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TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016 • 25 DHUL HIJJA 1437 • Volume 21 • Number 6932 thepeninsulaqatar @peninsulaqatar @peninsula_qatar 2 Riyals

Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani with Ambassador of India Sanjiv Arora on the occasion of the latter ending his tenure in the country, at Emiri Diwan, yesterday. The Deputy Emir presented the outgoing envoy with the Sash of Merit in recognition of his role in enhancing bilateral relations and wished him success in his future assignments. The Ambassador expressed his thanks and appreciation to the Deputy Emir and officials for the cooperation he received during his tenure.

Deputy Emir meets outgoing Indian envoy

By Raynald C Rivera The Peninsula

DOHA: In yet another move to attract more visitors, Qatar has relaxed its transit visa rules allowing transit passengers at Hamad Interna-tional Airport (HIA) to stay a maximum of 96 hours in the country, without the need to apply in advance for an entry visa.

Previously, transit passengers with a mini-mum layover of eight hours were allowed to spend a maximum of 48 hours in Qatar. Under the revised scheme, passengers with a minimum transit time of five hours at HIA can stay in Qatar for up to 96 hours, without the requirement to apply for an entry visa in advance.

The transit visa is free of charge and avail-able on arrival at Hamad International Airport

to passengers of all nationalities, upon con-firmation of onward journey and completion of passport control procedures. All visas are approved and issued at the sole discretion of the Ministry of Interior (MoI).

The new scheme announced yesterday by Qatar Airways, Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) and the MoI is seen as a shot in the arm for the country’s tour-ism sector and another significant stride to promote Qatar as a world-class stopover destination.

The amendments on visa rules, announced on the eve of World Tourism Day, is the third in a series of steps Qatar has taken to facilitate vis-itor entry into the country. Last week, officials announced new procedures to accelerate the entry of tourists arriving on board cruise ships, and earlier, an agreement was signed with VFS Global, which will pave the way for an online tourist visa processing system.

“We congratulate Qatar for announcing, very auspiciously on the occasion of the World Tour-ism Day, a new milestone change in the country’s transit visa scheme. This is the third significant travel facilitation announcement from Qatar in the space of just one month. We are very pleased to see that the work conducted by UNWTO with Qatar on visa facilitation is yielding results and trust that these will certainly result in an increase of visitors to Qatar,” said UNWTO Secretary-Gen-eral Taleb Rifai.

→ Continued on page 2

New transit visa rules make entry easier

The Peninsula

DOHA: Ooredoo has strongly dis-agreed with the Communications Regulatory Authority’s (CRA) deci-sion related to access to its duct infrastructure.

In an official statement issued here yesterday, Ooredoo expressed disappointment with the regulator’s decision and order issued on Sep-tember 8 this year, saying that it contained grave errors.

According to Ooredoo, the regulator has not given sufficient consideration to input or evidence it presented to the CRA. Ooredoo has been fully cooperating with the CRA and has been sharing its mobile sites with Vodafone Qatar since 2009. It opened its ducts network to QNBN in 2012 and today the majority of the QNBN network in Qatar passes through the Ooredoo network.

“Ooredoo has not refused access to its network infrastruc-ture and in its opinion, the CRA Decision and Order includes grave errors,” said Ooredoo.

The CRA inserted modifications in the final Reference Infrastruc-ture Access Offer (RIAO) without consulting Ooredoo. Such modifi-cations may expose our network to mismanagement and would nega-tively impact the quality of services that we offer to our customers, in particular government and public-critical services.

“We have a duty to protect our customers and ensure service con-tinuity. Our experience with QNBN shows that we need to be very careful in allowing third parties to utilise our networks,” it said.

The company said, the order requiring the adoption of the RIAO in its current form is not balanced and favours its competitors.

→ See also page 19

By Fazeena Saleem The Peninsula

DOHA: An estimated QR1.8bn is spent annually on treating diabetes and its complications in Qatar and the potential cost is likely to rise to QR 4.9bn by 2035, with an expected increase in the number of diabetics in the country to 299,000 by that year, the Minister of Public Health

H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari said yesterday.

She was addressing the opening session of the International Diabe-tes Leadership Forum, which opened at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel yesterday, in the presence of the Prime Minis-ter and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani and a number of leading inter-national experts.

“Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases in the world, and

unfortunately, Qatar has not been spared from this trend. Advances in medical technology and the delivery of care in Qatar means most of those people are able to keep their diabetes under control and learn to live along-side it,” said Dr Al Kuwari.

The minister said that one in six (17%) of the adult population in Qatar suffers from diabetes. The number of people with diabetes is predicted to reach 299,000 in 2035. It would increase to 368,000 by 2055 and the

expenditure for treatment will reach QR8.4bn.

Also an estimated 50% of all dialy-sis provided in Qatar is due to diabetes, half of acute coronary disease is asso-ciated with diabetes and close to 70% of all stroke patients have diabetes or pre-diabetes, she added.

“Our projections show us that without any change, the number of people suffering with diabetes is likely to double in the next 40 years, mean-ing this terrible disease would impact

even more children, families and com-munities than it does today. With that, the potential cost of treatment and its complications is likely to rise to QR4.9bn by 2035,” said Dr Al Kuwari.

However, she emphasised that the situation would change if every-one take responsibility to combat the disease by finding new ways to iden-tify people at risk, change prevention methods , and change lifestyle.

→ Continued on page 3

By Irfan Bukhari The Peninsula

DOHA: “I am not an ashtray,” is the plea of few olive trees planted outside a shop at the Airport road. The beautiful trees are requesting the smokers not to throw cigarette butts on their beds.

“I am an olive tree. Not an ashtray.” It is the story of smoking in outdoor public places and smokers’ indifferent attitude. This careless behaviour of smokers prompted the shop owner to install a notice on the plant-beds in front of his outlet advising people to avoid mistreating beautiful trees.

The olive trees themselves are a result of the shop owner’s love for flora and his dedication in cultivating them in this unfriendly climate.

“The owner of the shop has special affec-tion for these trees. We were compelled to install these notice-plates on the beds, disappointed with the smokers’ attitude,” an expat employee of the outlet told The Peninsula.

He said that smokers including visitors and employees are not allowed to smoke indoors. Therefore after smoking in open space they used to throw cigarette butts in the bed. “Now we have placed an ashtray next to plant beds for smok-ers’ convenience. But still some careless smokers extinguish their cigarettes in the soil of beds,” he lamented.

It is pertinent to mention here that under Article 10 of the Law No (20) of 2002, smoking

is illegal at enclosed public places like means of public transport, schools, edu-cational and training centres, universities, hospitals, health centres and other edu-cational and institutions and health facilities. Smoking is also prohibited at ministries and other government bodies, organisations, public corporations, sports clubs, societies’ centres and public places, lifts, cinemas and theatres.

No one can smoke at any industrial establishments, commercial centres, res-taurants and other places which sell food or drinks to the public. The current law imposes a fine up to QR500 for smoking in closed public places, and a new anti-tobacco law is in the making proposing stricter punishments.

As smoking is not allowed in closed public places, smokers without any hes-itation satisfy their craving for tobacco in open spaces including roads, pedestrian pathways, parks, bus waiting stands etc.

“The government should also prohibit smoking in open public places and any-one having the habit must only smoke in their closed private places,” said another the employee of the shop.

Apart from smoking in open public places and some instances of violations at enclosed public places too, Shisha (water-pipe smoking) at some places like Souq Waqif is causing trouble for non-smokers.

→ Continued on page 4

Qatar spends QR1.8bn a year for diabetes treatment

‘I am an olive tree... not an ashtray’

Ooredoo says disappointed by regulator’sdecision

Jaidah Square officials have posted signs around the olive trees planted in front of their building on Airport Road to caution smokers from extinguishing their cigarette buds there. Authorities have also placed ashtrays around the premises. Pic: Qassim Rahmatullah/The Peninsula

Transit passengers can now stay up to 96 hours in Qatar without the need to apply in advance for an entry visa.

The Peninsula

DOHA: The Doha College has apologised for raising the Israeli flag dur-ing a celebration in the campus recently to mark the beginning of the new academic year, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education said yes-terday on its Twitter account. The ministry quoted a senior school official as saying that the Israeli flag was raised mistakenly among other flags of the United Nations member states during the ceremony and it was imme-diately removed. Responding to some tweets criticising the school over the action, the Ministry said that private schools operate in the country under the Qatari law and under the supervision of the ministry. In case of any violation of the law, there are punishments specified in the law.

Doha College is one of the oldest British curriculum schools in Qatar with about 1800 students on its rolls. According to the school the students represent over 70 nationalities.

Doha College apologises for raising Israeli flag

RIYADH: The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia yesterday cut cabinet ministers’ sala-ries by 20 percent and reduced other state officials’ benefits in a continuing austerity drive to cope with lower oil revenues. → See also page 6

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Saudi King cuts ministers’ salaries by 20%

Smiles and ‘selfies’ as Aspire Academy welcomes Barshim

HOME 02 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani yesterday met officials of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Talks dealt with cooperation, particularly in the field of combating terrorism and cybercrimes.

Premier meets UNODC officials

The Peninsula

DOHA: In a major initiative to pro-mote innovation in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, Qatar Foundation (QF) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with 500 Startups, a leading global venture capital seed fund and startup accelerator.

Both organisations will provide

seed funding, training and mentor-ship to startups across Mena over the next five years.

The initiative aims to help star-tups achieve market traction and scale, using customer acquisition and scaling strategies mastered by high-growth tech companies in Silicon Valley, such as Facebook, Salesforce and others, said a QF statement yesterday.

QF will become an anchor inves-tor in the 500 Startups Mena region microfund. It will also organise the annual world-class 500 Distro Dojo growth marketing accelerator pro-gramme, and make its incubation centre at Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP), part of Qatar Founda-tion Research and Development (QF R&D), available to all startups.

QF will also help startups gain access to the cutting-edge research and technology development cur-rently under way within its research institutes and labs, and enable them to benefit from skills and capabilities

of graduates from universities in Education City.

Dr Hamad Al Ibrahim, Execu-tive Vice-President, QF R&D, and Chairman, Board of Directors, QSTP, said:“The partnership reflects our recognition of the importance of startups to a dynamic, successful and sustainable knowledge-based economy, and illustrates — nation-ally and internationally — the emphasis QF places on enabling and nurturing an entrepreneurial culture.

“Through QSTP, our innovation arm, alongside 500 Startups, we will provide access to tools and support necessary for entrepreneurs to thrive in today’s market and develop prod-ucts that have tangible economic and social impact.”

Additionally, 500 Startups will make its extensive network of inves-tors, mentors, experts and startup founders available to the regional entrepreneurs selected.

By providing funding, expertise and reach, the regional microfund will create a vehicle for entrepre-neurs to develop and accelerate their innovations and take their young companies to the next level, with the aim of establishing them as key players in the regional and glo-bal market.

Dave McClure, Founding Part-ner, 500 Startups, said: “We provide entrepreneurs with global access to expert mentorship, hands-on sup-port, networking opportunities, and resources that will not only kick-start ideas but also help take companies to the next level.

“We aim to inspire, develop and lead by example. The Mena region is continuing to experience steady growth and through this partnership with QF, we want to help unleash the potential within the region,” he added.

QF signs deal to promote innovation in Mena regionQatar Foundation and 500 Startups will provide seed funding, training and mentorship to startups over the next five years.

Dave McClure (left), Founding Partner, 500 Startups, and Dr Hamad Al Ibrahim, Executive Vice-President, QF R&D, and Chairman, Board of Directors, QSTP, exchanging documents after signing the MoU.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Sheikh Thani Bin Abdul-lah Foundation for Humanitarian Services (RAF) has provided fresh humanitarian aid worth QR1m to the needy people in war-torn Yemen.

More than 14,000 people ben-efitted from the project financed through donations by people from Qatar.

The initiative aimed at provid-ing basic food items, healthcare services and other necessities to dis-placed families. It was launched in collaboration with local partner, Al Muhsinin charitable organisation.

The project was implemented in 10 areas, including Sana’a, Had-hramaut, Lahaj, Al Dali, Rasad, Yafa, Ib, Al Hadidah, Taz and Radfan.

More than 2,000 baskets of basic foodstuff were distributed, benefit-ing over 13,000 people in Hajja, Taz,

Radfan and Sana’a provinces. Medium-size families comprising

six to eight members were given food baskets which could last two months.

The baskets included rice, wheat flour, edible oil, sugar, tea, pasta, spices and cleaning materials.

In addition, some 220 homes in remote areas of Ib, Dale, Had-harmout, Radfan and Sana’a — hit by outages — were connected with a solar power system for lighting purpose.

RAF intervened and paid medi-cal bills of 65 poor patients in utmost need of treatment amid poor health-care services in the country and lack of medicines. A social project was also launched and seven youth in Sana’a were provided with finan-cial support to get married in view of their poor financial condition.

Scholarships were provided to eight boys and one girl who could not pursue higher studies due to finan-cial reasons. Beneficiaries with solar power systems provided to light up their homes in a village in Yemen.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) yesterday announced the eight landmarks people can visit to take part in World Tourism Day (WTD) social media competition which starts today.

The landmarks include Museum of Islamic Art; Katara; Al Zubarah Fort; Souq Waqif; Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani Museum; Aspire Zone; Imam Muhammad ibn Abd Al Wah-hab Mosque; and the East-West/West-East Richard Serra installa-tion at Brouq Nature Reserve near Zekreet.

Life-size photo frames have been installed at these locations, through which participants can take pictures to upload on social media.

They can use the hashtags #WTD2016 and #ShowcaseQatar

for a chance to win exciting prizes, including weekend stays at a local five-star hotel.

Participants can boost their chances of winning prizes by vis-iting and uploading pictures of as many of the eight landmarks as they can.

The competition, declared in the UN calendar to celebrate World Tourism Day, runs until Saturday.

Throughout this time, special packages at discounted prices will be available at local tourist estab-lishments, courtesy of partnering hotels and tour operators.

The packages include dis-counted bed and breakfast, spa treatments, lunch buffets, spe-cial rates for desert safaris, dinner dhow cruises, fishing trips and overnight camping.

World Tourism Day was estab-lished by UNWTO to celebrate tourism’s social, economic and cultural value and raise awareness

Eight landmarks open for World Tourism Day social media contest

A Qatar Tourism Authority brochure showing the eight landmarks people can visit to take part in the contest which starts today and runs until Saturday.

about the ways it enriches the lives of people across the world.

Qatar will host the official UN celebration for WTD next year

under the theme ‘Sustainable Tour-ism — A Tool for Development’.

Continued from page 1

“By offering an enhanced transit visa to passengers trav-elling through HIA, Qatar is providing its visitors a welcoming experience from the moment their planes touch down in Doha until they begin their onward journeys to their final destinations.

“And, as we celebrate World Tourism Day’s Tourism for All theme, we are delighted to make Qatar more accessible to people from around the world and invite them to discover our country, our cultural heritage and our natural treasures,” said Hassan Al Ibra-him, Chief Tourism Development Officer, QTA.

The new transit visa scheme will also position Doha as a turn-around port for cruise ships, he said, adding in the near future international cruise passengers could fly to Qatar, enter using a transit visa, and begin and end their cruise in Doha.

“This will increase the length of stay in Qatar of a growing seg-ment of visitors and allow them to further explore our country’s tourism offering, while increas-ing the economic impact of cruise tourism,” he said.

Akbar Al Baker, Chief Execu-tive, Qatar Airways Group, said: “QA serves millions of people from around the world as they journey across our network of over 150 destinations.

“Whether travelling for busi-ness or leisure, we want to enrich the journey of all our passengers and are restructuring our fares to reflect this initiative and promote stopovers to travellers.”

Brigadier Abdullah Salim Al Ali, Director-General, General Directorate of Nationality, Borders and Expatriates Affairs, Ministry of Interior, said: “The MoI strives to support the country’s growth and development, while main-taining security for all visitors and residents.

Fresh aid by RAF benefits over 14,000 in Yemen

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar National Human Right Committee (NHRC) yesterday con-cluded a training course on national mechanisms for protecting human rights.

The two-day workshop was attended by 33 members from NGOs which are voluntary groups and non-profit organisations managed by citizens at local or international basis.

It aimed at building capacities of the members and raising awareness about safeguards to ensure respect for fundamental rights of man and freedom.

The programme covered two major aspects in six sessions. The first was about the procedures or measures usually taken at the level of the state and the second was on

means of protection at international level. The programme dealt with top-ics concerning general outlook of national mechanisms for protection of human rights, the role of national institutions in promoting and pro-tecting human rights with a focus on

NHRC and NGOs and an overview of international means and measures for protection of human rights. Dr. Abdulaziz Al Meghaiseeb, Member of NHRC, concluded the workshop and presented the participants with certificates.

New transit visa

scheme to make

Doha a turnaround

port for cruise ships

NHRC concludes training course

Dr. Abdulaziz Al Meghaiseeb (left), Member of NHRC, honouring one of the participants.

HOME 03 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

Citizens to be screened fornon-communicable diseases

The Peninsula

DOHA: The Organising Committee of the 10th edition of the Scientific Excellence Awards yesterday held an orientation meeting for representa-tives of government and academic institutions, directors and operators of schools and people at Sharq Vil-lage & Spa Hotel.

The Excellence Day under the patronage of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is one of the important events the country holds every year to honour out-standing students in Qatar with the highest scientific awards, said Dr. Hamda Al Sulaiti, CEO, Scientific Excellence Awards.

“We celebrate scientific achieve-ments and excellent performances of our students with the aim of encour-aging educational institutions and students to exert more efforts and enhancing compatibility.

“The government is investing and facilitating to encourage and honour Qataris showing outstanding scientific performances,” she added.

The meeting was also attended by Abdullah Al Kamali, Chair-man, Scientific Research Judging Committee; Hassa Al Hammadi, Chairperson, Secondary School Graduates Judging Committee; and Fatma Rashid, Chairperson, Pre-paratory School Students Judging Committee.

The Organising Committee at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education had last week announced that it will start receiving nomina-tions for the annual awards from October 16 until November 14.

During the meeting, Hassan Al Mohammadi, Chairman, Executive Committee, and Director, Public Relations Department, Ministry of Education and Higher Education, highlighted the eight categories of the awards — elementary school students; preparatory school stu-dents; secondary school graduates; university graduates; PhD holders, outstanding teacher;, outstanding school; and outstanding scientific research.

The Organising Committee also held a meeting with coordinators of awards in Maimona Elementary School on Sunday and discussed the importance of preparing applica-tions in a proper way.

Many students vied for awards and missed them in the past years

because of poor applications, Dr. Al Sulaiti told the meeting.

She said there is no exception and every applicant needs to fulfil all requirements and provide needed documents. They should also focus on quality rather than quantity because there are standards and cri-teria to be applied, Dr Al Sulaiti said.

The role of coordinators is to raise awareness about the awards, distribute brochures to students and parents, and answer questions by the public and interested individu-als, she said.

Coordinators are required to organise workshops, estab-lish groups of excellent students in schools and help applicants organise their files. The orientation work-shops continue today.

Dr. Hamda Al Sulaiti (left), CEO, Scientific Excellence Awards; and Hassan Al Mohammadi, Chairman, Executive Committee, and Director, Public Relations Department, Ministry of Education and Higher Education, at the event.

Orientation meeting held for Scientific Excellence Awards

By Fazeena Saleem The Peninsula

DOHA: An initiative is under way to begin screening Qataris at risk of developing several non communi-cable diseases by 2017, said a senior official at the Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) yesterday.

The comprehensive programme initially will screen Qataris at the risk of developing conditions such as hypertension, thyroid, cancer and mental health problems, Dr. Samya Ahmad Al Abdulla, Director of Oper-ations, PHCC, told a press conference on sidelines of International Diabetes

Leadership Forum. “We are still developing some procedures regard-ing this project, hopefully we will launch it in 2017,” she said.

“As a pilot project, we will start it at one or two health centres and depending on its success, will imple-ment the programme at other health centres,” she added.

Meanwhile, a smart clinic for diabetes at Al Wakrah Health Centre in a pilot project has so far registered more than 3,000 Qataris at risk of developing the disease.

Among them 1,101 were screened and 55 percent were diagnosed with diabetes, said Dr. Al Abdulla.

People for screening were selected from among 10,000 Qataris who are registered with Al Wakrah health Centre.

Among those screened, 688 showed no symptoms of diabe-tes and 365 were identified as pre-diabetic.

The smart clinic for diabetes within Al Wakrah Health Centre is run with the participation of Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) and pro-vides integrated healthcare facilities.

Using a combination of data analysis and a risk-based screen-ing, the programme identifies those with known diabetes risk factors and invites them to the smart clinic for voluntary screening.

“The programme aims at early detection of diabetes as well as other risk factors associated with the con-dition. Patients who are registered at Al Wakrah Health Centre are invited for screening at the clinic,” said Dr. Al Abdulla.

“This is a pilot project. After an assessment we will decide how to expand the programme,” she added.

Some 2,000 Qataris at the risk of developing diabetes will be called for voluntary screening in the sec-ond phase of the project.

Sheikha Dr. Al Anoud Moham-med Al Thani, Manager, Health Promotion and Non Communicable Diseases, Ministry of Public Health, and Co-Chair, National Diabetes Committee; Professor Abdul-Badi Abou-Samra, Chairman, Inter-nal Medicine, HMC, and Co-Chair, National Diabetes Committee; and Dr. Abdullah Al Hamaq, Executive Director, Qatar Diabetes Associa-tion, highlighted the importance of creating awareness and prevention of diabetes.

“Annually, Qatar spends around $2,860 per person for diabetes treatment.

“Prevention of risk factors is better than treatment. It is also important that we identify people with the possibility of developing diabetics,” said Dr. Al Hamaq.

FROM LEFT: Mads Bo Larsen, Vice-President, Novo Nordisk for Gulf, India and Egypt; Lewis Affleck, Managing Director, Maersk Oil Qatar; Professor Abdul-Badi Abou-Samra, Chairman, Internal Medicine, HMC, and Co-Chair, National Diabetes Committee; Hamad Jassim Al Hamad, Head, Public Relations, Ministry of Public Heath; Sheikha Dr. Al Anoud Mohammed Al Thani, Manager, Health Promotion and Non-Communicable Diseases at the Ministry, and Co-Chair, National Diabetes Committee; Dr. Samya Ahmad Al Abdulla, Director of Operations, PHCC; and Dr. Abdullah Al Hamaq, Executive Director, Qatar Diabetes Association, at the press conference yesterday.

The comprehensive programme will initially screen Qataris at the risk of developing conditions such as hypertension, thyroid, cancer and mental health problems by 2017.

Continued from page 1

The two-day forum being held in Qatar for the first time has brought together local and international diabetes experts, healthcare pro-fessionals, patient organisations, NGOs, policymakers and govern-ment officials.

Dr. Shaukat Sadikot, President, International Diabetes Federation; Dr. Ala Alwan, Director, Eastern Mediterranean Region, World Health Organisation; Lewis Affleck, Man-aging Director, Maersk Oil Qatar; and Mads Bo Larsen, Vice-Presi-dent, Novo Nordisk for Gulf, India and Egypt also addressed the open-ing session.

“Diabetes is an increasing prob-lem in the region. Globally, nearly one in 10 adults suffer from it. But in some Middle Eastern countries, the number is one in five adults and is rising. By 2030, the number of peo-ple with diabetes in the Middle East is expected to increase from nearly 33 million today to almost 60 mil-lion,” said Dr Alwan.

Diabetes is a major cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, stroke and lower limb amputation globally and in the region. “Diabetes today is a tsu-nami and the waves are getting higher and higher. Unfortunately, the Gulf is prone to see the highest

percentage of increase in diabe-tes. About 415 million people in the world have diabetes, which is a huge number and they are increasing but half the people don’t know that they have diabetes,” said Dr. Sadikot.

“We are at a war against diabe-tes. Sadly, we are losing the battle but we can win the war if we do some-thing now because later will be late. All of us have to work together to push this tsunami back,” he added.

After the opening session, work-shops, discussions and partnership meetings were held on ‘Burden of Diabetes,’ related to Qatar and the region. A work plan to successfully implement Qatar National Diabetes Strategy 2016-2022 will be devel-oped during the forum.

The event is organised by the Ministry of Public Health; and Action on Diabetes, in collaboration with Hamad Medical Corporation, Pri-mary Healthcare Corporation, Qatar Diabetes Association, Novo Nordisk and Maersk Oil Qatar. It is supported by World Diabetes Foundation and International Diabetes Federation.

Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani with other officials at the opening session of the International Diabetes Leadership Forum at Ritz-Carlton Hotel, yesterday.

One in five adults in Mideast has diabetes

Minister of Public Health H E Dr. Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari addressing the opening session of the forum.

HOME04 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

Minister of Endowments and Islamic Affairs (Awqaf) H E Dr. Ghaith bin Mubarak Al Kuwari yesterday held separate meetings with Ambassadors Nuran Niyazaliev (Kyrgyzstan, pictured) and Askar Shokybayev (Kazakhstan). Talks dealt with issues of common concern.

Minister meets envoy

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Green Building Council (QGBC) has unveiled the logo for its newest initiative, Qatar Sus-tainability Week, which will take place from November 13 to 17.

In addition to showcasing sustainability initiatives by members of the private and public sectors, the event will encourage community engagement and help cul-tivate a culture of sustainability among residents.

Designed by Bachir Mohamad, a Doha-based graphic designer, the logo was selected from a pool of sketches submitted to QGBC’s team as part of a nation-wide competition launched earlier this year.

In addition to calling for collective action to enhance sustainability, the selected logo depicts Qatar’s vision for a sustainable and greener future.

Engineer Meshal Al Shamari, Director, QGBC, said: “Qatar is on its way to becoming a more sustainable country as the government and the private sector have undertaken major steps towards ensuring a greener future. Qatar Sustainability Week will provide an opportunity for stakeholders to showcase their col-lective efforts and action for a better future.”

The event coincides with the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP 22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Morocco.

QGBC unveils Qatar

Sustainability Week logo

By Mohammad Shoeb The Peninsula

DOHA: India is a “significant mar-ket for Qatar Airways” but the Asia’s third-largest economy with immense business opportunities needs to open up its aviation sector providing “more liberal air service access” for the promotion of its tour-ism industry, Akbar Al Baker, Group Chief Executive, QA, said at an inter-national event in New Delhi.

QA participated in the ‘Incredi-ble India Tourism Investors’ Summit 2016’ (IITIS) to reaffirm its com-mitment towards India’s tourism market.

Al Baker was part of a CEO panel to discuss ways to create and enable an environment for investment in the tourism sector and overcome any obstacles to growth. He said: “India is one of the world’s fastest grow-ing economies, having tremendous business opportunities and huge potential, making it a significant market for QA.

“The country continues to show strong economic growth and an increasing demand for air travel to and from all corners of the globe.

The aviation industry contributes significantly to India’s prosperous tourism sector and more liberal air service access is required for the tourism industry to develop further.

“As a significant contributor to ongoing development, QA will remain committed to providing award-winning service, superior on

board products and seamless con-nections to our expansive network.

“We operate from 13 of India’s cities with more than 100 weekly flights and offer a premium travel experience with our warm hos-pitality and world-class service exclusively tailored to meet travel-lers’ needs.”

The Peninsula

DOHA: A significant fall in temperature is expected from Thursday until Saturday due to strong northwesterly winds, the Meteorology Department said yes-terday.

“Temperatures would rela-tively decrease during this period with the maximum between 36 and 38 degrees C and the mini-mum between 26 and 29 degrees in different parts of the country,” said a statement issued by the department yesterday.

Wind speed would range between 15-25 knots reaching 35 knots at places at times, which could lead to blowing dust.

Visibility may reduce to 2km or less in open areas and the sea waves would rise to eight-10/ 13 feet.

The department has forecast “hazy to misty/foggy” weather today, with temperature in Doha expected to hover between 29 and 36 degrees C. Messaied, A Wakrah, Al Khor and Abu Samra would see lower temperatures.

Indian mission to

hold Open HouseDOHA: The Indian Embassy will hold an Open House on Friday to address any urgent consular and labour problems of Indians in Qatar.

The Open House will be held from 5.30pm to 6.30pm. Writ-ten information on issues/cases proposed to be discussed with the embassy may be given from 5.30pm to 6pm.

This will be followed by a meeting with officials from 6pm to 6.30pm.

Salient information would be sent to the media after the Open House, an embassy statement said yesterday.

Six food outlets shut in DohaDOHA: The Doha Municipality has shut down six violating food out-lets for seven to 60 days.

The outlets included a caf-eteria in the Industrial Area, a restaurant, a grocery and a super-market in Al Maamoura, among others.

Reasons for the closure var-ied from selling expired food and food prepared in unhealthy con-ditions, among others.

Continued from page 1

“As per law these cafes are sup-posed to reserve at least 50 percent tables for non-smokers but you can see every table has become a shi-sha table,” said Ahmed, an Egyptian expatriate.

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) data shows the number of smokers in Qatar is estimated at around 37 percent of the population. The HMC offers a clinic, established

in 1999, to help quit smoking. “The number of people who visit the clinic is around 700 annually. We are able to help around 40 percent of them quit smoking. Many types of treatments and psychological consultations are offered as well as replacements for nicotine and medicine,” says HMC website. Sev-eral primary health centres have also set up stop smoking clinics as part of a national programme to curb the use to tobacco products in the country.

Al Baker: India significant market for Qatar Airways

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker with India’s Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Arun Jaitley at the summit.

Significant drop in

temperature likely

from Thursday

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday met Minister of State for Defence Affairs H E Dr. Khalid bin Mohamed Al Attiyah in Ankara. Dr. Al Attiyah conveyed greetings of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to the President and people of Turkey, and wishes of further progress and development. President Erdogan asked the Minister to convey his greetings to the Emir and the people of Qatar. The meeting dealt with means of enhancing relations and issues of joint interest, particularly in fields relating to military cooperation. Dr. Al Attiyah also met Turkish Defence Minister Fikri Isik and discussed issues of common concern. Qatar’s Ambassador to Turkey, Salem bin Mubarak Al-Shafi, was present.

Erdogan meets Dr. Al Attiyah in Ankara

Several PHCs set up stop smoking clinics

HOME 05TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

The Peninsula

DOHA: Sheikh Thani bin Abdul-lah Foundation for Humanitarian Services (RAF) has provided urgent humanitarian aid to more than 12,000 poor people in flood-hit areas of the Philippine island of Mindanao.

The aid includes basic foodstuffs and medicines in large quantities. More than 2,500 food baskets were distributed in seven villages of Mind-anao. The basket includes food items enough for a medium family for three months, including rice, sugar, edible oil, milk and coffee. The beneficiar-ies received medicines for regular use and for chronic diseases as well.

The initiative was launched in collaboration with its local partner in the Philippines “the Supreme Sci-entific Advisory Council”. The council had conducted a survey to assess the

needs of people in these areas.The beneficiary villages are Tau-

jan, Dar Al Salam, Beniwata, Lakiki,

Viraki and Karmin in five governo-rates of Mindanao.

The beneficiaries thanked the

donors, RAF and its local partner for their support at a tough time when they faced severe financial problems. Residents of these areas find it very difficult to earn enough to cover their daily needs due to natural disasters.

RAF had launched several cam-paigns to support the needy people worldwide. The beneficiaries include poor, needy people, widows, divor-cees and orphans. Refugees and internally displaced people have also benefited from the initiatives. The weaker segments of society like people with disabilities, chil-dren and senior citizens were given special care.

RAF said it would continue its efforts for providing humanitar-ian aid to the needy people all over the world. So far, RAF has access in 97 countries and provided charity projects, including developments and relief, among others.

The Peninsula

DOHA: In the context of the visit of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to Darfur, Sudan, Sheikh Thani bin Abdullah Foundation for Humanitarian Services (RAF) said that it has implemented over 20 projects at a cost of QR33m in Darfur.

The projects related to relief, development, health and educa-tion, among others, and were aimed at promoting peace and economic and social development of Sudan.

The Emir visited Darfur to par-ticipate in celebrations to mark the completion of the implementation of the Doha Document for Peace, on the invitation of President of Sudan Omar Hassan Al Bashir.

Development projects took a lion’s share of QR23m aid to Sudan.

A services complex at Tabit village is on top of the development projects, financed by Qatar’s Foreign Minis-try through Development Fund and caters to over 20,000 Sudanese in 28 villages.

Several projects for services were implemented in north of Dar-fur at a cost of $6m. They include a big mosque, four schools, a water pumping station, police station, health centre, 15 housing units for the employees of the complex.

RAF provided aid, including food supplies, to rescue over 12,000 people in Darfur in their tough time. More than 50 social and develop-ment projects were implemented to provide vocational training to youth to join the job market.

Means of earning livelihood were also provided for them and their families affected by unrest and displacement.

DOHA: The RAF has provided fresh humanitarian aid of QR1m to more than 30,000 internally displaced people fighting for survival due to unrest in Iraq.

The aid includes foodstuffs and clean drinking water. The project was financed by people from Qatar through donations.

More than 4,750 displaced fam-ilies sheltering in the refugee camps of Amiriyat Al Falluja, Dibika and Kelo-18 in Al Ramadi benefited from the project over several months.

The initiative aims to reduce the suffering of refugee families. Some 76,000 litres of drinking water was distributed on a daily basis. In addition, 5,000 baskets of basic foodstuffs were also distributed.

A basket was enough for a fam-ily comprising six to eight members for two months. Water coolers were also given to the beneficiaries.

A water tank with the capac-ity of 16,000 litres was mobilised to distribute drinking water to the ben-eficiary families at refugee camps.

RAF aid for flood-hit in Mindanao

Residents in Mindanao receiving food baskets provided by RAF.

A delegation from Qatar led by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud, visiting a health centre at a services complex built by RAF in collaboration with Qatar Development Fund in Darfur.

QR33m spent on Darfur projects

Aid for displaced in Iraq

Children in front of a water tank provided by RAF in Iraq.

MIDDLE EAST06 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

AP

RIYADH: The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia is reducing the salaries and benefits of senior officials and the Cabinet cut bonuses for public employees, as lower oil prices continue to pinch the kingdom’s economy.

The royal decree orders a 20 percent reduction in the salaries of ministers, among them the king’s successors: Crown Prince and Inte-rior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef,

and Deputy Crown Prince and Defence Minister Mohammed bin Salman. It also stipulates that min-isters pay their own phone bills for personal lines.

Yesterday’s decree also includes a 15 percent reduction in benefits for members of the country’s highest consultative body, the Shura Coun-cil, which is appointed by the king. Those include sums toward housing, a car, its maintenance and fuel during a member’s four-year term.

It marks the first cut to pub-lic sector wages since the kingdom began reining in spending after oil prices tumbled in mid-2014.

The unusual move was accom-panied by a Cabinet decision to put new limits on public sector employ-ees, many of whom have complained of already low wages.

The decision caps paid overtime hours to 25 percent of the employee›s salary and at no more than 50 per-cent for work on days off. It also freezes all new hires for govern-ment-funded jobs until the end of the current fiscal year.

Additionally, all non-essen-tial foreigners who work for the government will not have their contracts renewed. It was not immediately clear how many

people could be affected. The changes, which go into effect early next week at the start of the Islamic new year, were announced three months before next year’s fiscal budget is unveiled.

With 70 percent of Saudis work-ing in the public sector, nearly half of the government’s spending in 2015, or around $120bn, went to wages, sala-ries and allowances.

To cover the difference between its spending and revenue, the govern-ment has had to draw from its large foreign reserves, built up during years of higher oil prices. It also lifted some subsidies on gas and electricity.

The cuts, however, will not affect the salaries or allowances of soldiers taking part in military operations in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been bombing Iranian-allied rebels since March 2015.

The royal decree also did not mention reductions to the stipends of royal family members, a mat-ter viewed as highly private in the kingdom.

The government has set out a bold Vision 2030 reform plan to trim spending, lessen its dependence on oil revenue and boost the appeal of private sector jobs. Officially, unem-ployment is at around 12 percent.

AFP

RIYADH: The Saudi-led coali-tion fighting in support of Yemen’s government would prefer a broad political settlement to a ceasefire, its spokesman said yesterday.

“I think now it’s not a question of talking about a ceasefire,” Major General Ahmed Assiri said.

Late on Sunday a Houthi rebel leader, Saleh Al Sammad, proposed a truce on the country’s border with Saudi Arabia in exchange for a halt to Saudi-led air strikes on his forces.

Assiri said the coalition wel-comes “any effort to have a genuine political settlement” under a peace

initiative proposed last month by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

This is preferable to a “short ceasefire without any control, with-out any observation”, he said, adding that “the Saudi border is not and will not be the subject of any discussion”.

Previous truces in the 18-month war collapsed. After talks in Saudi Arabia with his Gulf counterparts, Kerry outlined a plan which offers the Houthis participation in gov-ernment in exchange for an end to violence and a surrender of weap-ons. The Houthis are allied with soldiers loyal to Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

“If they want to have a cease-fire they know what they have to do,” Assiri said, referring to terms

of the Kerry plan which were to be refined under United Nations medi-ation among the parties.

The initiative calls for a rebel withdrawal from seized areas including the capital Sana’a which they have held since late 2014.

Sammad heads a new coun-cil appointed in August by the rebels and their allies to run Yemen, a move which led to the suspension of UN-brokered peace talks. His council is not recognised by the international com-munity. In a speech published on the sabanews website, Sammad called for an end to “aggression” and the lifting of a coalition blockade in exchange for “an end to combat operations on the border and to (rebel) missile launches into Saudi territory”.

Reuters

DUBAI: Iran’s supreme leader has told former pres-ident Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not to stand again in next year’s elections, state media reported, effec-tively eliminating a major challenger to pragmatist incumbent Hassan Rowhani.

Ahmadinejad had not announced any plans to run in the vote scheduled for May, but has made several speeches in recent months, prompting speculation of a political comeback.

Commentators had suggested the firebrand populist, who frequently enraged the West with his rhetoric during his eight years in office, would have given Iran’s conservatives their best chance of regain-ing power.

But the instruction by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reported by state news agency Irna, effectively destroys his chances of getting the wider backing he would need to run a successful campaign.

“He (Ahmadinejad) came to me and I told him not to stand as I think it is not in his interest and that of the country,” Khamenei was quoted as saying.

“It will create bipolar opposites and divisions in the country which I believe is harmful,” Khamenei added. Rowhani’s popularity surged after last year’s deal with world powers that lifted most sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme.

Another potential rival — Revolutionary Guard Commander Qassem Soleimani, the most high-pro-file face in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria - said this month he would not stand in the vote.

Ahmadinejad was first elected president in 2005. His disputed win in the 2009 election prompted the Islamic Republic’s biggest protests and a security crackdown in which several people were killed and hundreds were arrested. Iranian law bars a pres-ident from seeking a third consecutive term. But Ahmadinejad would have been able to run again after the gap caused by Rowhani’s term.

Saudi slashes ministers’ pay & cuts employees’ bonuses

Coalition prefers final Yemen settlement to ‘short’ truce

AP

BEIRUT: Syria’s foreign minister said yesterday that an internationally-brokered cease-fire is still viable, as rescue workers in Aleppo sifted through the rubble from the heavi-est airstrikes on rebel-held areas of the northern city in five years.

Foreign Minister Walid Al Moal-lem, speaking to Mayadeen TV from New York, also said the government is prepared to take part in a unity government incorporating elements from the opposition, an offer that has been rejected in the past.

Opposition activists say more than 200 civilians have been killed in the past week under a sustained aerial campaign that UN envoy Staffan de Mistura called one of the worst of the 5 1/2-year war. The U.N. Security Council convened an emergency meeting but failed to take any action because of deep divisions between Russia and Western powers.

“What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counterterrorism, it’s barbarism,” said US Ambassador Samantha Power. “It’s apocalyp-tic what is being done in eastern Aleppo.”

Airstrikes on Aleppo on Monday killed at least six people, according to the Local Coordination Commit-tees, an activist-run collective. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported hours later that 12 were killed, including three children.

President Bashar Assad’s media adviser told Al-Mayadeen TV that the Syrian government abided by

the cease-fire but the rebels did not. Bouthaina Shaaban said once the truce expired, “our Syrian Arab army resumed its operations against terrorists.”

Al Moallem accused the US, Britain, and France of convening the Security Council meeting a day earlier in order to support “terror-ists” inside Syria. But he said ongoing communications between US Secre-tary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov meant a truce agreement brokered two weeks ago is “not dead.”

Syria’s military declared the cease-fire ended one week ago.

The spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the cease-fire is ineffective, but that Moscow is not losing hope for a political solution to the country’s crisis.

However, Dmitry Peskov told reporters yesterday that the Krem-lin is concerned that “terrorists are using the cease-fire regime to regroup, to replenish their arse-nals and for obvious preparations to carry out attacks.”

Peskov also took issue with harsh criticism by the United States and Britain over Russia’s actions in Syria.

He said Russia considers the tone of the criticism unacceptable and “such rhetoric is capable of causing serious harm to the resolution proc-ess” in Syria.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said the Syrian and Russian govern-ments “seem intent on taking Aleppo and destroying it in the process.”

“While they’re pounding Aleppo, dropping indiscriminate bombs,

killing women and children, talk of a unity government is pretty com-plicated,” Kerry said during a visit to Colombia.

He said the Syrian opposition won’t be “particularly excited about having a negotiation when they’re being bombed and starved,” adding that statements by the Syrian gov-ernment are “almost meaningless.”

The White House meanwhile said it’s difficult to envision any military cooperation with Russia in Syria because Moscow has repeat-edly failed to fulfill its commitments to the cease-fire deal.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Syria’s government has launched a “concerted campaign” to strike civilian targets, and that Assad’s forces are trying “to bomb civilians into submission.”

He says government forces have also targeted the Civil Defence, vol-unteer first responders also known as White Helmets.

In the central Syrian city of Homs, meanwhile, a second group of rebel gunmen and their families began evacuating from an opposi-tion neighbourhood.

Some 120 gunmen and their families are expected to leave al-Waer as part of an agreement to restore the government’s authority over the neighbourhood, Homs Gov-ernor Talal Barazi said.

The agreement struck over Al Waer was in keeping with Assad’s determination to settle the war on his own terms, securing surrenders through sieges and staying in power at least through an interim period to steer the country out of crisis.

Syria says truce still viable after weeks of air strikes

Yemeni pro-government forces, loyal to President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, take part in a parade to mark the anniversary of the 1962 revolution, in the country›s third-largest city of Taez, yesterday.

AP

EL ARISH, EGYPT: Egyptian officials say Islamic State (IS) militants have killed five Egyptian civilians and dumped their bod-ies, wearing orange jumpsuits, in a restive corner of the Sinai Peninsula.

They say two of the men were beheaded and the others shot in the head over accusations they had col-laborated with the Egyptian army,

which is fighting the insurgents in the area around the city of Rafah and the town of Sheikh Zuweid, where the bod-ies were found. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to release the infor-mation to journalists.

The army has been battling mil-itants in the area for years, with hundreds of casualties on both sides. The army often claims it has killed dozens of militants. Journalists are banned from the area.

Khamenei tells Ahmadinejad not to run again for president

IS militants kill 5 civilians in Egypt

With 70 percent of Saudis working in the public sector, nearly half of the government’s spending in 2015, or around $120bn, went to wages, salaries and allowances.

ASIA / AFRICA 07TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

Taiwan slams Hong Kong over visa denials

AFP

TAIPEI: Taiwan lashed out at Hong Kong yesterday, saying the city had recently denied visas to several Beijing-sceptic Taiwanese politicians as the island’s relations with China worsen.

Ties between Taiwan and Beijing have turned increasingly frosty since new president Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Pro-gressive Party (DPP) took office in May.

Beijing is highly suspicious of Tsai and the DPP, which is tradi-tionally an independence-leaning party.

Now Taiwan is accusing semi-autonomous Hong Kong of doing Beijing’s bidding by refusing to allow a series of DPP politicians to enter the city.

Two Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers say they were denied visas to attend forums. A third was refused entry when his connecting flight was cancelled in the southern Chinese city in August.

Taiwan’s China affairs minister Chang Hsiao-yueh described the denials as “very unreasonable”.

Death toll from clashes in DR Congo jumps to 49Reuters

KINSHASA: The death toll from militia clashes with security forces in the DR Congo last week was at least 49, more than three times the number earlier reported, the governor of the province hit by the violence said.

Fighters from militia group Kamwina Nsapu, seek-ing to avenge the death of their leader of the same name, battled security forces on Thursday and Friday in the town of Kananga.

UN-funded Radio Okapi quoted Alex Kande, gov-ernor of Kasai Central province as saying that 27 of the dead were militiamen, 16 were members of the security forces and six were civilians.

Beijing flies army jets over Strait near JapanAFP

BEIJING: China has sent fighter planes for the first time over a strait near Japan, the two govern-ments said yesterday, after Tokyo announced it may patrol alongside the US in the disputed South China Sea. More than 40 Chinese mili-tary aircraft on Sunday traversed the Miyako Strait between Japan’s Miyako and Okinawa Islands, to carry out training in the West Pacific, according to a statement on China’s defence ministry website.

The Sukhoi Su-30 fighters, bombers and refuelling aircraft did not violate Japanese airspace.

Japan’s defence ministry said it was the first time Chinese fighters

had passed over the strait.The drill is aimed at “testing far

sea combat capabilities”, the Chinese statement said. It follows China’s first military flight, carried out by spy planes, over the Miyako Strait last year.

The move comes after Japanese Defence Minister Tomomi Inada said earlier this month that Tokyo would increase its engagement in the South China Sea through joint training cruises with the US Navy, exercises with regional navies and capacity-building assistance to coastal nations.

Beijing asserts sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, dismissing rival partial claims from its Southeast Asian neighbours. It rejects any intervention by Japan in

the waterway. In recent months Jap-anese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has criticised China for rejecting a July ruling by an international tribunal, which said Beijing’s extensive claims to the waters had no legal basis.

Tokyo, a key US ally, is also strengthening defence ties with other countries in the disputed region. Japan and China are already at loggerheads over a longstanding territorial row in the East China Sea.

That dispute relates to uninhabited islets controlled by Japan known as the Senkakus in Japanese and the Diaoyus in Chinese. Abe said yesterday Japan would “never tolerate attempts to uni-laterally change the status quo” in the disputed waters, or “wherever else in the world”, in an apparent response to the Chinese move.

Durban unrest

AFP

LIBREVILLE: Ali Bongo will be sworn in today as Gabon’s president for a second seven-year term, his office announced, three days after his election victory was controver-sially validated by the constitutional court.

The ceremony will be held at the seafront presidential palace

in Libreville, the presidency said yesterday.

It gave no details of who had been invited or the time of the event.

Bongo’s victory in the August 27 vote was confirmed on Saturday by the country’s top court, which dis-missed opposition claims of vote fraud.

Violence erupted on August 31 after Bongo, 57, was initially declared winner.

Demonstrators set parliament ablaze and clashed with police, who made a thousand arrests.

Opposition figures say more than 50 people were killed. The govern-ment has given a toll of three dead.

Jean Ping, 73, Bongo’s main elec-tion rival, lashed the court’s ruling as a miscarriage of justice and declared himself “president elect”.

Ping, a career diplomat and a

former top official at the African Union, had filed a legal challenge after Bongo was declared winner by a mere 6,000 votes.

Ping had asked for a recount in Haut-Ogooue province, where 95 percent of voters in the Bongo fam-ily stronghold were reported to have cast their ballots for the president on a turnout of more than 99 percent.

The Constitutional Court upheld Bongo’s victory and put the winning margin higher at around 11,000 votes.

In its final tally, the court ruled Bongo had won 50.66% of the vote and Ping 47.24%.

The EU’s electoral observer mis-sion said Sunday it “regretted” that Gabon’s Constitutional Court “had been unable to satisfactorily rec-tify anomalies observed during the count”.

Bongo to be sworn in as Gabon president today

Reuters

SEOUL: China is investigating executives of a North Korean bank believed to finance the illicit pro-curement of arms and materials related to the isolated country’s banned nuclear programme, South

Korea’s JoongAng Daily reported yes-terday.

China and the United States have agreed to step up cooperation in the UN Security Council and in law enforcement channels after North Korea’s fifth nuclear test on Septem-ber 9, the White House said last week.

While China is North Korea’s sole major ally, it disapproves of its

nuclear and missile programmes.The Chinese-US cooperation

includes targeting the finances of Liaoning Hongxiang Industrial, a Chinese conglomerate headed by a Communist Party cadre, that the Obama administration thinks has had a role in helping North Korea’s nuclear programme, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The JoongAng Daily said Chi-nese authorities were investigating a top official of the Kwangson Bank-ing Corporation at its branch in the Chinese border city of Dandong.

The US Treasury designated the bank in 2009 under an order that targets entities supporting North Korea’s arms trafficking because of its suspected involvement in

procuring “dual-use” technol-ogy with both civilian and military application.

“The head of the branch, Ri Il Ho, temporarily returned to North Korea, so the deputy executive is being investigated,” a source told the J.

The paper did not identify its source, who it said was “well-informed on North Korea affairs”.

China probes North Korea bank suspected of nuclear link

Students at the Durban University of Technology march as countrywide protests demanding free tertiary education continue, in Durban, South Africa, yesterday.

Suu Kyi ill after US and UK tripAFP

YANGON: Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been forced to take a rest from her state duties after becoming unwell during a state trip abroad, her office said.

The 71-year-old was diagnosed with gastritis after returning from a visit to Britain and the US, her first trip to her Western allies since taking office in March.

Pictures of her being pushed through Yangon airport in a wheelchair posted on social media sparked concern about the Nobel Laureate’s health and quickly went viral.

“She feels weak as she did not have much time to rest during the trip,” her office said in a statement.

Kenya-Jordan joint drill

King Abdullah II of Jordan (left) and Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta (right) salute at joint military exercises dubbed Swift Eagle conducted by the Kenya Defence Forces and the Royal Jordanian Armed Forces at the Embakasi Garrison Humanitarian Peace Support School in Embakasi in the outskirts of Nairobi, yesterday.

The ceremony will be held at the seafront Presidential Palace in Libreville.

VIEWS08 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

After the hugely divisive referendum in June, Britain is gradually, but firmly, working on an exit strategy from the European Union. The initial shock, fear and confusion have given way to more clarity and determination about the process. Prime Minister

Theresa May’s government is working assiduously to fulfil her promises to the people, and the stridency of the anti-Brexit campaigners is getting thinner in the face of the realisation that there is no alternative even as the Brexit camp looks more confident and bolder. Amidst all this, the latest news is a bit disconcerting – that the prospect of a hard Brexit, or a complete divorce between Britain and the European Union, looks more likely, posing more difficulties for British businesses and ordinary citizens than imagined. The hard exit is possible due to two reasons: the desire of the British for a complete break-up with the EU, which will enable them to take charge of their borders, laws

and institutions, or due to the refusal of the European Union to let Britain gain an upper hand in the negotiations and instead punish them to deter other countries in the Union from choosing a similar path.

The prospect of an abrupt departure or a complete divorce poses more questions than before. According to some experts, “the danger of a hard exit now is that it increases uncertainty, reduces confidence and will result in businesses triggering their exit plans from the UK.”

London will have to renegotiate dozens of agreements which will be time-consuming. There is huge uncertainty about the legal status and future of two groups: three million EU citizens living in Britain and around a million Britons living in Europe. They are likely to be introduced to a new world of bureaucracy and finance, something they haven’t done all these years.

However, the developments in the past few months show that any predictions about Brexit impact on British economy and life will be risky. The bloodbath in the market immediately after the referendum had caused panic and made many Brexiters to rethink and repent, but later we saw a stabilisation of the market. Last week, a Guardian report said that fears about Britain sliding into a post-referendum recession may be unfounded with the latest data showing consumer spending strong, unemployment low and the housing market holding steady. Government borrowing was a touch higher than economists had expected in August, but was lower than a year ago.

The damage to both sides can be minimised if they approach the negotiation process with a spirit of reconciliation and bonhomie. But if the entire exit process is smooth and risk-free, it would also point to the redundancy of the EU project.

Hard Brexit

A complete divorce between Britain and the European Union looks more likely.

Quote of the dayWe are ready to continue our support, focusing on the implementation of the agreement. Today peace is in the hands of the Colombian people.

Federica Mogherini EU Foreign Policy Chief

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If the initial aftermath of the Brexit referendum is anything to go by then the future of British Muslims is going to be turbulent to say

the least.It is obviously a legitimate

question to ask how the U.K.’s leaving the European Union will affect three million British Mus-lims when the population of Muslims in Europe is relatively insignificant.

According to a research by the Pew Research Centre, even with a steady increase, there will be only 8 percent Muslims in Europe by 2030. Therefore, on the sur-face Brexit should have very little impact on Muslims.

Brexit debates hardly men-tioned the EU as a “Muslim” issue and there was no overt mention of the words “Islam” and “Muslims” by Brexit campaigners. However, if we look deep into the matter, we will find three important fac-tors emerging that bring Muslims at the forefront of the problem.

The first thing to look at is the statistics of abuse, insults and attacks British Muslims are facing after Brexit. The level of Islamo-phobic attacks rose sharply after the referendum results, with the Muslim Council of Britain report-ing a hundred anti-Muslim hate crimes during the weekend after the referendum alone. There has been a sharp increase of verbal and physical abuse against Mus-lims online and on the streets, including prominent politicians and journalists being asked to “go home”.

A large number of the abused are Muslim women, particularly those who wear the hijab. Accord-ing to a report by Tell MAMA, an organization that measures anti-Muslim attacks, “ … women were more likely to be attacked or abused while travelling on public transport to town and city cent-ers or when shopping.”

It is true that there have been several attacks on eastern Europeans with Polish centers vandalized and even a Polish

individual was killed in a rac-ist incident, yet the number of abuses Muslims have received is much higher compared to east-ern Europeans.

Secondly, the debate over immigration often ends with bringing up the “Muslim prob-lem”. Nigel Farage’s poster of refugees with the heading “breaking point” just before the referendum is an illustration of how the Brexit campaign cov-ertly attacked Muslims. As much as the Tory Brexit leaders dis-tanced themselves from the charismatic former UKIP leader, it has no doubt influenced a large number of people to unleash their hatred towards Muslims.

The third reason to believe that Brexit is likely to exacerbate attacks on an already alienated British Muslim community is the bizarre fear mongering of the likelihood of Turkey joining the EU by all sections of the Brexit campaigners. Former justice secretary and one of the figure-heads of the Brexit campaign Michael Gove had said one month before the referendum that Tur-key would likely join the EU and that it would put the British peo-ple in danger due to a supposed high level of criminality among Turkish citizens. This type of ster-eotyping of an entire nation is nothing but outrageous, but the only counter argument against this by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, who resigned after his remain campaign was defeated, was his effort to “clar-ify” that there was nothing to fear as Turkey would not join the EU in near future. Although not said explicitly, the fact that Turkey is a Muslim country was one of the main reasons for this astonishing fear mongering.

Brexit has divided the nation, but its immediate aftermath has already shown signs of a worry-ing future for the ethnic minori-ties. While it will be hugely unfair to suggest that 52 percent of the population who voted to leave are racists, there is a genuine cause for concern due to the political direction of post-Brexit Britain.

The politi-cal landscape of Britain is chang-ing fast with the rise of right-wing parties. Labour Party, tradi-tionally known

as pro-immigration and liberal towards ethnic minorities, are in a bitter civil war that is mak-ing them almost unelectable, while the Liberal Democrats are unlikely to regroup quickly after their catastrophic results in the last general election.

On the other hand, the rul-ing Tory party is moving towards the right after the Brexit vote and the coronation of Theresa May as the prime minister. What is most concerning is the establishment of UKIP as a mainstream politi-cal party. After being in the fringe for years, it has now successfully galvanized a large section of dis-enfranchised white working class people around the country and is gaining votes in traditional Labour strongholds in the north. Although it is not clear how its new leader Diane James will fill in the big shoes of Nigel Farage and will be able to overcome the party’s own challenges, there is no doubt that its public sup-port is growing at an alarming rate. The prospect of UKIP gain-ing parliamentary seats from a divided Labour Party means that big challenges lie ahead for eth-nic minorities in general and the Muslim community in particular in the coming years.

One of many potentially dis-astrous consequences of Brexit

is that Britain will no longer be bound by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which has been a gatekeeper of human rights in the region. The current Prime Minister, Theresa May, as the home secretary, had threat-ened to withdraw Britain from the ECHR two months before the referendum if British courts were not allowed to overrule the decisions of the Strasbourg court. Now Mrs. May has the license to do so, which means that many people will lose that last hope of justice if the British justice sys-tem fails to uphold human rights of ethnic minorities due to some laws enacted by the government.

Compared to many countries in the West, Britain is still one of the best countries for Muslims to practice their religion and manifest their faith in public. How long they will be able to maintain this freedom remains uncertain as the country has entered into unchartered territories after the Brexit vote. Early signs are not too encouraging and the political situation also gives a bleak picture of what is to come. The only encouraging sign so far is that politicians from all sides, including UKIP have strongly condemned racist attacks on ethnic minorities after the referendum.

Although I don’t see banning of Islamic practices like wearing the hijab an immediate concern, there is certainly a fear that intimidation towards Muslims by some sections of the society, sometimes fuelled by negative media portrayals of Islam and Muslims, are going to increase in the coming days. Whatever direction the country takes after Britain officially leaves the EU, political parties, civil right societies and the media should never keep their eyes off this threat.

How will Brexit affect British Muslims?

By Dr Salman Al AzamiAnatolia

There is fear that intimidation towards Muslims, fuelled by negative media portrayals of Islam, may increase in coming days.

OPINION 09TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

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

Knives out for Macron in French presidential race

By Michel RoseReuters

Inside the election war rooms of Paris, French politicians on both left and right are waking up to the threat Emmanuel Macron poses ahead of next year’s presidential

election and stepping up attacks on the fresh-faced former economy minister.

Macron quit President Francois Hol-lande’s government last month, pledging to “transform France” and taking the most concrete step so far towards a pres-idential bid he has not yet made official.

Government and opposition poli-ticians have branded the 38-year-old former M&A banker a “traitor” and “pop-ulist light”.

With poll after poll showing far-right leader Marine Le Pen assured of getting to the second round but losing the runoff in May to whoever faces her, Socialists and conservatives realise Macron’s pitch for the middle ground could cost them the remaining place.

“Macron is a danger for us,” a gov-ernment minister said on condition of anonymity. “He’s going to steal votes on the left and the right, although he can’t possibly do more than 18 percent and reach the second round himself.”

Former prime minister Alain Juppé, the leading candidate in the centre-right’s primaries, called Macron “Brutus” after his resignation from Hollande’s govern-ment, and also has reason to fear him, even if his entourage plays down that threat.

“There’s a window for him if (former president) Nicolas Sarkozy wins the pri-maries and Hollande is not a candidate,” Juppé’s campaign chief Gilles Boyer said. “But he’s prisoner of events beyond his control.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity,

close advisors within the “En Marche!” political movement Macron created last April say the backlash has failed to tar-nish his public image.

His popularity jumped four points after his resignation, according to an Odoxa poll published this month, with 45 percent of respondents considering he would make a good president, the sec-ond-highest score after Juppé.

In one scenario tested in an Elabe poll that assumes Sarkozy, not Juppé, is the conservative champion, Macron is seen coming third in the first round with 18 percent, one point behind Sarkozy, who would just manage to reach the runoff.

But Macron has very practical chal-lenges to tackle.

With only a dozen permanent staff, people in the movement say they need to hire another half a dozen by mid-October.

Never having been elected, Macron cannot count on public funding for a presidential campaign like candidates

backed by established parties, and needs to raise funds which under French law are capped at 7,500 euros per person per year.

Critics also point out the movement’s 80,000 members were able to sign up for free, and do not amount to the army of grassroots activists other candidates will mobilise.

Macron nonetheless managed to deploy hundreds of volunteers this summer in 50 cities in a door-to-door campaign meant to collect voters’ grievances.

The small team is now preparing a “diagnosis” for the country - struggling with high unemployment and which has endured several deadly Islamist attacks - that Macron said he would unveil in October in three rallies outside Paris, the first in Strasbourg on October 4.

“We want people to think ‘that’s the first time a guy tells me what I’m suffering from’,” a source in his inner circle said.

A “transformation plan” with 6-7 pri-orities will follow mid-November. Only then will he consider whether to run for president, the advisor said.

Meanwhile, Hollande’s party officials are working behind the scenes to strong-arm lawmakers into not rallying behind the former minister, Macron’s advisors said, with Socialist Party chief Jean-Christophe Cambadelis threatening to expel Macron supporters from the party.

Asked about the allegations, a party official said according to party rules members should support the party’s offi-cial candidate in any election.

Several French and European poli-cymakers cancelled their appearance at a gathering of European Social Demo-crats in Lyon where Macron was invited to speak at the weekend.

Investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaine said Hollande had asked Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to turn down the invitation. The French president’s

office denied it had intervened and Ren-zi’s office said he was never scheduled to attend the Lyon summit.

Macron’s team say if Hollande’s rat-ings, the lowest for a president in France’s post-war history, fail to pick up by the end of the year, more politicians will rally behind him. One recruit to his cause is Daniel Cohn-Bendit, hero of the 1968 stu-dent protests, who said Macron was best placed to prevent a Sarkozy-Le Pen run-off next year.

Macron’s advisor said finding enough candidates to run in France’s 577 parlia-ment constituencies in June would not be a problem either. “En Marche can field candidates everywhere. Our goal is to build something for the long term.”

Others are not so sure.“He’s a brilliant guy,” junior minister

Jean-Vincent Placé said. “But he is delud-ing himself on who will really support him and where he will be in two or three months.”

French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron leaves the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, on June 8.

A soliloquy on Syria as Obama’s strategy collapses

By Fred Hiatt The Washington Post

In his final appearance before the UN General Assembly a few days ago, President Obama didn’t

have much to say about the civil war between Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad and his enemies.

“There’s no ultimate military vic-tory to be won,” he said, and so the United States would “pursue the hard work of diplomacy that aims to stop the violence, and deliver aid to those in need, and support those who pur-sue a political settlement.”

Then he moved on to other matters.

Given that Syria is his greatest humanitarian and strategic fail-ure, where even as he spoke his latest diplomatic initiative was about to collapse, the brevity wasn’t surprising.

But, Obama being Obama, you can be sure he had given the issue a lot more thought than his few words would indicate. And if he’d been thinking aloud, here’s what you might have heard:

“Of course Kerry’s latest peace deal will collapse. Vladimir Putin is winning, why should he stick to a deal?

And even if Putin wants to play nice, why would Assad go along? He’s winning, too - if he wants to destroy the last human beings in Aleppo, who’s going to stop him?

“So is it unfair to keep letting John head out on these doomed missions? Year after year, he promises to get a deal and swears we’ll move to Plan B if the Syrians or Russians renege. Time after time, they double-cross him, and he goes back for more.

There is no Plan B, because I won’t approve a Plan B.

“But John gets praised for his tire-lessness. And we all look like we’re trying. If I can just pull it off one more time, the whole mess will be Hillary’s. Or, God forbid, the other guy’s.

“The truth is, no one should want Assad gone, as odious as he is. I can’t say that aloud, of course, since I got roped into pronouncing him fin-ished years ago. Yes, he’s a mass murderer and a torturer. He’s even showing me up by using chemical weapons again after Vladimir and I supposedly solved that problem. The chlorine loophole.

“But what’s the alternative? The ‘moderate’ opposition? Don’t make me laugh. Maybe I shouldn’t have mocked them as ‘farmers or teach-ers or pharmacists,’ but honestly - Al Qaeda or ISIS would waltz into Damascus if Assad went down.

“Oh, I know what Hillary would say. If I had listened to her back in 2011 and 2012 - and to Petraeus, and Panetta, and the rest of them - the ‘moderate force’ would be stronger now. We should have trained them

and carved out safe spaces for them and given them a chance against Assad. John tried the same argument on me when he started. He thought he could give it a new spin and sucker me in where Hillary had failed.

“Well, I know what the I-told-you-so crowd is saying. I wouldn’t go for it, because I worried that if we sent troops terrorism would spread, the country would fall apart, you’d get millions of refugees and even Russia might get involved. So we didn’t get involved, and, yes: Ter-rorism spread, the country fell apart, you got millions of refugees, and Russia got involved. And, yes, all of Europe is unstable because of Syria.

“But you know what? It could have been worse. You could have had all these bad things happen - hun-dreds of thousands killed, half the country driven from their homes - and US troops in the middle of it all. That’s the Bush way. I protected us from that.

“So now it’s Putin’s problem. Is that so bad? Maybe it hasn’t turned into a quagmire for him yet, like I said it would, but wait. Syria isn’t finished

with him yet.“And what will the next president

do? There’s a reason you’re not hear-ing ideas from either of them. No-fly zones? A little late for that, with Rus-sian air-defense systems blanketing the country. Safe zones?

Who’s going to keep them safe? Bad enough that I’m having to do an LBJ in Iraq, sending troops back in 500 at a time.

“It looks bad, I get that. I hate the whole mess. I’d rather talk about climate change or Burma or even Ukraine, for God’s sake. And, yes, a generation from now some presi-dent may travel to whatever’s left of Aleppo and express remorse, like I’ve done in Laos and Hiroshima and eve-rywhere else.

“That’s fine. Comes with the ter-ritory. I just hope they understand this much: It always looks easier in hindsight. There was no obvious right answer. Sometimes civil wars just have to burn themselves out.

“Now, where’s John? I just need him to buy me four more months. Four more months, and it’s some-body else’s problem from hell.”

Macron quit President Francois Hollande’s government last month, pledging to “transform France” and taking the most concrete step so far towards a presidential bid he has not yet made official.

Given that Syria is his greatest humanitarian and strategic failure, where even as he spoke his latest diplomatic initiative was about to collapse, the brevity wasn’t surprising.

ASIA / PHILIPPINES10 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

MANILA: Smoke from an air vent forced a Phil-ippine Airlines flight to Japan to turn back just minutes after taking off yesterday, aviation offi-cials said.

“Apparently, there was information that the pilot detected smoke in the cabin. So as part of safety measures, the pilot had to return to the ground,” said Eric Apol-onio, spokesman for the civil aviation authority, yesterday.

Smoke forces

Philippine Airlines

flight to turn back

Terrace artwork

UN rights expert hints at probing Philippine killingsAFP

MANILA: A United Nations rights rap-porteur said yesterday she intended to visit the Philippines to investi-gate President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly war on crime, but was seek-ing security guarantees for people she planned to speak with.

Duterte last week said he would allow UN and EU experts to look into the thousands of killings since he took office on June 30, however he also

challenged them to face him in pub-lic debates.

While the government has yet to issue formal invitations, the UN rap-porteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnes Cal-lamard, said she would solicit one.

“I welcome the reports recently (conveyed) through the media that the president and government of the Philippines will invite a UN mission to investigate the alleged extrajudi-cial executions.”

Callamard said in a statement that she would insist on a range

of measures to ensure that those who spoke with her did not face retribution.

“The date and scope of the fact-finding mission will be discussed and negotiated with the government, along with essential guarantees,” she said.

Those would include “my free-dom of movement and freedom of inquiry, and the assurance that those who cooperate with me will not be the object of retaliation, such as intimidation, threats, harassment or punishment,” she said.

Duterte won the presidential election in a landslide in May after promising to kill 100,000 criminals as part of a campaign against illegal drugs.

Duterte has in recent months urged police and even civilians to kill drug addicts as well as traffick-ers, and vowed to protect lawmen from prosecution.

However, he has also insisted that he has not encouraged anything illegal.

Police say they shot dead about a third of the people killed so far in self

defence, while the others were vic-tims of intra-gang wars.

However, rights groups say police are conducting extrajudicial killings and unleashing hired assassins, and that people with no links to the drug trade are being murdered as the rule of law crumbles.

The UN, the European Union, the United States and international human rights groups have all con-demned the killings. But Duterte has insisted he must continue his bloody crackdown to stop the Philippines from becoming a narco state.

AFP

MANILA: The Philippines yester-day reported its first known case of a pregnant woman infected with the Zika virus that threatens unborn babies, as authorities warned peo-ple to avoid mosquitos.

Health Secretary Paulyn Ubial said 12 cases of Zika had been detected across the Philippines this month, including a 22-year-old woman from the central island of Cebu who is 19 weeks’ pregnant with her first child.

“Initial ultrasound did not detect any foetal abnormalities. She will be monitored regularly during the entire period of the pregnancy,” the health department said.

Zi k a-i n fected preg na nt women can give birth to babies

with microcephaly, a deformation marked by abnormally small brains and heads.

Of the country’s 12 Zika cases, eight were female and ranged in age from 9 to 55, the department said.

None of those infected had trav-elled a month before testing positive and all had since recovered, it said.

Special teams have been dis-patched to all the affected areas to investigate where the infec-tion came from and recommend measures to deal with the virus, which can be spread by the bite of a mosquito.

Ubial called on the public to destroy mosquito breeding places, use insect repellent.

Scientists warned this month that the world should prepare for a “global epidemic” of microceph-aly due to Zika as there is no cure or vaccine for the disease.

Reuters

MANILA: Philippine President Rod-rigo Duterte (pictured) said yesterday he would visit Russia and China this year to chart an independent foreign policy and “open alliances” with two powers with historic rivalries with the United States.

Duterte said the Philippines was at the “point of no return” in its relations with former colonial ruler the United States, so he wanted to strengthen ties with others, and picked two global powers with which

Washington has been sparring with on the international political stage.

He last week declared he would soon - and often - visit China, with which ties remain frosty over a South China Sea arbitration ruling won by the Philippines in July. He said Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was expecting him in Moscow.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of trade moves annually. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have rival claims.

An arbitration court in The Hague

in July invalidated China’s claims to the waterway in a case brought by the Philippines, a ruling that Beijing refuses to recognise.

“I am ready to not really break (US) ties but we will open alliances

with China and... Medvedev, he is awaiting there for my visit,” Duterte said, adding he would open up the “other side of the ideological barrier”.

He welcomed investment and shrugged off rating agency Stand-ard and Poor’s concerns last week about the Philippine economy on his watch and his unpredictability.

“Never mind about the ratings,” he said. “I will open up the Phil-ippines for them to do business, alliances of trade and commerce.”

The peso fell to its lowest since 2009 yesterday and foreign inves-tors have dumped local shares for six straight weeks, worried about

Duterte’s anti-US rhetoric and bru-tal war on drugs, which has alarmed rights groups at home and abroad.

Duterte also said he would open up telecoms and airlines, which are two domestic sectors long control-led by local players and criticized for being uncompetitive. He did not elaborate.

The volatile leader’s vitriol against the United States has become a near-daily occurrence and source of both amusement and concern.

Yesterday, he accused Wash-ington of “hypocrisy” and said Americans were still “lording it over us”.

Duterte wants to ‘open alliances’ with Russia and China

Manila reports first Zika pregnancy case

‘Snake on a train’

halts Japan

bullet express

TOKYO: A Japanese bullet train was forced to make an emergency stop yes-terday after a snake was found slithering between the seats, local media reported.

A passenger spotted the 30 centimetre ser-pent poking between a gap in the seats, prompting the train, travelling between Tokyo and Hiroshima to stop and allow police to capture the slippery stowaway.

Taiwan braces for arrival of Typhoon MegiAFP

TAIPEI: Taiwan evacuated thousands of tourists from outlying islands yes-terday and set up nearly 100 shelters across the island as it braced for its third typhoon in two weeks.

The east coast is still reeling from damage caused by Super Typhoon Meranti earlier this month -- the strongest storm for 21 years to hit Taiwan -- followed by Typhoon Malakas.

The same part of the island is in the firing line again from approach-ing Typhoon Megi, which is already bringing strong winds and waves.

It is due to make landfall on the east coast today and forecast to bring almost a metre of rain to some areas over three days.

Ferries to Taiwan’s Green Island and Orchid Island were halted yes-terday after more than 3,700 visitors were evacuated over the weekend.

A 700-tonne crane was blown over yesterday at a harbour in the eastern area of Hualien.

It crushed a nearby building but no one was injured.

More than 35,000 soldiers are on standby to help with disaster relief and 92 shelters are open for residents.

At 0715 GMT Megi was 530km

east-southeast of Hualien, packing gusts of up to 191km per hour.

“The storm eye will be closest around noon tomorrow, affecting Taiwan the whole day,” Lin Chih-hui, a forecaster at Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau said.

“There is still a chance it might strengthen,” she said.

Mountainous regions in the northeastern county of Yilan and

Hualien -- already hit by the previ-ous storms -- could be lashed by up to 900 millimetres of rain through Wednesday (tomorrow), increasing the risk of landslides, the bureau said yesterday.

Flights and trains in Taiwan were disrupted by the approach of the third typhoon this month and most cities planned work and school clo-sures for today.

The island’s financial markets will also be shut, financial regula-tors said.

The island’s bullet train said yes-terday that it would suspend services today.

EVA Airways Corp, one of Tai-wan’s main international airlines, said yesterday it was cancelling or rescheduling some international flights.

Hague court to hear East Timor-Australiasea border disputeAFP

THE HAGUE: In a blow to Australia, an international arbitration court agreed yesterday to take up a dec-ade-long maritime border dispute between East Timor and Canberra which cuts through lucrative oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea.

The Permanent Court of Arbi-tration (PCA) “held that it was competent to continue with the con-ciliation process” initiated by East Timor against Australia in April, the court based in The Hague said.

East Timor last month urged the body -- the world’s oldest arbi-tration tribunal -- to help end the dispute that has soured relations between the two countries, saying negotiations had so far failed.

Australia in return had argued the PCA had no jurisdiction in the battle as Canberra had already signed a treaty with Dili ruling out any recourse to the court.

Dili yesterday welcomed the PCA’s decision.

“Just as we fought so hard and suffered so much for our independ-ence, Timor-Leste will not rest until we have our sovereign rights over

both land and sea,” the country’s independence resistance hero and former prime minister Xanana Gus-mao said.

Australian Foreign Affairs Min-ister Julie Bishop said Canberra “accepts the commission’s decision and will continue to engage in good faith as we move to the next phase of the conciliation process.”

“We are committed to working together to strengthen our relation-ship and overcome our differences in the Timor sea,” she added.

Canberra’s lawyers had also sought to argue that it had initiated talks with Dili through an exchange of letters in 2003 to try to solve the dispute.

But the panel said the exchange of letters between Canberra and Dili “did not constitute an agreement... because the exchange was not... legally binding.”

And the PCA’s five-member Conciliation Commission ruled the dispute should be settled under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, rather than the 2006 treaty -- called Certain Maritime Arrange-ments in the Timor Sea (CMATS) -- which covers the vast Greater Sunrise gas field lying between the two nations.

UN official said that she would insist on a range of measures to ensure that those who spoke with her did not face retribution.

People enjoy their lunch on seats adorned with photographs of old terrace houses in a temporary public artwork by James Voller entitled ‘Terraced’ in Sydney’s Martin Place, yesterday.

A worker crosses moored boats at the Dasi fishing harbour at Yilan county, eastern Taiwan, yesterday.

PAKISTAN 11TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

Internews

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s High Com-missioner in New Delhi, Abdul Basit, has ruled out possibility of an armed conflict between the two hyphen-ated but hostile neighbours.

“I strongly believe Pakistan and India do not gain anything from cre-ating hype. War is not a solution, war creates more problems,” Basit said in an interview with Telegraph India yesterday.

Eighteen Indian troops were killed by four militants in the attack on an Army Brigade Headquarters in the Uri area near the Line of Con-trol (LoC) on September 18. Hours after the attack, India’s civil and military leaders squarely blamed Pakistan with media commentators

calling for a military response. Later, Indian forces also started moving their light and heavy guns to the forward position along the LoC, triggering speculation about a possible showdown with Pakistani leadership also vowing to defend the country.

Talking in connection with the emerging situation, Basit said Paki-stan and India should not allow war hysteria to dominate their narratives.

“We can perhaps afford not to talk to each other for some time, but addressing our many bilateral, regional and global challenges can only happen through dialogue. I am not ready to give up on that.”

He said investigations are ongo-ing into what really happened in Uri so it is important not to draw pre-mature conclusions.

He said Pakistan had extended all out cooperation after January’s Pathankot attack on an airbase in Indian Punjab and things were mov-ing in the right direction till July 8 when Kashmiri freedom fighter Burhan Wani was killed by secu-rity forces in Indian Kashmir.

“Both the countries could pre-vent the situation from worsening, if the spirit was maintained,” he said, adding that Pakistan believed that issues should be resolved only through peaceful means and there is no other way.

Envoy rules out possibility of armed conflict I strongly believe Pakistan and India do not gain anything from creating hype. War is not a solution, war creates more problems: Abdul Basit

IANS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan yesterday demanded an international probe to “unearth the facts” into the terror attack on an army camp in Jammu and Kashmir’s Uri earlier this month, terming India’s allegations that the militants were from Pakistan as “baseless”.

Adviser to Pakistan Prime Minis-ter on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said that whenever an attack takes place in India, New Delhi always accuses

Pakistan without even conducting an investigation into the matter, Radio Pakistan quoted him as saying.

He said “An independent inter-national commission should be constituted to unearth the facts”about the September 18 attack by four terrorists, that left 18 Indian soldiers dead. India has said the attack was by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad group, which is also accused of mounting the January 2 Pathankot attack on an Indian air force base.

According to Aziz, this is not the first time that India has levelled

such “baseless allegations” against Pakistan.

Any such attack neither bene-fits Pakistan nor Kashmir, he said, adding that the “attack diverts the world’s attention from human rights violations” in Kashmir.

Tensions have been running high between India and Pakistan since the July 9 violence in Kashmir, a day after the killing of top militant Bur-han Wani by security forces.

More than 90 persons have been killed and over 11,500 injured in clashes between the security forces and protesters.

AFP

ISLAMABAD: Human Rights Watch yesterday accused Pakistan’s police of routinely carrying out extra-judi-cial killings, torture and arbitrary arrests, and called on Islamabad to implement urgent reforms of its under-resourced forces. The find-ings were contained in a new report based on interviews with more than 30 police officers and 50 victims or witnesses of abuse across three of the country’s four provinces.

In addition to noting habit-ual rights violations -- including more than 2,000 so-called “encounter”killings in 2015, which are often believed to have been staged -- the report said police often found themselves in thrall to pow-erful individuals who subvert the law for their own purposes.

“Pakistan faces grave security challenges that can be best handled by a rights-respecting, accountable police force,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

“Instead, law enforcement has been left to a police force filled with disgruntled, corrupt and tired officers who commit abuses with impunity, making Pakistanis less safe, not more.”

In the biggest city Karachi, encounter killings have surged since 2013 as paramilitary forces and police have stepped up raids against Taliban militants, criminals

and armed political activists.The term is used to describe

staged confrontations in which police or troops kill suspects and later claim they were acting in self-defence.

The report found that those from marginalised groups -- refu-gees, the poor, religious minorities, and the landless -- are at particular risk of violent police abuse.

It said: “Torture methods include beatings including with batons and leather straps, stretching and crush-ing legs with metal rods, sexual violence, prolonged sleep depriva-tion, and mental torture, including witnessing others being tortured.

“Senior officials told Human Rights Watch that physical force is often threatened and used because the police are not trained in profes-sional investigation and forensic analysis methods, and thus resort to unlawfully coercing information and confessions.” Local politicians meanwhile are able to halt inves-tigations against suspects with political connections, and to harass or file charges against opponents.

In addition to being on the front-line of the country’s battle against homegrown Islamist terror, Paki-stan’s police forces contend with high-levels of organised and violent crime. A recent wave of high-profile murders of women in the name of family honour have cast a spotlight on blood-money laws which allow the relatives of victims to forgive perpetrators in exchange for money.

A health worker administers polio vaccine drops to a child during a door-to-door polio campaign in Karachi, yesterday.

Health campaign Rights group seeks

action to halt torture

India allows

operations of

Samjhota Express

LAHORE: The Indian authorities allowed the operation of Samjhota Express yesterday after refusing to permit the train operation due to probable security threat because of the ongoing protests in Amritsar.

Earlier, the Indian Rail-ways sent a fax to the Pakistan Railways Head-quarters stating that the Samjhota Express won’t be able to operate, either from Pakistan to India or from India to Pakistan as per its regular schedule.

The fax cited secu-rity issues due to protests in Amritsar as the rea-son. However, in a second fax that was received at around 9:20pm PST, the Indian Railways allowed the train operations and was convinced that the situation was under control and the train operation won’t be sab-otaged due to the social unrest in Amritsar.

12 top students

to compete

in Boston ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s first team of 12 top biotechnology under-graduate students would compete in the iGEM World Championship Jamboree in Boston, USA this fall.

Dr Faisal Khan, the principal investigator and team supervisor who is also the director of the Institute of Integrative Biosciences at CECOS Uni-versity, Peshawar said they have been waiting for this moment to intro-duce synthetic biology in Pakistan. He felt there could be no better way than giving students the opportunity to do cut-ting-edge biotechnology research.

Woman deprived

of kidney

fraudulently

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani woman was deprived of a kidney fraudulently in Okara district of the coun-try’s eastern province of Punjab. Abida Ashraf of village No. 26/2L lived at a brick kiln along with her neighbourSakhi and his wife Shamim Bibi. The accused took Abida to Lahore where they served her drug mixed cold drink, which made her sense-less. When she regained consciousness, she found her left side of the body bandaged. The accused told her that she had suf-fered from appendicitis and an operation was conducted.

Internews

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Bureau of Emigration is working on a plan to automate its bureau and regional offices to facilitate citizens planning to proceed abroad for work.

Director General Bureau of Emi-gration and Overseas Employment informed during a meeting here that the PC-1 for automation of work of

the Bureau and its regional offices (Protectorates) is almost complete and will be submitted to Ministry for Overseas in next week, says a press release.

Federal Ombudsman Salman Faruqui has directed the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employ-ment to complete the work of automation during the current year.

Hafiz Ahsaan pointed out that a team work of all relevant

departments is required to expedite the automation process for overseas Pakistanis workers in a timely man-ner so as to help emigrant Pakistanis with the opportunities that become available for utilizing Pakistani tal-ents abroad and to earn precious foreign exchange for the country.

At present Pakistani nationals seeking employment abroad have to deposit fees in three separate banks accounts.

Internews

ISLAMABAD: An international drugs registration system was being devel-oped in Pakistan to make it at par with the standard of World Health Organisation’s (WHO) specific for-mat. According to an official of Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) after achieving this interna-tional standard based on Committee on Trade and Development (CTD)

Pakistani pharmaceutical compa-nies would be able to get registration of their medicines from concerned authorities of major countries of the world.

He added with this achievement of international standard on which the DRAP was working for Paki-stani companies would be able to get membership of Pharmaceuti-cals Inspection Cooperation Scheme (PICS) that would help these compa-nies for easily registration in every country of the globe. This step would

help increasing figure of country’s medicines export, which at present stands at the volume of `167m against India’s figure of `20bn and Bangla-desh `1.8bn.

He said that after joining PICS not only country’s export would touch the highest figure in export of medicines but local pharmaceutical exporters who were looking to export their products to less explored countries would get opportunities.

He said that PICS would endorse Pakistani pharmaceutical companies

as reliable exporters of quality med-icine. This would help improving the quality of local companies while country’s people would get quality medicines.

He said that federal drug sur-veillance laboratory would soon start functioning in the country. The laboratory would be international standard while labs would also start working at provincial level, he added.

He added under WHO assessment scheme DRAP would observe gaps and potentials while its transparency

would be checked by WHO. He said these laboratories would be pre-qualified from WHO in order to improve the credibility of these labs.

He said that taking cognizance of exercise of discretion in regard to drug pricing in the past this govern-ment for the first time in the country s history introduced a Drug Pricing Policy where discretion in fixing prices was altogether done away with and a Consumer Price Index based system was introduced. He said that under 2015 drugs pricing policy the

government has strictly controlled the prices of drugs in regard to hard-ship cases. Under the policy it was the prerogative of the government to fix the prices of those medicines that fall under hardship regime.

He said there was a set procedure to increase prices like submission of request (certified data) with the government by pharmaceutical com-panies to raise prices as fixed at ratio of 4 per cent to 6 per cent and up to 8 per cent in accordance with Con-sumer Price Index (CPI).

DRAP to launch international drugs registration system

International probe into Uri attack sought

Emigration bureau to automate its offices

People carry a banner as they march during an anti-India protest in Islamabad yesterday to show their solidarity with people in Kashmir.

INDIA12 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

Shoe thrown at

Rahul Gandhi in

Uttar Pradesh SITAPUR: A shoe was thrown at Congress Vice President Rahul Gan-dhi yesterday during his ongoing ‘Kisan Yatra’ in Sitapur of Uttar Pradesh, police said.

A youth has been arrested in this connec-tion and taken to the Kotwali police station for interrogation. The shoe missed the Gandhi scion by a whisker and he looked back at the shoe as it zipped past him. The assailant has been iden-tified as Hari Om Mishra, resident of Hargaon, a police official said. Con-gress leader Jitin Prasada was with Gandhi at the time of the attack.

George returns

to Karnataka

CabinetBENGALURU: KJ George yesterday rejoined the Siddaramaiah ministry in Karnataka, over two months after he resigned on July 18 following an FIR against him in the suicide case of a police officer.

Governor Vajubhai R Vala administered the oath of office and secrecy to George at Raj Bhavan in the presence of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, some ministers and a few senior officials at a simple ceremony here.

George, 59, who was Bengaluru Development and Town Planning Min-ister. The Congress high command consented to re-induction of George after the inquiry found no evidence of his role in the death of DSP M.K. Ganap-athy on July 7 at Madikeri.

IANS

SRIHARIKOTA: India yesterday morning successfully put into orbit its own weather satellite SCATSAT-1 and seven others - five foreign and two domestic - in a copy book style.

With this, India successfully completed yet another multiple satel-lite launch in a single rocket mission and is marching forward towards the milestone of 100 foreign satel-lite launches.

With this success, India has suc-cessfully launched 79 satellites for international customers.

Interestingly, this was also PSLV’s longest launch spread over two hours and 15 minutes.

The Indian space agency ISRO also put into commercial use its mul-tiple burn technology in its rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Simply put multiple burn technology is the switching off and switching on of a rocket’s engine in space mainly to deliver satellites in two different orbits.

“Today is a land mark day. Using the PSLV rocket we achieved he launch of eight satellites,” AS Kiran Kumar, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said soon after the launch.

“After a long gap of two hours, the entire mission was completed successfully,” the chairman added.

Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) director K Sivan said, “The mission was exciting and the long-est one. The other landmark mission to be done this year will be the GSLV-Mk 3 rocket.”

Exactly at 9.12am the PSLV rocket standing 44.4 metres tall and weigh-ing 320 tonnes tore into the morning skies with fierce orange flames at its tail. Gathering speed every second the rocket raced towards the heavens

amidst the cheers of the ISRO offi-cials and the media team assembled at the rocket port here.

At the rocket mission control room, Indian space scientists at ISRO were glued to their computer screens watching the rocket escaping the earth›s gravitational pull.

Seventeen minutes into the flight the rocket’s main cargo, the 371kg SCATSAT-1 - for ocean and weather related studies - was injected into a 730km polar sun synchronous orbit.

The remaining seven satellites were also placed in a 689km polar orbit after a long time lag.

These seven satellites include five foreign satellites: three from Algeria (Alsat-1B 103kg, Alsat-2B

117kg, Alsat-1N 7kg), and one each from Canada (NLS-19, 8kg) and US (Pathfinder-44kg).

The two other Indian satellites are: Pratham (10kg) built by Indian Institute of Technology-Bom-bay (IIT-B) and Pisat (5.25kg) from PES University, Bengaluru and its consortium.

Although SCATSAT-1 is a fol-low-on mission for Oceansat-2 improvements have been made in the satellite›s hardware configu-ration based on lessons learnt from Oceansat-2 instruments.

Also SCATSAT-1›s payload has been characterised with the objec-tive of achieving data quality for Climate Data Records, apart from

facilitating routine meteorological applications, the ISRO said. The ISRO said, SCATSAT-1›s scatterometer will provide wind vector data products for weather forecasting, cyclone detection and tracking services to the users.

The satellite carries Ku-band scatterometer similar to the one flown onboard Oceansat-2.

The mission life of the satellite is five years. According to ISRO, the two Algerian satellites Alsat-1B and Alsat-2B are remote sensing satellites while Alsat-1N is a technology dem-onstration nano satellite for Algerian students. The PSLV rocket is a four stage/engine rocket powered by solid and liquid fuel alternatively.

ISRO puts own weather satellite into orbit

Residents take photographs of the launch of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C35), carrying equipment which will be used to monitor oceans and weather at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, yesterday.

IANS

NEW DELHI: India yesterday looked set at firming up its tough stance against Pakistan on the issue of terror, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi stating that “Blood and water cannot flow together”, at a meeting to review the Indus Waters Treaty with the neighbour.

Modi is reported to have said this at a meeting he chaired in the morning with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Foreign Secre-tary S Jaishankar, and other senior officials, informed sources said.

The Prime Minister’s statement comes two days after he said at a public meeting in Kozhikode in Ker-ala that the country will not forget the sacrifices of the 18 soldiers killed in the September 18 terror attack in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir. India has said the four militants were from

Pakistan, a claim Islamabad has denied.

It was also decided that an inter-ministerial commission would be set up to go into various provisions of the bilateral treaty that was signed in Karachi on September 19,1960, out of Pakistan’s apprehen-sion that since the source of rivers of the Indus basin are in India.

The meeting also decided to look at the full utilisation of the waters of the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum, the three western rivers of the Indus water system that flow through Jammu and Kashmir, and is mostly utilised by Pakistan.

Around 95 percent of the waters of the three eastern rivers of Sut-lej, Beas and Ravi is being utilised by India.

Plea in SC on Indus

Waters Treaty

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court yesterday was urged to hear a plea challenging the constitutional and legal validity of the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan. As the petitioner, advocate ML Sharma, urged the court to hear the peti-tion on an early date in the course of the mentioning.

Folk dancers from the Panghat Group of Performing Arts during a dress rehearsal for an event to mark the forthcoming Hindu festival Navaratri in Ahmedabad, yesterday.

Festive dance

IANS

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court yesterday mocked the avowed seri-ousness of the Bihar government in pursuing its petition challenging a Patna High Court order granting bail to RJD strongman and former party MLA Mohammad Shahabuddin, ask-ing if it was so serious then why did it not challenge the order in the first instance.

As senior counsel for the state

government Dinesh Dwivedi said that “it’s a matter of extreme urgency and we are pursuing the matter seri-ously”, the bench of Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Amitava Roy said “You should have acted before” and challenged it.

The observation by the bench assumes significance as the Bihar government moved the Supreme Court challenging the grant of bail to Shahabuddin by the high court only after Chandrakeshwar Prasad -- the father of the murder victims -- approached the apex court.

Having made light of the Bihar government’s claim of urgency and seriousness, the court deferred the hearing for tomorrow after the senior counsel appearing for Shahabud-din sought a week’s time so that they could arrange a number of bail orders passed by various courts for placing them before the bench.

As senior counsel Shekhar Naphade, appearing for Shahabud-din, sought adjournment for one week, another advocate also sought a week›s time, so that senior coun-sel Ram Jethamalani, who too would

appear for Shahabuddin, could be briefed. However, as Naphade sought a week-long adjournment the bench said they would not like to postpone the hearing even by a day.

“Since allegations and counter-allegations have been made, we don’t intend to adjourn the matter. So many witnesses have been bumped off. You want to wash away everything,” the court asked. But, later, the judges indicated that they would adjourn the matter until Wednesday considering that defence counsel Ram Jethmalani is yet to be briefed on the matter.

Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioner and slain Rajiv’s father Chandrakeshwar Prasad, urged the court to stay the September 7 Patna High Court order granting Shahabud-din bail. But Justice Ghose declined to put on hold the high court order immediately, saying: “We don’t intend to pass an order of stay at this stage.”

Dinesh Dwivedi pleaded: “There is only one eye-witness in the case and if he is bumped off, then both cases -- the twin-murder case and the Rajiv Roshan murder (of his third son) case -- would collapse.”

SC asks Bihar of the reason for urgency to stay Shahabuddin bail

Blood & water cannot flow together: PM It was decided to set up a commission to go into the bilateral treaty signed in Karachi on September 19, 1960.

Agencies

KOLKATA: Six top Jamaat-ul-Muja-hideen Bangladesh (JMB) activists, including three of Indian origin, have been arrested from Assam and West Bengal, police said here yesterday.

“Special Task Force of Kolkata police has arrested six Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh terrorists,” Joint Commissioner of Police, Crime, Visal Garg told a media meet.

“These six are part of the top leadership of JMB,” he said, add-ing five of them are named in the chargesheet filed by the National Investigation Agency in the Khagra-garh blast case in Burdwan district in 2014.

Police have seized a laptop, mobile phones, SD cards,wires, detonators, a powder like sub-stance and fake identity documents from them. “The powder like sub-stance can be explosive. We will get it examined by experts,” said Garg.

“We had information that these people were hiding in the northeast-ern states and also in some parts of south India. They were under phys-ical and technical surveillance of the STF. We were also able to crack down their encrypted communica-tion system,” he said.

The arrested activists included Anwar Hossain Farook of Jamalpur,

Bangladesh, who was the head of the JMB unit in Bengal. Another nabbed militant was Moulana Yusuf alias Abu Khetab from Mangalkot of Burdwan district, the second in command in JMB.

The other four are Shahidul Islam, the head of JMB’s North Eastern unit, Mohammad Rubel - an expert in improvised explosive devices - hailing from Jamalpur, Bangladesh, Abul Kalam from Bur-peta, Assam and Jahidul S. alias Jabirul from Bangladesh.

Garg said the STF was keeping an eye on JMB activities and track-ing those who had absconded to the northeastern or southern India hideouts.

Acting on a tip off, Jahidul was picked up from Kachar in Assam on Saturday.

Following his interrogation, Yusuf and Sahidul were arrested from Bashirhat, and Anwar Farook and Rubel from Bagda road in Ban-gaon, both in North 24 Parganas district on Sunday.

Another STF team rounded up Kalam from Coochbehar rail-way station. Police was not ready to reveal more information of their arrest when contacted. However, it was informed that more details can be revealed only after thor-ough interrogation and completion of investigation. Police also look into their involvement in various other cases too.

Six JMB activists held

in Bengal & Assam

IANS

NEW DELHI: Prime Minsiter Naren-dra Modi yesterday dedicated seven new indigenously developed vari-eties of plants to the nation and interacted with farmers to mark the 75th anniversary of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

“No country would progress without the use of science and tech-nology,” Modi said at the Vigyan Bhawan here where the CSIR marked its 75th foundation day.

“Your (CSIR) contribution to the country in last 75 years increases our hopes from you. People would only expect from those who can deliever,” he said. “Sometimes we do invention but the common man is kept away

from those inventions. We need to abridge those gaps,” he said. Inter-acting with the farmers from five states through video conferenc-ing, the Prime Minster encouraged them to brand their products for bet-ter marketing.

The new varieties of the plants that have ornamental and medici-nal qualities were developed by the CSIR laboratories,

Modi dedicates 7 new plants to nation

EUROPE 13TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

Sanchez’s refusal to endorse his longtime rival heightens the chances of an unprecedented third general election in a year.

AFP

PARIS: Strollers and cyclists can breathe easy on the banks of Seine after Paris yesterday approved a plan to ban cars on a long stretch of riv-erside road cutting across the city.

Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo hailed the move as a “historic deci-sion, the end of an urban motorway and the taking back of the Seine.”

A centrepiece of her bat-tle against pollution, the plan has divided opinion in the French capital.

“We need to slow down a bit, let go, stop and relax,” said Violetta Kolodziejczak, a restaurant greeter.

“If you’re in a car, who has time to appreciate all this?” asked the Polish.

A opinion poll found 55 percent support for the plan among Parisians.

Nearly 19,000 people signed a petition in favour, while a motorists’ association gathered 12,000 signa-tures of members who oppose it.

The car ban applies to 3.3 km of an expressway on the Right Bank of the Seine. The project, with a cost estimated at €8m ($9.0m), will add wooden walkways and greenery while leaving a lane for emergency vehicles.

As expected, left-wing and envi-ronmentalist members of the city council approved the plan yester-day, while the minority right-wing opposition voted against it.

The right-dominated greater Paris region has been hostile to the plan, citing fears that bottlenecks on alternative routes will hurt busi-nesses and delay commuters.

Pensioner Veronique Gryson, out walking along the Seine with her hus-band, said the car ban could be “an

expensive privilege” for pedestrians.“For us, it’s very pleasant,” she said.

“But during the week if there are 200 pedestrians and at the same time you have 20,000 disgruntled motorists on another road, that might be a problem.”

Opponents have also complained of a lack of consultation and insuffi-cient testing of the plan.

Paris police chief Michel Cadot, whose remit includes ensuring smooth traffic flows, said that a committee would track the impact of closing the road previously used by around 43,000 cars each day.

The banks of the Seine, where tourists thronging to the Notre Dame Cathedral or the Louvre museum, have been classed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1991.

The newly pedestrianised section has been car-free for a month every summer since 2002, for the hugely

popular Paris Plages riverside beach bonanza. This year, it remained

closed to traffic for an exhibition after the sand was cleared away.

AFP

MADRID: Spain’s Socialist leader yesterday stood by his refusal to let conservative acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy form a new govern-ment despite heavy losses for the centre-left party in regional elections.

“The ‘no’ to Mr Rajoy... has never been more justified,” Pedro Sanchez told reporters after the Socialist party (PSOE) lost ground in polls in Galicia and the Basque country on Sunday.

Sanchez’s refusal to endorse his longtime rival heightens the chances of an unprecedented third general election in a year, analysts said.

Spain, the eurozone’s fourth largest economy, is being run by a caretaker government after elec-tions in December and June saw Rajoy’s conservative Popular Party (PP) win without an absolute major-ity and other parties fail to forge a rival coalition.

Rajoy’s PP is six seats short of the absolute majority of 176 seats it needs in a parliamentary confi-dence vote, even with the support of centrist party Ciudadanos, and one extra seat from a minor Canary Islands party.

A Socialist abstention would be enough to enable a PP-led minority government under Rajoy, who won most votes in the two general elec-tions but each time fell short of an overall majority.

Parliament must usher in a new government by October 31 otherwise new elections will take place, around Christmas.

Sanchez repeated his desire to form a “government of change” that

ousts the PP from power and said he wants the PSOE to hold primaries on October 23 in which he will stand again as leader.

“There is enough time for the debate to be held... and for us to form an alternative government,” he said.

Regional elections on Sunday strengthened acting Prime Minister’s Mariano Rajoy’s conservatives and weakened the Socialists, under pres-sure to let him form a government and end a months-long political impasse.

The PP renewed its absolute majority in Rajoy’s rainy north-western home region of Galicia, a long-time party stronghold.

And the party lost just one seat in the independence-minded Basque Country where its strong defence of a united Spain has never been popular.

Rajoy’s party won 41 out of 75 seats in the regional parliament in Galicia—equal to its share in the outgoing assembly—with over 95 percent of ballots counted.

In the verdant Basque country in northern Spain, the PP came in fifth with nine seats in the 75-seat assembly, down from 10 seats in the

Portugal’s

Guterres still

leads race

for UN chief

AFP

UNITED NATIONS: Portugal’s former prime minister Antonio Guterres maintained his lead in the race to become the next UN secretary-general following a fifth straw poll by the Security Council yesterday, diplomats said.

Guterres, who served as UN refugee chief for 10 years and was prime minister from 1995 to 2002, picked up 12 votes of encourage-ment, two “discourage” votes and one “no opinion”, the same result as the previous informal vote.

It was the fifth time that the 67-year-old has taken the number-one spot in the contest to succeed Ban Ki-moon, the former South Korean foreign minister who steps down on December 31 after 10 years as the world’s top diplomat.

Serbia’s ex-foreign minister Vuk Jeremic came in second with eight positive votes, six negative and one “no opinion”, followed by Slovakia’s foreign minister Miro-slav Lajcak, who took the second place in the last round.

The 15 ambassadors, including those from the powerful five per-manent members—Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States—met behind closed doors to rate the candidates.

Diplomats were watching Bul-garian candidate Irina Bokova’s showing after the government in Sofia said it may consider switch-ing candidates if she failed to get a top spot.

AFP

GENEVA: Italians were up in arms yesterday after the southern Swiss canton of Ticino voted for a measure that would force employers to prior-itise local residents over commuters living in Italy.

The text, entitled “Ours first”, was put to a popular vote by the populist right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), and was accepted on Sunday by 58 percent of voters in the Italian-speaking region, which borders Italy.

The text calls for changing the Ticino constitution to stipulate that when candidates for a job have the

same professional qualifications, employers should priorities those living in the canton over those liv-ing abroad, in a bid to fight “wage dumping” and unemployment.

Roberto Maroni, who heads Ita-ly’s northern Lombardy region and who is a member of the Lega Nord regionalist party, spoke out on social media, saying he accepted the out-come of the Ticino popular vote, but vowed to begin yesterday studying “adequate counter-measures”, the local media reported.

On Sunday evening, Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni stressed on Twitter that the refer-endum would have no immediate practical implications.

But he warned that “without

freedom of movement of people, Swiss-EU relations will be at risk.”

In the run-up to the vote, SVP argued that the initiative aimed to find a solution for the Ticino labour market while waiting for measures at a federal level to kick in.

Of the 200,000 positions in Ticino, 63,000 are today held by cross-border workers, according to Swiss public broadcaster RTS.

Unemployment meanwhile stood at 3.2 percent in Ticino in August, compared to 3.1 percent for Switzerland overall, according to statistics from the Swiss econ-omy ministry.

Following Sunday’s vote, Ticino authorities cautioned that it would be difficult to apply the text voted

through due to “a harmonisation problem especially in relation to the federal laws, which our canton is obliged to respect.”

Swiss media also stressed yes-terday that for Ticino to change its constitution, the canton would need a green light from Bern, something that is far from assured.

The Swiss government could not be reached immediately for com-ment, but is unlikely to look kindly at the Ticino vote, as it struggles to repair frayed relations with the EU.

Bern has for months been trying to figure out how to apply a deci-sion voted through at a national level in February 2014 that would dramatically curb immigration from the block.

Reuters

KOS, GREECE: British police started excava-tions on a Greek island yesterday, saying they were armed with new leads into the disap-pearance of a British toddler there 25 years ago.

South Yorkshire Police, who are leading the investigation, said they would focus their atten-tion on two sites on the island of Kos, close to where the child, Ben Needham, was last seen near his family’s holiday home on July 24 1991.

Detective Inspector Jon Cousins, the lead investigator, said new information on the case surfaced in May, following a public appeal to Kos residents.

“I have made a decision that there is a very valid and good reason for us to be doing the

activity that we are doing here today,” he said. Excavations would continue in the coming days, possibly weeks.

“I would not be doing that if I was not opti-mistic that we are going to find something of significance that hopefully will provide an answer for Ben’s family,” Cousins said.

He would not comment on British news-paper reports of speculation that the child may have been crushed by a digger in an accident.

Ben was only 21 months old when he disap-peared as he played outside a farmhouse that his family was renovating. Despite repeated appeals and hundreds of possible sightings, the boy has never been found and few firm clues have emerged. A previous dig in the area in 2012 was fruitless.

The hunt is one of Britain’s longest-running missing-person inquiries.

Shooting spree

in Sweden and

Paris injures six

Agencies

GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN/ PARIS: Six people were injured in two different shooting incidents in Gothenburg in Sweden and Paris.

Four men were injured, one critically, in Sweden’s southern city of Malmo, in what police said appeared to be a targeted attack by gunmen riding scooters.

The shooting broke out in a street in southern city’s Fosie district. Police in the area evac-uated one of the wounded to the city hospital.

According to witnesses interviewed by SydSvenskan newspaper, local residents were able to take the injured to hospi-tal in their cars before emergency services arrived. “The attackers were able to flee on scooters.

Eye witnesses said that there had been a car chase, with the four victims in one vehicle and two scooters pursuing them.

The car ended up ramming into a tree before multiple individ-uals on the scooters, who all had their faces covered, opened fire on the vehicle, shooting off some twenty rounds. “They were fir-ing automatic weapons,” one eye witness said. One of the victims was hit in the head and remains in critical condition.

In another incident, French police said a man had opened fire near a supermarket west of Paris and injured two people.

Elite police were at a building where a suspect was holed up, the officials said. According to BFM TV the man was known to police for violent behaviour.

Current Basque regional president and Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) candidate for a re-election as president, Inigo Urkullu (second right) celebrates with other party members outside the PNV headquarters in Bilbao, after winning the Basque regional elections.

outgoing assembly, after 99 percent of the ballots had been counted.

The moderate nationalist PNV party was once again the most-sup-ported party in the Basque region as expected, winning 28 seats, but with-out an absolute majority.

In both regions, the Socialist party (PSOE) lost seats from previ-ous elections four years ago and lost votes to new anti-austerity party Podemos, which is seeking to replace it as Spain’s main party on the left.

The PSOE finished fourth in the

Basque region, behind Podemos, and was tied in Galicia with the En Marea coalition which includes Podemos with 14 seats each.

“These results are not good for the Socialist party,” said Cesar Luena, one of the senior officials in the formation.

Spain’s Sanchez refuses to allow conservative govt

British cops with new clues seek missing toddler after 25 years

Italy red as Swiss region votes to block foreign workers

South Yorkshire police officers investigate the ground on the island of Kos, yesterday before commencing excavating a site for Ben Needham, who went missing in 1991.

Paris authorities ban cars along part of River Seine

A general view on the banks of the Seine River closed to the traffic in Paris, yesterday.

EUROPE14 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

The French President visited the camp for the first time after coming to office in 2012.

Visitors view an installation of artworks by artist Michael Dean, during a photocall for the 2016 Turner Prize, at Tate Britain in London yesterday. Artists Michael Dean, Anthea Hamilton, Helen Marten and Josephine Pryde are the four artists shortlisted for the 2016 Turner Prize.

Four shortlisted for Turner Prize

Berlin: Germany’s former top spy, Werner Mauss, went on trial yesterday accused of hiding millions of euros from authorities.

The 76-year-old dubbed “the German James Bond” had often been sent on classi-fied operations abroad, but his secret financial dealings are now under scrutiny.

He risks up to 10 years in jail if found guilty of shortchanging the state out of a total of €14.45m ($16m) in taxes from 2002 to 2013.

Prosecutors are accus-ing Mauss of placing large sums of undeclared funds in offshore accounts, including in the Bahamas, national news agency DPA said..

Russian held for

flying drone over

Polish buildings

WARSAW: Polish security officials said a Russian citizen suspected of fly-ing a drone over Polish government and presi-dent’s buildings has been detained for questioning.

Warsaw police spokesman Mariusz Mro-zek said yesterday the man was detained on allegations he violated Poland’s law that bans flying drones in cities without permission.

Natalia Markiewicz, spokeswoman for Gov-ernment Protection Office, said an officer spotted the drone fly-ing in the guarded area around Prime Minister Beata Szydlo’s office and of the nearby Belweder Palace, an office of Presi-dent Andrzej Duda.

Man rams police

car in Greece

THESSALONIKI, Greece: A 49-year-old Frenchman is to be deported from Greece after ramming a police car following a secu-rity check for suspected Islamic militants returning from Iraq and Syria.

A court in Thessalo-niki issued a 15-month suspended sentence and ordered his summary deportation yesterday.

Police testified the man was held for questioning for two days after cross-ing the border from Turkey. He was released without charge but later attacked an unmarked police car.

Germany ‘James

Bond’ on trial

for tax evasion

AP

CALAIS: The migrant camp in Cal-ais must be fully dismantled by the end of the year, French President Francois Hollande said yesterday, addressing a major issue for his Socialist government ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Hollande, who was visiting Cal-ais for the first time since winning office in 2012, said the camp known as “the Jungle” is a “humanitarian emergency.”

Authorities say about 7,000 peo-ple live in squalid conditions near the port of Calais hoping to get to Brit-ain, but aid groups say the number is closer to 10,000.

Hollande, who is eyeing a re-elec-tion bid, is facing harsh criticism from conservative and far-right rivals who say the camp is a symbol of his failure

to deal with Europe’s migrant crisis.Former president Nicolas

Sarkozy, who is competing to win the conservative primary, prom-ised last week in Calais that he could solve the issue in a few months by re-establishing strict border controls all around the country.

In a speech to police forces secur-ing the area, Hollande vowed to shut the camp “with method and deter-mination” so that new camps don’t appear near Calais or elsewhere across France. Hollande said police forces will remain in the area “as long as needed” after the camp is shut.

“We must guarantee a durable and effective sealing of the French-British border,” he said, insisting that British authorities must also do their part.

He expressed opposition to renegotiating the 2003 treaty that effectively puts British border in Cal-ais. Sarkozy, who signed it as interior minister, now wants to send migrants to a centre on British territory.

“This would be too easy to say: ‘let them go to the UK’ ... That would largely open the stream (of migrants)”, Hollande said in a sec-ond speech in the port of Calais.

The government announced plans in the summer to disperse Cal-ais migrants to centers across France, where they will be able to apply for asylum. The government has not given a firm timeline.

Hollande reaffirmed that plan on Saturday when he visited one of France’s 164 migrant reception cen-tres in the central city of Tours.

Reception centres will hold 40-50 people for up to four months

while authorities study their cases. Migrants who don’t seek asylum will be deported.

In a letter to Hollande, eight non-profit organisations helping migrants called for a long-term policy of

hospitality and integration in France. They criticised the dismantling of the Calais camp as a “short-term view that does not solve anything for the dozens of people who will continue to arrive every day in Calais.”

Reuters

SARAJEVO: Bosnia’s chief prosecu-tor has summoned the president of the country’s Serb Republic for ques-tioning after he defied the top court by holding an illegal referendum on whether his autonomous region should mark a national day.

The vote, on whether the Serb Republic should celebrate a Janu-ary 9 “Statehood Day” holiday, was widely seen as an attempt by Bos-nian Serb leader Milorad Dodik to emphasise its separateness from authorities in Sarajevo, the capital.

Western powers fear the vote could fuel separatist sentiment in a country that has never fully recov-ered from a 1992-95 ethnic war in which some 100,000 were killed.

The conflict was ignited by Serbs’ declaration on January 9, 1992 of an independent “Serb Republic” in the north and east of Bosnia. The terri-tory became the autonomous region of the same name under the peace agreement which ended the war.

A prosecution spokesman said yesterday the Serb Repub-lic’s President Milorad Dodik had been invited for questioning as a suspect in the case. There was no immediate word from Dodik on

whether he would attend.Dodik dismissed the possibil-

ity of criminal charges being filed against him. “Republika Srpska (the Serb Republic) has nothing to fear,” he said after the vote, which was opposed by the region’s Mus-lim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats.

Serbs in the autonomous region on Sunday voted overwhelmingly in favour of the holiday, which the Constitutional Court had ruled dis-criminatory because it coincided with a Serbian Orthodox Christian festival.

According to referendum organisers, 99.8 percent of voters supported the national day.

AFP

MOSCOW: Russia yesterday sought to deflect blame over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, accus-ing Kiev just days before the results of a Dutch criminal probe into the mass-killing are released.

Ukraine and the West insist pro-Russian rebels blew the Boeing 777 jet out of sky over war-torn east Ukraine on July 17, 2014, with a missile system likely supplied by Moscow.

An international inquiry concluded last October that a Rus-sian-made BUK missile fired from a zone held by pro-Russian sepa-ratists brought down the aircraft, but stopped short of saying who was responsible for killing all 298 pas-sengers and crew on board.

Russia and the rebels have con-sistently denied any role in downing the plane, releasing a series of sometimes contradictory claims that critics say are intended to con-fuse the issue.

At a specially arranged briefing yesterday, Russia’s defence minis-try released what it claimed were radar images showing that no mis-sile fired from rebel-held territory in the east could have hit the plane.

“The fact that Ukraine has not yet released information from radar station suggests the location from which the missile was launched—if it was a BUK — was in territory

controlled by the Ukrainian armed forces,” Russian army commander Andrei Koban said.

“If the Malaysian Boeing was hit by a missile launched from any area located east of the crash site, it would have been detected by Rus-sia’s primary radar,” Koban said, without explaining why Russian radar did not cover the areas west of the passenger jet’s flight path.

The radar footage released by Russia yesterday appeared to directly contradict earlier claims by Moscow, made in immediate aftermath of the incident, that a Ukrainian jet was spotted close to the doomed airliner. Initial results from a Dutch-led criminal probe into the downing of flight MH17 are due to be revealed tomorrow.

Investigators from the Nether-lands—where the majority of the passengers came from—have said the results should shed more light on the type of missile used and exactly where it was fired from.

The downing of flight MH17 ratcheted up international ten-sions over the conflict in Ukraine that started in April 2014 after pro-Russian gunmen took over towns in the country’s industrial east, and has since claimed some 9,600 lives.

The tragedy saw the European Union slap tougher sanctions on Russia—blamed by the West for being behind the rebellion—and the punitive measures remain in place as the fighting drags on.

Reuters

LIVERPOOL: The main opposition Labour party yesterday called on the government to spell out its strategy for negotiating Britain’s exit from the European Union, saying it had no brief to “do whatever the hell they like with our country”.

Just over three months since Brit-ons voted 52 to 48 percent to leave the EU, Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government has given little away about its Brexit plans. It has said it needs more time to pre-pare before triggering formal divorce talks and that it will not give a “run-ning commentary”.

While holding the June 23 ref-erendum was a Conservative re-election pledge, little was said

during the campaign about what a post-Brexit relationship with the EU would look like and the government banned public servants from contin-gency planning.

“They had that referendum but in my view it does not give them a dem-ocratic mandate to put themselves into a locked room and do whatever the hell they like with our country,” Emily Thornberry, Labour’s foreign affairs and Brexit spokeswoman, told an event on sidelines of its annual conference.

“It is about time they started telling us what their negotiating posi-tion is going to be ... because we, the opposition, want to scrutinise it.”

The veteran leftist Corbyn’s re-election as Labour leader last week has fanned fears among some that a move to drive the party further left will make it unelectable indefinitely and allow the Conservatives free

rein over the terms of Brexit.Labour strongly promoted immi-

gration during its 13 years in power until 2010. But it saw many of its tra-ditional heartlands support Brexit on June 23, with the pressure on jobs and public services blamed on EU immi-grants a central driving factor.

Thornberry said Labour also needed more time to establish its stance on Britain’s future relations with the EU.

“We are still considering it. We need to consider it with some care. We need to consider the messages that we got from the referendum ... We have to get the best deal possi-ble but it is unclear what the British public wants.”

Addressing the Labour confer-ence, Thornberry said a Labour government would make up any shortfall in EU structural funding

for deprived British regions beyond 2020, and would fight to protect

workers’ rights after a departure from the EU.

Calais camp must be dismantled: Hollande

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve (second left), French President Francois Hollande (centre) and President of French Hauts-de-France region Xavier Bertrand (second right) walk during a ceremony to mark the laying of first stone of the extension of the port of Calais, in Calais, yesterday.

Russia accuses Kiev over MH17 ahead of Dutch probe release

Bosnian Serb leader summoned over vote

Government must spell out Brexit plans: Labour

Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn (left), speaks with shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell, at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, yesterday.

Budapest blast

directed at cops;

manhunt on

AFP

BUDAPEST: Hungarian police said an explosion in Budapest that seriously injured two of its offic-ers was caused by a homemade, shrapnel-laden device intended to kill the pair.

Detectives have launched a manhunt and opened an attempted murder inquiry fol-lowing the incident late Saturday, Hungarian police chief Karoly Papp told a press conference.

“Our police officers were the targets of the attack. I consider it as an attack on the whole Hungar-ian police force—it was aimed at executing them,” he said.

AMERICAS 17TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016 15

People meet loved ones through the US-Mexico border fence in Tijuana, Mexico. The US Border Patrol opens the park on the American side in San Diego on weekends to meet family and friends through the fence at Tijuana.

Border woes

Numerous weapons were found at the scene, a bomb-squad robot examined a Porsche that’s believed to be the shooter’s and bomb squad officers also were scouring the suspect’s residence.

AP

HOUSTON: A disgruntled lawyer who had numerous weapons ran-domly shot at drivers in a Houston neighbourhood yesterday morn-ing, hitting six people, one critically, before he was shot and killed by police. Another three people had injuries from glass or debris.

The first report of the shootings came in at about 6:30 am, Police

Chief Martha Montalvo said at a news conference, and the suspect began firing at officers when they arrived. Montalvo did not identify the man; Mayor Sylvester Turner told KTRK-TV that the lawyer was “disgruntled” and was “either fired or had a bad rela-tionship with this law firm.”

Numerous weapons were found at the scene, a bomb-squad robot examined a Porsche that’s believed to be the shooter’s and bomb squad officers also were scouring the suspect’s residence, Montalvo said.

The entrance to the condo complex was still blocked off with police tape after the incident. Several cars with bullet holes and shattered windows were at a nearby strip mall.

Jennifer Molleda and her husband live in the same condo complex as the shooter. Though she heard gunshots about 6:12 am and called 911, her husband left for work. The 45-year-old called him not long after, and he told her “I’m hit, I’m hit.”

After the shooting stopped at 7:15 am, Molleda found her husband, 49-year-old Alan Wakim, several blocks away in the parking lot of a nearby strip mall. His Mustang had two shots that went through the windshield, and he told her that he

saw a red laser beam before the shots were fired. He was taken to a hospital to be treated.

“He got out of his car, we hugged, we cried,” Molleda said, adding that after she saw everything he believes the man was “aiming to kill.”

Molleda said a few weeks ago, the suspect brandished an assault-style weapon at roofers in the complex. She said she didn’t know him very well but described him as quiet. “He’s a normal, average Joe,” she said.

Jason Delgado, property manager of The Oaks condo complex, told KHOU-TV that there were two incidents with the suspect in the past few weeks. One was with the roofers, one of whom called police and said he’d been threatened with a gun; no arrests were made because the gun wasn’t pointed at the roofer. The TV station reported Delgado said the other incident was threatening emails sent to a man in the complex’s office due to maintenance issues in the suspect’s unit.

Another witness, Antwon Wilson, inadvertently drove into the shooting scene after dropping off his girlfriend at work and could “literally hear the gunfire flying.” He managed to flee

and escape injury.Lee Williams left his home

upon hearing gunshots and began directing traffic away from the condo complex, noting that people

usually cut through the area to avoid some busier intersections. One car ignored him, he said, and was shot at. Williams couldn’t see the gunman because it was dark, but believed he

saw the muzzle flashes.“Whatever cars were going by, he

was shooting at them,” he said, not-ing he heard at least 50 gunshots over 40 or so minutes.

AP

WASHINGTON: After months of tangling from afar, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (pictured above) will confront each other face-to-face for the first time in presidential debate, laying out for voters their vastly different visions for Amer-ica’s future.

The high-stakes showdown — the first of three presidential debates — comes as both candi-dates are viewed negatively by large numbers of Americans, with Demo-crat Clinton facing questions about her trustworthiness and Republican Trump struggling to convince many voters that he has the temperament and policy depth to be president.

Interest in the presidential race has been intense, and the campaigns are expecting a record-breaking audience to watch the 90-minute televised debate at suburban New York’s Hofstra University.

Clinton’s camp is worried that Trump will be held to a differ-ent standard in the debate and is

particularly concerned that the notoriously hot-headed business-man will be rewarded for simply keeping his cool.

“We also are concerned that Trump is going to continue to lie,” Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said yesterday.

The debate about the debate was still unfolding in the hours before the two candidates were to take the stage.

Clinton backers were publicly pressing moderator Lester Holt of NBC News to fact-check Trump if he tries to mislead voters about his record and past statements. But Trump’s campaign pushed back, accusing Clinton’s team of trying to put its thumb on the scale by enlisting the media to do Clinton’s job for her.

Asked about Trump’s incorrect statement that Holt is a Democrat — he’s registered as a Republican in New York — Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said it wasn’t lie, because Trump simply didn’t know Holt’s voter registration.

“He didn’t lie. A lie would mean he knew the man’s party affiliation,” Conway said on MNSBC.

AP

WASHINGTON: The Washington Monument will be closed indefinitely because of ongoing problems with its elevator, the latest in a series of woes for one of the city’s most enduring tourist attractions.

The National Park Service said in a statement yesterday that the mon-ument will remain closed until its elevator control system can be mod-ernized, a process that’s expected to take up to nine months once work begins. A start date for the project has not been determined.

The lone elevator that takes

visitors to the top of the 555-feet obe-lisk has broken down frequently over the past two years, roughly since the monument reopened after being damaged in an earthquake.

Park service officials have said they don’t believe that the 2011 earth-quake caused the elevator problems. But they don’t know exactly what’s wrong with it. Despite a monthlong inspection, “we have not been able to determine the cause of the ongoing reliability issues,” the park service said.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who represents the Dis-trict of Columbia in Congress, said in a statement that the timing of the closure “could not be worse,” given the crowds that have flocked to

Washington for the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Cul-ture, which is next to the monument.

“We have grown so accustomed to the repeated closures that unless there is some danger to the public, the monument should be open to the public for as long as possible,” Nor-ton said.

Mike Litterst, a park service spokesman, said the elevator is safe, but the breakdowns present an ongo-ing inconvenience.

“There are other factors in play when we have service interruptions. When it gets stuck, people are stuck inside there for 40 minutes to an hour in cramped, closed quarters,”

he said. “We couldn’t put visitors or staff at risk by attempting to reopen, knowing it was likely going to hap-pen again.”

The park service hopes to announce a timetable for the ren-ovation project, which is expected to cost up to $3 million, within the next few weeks.

In the meantime, it’s possi-ble that limited groups of people might be given the opportunity to walk the staircase to the top of the monument, but that option won’t be made available for the general public, Litterst said.

“We certainly share the frustra-tion and the disappointment of the visitors,” he said.

Colombia’s other

rebels to hold

fire during

peace vote

AFP

BOGOTA: Colombia’s second-largest rebel force, the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN), will hold its fire as Colombians hold a referendum on a peace deal with the larger, Marxist FARC.

“We are prepared to stop ELN offensive actions during this time (ahead of) the referendum” to make participation on October 2 easier for voters, Commander Pablo Beltran said on the official radio of the smaller force.

The government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) concluded a final peace accord on August 24 to end a 52-year war and were scheduled to sign a peace agreement.

The conflict, which has drawn in various left- and right-wing rebel groups as well as criminal gangs over the decades, has killed 260,000 people and left 45,000 missing.

After nearly four years of peace talks, the Colombian peo-ple will have the final say when they vote on the question: “Do you support the final accord to end the conflict and build a sta-ble and lasting peace?”

For the deal to be ratified, the “Yes” camp must win and also gather at least 4.4 million votes — 13 percent of the electorate.

If the deal passes, the FARC—the country’s largest rebel group—have pledged to disarm and convert themselves into a political party.

The government has yet to begin planned peace talks with the Cuban-inspired ELN.

President Juan Manuel San-tos has said the talks with the ELN will not start until it stops kidnappings.

Reuters

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilian police yesterday arrested Antonio Palocci (pictured), a powerful former finance minister and presidential chief of staff in recent Workers Party (PT) governments, as a sweeping anti-corruption probe hit even harder at the left-leaning party.

Prosecutors said at a news con-ference that Palocci acted as a liaison between the PT and Brazil’s largest engineering and construction con-glomerate, Odebrecht SA, from 2006 to 2013 in a kickback scheme cen-tered on contracts at state-led oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras.

“Evidence has surfaced ... that he

was responsible for coordinating his political party’s receipt of surrepti-tious payments from the Odebrecht Group,” read yesterday’s search and arrest warrant signed by anti-cor-ruption judge Sergio Moro.

Investigators allege Palocci

improperly approved loans from state development bank BNDES to Odebrecht in Africa and for oil platforms. They also allege that he pushed legislation through Con-gress to help the company win tax advantages.

Prosecutors said they had found evidence that Odebrecht paid 128m reais ($39.5m) to the Workers Party and its representatives between 2008 and 2013, including Palocci.

Construction magnate Marcelo Odebrecht, whose family owns the namesake company, received a 19-year sentence in March for brib-ery, money laundering and organized crime in relation to the scandal at Petrobras.

Two former aides of Palocci were arrested in yesterday’s police sweep.

A medical doctor by training,

Palocci was former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s finance min-ister and a key player in the 2002 election campaign that put the union and PT leader in the presidential seat.

He also served as chief of staff to Lula’s hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff. Palocci’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment about yester-day’s accusations.

Odebrecht’s press office said the company would not comment. BNDES officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Palocci’s arrest brings the inves-tigation of Brazil’s biggest corruption scandal further into the core leader-ship of the PT.

Lula was indicted last week on corruption charges in a case involv-ing a luxury seaside apartment that

prosecutors say was a disguised bribe from a construction company impli-cated in the Petrobras scheme. Still one of Brazil’s most popular politi-cians, his arrest is unlikely before he goes on trial.

Palocci helped Lula change his image from leftist radical into a busi-ness friendly and socially progressive leader who finally secured election on his fourth bid. As finance minister from 2003 he continued the anti-inflation and pro-market policies of the previous centrist government, helping calm financial markets’ con-cerns about Lula’s presidency.

But Palocci was forced to resign in 2006 amid allegations he lied to congress about frequenting a man-sion used by lobbyists in the capital Brasilia, where political graft was alleged to have been negotiated.

Elevator trouble closes Washington Monument

Nine injured in Houston shooting; gunman dead

Ambulance crew on standby after a gunman went on a shooting rampage wounding nine before he was shot and killed by police in Houston, yesterday.

Hillary and Trump set for

high-stakes showdown

Former Brazil finance minister Palocci arrested for corruption

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The Peninsula

DOHA: The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) has announced a new cohort of outstanding young people who will participate in the 2016-2017 Learners’ Voice Programme.

Thirty-one young education advocates from diverse back-grounds and disciplines have been selected to join the interna-tional Learners’ Voice Programme and engage in global dialogue on pressing issues in education.

The programme brings the voice of young people to the chal-lenge of rethinking education and equips them with skills to take on leading roles in their fields.

It focuses on building knowledge, communication, entrepreneurship and leadership skills. In addition to participat-ing in the WISE Summit 2017, the learners will also attend two intensive residential sessions delivered by experts and online and onsite activities. In a key component of the Learners’ Voice Programme due to start in Jan-uary, the participants will form teams to conceive and design innovative projects that address critical education challenges.

After thorough evaluation by the Learners’ Voice team, selected members will have an opportu-nity to pitch their proposals to an audience of potential investors, donors, and partners at the WISE Summit 2017 in Doha. “WISE is excited to introduce the new cohort of the Learners’ Voice Pro-gramme for 2016-17,” said Stavros N Yiannouka, CEO, WISE.

“The WISE team has worked hard to bring together a group of young people with diverse back-grounds and experiences who share a commitment to education as a means of individual empow-erment and social transformation.

“Several of these young peo-ple were refugees and immigrants to new countries, and have faced life-changing experiences. I am confident that they and their peers will bring to the WISE community powerful perspectives towards building the future of education,” Yiannouka added.

The Peninsula

DOHA: The fourth annual Qatar International Boat Show (QIBS 2016) will be held from December 7 to 10 at Lusail Marina in Lusail City.

Following the remarkable success of the show in the previous years, that has attracted more than 50,000 vis-itors from 88 countries, QIBS 2016 is expected to have the participation of leading international and GCC companies, active in boat and yacht manufacturing and marketing, in addition to the local Qatari compa-nies specialised in this key sector and its related supply industries.

“For the fourth consecutive year, QIBS has become a principal annual fixture on the sector’s cal-endar of specialised regional and international exhibitions, which underlines the remarkable success it has achieved over this short period of time and its ability to attract the industry’s key players,” said Ahmad

Abdulla Al Hammadi (pictured), Executive Director of Marketing & Sales, at Qatari Diar.

“Lusail City hosts QIBS in line with ‘Qatar National Vision 2030’ which seeks to diversify income resources and promote sustaina-ble activities. Besides, the city will stand out as always in attracting res-idents and visitors of all walks of life, becoming an icon for green, sustain-able cities in Qatar and the region,

particularly Lusail Marina that has established itself as one of the region’s most popular desti-nations for boat and yacht lovers,” added Al Hammadi.

Since its incep-t ion in 2013, QIBS has brought together thousands of world’s distin-guished boat and yacht manufac-turers, exhibitors

and specialists from the UAE, Bah-rain, Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Monaco, Turkey, Leb-anon, Switzerland, Poland, the Czech Republic and the United States of America, among others.

Khalid Essa Al Mannai, Chair-man of Al Mannai Events, QIBS organisers, noted that the show enjoys the support of all Qatari offi-cials led by Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, represented by Prime Minister and Interior Minis-ter H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani under whose patronage QIBS is held every year.

“QIBS contributes to support-ing the tourism and exhibitions sector in Qatar, attracting invest-ments to the country. This highlights the Qatari government’s relentless support to the private sector that drives the economy’s competitive-ness and helps in the diversification of income resources, including the vital sectors of tourism, exhibi-tions and marine services,” said Al Mannai.

Fourth Qatar International Boat Show in Lusail City from Dec 7

Dr. Hassan Rashid Al Derham (centre), President of Qatar University, with other officials and students during the 10th Annual White Coat Ceremony held by the university at the Marriott Marquis City Centre Doha Hotel yesterday. The event featured the symbolic oath taking of the university’s new pharmacy students. Pic by: Kammutty VP / The Peninsula

New QU pharmacy students don White Coats

The Peninsula

DOHA: The Ministry of Endowments (Awqaf) and Islamic Affairs has joined back-to-school campaign in a unique way asking preachers to hold special programmes to talk on new academic year.

The ministry has earmarked today-evening to organised lectures in 17 mosques across the country. The pro-grammes will be held after Isha prayers

and separate places will be made avail-able for women. The move meant to encourage students to be serious about their studies, follow the teachings of Islam in their practical life and to remind the duties of parents and guardians to support their children for education.

The preachers will give lectures explaining all aspects of education. The topics include learning is an obligation (learn), we progress through education, new academic year, how our children could be excellent, back to school and

education is a collective responsibility . The designated mosques are Omar

bin Khattab mosque, Madinat Khalifa, Abdullah and Abdul Ghani mosque, Al Najma, Ahmad bin Rashid Al Muraikhi mosque, Madinat Khalifa, Abdullah bin Abdullah Al Atiya mosque, Murra (west) among others, Qatar News Agency reported. The famous scholars will be Sheikh Ahmad Al Muhammadi, Sheikh Badruddin Mohamad Othman, Sheikh Usma Redwan, Sheikh Muwafi Adhab and Daifullah Omar Salim among others.

Ministry campaign to enliven students’ life

The Peninsula

DOHA: To commemorate the first ever UCI Road World Champion-ships to be held in the Middle East, Qatar has released a special limited edition of postal stamps.

According to the details made available yesterday, the limited edi-tion stamps can be purchased from 30 Qatar Post offices across the country or at Fan Zone to be set up during the October 9-16 mega event.

The stamps have been produced following a partnership between Qatar Post and UCI, the world cycling ruling body. The stamps celebrate these high-profile cham-pionships that will see more than 1,000 cyclists in action.

More than 500 million TV view-ers are expected to tune into live coverage of the top UCI event.

Thousands of visitors are set to land in Qatar for the 8-day cycling gala. Stamps have been priced at QR3.50, QR4.00 and QR4.50.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar, represented by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment, will join the Arab Organisation for Agricultural Development at League of Arab States in marking the Arab Agricultural Day today. An awareness lecture on how to curb food wastage to enhance food security tomorrow for agricultural sector employees will be organised. The Director General of The Arab Organisation for Agricultural Development Dr. Tariq Mossa Al Zadjali, said that the world is witnessing food shortage caused by either natural or human factors. He said that about 1.3bn tonnes of food is wasted annually, which represents 33 percent of food produced.

Qatar to mark Arab Agricultural Day

Q-post releases stamps to mark

UCI Road World Championships

WISE selects 31

young people for

Learners’ Voice

Programme

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Qatar expands free transit visa stay to 96 hours for all nationalities

9 hurt in Houston shooting;suspect dead, was a lawyer

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Umm Al Houl Phase-1 production in April

By Mohammad Shoeb The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar’s multi-billion riyal Umm Al Houl Combined Cycle Power Plant will commence commercial

operations in three phases, with the first phase scheduled to be opera-tional in April next year.

The $2.5bn (QR9.1bn) ambitious power project, with the installed capacity of producing over 2,500 megawatt of electricity and 136 mil-lion gallons of desalinated water, will become fully operational by July 2018, said Jamal Al Khalaf (pic-tured), CEO of Umm Al Houl Power Company.

“We have received all the six gas turbines. The work is progressing in full swing and the first stage of the power plant will become operational by April next year by producing 40 million gallons of water,” said Al Khalaf. “Once fully operational in July 2018, the plant will have the installed capacity to producing about 23 percent of Qatar’s needs of electricity and 26 percent of water production.”

Al Khalaf was speaking at a press conference on the sidelines of an event held to mark the arrival of Sie-mens’ six gas turbines for the project on Sunday. Present were Adrian Wood, CEO of Siemens Qatar; and

John Chang, Executive Vice-President of Global Business and Operations at Samsung C&T, a partner in the Umm Al Houl project .

In addition to the six turbines, Siemens’ scope of supply also includes four steam turbines and 10 generators. The company has also signed a 25-year service agreement for the plant’s maintenance and serv-icing. Siemens has been working in Qatar since 1970 in a wide-range of areas, including transport, informa-tion technology and energy sectors.

Adrian said that Siemens has many investments in Qatar that are not only limited to energy, but vary in different areas. Siemens revenue in Qatar surpassed over QR1.8bn in 2015. He added that Siemens Qatar is working to transfer technology to Qatar through the provision of skill development and the exchange pro-gramme between engineers working

in Qatar and those working in the company, noting that the company had opened a centre in the Qatar Sci-ence and Technology Park (QSTP) realise the goal.

Umm Al Houl plant is part of Qatar’s biggest power and water projects, located in the Qatar Eco-nomic Zone 3, south of the capital city of Doha. The plant will have the capacity of meeting the power and water demand of about 2.5 mil-lion homes in the area, including Mesaieed, Al Wakra and other neigh-bouring places.

Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) owns 60 percent in the project, while Qatar Petroleum owns 5 percent, Qatar Foundation 5 percent and K1 Energy (30 percent) to manage and operate the project. K1 Energy is a consortium of Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and Mitsubishi Corp.

The QR9.1bn project with a capacity of over 2,500 MW of electricity and 136 million gallons of desalinated water will become fully operational by 2018.

Oil climbs to $48

as Saudi offer

opens door to

future Opec deal

Bloomberg

NEW YORK: Oil rose to about $48 a barrel as Saudi Arabia’s offer to cut output opened the door to a future Opec deal, though the king-dom doesn’t expect an agreement when members of the group meet this week.

West Texas Intermediate for November delivery rose $1.56, or 3.5 percent, to $46.04 a bar-rel at 10:55 am on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent for November settlement climbed $1.67, or 3.6 percent, to $47.56 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange.

While Saudi Arabia and Iran didn’t reach an agreement after two days of preparatory talks in Vienna, the Saudis did offer to pump less crude if Iran caps output, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. The kingdom proposed to cut its production to January levels, Alge-rian Energy Minister Noureddine Boutarfa said on Sunday. “I think it’s positive that Opec is getting together,” Francisco Blanch, head of commodity markets strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York, said.

“It’s in the Saudi’s interest and other Opec member’s inter-est to start coming together and do something.”

Oil has fluctuated since ral-lying in August on speculation major producers will agree on ways to stabilise the market when they meet in Algiers tomorrow. Prices fell on Friday after a dele-gate of the Opec said Saudi Arabia doesn’t expect a decision on out-put at the meeting. Three people with knowledge of the matter also said Russia’s delegation plans to join discussions only after Opec reaches a consensus.

Ooredoo unfolds its growth strategyThe Peninsula

DOHA: Ooredoo has held its annual Capital Markets Day that provided opportunity to key market partici-pants to get an in-depth insight into company’s strategy for growth and its progress against ambitious targets for development.

Waleed Al Sayed, Deputy CEO of Ooredoo Group, led the event, which saw presentations by Ooredoo’s heads of strategy, finance and stra-tegic sourcing. Additionally, leaders of Ooredoo’s operations in Myanmar, Indonesia and Oman also provided updates on their respective markets.

For the analysts and investors who took part, the event offered an important opportunity to meet with

Ooredoo’s senior management and discuss the company’s strategy and key operational developments, as well as the changes impacting the wider industry. “We are pleased to showcase our track-record of suc-cess, impressive portfolio of telecom assets in growth markets, and expe-rienced management team to the global financial community,” said Sheikh Saud bin Nasser Al Thani, Group CEO, Ooredoo.

“By delivering excellent results at home in Qatar and across our global footprint, we are contributing to the growth of this industry and ensur-ing that our customers benefit from life-changing technologies,” he said.

Ooredoo has delivered a positive performance in 2016, increasing its customer base by 14 percent to 130 million and recording revenue of

QR16bn by the end of June 2016. The company’s Group EBITDA of QR6.5bn and its improved EBITDA margin of 41 percent in the same period demon-strated its continued improvement in operational performance. The com-pany’s evolved strategy is designed to strengthen this position, by focus-ing on operational speed, execution excellence and performance/effi-ciency management.

The company is seeing strong

returns resulting from its unified Ooredoo brand, which is now present in eight out of 10 of Ooredoo mar-kets and is the number one brand for brand health, according to a recent study by Brand Finance. In addition, Ooredoo has significantly grown its strength as a data company, offering 4G in 8 out of 10 markets and deliv-ering QR6.2bn from data revenue for the six months to June 30, 2016. Both Qatar and Oman are now generating

more than 50 percent of their reve-nue from data.

For some of the investors in attendance, the event was an oppor-tunity to meet the new executives who have joined Ooredoo Group over the past 12 months. Ooredoo refreshed its leadership team at the end of 2015 and has brought in three new CEOs for its regional operations to help take Ooredoo through the next phase of its development.

QBIC kicks off 7th edition of LeanStartupThe Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Business Incubation Center (QBIC) founded by Qatar Development Bank (QDB) and Social Development Center (SDC) success-fully kicked off its seventh wave of the LeanStartup Program (LSP),with a women edition Speaker Series entitled “The Rise of Female Entre-preneurship in Qatar”.

Building on its successful flagship programme, the centre continues to take on promising entrepreneurs of all ages with innovative ideas, to provide them withthe coaching and support needed to establish a startup. By organising a Speaker Series ses-sion and inviting local and successful entrepreneurial experts, QBIC hoped to encourage the new entrepreneurs

to refine their business ideas, over-come their obstacles and fully dedicate themselves to their startups as they take their first steps towards turning their ideas into reality.

Abdulaziz bin Nasser Al Khalifa, QDB CEO and QBIC Chairman said: “SME’s are the core of a diversified and flourishing economy. We keep witnessing different ideas that have the potential to highly contribute to the local economy, and this is why we’re pleased to continue kicking off our flagship program twice a year. With our assistance and support, we are actively expanding and develop-ing stronger SME’s.”

“The major role we play at QBIC benefits the interest of entrepre-neurs, as we ensure that their startup ideas are turned into reality, through which they can actively partici-pate in the local economic and SME

development. Uniting our expertise with established entrepreneurs is an essential part of transferring knowl-edge, which encourages aspiring ones to venture into the field of entrepre-neurship; female entrepreneurs are a great example of this.”

While QBIC previously hosted various Speaker Series sessions with renowned entrepreneurs such as Mohammed Jaffar, former CEO of Talabat.com, Christopher Free, General Manager of Uber Qatar and UAE, and Elmar Mock, co-inventor of Swatch, QBIC wanted to shed light on the local accomplishments of Qatari women to date in an effort to show-case that businesses do not require feasibility studies to succeed; they require hard work, determination, and customer assessment.

Talking at the women edition Speaker Series were women who

were chosen based on their per-sonal achievements, to share their acquired knowledge on the way to successful entrepreneurship. The motivation talks were delivered by Razan Suliman, founder of Fanilla Couture; Aisha Al Jaidah, founder of Blue Penguin; Noof Al Marri, founder of Newline 4 Media and Noora Al

Amri, founder of Tartebkom Holidays.Aysha Al Mudahka, QBIC CEO

said: “Our entrepreneurs have been greatly benefitting from practical work, networking and collaborating with experts in the field. We strongly believe in the local talents making a difference in the Qatari market, and we especially value and believe in the

capabilities of Qatari women, which is what we wanted to highlight in this edition of our Speaker Series.”

The entrepreneurs will be pitch-ing their refined business ideas to a judging panel and potential investors during the Demo Day event mark-ing the end of the programme, which will take place on December 6, 2016.

Ooredoo Group Deputy CEO Waleed Al Sayed (centre) and other officials at the Capital Markets Day in Doha.

QDB CEO and QBIC Chairman Abdulaziz bin Nasser Al Khalifa and other participants at the event.

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FTSE100 6,818.04 -91.39 PTS

BRENT $46.12 -$1.64

BUSINESS18 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

QIIB launches features-packed credit card

The Peninsula

DOHA: QIIB has announced the launch of the latest and most distinc-tive features in credit cards, which allows the Bank’s customers to avail of a monthly payment plan, equiva-lent to 5 percent of the due amount on the credit card.

Mohammed Al Mawlawi, GM, Chief Business Development and Marketing in QIIB, said: “The launch of the 5 percent monthly payment plan for QIIB’s credit cards comes within the framework of innovation and in response to customer require-ments. It also signifies the Bank’s desire to provide our customers the best and most convenient features on

credit cards, which they aspire. We hope the features-packed QIIB credit cards will meet the various needs of our customers in different categories and that they will find these easily accessible and most convenient.”

“The advantages and benefits of QIIB credit cards are many. Besides the option of a monthly payment plan, equivalent to 5 percent of the total due amount on the credit card, our customers can also earn QIIB Points that may be redeemed for tickets in more than 900 airlines worldwide. Also, QIIB credit cards are accepted worldwide.”

Mohammed Al Mawlawi said, “The holders of QIIB credit cards with the 5 percent monthly pay-ment plan need only pay 1 percent as monthly profit rate. They are enti-tled to a Takaful coverage of up to QR100,000 at competitive charges in the sad event of a death.”

QIIB customers have the option to settle the credit card payments either by installments or as a lump sum. In case they choose to settle the whole amount, the 1 percent monthly profit rate will not be applied.

QIIB urged the bank’s customers to make use of the most innovative, useful and competitive features in

the QIIB credit card, which will help them fix their priorities and settle their obligations at the lowest cost possible. Flexible payment options in the credit card will help those cus-tomers, who due to various reasons, may not be able to pay and clear their outstanding immediately.

Al Mawlawi also expressed his confidence that the various innova-tive features of the credit cards will be accepted and acclaimed by a wide range of QIIB customers because the bank has always been keen to design and offer features that are in compliance with the best banking

standards and approved by Islamic banking.

Existing customers or fresh customers who wish to avail of the distinctive features in the QIIB credit cards may visit any of the Bank branches, conveniently located at various places across Qatar.

Pfizer decides

not to split and

ends years of

speculation

Bloomberg

NEW YORK: The biggest breakup in drug industry history isn’t hap-pening. Pfizer Inc won’t split in half, after years of what the pharmaceutical giant called an “extensive evaluation.”

The decision follows the col-lapse of Pfizer’s attempted $160bn merger with Allergan Plc this year, a deal that would have shifted the company’s tax address overseas and bulked up units before a split. In recent months, New York-based Pfizer had signaled it might stay together.

“By operating two separate and autonomous units within Pfizer we are already accessing many of the potential benefits of a split — sharper focus, increased accountability, and a greater sense of urgency — while also retaining the operational strength, effi-ciency and financial flexibility of operating as a single company,” Chief Executive Officer Ian Read said in a statement.

The question now is what’s next for the biggest drugmaker in the US Pfizer, in the statement, said it is “poised to grow” both businesses, and the drugmaker most recently agreed to a $14bn deal to acquire Medivation Inc and its cancer treatments.

Investors have been wait-ing for a decision since 2012, when a Goldman Sachs Group Inc analysts suggested the com-pany should. Soon after, Pfizer began reorganising its business into what eventually became two distinct units — one cash-gener-ating business with older and off-patent medicines, and another growth-focused operation with products dependent on more recent research and development.

The decision doesn’t affect the financial guidance for 2016, which Pfizer reaffirmed. Both units have delivered solid year-over-year performance over the course of the past three years, demonstrat-ing their ability to compete on a standalone basis, Pfizer said.

The shares fell 1.1 percent to $33.90 at 6:55 am in New York yesterday.

The new card allows customers to avail of a monthly payment plan, equivalent to 5% of the due amount on the credit card.

ABOVE: Mohammed Al Mawlawi, GM, Chief Business Development and Marketing, QIIB. RIGHT: The QIIB headquarters in Doha.

Hyundai workers

start first full

strike in 12 years

AFP

SEOUL: Tens of thousands of unionised workers at South Korea’s Hyundai Motor staged their first full strike yesterday for more than a decade after negotia-tions over a wage increase stalled.

Nearly 50,000 workers at Hyundai Motor’s three plants across the country — includ-ing the main one in the southern city of Ulsan — walked off the job throughout yesterday, said a spokesman for its labour union.

The day-long stoppage is the first full strike at the company since 2004. The workers would also stage a six-hour partial strike from Tuesday to Friday, the union spokesman said. Hyundai’s union has staged partial strikes every year since 2012, including nearly 20 such stoppages this year.

Investcorp closes US deals worth $1.6bnThe Peninsula

DOHA: Investcorp, a leading pro-vider and manager of alternative investment products, yesterday announced that its US-based real estate arm has acquired five multi-family apartment properties and five student housing properties in several major metropolitan markets across the US.

The conclusion of these deals represents the culmination of a 12-month period during which Investcorp saw record investment volume in real estate of approxi-mately $1.6bn of gross transaction value.

According to Real Capital Ana-lytics Investcorp has, for the past 10 years, been the top private Gulf-based investor in US real estate.

The acquisitions are consistent with Investcorp’s strategy to invest in high-quality properties through-out key US markets that it believes

will provide attractive cash yields and upside.

Johannes Glas (pictured), Man-aging Director at Investcorp in Qatar, said, “Investcorp continues to actively pursue the right oppor-tunities in the US real estate market and these seven assets strengthen our already impressive portfolio. We look to invest in properties that are located in high-growth metropolitan markets that also demonstrate strong economic fundamentals; we believe that these latest investments are per-fectly aligned with those criteria.”

Little Cottonwoods Apartments is a 379 unit, Class B, “garden style” apartment property located in the Tempe submarket of Phoenix, Ari-zona. Phoenixis projected to have amongst some of the highest per-centage of employment growth of major US markets over the next few years, and is also projected to expe-rience significant rent growth. Little Cottonwoods was acquired in joint venture with TruAmerica and is the fourth transaction between the

parties. The Raleigh-Nashville mul-tifamily portfolio is a four property, 1,176 unit, Class B apartment port-folio with three assets located in Raleigh, North Carolina and one in Nashville, Tennessee.

The portfolio properties are in upscale suburban neighbour-hoods, offering convenient access to employment hubs.

Raleigh boasts a healthy labor market, with new and expanded companies attracted by its affordable cost of living and high concentration of growing industries.

Nashville has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the coun-try, and a well-diversified economy driven by a skilled labor force, low cost of living and pro-business environment.

The Raleigh-Nashville portfo-lio was acquired in joint venture with Redwood Capital Group and is the fourth transaction between the parties.

The Tampa and Indianapolis properties are comprised of two

recently built, Class A student hous-ing communities located in Tampa and 358 in Indianapolis.

The Raleigh Student Hous-ing portfolio is comprised of three recently built, Class A student hous-ing communities in Raleigh, North Carolina.

GE Oil & Gas signs PCP services deal with PDOThe Peninsula

DOHA: GE Oil & Gas has signed a landmark long-term, multi-mil-lion-dollar contract with Petroleum Development Oman for the provi-sion of Progressive Cavity Pump equipment (PCP) and related serv-ices commencing in the third quarter of 2016.

This is aligned with PDO’s ‘In Country Value’ initiative and marks the first contract awarded by PDO to GE, for providing PCP equipment and services.

PDO’s ‘In Country Value’ strategy aims at promoting localised sourc-ing, developing Local Community Contractors (LCCs) and strength-ening Omani talent development through training programmes. GE Oil & Gas will sub-contract services to LCCs that will also be trained on the various aspects of PCP services. The engagement of the LCCs and sub-contracting of work to them is crucial to driving local talent devel-opment and boosting south Oman’s local economy.

A PDO spokesperson said: “The award of the integrated PCP contract to GE for the Nimr fields synergises and aligns with the integrated RRP contract for the Nimr fields previ-ously awarded to GE.

‘In Country Value’ was an impor-tant feature of the negotiations and this contract is further evidence of our commitment to secure long-term sustainable economic benefits for the Sultanate.”

Rami Qasem, President & CEO, GE Oil & Gas for Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, said: “The contract builds on our long-term partnership

with PDO and underlines our com-mitment to investing in Oman and

supporting PDO to achieve their long-term goals. The provision of

advanced equipment and services will help in meeting and exceed-ing the average run-life of the PCP equipment, a critical component in PDO’s production operations.”

As part of the deal, GE Oil & Gas has joined hands with its local part-ner Edgo to provide a wide range of specialised equipment and ensure preventive and corrective main-tenance for a number of inherited PCP systems in addition to super-vising the use of these systems in well interventions. GE Oil & Gas will also provide technical training to the PDO team.

GE Oil & Gas supports its part-ners in Oman with a wide range of products and services including Arti-ficial Lift products such as Rod Lift Systems, Automation, Electrical Sub-mersible Pumps, Progressing Cavity Pumps, Surface Pumping Systems, Zenith Systems, Power 2 Lift, Pres-sure Control systems (PC) and Turbo Machinery Services (TMS), among others.

With an active presence in Oman since 1975 GE is a key partner in supporting the Sultanate’s energy production. GE currently has 70 per-cent of the RRP scope of work with PDO in the Nimr area. GE ESP tech-nology is deployed in 230 of PDO’s wells to support production. GE is also powering the three LNG trains at Oman LNG’s Qalhat complex with six critical gas turbines driving the trains and six gas turbines generat-ing power.

GE has also rolled out dedicated training programmes for Omani professionals at the GE Oil & Gas University in Florence, a testament to the abiding commitment to sup-port Omanisation and human capital development.

FROM LEFT: Lorenzo Simonelli, President & CEO, GE Oil & Gas; Raul Restucci, Managing Director, Petroleum Development Oman; and Rami Qasem, President & CEO, GE Oil & Gas for Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, at the signing event.

‘Reforms are redefining

banking business models’

The Peninsula

DOHA: World’s banking business models are increasingly getting redefined through financial inclu-sion and re-regulation, Doha Bank CEO Dr. R Seetharaman (pictured) said yesterday.

Speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing Sibos Conference in Geneva, Dr. Seetharaman said in response to the financial cri-sis, the global regulatory reforms had been actively reviewed under the leadership of G20 countries in co-ordination with Financial Sta-bility Board (FSB), IMF and Bank for International settlements (BIS).The Dodd–Frank Wall Street reform and consumer protection act in US implemented the regulatory reforms in response to the crisis. The Vol-cker’s Rule was enacted under this regulation to restrict proprietary trading. The SEC also proposed tougher disclosure rules for hedge fund and private equity firms, These reforms are transforming the global banking landscape, he said.

Policy framework for sys-temically important financial institutions, regulation and over-sight of shadow banking, risk practices on structured prod-ucts were some of the areas which required review in the light of cur-rent crisis. Basel 3 is also under implementation. “The Banking Business model will be redefined on account of shift from de-regula-tion to re-regulation. Globalisaton, technology, consumerism and

re- regulation were the key areas driving the change,” he said.

Giving an insight on GCC reforms, he said: “This year Saudi Arabia has unveiled its Vision 2030 roadmap with three key themes — a “vibrant society”, a “thriving econ-omy” and an “ambitious nation. Saudi Arabia’s stock market reg-ulator said it would ease rules for foreign investment on the bourse, as part of efforts to open its capital market under an economic diver-sification plan.”

In December 2013, the Qatar Central Bank (QCB), QFC Regulatory Authority (QFCRA) and Qatar Finan-cial Markets Authority (QFMA) have jointly launched a strategic plan for the future of financial sector reg-ulation in Qatar. In April 2015, the QCB and the World Bank launched a technical cooperation programme to further strengthen financial oversight in Qatar. Dr. Seetharman highlighted on GCC & Qatar Banking Industry. He said “The asset growth in Qatar was close to 6 percent and lending growth was close to 7 per-cent till July 2016.

BUSINESS 19TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

UDC wins two Arabian Property Awards for The Pearl-QatarThe Peninsula

DOHA: United Development Company (UDC), a leading Qatari shareholding company and master developer of The Pearl-Qatar, has won two prestigious awards as ‘best commercial high-rise development’ for its Abraj Quartier office towers, and highly commended mixed-use development for The Pearl, at the Arabian Property Awards 2016 held recently in Dubai.

The awards were received by UDC senior representatives at the official gala dinner concluding the

event. These high profile awards aim to recognise the best residential and commercial real estate profession-als across the globe and UDC was successful in both categories it was nominated for.

These are globally renowned accolades of excellence, and the fact that UDC won an award in each cat-egory it entered, is a reflection of the company’s commitment to providing superior quality developments that serve to maintain The Pearl’s leading position as one of Qatar’s iconic sites.

Abraj Quartier was also nomi-nated for the international property awards, ranking first among many

other regional winners in the same category. The event will be organised in London later this year, and will see UDC compete against other success-ful companies from Asia Pacific, the UK, the Americas, Europe and Africa to find the ultimate ‘World’s Best’ in the category of High-Rise Commercial

Development.Abraj Quartier are considered the

location of choice for many businesses and companies, with two highly impressive 42-storey towers situated at The Pearl-Qatar’s main entrance.

The twin towers offer first class office spaces of different sizes,

multiple amenities designed to provide the best working environment, along with panoramic views of Doha’s West Bay, and direct access to the Island’s premier restaurants, retailers as well as the upcoming rail network. Office tower Abraj Quartier 01, is now open for leasing.

Ooredoo disappointed with CRA’s ordersBy Sachin Kumar The Peninsula

DOHA: Ooredoo has expressed deep disappointment with the Communi-cations Regulatory Authority’s (CRA) decision and orders issued on Sep-tember 8 this year in relation to access to its duct infrastructure. In a statement issued yesterday, the com-pany said decision and order by the communications sector regulator include grave errors.

According to the company, the regulator has not given sufficient consideration to input or evidence it presented to the CRA. Ooredoo has

been fully cooperating with the CRA and has been sharing its mobile sites with Vodafone Qatar since 2009. It opened its ducts network to QNBN in 2012 and today the majority of the QNBN network in Qatar passes through the Ooredoo network.

“Ooredoo has not refused access to its network infrastructure and in its opinion, the CRA Decision and Order includes grave errors,” said Ooredoo.

The CRA inserted modifications in the final Reference Infrastructure Access Offer (RIAO) without consult-ing Ooredoo. Such modifications may expose our network to mismanage-ment and would negatively impact the quality of services that we offer to our customers, in particular gov-ernment and public-critical services. “We have a duty to protect our cus-tomers and ensure service continuity. Our experience with QNBN shows that we need to be very careful in allowing third parties to utilise our networks,” it said.

The company said, the order requiring the adoption of the RIAO in its current form is not balanced and favours its competitors.

In its ruling, Ooredoo said, the CRA has not sufficiently considered QNBN’s ‘illicit’ use of Ooredoo’s infra-structure – the deliberate breach of the Infrastructure Access Agreement (IAA) referred to as ‘The Sheraton Matter’. The Sheraton Matter dem-onstrates that QNBN is prepared to breach the IAA – the issue that led to its partial suspension, which the CRA has ignored in its ruling.

Ooredoo’s conduct has been in accordance with the IAA and agreements on operational matters agreed by parties outside of the IAA.

Unfortunately, QNBN seems unwill-ing to take the steps necessary to abide by the IAA. It has not adhered to mutually-agreed safeguards, so that it could rush commercial serv-ices into the market.

QNBN’s conduct has not been limited to a one-off breach of the IAA, but multiple instances that QNBN had repeatedly failed to rectify. These breaches have not been investigated by the CRA and are not mentioned in the Decision and Orders.

Ooredoo said it is happy to resume the IAA with QNBN, once QNBN rectifies its breaches. It is also happy to publish the RIAO and enter into agreements with other service providers on the basis of the RIAO,

once the RIAO accords with the Law. This includes Ooredoo’s right to be fairly compensated for providing access to its infrastructure.

Ooredoo believes an under-lying problem is also the lack of rigour applied by the CRA in its deci-sion-making. It has engaged in the development of the RIAO in good faith, and was close to finalising the whole process. It was the CRA that then amended the RIAO, in a manner that appears contrary to the nation’s Law and Licenses.

Ooredoo said there is a conflict of interest in the CRA adjudicating commercial agreements relating to QNBN, which is affiliated to and ulti-mately operated by the CRA.

Ooredoo said decision and orders by the communications sector regulator on duct infrastructure include grave errors

UDC senior representatives with the awards at the event.

Turkey’s markets

slide after Moody’s

cuts rating to ‘junk’

Reuters

ISTANBUL: Turkish shares tum-bled 4 percent and bonds and the lira weakened sharply yesterday after Moody’s cut its credit rat-ing to “junk”, raising risks of an outflow of foreign funds and a squeeze on external borrowing.

Turkey depends on investment to fund its current account deficit — one of the biggest in the G20 —and service its foreign debt. Rat-ings downgrades could force it to pay more to borrow in interna-tional markets.

In its decision late on Friday, Moody’s cited worries about the rule of law after a failed putsch and risks from a slowing econ-omy. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth slowed to 3.1 per-cent in the second quarter from 4.7 in the first and officials see it slowing further.

Standard and Poor’s made a two-notch cut by right after the failed putsch. Of the major agen-cies, only Fitch has Turkey on investment grade and that is due for review at the start of 2017.

Moody’s cut will therefore trigger an outflow of funds by foreign investors such as pen-sion funds, who require at least two agencies to rate sovereign debt at investment grade, said Gokce Celik, chief economist at Finansbank.

That will push “the cost of external borrowing higher while rendering the currency weaker,” Celik said in an email.

The main stock index was down 4 percent to 76,511 at 1105 GMT, on course for its biggest one-day decline since the days after the attempted coup of July 15.

The losses were driven by banking shares, which fell nearly 6 percent.

Moody’s cut the government’s long-term issuer and senior unsecured bond ratings debt to non-investment grade Ba1 from Baa3. It kept its outlook on the rating “stable,” saying Turkey’s flexible $720bn economy and strong fiscal track record offset balance-of-payments pressures.

Investment spending should lift Kuwait’s growth: QNBThe Peninsula

DOHA: Kuwait’s new investment pro-gramme is set to raise the country’s economic growth, QNB Group said yesterday. In its ‘Kuwait Economic Insight September 2016’ report, the QNB said Kuwait’s economy slowed in 2015 as oil production fell, but mac-roeconomic fundamentals remain strong with a low fiscal breakeven price, significant accumulated sav-ings and low levels of public debt.

The parliament approved a $116bn investment programme in February 2015 and $32bn of projects

were awarded, 20 percent higher than in 2014. Real GDP is projected to rise to 3.6 percent in 2016 on higher hydrocarbon production and then moderate to 2.7 percent in 2017-18 supported by the government’s investment programme. Inflation is expected to rise to 3.5 percent in 2016, 4.4 percent in 2017 and 4.9 percent in 2018 due to rising rents, subsidy cuts, higher commodity prices and the introduction of VAT in 2018.

A number of factors are expected to drive inflation higher: fuel sub-sidies were cut in August 2016, oil prices are expected to rise to $55/b in

2017 and $58/b in 2018, and interna-tional food prices are expected to rise.

Kuwait’s fiscal deficit is expected in 2016/17 as oil revenues decline, but the budget should return to surplus in 2017-19 as oil prices recover and cor-poration tax and VAT are introduced.

Expenditure is expected to increase in nominal terms as capital spending, wages and social bene-fit costs rise, but, as a share of GDP, expenditure will fall in 2017-19 as ris-ing oil prices lead to higher nominal GDP. The government is planning to raise debt ($10bn internationally and $6bn locally) to finance the 2016/17

deficit and cover mandatory transfers to the Fund for Future Generations, pushing up public debt from 10.6 percent of GDP in 2015 to 22.8 per-cent in 2018. Bank loan growth (8.3 percent in 2016) is expected to out-pace deposit growth (3.0 percent in 2016) until 2017. Lending growth will be driven by strong demand for consumer loans, project lending and government financing needs, while deposit growth will be held back by the slowing economy. Bank profitabil-ity should rise on robust loan growth and falling NPLs as banks continue to clean up their balance sheets.

Qatar Airways first airline to adopt flight watch technologyThe Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Airways announced yesterday that it will be the global launch customer of GlobalBeacon (sm), a technology solution by Air-eon LLC and FlightAware, designed to provide up-to-the minute global tracking of all aircraft equipped with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) in 2018.

The airline will adopt the flight watch technology approximately three years before the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) recommendation for compliance by 2021.

Announced by ICAO in March of 2016, Global Aeronautical Distress Safety System (GADSS) was created to help improve the ability to detect

commercial aircraft in remote loca-tions. The key components of GADSS recommend that aircraft report their position to the airline’s operations centre at a minimum of once every 15 minutes under normal flight cir-cumstances. However, if an aircraft should become in distress, position reports are then to be provided every minute. GlobalBeacon will provide a permanent minute-by-minute reporting capability, far exceeding the ICAO recommendation.

Akbar Al Baker, Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, said: “As one of the fastest growing airlines in the world, both our needs, and our drive to deliver the very best serv-ices for our global passengers, are continually evolving. GlobalBeacon will seamlessly integrate with our existing ICAO 2018 compliant flight watch technology (Total Operations

System), and further enhance our fleet management by providing updates every minute.”

“I am proud of Qatar Airways’ leadership in this vital area of avia-tion safety and awareness. We will be the first airline in the world to have the capability to use worldwide sat-ellite air surveillance to support our airline operations and to achieve the highest level of flight tracking standards ahead of the ICAO 2021 mandate,” added Al Baker.

GlobalBeacon combines Flight-Aware’s worldwide flight tracking information, including origin, desti-nation, flight plan route, position, and estimated time of arrival with data from Aireon’s space-based ADS-B aircraft surveillance system, due to be operational in 2018.

The solution wil l pro-vide Qatar A ir ways with

state-of-the-art technology to meet and exceed GADSS requirements and recommendations.

In May, Qatar Airways announced the successful completion of its TOPS fleet management system, designed to optimally schedule aircraft and manage flights. TOPS, which stands for Total OPerations System, inte-grates data from multiple sources and produces a holistic view of the air-line’s operation, from the global scale to the individual flight level, in order to anticipate and notify operations staff of any potential issue and pro-vide solution options. Specific tasks that can now be carried out due to this integration include, but are not limited to: tail assignment optimiser, whereby aircraft are assigned to spe-cific lines of flying with respect to the operational needs of the route, based on the specific aircraft’s capabilities;

NOTAM manager, where Notice to Airmen are immediately communi-cated to the specific dispatchers and operations staff for more perfect situ-ational awareness; and Flight Watch, which consolidates all flight data into a single graphical source for ease of tracking, communicating with and managing the airline’s more than 500 daily flights to more than 150 desti-nations in six continents.

“Qatar Airways is a leader in the aviation industry, and their proac-tive approach to implementing the GADSS recommendations rein-forces that point,” said Aireon CEO, Don Thoma. “With a modern fleet of 190 aircraft flying all over the world, across remote and oceanic airspace, Qatar Airways and GlobalBeacon are an ideal match and no new avion-ics will be required. We’re excited to welcome them as a partner.”

Deutsche Bank

shares hit historic

low on panic selling

AFP

FRANKFURT: Shares in Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest lender, hit a record low yesterday after reports at the weekend that Ber-lin had refused state aid for the embattled lender.

The sell-off saw shares plunge by more than 6.6 percent by around 1300 GMT to stand at €10.65, making it by far the DAX 30’s worst performer. At one point in the session, Deutsche Bank shares stood at €10.63, a his-toric low. “Given the state of the news, people are selling almost in a panic,” said analyst Michael Seufert of NordLB bank.

Investors were blindsided by news earlier in September that US regulators were seeking a $14bn fine from Deutsche Bank over its actions leading up to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in 2008. German weekly Focus reported that Chancellor Angela Merkel had ruled out any chance of offering state aid or interceding with the US authorities. Analysts offered some crumbs of comfort for Deut-sche watchers, with Seufert noting “there’s no reason at the moment why the bank would have to ask the government for help”.

Aramco plans to spend $334bn by 2025Reuters

MANAMA: Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil giant Aramco plans to invest a total of about $334bn by 2025, including spending on infrastructure and projects to maintain oil capacity, Abdulaziz Al Abdulkarim, vice-president for procurement and

supply chain management, told a conference in Bah-rain that the figure included spending on exploring for and developing unconventional resources, such as shale gas.

Saudi Aramco outlined a plan known as In-Kingdom Total Value Add (IKTVA) last year, when CEO Amin Nasser (pictured) said the company would spend more than $300bn over the next 10 years, of which 70 percent would be local content.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar’s expats has topped in the Middle East in HSBC survey in personal economics, reporting the highest levels of disposable income (73 percent). The region overall remains an excellent des-tination for expats to improve their earnings, increase their savings and enjoy a greater dis-posable income, revealed HSBC expat survey ‘Expat Explorer’ yesterday.

The survey, now in its ninth year, said living and working abroad can help expats progress faster towards achieving some of their important financial goals. These goals include buying a

property, saving for children’s education and putting money aside for retirement.

In Qatar, 69 percent respond-ent said they can earn more than at home and 79 percent say that they can save more than in their home country. 59 percent have the ability to save towards their retirement and 61 percent of expats in Qatar say that living abroad has sped up their plans to buy a property, according to the survey.

Expat Explorer is the largest and one of the longest running surveys of expats, with 26,871 respondents sharing their views on life abroad including careers, financial well-being, quality of life and ease of settling for children.

Quality of the working life in the Middle East has also improved with 36 percent say-ing that job security is better than in their home countries, show-ing an increase from 30 percent last year. Work-life-balance also seems to be better in the Mid-dle East with an increase from 43 percent to 53 percent over the past year supporting the statement.

“Expats consistently tell us that moving abroad has helped them achieve their ambitions and long-term financial goals, from getting access to better education for their children to buying property or saving more for retirement. Most expats also find that their quality of life has improved since making the move

— and that they are integrating well with the local people and culture,” said Dean Blackburn, Head of HSBC Expat.

As per the survey, nearly a quarter (22 percent) of expats aged 18-34 moved abroad to find more purpose in their career. This compares to 14 percent of those aged 34-54 and only 7 percent of those aged 55 and over. Millen-nials are also the most likely to embrace expat life in search of a new challenge: more than two in five (43 percent) say this, com-pared with 38 percent of those aged 34-54 and only 30 percent of those aged 55 and over. Mil-lennials are finding the purpose they seek, with almost half (49 percent) reporting that they are more fulfilled at work than they

were in their home country. Far from slowing progress

towards their longer term finan-cial goals, expats find many are fast tracked by life abroad. Around two in five expats say that moving abroad has accel-erated their progress towards saving for retirement (40 percent) or towards buying a property (41 percent), compared to around one in five (20 percent and 19 per-cent respectively) whose move abroad has slowed their progress towards these financial goals.

Almost a third (29 percent) of expats say living abroad has helped them to save towards their children’s education more quickly, compared to only 15 per-cent who say it has slowed them down.

QE Index 10,509.79 0.72 %

QE Total Return Index 17,004.14 0.72 %

QE Al Rayan Islamic Index 3,949.51 0.44 %

QE All Share Index 2,896.66 0.68 %

QE All Share Banks & Financial Services 2,891.92 0.93 %

QE All Share Industrials 3,166.14 0.75 %

QE All Share Transportation 2,470.58 0.43 %

QE All Share Real Estate 2,475.07 0.33 %

QE All Share Insurance 4,618.58 0.88 %

QE All Share Telecoms 1,211.5 0.88 %

QE All Share Consumer Goods & Services 6,321.1 0.38 %

QE INDICES SUMMARY QATAR STOCK EXCHANGE

QE MARKET SUMMARY COMPARISON

GOLD AND SILVER

WORLD STOCK INDICES

26-09-2016 Today 25-09-2016 Previous dayIndex 10,509.79 10,435.17

Change 74.62 22.67

% 0.72 0.22

YTD% 0.77 0.06

Volume 6,184,387 3,790,624

Value (QAR) 236,783,817.30 178,108,265.86

Trades 3,639 2,136

Up 26 | Down 12 | Unchanged 02

GOLD QR156.9746 per grammeSILVER QR2.2849 per gramme

Index Day’s Close Pt Chg % Chg Year High Year LowAll Ordinaries 5519.111 0.463 0.01 5691.8 4762.1

Cac 40 Index/D 4413.75 -74.94 -1.67 4607.69 3892.46

Dj Indu Average 18261.45 -131.01 -0.71 18668.4 15450.6

Hang Seng Inde/D 23317.92 -368.56 -1.56 24364 18278.8

Iseq Overall/D 6026.26 -82.6 -1.35 6791.68 5286.65

Karachi 100 In/D 40220.76 438.81 1.1 40542.64 29785

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The Peninsula

DOHA: Domasco, the authorised distributor for Volvo Trucks in Qatar, announced that Volvo’s Iron Knight Truck had broken world speed records for 500 metres and 1,000 metres. Reaching the top speed of 276 kilometres per hour, Volvo’s Iron Knight set the new unofficial world record for trucks covering the distance of one kilome-tre in 21.29 seconds. The record is being reviewed by the international motor sport association FIA. The pre-vious record for 1km in 21.59 seconds was set in 2012 by Volvo’s Mean Green truck.

The tests were carried out on an airplane runway in Sweden. The driver was former European Truck Rac-ing Champion Boije Ovebrink. The truck covered 500 metres in 13.7 seconds. After starting, the 4,500-kg Iron Knight can reach 100 km per hour in just 4.6 seconds. Specialists from different Volvo Trucks departments worked closely together to develop this one-of-a-kind truck with unsurpassed performance.

Apart from Volvo Trucks’ powertrain, which is the heart and soul of The Iron Knight, they’ve hand-built the truck from the ground up just for this special test. The vehicle’s diesel engine is based on Volvo’s normal design for tractor-trailer trucks. But it was modified to increase the usual power and performance. The truck was also designed to reduce wind resistance to increase speed and reduce fuel use.

Faisal Sharif, Managing Director of Domasco, said: “For many of our customers, maintaining a high aver-age speed is important in order to save time — time that may be crucial to the transport mission. In the same way, it’s important to minimise fuel costs. What Volvo Trucks offer is an engine and gearbox that utilise their full com-bined potential to deliver more efficient transportation.”

Mohammad Majeed, Sales and Marketing Manager of Commercial Vehicles at Domasco, said: “Volvo Trucks are brawny steel titans that can take on any extreme road condition or climate variances while guaranteeing maximum fuel efficiency and smooth driving.”

Volvo’s Iron Knight Truck breaks world records

INTERNATIONAL MARKETS - A LIST OF SHARES FROM THE WORLD

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COMPANY CLOSE NET VOLUME

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LONDON

Qatar expats has highest disposable income in Mideast

BUSINESS20 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

21TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

India seal win in historic 500th Test

AFP

KANPUR: Spin twins Ravichan-dran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja bowled India to a comprehensive 197-run victory over New Zealand yesterday on the fifth and final day of their country’s landmark 500th Test.

Ashwin claimed six wickets as the visitors, who resumed the day on 93 for four in pursuit of their unlikely 434-run target, were dismissed for 236 shortly after lunch at Kanpur’s Green Park.

Ashwin, who recorded his 19th five-wicket haul in Tests, and Jadeja shared 16 wickets between them in the match to flatten the New Zealand batting line-up.

And it was Ashwin who triggered the celebrations in the Indian camp by taking the last wicket, dismissing the lanky off-spinner Neil Wagner lbw for nought to end with overall match figures of 10-225.

Man of the match Jadeja, who registered a five-wicket haul in the first innings, also contributed with unbeaten scores of 42 and 50 in the first and second innings respectively.

“It’s a memorable Test, it’s been a very good Test,” skipper Virat Kohli said after India became the fourth team to complete 500 Tests. Eng-land, Australia and the West Indies had already managed the feat.

“From the second day onwards when New Zealand were bat-ting really well, I and Ashwin were chatting how we had to show good resilience to win it.

“The boys have applied them-selves really well. Few moments we were in a spot of bother... But Jadeja and Ashwin (who scored 42) bat-ted really well in the first innings... Makes a psychological difference,” said Kohli.

A 102-run partnership between overnight batsmen Luke Ronchi and Mitchell Santner helped New Zea-land put up some resistance in the first hour of play. Ronchi’s fighting 80 was laced with nine fours and a six.

But left-arm spinner Jadeja managed to break their stand when Ronchi mistimed a flatter delivery and was caught at point by Ashwin.

Santner, whose valiant 71 included seven fours and two sixes, was snared by Ashwin shortly after lunch when he fell to a virtually unplayable delivery.

The ball pitched well outside the leg-stump and turned and bounced to take the left-handed Santner by surprise as he edged the ball to point.

“The way Santner applied him-self with bat and ball and the way Ronchi played coming back into the team was fantastic,” said Williamson.

Pace spearhead Mohammed Shami also claimed two wickets in the innings, including wicketkeeper-batsman BJ Watling for 18.

Ashwin claimed three wickets on Sunday to reduce New Zealand to 56 for four at one stage, after get-ting openers Martin Guptill and Tom Latham in quick succession.

Ashwin also had skipper Kane Williamson, who top-scored with 75 in the first innings, dismissed lbw to claim his 200th Test wicket on the fourth day to give India a firm grip.

India declared their second innings on 377 for five at tea on the fourth day with Rohit Sharma and Jadeja putting on a 100-run unbeaten partnership for the sixth wicket.

Cheteshwar Pujara top-scored for the hosts with 78 and his 133-run

second-wicket partnership with Murali Vijay (76) was the highlight of India’s second innings.

Ashwin and Jadeja had given India the advantage on the third day after bowling out New Zealand for 262 in response to India’s first-innings 318.

“India outplayed us though and if we look back there was a two-session period where the game slipped away from us,” said Williamson.

“It would have been nice to get closer to the first innings total, and to start off restricting India to 300 on a good batting wicket was good work,” he added.

India team’s players celebrate New Zealand’s last wicket on the final day of their opening Test at Green Park Stadium in Kanpur, India, yesterday.

India (I innings): 318New Zealand (I innings): 262India (II innings): 377/5 declNew Zealand (II innings):T Latham lbw Ashwin 2

M Guptill c Vijay b Ashwin 0

K Williamson lbw Ashwin 25

R Taylor (run out) 17

L Ronchi c Ashwin b Jadeja 80

M Santner c Sharma b Ashwin 71

B J Watling lbw Shami 18

M Craig b Shami 1

I Sodhi b Ashwin 17

T Boult (not out) 2

N Wagner lbw Ashwin 0

Extras (LB-2, NB-1) 3

Total (all out) 236Fall of wickets: 1-2, 2-3, 3-43, 4-56,

5-158, 6-194, 7-196, 8-223, 9-236, 10-

236.

Bowling: Shami 8-2-18-2; Ashwin 35.3-

5-132-6; Jadeja 34-17-58-1; Yadav 8-1-23-

0; Vijay 2-0-3-0.

SCOREBOARD

All-round Jadeja and Ashwin help the hosts claim a clinical 197-run victory against New Zealand in the landmark match in Kanpur

Captain Kohli

hails ‘priceless’

Ashwin

Reuters

KANPUR: India captain Virat Kohli lavished praise on spinner Ravi-chandran Ashwin yesterday after his 10-wicket match haul vindicated the hosts’ decision to go into the series opener against New Zealand with an extra batsman.

Normally a steadfast advocate of a five-bowler attack in Tests, Kohli laid himself open to criticism when the team sacrificed leg-spinner Amit Mishra to make room for an extra batsman in Rohit Sharma.

Many questioned the wisdom of the move but with Ashwin claiming half the 20 Kiwi wickets that tum-bled at Kanpur’s Green Park Stadium, Kohli was a relieved man.

“He’s been outstanding for the Indian team. If you see all the impact players in the world, I think he comes in the top three or four easily,” Kohli told reporters after his team clinched India’s 500th Test by 197 runs to go 1-0 up in the three-test series.

“The rankings, of which I’m not a big fan, suggest Ashwin is the best at the moment and there’s no doubt that he is bowling wonderfully well for the past couple of years,” Kohli said.

“It’s priceless to have cricketers like that in your Test team, players who can give you balance with bat and ball. I wish he keeps nurturing his skills so that we can keep domi-nating Test matches.”

Ashwin and left-armer Ravin-dra Jadeja shared 16 wickets in the spin-dominated contest in which the off-spinner become the second fast-est to 200 Test wickets, achieving the feat in his 37th match.

Australian spinner Clarrie Grim-mett took one Test fewer to reach the milestone.

Kohli said it was a smart decision to play another batsman, pointing to Sharma’s unbeaten 68 in the second innings.

“The extra batsman helped. I mean Rohit got runs in the second innings, (and was) pretty solid with Jadeja. Both were able to play posi-tively and gave us an hour extra to bowl at them.”

Ravichandran Ashwin

Pakistan eye T20 whitewash against West Indies AFP

ABU DHABI: Coach Mickey Arthur (pictured) urged Pakistan to be ruth-less and achieve a rare clean sweep against world champions West Indies in the third and final Twenty20 in Abu Dhabi today.

Pakistan hold an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series after the nine wicket and 16-run victories in the two back-to-back matches in Dubai.

Arthur said the series win is the first step in building a new team, five months after they crashed out of the World Twenty20 in India.

“Without a doubt the series win is the first step in the right direction,” said Arthur on Monday. “We want to win it 3-0 and want to be ruthless with our attitude.”

Pakistan have never won two T20 matches in a three-match series.

Their spin assault saw West Indies crumble for 115 on Friday, with left-arm spinner Imad Wasim grabbing a career best five for 14.

They then scored 160 for four before restricting the West Indies

for 144 for nine on Saturday. Arthur believes his players are achieving targets after losing a one-day series 4-1, but winning the only T20 on their recent tour of England.

“We set ourselves some realis-tic goals.

“First of all we want to play the brand of cricket that’s up with the task, we want players who can do the job and I think we went some way to finding out some players in this series who can do that,” said Arthur.

Arthur was satisfied with Paki-stan’s batting approach, specially in the power-plays.

“Some of the things we identified in the England series was power play thing and that is pleasing that we have improved on that.

“The dot ball percentage (we play) was always far too high, so we had to rotate the strike more and we partic-ularly worked hard to score off good

balls and have done good power hit-ting.” Arthur hoped dashing batsman Umar Akmal will redeem his career, recalled to the T20 squad after five months and in the one-day team after a year and a half.

“I had a very serious chat with Umar,” said Arthur of Umar being dropped for disciplinary reasons.

“He knows where he stands, but he has been outstanding and has stuck to his work and he is working very hard and I am enjoying working with him.” Arthur believed West Indies were finding life difficult against his spinners.

“Look, it’s always an area where we try to expose opponents in these conditions and we have done that with spin bowling.

“These are our conditions so we try to expose them in our conditions and we have been smart in these conditions.”

Pierce to retire

at end of seasonAFP

LOS ANGELES: Los Angeles Clippers forward Paul Pierce con-firmed on Monday he will retire from basketball at the end of the season after nearly two decades in the NBA.

Pierce, who turns 39 next month, said on The Players Trib-une website he hoped to sign off after 19 seasons with a champion-ship. “This is it, my final season,” Pierce wrote. “It’s time to move on from the game of basketball.

“I’m at peace with retiring, but I’ve got one more ride left. One more season. One more opportunity.”

Tatar takes Europe into World Cup finalAFP

TORONTO: Tomas Tatar scored his second goal of the game 3:43 into overtime as Team Europe advanced to the final of the World Cup of Hockey with a 3-2 win over Sweden.

Tatar, of Slovakia, scored a con-troversial goal on Sunday as the puck appeared to go in off his skate and past a startled Swedish goal-tender Henrik Lundqvist at the Air Canada Centre arena.

Team Europe advances to the best-of-three final against unde-feated Canada with the first game scheduled for Tuesday in Toronto.

Team Sweden challenged the call and it went to video review but officials ruled it a good goal.

Team Europe was the biggest longshot to get this far in the tour-nament as they have only been playing together for a few weeks.

They are coached by Canadian-born Krueger and their roster is made up of a mixture of star play-ers from Europe’s eight smaller hockey nations.

Their outlook appeared even bleaker when they were shut out 4-0 by a young Team North Amer-ica in their first pre-tournament contest.

But eventually European pride and skill took over as they have won three of their last four games with

the only loss coming against Can-ada in group play.

Tatar also scored just 12 seconds into the third period to give Europe a 2-1 lead.

Sweden’s Erik Karlsson tied it with 4:32 left in the third, setting the stage for Tatar’s overtime winner.

Marian Gaborik also scored for Europe, while Nicklas Backstrom had a first period goal for Sweden.

Swedish coach Rikard Gronborg said was disappointed they didn’t reach the final but liked the fight in his team. Jaroslav Halak, of Slo-vakia, continued his solid play as he stopped 37 of 39 shots for Team Europe.

Lundqvist made 28 saves for Sweden.

Team Europe forward Tomas Tatar (right) reacts after scoring the game winning goal against Team Sweden during a semi-final game in the 2016 World Cup of Hockey in Toronto on Sunday.

SPORT22 TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

Japan to host 2026 Asian Games

AFP

DANANG, VIETNAM: Japan’s central Aichi prefecture and its capital city Nagoya were confirmed as co-hosts of the 2026 Asian Games on Sunday, adding another major event to the country’s bulging international sports calendar.

The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) formally endorsed the bid after Aichi prefecture governor Hide-aki Ohumra and Nagoya city mayor Takashi Kawamura presented their joint offering to the OCA general assembly in Danang.

Kawamura promised that the Games would be fun, and even ser-enaded the assembly with a verse from the Elvis Presley song “Can’t help falling in love” to prove the point.

Both men emphasised the strength of Japan’s economy and advanced technology as well as the country’s successful record of stag-ing major sports events.

As the lone bidder for the Games, Japan’s proposal was rub-ber-stamped by the assembly and the host contract signed by the OCA and the bid delegates.

The OCA had originally planned to choose the 2026 Asian Games host in 2018 but brought the vote

forward to provide some certainty to the region’s crammed sporting cal-endar which includes three Olympic events over the next eight years.

“The roadmap of our main event and sports calendar is very stable,” OCA president Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al Sabah told the assembly in the Vietnamese city, which is cur-rently hosting the 5th Asian Beach Games.

“Asia will host a lot of interna-tional events for a lot of international federations... so we want to try and make a very stable programme for our different events.”

South Korea is already hosting the Winter Olympics at Pyeonchang in 2018, while Tokyo hosts the 2020 Summer Olympics before the winter games go to Beijing in 2022.

Held every four years, the 2018 Asian Games are in the Indonesian cities of Jakarta and Palembang while the 2022 edition will take place in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.

Japan will also host the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the Asian Winter Games in 2017 and the world swim-ming championships in 2021.

The joint bid for the 2026 Asian Games almost came unstuck follow-ing a dispute over the cost of funding the Games that was only resolved this month.

Kawamura originally threat-ened to withdraw Nagoya’s joint bid because of fears costs could spiral before reaching an agreement with the prefectural government of Aichi.

Meanwhile,OCA has rescheduled two of its biggest regional events and introduced limits on the number of athletes allowed to compete in the region’s top multi-sports competition.

With Asia already set to stage the next three Olympics and a host

of world championships over the next decade, OCA officials have decided to streamline some of their major regional events, which have grown spectacularly from humble beginnings.

The Asian Beach Games, cur-rently taking place in Vietnam, will now be held every four years instead of every two. Founded in 2008, the next edition was supposed to take place in 2018 but has been postponed until 2020.

The 2017 Asian Youth Games, due to be held in Jakarta, will now take place in 2021. The Games, which were first held in 2009, were

originally due to take place in Sri Lanka but were to switched to Indo-nesia, mainly as a test event for the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang.

Indonesian officials told the OCA General Assembly on Sunday they would stage a smaller test event in 2017 and then the Youth Games at Surabaya four years later.

OCA president Al-Sabah also announced limits on the number of competitors at the Asian Games. This is second only in size to the Olympics with more than 10,000 competitors and 5,000 officials from 45 coun-tries and regions as well as 4,000

technical staff, 8,000 media and 30,000 volunteers.

Until now, countries have been allowed to enter as many athletes as they liked but the OCA said each nation would be restricted to a max-imum of two competitors in each individual event.

“Otherwise we will have nine from one country and none from other countries,” Sheikh Ahmad told the assembly.

“We are getting the best two from each NOC (National Olym-pic Committee) and we are giving a chance to other NOCs to win medals.”

Twin cities Aichi and Nagoya confirmed as venue for the multi-sport event

The members of the Qatar handball team celebrate after winning the gold medal match during the 17th Asian Games in Incheon in this file picture of October 4, 2014.

Bach wants clarity on doping rolesAFP

DANANG, VIETNAM: Interna-tional Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach said on Sunday he wants governments to do more to combat drugs in sport following the Russian doping scandal that rocked the build-up to the Rio Olympics.

Reinforcing his belief that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) should be completely overhauled, Bach said it was time that governments played a more active role to help create a better and more transparent system of tackling cheats.

“This has had to happen together with WADA because WADA, in the fight against dop-ing, is the platform,” Bach told the Olympic Council of Asia General Assembly.

“We (also) need the commit-ment of government. Together with governments, we want to make WADA more efficient.”

The IOC and WADA have been at odds over their roles in deal-ing with anti-doping cases after WADA led calls for Russia to be banned from Rio following alle-gations of state-backed doping.

The IOC opted not to ban Rus-sia, instead leaving the decision to individual sports. But it believes a clearer system should be estab-lished, taking the key decisions away from sports and national federations.

“We think the whole anti-dop-ing system should be independent from sports organisations with regard to testing and sanction-ing,” Bach said.

“The system has to be more transparent... we have to be very clear who is responsible for what: testing, compliance, sanctioning.

“We owe this to the athletes so they know what is happening, and we owe it to the public to be fully transparent.”While the IOC and WADA have been at loggerheads over the handling of Russia’s eligibility to compete in Rio, the IOC has convened a summit in Switzerland next month to look at the issue before a global doping conference in 2017.

“You’re all aware of the challenges we had with regard to the protection of clean athletes before the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro,” Bach said.

“The IOC, on very short notice, had to take some preliminary decisions and actions in order to protect clean athletes. In these discussions, it has become more obvious that we have to look at the WADA system.

“We decided that the IOC will ask for a full review of the WADA anti-doping system in order to make it more robust, more efficient, more transparent and more harmonious.”

Wozniacki makes strong start in WuhanAFP

WUHAN, CHINA: Former world number one Caroline Wozniacki made a strong start at the WTA Wuhan Open as the tournament was hit by a wave of retirements yester-day.

Wozniacki -- fresh from a title victory at the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo on Sunday -- took two sets to secure her place in the second round, as double Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova and Briton Johanna Konta also made convincing starts.

Four players quit mid-match, tak-ing the tally to six in just two days at the Chinese tournament, which is also missing injured world number two Serena Williams.

Wozniacki was sidelined by injury for nearly three months ear-lier this year but has made a strong late-season comeback, reaching the semi-finals of the US Open and bag-ging her first crown of the season in Tokyo.

The 26-year-old Dane flew straight to Wuhan after Sunday’s final where she dispatched Australian Samantha Stosur in two sets, winning 6-3, 6-2 on an ace.

“I’m on a roll, so hopefully I can keep pushing myself and play well,” she told reporters after the match.

Kvitova served six aces -- mir-rored by her teenage opponent’s six double faults -- to sweep to a 6-3, 6-1 victory against Latvian Jelena Ostapenko.

“The beginning of the match was just terrible. Afterwards, I was just more relaxed and more confident,”

the Czech player told reporters. “I think the key was kind of attacking her second serve,” she added.

Meanwhile, Konta eased past German Annika Beck 6-1, 6-2 to get her campaign off to a flying start.

“She fought all the way through and we had a lot of close games so I don’t think the scoreline quite reflects the level of the match,” Konta said after the match.

The Australian Open semi-final-ist will meet Zhang Shuai of China, who beat compatriot Peng Shuai in three tightly fought sets 6-7 (5/7), 6-3, 6-4.

The pair last met in Melbourne, where Konta halted qualifier Zhang’s fairy-tale run in the quarter finals.

“We had a great match at the Aus-tralian Open and I haven’t played her since so I think it will be a great bat-tle,” Konta said.

But Britain’s Heather Watson, Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia and Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenk-ova all joined the injury list as they retired from their first-round matches. Meanwhile, Irina-Camelia

Begu of Romania bowed out in the second set of her second-round meet with world number five Simona Halep. The late-season tournament, which comes just two weeks after the year’s final Grand Slam, the US Open, also saw five retirements last year -- including in the final.

Yesterday’s pull-outs enabled American Madison Brengle, Yulia Putintseva of Kazakstan and Japan’s Misaki Doi to progress to the second round with unexpected ease.

An all Czech second round meet saw US Open finalist Karolina Plisk-ova beat Lucie Safarova in a close two sets, 6-3, 7-5.

Kvitova was able to level her season’s score with Ostapenko, who beat the Olympic bronze medallist twice at the beginning of the year, before the Czech ousted her at the US Open.

Illness hampered the start of the 26-year-old Kvitova’s season, which also saw her split with her coach of seven years David Kotyza, and she has slipped to 16th in the rankings -- her lowest in five years.

Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark hits a return during her match against Samantha Stosur of Australia at the WTA Wuhan Open in Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province yesterday.

‘Boring’ mind control puts Konta on verge of new landmarksAFP

WUHAN, CHINA: A “boring” mental technique which allows her to focus on match after match as if nothing else matters has left Johanna Konta (pictured) knocking on the door of the world’s top 10 -- not that she lets herself worry about such things.

Konta, 25, burst onto the scene at last year’s US Open and she has gone up another gear this season, winning her first WTA title and rising to 13th in the world.

As well as her victory at Stanford, Konta also became the first British woman to reach a Grand Slam semi-final in 33 years at the Australian Open, equalling Virginia Wade and Sue Barker.

She now has a chance of reaching the elite -- and lucra-tive -- eight-player WTA Finals in

Singapore. But when asked about the season finale, Konta’s response is typically level-headed.

“It’s one of those things that’s the result of something else, so there’s not much point in worrying about it or craving it or stressing, because it’s not completely under your control,” she told AFP at the Wuhan Open in China.

“All I can do is focus on each match I get to play.”

Even in an era when mind coaches are common, Konta’s fierce commitment to her mental “proc-esses” stands out.

She says she owes much to Span-ish mind coach Juan Coto, with whom she started working with in 2014, transforming from a nervy player into one with steely focus.

When asked about her mental technique, she explained: “It’s basi-cally treating yourself kindly when its hardest to do so. And it’s just a

habit to get into.” “I’ve got my own processes with my team,” said Konta, before adding self-consciously: “Even if it almost sounds monoto-nous and boring, but it’s just trying to get yourself into a mental state of being where you are repeating the kind of things that you should be tell-ing yourself.”

Konta uses deep breathing and visualisation, and repeats positive phrases to herself to ensure she focuses on the aspects of a match she can control, rather than worry-ing about possible outcomes or bad shots.

The results are plain to see on court: Konta has soared 137 places since the end of 2014 to 13th in the world, making her the highest ranked British woman since Jo Durie in 1983.

If Konta has an unusual approach to her tennis, she also had an unconventional upbringing:

born in Sydney to Hungarian par-ents, she moved to Spain aged 14 to attend the Sanchez-Casal Ten-nis Academy, where Andy Murray also trained.

Her parents eventually followed, swapping Australia for Eastbourne on the south coast of England in order to be closer to their daughter.

Konta was also home-schooled, something she credits with teaching her discipline and mental skills which she now uses on court.

WTA Wuhan Open ResultsWuhan, China: Results from the second day of the Wuhan Open yesterday (x denotes

seeding):

Women’s Singles Second RoundSimona Halep (ROU x4) bt Irina-Camelia Begu (ROU) 6-3, 2-0 (ret)

Carla Suarez Navarro (ESP x7) bt Yanina Wickmayer (BEL) 6-4, 6-3

Karolina Pliskova (CZE x5) bt Lucie Safarova (CZE) 6-3, 7-5

1st RoundPetra Kvitova (CZE x14) bt Jelena Ostapenko (LAT) 6-3, 6-1

Yulia Putintseva (KAZ) bt Anastasija Sevastova (LAT) 6-1, 4-1 (ret)

Dominika Cibulkova (SVK x10) bt Alize Cornet (FRA) 6-2, 2-6, 6-3

Madison Brengle (USA) bt Heather Watson (GBR) 6-3, 2-1 (ret)

Misaki Doi (JPN) bt Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (RUS x15) 6-7 (3/7), 6-4, 3-1 (ret)

Johanna Konta (GBR x11) bt Annika Beck (GER) 6-1, 6-2

Zhang Shuai (CHN) bt Peng Shuai (CHN) 6-7 (5/7), 6-3, 6-4

Kristina Mladenovic (FRA) bt Coco Vandeweghe (USA) 7-6 (7/5), 6-3

Elina Svitolina (UKR) bt Bethanie Mattek-Sands (USA) 4-6, 6-3, 6-4

Barbora Strycova (CZE) bt Sara Errani (ITA) 6-1, 3-6, 6-1

Jelena Jankovic (SRB) bt Daria Gavrilova (AUS) 6-2, 6-2

Caroline Garcia (FRA) bt Mirjana Lucic-Baroni (CRO) 6-2, 6-4

Daria Kasatkina (RUS) bt Julia Goerges (GER) 6-0, 6-4

Carolina Wozniacki (DEN) bt Samantha Stosur (AUS x16) 6-3, 6-2

ATP Shenzhen ResultsBeijing: Results from the ATP tennis tournament in Shenzhen, China yesterday:

Men’s Singles First RoundFabio Fognini (ITA x7) bt Dudi Sela (ISR) 6-4, 6-1

Mischa Zverev (GER) bt Zhe Li (CHN) 6-2, 6-3

Andrew Whittington (AUS) bt Luca Vanni (ITA) 2-6, 7-6 (12/10), 6-2

SPORT 23TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016

Golf legend Palmer passes away at 87

AP

PITTSBURGH: Arnold Palmer charged across the golf course and into America’s living rooms with a go-for-broke style that made a country-club sport popular for the everyman. At ease with presidents and the public, he was on a first-name basis with both.

He never lost that personal touch. That’s what made him the King.

Palmer died on Sunday in Pitts-burgh at 87. Alastair Johnston, the CEO of Arnold Palmer Enterprises, said Palmer was admitted to the UPMC Hospital on Thursday for car-diovascular work and weakened over the last few days. Palmer was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997, which was caught early.

Palmer’s place in golf history went well beyond his seven major championships and 62 PGA Tour wins. His good looks, devilish grin and hard-charging style of play made the elite sport appealing to all. He arrived about the time tele-vision moved into most households.

“If it wasn’t for Arnold, golf wouldn’t be as popular as it is now,” Tiger Woods said in 2004 when Palmer played in his last Masters. “He’s the one who basically brought it to the forefront on TV.”

Palmer also was a pioneer in sports marketing, paving the way for many athletes to reap in

millions from endorsements. Some four decades after his last PGA Tour win, he ranked among golf’s highest-earners.

“It is not an exaggeration to say there would be no modern-day PGA Tour without Arnold Palmer. There would be no PGA Tour Cham-pions without Arnold Palmer. There would be no Golf Channel without Arnold Palmer,” PGA Tour Com-missioner Tim Finchem said in a statement.

It was, of course, not just the victories, but how he won. He would hitch up his pants, drop a cigarette and attack the flags. With power-ful hands wrapped around the golf club, Palmer would slash at the ball, twist that muscular neck and squint to see where it went.

He was never dull. Consider that Palmer rallied from seven shots behind to win a US Open. He blew a seven-shot lead on the back nine to lose a US Open.

Palmer stopped playing the Mas-ters in 2004 and hit the ceremonial tee shot every year until 2016, when age began to take a toll.

He never won the PGA Champi-onship, one major short of a career Grand Slam. But then, the standard he set went beyond trophies. It was the way he treated people, looking everyone in the eye with a smile and signing every autograph, mak-ing sure they were legible. He never liked “The King” label but it stuck.

Palmer played at least one PGA Tour event every season for 52 con-secutive years, ending with the 2004 Masters. He spearheaded the growth of the 50-and-older Champions Tour, winning 10 times.

He was equally successful in business off with golf course design, a wine collection and apparel that included his famous logo of an umbrella.

He bought the Bay Hill Club & Lodge upon making his winter

home in Orlando, Florida. In 2007, the PGA Tour changed the tourna-ment’s name to the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Palmer was born Sept. 10, 1929, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, the oldest of four children. His father, Deacon, became the greenskeeper at Latrobe Country Club in 1921 and the club pro in 1933.

Palmer joined the PGA Tour in 1955 and captured the Canadian Open for his first title. He won four green jackets at Augusta National, the British Open in 1961 and 1962 and the US Open in 1960.

Palmer’s last PGA Tour win came in 1973 at the Bob Hope Classic. Only four other players won more PGA Tour events — Sam Snead, Nicklaus, Woods and Ben Hogan.

N ickname: The King

Date of Birth: September 10, 1929

Place of Birth: Latrobe, Pennsylvania

Date and place of death: 25 September

2016 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Nationality: USA

Played professionally: 1954-2006

Career highlights: 95 titles, including 62 US

PGA Tour titles

First victory: Canadian Open, August 20,

1955

Last victory: Senior Tour Crestar Classic

September 18, 1988

MAJOR VICTORIES:

The Masters - 4 victories (1958, 1960, 1962,

1964), 2 runner-up finishes (1961, 1965)

US Open - 1 victory (1960), 4 runner-up fin-

ishes (1962, 1963, 1966, 1967)

British Open - 2 victories (1961, 1962), 1

runner-up finish (1960)

PGA Championship - 3 runner-up finishes

(1964, 1968, 1970)

Ryder Cup: 6 victories in six appearances as

a player (1961, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1971, 1973)

ARNOLD PALMER FACTFILE

Lekhwiya set early pace The Peninsula

DOHA: The Qatar Stars League season is taking a backseat, ahead of Russia 2018 World Cup Qualifiers, but Djamel Belmadi’s Lekhwiya have come flying out of the traps this season scoring nine goals in just two games.

The Red Knights opened up their campaign with a compre-hensive 4-0 victory over newly promoted Muaither with two goals in either half.

While in their second tie, Lekhwiya needed a late Nam Tae Hee free kick to secure all three points against Gharafa in a rollercoaster 5-4 victory. One note of concern for head coach Djamel Belmadi will be how the Lekhwiya defense was breeched on four occasions, something that he will be certainly looking to address during the interna-tional break.

Lekhwiya strengthened sig-nificantly in the summer, and the signing of Moroccan inter-national Yusef El Arabi looks to be a strong investment from the Lekhwiya management. The

former Granada man is tailor made for Lekhwiya and has set-tled well at the club, grabbing three goals in three starts for the Red Knights.

Likewise the club has brought back two youngsters who are primed for a big debut season with Lekhwiya. Young striker Almoez Ali scored his first ever QSL goal of the season in the victory over Muaither, along with midfielder Assim Madibo who has enjoyed some impressive cameo’s from the bench. The Qatari youth interna-tionals will have to step up this year and will form a vital part of the squad if Lekhwiya are to com-pete on all fronts.

Finally Lekhwiya are enjoying fine early season form from mid-fielder Nam Tae Hee. The South Korean international has been on sparkling form lately, with a man of the match performance against Al Gharafa on Saturday evening. Nam already leads the way in the scoring charts with a fine hat-trick last time out, and head coach Djamel Belmadi will be hoping for more of the same after the interna-tional break when Lekhwiya take on second placed Al Sadd in a top of the table round 3 clash.

Lekhwiya midfielder joins Al Ahli on loan The Peninsula

DOHA: Al Ahli has announced the season long loan signing of Lekhwiya midfielder Abdurah-man Mohammed.

Mohammed was previ-ously on loan last season with Al Wakrah and will be looking for some first team game time at the

Brigadiers. Ahli have been busy in the summer transfer window bringing in a total of nine play-ers including professional players Sayed Adnan and Wilfried Yessoh.

Al Ahli will now begin prep-arations in earnest for their third round match against Al Wakrah on the 15th of September. So far Luka Bonačić’s side has registered an opening day victory against Al Gharafa and a defeat to Al Sadd.

Iraqi defender Rehema returns to Al Wakrah The Peninsula

DOHA: Al Wakrah have been handed an injury boost ahead of their QSL third round clash against Al Ahli which will be played on October 15.

Iraqi defender Ali Rehema has been cleared to resume training with the Blue Waves after suffering a heel injury just before the start of the QSL sea-son, in a friendly match against Al Rayyan.

The knock has kept the former Iraqi international on the sidlines for Wakrah’s first two games of the season. Both matches saw Mauricio Larriera’s side lose 2-1 to El Jaish and Al Kharaitiyat respectively.

The return of Rehema will be seen as a timely boost for Wakrah, who are looking to register their first points of the QSL season.

In other team news, Wak-rah head coach has yet to decide if his squad will take part in any friendly matches during the three week break in QSL action.

Lekhwiya players celebrate after the penalty shoot-out which ensured their victory against Al Sadd in the Emir Cup final played at Jassim Bin Hamad Stadium in this file photo.

Qatar handball team looks for glory at Asian Beach Games QNA

DA NANG, Vietnam: Qatar’s handball team is keen to retain their title at the prestigious Asian Beach Games when they began their campaign against India yes-terday.

The national handball team is pooled in group, A alongside Paki-stan, Bahrain, Thailand and India, while group B includes hosts Viet-nam, Oman, Japan, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

An estimated 3.000 athletes from 45 countries and territories, including 350 competitors from Vietnam, rivalling in 14 categories

In these prestigious Games, Qatar sport teams are due to compete in seven games includ-ing football, handball, volleyball, basketball, athletics, wrestling and swimming.

The ABG5 are featuring 14 sports, 22 disciplines and 178 events. The logo represents sand and waves in the shape of youthful and energetic athletes, while the mascot features a swift let - a dis-tinctive bird of Vietnam’s southern central coast.

Worrall to get AustralianODI debut Reuters

JOHANNESBURG: Australia fast bowler Daniel Worrall will make his one-day international debut in Tuesday’s one-off match against Ireland at Willowmore Park in Benoni, South Africa, captain Steve Smith said yesterday.

“He has worked very hard and he’s improved a lot over the last couple of years. I think he’s got a lot stronger and bowling with good pace and good shape,” Smith told a news conference.

“This series will be a good challenge for him, with Ireland tomorrow and then South Africa in their conditions.”

Worrall is one of three uncapped fast bowlers Australia have included in a 14-man squad for the warm-up game against the Irish and then a five-match ODI series against South Africa, starting on Friday. Joe Mennie and Chris Tremain are the other two.

“All the new quicks that are here have come a long way in the last couple of years, they’ve really improved and put their names up. It’s a good opportunity to see how they do under pressure against a good South African batting line-up,” added Smith.

Warrican in West Indies Squad AFP

DUBAI: Left-arm spinner Jomel Warrican was yesterday named in the West Indies’ 15-man squad for the upcoming Test series against Pakistan in the United Arab Emir-ates.

Warrican was added to the 14 players chosen for the squad for the third and fourth tests against India last month.

The three-match series opens with the two countries’ first ever day/night fixture using the pink ball at the Dubai Inter-national Cricket Stadium, from October 13.

The second match is at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi starting October 21, with the closing test at Sharjah Cricket Stadium from October 30.

Tuilagi set to miss autumn TestsAFP

LONDON: Star centre Manu Tuilagi is set to miss England’s autumn Tests against South Africa, Australia, Argen-tina and Fiji with a groin injury, his Leicester club said on Sunday.

The 25-year-old has not played since the first game of the English Pre-miership season and the Tigers’ director of rugby Richard Cockerill believes he will be out for another “six to eight weeks”.

“He has still got a tight groin. We are hoping he will be back on the field within six to eight weeks,” said Cock-erill. “He is a world-class player. He doesn’t want to be injured, we don’t want him to be injured. We want him on the field.”

England take on South Africa at Twickenham on November 12 before facing Fiji, Argentina and Australia.

Manu Tuilagi

The golf “King” whose career highlights include 95 titles, with 62 US PGATour wins, dies

Golf legend and former Masters champion Arnold Palmer speaks at a news conference at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, in this April 3, 2007, file photo.

Golf legend Arnold Palmer passes away at 87

PAGE | 21 PAGE | 23

India seals win in historic

500th Test

TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2016 • 25 DHUL HIJJA 1437

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

@peninsulaqatar @peninsula_qatarthepeninsulaqatar

Laudrup set to take charge atAl Rayyan

AFP

DOHA: Danish football star Michael Laudrup, who guided Qatar Stars League (QSL) giants to title glory a little over a year ago, is set to return for his coach-ing second stint.

According to Al Rayyan website, 52-year-old Laudrup is set to replace Jorge Fossati who was named Qatar coach on Saturday.

The former Barcelona and Real Madrid star, in his one year in Qatar, helped Lekhwiya to QSL title in the 2014-15 season.

Al Rayyan, who resume training today for their third round of QSL action, will wait on Laudrup to arrive in Qatar and sign the contract later this week.

According to a report on Al Kass website, the statement read: “Mr Laudrup had enjoyed success with Lekhwiya helping them win the QSL title and the Qatar Cup.”

“Al Rayyan officials see him as the best replacement for Fossati who has since taken charge of the Qatar national squad.”

“Al Rayyan needs a good coach and we need to prepare hard for the remain-der of the season.”

Under Laudrup, Lekhwiya reached the quarter-finals of the AFC Champi-ons League in his one season in Qatar. Laudrup was sacked by Swansea in Feb-ruary 2014.

Fossati, a hugely popular figure in Qatar, guided Al Rayyan to a stunning QSL title glory earlier this year in March with five rounds to spare.

Laudrup, previously the coach at English Premier League team Swansea City, beat off competition from former Tottenham manager Christian Gross, according to AFP.

It will be his first return to man-agement since surprisingly leaving Lekhwiya last year.

Al Rayyan won their first champi-onship in over 20 years last season, and finished 14 points clear of nearest rivals El Jaish.

Currently they lie fourth in the table but only two games of the new season have been played.

Lekhwiya are top with a 100 per-cent record.

Fossati will be officially unveiled as the national coach at a press confer-ence today.

Former Barcelona and Real Madrid star to take over coaching duty from Jorge Fossati

Smiles and ‘selfies’ as Aspire Academy welcomes Rio star Barshim The Peninsula

DOHA: It was a time for smiles and ‘selfies’ as Aspire Academy yesterday wel-comed back Olympic Games star Mutaz Essa Barshim to the place where it all began for the lanky athlete.

A little over a month ago, silver medallist Barshim fin-ished behind Canada’s Derek Drouin in the men’s high jump final at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Ukraine’s Bohdan Bond-arenko claimed the bronze medal.

Aspire Academy yester-day marked the beginning of the new 2016-2017 academic year by hosting the Rio star who appeared clutching the high jump silver medal he won last month.

Barshim was welcomed by the Academy students including the 56 new stu-dent-athletes at the Academy’s Auditorium, sharing the highs and lows on his journey to Olympic glory to help inspire young athletes to follow in his footsteps as they undertake

a variety of sporting pro-grammes at the Academy.

Barshim was welcomed by Aspire Academy Deputy Director General, Ali Salem Afifa and Aspire Academy management team, in addition to a number of student-ath-letes, coaches and staff.

Speaking at the event, Barshim said: “It’s good to be back here where it all started, at Aspire Academy, which I consider to be my second home. The Academy, it’s world-class facilities unlike any other I’ve seen through-out my many travels, has equipped me to be where I am today. It’s a great hon-our to be greeted with such applause and it feels great to make my country proud by bringing home its first Olym-pic silver medal. I hope my presence here today inspires fellow student-athletes to work hard and take advan-tage of what the Academy has to offer, to achieve incredible results.”

He told the new student-athletes: “Don’t be afraid of failure as it will help you learn. Don’t overthink, show dedication, get plenty of rest,

and proactively seek your coach’s guidance to achieve your best possible results. Dream big and aim high, Olympic glory and world records comes from hard work, dedication and great team around you.”

Afifa said: “We are incredibly proud to see one of our bright students rise at an international level. Aspire Academy is always striving to provide the best facilities, coaches and education to help our student-athletes achieve their maximum potential. We hope to see more of them achieve great results at major international tournaments in line with the Academy’s objectives to help Qatar ele-vate its international portfolio in the sporting arena.”

This new academic year 2016-2017, which has a total number of 265 student-athletes, marked the first academic year after receiving the Accreditation by the Coun-cil of International Schools

Student-athletes were accepted after successfully completing the elaborate Tal-ent Identification process of the Academy.

Al Rayyan’s new Danish coach, former Barcelona and Real Madrid star Michael Laudrup.

The Peninsula

DOHA: New coach Jorge Fossati, on Sunday named the squad for Qatar’s 2018 FIFA qualifying match against Korea which will take place on Octo-ber 6.

The new coach has ignored some popular names but included a few new faces in the 26-member squad. Qatar host Serbia in an international friendly on Thursday, the first game under their new coach, ahead of the game against Korea. The October 6 fixture will be followed by the next qualifier against Syria on October 11.

The Qatari team took part in their first training session under the guidance of Fossati. Current Qatar Stars League leaders Lekhwiya lead the way with 8 players in the national squad, including midfielders Ismaeel Mohammed and Karim Boudiaf whilst Ali Afif also received a call up for the first time in over a year.

Al Sadd has contributed seven players to the Al Anabi squad includ-ing regulars Ali Asad and national team captain Hassan Haydoos.

Fossati also turned to his former club Al Rayyan to pick the trio of

Saad AL Hadjri in goal along with attacker Sebastian Soria and Rodrigo Tabata. Meanwhile, QFA President Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Thani urged Qatar players to keep their confidence going, ahead of their crucial match against Korea. QFA President watched Qatar play-ers in action during a training session on Sunday and was accompanied by Khalifa Khamis Al Thawadi.

He also met with Fossati and his backroom staff members and addressed the players and urged them to be ‘positive’ for their forth-coming matches.

Fossati names squad ahead of qualifier

Lacoumet Amin, Ahmed Yasser, Mohamed

Musa, Karim Boudiaf, Louise Martin, Ismail

Mohamed, Moiz Ali, Ali Afif, Mahdi Ali, Abdul

Aziz Hatem, Alam Muftah, Mohamed Juma,

Yusuf Ahmed, Ahmed Abdel Maqsood,

Bualem Khoukhy, Saad Al Sheeb, Pedro, Ib-

rahim Magid, Abdul Kareem, Mohamed Ka-

sola, Ali Asad, Hassan Al Haydos, Saoud Al

Hajri, Rodrigo Tabata, Sebastian Soria, Khal-

ifa Abu Bakr, Akram Afif, Meshal Abdullah,

Khalid Muftah, Mohamed Muntari and Mo-

hamed Abdulah. Coach: Jorge Fossati

QATAR SQUAD

Qatar players train under the watchful eyes of coach Jorge Fossati

Star athlete Mutaz Essa Barshim takes a selfie with students and officials at the Aspire Academy yesterday.

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