Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani met at the Emiri Diwan yesterday with Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif, and his delegation. They reviewed cooperation between the two countries and exchanged views on the current situation in the region.

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HIA face-reading tech plan to make boarding easierSachin Kumar The Peninsula

Soon faces of passengers will become their pass-ports at the Hamad International Airport as instead of showing their

passports and boarding passes, they will be able to board flights by just showing their faces.

The airport is working on a project which will do away with requirements for a passenger to show passport and boarding pass at airport touch points.

HIA and global IT provider SITA yesterday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that pro-vides a framework for the two partners to trial and enhance inno-vative passenger processing solutions at HIA.

The MoU was signed jointly by HIA Chief Operating Officer, Engr Badr Mohammed Al Meer and Hani El Assaad, SITA President, Middle East, India and Africa, at an event which took place at Qatar’s five star airport.

The main focus of the MoU is to advance HIA’s initiative to imple-ment seamless identity management across all key passen-ger service points using biometrics. In simple terms, the HIA has a

vision to completely transform how passengers experience the airport today.

According to the plan, a pas-senger would be required to register or get his face captured at the first touch point at the airport, from then onwards all he would need to do is to show his face at check-in, self baggage drop, pre-border control just prior to immigration and ultimately at the boarding gate.

“HIA’s efforts towards innova-tion and its strategic alliances with key partners such as SITA, all con-tribute towards its ‘Smart Airport’ vision that was officially launched in May 2016 under the patronage of Prime Minister and Interior Min-ister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani,” said Al Meer.

→ Continued on page 4

Trials will also be held to evaluate the effectiveness of robots for passenger facilitation.

Emir meets Iran Foreign Minister

More job categories to be excluded from driving licenceSidi Mohammed The Peninsula

To allay traffic congestion woes, more job categories are likely to be declared

ineligible for light-vehicle licences in addition to existing list of above 180 jobs already banned from having the per-mission. This is being done as part of a national strategy to

address traffic congestion, a senior official at General Direc-torate of Traffic Department told The Peninsula.

“Currently, the demand of driving licence is very high and

there are many categories of jobs which will be banned from getting car driving licence,” the official said.

→ Continued on page 5

Emir condoles with Iraq leadersQNA

Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent yester-day cables of condolences to

President of the Republic of Iraq, Dr Fuad Masum, and to Prime Min-ister of Iraq Dr Haider Al Abadi, on the death of former Iraqi president Jalal Talabani. Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani, and Prime Minister and Inte-rior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani also sent similar cables.

→ See also page 12

Hague seminar on Qatar siege THE Hague Institute for Global Jus-tice stressed that the siege imposed by the siege countries on Qatar has not only created major politi-cal and economic disturbances in the region, but also raised many issues of international law. Speak-ers were participating in a seminar — “International legal means avail-able in the light of the four siege countries measures against Qatar”.

→ See also page 7

02 WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017HOME

03WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017 HOME

President of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid, received the credentials of Fahd bin Mohammed Al Attiyah as non-resident Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the State of Qatar to the Republic of Estonia. The President wished the Qatari Ambassador success in his new duties to push forward the cooperation relations between the two countries.

Qatar envoy in Estonia

Minister of Culture and Sports H E Salah bin Ghanem Al Ali with Ambassador of the French Republic to Qatar, Eric Chevallier. The meeting reviewed cooperation between the two countries and the means of strengthening and developing them in the cultural and sports fields.

Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani received a written message from Minister of the Interior of the French Republic, Gerard Collomb, pertaining to bilateral relations between the two countries and issues of common concern. The message was handed over by French Ambassador to Qatar, Eric Chevallier, during a meeting with the Prime Minister and Interior Minister.

PM receives message from French Minister

Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani with Ambassador of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to the State of Qatar, Mesganu Arga Moach, on the occasion of the end of his tenure in the country. The Prime Minister and Interior Minister wished the Ethiopian ambassador success in his future assignments and relations between the two countries further progress and prosperity.

PM meets outgoing Ethiopian envoy

Sanaullah AtaullahThe Peninsula

With adequate support of Qatar Devel-opment Bank (QDB), the

local farmers have increased vegetable production capacity of their farms significantly and are expecting to harvest double the quantity in the upcoming season. The farmers said that they added new greenhouses at their farms and acquired more free spaces of arable land to boost production.

Farmers lined up at the QDB to get finances for their agricul-tural projects. “A big number of farm owners are visiting the QDB seeking the bank’s services like feasibility studies for projects and providing neces-sary funds etc.,” said Ali Al Mohannadi, Manager for Agri-culture and Fisheries at QDB.

“Two types of projects – agricultural and livestock breeding - are being imple-mented at the farms,” said Al Mohannadi, while speaking in a Qatar TV talk show recently.

Al Mohannadi said that QDB provides funds to farm owners for their projects and the bank did not leave any stone unturned in financing the projects.

“The QDB also offers other services to the farmers like con-sultancy and holding exhibition

for promoting their products,” he added.

Farms are struggling to increase their production signif-icantly for the upcoming season. “We expect about 30 percent more production during the forth-coming season as compared to the last year,” said Ali Ahmad Saad Mansour Al Kaabi, owner of the Global Farm for Agricultural Supplies.

Al Kaabi said that the com-pany had established hundreds of greenhouses under seven projects during the past four months of blockade. “Most of the projects, five projects were financed by QDB and the remaining two were funded by

the company,” said Al Kaabi, adding that the projects had air-conditioned facilities, regular shades and irrigation system.

“All farmers are working to increase the productions of their farms. We acquired more free space of arable land at our farm,” said Ahmed Al Khalaf, a promi-nent Qatari businessman and owner of an agricultural farm.

“We have set up new green-houses to enhance the seasonal production. I expect that the har-vest of agricultural produce will increase manifold during the forthcoming season compared to the last year,” said Al Khalaf.

The farmers also appreciated the support of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment to the local farms.

The Ministry allots arable land to farms and facilitates them in getting water for irriga-tion, agricultural inputs and fertilizers, a farmer told The Peninsula. “The Ministry pro-vided various platforms to farmers to market their prod-ucts like winter vegetable markets and contracts with major commercial outlets which buy the products directly,” said the farmer. “With the support of the Ministry, the farmers got fair prices for their products in the last agricultural season,” he concluded.

QDB helps farmers to increase outputMore greenhouses

Farmers said they added new greenhouses and acquired more free space of arable land to boost production.

Farmers lined up at the QDB to get finances for their agricultural projects.

QNA

Under the Patronage of Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E

Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Min-istry of Education and Higher Education will celebrate Teachers’ Day tomorrow at the Qatar National Convention Center.

The event will award 100

of the oldest teachers in Qatar, in recognition of their services and contribution in the educa-tional field.

The State of Qatar annually celebrates this day in line with the World Teachers’ Day set by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organi-sation (Unesco) held annually on October 5, in recognition of their role as a pillar of the edu-cational process.

Ministry to mark Teachers’ Day

Be wary of fake calls,Ooredoo tells customers The Peninsula

Ooredoo has reminded customers to be vigi-lant and not trust calls

via social media or commu-nication applications (apps) wherein the caller ID displays ‘Ooredoo’.

Fraudsters are able to change their caller ID or dis-play names to ‘Ooredoo’ using some of the popular commu-nication apps, to ring customers and ask for credit card and account details, or top-up credit details in order to release a fake ‘prize’.

According to the company, Ooredoo representative will ring customers via the account number 4420 0000 only, and all calls registered under the caller ID name ‘Ooredoo’ received via apps are fake.

The company has urged customers to report any scam numbers via the 111 call cen-tre and to block suspicious numbers via their selected caller ID apps.

The Peninsula

The inspection campaign held by a representatives from the Ministry of Econ-

omy and Commerce in September resulted in the sei-zure and issuance of 64 violations.

The ministry announced the violations include the non-com-pliance with prices of vegetables and fruits bulletin, non-display of product and service prices, non-display in Arabic, non-issu-ance of receipts in Arabic, increasing prices without prior approvals from concerned authorities, offering discounts without proper required approvals and describing,

advertising, displaying products with false or deceiving information.

The penalties included administrative closure and financial fines which vary between QR 5,000 and QR 30,000 according to the laws and decisions governing the work of consumer protection departments. The ministry revealed it received 1,061 com-plaints in September, in which the necessary measures were taken to resolve them.

The intensive inspections are part of the Ministry’s keen-ness to regulate and monitor the markets and commercial activ-ities in the country with the aim of controlling prices and

detecting violations to protect consumer rights to monitor if suppliers were abiding by the obligations stipulated by Law No. (8) of 2008 on consumer protection.

The Ministry confirmed it will be firm against all those negligent and not complying with the consumer protection law and its executive regula-tions. It also confirmed it will intensify its inspection cam-paigns to control such practices and refer all violators to the con-cerned entities to take the appropriate measures against them to protect the consumer.

The Ministry called on all consumers to report any viola-tions to the Ministry.

Ministry of Economy detects 64 violations in September

MEC recalls Chevrolet Silverado model 2014 over power-steering defectThe Peninsula

Ministry of Economy and C o m m e r c e h a s announced the recall of

Chevrolet Silverado model of 2014 over defect in power steering con-trol module. The Ministry of Economy and Commerce, in col-laboration with Jaidah automotive,

dealer of Chevrolet vehicles in Qatar, has announced the recall of Chevrolet Silverado model of 2014 over a defect in the power steering control module.

The ministry said the recall campaign comes within the framework of its ongoing efforts to protect consumers and ensure that car dealers follow up on

vehicle defects and repairs. The ministry said that it will coordi-nate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works.

A shaded farm in Qatar.

Culture Minister meets French envoy

04 WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017HOME

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud with Ambassador of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to Qatar, Mesganu Arga Moach, on the occasion of ending his tenure in the country. During the meeting, they reviewed bilateral relations and ways of boosting them in various fields.

Deputy Prime Minister meets outgoing envoy Emir greetsPresident of GermanyEMIR H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent yesterday a cable of congratulations to President of the Federal Repub-lic of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier on the occasion of his country’s National Day.

The Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani also sent greetings to Frank-Walter Steinmeier on the occasion.

Prime Minister and Inte-rior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Kha-lifa Al Thani sent a cable of congratulations to Chancel-lor Dr Angela Merkel on the occasion of her country’s National Day.

Doha Center for Interfaith Dialogue condemns Las Vegas mass shootingQNA

Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue (DICID) has strongly

condemned the criminal shoot-ing that took place in the US city of Las Vegas on Monday, which resulted in the death and injury of large number of innocent people.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the DICID affirmed its total rejection of such acts and criminal ideas that claim innocent lives, regardless of their religion or faith.

The Center underlined that such trends and criminal ideas

represent a clear violation to the principles of humanity and the values of all divine religions that urge self-preservation, which is considered one of the greatest principles of the true religion of Islam.

The Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue reiterated its message which calls for love and tolerance, calling on the peace-loving people of the world to renounce violence, fight intol-erance and hatred, and to work together to protect the innocent and to reject hatred, violence and terrorism in all its forms.

13 professionals awarded Event Management DegreeThe Peninsula

Thirteen local and regional business events professionals have earned an Event Management Degree

(EMD) after completing the pro-gramme certified by the Union of International Fairs (UFI) in Qatar. The six-month training programme came as part of Qatar Tourism Authority’s (QTA) efforts to enhance Qatar’s com-petitiveness in the business events field, and was delivered in collaboration with the Exhi-bition, Convention and Event Management Company (ECE).

Speaking at the graduation ceremony, Ahmed Al Obaidli, Director of Exhibitions at QTA, said, “This EMD programme is one of many efforts undertaken to empower local exhibitions professionals with the tools they need to attract and deliver the highest quality of events. As we embark on the Next Chapter of the National Tourism Sector Strategy 2030, QTA will be working to further consolidate and focus the efforts of key

members of the business events sector.” He added, “We are par-ticularly pleased to see participants join us from coun-tries across the region, such as Oman, Iran and Sudan, reinforc-ing Qatar’s position as one of the region’s business events knowl-edge hubs.”

The EMD programme aims to help business event profes-sionals develop essential skills, particularly those related to project and risk management for exhibitions, sales management, exhibition marketing, strategic

management and sustainability in the exhibition industry.

Since the EMD programme was first launched in 2007 by UFI – the leading global exhibi-tion’s association – it has been delivered 15 times at different locations in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Kai Hattendorf, Managing Director and CEO of UFI said, “The region boasts world-class event venues and facilities which encouraged several private and governmental organisers to push forward the role of the exhibi-tion industry in the region. We were delighted to contribute to

this development through this unique educational programme which - thanks to the diversity of the participants in Doha – also provided a great networking opportunity.” Qatar’s business events sub-sector boasts grow-ing events management services, an exhibition capacity of 70,000

square metres, spread over world-class venues such as Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC) and the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center (DECC), an expanded transport network, as well as exceptional accessi-bility via Qatar Airways’ reach to 150 destinations worldwide.

Six-month course

The six-month training came as part of QTA’s efforts to enhance Qatar’s competitiveness in business events field.

Qatar’s business events sub-sector boasts growing events management services.

The Peninsula

In a step to motivate the next generation of athletes in Qatar, Ooredoo yesterday

honoured Qatari Olympic Medalist Mutaz Barshim at the company’s Headquarters in West Bay.

Mutaz, who is now short-listed for the IAAF Athlete of the Year award, was greeted by Ooredoo’s Chairman, Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Thani, as well as a host of sen-ior Ooredoo management.

The event was held as recog-nition for the achievements of Mutaz in high jump, including his current Number One standing in the IAAF Diamond League, a Gold Medal at the 2017 World

Championships in Athletics, his 2016 Silver Medal at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Also, Mutaz has been recently nominated for the World Athlete of the Year by IAAF. He is one of 10 men nom-inated for the prestigious prize.

Talking at the event, Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Thani, Chairman of Ooredoo, said: “We congratu-late Qatar’s sporting hero Mutaz on his excellence and success in raising the flag of Qatar in the international sorting arena. Ooredoo has a long history of supporting Qatar’s athletes and Mutaz is a perfect example of a Qatari athlete who, despite his youth, has been able to emerge as a model for the next-gener-ation of athletes.”

Professionals who earned the Event Management Degree (EMD) with officials.

HIA face-reading tech plan to make boarding easierContinued from page 1

“Our aim is to empower our passengers to experience a seamless journey at their own pace, all the while keeping them informed about what matters to them most,” said Badr Moham-med Al Meer, Chief Operating Officer at HIA. “The use of bio-metrics as the only verification required at each passenger touch point along the airport journey will go a long way in improving the flow of passengers, provid-ing a better travel experience as well as greater operational vis-ibility for the stakeholders,” added Al Meer.

According to HIA statement, trials will also be held to evalu-ate the effectiveness of robots for passenger facilitation; block-chain technology for rapid and secure sharing of data across stakeholders; and the potential use of augmented and virtual reality for operational concepts.

It was also announced at the event that SITA will be supply-ing and commissioning 62 of its next-generation common-use check-in kiosks, with bag tag printing capability. This will enhance passenger experience for self-service check-in and enable progressive deployment of self-service bag-drop facilities.

SITA will also be supplying and commissioning boarding pass verification e-gates which will be located prior to depar-tures’ border control. These kiosks and e-gates will have the

ability to use biometrics to iden-tify passengers.

In line with HIA’s strategy, all systems that are being acquired or upgraded for pas-senger processing, such as for check-in, bag drop, and aircraft boarding, are specified for inte-gration with biometric sensors. Such capability will not only provide enhanced security over-sight but also holds tremendous potential to deliver a smooth end-to-end journey through the airport using a single biometric token.

The formalisation of this partnership follows the success-ful industry-first pilot of biometric exit checks conducted

by SITA and HIA in Qatar’s air-port during 2016. These early trials using SITA’s Smart Path technology at HIA, in collabora-tion with the national carrier Qatar Airways, Government Security Agencies and the national regulator, Qatar Civil Aviation Authority, have led to SITA optimising the technology and subsequently implement-ing it with major airports and airlines around the world.

A key benefit of SITA’s Smart Path technology is that it seam-lessly integrates into existing common-use airport infrastruc-ture and airline systems, allowing passengers to use bio-metrics each step of the way

– doing away with the need to present travel documents beyond the first step in the journey.

Hani El Assaad, SITA Presi-dent, Middle East, India and Africa said: “We at SITA wel-come the opportunity to work with a world-leading hub such as Hamad International Airport to push the boundaries of inno-vation to truly change the way passengers will travel in future. Our vision to make air travel easier at every step fits neatly with the Hamad International Airport’s ‘Smart Airport’ vision and together we can help reshape the future of air transport.”

Ooredoo congratulates Qatari athlete Barshim

Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Thani, Chairman of Ooredoo, congratulating Mutaz Barshim.

Hani El Assaad, SITA President, Middle East, India and Africa (left), and Engr Badr Mohammed Al Meer, Chief Operating Officer at Hamad International Airport, at the MoU signing ceremony.

05WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017 HOME

Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani with Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif, in Doha yesterday. They discussed bilateral relations and means of enhancing them, along with developments in the Gulf crisis and Kuwaiti mediation efforts, in addition to the latest developments in the region.

The Peninsula

Special limited edition pink amenity kits are now being offered to Qatar Airways’

First and Business Class passen-gers to mark the airline’s continuing support for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Each passenger flying long-haul in First Class and Business Class will be presented with a luxury amenity bag created exclusively for Qatar Airways by stylish Italian luggage brand BRIC’S, in a carefully chosen shade of pink called ‘Rose Pompadour’.

Every one of the highly-sought after amenity kits, designed for men and women, will be accompanied by a spe-cially created card urging customers to Think Pink! and encouraging them to support the fight against breast cancer.

Qatar Airways Senior Vice President Marketing and Corpo-rate Communications, Salam Al Shawa, said: “Qatar Airways is a very strong supporter of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and all the incredibly hard work that goes into research and develop-ment to help beat breast cancer. We hope these very special and

limited edition pink BRIC’S lux-ury amenity kits for our male and female passengers flying long-haul in First Class and Busi-ness Class will help demonstrate our ongoing commitment to raising awareness of breast can-cer, and show our support for those affected by it.”

Qatar Airways has long sup-ported Breast Cancer Awareness month with the airline’s staff playing their part to help beat the disease. As well as being encour-aged to wear pink during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, many Qatar Airways employees will be taking part in a number of ini-tiatives to alert staff to the dangers of the disease and gen-erate funds towards fighting breast cancer.

These include various work-shops and awareness-raising lectures designed to raise aware-ness of the importance of self-assessment and early diagnosis.

The special pink luxury amenity kits are just the latest initiative by the airline to raise both awareness and funds for the disease that affects millions of women all around the world.

The pink shade of Rose Pom-padour used for the amenity kits

was created in France in 1757 at the famous Sèvres porcelain facility. The shade, prized for its vivacity and beauty, was one of five colours produced by Sèvres, which helped to define magnif-icence and luxury in eighteenth-century France.

All passengers flying in First Class and Business Class with Qatar Airways will be offered pink versions of the airline’s sig-nature miniature BRIC’S Bellagio and Sintesis suitcase amenity kits, which feature a hard shell with a Tuscan leather trim. Each

bag contains exclusive products from Italy’s Castello Monte Vib-i a n o V e c c h i o , t h e environmentally friendly olive oil company.

The skin care range includes lip balm, hydrating facial mist, and anti-ageing moisturiser in Business Class, with added Night Recovery Cream for First Class kits.

Pink socks, eyeshades and ear plugs complete the range with the addition of a BRIC’S signature luggage tag for First Class.

Qatar Airways supports Breast Cancer Awareness month

The Peninsula

As h g h a l h a s announced the com-pletion of Roads and I n f r a s t r u c t u r e D e v e l o p m e n t

project in North and East of Al Kheesa (Rawdat Al Hamama) – Package 1. The first package serves about 766 residential plots, along with a number of schools, mosques, commercial outlets, and Ferjan markets in the area. This was achieved by upgrading the local roads net-works (about 19.5 km), and providing one-lane and two-lane local roads to facilitate local residents’ access to their houses.

The announcement was made at a community meeting held yesterday at the Majlis of Meshaal bin Abdullah Al Noaimi, the Central Municipal Council member for Constituency No. 18.

The meeting was attended by Mubarak Mohammed Matar Al Kuwari, Director of Al Daayen Municipality, and dignitaries from the area, as well as Engineer Saoud Al Tamimi, Roads Projects Department Manager at Ashghal and section heads and concerned engineers in Ashghal.

Eng. Saoud Al Tamimi, high-lighted the main features of the project and the challenges faced by the authority during its implementation. He listened to the comments of the audience and answered their questions about Ashghal’s ongoing and future projects in the area.

Eng. Saoud Al-Tamimi added that the project aims at providing

an integrated infrastructure, drainage networks, roads and many essential utilities in Al-Kheesa, which suffers a shortage in all infrastructure services.

In addition, pavement works were carried out in the area and 330-road signage were installed to improve road safety. Electric-i t y c o n n e c t i o n s , telecommunications services, and an upgraded irrigation sys-tem were among a package of services provided for the local community as part of the project works. Additionally, 790 light-ing poles were installed and will be connected to the electrical power by next month.

The project’s infrastructure works involved constructing a surface and ground water drain-age network (about 15.7 km) in order to solve the flooding issue during the rainy seasons.

The project also involves upgrading major trunk sewers (15 km in length), that will solve the sanitary overflow issue and will eliminate the use of septic tanks in North and East Al Kheesa once these trunk sewers are connected to outfalls under future projects Ashghal is planning to launch. The project also involves upgrading the treated sewage effluent net-work (about 8 km).

Meshaal bin Abdullah Al Noaimi said: “This meeting is a good and new initiative by Ash-ghal, and I hope other entities concerned with community engagement do the same. Dur-ing the meeting, benefits of the Roads and Infrastructure Devel-opment project in North and

East of Al Kheesa (Rawdat Al Hamama) were discussed, in addition to the current and future projects in the area.”

“Ashghal also listened to the attendees’ questions and remarks. It is worth mentioning that Ashghal has leaped for the better in the last year, as we noticed weekly achievements, which changed Ashghal’s per-ception in the eyes of citizens and municipal council members, given that all our demands are being met, which pleases eve-ryone.” Noaimi added.

He said: “Since the begin-ning of the blockade, we noticed a lot of cooperation between all entities and noticed more achievements recently. Lastly I would like to thank the Public Works Authority and the Min-ister of Municipality and Environment for his continuous support”.

Mubarak Mohamed Matar Al Kuwari said, “We thank Ash-ghal for their continuous communication with the peo-ple, and ongoing cooperation to meet the citizens’ needs and solve their problems. We also appreciate the efforts made to find quick solutions for emer-gency problems, especially underground water problems, whereas underground and rain water pipes are currently being laid and will be complete soon.”

The project location is about 10km far from the north of Doha City, and lies between the Al Khor Expressway and Al Shamal Road in Al Daayen Municipality.

Ashghal completes project in North and East Al Kheesa

Majority of people have poor knowledge of Zika: SurveyThe Peninsula

Two-thirds of respondents to a survey in Qatar about the Zika virus had poor

knowledge of the disease. The research team of Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q)’s Insti-tute for Population Health (IPH) surveyed 446 people in Qatar from GCC or other Middle East-ern countries and asked a range of questions about Zika.

The results showed that 66 percent of participants had ‘poor’ knowledge of Zika, defined as not knowing that it is transmitted by mosquitos and/or that anyone can get the virus and/or that there is currently no vaccine. Twenty-seven percent had ‘basic’ knowledge of Zika, defined as knowing that there is currently no vaccine, that the disease is transmitted by mosquitos and that anyone can get it.

Just seven percent of respondents were found to have ‘broad’ knowledge, defined as having ‘basic’ knowledge and additionally knowing that it can be transmitted through sexual intercourse, blood transfusions and from mother to baby dur-ing pregnancy, and that if a pregnant woman has Zika virus there are health risks for her baby.

The Zika virus is generally not

harmful to most people but poses a more serious risk to pregnant women as it can cause grave medical complications such as the birth defect microcephaly, char-acterized by an abnormally small head in newborn babies. The Zika virus is not currently judged to be a direct threat to the Gulf region currently.

Lead author of the study Dr. Sohaila Cheema, Director of the Institute for Population Health and Assistant Professor of Health-care Policy and Research at WCM-Q, said, “Our aim with this study was not to make people worried about Zika virus becom-ing prevalent in Qatar, because the risk of that happening is very low, although future cases are indeed possible because of Doha’s position as a global transport hub. Rather, our aim was to look at an emergent public health issue that received widespread coverage in

the media and discover whether the general public gained useful practical information that they could use to protect their own health.

“The results are slightly con-cerning for us because it appears that although the Zika virus was extensively covered by interna-tional media, this does not appear to have resulted in peo-ple gaining anything more than a superficial understanding of the disease and the nature of the risk it poses.”

The article, entitled Knowl-edge and perceptions about Zika virus in a Middle East country, has been published in the health jour-nal BMC Infectious Diseases. Other contributors to the study included Dr Javaid Sheikh, Dean of WCM-Q, and Dr Ravinder Mamtani, Professor of Healthcare Policy and Research in WCM-Q’s Institute for Population Health.

More job categories to be excluded from driving licence

Continued from page 1“The department is wait-

ing for the completion of mega urban projects and once they like roads and bridges are completed, the department can relax the policy,” the official further said.

He clarified that the cate-gories of jobs which could be banned in near future included jobs relating to administration. “These categories don’t require a driving licence as the com-panies are supposed to provide them with transportation,” the source said.

The department has already banned more than 180 categories of jobs which include a number of professions.

The job categories already banned from getting driving licences include grocer, butcher, tailor, goldsmith, a g r i c u l t u r a l w o r k e r , decoration technician, mining technician, beautician, mechanic , newspaper vendor, barber, servant, cosmetologist, security guard, porter, shepherd etc.

“At the time when we have banned many jobs categories from getting light-vehicle licences, we have allowed all categories to take motorcycle licences. Also, heavy-vehicle licences are allowed for workers”, said the official.

“Until now, the demand of motorcycle license is low. We are encouraging all youth to take it. There are about 50percent of Qatari youth driving motorcycles without licences, and this is very dangerous and pose serious risk to their lives and lives of other people”, he revealed.

To make driving test time comfortable for applicants, the time has been adjusted from 5am to 7am; divided in three days for three different tests including computer test, parking test and road test.

About the “smart cars” being used for driving tests without human intervention and supervision, the official said that the move was still under consideration and had not been implemented yet.

The community meeting at the Majlis of Meshaal bin Abdullah Al Noaimi, a Central Municipal Council (CMC) member.

Dr Ravinder Mamtani and Dr. Sohaila Cheema

An amenity kit for Business Class Female.

Foreign Minister meets Iranian counterpart

06 WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017HOME

The Peninsula

The World Innovation Sum-mit for Education (WISE), a leading international ini-

tiative driving innovation and collaboration in education, has revealed the names of four projects selected to benefit from the 2017-18 WISE Accelerator programme.

The selected 2017-18 WISE Accelerator projects are CamBi-oScience (UK), a cloud platform delivering individualised online courses in life science technol-ogies for professionals in academia and industry. Its aim is to respond to the demands of the rapidly advancing fields of science and technology, and an ever-increasing share of jobs requiring a background in STEM.

Doc Academy (UK), an

education programme aiming to develop critical and independ-ent thinking in young people. Using the power of

documentary film as a stimulus for learning and debate, Doc Academy is designed to help teachers and students think

about the world, society, and their place in it. Pixis based in France and its an online platform aiming to become the college councillor of the future through the use of artificial intelligence and data science, with the goal of transforming career guidance. Pixis helps students explore and identify meaningful degrees and jobs. Tabshoura in a Box (Leb-anon) is an initiative of Lebanese Alternative Learning that deploys an offline server filled with digital resources. Aligned with the Lebanese school cur-riculum, the content is designed to fill learning gaps and avoid school dropouts in deprived areas of Lebanon and refugee communities.

Each year, the WISE Accel-erator programme supports the development of young,

innovative EdTech projects with high potential for scalability and positive impact in the field of education. The chosen projects will benefit from a year-long mentorship programme tailored to address their specific needs.

Stavros N. Yiannouka, CEO, WISE, said, “These four promis-ing initiatives offer smart solutions to pressing education challenges including the need for 21st century skills to prepare for an uncertain future of work, the rapidly advancing field of STEM, and the global refugee crisis. We are pleased to welcome these projects to the WISE Accelera-tor programme, where they will benefit from mentorship and global connections, enabling them to develop and scale for the benefit of the wider community.”

WISE picks four projects for Accelerator programme

CamBioScience, one of the selected projects from the 2017-18 WISE Accelerator programme.

The Peninsula

Sidra Medical and Research Center (Sidra) hosted a series of workshops on cul-

tural intelligence for over 200 clinical and non-clinical lead-ers of the organisation recently. The workshops were led by international thought leader and author Dr David Livermore, President of the Cultural Intel-ligence Center.

Cultural Intelligence is a glo-bally recognised way of assessing and improving effec-tiveness for culturally diverse situations. It is rooted in rigor-ous, academic research conducted by scholars around the world. According to Dr Livermore, Sidra is the first organization in Qatar, to adopt his Cultural Intelligence model into its corporate learning and employee engagement programs.

Dr. Kholode Al Obaidli, Chief Learning Officer, who has championed for innovative and engaging learning and develop-ment programs at Sidra said, “With the rapid rate that our organization is growing and with over 80 different nation-alities, it is critical that we have an open dialogue and aware-ness about our cultural differences in the workplace. As a diverse healthcare organiza-tion in Qatar, we are taking active measures to ensure that we have training and career development programs that cul-tivate a culture of respect, workplace efficiency and safety which will benefit both staff and our patients.”

Dr Livermore who conducts cultural intelligence workshops across the globe, pointed out empirical research reports on organizations that improve their cultural intelligence benefit

from effective communication across cultures; improved cre-ativity and innovation; enhanced job performance and increased profitability and cost savings.

“The cultural intelligence model is based on four capabil-ities – drive, knowledge, strategy and action. The work-shop was a great exercise in getting a deeper understanding of one’s personal culture versus other cultures within a team and how can we align expectations. I am incredibly inspired by an employee community like Sidra, with more than 2500 employ-ees from over 80 different nationalities and how they can utilize those differences to drive innovation and quality care for patients and their families.” said Dr Livermore.

Dr Livermore will be back in Qatar again to conduct more sessions for leadership at Sidra.

Sidra hosts workshops

Raynald C Rivera The Peninsula

More than 45 high school and university students are taking part in the

annual ‘ROTA Youth Service Clubs – Leadership Training 2017’ programme organised by Reach Out To Asia, a core pro-gramme of Education Above All (EAA).

This was announced by Abdulla Al Bakri, Community Development Manager at ROTA, during a press conference at Education City yesterday, ahead of the four-day intensive train-ing which kicks off the five-month long programme.

The intensive training pro-gramme will be held from October 25 to 28 and will focus on leadership and project man-agement skills.

“We are delighted to announce the new edition of our

annual Youth Leadership pro-gramme. The programme is an invaluable initiative that invests in developing crucial skills of Qatari and resident youth. The first phase is an intensive 4-day programme that will equip youth participants with vital skills to go on to make their voices heard on global humanitarian issues and positively contribute to their communities,” said Al Bakri.

The participants were cho-sen among the many hopefuls who applied online and under-went personal interviews, he explained.

“This year’s participants have demonstrated eagerness to make a difference in the world around them, and I am confident that once they have completed the programme, they will be empowered to become respon-sible global citizens capable of shaping the future for genera-tions to come,” he added.

The programme was created to provide Qatari youth aged 16 to 26 with the communication and leadership skills to play an active role in addressing global humanitarian issues and driv-ing the development of their communities.

The young participants will take part in the three-phase pro-gramme that runs from this month to March next year, which will equip them with core lead-ership, project management, advocacy, teamwork and com-munity service skil ls . Throughout the programme, participants will work in groups to complete a series of assigned tasks and projects to enable them to leverage their goal set-ting capacity and network with their peers.

The ROTA Youth Challenge is an effective tool for develop-ing and fine-tuning youth skills that will present participants

with real life challenges to equip them with the skills to make a meaningful impact in their com-munities. The programme will also help Qatari youth chart their career paths, and will prepare them to become qualified ambassadors for Qatar and ROTA at international conventions.

“It is an honour to be given an opportunity to be one of the mentors for the Youth

Leadership 2017 programme. As a previous participant of the pro-gramme, I was taught several invaluable skills that have ena-bled me to become an effective leader and speak up on global issues. I now feel confident in my ability to impart what I learned and to offer like-minded youth with the guidance to go on to make an impact on both a local and global scale,” said Saif Al Suwadi, ROTA Youth Clubs

representative. ROTA will showcase distin-

guished projects following the successful completion of the programme at next year’s ROTA’s EMPOWER Youth Con-ference, a youth-led conference that promotes youth develop-ment in Qatar through a network of youth service clubs that ena-ble youth to become responsible global citizens and empowered young leaders.

45 students take part in ROTA Training programme

Abdulla Al Bakri (centre), Community Development Manager at ROTA, during a press conference at Education City, yesterday.

The Peninsula

The Digital Incuba-tion Center (DIC) at the Ministry of

Transport and Commu-nications (MoTC) has launched IdeaCamp - a new program for entre-preneurs, developers and designers who have great ideas for a technology solution.

IdeaCamp offers a series of workshops, training courses and mentorships for five weeks that will help entrepreneurs develop business models, build prototypes and test their ideas with local customers.

By the end of the program, the entrepre-neurs with successful ideas will join the DIC Startup Track to take their ideas to the next level, which begins this December 1.

Online applications to join the program will be received at www.ide-acamp.qa until October 18, 2017. Applications will then be screened and owners of the accepted applications will be noti-fied. IdeaCamp accepts applications for any technology idea. How-ever, priority is given to entrepreneurs who sub-mit ideas in the following technology areas: Block-chain, 3D printing and the Internet of things (IoT).

The Digital Incuba-tion Center (DIC) was created in 2011 to boost ICT innovation in Qatar, particularly among young people at the crit-ical early stages of starting or growing a technology-related business.

The DIC is looking for entrepreneurs capable of harnessing emerging technologies to create innovative products, solutions, or services that will contribute to Qatar’s digital economy.

The DIC offers start-ups free office space, technical support, train-ing and guidance, mentorship, as well as business planning and legal advice.

MoTC Digital Incubation Center opens IdeaCamp

Dr David Livermore, President of the Cultural Intelligence Center, interacting with others during the workshop.

The Peninsula

The third Qatar Patient Safety Week organised by the Min-istry of Public Health under

theme “Together for Patient Safety” has concluded after organising a number of events in which large number of health practitioners and general public participated.

A week-long event included lectures and seminars. The activ-ities were held at the Ministry of Public Health, Qatar University, Aspetar Hospital and the Grand Hyatt Hotel with participation of all relevant sectors including a large number of health practition-ers and the general public.

Qatar Patient Safety Week is a national initiative created by the HealthCare Quality and Patient Safety Department (HQPS) as a conduit to raise awareness and spread the concepts of patient safety among all healthcare pro-viders as well as the public across Qatar. The QPSW was attended by seven speakers from outside the State of Qatar and 41 speak-ers from various Qatar-based health institutions who partici-pated in many lectures and panel discussions, in addition to the wide participation of specialists from the medical staff.

A public awareness campaign was held at the Villaggio Mall on September 29 and 30 September. The campaign included several activities organized by the Minis-try of Public Health in cooperation with the Qatar Red Crescent and

Al Emadi Hospital. The views and suggestions of visitors in Villag-gio on improving health services in Qatar were also surveyed through a questionnaire.

Health service providers were also surveyed about patient expe-rience through a questionnaire in which 109 health care providers participated.

Speaking at the closing cere-mony of the third Qatar Patient Safety Week at the Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Juliet Ibrahim from the Ministry of Public Health spoke about the National Health Strategy (2017-2022). She briefed the attendees on the basic pillars of the health strategy towards bet-ter health, better care and better values. The lecture also addressed the national objectives of the strategy and stressed that the strategy was prepared through joint efforts.

Dr. Ron Wyatt, Chief Quality Officer, Hamad Medical Corpo-ration, Director of Hamad Healthcare Quality Institute, spoke about the safety of drugs and the importance of health care as one of the main needs of the individual. He also addressed on the World Health Organization’s “Third Global Challenge Initiative on Patient Safety” and the medi-cal errors. Huda Amer Al Katheeri, Director of Health Care and Patient Safety Department at the Ministry of Public Health, thanked the attendees. Winners of the five posters from the local posters on quality improvement and patient safety were awarded.

Qatar Patient Safety Week concludes

07WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017 HOME

The Peninsula

Hamad Bin Khalifa Univer-sity (HBKU), of Qatar Foundation , and Exxon-

Mobil Research Qatar (EMRQ) signed a Memorandum of Under-standing (MoU) yesterday, forging a commitment to advance science and technology through research and develop-ment in Qatar. This partnership aims to strengthen the coopera-tion between the two parties through the exchange of knowl-edge, student opportunities and academic development programmes.

The MoU was signed by Dr Ahmad M Hasnah, President of HBKU, and Alistair Routledge, President and General-Manager of ExxonMobil Qatar, at a cere-mony held at the HBKU Headquarters in Education City, in the presence of senior execu-tives from both organizations, and marked the launch of the

HBKU – EMRQ Research Schol-ars Program, in which the two organizations will collaborate on joint research projects.

The collaboration involves the participation of graduate stu-dents from HBKU’s College of Humanities & Social Sciences (CHSS) and the College of Science and Engineering (CSE). Research undertaken in the program will contribute to projects in the fields of environmental management, water usage, geology, and safety.

Dr. Hasnah said, “At HBKU, we actively work with our part-ners to build a robust ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneur-ship. This collaboration with ExxonMobil will build more syn-ergy between our students, faculty and researchers, and the industry. One of the key focus areas of HBKU is the energy and environment sector, and we look forward to sharing knowledge and collaborating on research in this field. It is partnerships like

these that showcase HBKU’s commitment to utilizing its expertise to work hand-in-hand with the industry.”

“The HBKU–EMRQ Research Scholars Program highlights our joint commitment to research, and establishing a solid founda-tion for Qatar’s sustainable future. Education is a fundamen-tal building block in our society, therefore, we at ExxonMobil have been working closely with our partners to encourage the pursuit of excellence in educa-tion, particularly in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM),” said Routledge.

The HBKU–EMRQ Research Scholars Program, within the signed MoU between the two organisations aims to strengthen the collaboration between aca-demics and research, and the industry. The MoU will see fur-ther engagement between the experts from HBKU and Exxon-Mobil, serving as mentors,

advisors and researchers in the undertaken projects in the Schol-ars Program.

Through the agreement, both

organisations will strive towards the continuous development of student research programs, to promote academic and industry

relations, foster innovation, and facilitate the development and use of state-of-the-art technology.

HBKU and EMRQ sign MoU to collaborate on research projects

The Peninsula

Qatar University (QU) held Innovation and Intellectual Property

(IP) Awareness Day aiming to promote and raise com-munity awareness on the protection of intellectual property at QU.

The event was organ-i s e d b y t h e newly-established QU Inno-vation and Intellectual Property (IIP) Office, an arm of QU Research Planning and Development Office and under the auspices of QU Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies Prof Mariam Al Maadeed.

It included presenta-tions delivered by intellectual property experts from QU and institutions from the public and private sectors. Speakers were Dr Mohamed Sayed Fares, QU College of Law Assistant Professor of Law, Dr Arsa-lan Safari,QU Center for Entrepreneurship Assistant Professor, Ahmed M Al-Sulaiti, Head of Intellectual Property Awareness Admin-istration at Qatar Ministry of Economy and Commerce, Nival Nabil, Legal Expert at Qatar Ministry of Economy and Commerce and Namir Bachir Sioufi, Patent Attor-ney at Saba & Co Intellectual

Property. They discussed various

t o p i c s w h i c h included,“Copyright and the University: Protecting your Works”, “Innovation and Intellectual Property in Small Businesses”, “The Role of the Ministry of Economy and Commerce’s Intellec-tual Property Awareness Administration”, “The Role of the Ministry of Economy and Commerce’s Intellec-tual Property Administration in obtaining Patents in Qatar”, and “Filing Patent Application and PCT”.

Dr. Mohamed Salem Abou El Farag, IIP Office Manager, provided a brief on the office’s functions and roles such as promoting innovation, protecting all types of IP and enhancing IP awareness among QU community, supporting IP enforcement, marketing QU IP rights, and negotiating IP licensing agreements.

Prof Mariam Al Maa-deed, said, “The newly-established QU-IIP Office will contribute to advancing QU research, inventions and IP profile, while seeking to make research knowledge read-ily accessible by the community, industry and researchers without them violating the laid down rules and regulations.”

QU organises IP Awareness Day

The Peninsula

To make procedures easier for Qatar’s visitors, the Ministry of Interior recently launched, on

its official website, a new link about visas, allowing visitors to search for visas based on nationality and residence.

This came under the Ministry’s framework which aims to ease visas to the country. The new link offers many options such as the types of visas, how to avail them and how to extend them. It also shows the rules related to every type of visa, in addi-tion to some general tips.

The Ministry also asked people to participate in an online discussion on the website about their opinion of the new procedures related to visas, and if they have any suggestion or expe-riences of entering Qatar. It also asks people to write if they find any prob-lems or obstacles.

The launching of the new link coincided with the official celebration of World Tourism Day, which was held in Doha on September 27, under the theme of Sustainable Tourism-A Tool for Development’ and attracted a number of high-level officials from the international tourism sector. It also came at a time when the country wit-nesses big development to be a tourist destination.The MoI earlier announced that Qatar is now visa-free for citizens of over 80 countries around the world, in addition it had eased procedures to citizens of many other countries. With this announcement, Qatar is now the highest in the region in terms of number of nationalities eligible to enter visa-free, making it the most open country in the region.

Ministry opens new link about visas

QNA

The Hague Institute for Glo-bal Justice stressed that the siege imposed by the four

countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt) on Qatar has not only created major political and economic disturbances in the region, but also raised many issues of international law.

The speakers, who partici-pated in the seminar entitled “International legal means avail-able in the light of the four siege countries measures against Qatar” organised by the Diplo-matic Institute, said that the siege is seen as a dangerous escalation of friendly relations between Qatar and those countries, and an attempt to interfere in Qatar’s internal affairs. The seminar is among the intellectual events organised by the Diplomatic Institute that discuss the dam-age caused by the siege and its

legal consequences attended by department directors at the Min-istry of Foreign Affairs and officials from a number of min-istries and stakeholders.

At the beginning of the sem-inar, Foreign Minister’s Special Envoy on Counterterrorism and Mediation in Disputes’ settle-ments HE Ambassador Dr. Mutlaq bin Majed Al Qahtani, said that the main problem fac-ing the international community is the implementation and appli-cation of international law.

HE Ambassador added that the focus on this problem is because there are violations by the siege countries, stressing that these violations are clear to all and any simple study will show the huge number of violations committed by the siege countries against the State of Qatar.

Dr. Al Qahtani said we must prove to the world that there are violations of international

obligations through the law. The four countries, with their siege of Qatar, have committed an act that contravenes international law, and we are here to clarify the means of applying interna-tional law. He noted that there are important organizations that can be resorted to in the appli-cation of international law, namely the United Nations and specialized organizations, which in his view more effective than others because they have mech-anisms to resolve disputes in a binding manner, but on condi-tion of proof of these violations.

For their part, experts at the Hague Institute stressed that an important principle of conduct among countries was the United Nations (UN) General Assembly resolution (No. 2625) of 1970, also known as the Declaration on Friendly Relations, and although it was not a binding

international agreement, UN affirmed that the principles of the Charter of the United Nations embodied in this Declaration constitute fundamental princi-ples of international law.

The speakers pointed out that the measures that could be taken to address violations of any of the basic principles of the international regime or any other rights violated by these countries against Qatar under international law are to initiate legal actions against states and individuals in the context of the siege of Qatar by the four countries.

The participants, Senior Ambassador at the Institute HE Winand Staring, Dr. Stephen Rapp, a legal expert in the US government and the United Nations, and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Institute Ste-ven van Hoogstraten presented the mechanisms for the adjudi-cation of cases in accordance

with international criminal law, international maritime law, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, World Trade Organization (WTO) law, international investment law, international public law and the International Court of Justice.

Dr. Al Qahtani spoke about Qatar’s efforts in the fight against terrorism. He stressed that Qatar has not supported terrorism in any way. It is the only Arab and Islamic country that is a mem-ber of the Global Fund and has donated $ 1 million to this fund, which aims to address the root causes of violent extremism.

H E Ambassador stressed that the State of Qatar contrib-utes to finding a radical solution and addressing the causes of vio-lent extremism. In order to do so, 10 million children in 45 coun-tries around the world have been educated through the Education for All programme.

Dr. Al Qahtani said that the State of Qatar is implementing economic empowerment and job creation projects for Arab youth in 16 Arab countries and aims to generate job opportunities for 2.7 million Arab youth by 2020. He added there isn’t a state in the Arab and Islamic world has done the same efforts as the State of Qatar in this field. At the end of the seminar, the Assistant Direc-tor of the Diplomatic Institute Nadia Ahmed Al Shaibi expressed her thanks and appreciation to the Hague Institute for Global Justice for its valuable participa-tion in providing international legal frameworks to deal with the siege. The participants also expressed their thanks to the Diplomatic Institute, which gave them the opportunity to partic-ipate in this seminar which highlighted the international law in dealing with the issues of the siege.

‘International Law authorises prosecution of siege countries’

The Peninsula

Bedaya Center for Entrepre-neurship and Career Development (Bedaya

Center), a joint initiative by Qatar Development Bank and Silatech, has launched the sec-ond ‘Dukan’ -the cosy little shop at Ezdan Mall. This follows the successful opening of the first branch at the Katara cultural vil-lage, about a year ago.

Through ‘Dukan’, Bedaya aims to support small and medium businesses founded by young, creative and ambitious local Qataris, helping them gain visibility, promote their prod-ucts and display their goods and services in one of the most stra-tegic shopping malls in town.

Reem Al Suwaidi, General Manager of Bedaya, said,” Today we are pleased to cultivate yet another success by opening the second branch of ‘Dukan’ at Ezdan mall which will last for three weeks. This initiative was launched last year to support local SME’s and startups by highlight the pioneering inno-vation in the country and facilitate our next generation become future business leaders”.

“The Dukan initiative coin-cides with the our objective at Bedaya to support the youth and young Qataris establish their projects and businesses in a way that will allow a new generation of entrepreneurs to become building blocks of our nation’s future, as well as compliment the growth of our local indus-tries and projects” she added.

Group General-Manager of

Ezdan Malls Malik Awan, said, “Ezdan Mall is committed to supporting and marketing national goods in view to create greater self-sufficiency. For this reason, we partnered with Bedaya Center to back their ambitious project ‘Dukan Bedaya’.

Furthermore, Ezdan Mall Group General Manager said that this project is a quality addi-tion to the series of initiatives recently launched by Ezdan Mall to address the siege and pro-mote the Qatari culture. Such initiatives included the set-up of Tamim Al Majd murals, in addition to the co-operation with the Ministry of Culture & Sports, over the past two months, to host a range of her-itage activities that varied between theatrical shows, plas-tic arts and various forms of traditional crafts, which in turn attracted hundreds of visitors and achieved a great interaction with the public.”

Under the roof of Dukan, a

variety of special local projects are displayed, which are founded by local talented and creative Qataris under the supervision and guidance of Bedaya Center for Entrepre-neurship and Career Development.

Dukan’s objective is support SMEs in Qatar by showcasing their products in an innovative and different ways that attract the public and introduce the products to them. Every two weeks, the displayed products are changed enabling a large number of entrepreneurs to par-ticipate and introduce their projects and products.

The Dukan initiative has opened the doors for new prod-ucts to surface. It aims to supply the needs of the local market and thereby eliminate the dependence on imports. In order to provide more details about the products at the Dukan, a profile is displayed next to each item highlighting the business behind it and the product itself.

Bedaya Center launches ‘Dukan’

Officials inaugurating the second ‘Dukan’ -the cosy little shop at Ezdan Mall.

Officials during the launch of the programme.

08 WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017HOME

The Peninsula

Qatar University College of Business and Economics (QU-CBE) held a press con-

ference recently to outline its key achievements and future plans for the academic year 2017-18.

The press conference was moderated by Dr. Khalid Shams Al Abdulqader, CBE Dean; Dr. Belaid Aouni, CBE Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Pro-grams; Dr. Mahmoud Abdellatif, Director of CBE Center for Entre-preneurship; and Dr. Bader Al Esmail, CBE Department Heads of Management and Marketing; Prof Mohamed Gaied of Finance and Economics; Prof Mostafa Kamal Hassan of Accounting and Information Systems. Highlight-ing the new pillars of CBE’s new strategy, Dr Khalid Shams Al Abdulqader said: “The college’s new strategy is based on several pillars such as the graduation of

highly qualified professionals, maintaining a strong relationship between the college’s alumni and its Advisory Board, and keeping abreast of the ever-changing needs of the local and regional labour market, among many others.”

He also stressed the impor-tance of increasing the organization and implementa-tion of international conferences that align with local and regional needs, and of fostering links with institutions from various sectors through partnerships and collab-orations that enhance education and research outcomes.

“CBE Center for Entrepre-neurship has been selected among the top 35 centers in the world by the Information and Knowledge Management Soci-ety. He also highlighted that the center will organize the Interna-tional Conference on Entrepreneurship, Innovation

and Local Development, first-of-its-kind in Qatar,” said Dr Mahmoud Abdellatif.

On management and market-ing, Dr Bader Al-Esmail highlighted the increase of research output at CBE Manage-ment and Marketing Department, noting that over 70 papers have been published in scientific jour-nals and books and presented in various conferences.

“CBE Finance and Econom-ics Department will continue to advance its research initiatives through the organization of research seminars and seminars on tax awareness to ensure a full engagement with the community, the improvement of research metrics, and the establishment of research groups in support of the Corporate Governance Center,” said Prof Mohamed Gaied, on finance and economics.

While speaking about accounting and information

systems, Prof Mostafa Kamal Hassan said: “The department will continue to offer the account-ing courses in Arabic for the Arabic tracks.” He also noted that the department’s accounting pro-gram has earned endorsement by IMA® (Institute of Manage-ment Accountants) and accreditation by the Association of Chartered Certified Account-ants (ACCA).

“These achievements focused exclusively on advancing the accounting profession, recogniz-ing that the accounting program meets high educational stand-ards, preparing students to enter the profession of accounting and the job market,” he added.

Prof Belaid Aouni said: “There is an increasing demand for pro-grams offered at CBE. In Fall 2017, 43 students have been accepted in the MBA program among 95 candidates. Around 67.5% are Qataris. Regarding the Master of

Accounting (MAC) program, 22 students have been accepted among 31 candidates. Around 36.36% are Qataris. While for the Master of Science in Marketing, 26 students have been admitted among 46 candidates. Around 46.1% are Qataris.”

Additionally, CBE promotes research by providing programs with thesis track (Master of Accounting and Master of Science in Marketing). It also continues to support faculty members to develop research by securing grants. Indeed, in 2017, CBE fac-ulty members have secured nine internal grants and one external grant of the Undergraduate Research Experience Program (UREP).

In order to support student exchange activities, CBE selected five students to represent the col-lege at the International Master’s Summer School, held at the Uni-versity of Bradford in the UK.

QU-CBE lines up key achievements and future plans

The Peninsula

In the framework of reinvent-ing the country’s postal sector to provide ‘21st cen-

tury’ services to its citizens and businesses, MEEZA, Qatar’s prominent end-to-end Managed IT Services & Solutions Provider, is helping Qatar Post substan-tially expand its capabilities through a Managed IT services for all its IT initiatives.

The partnership is coming into effect in tandem with Qatar Post’s modernization drive and its recently revealed new visual identity.

Commenting on the occa-sion, Eng. Ahmad Mohamed Al Kuwari, MEEZA’s CEO, said, “As a selected ICT partner of the Ministry of Transportation and Communication, MEEZA is delighted to be working with Qatar Post, which we consider as a key pillar of the country’s development over the years, to help bring the postal company’s digital infrastructure and its end-user services to the 21st Century. MEEZA has been work-ing closely with the company to understand its ICT transforma-tion objectives and the exact ways we can contribute to achieving their goals, in the

framework of Qatar Post’s new identity.”

He added: “MEEZA intends to draw on its industry exper-tise and years-long of experience in supporting and implementing ICT-based projects for big corporations and renowned institutions in Qatar as well as the entire region, and we are confident that our partnership will bring about results that will exceed expectations and significantly improve the user experience as well as make internal processes more efficient.”

On his part, Faleh Alnaemi, Qatar Post’s Chairman and Managing Director, said:

“Since its inception more than six decades ago, Qatar Post’s core mission has been to bring people closer together as well as bring the world to their doorstep in an efficient man-ner. However, the world has dramatically changed since then, and it is now time for us to bring our vision and the serv-ices we provide to customers and businesses to the 21st Cen-tury. Qatar Post’s new visual identity holds the promise of a much faster, more connected and hands-on user experience to citizens, residents and

companies in Qatar, in line with our core values of reliability, effectiveness, openness, moder-nity and excellence.”

He added: “MEEZA’s expe-rience in Managed IT Services and its track-record of success-ful project and ventures in the field, makes it the right partner and one of the major driving forces behind bringing our vision to fruition, and we are thrilled to work together to bring fully reimagined world-class services to our users, as well as towards turning Qatar into one of the major logistical hubs between Asia and Europe.”

MEEZA’s announcement

comes on the heels of Qatar Post confirming that its newly revealed visual identity marks the postal company’s complete service-overhaul, which includes single-counter serv-ices, a mobile application that tracks parcels and supports online payments, and a 25-branch renovation process, as well as Qatar’s first-of-its-kind logistics hub count on the site of the old Doha Interna-tional Airport.

To make this possible, MEEZA will be providing Qatar Post with a sophisticated range of end-to-end Managed IT Services and Solutions that

cover the company’s ICT Infra-structure, Security Services, Service Operations, Disaster Recovery, Call Center Opera-tions, as well as a number of End User “Desktop-as-a-Serv-ice” features.

MEEZA, a Qatar Foundation joint venture, is an established end-to-end Managed IT Serv-ices & Solutions Provider based in Qatar that aims to accelerate the growth of the country and the region through the provi-sion of world-class Managed IT Services and Solutions. MEEZA’s offerings include Data Centre Services, Cloud Services and IT Security Services.

Officials of MEEZA and Q-Post during the launch of the partneship.

The Peninsula

The Cultural Village Foundation- Katara in cooperation with the

Unesco Office in Doha is set to launch the second edition of the annual ‘Cultural Diver-sity Festival’ tonight at Katara Amphitheatre.

‘The Festival will witness the participation of folkloric groups from more than 20 different countries.

The opening ceremony will start at 7.30pm featuring a performance by a Qatari folkloric group. It will be fol-lowed by a Palestinian folkloric performance from 8.45pm till 9.30pm.

The festival will feature a wide array of cultural per-formances reflecting authentic cultural identity of more than 20 countries, some of which are taking part for the first time. Among the countries participating in this edition are Qatar, Palestine, Lebanon, Algeria, Ethiopia, Togo, South Africa, China, South Korea, Pakistan, Iran, Chechnya, Turkey, Hungary, Germany, Slovakia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, United Kingdom, Mexico and Brazil.

Katara and Unesco to launch Cultural Diversity Festival 2017

QNA

The National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) has so far received about 190

complaints from Qatari students studying in Egyptian universi-ties, who were prevented from completing their studies.

Some of the students were also prevented from attending the final exams last September due to the recent measures taken by the Egyptian authorities

which placed restrictions on Qatari students studying in Egyp-tian universities.

The National Human Rights Committee said that the Egyp-tian procedures require obtaining security approval before granting Qatari students a visa to complete their studies in Egyptian universities or attending examinations, though the Egyptian authorities had pre-viously said that the Qatari students enrolled in Egyptian

universities are excluded from the decision of imposing visas on Qataris wishing to visit the Egyp-tian territory.

Although some of the stu-dents have already obtained the visas to enter Egyptian territory, the Egyptian authorities refused their entry after arrival at Egyp-tian airports, claiming they did not obtain security approvals, and demanded that they return to Qatar, the NHRC added.

The Egyptian authorities are

placing many obstacles in front of Qatari students studying in Egyptian universities, which caused their failure to attend classes, especially since the aca-demic year 2017/2018 has already begun. The Committee warned that these obstacles also caused absence at the second round examinations and the other exams during September and October 2017, stressing that this represents a gross violation of their right to education. The

NHRC said that it had addressed the National Council for Human Rights in Egypt and several inter-national organizations, notably the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Cul-ture (UNESCO), the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty Inter-national and Human Rights Watch, as those actions against Qatari students represent a fla-grant violation of the right to education.

NHRC: Rights of 190 Qatar students in Egypt violated

MEEZA helps to expand Q-Post’s capabilities

The Peninsula

In order to improve its experience in the field of agricultural, poultry as

well as sheep breeds, a del-egation from AL Sulaiteen Group of Companies arrived in Warsaw recently for a working visit to the Repub-lic of Poland.

The delegation, headed by Khaled Abdulla Al Sulaiteen, Vice-Chairman of AL Sulaiteen Group of Com-panies, headed directly to the city of Olsztyn.

The visit aims at signing of a cooperation contract between the University of Warmia and Mazury and Al Sulaiteen Center for Research, Studies, Agricul-tural Training - one of Al-Sulaiteen Group compa-nies (State of Qatar) the delegation has visited agri-cultural, poultry as well as sheep breeds improving research and studies centers.

The delegation also attended the annual cele-bration of the opening of the academic year of the univer-sity. And participated in many important meetings with the President ,Vice President ,senior officials of the University andsome Polish businessmen .the two parties discussed aspects of cooperation between the Al Sulaiteen group companies and Major Polish companies particularly in the field of food and medicine and they Invites Polish companies to invest in Qatar, that wel-comes foreign investment.

Mr. Khalid, head of the delegation and vice chair-man of the board of directors of Al-Sulaiteen Group, the head of the del-e g a t i o n , s i g n e d a cooperation contract with the University of Warmia and Mazury in the office of the President of the Univer-sity in the presence of members of the delegation accompanying him as well as the media.

AL Sulaiteen Group of Companies signs contracts

The Peninsula

The Ministry of Municipal-ity and Environment’s agricultural quarantine

offices have inspected 8,071 imported consignments, weigh-ing more than 93,492 tonnes, from various types of imported agricultural consignments, plant products and production inputs in September across the differ-

ent customs points.The quarantine offices

destroyed 114 consignments weighing more than 38 tonnes for violating the agricultural quar-antine law and for certain damages.

The agricultural quarantine is a first line of defence for pro-tection from agricultural infections. The preventive pro-cedure aims to protect the

country’s agricultural wealth from foreign-originated pests.

It also provides that all plants, agricultural products and any other materials shall be subject to phytosanitary regulations for its procedures and to ensure that other agricultural production inputs are in conformity with the conditions and specifications.

Quarantine offices destroy 38 tonnes of imported agricultural products

09WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017 MIDDLE EAST

Palestine Cabinet meets after historic patch upGaza City

AFP

The Palestinian cabinet met in Gaza for the first time since 2014 yesterday, as Israel warned it would reject

any reconciliation deal between the Palestinian factions unless Islamists Hamas disarm.

The meeting comes as part of moves to end a decade-long split between the internationally recognised Palestinian Author-ity, based in the occupied West Bank, and Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip.

The return of the PA to Gaza had been cautiously welcomed by the United States and the United Nations, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it could be a “bogus” recon-ciliation “at the expense of our existence”.

Hamas has controlled Gaza since seizing it from the PA in a near civil war in 2007, and since then multiple reconciliation attempts have failed.

But the Islamists announced last month they were willing to hand over civilian control to the PA, which is dominated by Pal-estinian president Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement.

Yesterday’s cabinet meeting was the first in Gaza since November 2014, and comes a day after Palestinian Prime Min-ister Rami Hamdallah entered the territory for the first time

since a unity government col-lapsed in June 2015.

At the beginning of the meet-ing, which took place at the official Gaza residence of Abbas in Gaza, Hamdallah pledged to end the rift. “We are here to turn the page on division, restore the national project to its correct direction and establish the (Pal-estinian) state,” he said.

Afterwards, government spokesman Yusuf Al Mahmud said a full reconciliation deal would take time.

“The government does not have a magic wand,” he told reporters.

The sides were to hold fur-ther talks in Cairo.

More than two million peo-ple live in impoverished Gaza, which has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt for years.

The Palestinian Authority has also sought to punish Hamas for

setting up what was seen as a rival government, reducing elec-tricity payments for Gazans.

A key sticking point between the two Palestinian sides will likely be Hamas’s powerful mil-itary wing that has fought three wars with Israel since 2008.

The Palestinian Authority has signed peace deals with Israel, but Hamas was not party to them and does not recognise Israel’s

right to exist.The United States and the

European Union blacklist Hamas as a terrorist organisation, com-plicating the formation of any potential unity government.

Israel said any deal would be unacceptable unless Hamas dis-armed. “We are not prepared to accept bogus reconciliations in which the Palestinian side appar-ently reconciles at the expense

of our existence,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

“Whoever wants to make such a reconciliation, our under-standing is very clear: recognise the State of Israel, disband the Hamas military arm, sever the connection with Iran — which calls for our destruction.”

In response Hamas said Israel was the primary benefici-ary of the division. In an

interview on Monday night Abbas said there would be “one state, one system, one law and one weapon” — in an apparent reference to Hamas’s military wing.

Hamas could not “copy or clone Hezbollah’s experience in Lebanon,” he added, referring to a situation where an independ-ent armed group exerts major influence on national politics.

Hamas officials reject the possibility of disarming.

Hamas leader Haniyah said they were willing to “pay any price” for reconciliation but ana-lysts say disarming would effectively mean the end of the movement. The United States cautiously welcomed Hamdal-lah’s visit Monday.

But US special envoy Jason Greenblatt also said any Pales-tinian government “must unambiguously and explicitly commit to nonviolence, recog-nition of the State of Israel, acceptance of previous agree-ments and obligations between the parties and peaceful negotiations.”

UN Middle East envoy Nick-olay Mladenov said he was “encouraged” by the develop-ments and wanted to see the Palestinian Authority government exercise full control in Gaza. “This is essential for resolving the humanitarian situation as soon as possible, most notably the crip-pling electricity and health crises,” he said in a statement.

Head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyah (centre) makes a speech in Gaza City yesterday. Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah (right) and Leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Es-Sinvar also attended the meeting.

Yesterday’s cabinet meeting was the first in Gaza since November 2014, and comes a day after Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah entered the territory for the first time since a unity government collapsed in June 2015.

Defence casts doubt on case against Benghazi suspectWashington

AP

Defence attorneys worked yesterday to raise doubt that Ahmed Abu Khattala

was the man who orchestrated the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, highlighting evidence about how local Libyan forces working for the Americans didn’t defend the U.S. compounds.

The trial for Abu Khattala entered its second day with U.S. government prosecutors contin-uing to question a diplomatic security agent who tried unsuc-cessfully to save ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Patrick Smith, a State Department infor-mation management officer, from a burning U.S. compound. Nearly eight hours later, two more Americans, contract secu-rity officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, died in a mortar attack on a CIA complex nearby.

The defense says Abu

Khattala was not the ringleader and only went to the site of the attacks because he was curious about what was happening. Defense attorney Michelle Peter-son cross-examined the diplomatic security agent, Chris Wickland, who had testified about confronting members of a Libyan security force who he thought let down the Americans during the attack.

“I remember looking at them dead in the eye and said ‘Where were you?’” Wickland said he told them during a lull in the attack. After gunfire resumed, the disorganized local force “just started running.”

Peterson, who sat next to Abu Khattala during the trial, highlighted the Libyan force’s lack of response in helping defend U.S. personnel as part of a strategy to suggest that other local Libyans — perhaps former loyalists to former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi or turncoats

working at the compound — were to blame for the attacks.

The defense has called Abu Khattala a “Libyan patriot” who fought on America’s side in the war against Gadhafi.

“You knew there were Gad-hafi loyalists who still remained?” she asked Wickland.

“Yes,” he replied.“By the time the revolution

was over, there were still loyal-ists?” she asked.

“I would assume so,” Wick-land replied.

Wickland testified that the armed local Libyan force that scattered at one point during the attack might have been disor-ganized, but did not show hostility toward the Americans. Two of the members of that force Wickland knew personally were so disturbed by what had hap-pened that they had “tears in their eyes,” he said.

Wickland also testified that

another local unarmed force working with the Americans did their job in alerting the pending strike. He said members of that group who had been trained to shout “attack, attack, attack” to warn the Americans did scream the words into their radios just before the strike.

On Monday, Wickland offered an emotional account of how he tried to save Stevens and Smith at the diplomatic com-pound. He retook the stand Tuesday morning and continued his harrowing tale of surviving and how he and other Americans jumped in an armored vehicle in hopes of driving to the CIA annex nearby. Wickland, who was driving, described how the vehicle was attacked during their circuitous drive through groups of hostile Libyans.

“I just floored it. They (armed men along the road) all raised up (their weapons) and started shooting the car, pelting the car

hundreds of times,” he said, add-ing that he later plowed through parked vehicles and a wooden roadblock.

They eventually reached the CIA annex, which was then attacked by mortars. He recalled being treated in a medical room for his injuries, drinking water and eating fruit for energy. He was having trouble breathing because of the smoke he had inhaled, but there was no oxy-gen to help with that and he grabbed a gun and took up a position to help with the attack on the annex.

Later, he heard a loud explo-sion and David Ubben, another diplomatic security agent, was brought down to the medical room.

“The mortar basically had ripped off his leg,” Wickland said. “He had shrapnel in his face, and it had ripped off part of his arm. It’s hard to see your friend like that.”

Turkey seeks to isolate Syria Idlib jihadists opposing truceIstanbul

Reuters

Turkey is luring militants away from the jihadist alliance that controls Syr-

ia’s northwestern Idlib province as a step towards implementing a deal to reduce violence there, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavu-soglu said yesterday.

Idlib is one of four “de-esca-lation” zones which foreign powers agreed to establish in opposition territory in western Syria after years of civil war. But the former al Qaeda branch which controls the province has pledged to keep fighting Syrian government forces and their allies.

The ex-Nusra Front’s stance has raised doubt about how Tur-key, one of three parties to the agreement, can proceed with plans to deploy observers inside Idlib. Russia and Iran, the other

two countries involved, are due to police its edges.

Cavusoglu said the first stage, already under way, was to sep-arate “moderate rebels” from “terror organisations” - a refer-ence to Nusra, which cut ties with al Qaeda last year, rebranded itself and now spearheads the Tahrir al-Sham jihadist alliance that dominates Idlib.

His comments endorsed remarks by a rebel source who said that efforts by foreign states were under way to encourage defections from the alliance, to break it up, isolate it and reduce its capacity to oppose any Turk-ish military deployment.

“With regards to Nusra, they are working to weaken it through intelligence opera-tions,” the source told Reuters. Those could include assassina-tions and campaigns to undercut the group’s popular support, the source said.

The aim was to encourage jihadist fighters who are not members of al Qaeda to “melt into society”.

At least two million people live in Idlib, the largest populated Syrian area held by rebels - including some nationalist Free Syrian Army factions who some-times fought alongside jihadists. The province’s population has ballooned as thousands of civil-ians and combatants have left areas seized by the Syrian army in other parts of the country, with the help of Russian jets and Iran-backed militias.

Turkey already controls a swathe of northern Syria east of Idlib following a military incur-sion in 2016. The rebel source said up to 2,000 fighters being trained by Turkish forces could deploy to Idlib, where many peo-ple have close ties to Turkey and could welcome a Turkish presence.

Israeli Prime Minister Ben-jamin Netanyahu yesterday pledged to build “thou-

sands” of new homes in a major West Bank settlement east of Jerusalem, insisting it would one day be part of Israel.

“We shall build here thousands of housing units” and add industrial zones, Netanyahu said during a visit to the Maaleh Adumim settlement of 37,000 people.

“This place will be a part of the state of Israel,” he added, speaking in Hebrew. Netanyahu has repeatedly spoken of major blocs of West Bank settlements being absorbed into Israel. in a future peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu backsexpansion of West Bank settlement

Displaced residents unloading their belongings from a truck inside a refugee camp for people displaced by fightings between the Syrian Democratic Forces and Islamic State militants in Ain Issa, Syria, yesterday.

All over the world, secessionist movements are gaining momentum and gaining acceptance in the regions where they are erupting. This is largely a result of the individualism that is ruling our times.

Ethnic and regional groups are demanding independence and self-rule fueled by a desire for distinct identity and more prosperity. Kurdistan witnessed a referendum last week, which sent shockwaves through the region and invited consequences, and now we are seeing the Catalonian clamour for secession from Spain gathering speed. In the same way as the Kurdistan referendum trigged a tremor across the Middle East, the Catalonian referendum sent ripples across Europe. The only difference is that Europe is no Middle East or Asia. This is a continent where ideals of freedom and democracy are deeply entrenched in popular culture, are considered sacrosanct and protected by constitutions.

The biggest fallout of the Catalonian referendum is that the issue has been thrust into the global limelight. It has sparked a constitutional crisis in Spain and has raised fears of unrest and prolonged political instability in its wealthiest region, deepening the divide between Madrid and Barcelona. At the same time, it’s a crisis that could have been prevented from worsening if both sides had acted with restraint. It’s unfortunate that almost 900 people were injured during the police

crackdown on the referendum, which would only help to harden positions. Leaders in Catalonia must realise that independence cannot be achieved through a mere declaration after a vote, and leaders in Madrid must realise that the desire and calls for independence cannot be suppressed through force. The only option for both sides is to sit across the table for negotiations. The European

commission reacted wisely when it said the referendum was “not legal” but at the same time called on the Spanish government to open dialogue, saying violence could not be an instrument in politics.

We cannot say that people in Catalonia have spoken up unanimously in favour of secession after the vote. According to officials, only 2.26 million Catalans – which is only 43 percent of the region’s 5.3 million eligible voters – took part in the referendum which was staged in defiance of the Spanish government and the constitutional court and the Catalan high court. The number of voters was less than half the population. It seems that the proponents of independence came out to vote while those who opposed it or didn’t have a view stayed back.

Europe as a continent is already populated with too many small countries and further splintering of states would only increase the number. Formation of new states doesn’t always lead to a better future and more prosperity, though it can be an expression of identity. European leaders too need to take a strong and clear stance on an issue that is getting out of control.

10 WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017VIEWS

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

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

msalim@pen.com.qa

Catalonian struggle

QUOTE OF THE DAY

I don‘t think that vote was particularly an unexpected one. I have put an offer out there as what the future partnership for the UK and the EU could be. Now we wait to hear from the EU what their response is.

Theresa MayUK Prime Minister

The biggest fallout of the Catalonian referendum is that the issue has been thrust into the global limelight.

What a difference a year makes. This time last year Jeremy Corbyn was fighting to stay leader of the Labour Party. It mattered little that he had just been re-elected

by 250,000 party members, the largest mandate ever won by a party leader. It mattered even less that Labour had become the largest political party in Europe. Corbyn was savaged by Labour MPs and the media at every turn. “They won’t stop until they see our blood on the floor,” one member of his team observed. Corbyn was assailed for not singing the national anthem, for debating whether to wear a white or red poppy, for refusing to kneel before the Queen. The right wing Daily Mail styled him “Com-rade Corbyn”. The soft left were even less forgiving.

The BBC, a public service broadcaster with a legal duty to be impartial, also had the knives out for him. In one infamous interview, Laura Kuenssberg, its political editor, did not so much grill Corbyn, as turn him over slowly on a roasting spit. Kuenssberg assailed him for his well-known opposition to nuclear weapons, and — in a longer interview published online - for his opposition to shoot-to-kill policing.

LK [interrupting]. So yes or no. You would never push the nuclear button?

JC: I’ve answered you perfectly clearly. It’s immoral to have or use nuclear weapons. I’ve made that clear all of my life.

At no point did she produce counter-argu-ments like the widespread scepticism of military strategists on the wisdom of maintaining a weapon Britain could never use independently. Her editorial purpose was to portray Corbyn as man unfit to govern.

Half the shadow cabinet helped her to convey this message: Andy Burnham, shadow home sec-retary; Maria Eagle, shadow defence secretary; Hilary Benn, shadow foreign secretary; Angela Eagle, shadow business secretary; Lord Falconer, shadow justice secretary; and Heidi Alexander, shadow health secretary.

Kuenssberg was taken to the BBC Trust for that interview and the Trust ruled in Corbyn’s favour. It found that the BBC’s political editor had inaccurately reported the Labour leader’s views about shoot-to-kill, presenting his general views as a response to a specific question about the Paris attacks, when they plainly were not. Kuenssberg was undeterred by the finding that she had breached the BBC’s own rules of imparti-ality and fairness. It was the political hunting season, and Corbyn was fair game. Martha Kear-ney, John Humphreys were all part of the hunting party.

Fast forward a few months and look how dif-ferently Kuenssberg (who turned up at the Labour Party conference with a bodyguard) treats Cor-byn. Gone are the smears and the epithets. Corbyn is being reported straight. The BBC is starting to treat Corbyn seriously as a future prime minister.

Which is just as well, because he could eas-ily be. Even if he never is, the Labour leader is setting the domestic agenda. Austerity, privati-sation of the NHS, inner city regeneration (code for gentrification), student fees, zero contract hours - the words which formed the narrative for the last two decades have become politically toxic. Labour will never again be - in Peter Man-delson’s phrase - intensely relaxed about the filthy rich. (In February this year, Mandelson said he worked to undermine Corbyn “every day”.)

Whatever the future holds for him, Corbyn

What Jeremy Corbyn can teach the Arab SpringDavid Hearst

has changed the political landscape. Cor-byn’s transformation from muppet to master of all he surveys is remarkable. And it holds clear lessons for the battered bat-talions of the Arab Spring.

Corbyn has much in common with the forces that led the Arab Spring: both repre-sent the poor and the working classes; both emerged from the fringes of the political spectrum; both surprised the establish-ment; both had the overwhelming majority of the media against them; and both were the frequent targets of attempted coups.

The military coup in Egypt succeeded, but the same counter revolutionary forces funded by the same dictatorships also tried a coup in Tunisia, Turkey and latterly in Qatar. The right wing of the Labour Party and the most senior members of the parlia-mentary party openly and repeatedly tried to unseat their party leader.

But there are significant differences, too. In his most difficult moments, Corbyn stuck by his constituency and never dis-tanced himself from it; he did not appease, even in moments when he looked bad; he did not triangulate or change his message. He stuck to his guns in the knowledge that voters would deliver, which they did.

The Islamist victors of the first free elections in the modern history of Egypt and Tunisia thought they needed to recon-cile with their enemies in the old regime, big business and the establishment to secure stability in society. By doing so, they allowed the establishment to drive a wedge between them, their voters, and their fel-low revolutionaries.

Mohamed Morsi begun his presidency by taking an oath in Tahrir Square. He ended it by abandoning the secular left in favour of his new found friends in the Army. A week before they marched him off to prison, Morsi thought the army had his back. Today, a continually compromising — and compromised — Ennadha party in Tunisia backed a law giving amnesty to corruption in the era of Ben Ali. To be a supporter of the Arab Spring is to be con-tinually betrayed. And for what? Scraps of international aid? The IMF?

Not that their former partners in the secular left fared much better. They were corrupted by the bribes they were given to sabotage their fellow revolutionaries; they too played identity politics, lacking the vision to understand that unity was more important than sectional gain.

Corbyn’s movement understood that the media would never back him. So it cre-ated its own alternative channels of communication with the electorate which worked well - social media, meetings on the door step and in the town hall - all well below the radar of the national media.

The forces which led the Arab Spring were overwhelmed by the hostility of the

media and could not keep in touch with their elector-ate. In exile they are still far from being a govern-ment in waiting. The Brotherhood is wracked

by splits, and can only really come alive again under a new leadership drawn from its youth. Other elements of the opposition are in an even worst state. They are not addressing the central question in the Arab world. This is no longer about identity poli-tics and whether you label yourself Islamist or secular. It is about how to govern, in Corbyn’s words, for the many not the few.

Its about giving everyone a fair share of the state’s resources, about creating a state which protects rather than preys off its people. Its about a functional and fair minded economy. To this neither political Islam nor the other opposing secular liberal forces provide alternative answers other than to mouth the discredited economic mantra of global capital. They are resilient as a protest movement, but they have no programme, no manifesto for the day after a dictator falls. They seek power but have little idea what to do with it.

I am not saying these opposition forces are redundant. They are needed now more than ever before because Arab regimes since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, have failed miserably to create a self-confident, independent and economically prosperous Arab world, and their model of governance is broken. Look at the wealthiest country in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, a regime which is now trying to rebrand itself as a champion of women’s rights. It has just given up half a trillion dollars of its wealth in civil and military contracts, and pledges, to Donald Trump, while their economy is contracting.

In contrast, Corbyn does have a plan and if the turnaround in his fortunes was attributed to any single factor it was his manifesto. Just five weeks before the date of the last general election, Corbyn was trailing 20 points in the polls behind the Conservatives, having just lost massively in local elections. His fortunes changes once his manifesto appeared. Why? Because for the first time in a generation, it offered vot-ers an appealing and clear alternative.

There is another lesson here for the forces of the Arab world: public opinion is volatile and no battle is ever won or lost. The counter-revolutionary forces of abso-lute monarchs and military dictators have sunk billions of dollars trying to sell the notion that the Arab Spring is dead and that everyone who took part in it should pack up and go home. Corbyn proves there is life after death.

Lesson number one: never give up. Les-son number two: know your constituency. Lesson number three: never allow anyone to get between you and it. Lesson number four: create your own media. Lesson number five: construct a programme that helps the working class. Lesson number six: do not try to reconcile with those who hate you, because you will lose either way.

Whatever the future holds for him, Cor-byn has changed the landscape of British politics — which is more than can be said for a host of Labour leaders before him. Arab states do not need yet another tradi-tional leader. They need a transformation.

That can only be done from the inside, from the youth upwards. No outside power is going to help them. In fact, it will actively thwart them. This is a job for Arabs themselves. They have already paid in blood for losing once, in Egypt, in Syria, in Libya, in Yemen. One day, however, they will prevail and for that they have to prepare now. The writer is editor-in-chief of Middle East

Corbyn’s transformation from muppet to master of all he surveys is remarkable and it holds clear lessons for the battered battalions of the Arab Spring.

ED ITOR IAL

11WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017 OPINION

fight for better pay and conditions. That’s how things improve.

But any move away from this free movement means “managed migration” under which migrant workers are judged primarily by their economic value. That means employers bringing workers into the country on strict terms. More power is in the hands of the employer, who decides whether an employee can stay in the country or not. That makes organising for rights and protections so scary that it’s unlikely to happen.

“Brexit and immigration” examines a number of managed migration schemes — from the rela-tively benign “guest worker” scheme in Germany. They all have one thing in common — the fewer rights migrant workers have, the more they will be exploited.

In the short term, and under the influence of a deeply xenophobic media — which would have us believe the UK is “overrun” with migrants - some workers today see a direct benefit to themselves in limiting migration. It is precisely the same mindset which led some trade unions, a century ago, to oppose women’s entry into the workforce in Britain on the grounds that it was undermining men’s wages.

Research suggests that women’s entry into the workforce did have some negative short-term effect on wages. In all likelihood, it had a much bigger effect than recent migration, which has actually helped raise wages, outside of some spe-cific economic sectors and areas of the country.

Are Trump, Tillerson doing good cop, bad cop?

If President Donald Trump and his top diplo-mat are playing “good cop, bad cop” with North Korea, it doesn’t appear to be working: Entreaties of diplomacy aren’t yielding meaningful talks, and military threats aren’t

scaring Pyongyang into halting its nuclear advance.

Instead, America’s mixed messaging may be increasing the risk of miscalculation by the iso-lated, communist government, which lacks insight into the Trump administration’s thinking and could mistake brinkmanship for an overt threat of war.

Although American military action could invite devastating consequences for its South Korean ally, Trump has threatened to use military options and offered sometimes apocalyptic visions of the North unless it ends its nuclear and missile testing.

North Korea has launched intercontinental ballistic missiles that can potentially strike the US mainland and a month ago conducted its largest ever underground nuclear explosion. It has threat-ened to explode another nuclear bomb above the Pacific.

Amid all the threats, however, some level of US-North Korean diplomacy has survived.

Speaking last weekend in China, which wants Washington to resume a full dialogue with Pyongyang, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fueled speculation of a new diplomatic effort,

acknowledging open channels of communications between the two countries.

Hours later, Trump chimed in.“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary

of State, that he is wasting his time trying to nego-tiate with Little Rocket Man,” Trump tweeted Sunday, once again deploying his pet name for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”

The jarring tweet fueled a narrative that Trump was undermining his chief interlocutor with the world. But officials close to Tillerson insisted that the pair were on the same page, and that Trump was merely sending a message to North Korea that it would have to show up in serious negotiating mood to any diplomatic talks.

Whatever the intent, confusion was the result.And on Monday, White House spokeswoman

Sarah Huckabee Sanders compounded the impres-sion that the White House views diplomacy as a dead end.

The only conversations the US is willing to have with North Korea are about the fate of the three Americans being held there, she said. Back-channel talks in the spring led to the release of college student Otto Warmbier, who returned home with brain damage and died days later.

“Beyond that there will be no conversations with North Korea at this time,” Sanders said.

While the episode represents the latest

example of the president appearing to step on his top diplomat’s toes, even if advertently, perhaps more concerning for the United States is the lack of results Trump’s hardnosed approach or Tiller-son’s softer tack have produced.

Trump’s “bad cop” may have galvanised action by China, the North’s traditional diplomatic pro-tector and main trading partner, which has agreed to tough new UN sanctions on its ally’s primary sources of revenue for weapons development. The measures include banning imports of North Korean coal, iron ore and textiles, and new limits on crucial oil and petroleum supplies.

But none of the economic pressure has forced Kim’s government to even slow down a nuclear acceleration that could soon put the entire United States within range.

Tillerson’s “good cop” has hardly fared better. The North professes to not even be interested in diplomacy unless the US abandons its “hostile policy.”

During his meetings in Beijing, the Chinese assured Tillerson they would implement the UN sanctions and press their local authorities near North Korea’s border to stamp out banned activity, according to a State Department official familiar with the talks.

China wants the North to halt its nuclear and missile tests, however remote the goal, and is eye-ing the winter months when there are no US-South

Workers’ strength comes through united action. It’s a pretty simple rule of history. When the most marginalised and

exploited workers stand up for them-selves, better off workers need to stand with them. It was the struggles of the match girls, the Irish dockers and the sweatshop workers of late 19th-century London that transformed British trade unionism and made it a mass force for social change.

A strong workers’ movement would never accept the rights of a minority being removed. Yet that is exactly what the end of EU free movement rules in Britain would mean.

European migrant workers would have fewer rights in Britain and would, therefore, be less able to defend their pay and conditions. That explains the stark warning contained in a report released today by Another Europe is Possible: the big winners of a post-Brexit “controlled migration” system will not be British workers, but unscrupulous employers.

“Brexit and immigration: prioritising the rights of all workers”, by Luke Cooper and Zoe Gardner, argues that a managed migration system — however “generous” — would be worse for Euro-pean and British workers than the status quo.

That’s because free movement gives rights to workers — to live, work and study. It’s not an unlimited right, con-trary to popular belief, but it does mean that European citizens have the right to join with their British colleagues and

Is Brexit really going to help British workers?

US President Donald Trump smiles at Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in the Oval office of the White House in Washington DC.

But long term, the failure to stand with women workers was both unethical and left workers as a whole weaker, leaving women more exploited — just what big business wanted.

None of this means that things are fine for British workers. Britain has a very deregulated “labour mar-ket”, with dreadful stories emerging regularly of big business employing workers on disgraceful terms and conditions, fuelling unprecedented level of ine-quality in society. This has not been created by European free movement and the answer is not to further divide the workforce, but to fight for a better deal — just as the migrant and women workers did 150 years ago.

That better deal — “free movement plus” — could include new rules to enhance collective bargaining, especially in low-skill sectors, a boost to the minimum wages, and making sure employers really can’t use for-eign workers to undercut wages by increasing penalties. It could also include investment strategies which ensure money follows migrants to parts of the country suffer-ing long-term deprivation.

In fact, the implications of these arguments are much bigger than Europe. The development of free movement within Europe has been accompanied by a barbaric immigration policy at Europe’s borders, with 5,000 people dying trying to reach Europe last year. This is both inhuman, especially given so many are try-ing to escape from the consequences of European foreign policy, but also a recipe for exploitation as migrants arriving from outside the EU, without permis-sion, are forced into the highly exploitative illegal economy.

This is what globalisation is all about — free cap-ital and controlled people. How do we reverse this? By constraining the ability of big business to do what it wants, where it wants, when it wants, and supporting and expanding each other’s rights and protections.

Pulling up the drawbridge won’t create a more equal Britain. Domestic and foreign policy are inti-mately connected. Only by supporting a more equal, sustainable, generous and peaceful world, will we cre-ate a better Britain.

The writer is the director of UK campaigning organisation

Global Justice Now. He was previously the director of Jubilee

Debt Campaign.

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Korean military exercises that often exacerbate tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula. The official wasn’t authorised to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity.

Even that appears a remote possibility. Analysts and even governments in between say Trump is making it increasingly difficult for the North to have confidence in any diplomatic effort with the United States, given his threats to demolish a 2-year-old arms control pact with Iran.

And back-channel diplomacy between senior US and North Korean diplomats — primarily aimed at freeing detained Ameri-cans — hasn’t helped repair any trust. In fact, the two sides have barely communicated for the last couple of weeks and there is no sign North Korea wants to re-engage, according to officials with knowledge of the discussions.

The “good cop, bad cop” ploy is unlikely to work, said Evans Revere, a former State Depart-ment official who took part in unofficial talks in Switzerland with North Korean officials last month. The North, he said, wants only to speak to Washington as “one nuclear power to another.”

Matthew Pennington is a reporter on

US-Asian affairs for The Associated

Press. Formerly in Thailand, Pakistan

and Afghanistan and Matthew Lee is

the Chief state department corre-

spondent for The Associated Press,

covering US foreign policy and inter-

national affairs.

Matthew Pennington & Matthew LeeAP

Trump’s “bad cop” may have galvanised action by China, the North’s traditional diplomatic protector and main trading partner, which has agreed to tough new UN sanctions on its ally’s primary sources of revenue for weapons development. The measures include banning imports of North Korean coal, iron ore and textiles, and new limits on crucial oil and petroleum supplies.

Nick DeardenAl Jazeera

Pulling up the drawbridge won’t create a more equal Britain. Domestic and foreign policy are intimately connected. Only by supporting a more equal, sustainable, generous and peaceful world, will we create a better Britain.

12 WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

European Union Commissioner for Enlargement Johannes Hahn (left) meets with Foreign Affairs Minister of Tunisia, Humeys El Cihinavi at the Foreign Ministry in Tunis, Tunisia, yesterday.

Barzani has only one man to beatSulaimaniyah

AFP

An ex-minister in Iraq’s first post-invasion government will be the sole candidate for

the presidency of the country’s autonomous Kurdish region in a November election, an offi-cial said yesterday.

Mohammad Tofiq Rahim, a staunch opponent of current Kurdish leader Massud Barzani who has repeatedly said he will not stand again for the post, was the only person to put for-ward his candidacy, the autonomous region’s electoral chief said.

“By the deadline for candi-dates on Tuesday, we had received all the documents necessary for Mohammad Tofiq Rahim to be a candidate for the presidency of Kurdis-tan. He is the only person to have declared himself a can-didate,” electoral commission head Yari Hadji Omar said by telephone from the regional capital Arbil.

The Kurdish region, which last week voted overwhelm-ingly in favour of independence in a referendum rejected both by Baghdad and by Iraq’s neighbours Turkey and Iran, will hold presidential and leg-islative elections on November 1. The electoral commission has approved 21 lists of candidates for the legislative vote.

Rahim, 64, a former mem-ber of the Kurdish peshmerga security forces, is a member of Goran, a party strongly opposed

to Barzani. The most recent presidential vote in the auton-omous Kurdish region was in 2009. Originally, a presidential term of office was four years, but in 2013 parliament extended it by two years.

A general election was held in September 2013, but Kurd-ish parliamentary activity has been frozen since November 2015, enabling Barzani to remain in power.

Rahim has opposed Barza-ni’s mandate being extended.

“The commission must now examine the documents and accept his candidacy,” Hadji Omar said of Rahim.

In September 2003, Rahim became industry minister in the first Iraqi cabinet that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The September 25 referendum on Kurdish independence, a Barzani initiative, returned a resounding 92.73 percent “yes” result.

But it also provoked a resounding “no” from Baghdad, Tehran and Ankara and sent regional tensions soaring.

Former Iraqi president Talabani dead Sulaimaniyah

AFP

Ex-Iraqi president and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani (pictured) died yester-day in Germany, officials in his party

said.Talabani, 83, was Iraq’s president from

2005 to 2014 and a key figure in Iraqi Kurdis-tan, where voters last week overwhelmingly backed independence in a disputed referendum.

“Our leader died in Germany,” an offi-cial with Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) said.

A family member said Talabani’s health had taken a turn for the worse and he has been transported to Germany, along with his wife and two children, before the refer-endum. Iraqi Kurdish lawmaker Zana Said paid tribute to Talabani as “the only presi-dent whose death saddens Arabs, Kurds and all other ethnicities”.

“We pray to God that his death will help to bring back good relations between the brothers of Iraq.”

Talabani’s death, following a decades-old struggle for Kurdish statehood, came

after Iraq’s Kurds voted 92.7 percent in favour of independence in the September 25 referendum.

The vote, rejected by Baghdad as illegal, has put deep strain on ties between the Kurds and central Iraqi authorities, who have cut off international flights to the region and threatened further action. Talabani was an avuncular politician and a skilled negotia-tor, who spent years building bridges between the country’s divided factions, despite his efforts for Kurdish independence.

Born in 1933 in the mountain village of Kalkan, he studied law at Baghdad Univer-sity and did a stint in the army before joining the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, father of current Kurdistan regional president Massud Barzani.

Talabani took to the hills in a first upris-ing against the Iraqi government in 1961 but famously fell out with Barzani, who sued for peace with Baghdad, and joined a KDP splin-ter faction in 1964. Eleven years later, he established the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) after Barzani’s forces, abandoned by their Iranian, US and Israeli allies, were routed by Saddam Hussein’s army.

He became president in April 2005 after the first post-Saddam election in Iraq and continued in the post until 2014, when he was replaced by the current president, Fuad Masum. Iraq’s head of state plays a largely ceremonial role and is elected by members of parliament.

In August 2008, the married father of two underwent successful heart surgery in the United States, then in 2012 he was flown to Germany after suffering a stroke, casting doubt over his ability to ever return to Iraq.

France says Iraq PM’s Paris visit will boost tiesParis

Reuters

France appeared to back-track yesterday on efforts to mediate

between Iraq’s government and Kurdish regional author-ities, saying a visit by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi would centre on bilateral ties and fighting Islamist militants.

Abadi is due in Paris today for a two-day visit.

While the invitation had been made prior to an inde-pendence vote held in Iraqi Kurdistan last month, French President Emmanuel Macron’s office on Friday issued a statement offering to help ease tensions between Baghdad and the Kurds.

That drew a response from Abadi’s office on Satur-day in which Iraqi officials made clear that the invitation was not related to the Kurd-i s h i n d e p e n d e n c e referendum.

“President (Macron) ... recalled the importance of preserving unity and Iraq’s (territorial) integrity while recognising the rights of the Kurdish people,” the Elysee statement had said.

78,000 civilians could be trapped in Iraq’s Hawija: UNBaghdad

Reuters

Up to 78,000 people could be trapped in Islamic State-held Hawija in

northern Iraq, the United Nations said yesterday, as secu-rity forces push to recapture the town.

Iraq started an offensive on September 21 to seize Hawija, which fell to the hands of

militants after the Iraqi army collapsed in 2014 in the face of the Islamic State offensive and remains the last militant-held town in the country’s north.

UN humanitarian spokes-man Jens Laerke said the number of people who have fled the fighting has increased from 7,000 people during the first week of the operation to some 12,500 people now. But up to 78,000 remain trapped, he said.

Iraqi security officials say the militants prevent some residents from leaving, while others are afraid of escaping towards gov-ernment forces because of the explosives that might have been laid by Islamic State around the town. “We remain concerned for the lives and well-being of these vulnerable civilians and remind those doing the fighting that civilians must be protected at all times and allowed to safely leave

Hawija,” Laerke said.Laerke said more people

were expected to flee the fight-ing in areas around Hawija in the next 24 to 48 hours as security forces push into more densely populated areas.

Hawija, north of Baghdad, and a stretch of land along the Syrian border, west of the Iraqi capital, are the last stretches of territory in Iraq still in the hands of Islamic State.

Mugabe meets South African President Zuma Pretoria

AFP

Zimbabwean President R o b e r t M u g a b e returned to South Africa

yesterday for the first time since his wife claimed diplo-matic immunity over allegedly assaulting a model in a Johannesburg hotel room.

Mugabe, 93, was not accompanied by his wife Grace as he met President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria, six weeks after the alleged attack sparked diplomatic tension b e t w e e n t h e t w o neighbours.

Mugabe used his opening remarks at the talks to stress the close relations between Zimbabwe and South Africa, but did not mention the inci-dent. “Had we had a say in the choice of a neighbour, we would have chosen you,” he said, to laughter from minis-ters on both sides.

“We are one — one peo-ple, one revolution, one struggle, one future,” he added. Grace Mugabe, 52, is alleged to have assaulted Gabriella Engels with an elec-trical extension cable at the chic Johannesburg hotel where the Mugabes’ two sons, who are in their 20s, were staying. Engels suffered cuts to her forehead and the back of her head during the alleged August 13 assault. The first lady was granted diplomatic immunity by South African authorities and promptly flew out of the country.

The Kurdish region, which last week voted in favour of independence in a referendum, will hold presidential and legislative elections on November 1.

Concern as Nigerian leader goes missingUmuahia

Reuters

A secessionist leader seeking independence from Nigeria has been missing since an

alleged military raid more than two weeks ago left his house in the city of Umuahia riddled with bullet holes, its windows smashed and doors hanging off hinges.

The disappearance of Nnamdi Kanu, after the raid the army says did not happen, threatens to ignite separatist unrest capable of desta-bilising southeastern Nigeria, a region where a million people died in a 1967-70 civil war over the short-lived Republic of Biafra.

Kingsley Kanu, 48, said he was with his older brother Nnamdi, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, at their family home on the evening of September 14 when sol-diers stormed in. “They were shooting everything they saw,” he said, pointing to bullet holes in walls and windows.

“They came here just to kill eve-rybody,” he said, adding that around 20 IPOB members were shot dead but most of the bodies were taken by soldiers. Reuters witnesses — a reporter and TV cameraman — on September 27 saw six corpses with bullet wounds in a morgue, who IPOB said were among their members.

Two resembled men in pho-tographs held by weeping relatives who told Reuters their brothers were killed in the raid, though nobody could verify the identities of the four others.

“The military did not raid Nnamdi Kanu’s residence,” a mili-tary spokesman told reporters in the capital, Abuja. “Nnamdi Kanu is not in the custody of the military.” The allegation and denial are the biggest flashpoint of a military deployment in the southeast.

Civil society groups and ana-lysts say the military presence and its leader’s disappearance could prompt the separatists to abandon their policy of non-violence.

Peter Ujam holds a photograph of his brother, Omyaka Ujam, who he says was killed in an alleged raid at Nnamdi Kanu’s home on September 12, 2017, which the army said did not take place, as his sister Philomena Ngene reacts in the city of Umuahia, southeastern Nigeria.

Boosting ties

13WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017 ASIA

NEWS BYTES

Workers remove religious offerings and frames which were immersed in the Yamuna river after the Durga Puja festival in New Delhi, yesterday. Activists have urged greater accountability for cleaning up the nation’s waterways which are often clogged with religious offerings around the time of festivals across India.

Polluted river

New Delhi

Reuters

A government crackdown on Muslim-dominated abattoirs and the trade of cattle dragged down India’s exports

of leather shoes by more than 13 percent in June, as leading global brands turned to China, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan to secure supplies.

The drop in exports of shoes and leather garments comes as a setback for Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi, who has sought to create millions of jobs by more than dou-bling the leather industry’s revenues to $27 billion by 2020.

Emboldened by the victory of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 gen-eral election, Hindu hard-liners, who consider cows sacred, became more

assertive in their calls for a clamp-down on both the meat and leather industries, run by Muslims, who make up 14 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people. “The writing was already on the wall,” Nazir Ahmed, CEO of shoe-maker Park Exports, told Reuters by phone from Agra, a shoe-making hub and home to the Taj Mahal. “We have killed the goose that laid the golden egg.”

India, the world’s second-biggest sup-plier of shoes and leather garments, exports nearly half its leather goods, with overseas sales estimated at $5.7 billion in the 2016/17 fiscal year to March, down 3.2 percent from a year earlier. Footwear exports fell more than 4 percent in April-June, to $674 mil-lion. In March, after being appointed chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most pop-ulous state and a major leather exporter, Yogi Adityanath, a firebrand Hindu monk, ordered

a closure of abattoirs operating without licenses. Slaughterhouse owners complain that much of India’s meat and leather trade takes place in the informal sector, and it’s hard to get licences, especially for smaller units.

In May, citing cruelty to animals, the fed-eral government banned the trade of cattle for slaughter, and restricted livestock sales only for agricultural purposes such as ploughing and dairy production.

But the country’s top court overturned that order, citing the hardship the ban had caused. That has not brought relief as repeated attacks on trucks carrying cattle still rankle the leather trade.

“The supreme court has allowed the resumption of trade for cattle, but the ground reality is that cow vigilante groups continue to be active and no one wants to risk his life by transporting cattle,” Ahmed said.

Srinagar

AFP

Three militants who yes-terday stormed a paramilitary base near the main airport in Indian-administered

Kashmir have been killed, police said, ending an hours-long gun-battle that also left a soldier dead.

Three paramilitary troopers and a police officer were injured when the attackers hurled gre-nades and fired automatic weapons at the Border Security Force (BSF) base next to the high-security Srinagar airport before dawn, said director-general of police S P Vaid.

“All the three militants have been killed. An assistant sub-inspector of BSF also died in the initial assault,” Vaid said.

Flights at the airport, which shares a compound wall with the base, resumed after being sus-pended briefly with at least one flight from New Delhi cancelled, authorities said. Kashmir’s

inspector-general of police, Muneer Ahmed Khan, blamed Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed for the attack but denied some media reports that the fortified airport was the target. He told reporters the Islamist group was a threat “because they believe in surprise suicide attacks”.

In August the group claimed responsiblity after three militants stormed a police base at Pulwama in Kashmir, killing eight govern-ment personnel. The three attackers were also killed in a two-day battle. Kashmir has been divided between India and Paki-stan since the end of British

colonial rule in 1947 but both claim the territory in full.

For decades rebel groups have fought Indian soldiers deployed in the territory, demanding independence or a merger of the former Himalayan kingdom with Pakistan.

Yesterday’s attack came hours before an Indian soldier was killed by Pakistani fire on the de facto Kashmiri border in the mountainous Poonch dis-

trict southwest of Srinagar. The rival armies routinely

target each other across the heavily militarised Line of Con-trol that divides the territory.

On Monday the Indian army said it killed five suspected rebels in two separate gunbat-tles on the border. Indian authorities said two children were also killed by Pakistani gunfire at another location along the Line of Control.

India says Pakistan initiates cross-border firing to help rebels cross into Indian-admin-istered Kashmir to launch attacks. Islamabad says it gives only diplomatic support to the Kashmiri campaign for self-determination.

Last week Pakistan said three civilians were killed on its side of the border in Kash-mir after Indian soldiers opened fire.

London

AFP

British police rearrested Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya yesterday amid

an ongoing extradition request from India, where he is accused of fraud.

Mallya left India in March 2016 owing more than $1 bil-lion after defaulting on loan payments to state-owned banks and allegedly misusing the funds.

The flamboyant financier, who co-owns Formula One team Force India, was expected to appear in a Lon-don courtroom later on Tuesday to face additional charges.

“He has been arrested,” a spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said. “New charges are being added on.”

Mallya was out on bail after being arrested by police in April following an extradi-tion request from India in early February.

Indian investigators demanded the 61-year-old be brought home to face fraud charges related to the bank defaults. Mallya insisted he was innocent and denied flee-ing the charges in his homeland, following the legal hearing in London in June.

“I deny all allegations that have been made and I will continue to deny them,” he said outside court. “I have not eluded any court. If it is my lawful duty to be here, I’m happy to be here,” he added.

“I’ve given enough evi-dence to prove my case.”

Known for his lavish life-style, Mallya made Kingfisher beer a global brand and ran a now-defunct airline with the same name.

Malayalam actor Dileep gets bail; fans cheer as he leaves jailKOCHI: Malayalam superstar Dileep (pic-tured), arrested for alleged involvement in the kidnapping of an actress, was yes-terday granted bail by the Kerala High Court. The actor later left Aluva sub-jail here to loud cheers from hundreds of his fans. The bail conditions include surren-dering his passport, furnishing a bond of Rs100,000, a pledge to stay away from witnesses in the case and to keep away from the media. This is the third time Dileep approached the High Court for bail. He had also sought bail earlier twice from the trial court. The court order on his bail was brought to Aluva sub-jail, where Dileep has been housed, by his brother. In stark contrast to being hooted by angry crowds who had gathered to see Dileep following his arrest on July 10, on Tuesday hundreds of fans gathered to cheer the star. His fans, including women, began collecting soon after he was granted bail by the Kerala High Court around 2pm. They were seen distribut-ing sweets and chanting slogans in his favour.

Hadiya case: Supreme Court to examine if High Court can annul marriage NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court yesterday said it will exam-ine whether the Kerala High Court could annul a marriage while hearing a habeas corpus plea by the parents of a young woman who had converted from Hinduism to Islam and married a Muslim. A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A M Khanwilkar and Justice D Y Chandrachud said: “We want to know how the Kerala High Court can annul the marriage under Article 226 of the Constitution by exercising its special powers to entertain pleas against the State.” The scope of entertaining pleas under Article 226 by the High Court has been expanded to include issues not involving state actors but does it also extend to taking recourse to nullify a marriage, the court observed. The apex court’s remarks came while hearing a plea by Shafin Jahan, challenging the High Court order that nullified his mar-riage with Hadiya. The bench also wondered whether the 24-year-old woman could be placed in her father’s custody. Observing that “a father can’t have control over a 24-yr-old girl”, the court said that it may send her to a safe home and her father can’t insist on her custody. The court had doubts about its own August 16 order wherein it asked the National Investi-gation Agency (NIA) to probe the conversion and marriage of Hindu girl Akhila, now known as Hadiya after conversion, in Kerala in 2016.

Militants storm Kashmir army base; 4 dead

Three students crushed by train while taking selfiesNEW DELHI: Three college stu-dents were killed by an express train yesterday while taking pho-tos of themselves on a track in India, the country with the world’s worst record for selfie deaths. The three were photographing them-selves on a railway bridge when the train hit them in the town of Bidadi in the southern state of Karnataka, police said. “We found their muti-lated bodies on the track and investigations have been taken up,” R S Bylanjaiah, a local railway police officer, told AFP. He said the three had parked their motorbikes on the embankment below the 30-metre bridge before walking to its centre to take pictures. Last month a man was crushed to death by an elephant when he tried to take a selfie with him in the east-ern state of Odisha.

New Delhi

Bloomberg

India’s Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi’s attempt to eliminate corruption in elec-

tion funding has landed in the country’s top court amid allega-tions that the measures will lead to a spike in anonymous

political donations. The Supreme Court of India yesterday agreed to hear a public interest litiga-tion, akin to a class action suit, that challenges the introduction of electoral bonds and seeks a ban on cash donations to polit-ical parties.

A bench headed by Chief Jus-tice Dipak Misra sought replies

from the finance and law min-istries, apart from the poll panel. The court hasn’t fixed a date for next hearing.

In the annual budget speech this February, India’s Finance Minister Arun Jaitley introduced “electoral bonds” as a measure designed to cleanse the funding to political parties. Unlike debt

instruments, these bonds resem-ble promissory notes backed by the nation’s central bank, which allow donors to pay political par-ties with banks as an intermediary.

The government had also cracked down on cash dona-tions reducing the permissible amount to 2,000 rupees ($31)

from 20,000 rupees limit earlier.

A petition filed by a non-gov-ernment organizat ion, Association For Democratic Reforms, said the attempt to clean up political donations had opened the “floodgates to unlim-ited corporate donations” and “anonymous financing”.

Top court to examine Modi’s political funding plan

Smoke rises from the military building after it was blasted by Indian army where last suspected militant was believed to be holed up in Humhama on the outskirts of Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, yesterday.

Indian tycoon Mallya arrested again in London

Crackdown on Muslim-run leather units hits jobs

All the three militants have been killed. An assistant sub-inspector of BSF also died in the initial assault, said director-general of police S P Vaid.

14 WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017ASIA

Islamabad

Reuters

Pakistan’s ruling party yesterday re-elected ousted premier Nawaz Sharif (pictured) as its leader, saying he was

“back with full force”, a day after using its parliamentary majority to amend a law to allow him to re-take the job.

Jafar Iqbal, who headed a five-member election body, said Sharif had been elected party president unopposed by the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz’s (PML-N) central executive committee.

Sharif resigned as prime minister in July after the

Supreme Court disqualified him for not declaring a source of income. He was also forced to

step down as president of PML-N, though he kept control of the party and installed Shahid

Khaqan Abbasi, a loyalist, as prime minister.

Sharif’s re-election as party chief brings him back into the political fold, he said, contradict-ing those who thought he would no longer be relevant.

“There have been attempts again and again to exit me, but you will always keep giving me an entry again and again,” Sharif told party workers after his election. “I congratulate that you’re bringing Nawaz Sharif back with full force.”

No one came forward to con-test Sharif, Iqbal said amid clapping, thumping and slogans in support of Sharif in televised proceedings of the election in Islamabad. The former prime minister will lead the party for

four years.“Nawaz Sharif is the symbol

of economic development in Pakistan,” Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal said in his address to the party members.

Abbasi presented an “open challenge to all the dictators and PPP” to compare the develop-ment work carried out by them with that of the PML-N.

Parliament amended a law on Monday to enable Sharif to re-take the PML-N leadership. Opposition lawmakers tore up paper copies of the Election Bill 2017, passed by the Senate last week, that allowed Sharif to become the party president again.

The vote was more of a

formality as PML-N has a vast majority. Sharif has appeared before an anti-corruption court and is expected to be indicted next week, along with three of his children.

Sharif, his children -- Has-san, Hussain, Maryam -- and son-in-law Captain Safdar are facing investigations related to ownership of properties in Lon-don and the firms Azizia Steel as well as another 16 offshore companies.

The veteran leader denies any wrongdoing and has alleged there was a conspiracy against him, with senior PML-N figures pointing fingers at elements of Pakistan’s powerful military. The army denies playing a role.

Nawaz Sharif returns as PML-N party chiefBack with full force

“There have been attempts again and again to exit me, but you will always keep giving me an entry again and again,” Sharif said.

Jafar Iqbal, who headed a five-member election body, said Sharif had been elected party president unopposed.

NEWS BYTES

KATHMANDU: Nepal’s Maoist party announced yesterday an alliance with the largest communist bloc, ahead of key elections seen as the final step in the Himalayan nation’s post-war transition to a federal democracy. The two parties, with a third smaller partner, have agreed a tie up for general elections later this year, and plan to unify as a single com-munist party following the polls. “We had said before, after the signing of the peace deal, that Nepal should have a sin-gle communist party. We are now finishing that incomplete process,” Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal said at a press conference announcing the deal. The Maoists have dominated Nepal’s politics for more than 20 years after waging a dec-ade-long insurgency against government forces that claimed more than 16,000 lives. The civil war ended in a peace deal in 2006 that saw rebel leader Dahal become Nepal’s first post-war prime minister. The 240-year-old Hindu monar-chy was abolished two years later beginning the Himalayan nation’s transformation to a secular republic. Three main parties — the Maoists, the Communist Party Nepal-Union Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), and the Nepali Congress (NC) — have since monopolised the political sphere, forming var-ying brittle coalitions with one another.

ISLAMABAD: The Lower House of the Parliament of Paki-stan has passed three bills including the Elections Bill, 2017, through voice voting and rejected the amendments moved by the Opposition. Minister for Law and Justice tabled the Elections Bill, 2017, in the House as passed by the Senate with amendments following which the House passed the bill. It has been passed by both Houses of the Parliament and would become an Act after the signature of the Presi-dent. The Bill consolidates eight election laws which shall stand repealed after its enactment. The Bill contains numer-ous electoral reforms including strengthening of Election Commission of Pakistan by making it fully independent and autonomous.

LAHORE: The first batch of the rolling stock for the Orange Line Metro Train reached the provincial metropolis of Lahore yesterday and it was parked at the train project depot at Der-aGujjran near Quid-i-Azam Interchange of the Ring Road. More than three-fourths of the civil work on the train project has so far been completed. A special ceremony for unveiling the rolling stock will be held on October 7 on the premises of the depot. A total of 27 sets of trains, each comprising of five cars, are being imported from China for the project. As many as 23 train sets will reach Lahore by the end of this year as per the schedule issued by the Chinese contractor. The metro train will operate at a commercial speed of 80km per hour and cover the end-to-end 27km long journey in just 45 minutes.

Nepal’s Maoists form alliance with main communist party

Pakistan Elections Bill-2017 passed

Lahore’s Metro rolling stock arrives

Afghan operation against IS

Cox’s Bazar

AFP

Relief agencies yesterday fought to contain a diar-rhoea outbreak around

camps in Bangladesh where more than 500,000 Rohingya have taken shelter in the past five weeks.

The United Nations said meanwhile it would seek $430 million to increase operations in the camps along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. The Rohingya Muslims have poured across the frontier to escape a military crackdown in Buddhist-major-ity Myanmar.

A 20-bed treatment clinic was opened at Kutupalong ref-ugee camp Monday to treat diarrhoea victims and another 60-bed facility would be set up this week, a UN spokesman said.

UN staff and volunteers were touring Kutupalong and nearby makeshift camps to identify those who have not sought treat-ment, UN refugee agency spokesman Andrej Mahecic said.

“We have seen an increas-ing trend of diarrhoeal disease cases, including cases of diar-rhoea with severe dehydration,”

he said. Bangladesh authorities were not aware of diarrhoea-related deaths in the camps, but the health department said more than 10,500 Rohingya had been treated since the influx began on August 25.

Last week the World Health Organisation warned of a grow-ing cholera risk in the makeshift camps as they lacked safe

drinking and hygiene facilities. The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) group also said the camps were on the brink of a public health disaster.

The camps face dire short-ages of food and medicine in what has become one of the world’s largest refugee settlements.

The overwhelmed camps

around the border town of Cox’s Bazar already had 300,000 peo-ple who fled earlier violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Mark Lowcock, a UN under secretary general for humani-tarian affairs, said the world body would be seeking “some-thing like $430 million to enable us to scale up the relief operation.”

Islamabad

Internews

Pakistan Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif left for a three-day tour of the US

yesterday, where he is expected to meet US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to resume bilateral talks and work out ways to dispel tensions that cropped up after US President Donald Trump’s announce-ment of a new policy for Afghanistan and South Asia.

The Foreign Minister told Geo News on Monday that he would clear Pakistan’s posi-tion in meetings with US officials. He will also report-edly meet US National Security Adviser H.R. McMas-ter during the trip. The visit comes amid tensions follow-ing Trump’s accusation of Pakistan “being a safe haven for terrorist organisations”.

Asif will also be address-ing a gathering at the US Institute of Peace in Wash-ington on US-Pakistan relations on October 5, the institute said, pointing out that Trump’s speech had not only “unsettled US-Pakistan relations” but also had “seri-ous implications for US interests in Afghanistan, nuclear non-proliferation”.

Dhaka

AFP

Bangladesh’s chief justice began a one-month period of leave yesterday amid

claims he was forced to go on holiday after a landmark ver-dict that went against the government. Justice Minister Anisul Huq rejected widespread speculation linking S. K. Sinha’s absence to the ruling, saying the top judge’s decision was due to illness.

“He was formerly a cancer patient,” Huq said, adding that those behind the claims “have mental problems” or “ill motives”. The head of Bangla-desh’s top bar association said Sinha was forced to take leave after he led the Supreme Court when it scrapped parliament’s power to sack top judges.

“Our association of lawyers thinks that immense pressure has been piled on him so that he take a one-month leave,” Joynul Abedin, head of Supreme Court

Bar Association, told reporters. “You know, the nation knows and the people of the world know a political party (and) the government have piled pressure on him in many ways,” he said.

“We think he was sent on a one-month leave as part of this pressure. He did not take the leave ... He was forced to.” Sinha made headlines in August when the Supreme Court scrapped parliament’s power to sack top judges, in a verdict seen as bol-stering judicial independence.

Yangon

AFP

Two Myanmar soldiers are being questioned after they were caught with

nearly two million “yaba” pills in restive Rakhine state, police said yesterday, as the drugs trade goes on despite commu-nal violence.

The men were held after 1.88 million tablets said to be worth around $2.8 million were found in a military vehicle in the town of Maungdaw on October 1, a senior anti-drugs officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Maungdaw is the epicentre

of violence that has left hun-dreds dead and sent 500,000 Muslim Rohingya residents fleeing into Bangladesh.

Myanmar’s army has flooded the area since August 25 in a major offensive designed to flush out Rohingya militants. But their presence appears to have failed to slow the drug trade.

Yaba, a Thai word meaning “crazy medicine”, is a concoc-tion of methamphetamine and caffeine that has become pop-ular among young people in Bangladesh.

Myanmar’s western border zone is awash with metham-phetamine, most destined for Bangladesh.

UN battles mounting illness in Rohingya camps

Parents gathering with their children at a relief point for babies and pregnant women at the Kutupalang refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, yesterday.

Bangladesh top judge’s leave sparks rumours over landmark verdict

Pakistan FM leaves for three-day US visit

Myanmar soldiers nabbed with two million pills

A member of the Afghan security forces escorting alleged Islamic State fighters and Taliban being presented to the media at the police headquarters in Jalalabad, yesterday. Afghan police said 10 alleged Islamic state fighters were arrested during an operation in Nangarhar.

15WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017 ASIA

Sri Lanka parliament commemorates 70th anniversaryColombo

IANS

A special Sitting of Parliament was held yesterday to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of Parliamentary

Democracy in Sri Lanka. At the com-mencement of Public Business, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the opposition in Parliament moved a Vote to recognize the occasion of the special sitting.

"That this Parliament at its meeting today commemorates with pride the 70th anniversary of its first meeting as an

independent Parliament and notes that Parliament of Sri Lanka is the oldest Par-liament elected by universal adult franchise in the Asia region with an unbro-ken record of democratic governance and wishes for itself and the people of Sri Lanka a prosperity, development and fur-ther strengthening of democratic traditions, principles and rule of law," it said.

The speeches began with the Presi-dent Maithripala Sirisena and was followed with speeches by the Prime Min-ister Ranil Wickremesinghe, Leader of

the Opposition R. Sampanthan, Leader of the House Minister Lakshman Kiriella, Chief Government Whip Minister Gay-antha Karunathilaka, Chief Opposition Whip Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and the leaders of the recognized political parties in Parliament. The Speaker Karu Jayasuriya delivered the Vote of Thanks. Speakers of the Parliaments of the SAARC countries who are in Sri Lanka to partic-ipate in the 8th conference of the Association of SAARC Speakers and Par-liamentarians were present at the Speaker's Gallery.

A Sri Lankan soldier standing at the ceremony of the national parliament in Colombo, yesterday.

Two Swedes wounded in Philippine rebel attackManila

AP

Suspected communist rebels staged an attack on a police car

in the central Philippines yesterday and two Swed-ish citizens and their driver in a passing van were wounded in the crossfire, police said.

A police report said a Swedish man was shot in the wrist and a Swedish woman was injured in the shoulder, while their Fil-ipino van driver was wounded in the face, stomach and thigh during the attack by the New People's Army in the coastal town of Cauayan in Negros Occidental province.

The foreigners and their driver were taken to a hospital. One guerrilla was wounded in the gun-battle in the village of Caliling, police said.

The five policemen in the patrol car targeted by the rebels were not wounded, the report said.

Jakarta

AFP

A Tinder-style dating app for polygamists has sparked controversy in

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation -- but its developer says he "just wants to help" unmarried middle-aged women. Indonesian law defines marriage as between a man and a woman but polygamy is tol-erated in certain circumstances, despite being generally frowned upon.

Ayo Poligami, loosely trans-lated as "let's go polygamy", is a free smartphone app that matches married and single Muslim men with women who want to create "big families".

It has attracted more than 56,000 members since its launch in April, according to developer Lindu Cipta Pra-nayama. But women's rights campaigners have criticised the app, warning of a strong link between polygamy and domes-tic violence.

"Due to the controversy, I initially wanted to permanently shut down the site, but when I saw many women in their 40s of 50s who are still virgins and unmarried I decided to keep it," Pranayama said yesterday.

"Can you image being in your 40s or 50s but never been touched by a man?" added the 35-year-old, who created the app after failing to find a wife on several dating sites.

Indonesian men who apply to one of the country's Islamic courts, which have jurisdiction over marriage, are able to take a second wife under certain cir-cumstances. For example, a court may review and grant an application if the man's first wife is unable to bear children or has a disability and gives her permission.

Adriana Venny Aryani, from Indonesia's National Commis-sion on Violence Against Women, said polygamy as facil-itated by Ayo Poligami could be harmful to wives.

"When the husband is prac-ticing polygamy, women are emotionally abused, economi-cally (abused), and sometimes violently," she said.

Bangkok

AP

Thai police said yesterday they are seeking an inter-national request for the

arrest of former Prime Minis-ter Yingluck Shinawatra, (pictured) who is believed to be in England after fleeing to Dubai to evade a prison sentence.

Deputy Police Commis-sioner Gen. Sr ivara Rangsibrahmanakul said the United Arab Emirates con-firmed that Yingluck went from Dubai to England. He also said he asked the international police organization Interpol on Sunday to issue a red notice — a request to locate and provisionally arrest someone pending extradition — for Yingluck.

Yingluck, whose govern-ment was ousted in a 2014 coup, was sentenced in absen-tia to five years' imprisonment on Sept. 27 for negligence in instituting a money-losing rice subsidy program. She fled Thai-land before the verdict and has called the case against her politically motivated.

Srivara said he cited a Thai arrest warrant for Yingluck as part of the request for a red

notice. "If Interpol can issue the red notice then authorities can proceed (with the arrest)," Sri-vara said, but added that he could not speak for British authorities about whether they would arrest her.

Srivara refused to comment on whether Interpol would comply with the request and issue a red notice, as there could be objections that the case against Yingluck is politi-cal in nature and she could potentially qualify for political asylum.

Deputy Police spokesman Col. Krissana Pattanacharoen said Monday that police have already sent a request to Thai-land's foreign ministry to revoke Yingluck's passport.

Phnom PenhReuters

An outspoken deputy of Cambodia’s detained opposition leader fled the

country yesterday, saying she feared for her safety after Prime Minister Hun Sen threatened further arrests of opposition politicians.

Kem Sokha, leader of the

opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was arrested on Sept. 3 and charged with treason in a widening crackdown on critics of Hun Sen, which his opponents say is a ploy to win an election next year.

“Without a true opposition and with the wide level of fear, there’s no hope for free and fair elections in 2018,” Mu Sochua, 63, told Reuters after leaving

Cambodia, adding that she “did not feel safe”.

“Democracy in Cambodia is very rapidly eroding to a point where no other opposing forces are left to fight dictatorship,” she said.

Government spokesman Phay Siphan said Mu Sochua had “left of her own choice” and he did not know whether authori-ties had planned to arrest her.

Known internationally for campaigns to fight sex traffick-ing and assert women’s rights, Mu Sochua had been among the most vocal opposition politicians in Cambodia since Kem Sokha was arrested and accused of plotting to take power with U.S. help. She told Reuters last week that around half the CNRP’s members of parliament had fled the country in fear.

Dating app draws criticism in IndonesiaThai police seeking Interpol notice for former PM's arrest

Opposition leader's deputy flees Cambodia

Australia to fit warships with anti-missile defence systemsSydney

Reuters

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said yesterday nine war ships

set for construction in 2020 will be fitted with long-range anti-missile defence systems to counter the threat of rogue nations.

Australia’s proposed frig-ates will use Aegis combat

systems, produced by Lockheed Martin, in conjunction with SAAB Australia technology, Turnbull said.

Tensions in the region have spiked considerably in recent months as North Korea con-ducted a series of tests of its medium-and long-range ballis-tic missiles, some of which flew over Japan, as well as its sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3.

Pyongyang, which ultimately

wants to target the U.S. main-land with a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile, has said its mis-siles could strike Australia.

“Recent events in our region have proven that Australia’s future frigates must be equipped to defend Australia from the threat of medium- and long-range missile attacks,” Turnbull said in a speech in Sydney.

Work on the frigates is set to begin in 2020, with BAE Systems,

Navantia and Fincantieri all competing for the A$35 billion ($27.39 billion) contract.

The decision to use the Aegis ballistic missile defence systems brings Australia in line with U.S. and Japanese vessels, allowing international cooperation, Vice Admiral Tim Barrett, Australia’s navy chief, told reporters in Sydney.

The proposed frigates are part of Australia’s plan to

increase defence spending by A$30 billion to be worth A$195 billion, or 2 percent of GDP, by 2021-2022 as Canberra seeks to protect its strategic and trade interests in the Asia-Pacific.

Australia selected French naval contractor DCNS last year to build its fleet of 12 submarines, ahead of other offers from Japan and Germany, one the world’s most lucrative defence contracts.

Pathologist testifies on signs Kim Jong-Nam was poisonedShah Alam

AFP

The half-brother of North Korea's leader suffered extensive organ damage after being attacked with a

nerve agent, a pathologist said yesterday, as more chilling details emerged at the trial of his alleged killers.

Vital organs, including his lungs and brain, swelled due to a build-up of fluid, testified Mohamad Shah Mahmood, who carried out the post-mortem on Kim Jong-Nam.

Two women are on trial accused of attacking Kim Jong-Un's estranged relative with the deadly nerve agent VX at Kuala Lumpur airport on February 13, in an assassination that shocked the world. He died an agonising death about 20 minutes after the VX, a

chemical so deadly it is listed as a weapon of mass destruction, was rubbed on his face.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, who were arrested a few days after the killing, have pleaded not guilty to the murder.

The defendants, who face death by hanging if convicted, say they were duped into believ-ing they were taking part in a

prank for a reality TV show. Their lawyers blame North Korean agents.

South Korea has accused the North of ordering the hit but Pyongyang denies the allegations.

The charge sheet blames Kim's death on the women along with four other people still at large, who are not named. Four North Korean suspects fled Malaysia on the day of the mur-der. On the second day of proceedings yesterday, Moha-mad Shah described to the Sham Alam High Court, outside Kuala Lumpur, how he carried out the post-mortem.

"The overall findings showed congestion of the organs and swelling of the lungs," he said, using the medical term which refers to an excessive accumu-lation of body fluid.

Parts of the brain, the liver

and spleen were among organs affected, he added.

He said the weight of Kim's right lung had increased to 690 grams (24 ounces), above the average for an adult lung.

From the examination, he concluded that Kim had "died due to VX poisoning".

A post-mortem report sub-mitted as evidence to the trial showed that VX was found not just on Kim's face and eyes but also in his blood and urine, and on his clothes and luggage.

Earlier, a chemical patholo-gist who examined a sample of Kim's blood testified it showed

very low levels of an enzyme vital for his nervous system to function, a condition which could have been caused by exposure to poison.

The pathologist, Nur Ashikin Othman, said Kim had a level of 344 units per litre, far below the usual level for men.

Organs damaged

Vital organs, including his lungs and brain, swelled due to a build-up of fluid, testified Mohamad Shah Mahmood, who carried out the post-mortem on Kim Jong-Nam.

Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong and Indonesian Siti Aisyah who are on trial for the killing of Kim Jong Nam, are escorted as they leave the Shah Alam High Court,Kuala Lumpur, yesterday.

16 WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017EUROPE

Scaffolding covers part of the Elizabeth Tower, commonly known as Big Ben in the evening sunlight in London, yesterday. The Houses of Parliament are undergoing extensive renovations to protect the heritage of the building.

Big Ben under renovation

Barcelona

AP

Highways were blocked, schools closed and much business halted across Catalonia

yesterday as workers and stu-dents joined strikes and took to the streets to protest the use of force by police that left hundreds injured during a disputed refer-endum on the region’s secession.

In the regional capital, Bar-celona, where bus and subway services were affected, disori-ented tourists scrambled to find open cafeterias to avoid the pro-tests. There were moments of tension when a handful of picket-ers forced the closure of shops that had remained open in the city’s famed Las Ramblas boulevard, but elsewhere the demonstrations were largely peaceful.

Several labour unions and grassroots pro-independence groups had urged workers throughout Catalonia to go on partial or full-day strikes after the referendum that the Spanish gov-ernment had deemed illegal and invalid.

“People are angry, very angry,” said Josep Llavina, a 53-year-old self-employed worker who had traveled to Bar-celona from a nearby town to participate in the protest outside

the regional offices of Spain’s National Police.

The building became a focal point for protesters, gathering thousands at midday who shouted that the police were an “occupying force” and urged Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to resign. “They brought violence with them,” Llavina said. They have beaten people who were holding their hands up. How can we not be outraged?”

Catalan officials say that 90 percent of the 2.3 million peo-ple who voted Sunday were in favor of independence. But fewer than half of those eligible

to vote turned out. The vote was boycotted by most of Spain’s national parties on grounds it was illegal and lacked basic guarantees, such as transpar-ency, a proper census or an independent electoral govern-ing body.

The central government in Madrid is blaming Catalan sep-aratist politicians and grassroots groups for the violence, saying they “plotted to break the law” and drew citizens to an unlaw-ful vote.

“Nothing of this would have happened if the (Catalan) gov-ernment hadn’t declared itself

in rebellion, breaking the orders of the courts and lying and trick-ing people,” said Spain’s top official in Catalonia, Enric Millo, yesterday.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont has declared the vote valid and has announced it will present the final results this week to Catalonia’s regional parliament, which would trig-ger the process of breaking away from Spain.

The Spanish national gov-ernment has said it will respond with “all necessary measures” to counter such a move, and is holding talks with national

opposition leaders to find multi-partisan consensus on the response.

The general strike in Cata-l o n i a c a l l e d b y pro-independence groups was not fully backed by Spain’s two main unions, the UGT and CCOO groups, who invited workers to decide individually whether to halt work or not to protest police violence, but not in support of secession.

“I disagree with the strike. In fact, at work nobody told me anything about a strike. So I decided to come,” said Jose Boli-var, 54, a town hall employee.

Dublin

AFP

Ireland’s High Court yester-day asked the EU’s Court of Justice of the European Union

to decide on rules on the trans-fer of data from Europe to the US in a case with far-reaching implications for industry.

Judge Caroline Costello said that “only a decision of CJEU can resolve the potential for incon-sistent applications” of the

mechanism used by giants such as Facebook to transfer Euro-pean users’ data to the US. “I therefore have decided to ask the Court of Justice for a prelim-inary ruling,” she concluded.

The legal action follows a complaint by Austrian privacy lawyer Max Schrems to Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) about Facebook’s use of so-called standard contractual clauses (SCCs) to transfer per-sonal data from Europe to the

US, via its European headquar-ters in Dublin. SCCs are now widely used by data exporters and are intended to allow for the legal transfer of data from EU citizens as long as “adequate protection” is in place.

In an emailed statement, Facebook said it was “essential the CJEU now considers the extensive evidence demonstrating the robust protections in place under Standard Contractual Clauses and US law, before it makes any

decision that may endanger the transfer of data across the Atlan-tic and around the globe.”

SCCs “are essential to compa-nies of all sizes, and upholding them is critical to ensuring the economy can continue to grow without disruption,” the statement said. Schrems argues that the SCCs offer no redress for European citi-zens in the US in the event of their data being accessed by a third party, such as US intelligence services, or compromised in some other way.

Brussels

AFP

Belgium has moved to expel an Egyptian preacher at the coun-

try’s biggest mosque because he posed a “national security” threat, officials said yester-day. Immigration Minister Theo Francken revoked the residency permit of the imam of the Saudi-financed Grand Mosque, near the EU head-quarters in Brussels.

Belgium has been hit by several attacks since 2016, including suicide bombings claimed by the Islamic State group that killed 32 people at Brussels airport and a metro station.

“Everybody knows there is a problem with the Grand Mosque in Brussels. I decided to withdraw the residency permit of the imam of this mosque,” Francken told Bel-RTL. “We have had very clear signals he is a man who is very radicalised, salafist, very conservative and dangerous for our society and national security,” Francken added.

Francken did not identify the imam but his office said his name is Abdelhadi Sewif, a man of Egyptian origin who has lived in Belgium for 13 years. Belgian authorities first decided in March not to renew the imam’s residence permit but he has appealed against the decision and judges will review his case on October 24, an official said.

Romania & Bulgaria open new border crossingBUCHAREST: The Romanian and Bulgarian prime minis-ters have opened a new border checkpoint between their countries, both of which want to join the visa-free Schengen travel zone.

Romanian Premier Mihai Tudose met Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov for the official opening ceremony yesterday of the Lipnita-Kay-nardza crossing, which links southeast Romania to north-east Bulgaria.

Romania and Bulgaria need to demonstrate that their borders are secure in order to join Schengen. A statement from Romania’s border police said the cross-ing meets required security standards. The border cross-ing which cost ¤6m will ease international traffic and will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Sofia

Reuters

The prime ministers of Bulgaria, Greece and Romania gave their support to their Balkan neighbour Serbia’s bid to join

the European Union yesterday, saying the integration of the western Balkans would guarantee regional peace and stability.

Serbia, which in the 1990s was seen as pariah of Western Balkans for its central role in wars that followed the collapse of Yugo-slavia, expects to complete negotiations on EU membership by 2019.

“All of us know that the natural place of Serbia is in the European Union,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said after a four-party summit in the Black Sea city of Varna with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Tudose and Serbian President Alexander Vucic. Borissov said that the three EU mem-bers would work to speed up the process to the advantage of peace and stability in the Balkans and Europe generally.

Bulgaria takes over the rotating six-month

EU presidency in January while Romania will take over in 2019. Many Serbs, however, remain sceptical about joining the bloc and view West-ern European countries as outspoken advocates of the 1999 NATO bombing to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians in the former province of Kosovo, in which thousands of civil-ians had been killed.

Vucic accused the European Union of using double standards by refusing to accept the Catalan independence referendum while largely welcoming a separate Kosovo.

“We support Spain, it is our friendly coun-try,” said Vucic. “But the European Commission responded in a different way (over Kosovo) and it was against my people and my state. Kosovo’s declaration of inde-pendence from Serbia in 2008 was accepted by Washington and most EU states, but rejected by Belgrade and its allies.

“Kosovo gained independence without even holding a referendum but Catalonia ... cannot get anything like that,” Vucic said. “Sometimes, we, the Serbs, are asking our-selves why we should have been the victim of double standards?”

Balkan leaders back Serbia’s bid to join European Union

Belgium moves to expel imam over security fearsCatalans protest police crackdown

Madrid

AFP

Spain’s High Court said yesterday it had agreed to a US request to extra-

dite a Russian man accused of controlling one of the world’s top generators of spam and online extortion.

Peter Levashov from Saint Petersburg, a 37-year-old who goes by a string of names, was arrested at Bar-celona airport on April 7 by Spanish authorities acting on a US warrant.

US prosecutors accuse the purported hacker of control-ling the Kelihos network of tens of thousands of infected computers, stealing personal data and renting the network out to others to send spam emails by the millions and extort ransoms. His defence team had argued that the US extradition demand was “politically motivated”.

Levashov, a computer specialist, had served in the Russian army and worked for President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, accord-ing to his lawyers.

In the course of his work he had access to confidential documents which he fears authorities in the US may demand he turn over to them if he is extradited there, the lawyers had argued.

But the High Court said in its ruling that “none of the allegations relating to the political motivation” for the extradition request “has been accepted”.

Irish court refers EU-US data transfer case to EU

Protesters gather at the Placa de la Universitat square during a general strike in Catalonia called by Catalan unions in Barcelona, yesterday.

Several labour unions and grassroots pro-independence groups had urged workers throughout Catalonia to go on partial or full-day strikes after the referendum that the Spanish government had deemed illegal and invalid.

Spain to extradite Russian hacking suspect to US

17WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017 EUROPE

Intendants of the State Opera Juergen Flimm (right) and Matthias Schulz (left) with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her husband Joachim Sauer ahead of the reopening of the State Opera in Berlin, yesterday.

Opera reopening

Moscow

AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday called for “predictable and mutually

beneficial” ties with the United States as he received diplomatic

credentials from Washington’s new ambassador to Moscow.

The US Senate last week confirmed businessman, veteran diplomat and former presiden-tial candidate Jon Huntsman as ambassador to Russia, filling a crucial post at a time when ties

are at dangerously low ebb.“As far as bilateral ties with

the United States are concerned, their current level cannot be sat-isfying,” Putin said at the Kremlin after he received diplomatic cre-dentials from Huntsman.

“We are in favour

of constructive, predicable and mutually beneficial cooperation. We are convinced it should be based on the meticulous adher-ence to the principles of equality, respect of national interests and non-interference in domestic affairs.” Putin again expressed

condolences to the American peo-ple following the Las Vegas shooting which killed at least 59 people and wounded more than 500. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov ear-lier said that the president wanted to restore ties with the US but stressed he could not do it alone.

Putin calls for better US ties as he meets new envoy

Strasbourg

Reuters

The European Parlia-ment savaged the British government’s handling of Brexit negotiations yester-

day, voting against opening talks yet on future trade and con-demning disarray in Prime Minister Theresa May’s team.

The leader of the EU legisla-ture’s biggest party, a German ally of conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, said cabinet in-fighting was putting a deal at risk and called on May to sack her own for-eign secretary, Boris Johnson.

“Please sack Johnson,” demanded Manfred Weber, a leading figure in the assembly, which must approve any deal struck by EU negotiator Michel Barnier before Britain leaves in March 2019.

Opening the debate in Stras-bourg, Barnier and EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker repeated their view that a fourth

round of negotiations last week did not produce enough agree-ment on key issues for the EU to yield to May’s demands for imme-diate talks on a free trade deal and a transition to it after Brexit.

Juncker last week said it would take “miracles” for talks next week to unblock a move to a new phase by the end of this month, let alone in time for EU national leaders to approve such a shift in gear when they meet for a summit on Oct. 19-20.

The test the EU has set is to make “sufficient progress”— which it has not defined—on agreeing rights for EU citizens in Britain after Brexit, land border arrangements with Ireland and how much London will pay Brus-sels on its departure.

Echoing Barnier, Parliament called on EU leaders by 557 votes to 92 to delay making a decision on that progress “unless there is a major break-through in line with this resolution in all three areas dur-ing the fifth negotiation round”.

While welcoming May’s pledges in a speech at Florence 10 days ago to strengthen legal guarantees for expatriates and to pay into the EU budget during a two-year post-Brexit transi-tion period, critical speakers

highlighted London’s refusal to let the European Court of Justice be the ultimate arbiter on rights or to commit to paying substan-tial sums due beyond 2020.

And though some, includ-ing the UK Independence Party,

criticised the European Union position as intransigent, many were critical of conflicting sig-nals being given by May, Johnson and others on where negotiating “red lines” lie for Britain.

Senior MEP calls for sacking ofBoris Johnson Manchester

AP

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson assured British Conservatives yesterday

that he supports “every sylla-ble” of Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans for Brexit.

But unity is in short supply in the U.K.’s fractious, anxious governing party — and John-son’s vow of loyalty did not quell suspicions he covets the leadership.

Johnson told delegates to the Conservative annual con-ference that “the whole country owes (May) a debt for her stead-fastness in taking Britain forward, as she will, to a great Brexit deal.”

May laid out her plans for Britain’s exit from the European

Union in a speech last month in Florence — “on whose every syllable I can tell you, the whole Cabinet is united,” Johnson said.

Johnson has spent weeks giving the opposite impression. He has been accused of under-mining the prime minister — and advancing his leadership

ambitions — by laying out his own distinct roadmap for Brit-ain’s exit from the European Union.

With EU divorce negotia-tions proceeding at a snail’s pace, Johnson has positioned himself as a champion of a clean-break “hard Brexit.”

Paris

AFP

France’s lower house of parl iament yesterday overwhelmingly approved a new counter-terrorism bill, making permanent several

controversial measures in place under a nearly two-year-old state of emergency. It will allow the authorities to confine suspected jihadist sympathisers to their neighbourhoods, close places of worship accused of condoning terror and carry out more on-the-spot identity checks — all without the prior approval of a judge.

The legislation has encountered little resistance from a public traumatised by a string of militant attacks, despite criticism it will undermine civil liberties. The bill was approved on its first reading in the lower house of parliament by 415 votes to 127, with 19 abstentions.

It is expected to become law before the state of emergency declared after the 2015 Paris attacks elapses on November 1 after being extended six times. Since 2012, France has progressively tightened its legal arsenal to tackle terror threats, passing around

10 different laws. “The concentration of powers in the hands of the executive and weakening of judicial oversight is not a new characteristic of France’s counter-terrorism efforts,” said Benedicte Jeannerod, France director for Human Rights Watch. “But the normalisation of emergency powers crosses a new line.”

Tuesday’s vote comes after more bloodshed this weekend, when a suspected Tunisian radical stabbed two 20-year-old women to death in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille.

The attack by 29-year-old Ahmed Hanachi, who was shot dead by troops on anti-terrorism patrol, brings to 241 the number of people killed in attacks claimed by, or attributed to, jihadists since January 2015.

“We’re still in a state of war,” Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told parliament yesterday, warning of a “very serious threat” level.

Rights groups have countered that

the state of emergency did not prevent a string of attacks in the past two years.

On Monday, anti-discrimination group SOS Racisme demonstrated outside parliament against provisions that will allow police to carry out more spot ID checks. “People who are supposedly foreigners, black or north African will be stigmatised,” Thierry Paul Valette, head of another anti-racism group, Egalite Nationale, told the Liberation newspaper. UN experts also raised objections in a letter to the French government last week.

But a poll published by the conservative Le Figaro newspaper last week showed 57 percent of the French in favour. The Islamic State group, which is fast losing territory across the remaining parts of its self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria, has claimed several recent attacks in France as the work of its devotees, including the Marseille assault. Under the anti-terror bill, which was passed by the upper

house Senate in July, the police will have powers to expand border controls to areas around international train stations, ports and airports. It also allows the authorities to shut down a mosque or other place of worship if preachers are found to promote radical “ideas and theories”.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front who ran a failed presidential bid, complained Tuesday that the law did not go far enough in combatting the “Islamist ideology that is waging war on us”.

Ex-president Francois Hollande declared a state of emergency after the wave of bombings and shootings at Paris nightspots and France’s national stadium in November 2015, in which 130 people were killed. It was meant to be temporary but was repeatedly extended in order to protect major sporting and cultural events, as well as this year’s presidential and parliamentary elections.

French MPs adopt tough anti-terror lawThe bill was approved on its first reading in the lower house of parliament by 415 votes to 127, with 19 abstentions. It is expected to become law before the state of emergency declared after the 2015 Paris attacks elapses on November 1 after being extended six times.

Johnson vows loyalty to May as divided UK Tories meet

Podgorica

AFP

An Australian-Mon-tenegrin man was remanded into custody

by a court in Montenegro yes-terday over suspected drug trafficking. Vaso Ulic, 58, was arrested in Montenegro in late August as part of a joint oper-ation with Australia.

Both countries suspect Ulic of organising the traffick-ing of 60kg of MDMA — commonly known as ecstasy — to Australia from several countries between July 2007 and May 2008, according to police. Born in Montenegro, Ulic moved to Australia in 1974 and obtained citizenship there. He returned to the tiny Balkans nation in 2004 to live in a winegrowing area, according to his lawyer.

As Montenegro and Aus-tralia do not have an extradition treaty, Ulic should be tried in his native country, Ulic’s lawyer Milos Vuksa-novic said. The prosecutors suspect Ulic of “organising drugs trafficking over the phone,” Vuksanovic said.

“My client has lived peacefully with his family for more than a decade,” he said.

Montenegro lies on the so-called “Balkan route” used by traffickers to smuggle drugs, weapons and people towards western Europe.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson gathers his papers after addressing the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, yesterday.

Berlin

Reuters

Outgoing German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeu-ble said he is confident his

conservatives can work out a new three-way coalition government.

Chancellor Angela Merkel won a fourth term in office in a Septem-ber 24 election, but a fractured vote that saw the far right enter parlia-ment means she is trying to work out a three-way coalition that is untested at federal level.

The Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is shaping up as an obstacle to her efforts to forge the tie-up between their conservative bloc, the environmentalist Greens,

and the pro-business Free Demo-crats (FDP). Schaeuble said the parties would work out a deal.

“I advise calm. A way will be found,” he told a special edition of the Bild am Sonntag newspaper published on Tuesday, the anniver-sary of German reunification.

Leaders of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) - stung by a drop in support of more than 10 percent in the election - want the conservative bloc to agree policies on immigration, pensions and healthcare before opening coali-tion negotiations with the other two parties. Merkel has rejected a CSU demand for 200,000 per year cap on immigration, complicating her efforts to form a new government.

Outgoing German minister confident of three-way coalition

Montenegro holds suspected drug kingpin

Belgrade

AP

Serbia said yesterday that former Bosnian Serb military commander

Ratko Mladic, who is being tried for genocide at a UN tri-bunal, should be released provisionally from detention in The Hague, Netherlands, on health grounds.

Serbia’s state TV said Tuesday that the government was responding to requests from the defense and family by issuing a guarantee that 74-year-old Mladic would not flee while undergoing hospi-tal treatment in Serbia.

Judges at the Nether-lands-based UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugo-slavia rejected in May a similar defense motion seek-ing Mladic’s release for a medical treatment in Russia. Mladic had two strokes and a heart attack before he was imprisoned and his lawyers say that his condition has fur-ther deteriorated in jail.

Serbia backs Mladic’s release on health grounds

18 WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017AMERICAS

Mario Abdo Benitez, one of the two presidential candidates of the ruling Colorado Party for the December 17 election, speaks during the inscription of the different applicants’ candidacies at the party headquarters in Asuncion, Paraguay, yesterday.

Guaynabo

AFP

President Donald Trump shook hands with storm survivors on the US island

of Puerto Rico yesterday, dur-ing a trip designed to quiet critics who branded his initial response slow and ham-fisted.

Trump and First Lady Mel-ania Trump visited the municipality of Guaynabo, walking among trees felled by Hurricane Maria’s jet-blast winds. He asked residents about their homes, posing for photos and softly shot paper towels basketball-style into a crowd.

Nearly two weeks after Hur-ricane Maria thrashed through the US territory, much of the island remains short of food and with-out access to power or drinking water. The administration’s crit-ics said the early response was not fast enough or on a scale that

could help the island’s 3.4 million American citizens.

Shortly after touching down at Muniz Air National Guard Base at the beginning of his five hour trip, Trump rallied disas-ter management workers telling them they “can be very proud” of their response. But many of the pugilistic president’s com-ments appeared to be aimed at quieting his own critics, inviting officials to say “nice things” about the response and con-trasting it with previous storms.

“We saved a lot of lives.” Trump said, comparing the out-come favorably to that of Hurricane Katrina, which rav-aged New Orleans in 2005.

“If you look at a real catas-trophe like Katrina and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds of people that died and what happened here with a storm that was just totally overbearing.”

“No one has ever seen any-thing like that. What is your death count?” he asked. So far 16 people are confirmed dead from the storm. “I hate to tell you Puerto Rico but you threw our budget a little out of whack, but that’s fine,” Trump said.

Before traveling to the island Trump had feuded with local officials over the pace of the relief effort, berating San Juan’s mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz and suggesting Puerto Ricans were “ingrates” who “want everything to be done for them.”

Luckily for the White House, few Puerto Ricans have had the time or — quite literally the energy -- to read or hear of the president’s barbed remarks.

But the president’s visit was carefully choreographed to avoid any embarrassing pro-tests. Along the route of his motorcade at least one sign declared him a “bad hombre”.

Washington

AFP

The United States ordered the expulsion of 15 Cuban diplomats yesterday, accusing Havana of failing to

protect their American counter-parts from harm in a series of attacks on their health.

Secretary of State Rex Till-erson said, however, that Washington would maintain diplomatic relations even though the size of the US mis-sion in Havana would be reduced to a minimum.

“Until the government of Cuba can ensure the safety of our diplomats in Cuba, our embassy will be reduced to emergency personnel to mini-mize the number of diplomats at risk of exposure to harm,” he said. “This order will ensure equity in our respective diplo-matic operations,” he said.

The attacks, which US offi-cials initially suggested could have been carried out with some sort of covert acoustic device, have affected at least 22 US embassy staff in Havana over the past few months. Those affected have exhibited physical symp-toms including ear complaints, hearing loss, dizziness, headache, fatigue, cognitive issues, and dif-ficulty sleeping.

Tillerson said the US would “maintain diplomatic relations with Cuba, and will continue to cooperate with Cuba as we pur-sue the investigation into these attacks.” US relations with Havana were only fully restored in 2015 -- after a half-century Cold War breakdown — and have deteriorated since Presi-dent Donald Trump took office in January.

Last week, Tillerson said he was withdrawing more than half the personnel from the US embassy in Cuba in response to the unexplained attacks. The US

expelled two Cuban diplomats in May, and Tillerson has raised the possibility of closing the American mission in Cuba alto-gether over the issue.

Observers doubt that Cuba would have risked antagoniz-ing its neighbors at the end of 2016 -- when relations between the former enemies were still thawing. And even Washington has not blamed Cuba directly, although no other suspects have been identified.

The Cuban diplomats, who were given seven days to depart, were not declared persona non grata, a US official speaking on condition of anonymity said. “Our position on assurances is not presume Cuban culpability,” the official said. “What it does is require the Cuban government to be able to fulfill their obliga-tions with the safety and well being and protection of foreign diplomats in their country.”

The US diplomats leaving Cuba are expected to be out of the country by the end of the week. The State Department gave the Cubans a list of which diplomats they wanted expelled.

Routine US visa operations in Havana were suspended indefinitely in response to the attacks, and US officials urged Americans to refrain from vis-iting the island.

Cuba reacted by calling the US move hasty, and said it would affect bilateral relations. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla earlier said his country has found no evi-dence to support US claims that diplomats were harmed due to attacks. US officials previously told reporters they believed some kind of inaudible sound weapon was used on the US staff either inside or outside their res-idences in Havana.

Canadians in Cuba have also been hurt, with a source close to that country’s embassy tell-ing AFP that more than five families were affected, includ-ing several children.

Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio, an outspoken critic of the Havana regime, has demanded that, until those responsible for the attacks are found, Washington should expel the same number of Cuban dip-lomats as Americans it is pulling from Havana.

Washington should also consider putting Cuba back on a terror blacklist, Rubio said. “The era of constructive engage-ment has been replaced by one depicting the Cuban government as behaving badly,” said Paul Webster Hare, a former British ambassador to Havana and political science professor at Boston University.

Webster Hare cited a Sep-tember speech at the UN General Assembly in which Trump said the United States “has stood against the corrupt and destabi-lizing regime in Cuba.” Trump further implied that further rap-prochement is on hold as he “will not lift sanctions on the Cuban government until it makes fun-damental reforms.”

US orders expulsion of 15 Cuban diplomats

Trump, Melania meet storm survivors in Puerto Rico

Washington

Reuters

The Trump administration would support legislation allowing illegal immi-

grants who came to the United States as children to gain law-ful permanent status and eventually citizenship, a Department of Homeland Secu-rity official said in testimony to Congress yesterday.

The Trump administration last month ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, which began in 2012 under former president Barack Obama and offered nearly 800,000 young people who came to the United States illegally as children protection from deportation and the right to work legally in the United States.

The administration said it ended DACA because Obama overstepped his constitutional authority by creating the policy unilaterally and without Con-gressional approval. President Donald Trump called on Con-gress to enact a law to protect DACA recipients, and last month angered some of his fellow Republicans by negotiating with congressional Democratic lead-ers on possible legislation.

“Under a rational bill these individuals would be able to become lawful permanent res-idents with a pathway to

citizenship,” Michael Dough-erty, assistant DHS secretary for border, immigration and trade policy, said at a Senate hearing, in response to questioning on the Trump administration’s position on whether “Dream-ers,” as they are often called, should be allowed to stay in the United States.

Earlier in the hearing, when asked what Trump would like to see in a “DACA fix bill,” Dougherty recited a list of the administration’s immigration priorities, including border con-trol, expanding the ability to quickly remove people who enter illegally and do not claim asylum, better vetting, reduc-ing visa overstays, reforming non-immigrant business visas and establishing a merit-based system that favors skilled immigrants.

Several Republican bills have been introduced in Con-gress that address various aspects of that agenda, includ-ing one that has been endorsed by the White House, but many Democrats and immigration groups see those proposals as poison pills that would kill the chance for a deal on the issue. Democrats say it is unfair to DACA recipients to make leg-islation helping them contingent on a broad suite of enforcement and reform measures.

Trump administration backs citizenship path for ‘Dreamers’: Official

Quito

AFP

Ecuador’s vice president, Jorge Glas, was ordered locked up on Monday

pending a criminal investigation into allegations he took $16m in bribes from Odebrecht, a Bra-zilian construction giant that paid illegal kickbacks to win public contracts.

The country’s highest court ordered the preventive deten-tion along with a freeze of Glas’ assets and bank accounts.

Under investigation by the US Justice Department, Odebre-cht agreed in December to pay a record $3.5bn fine after admit-ting to paying $788m in bribes across 12 countries to secure juicy tenders. Glas is just the lat-est political figure in Latin America to be identified as a suspected recipient of bribes from the Brazilian group.

Fallout from the scandal has cast a cloud over politicians in several other countries, includ-ing Mexico, Peru, Panama and Venezuela.

Ecuadoran lawmakers in August unanimously voted to allow the corruption probe against Glas to go ahead. He was barred from leaving the coun-try. Glas has denied any link to the Odebrecht scandal, though his uncle, Ricardo Rivera, has been arrested for his alleged participation in the affair.

“I acknowledge UNDER PRO-TEST this detestable outrage against me, though I am confident justice will prevail and that I will prove my innocence,” Glas tweeted after the court order.

Ecuador VP jailed in bribery case

Santiago

Reuters

Chile’s conservative pres-idential candidate Sebastian Pinera has

consolidated a strong lead in polls for the November presi-dential election, a survey by pollster CERC Mori showed.

The poll showed that Pin-era, a former president, would win 44 percent of the vote in the first round on November 19, up from 35 per-cent in CERC Mori’s previous poll released in early July. Alejandro Guillier, a center-left senator, would take 30 percent in the first round, the poll said, while hard-left can-didate Beatriz Sanchez would take 11 percent.

CERC Mori said it was not able to accurately estimate vot-ing intentions for a possible second round, which would be required if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote. With six presidential can-didates from the left, there is a possibility of a broad alliance in a second round against the right-wing Pinera.

At present, however, there is no sign of such an alliance forming, according to Marta Lagos, director of CERC Mori. “If a movement forms against Pinera, then someone could emerge as a leader. The point is that this movement does not exist and nor does the leadership,” she told a news conference.

US President Donald Trump examines emergency lights being given to a crowd of local residents affected by Hurricane Maria as he visits a disaster relief distribution point at Calgary Chapel in San Juan yesterday.

Chile’s Pinera consolidates lead in polls

Mysterious attacks

The mysterious attacks have affected at least 22 US embassy staff in Havana over the past few months.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, however, that Washington would maintain diplomatic relations even though the size of the US mission in Havana would be reduced to a minimum.

Paraguay poll campaign

19WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017 AMERICAS

Las Vegas

Reuters

Law enforcement offi-cials were puzzled yesterday over what motivated a retiree with no criminal record

to assemble an arsenal in a high-rise Las Vegas hotel and rain gunfire onto a outdoor concert, killing at least 59 people.

The gunman, identified as Stephen Paddock, ended Sunday night’s shooting spree, the dead-liest in modern US history, by killing himself. He left an arse-nal of 42 guns but no clear clues as to why he staged the attack on a crowd of 20,000 from a 32nd-floor window of the Mandalay Bay hotel. More than 500 peo-ple were injured, some trampled.

Federal, state and local investigators have found no evi-dence that Paddock, 64, had even incidental contacts with foreign or domestic extremist groups, and reviews of his history show no underlying pattern of law-breaking or hate speech, a senior US homeland security official said. “We cannot even rule out mental illness or some form of brain damage, although there’s no evidence of that, either,” the official said.

Paddock’s brother, Eric, has described himself as equally mystified by the attack. “It just makes less sense the more we use any kind of reason to figure it out,” Eric Paddock said in a text message on Tuesday. “I will bet any amount of money that they will not find any link to anything

... he did this completely by himself.”

He described his brother as a financially well-off enthusiast of video poker and cruises, with no history of mental health issues.

President Donald Trump told reporters that Paddock had been “a sick man, a demented man”. He declined to answer a ques-tion about whether he considered the attack an act of domestic terrorism. Trump was due to visit Las Vegas today.

US officials discounted a claim of responsibility by the Islamic State militant group and said they believed Paddock acted alone. Although police said they had no other suspects, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said investigators wanted to talk with Paddock’s girlfriend and live-in companion, Marilou Danley, who he said was traveling abroad, possibly in

Tokyo.The closest Paddock

appeared to have ever come to a brush with the law was a traf-fic infraction, authorities said.

The attack stirred the frac-tious debate about gun ownership in the United States, which is protected by the Sec-ond Amendment to the Constitution, and about how much that right should be sub-ject to controls.

Sunday’s shooting followed the massacre of 26 young chil-dren and educators in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, and the slaying of 49 people at a gay

nightclub in Orlando last year. The latter attack was previously the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

Democrats reiterated what is generally the party’s stance, that legislative action is needed to reduce mass shootings. Repub-licans, who control the White House and both chambers of Con-gress, argue that restrictions on lawful gun ownership cannot deter criminal behavior.

“We’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes by,” said Trump, who strongly supported gun rights during his presiden-tial campaign. US Senate

Democratic leader Chuck Schumer urged Trump to bring together both major parties to devise a solution to gun violence.

“I am requesting the presi-dent to call us together, Democrats and Republicans, to come up with a reasonable solu-tion,” Schumer told journalists. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said it was too soon after the attack to discuss “leg-islative solutions” to gun violence.

“It’s particularly inappropri-ate to politicize an event like this, which just happened in the last

day and a half,” McConnell told journalists.

Paddock seemed atypical of the troubled, angry young men who experts said have come to embody the mass-shooter pro-file in the United States.

Public records on Paddock point to an itinerant existence across the US West and South-east, including stints as an apartment manager and aero-space industry worker. He appeared to be settling in to a quiet life when he bought a home in a Nevada retirement commu-nity a few years ago. Police said they found 23 guns in Paddock’s suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel. They found another 19 firearms, explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition at Pad-dock’s home in Mesquite, 145km northeast of Las Vegas.

A search of his car turned up a supply of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be formed into explosives and was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb-ing of a federal office building that killed 168 people, Lombardo said. Chris Sullivan, the owner of Mesquite’s Guns & Guitars shop, issued a statement confirming that Paddock was a customer who cleared background checks and said his business was coop-erating with investigators.

Lombardo said investigators knew a gun dealer had come for-ward to say that he had sold weapons to the suspect, but it was not clear if he was referring to Sullivan. He said police were aware of other people engaged in those transactions, including at least one in Arizona.

Washington

AFP

Twenty-three guns in his hotel room. Nineteen more at home. Piles of

ammunition, and devices that converted assault rifles to auto-matic weapons that fired like machine guns.

How did Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock, who shot and killed 59 people from his 32nd story hotel window, amass an arsenal of firearms? In the United States, and particularly in states like Nevada, it’s easy. And totally legal.

Although the country is notorious for its lax gun laws, there are some restrictions on multiple sales of handguns. But if someone wants to build up a cache of rifles the way Paddock did, they could do so without anyone noticing.

Most gun sales are by feder-ally-licensed vendors who must put buyers through background checks. The FBI will run their name through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which refers to three databases of offenders.

Those databases are not always perfect, relying on often spotty reporting from the states. Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine people in an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, 2015, cleared a handgun purchase background check just weeks before, despite having a drug conviction on his record.

But if a person’s record is clean — and Paddock evidently did not raise any red flags — he can buy as many guns as he wants. There are some controls, points out Laura Cutilletta, the legal director at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Licensed gun dealers, who handle perhaps 60 percent of all firearm sales, have to report multiple handgun sales to the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco. “Multiple” means two or more guns to the same pur-chaser within five business days.

Three states — California, New York and New Jersey — prohibit sales of more than one handgun in 30 to 90 days, with slight variations between them. Beyond that, the country is an

open market, with private sell-ers of used guns not having to run background checks, and no restrictions on long gun purchases.

Automatic weapons have been banned in the United States for three decades. But convert-ing a semi-automatic weapon, including the AR-15 and AK-47-type assault rifles widely available in US gun shops, into an automatic weapon is easy.

For $40 you can buy a trigger crank, a small device that can be attached to the trigger. It can make the gun fire three or four times with each turn of the crank, significantly faster than using a finger to pull the trigger. For as little as $99, you can get a bump stock, a spring-loaded stock that, with one pull of the trigger, keeps the weapon firing using its own recoil. It can enable the weapon to fire at a rate of 600 rounds a minute or more.

Trigger cranks and bump stocks are completely legal, they even come with ATF certifications that they do not constitute an ille-gal conversion of the guns. According to reports Paddock had two weapons with bump stocks.

Motive for massacre baffles investigators

Belongings are scattered and left behind at the site of the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, in Las Vegas, Nevada, yesterday.

A sign advertising a gun range is seen near the Las Vegas Strip yesterday.

Los Angeles

AFP

The deadly attack on con-certgoers in Las Vegas has prompted a debate about

security measures at hotels and open-air venues, but little could have been done to prevent Sun-day’s carnage, experts say.

The challenges lie in part in the difficulty of imposing harsh policies on places and events meant for fun and relaxation, and foiling a perpetrator bent on bloodshed. “This was an unpreventable incident, period,” said Patrick Brosnan, a former NYPD detective who now runs a private security firm called Brosnan Risk Consultants.

Brosnan and several other security experts interviewed by AFP said the shooting at a coun-try music festival that left at least 59 people dead and more than 500 injured underscored the difficulty for law enforcement to stay one step ahead of some-one planning such attacks.

The gunman, retired accountant Stephen Paddock, 64, shot at concertgoers from a room on the 32nd floor of the

nearby Mandalay Bay hotel before killing himself, police said. His motive was not imme-diately known.

“The ironic part of this thing is that security in Vegas is actu-ally very good but with a halfway creative mind and a means to do something in a free country, it causes issues like this,” said Tegan Broadwater, president and founder of Tacti-cal Systems Network, a security consultancy firm based in Texas.

He said Paddock probably very easily sneaked his arsenal—which included at least 16 rifles and ammunition—into his room given relatively lax security measures at hotels.

“It would actually be very simple for anyone to get into a hotel on any typical day with that kind of armament because hotels don’t usually vet the type of baggage that’s being brought in,” Broadwater told AFP. “You usually pull up to a concierge, you load your bags and you wheel them up to your room.”

Any radical changes in secu-rity at hotels in Las Vegas—a gambling hub that attracts some 43 million visitors annually—are

unlikely to be put in place for fear of driving away tourists, the experts said. “Hotels and casi-nos have to find a fine balance between security and staying a welcoming place,” said Jason Porter, vice president of Pink-erton, a risk management services company.

Brosnan said should hotels in Las Vegas adopt stringent security protocols that include metal detectors and searching guests’ luggage, that would likely impact the region’s tour-ism industry which generated nearly $60bn in economic activ-ity in 2016, according to a study by Las Vegas-based Applied Analysis.

Richard Frankel, a former FBI agent, prosecutor and pro-fessor of homeland security at St. John’s University, said Sun-day night’s mass shooting — the deadliest in modern US history—would likely spur a rethink of security measures at open-air venues.

He said new protocols could include stationing snipers on the roofs of nearby buildings and using helicopters and unmanned drones during such events.

The home of Stephen Paddock is seen in Mesquite, Nevada, yesterday.

How did Las Vegas shooter get his arsenal? Easily, and legally

Vegas carnage unavoidable, security experts say

Las Vegas shooting

Federal, state and local investigators have found no evidence that Paddock, 64, had even incidental contacts with foreign or domestic extremist groups.

President Donald Trump told reporters that Paddock had been “a sick man, a demented man”.

20 WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER 2017MORNING BREAK

FAJRSHOROOK

04.11 am

05.27 am

ZUHRASR

11.23 am

02.46 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

05.20 pm

06.50 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 03:45 – 16:00 LOW TIDE 09:15 – 22:45

Hot daytime with slight dust to

blowing dust at places at times

and some clouds.

WEATHER TODAY

Minimum Maximum

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

30oC 39oC

The Peninsula

Celebrity Chef Zar-mig Halladjian exhibits another side of her mul-tifaceted talent,

showcasing 40 of her paint-ings at her solo exhibition titled “Inspiration of the Fruit of Susie Tree” which opened on Monday at Katara Building 19.

The show, which runs until October 8, features paintings of different sizes created without using the paintbrush, but the artist’s fingers, drawing a close relation between her pas-sion for gastronomy and her penchant for visual arts.

In her Katara debut, the

artist displays paintings which focus on women and convey various feelings and emotions expressed in vibrant colours through her unique style.

“Katara has opened its doors to the artist Zarmig to offer visitors of Katara a collection of the most beau-tiful works of art. It would provide the public with a new and distinct experi-ence,” said Katara General Manager Dr Khalid bin Ibra-him Al Sulaiti, who officially opened the exhibition.

Zarmig said: “I am pleased to present my first exhibition in Katara, this beautiful and attractive cul-tural edifice”

Zarmig adds that each of her paintings tells a

certain story of her life. She said that she worked to focus on the presence of women and she chose to address the exhibition in the name of her mother for her love and sacrifices, as the mother is symbol of tender-ness, affection and love.

Zarmig holds a master degree in Public Health of Food and has several tele-vision programs in local and international television channels. She published several cooking books, two of which are Culinary Art secrets and The Art of Carv-ing. She has been a judge in international culinary com-petitions and a consultant in the food and hospitality industries.

Celebrity Chef Zarmig Halladjian (left) and Katara General Manager Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim Al Sulaiti (second left) along with other guests at the opening of “Inspiration of the Fruit of Susie Tree” exhibition at Katara Building 19.

Katara opens paintings of celebrity chef Halladjian

Hissa debuts shoe designs at Paris Fashion WeekThe Peninsula

Qatari designer Hissa Al Haddad debuted her first shoe collection in Paris Fashion Week yesterday in the Le Bristol Paris.

Hissa Haddad is a bespoke Qatari brand of artisanal Ital-ian made shoes founded by its visionary and female entrepreneur Hissa Al Haddad.

Inspired by the Middle East’s rich heritage and pearl trade, the brands aesthetic reflects that beauty in each and every handcrafted piece.

After two years of meticulous research and perfection Hissa Haddad is introducing its capsule collection of 10 unique designs and colours.

During the event the brand unveiled its SS18 collection with nine new designs.

Johannesburg

AFP

The family of jailed Paral-ympic athlete Oscar Pistorius said yesterday

that it would pursue legal action over a coming US film about his murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

In a statement, the Pistorius family said neither it nor the Steenkamps were consulted about the film, Blade Runner Killer, which is set to premiere on the Lifetime network in the US on November 11. The ath-lete’s family criticised the project for not being a “true reflection” of the shooting nor of Pistorius’s marathon trial which gripped the world.

“The ‘film’ is a gross misrep-resentation of the truth,” the family said in a statement. “We will be taking legal action.”

Pistorius, 30, is serving a six-year prison term for killing Steenkamp in his house in the South African capital of Preto-ria in the early hours of Valentine’s Day on 2013.

The double-amputee sprinter shot Steenkamp four times with high-calibre bullets through a locked bathroom door. He maintained that he mistook the model for an intruder. The family statement, issued by Oscar’s brother Carl Pistorius, dismissed the film as a biased “representation of what the prosecution tried to portray.”

On Monday, the Steenkamps also distanced themselves from the film, saying they were “hor-rified and upset” at reports that it claimed to tell the story from the perspective of Reeva and her mother June. The trailer for the film, which stars German model Toni Garrn as Steenkamp, shows Pistorius and Steenkamp in bed, having arguments before her death and Pistorius opening fire.

In 2016, an appeals court upgraded Pistorius’s man-slaughter conviction to murder. South African state prosectors are pushing for a longer sen-tence, with the appeals court due to hear the case on Novem-ber 3.

Pistorius family vows legal action over movie

The Peninsula

The fourteenth cycle of “I am A Researcher” mod-ule of Qatar University’s

(QU) Al Bairaq Programme recently launched in a cere-mony held at the University.

The event was attended by Dr Noora Al Thani, QU Center for Advanced Materials (CAM) Manager of Outreach and Engagement and Al Bairaq Supervisor and a large number of Grade 12 students and

teachers from seven high schools in Qatar which included Tariq Bin Ziad Inde-pendent Secondary School for Boys, Al-Arqam Academy – Girls, Omar Bin Abdulaziz Secondary School for Boys, Al Bayan Educational Complex for Girls, Jassim bin Hamad Independent Secondary School for Boys, Aisha Bint Abi Bkr Independent Secondary School For Girls, and Omar Ibn Al-Khattab Secondary School for Boys.

Dr Noora Al Thani said: “Al-Bairaq is a unique expe-rience that motivates high school students to innovate and achieve their full poten-tial through a wide range of projects. The projects that contribute to shape their per-sonalities and enhancing their critical-thinking, problem-solving and teamwork skills.”

“It is the result of the com-mitted vision of QU to build a generation capable of research and development

towards achieving a knowl-edge-based economy. It also highlights CAM’s commitment to promoting scientific culture and research from high school to university towards achiev-ing the objectives and priorities of the State of Qatar,” she added.

Al Bairaq promotes inno-vation, entrepreneurship and applied research in line with Qatar National Vision 2030, and the country’s ambitions towards a knowledge-based

economy. It also stresses interdisciplinary research that can cover any and all STEM (Science, Technology, Engi-neering and Mathematics) subjects.

The Programme is sup-ported by UNESCO Doha Office (Partner), Qatar National Commission for Edu-cation, Culture and Science (Partner), RasGas Company Limited (gold sponsor), and Shell Qatar (silver sponsor).

QU launches 14th cycle of ‘I am A Researcher’

Rome

AFP

The highest level of Rome’s ancient Colos-seum will be opened

to the public for the first time in 40 years on Novem-ber 1, Italy’s culture minister said yesterday.

Seats on the fifth level of the amphitheatre were once reserved for ancient

Roman society’s lowest c o m m o n e r : t h e plebeian.

But the seats boasted a breathtaking view — not only of the gladiator battles far below, but of the heart of the empire.

“It is an incredible view of the Colosseum and Rome, which the visitor will remember as one of the most beautiful things he has

seen in his life,” Italian Cul-ture Minister Dario Franceschini said at a media presentation.

Far below, tourists peer-ing down into the maze of galleries in the monument’s belly appear as tiny specks, showing just how far away the commoners were from the arena floor, where ter-rified prisoners were forced to fight wild beasts.

Colosseum to open up highest levelPeople visit the Ancient Colosseum in Rome yesterday.