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Volume 22 | Number 7245 | 2 RiyalsSunday 6 August 2017 | 14 Dhul-Qa’Da 1438 www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

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Turkey and Qatar will hold joint naval drills today and tomorrow, as part of a two-stage joint exercise amid the ongoing diplomatic crisis between Doha and several other Arab states, Anadolu agency reported.

CRISIS TIMELINE

June 5Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt

sever ties with Qatar. In response, Qatar says

there is “no justification for the cutting of

ties”. Four countries also declare flights to

and from Qatar will be stopped within a day.

June 7Kuwait’s Emir HH Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad

Al Jaber Al Sabah arrives in Qatar. Turkish

exporters say they are ready to step in and

supply necessary food items for Qatar. The

Turkish Parliament passes special law to send

troops to Qatar.

June 9Blockading countries threaten its citizens

with dire consequences for expressing

sympathy with Qatar on social media.

June 11Qatar declares it will not expel people from

the blockading countries.

June 12Qatar’s Foreign Minister denounces sanctions

as “unfair” and “illegal”.

June 13Qatar says any talks to shut down Al Jazeera

will remain off the table.

June 14Qatar Airways announces that none of its

international routes have been affected by

the blockade.

June 15Qatar signs $12bn deal with US for buying

F-15 jets. Qatar’s NHRC releases shocking

report that more than 13,000 Qatari citizens

have been affected by the illegal blockade.

June 23Four blockading nations issue a set

of 13 demands.

June 24Qatar rejects the 13-point demand

list terming it “neither reasonable nor

actionable”. US Secretary of State Rex

Tillerson puts his weight behind Qatar’s

cause, saying the demands on Qatar were

very difficult to meet.

June 30Qatar’s Defence Minister HE Khaled Al Attiyah

says the illegal blockade on Qatar is a

declaration of war.

July 1Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin

Abdulrahman Al Thani said in Rome that

the list of 13 demands ‘was meant to be

rejected.’

July 3Kuwait seeks an extension of 48 hours for

Qatar to respond to Saudi-bloc demands and

it is granted.

July 8British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson

arrives in Qatar to try to defuse Gulf

tensions.

July 9Qatar decides to form Compensation

Claims Committee to seek

compensation for damages from the

blockade.

July 11Tillerson arrives in Doha for talks to try

and defuse the situation. Qatar signs a

landmark deal with the US to combat

terrorism.

July 17The Washington Post breaks the scoop

story revealing that the UAE was

behind hacking of Qatar News Agency.

Egypt ends visa-free entry for Qatari

citizens.

July 19Blockading countries turn their 13

demands to ‘six broad principles’.

July 20Qatar provides evidence that the QNA

website was hacked from the UAE.

July 21Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al

Thani addresses the nation on TV and

also issues a decree amending some

provisions of a law on ‘combating

terrorism.’

July 29After several Qatari pilgrims face

trouble in performing Haj, Qatar

accuses Saudi Arabia of politicising

the Haj.

July 30Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain

speak of a possible dialogue with Qatar

for the first time, but maintain conditions,

in the Manama meeting.

July 31Qatar lodges a formal complaint with

the WTO over the blockade.

August 2Qatar seals a €5bn deal for navy vessels

from Italy.

August 3Qatar decides to grant permanent

residency status to expatriates, subject

to them fulfilling some criteria.

August 4German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel

said he and US Secretary of State Rex

Tillerson agree on rejecting the isolation

of Qatar under siege for two months.

62 days on, Qatar defeats siege

Irfan Bukhari The Peninsula

By finding new trade partners, exploring new import channels, opening new maritime lines, activating

domestic production, Qatar has defeated the nefarious designs of blockading countries to create a crisis in Qatar.

Sixty-two days after the siege, normal life goes on in Qatar with no scarcity of food items. Rather the siege has proved a blessing in disguise with Qatar ensuring speedy completion of its projects to ensure self-sufficiency.

Immediately after imposition of blockade on June 5 by the three Gulf countries, all imports from those countries were halted. To address the temporary shortage of dairy and poultry products in markets, Turkish and

Iranian food products hit the shelves of retail outlets.

Turkish exports to Qatar increased 51.5% in June compared to the previous month (May 2017) and reached $53.5m. Food, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, poultry and water topped the list of Turkish exports to Qatar. Till the second week of July, Turkey had sent

197 cargo planes, 16 trucks and one ship to Qatar to meet its daily needs since the crisis started.

During the siege, a Qatari company announced airlifting 4,000 cows from Germany, US and Australia to address country’s domestic milk demand in face of a Saudi-led blockade. A number of shipments have

already arrived in Qatar.Apart from imports from

Turkey, Iran, India and other countries, many national products like Baladna, Dandy and Ghadeer were, and are available in the local markets to serve daily needs of the residents.

→ Continued on page 2

Mohammed Osman The Peninsula

One of the region’s biggest diplo-matic crises in decades which was sparked by the hacking of Qatar

News Agency (QNA) around midnight of May 24 is more than two months old now.

Hackers posted on the official news agency a fake story quoting top Qatari officials, give an excuse to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt to sever relations with Qatar on June 5. The Saudi-led bloc tried to mobilise the region against Qatar pushing small and marginal states like Mauritania, Comoros and Maldives to join them in their isolation of Qatar by forcing them into sub-mission. The baseless campaign against Qatar and unjustified harsh decisions were seen by GCC citizen and Arabs from the

beginning as not falling in line with the laws, customs or brotherhood and neigh-bourliness ties, specially because the measure was taken during the Holy month of Ramadan.

The siege countries announced within less than two weeks of the hack-ing, the embargo on Qatar. Flights were barred from their airspace, borders were sealed and threats were made but Qatar struck a reconciliatory tone by refusing all kinds of escalation and kept on call-ing for dialogue.

Al Jazeera’s offices and all media out-lets were blocked including internet access to Qatari news websites. The siege countries also gave Qatari citizens 14 days to leave their territory and banned their own citizens from travelling to or residing in Qatar.

→ Continued on page 2

Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani addressing the nation recently.

Blockading nations isolated, not Qatar

Unjust blockade steeled country Amna Pervaiz Rao The Peninsula

Citizens, diplomats, and expats in Qatar who have proudly weathered the

62-day unjust siege imposed by the neighbouring countries think that the blockade has made Qatar stronger.

Talking to The Peninsula, Hafiz Junaid Amir Sial, Commu-nity Welfare Attach’e at the Embassy of Pakistan said: “Do not count the days, make the days count what Qatar has done since the beginning of the unjust siege imposed on it by Saudi Ara-bia, Bahrain, UAE and Egypt.

The siege has become a

blessing in disguise and has made the State of Qatar stand tall in world political arena. The diplo-matic crisis has polished the nation. It has revealed wisdom, resilience, farsightedness and quick shift of approach in terms of finding new credible partners, supply chains and spreading investment portfolios.”

“The crisis has united the Qatari nation in a more dynamic way with a new feeling and sense of nationalism whereby each and every individual whether he is a Qatari or non Qatari has joined the hands of the wise leadership to counter the challenge of the siege.

→ Continued on page 2

Normal life goes on in Qatar with no scarcity of food items. The siege has proved a blessing in disguise with Qatar ensuring speedy completion of its projects to ensure self-sufficiency.

Siege fails toderail Qatar’s growth plans P|2

Healthyresponse byhealth sector P|2

On 24 May 2017 at 12:13am Qatar News Agency (QNA) was hacked and a fabricated news and statement attributed to Emir H H Shiekh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, was posted on the website. Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad Al Thani, CEO of Qatar Media Corporation, denied the false statement attributed to Emir and published on QNA website by hackers, stressing that the cyber crime was committed by an unknown entity. Investigations confirmed that the agency was hacked and false statements attributed to Emir. The FBI team investigated the security breach by hackers and further investigation revealed the involvement of UAE. “The Washington Post revealed the involvement of UAE and senior Emirati officials in the hacking of QNA,” Qatar’s government communication office said in a statement on Monday (July 17).

02 SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017HOME

Minister of Foreign Affairs H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Japan, Kentaro Sonoura, yesterday. The Foreign Minister briefed the Japanese official on the latest developments in the Gulf crisis and all the illegal measures taken against Qatar by the siege countries.

Foreign Minister meets Japanese PM’s Special Adviser Emir greets Rwanda PresidentQNA

Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent yesterday a cable

of congratulations to Presi-dent Paul Kagame, on his re-election as President of the Republic of Rwanda.

Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani sent a simlar cable.

Qatar’s growth plans on track despite siegeSatish Kanady The Peninsula

In two months’ time, Qatar has proved that the block-ade slapped on it by

Saudi-led allies has failed to impact the economic and finan-cial fundamentals of the country.

Qatar’s liquefied natural gas and oil exports were hardly hit by the blockade. Nearly five weeks after the bloc had laid siege to Qatar, the country’s newly established oil firm North Coil Company (NOC) success-fully loaded the first tanker of crude oil from Al-Shaheen oil field. Qatar’s exports of LNG to key Asian destinations includ-ing Japan, India, South Korea and China were also not affected by the blockade.

Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and produces up to 77 million tonnes of gas each year.

The monthly figures of the value of exports of domestic goods, released by the Minis-try of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS) sug-gested Qatar’s exports of LNG -the key to its financial health - were not hurt in June. June exports of petroleum gases and other gaseous hydrocar-bons climbed 15.8 percent, from a year earlier, to QR11.88bn.

In June, Qatar’s trade bal-ance showed a surplus of QR12.5bn, an increase of about

QR4.9bn or 63.6 percent year-on-year, and increased by nearly QR1.7bn or 15.3 percent compared to the pre-blockade month of May 2017.

With Qatar developing alternate shipping routes, ana-lysts believe that the country can function fairly well even if the sanctions continue, and still expect it to be one of the Gulf’s best-performing economies this year.

Despite the blockade, ana-lysts project a brighter outlook for Qatari economy. National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) in its eco-nomic update on Qatar, noted last week that the country’s growth is expected to pick up this year. The growth is expected to accelerate to 3.1 percent in 2018.

The blockade has failed to influence the financial market sentiments of Qatar as well. The Qatar stock market staged a remarkable turnaround in July to emerge as the second best performing market in the GCC.

Qatar building food security facilitiesContinued from page 1

Few days back, in a statement to QNA, Assistant Undersecretary for Agriculture and Fisheries Affairs at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment Sheikh Dr Faleh bin Nasser Al Thani said that new livestock production projects in Qatar included Baladna livestock farm, which targeted 40 percent share in dairy products’ market in the country.

Hassad Food has recently announced the launch ‘Iktefa’ initiative that aims to turn unproductive local farms into productive ones and increase production. Under the initiative, Hassad will support local farm owners by purchasing their yearly production of fresh veg-etables and fruits.

The Turkish government has also signed a deal with Qatar to strengthen co-operation in the agricultural and livestock sectors.

Qatar is also building strate-gic food security facilities and warehouses at Hamad Port

having capacity of providing stockpile of processed and stored food for 3 million people for two years as well as exporting food stuff to regional countries.

Qatari companies are also set to start joint ventures with foreign companies to boost local production. Two days ago, 88 Qatari and 200 Turkish compa-nies met in İzmir to develop commercial relations between the two countries. The first result was an agreement to launch trade between Kocaeli and Doha. To counter the effects of blockade, Doha and Tehran are also willing to discuss land trade routes.

The role of Mwani and Hamad Port has been pivotal in knocking out the challenges posed by the blockading coun-tries and siege.

Hamad Port has successfully broken the siege imposed on Qatar since June 5 with the opening of five new shipping lines. Turkish Economy Minis-ter Nihat Zeybekci said on

Friday. “We’re thinking about alternatives for land trade routes with Qatar but the easiest way is passing through Iran,” Zey-bekci told Anadolu Agency.

In a statement to QNA, the Director of Hamad Port, Cap-tain Abdul Aziz Al Yafei recently said that Hamad Port’s new lines connect directly to several ports in the region and beyond such as Sohar and Salalah in Oman, Mundra and Nhava Sheva in India, Izmir in Turkey and other ports served by these interna-tional companies from all over the world.

He pointed out that Qatar Ports Management Company (Mwani Qatar) received in the first half of this year up to 470,000 tonnes of general cargo and about 407,000 heads of livestock, in addition to 449,000 tonnes of gabbro and building materials. The Ministry of Trans-port and Communications has also awarded the contract of part one of the second phase of the Hamad Port for $2bn.

Fazeena Saleem The Peninsula

The Ministry of Public Health and other health-care providers continue to

deliver all services to the public without interruption despite the two month long blockade imposed on the country.

Services provided by the health sector have not been affected and the Ministry con-tinues to implement all health projects that aim to maintain sustainable development of health services and increase the potential and capabilities

of the health sector.The Hamad Medical Corpo-

ration (HMC), prime healthcare provider in the country, has said there is “no risk on public health” because there is no shortage of medicines or medical supplies, due to the blockade imposed. It has assured that all health serv-ices provided by its hospitals are functioning normally and there is no shortage of medical sup-plies or medicines because of the blockade imposed. HMC has said that it has stocks of medicines and other important medical supplies for many months.

Also the Primary Health Care

Corporation (PHCC) has con-firmed that there is no shortage of drugs as well as delivery and access to medical supplies and medicine continues as usual.

Several private pharmacies, pharmaceutical experts, private hospitals and polyclinics The Peninsula spoke to at different occasions rejected the notion that the blockade had an impact on the availability of medicines by say-ing stocks of certain medicines are still available and in the meantime have started receiving medicines and medical supplies from alter-native import countries.

Within a short time of two

months private hospitals and polyclinics have started receiv-ing medicines from new import countries. Companies which bring pharmaceutical products as well as some private health-care providers have started to import medicines from countries including the UK and Jordan.

Also the blockade or change of import countries has not made an impact on the medicines prices. While patients say that they had a perception of short-age of medicines and that prices might increase but it turned out to be wrong both at private and public hospitals.

Healthy response by health sector

With Qatar developing alternative shipping routes, analysts believe that the country can function fairly well even if the sanctions continue.

Continued from page 1The hardworking people of

Qatar have shown to the world with strong faith that they have the capacity to come out as win-ners and real champions,” he added.

Eng Mohammed Mahdi Al Yami, a resident and Executive Director of Qatar Youth Hostels Association, expressed his feel-ings towards the failure of the countries which have imposed the unjust siege with these words: “This blockade is a com-plete failure as there is a lot of solidarity among Qataris and expats living in Qatar. The blockade, actually, has given us a chance to discover our r e s o u r c e s a n d

ensure sustainability. Qatar at all levels, whether it was polit-ical or at public handled the crisis amazingly without criti-cising and disrespecting our neighbouring countries.”

Construction companies in the country have sufficient stock of building materials for the com-ing months and have overcome the effect of the blockade.

General Manager at Re-bar Steel and Fabrication company said: “As a building materials supplier, we have overcome effects of blockade quickly because the government has provided full support and facil-ities to adopt different measures.”

“I laud Qatar’s diplomacy for

their (diplomats) timely and tire-less actions which made fabrications and false accusa-tions against Qatar fall apart,” he added.

Haroon Qureshi, a Pakistani expat for 41 years, said: “On the day the blockade was imposed I was in Pakistan and most of my friends and family started pan-icking. They told me not to go back, partly, because of the rerouting of flights but I was calm and had complete faith in the ability of the government to han-dle the crisis. I arrived in Qatar on August 3, 1976. I have seen in all my years is the ability of Qatar to maintain peace and stability no matter what the circumstances.”

Continued from page 1All of these rapid and

aggressive actions were based on miscalculation that Qatar will raise white flag immediately a fact that was understood by Qatar’s leadership. As stated by the Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani that the siege countries were “demanding that we have to surrender our sovereignty, something it would never happen”.

Doha from the first day stressed that its website was hacked and accused the UAE of being behind the hacking of its news agency, claims that FBI investigations confirmed later on and were backed by the Washington Post report.

Despite escalation meas-ures, Qatar kept calling for dialogue and begun to seek a legal means to settle the land, air and sea blockade imposed in clear violation to the interna-tional laws and regulations, international treaties and despite the separation of over 12,000 families, and heavily affected the interests of Qatari and GCC citizens.

Qatari nationals and expa-triate based in Qatar were denied access to Makkah and Madinah to perform Umrah instead forced to leave the hotels and interrupt their Umrah and now are not allowed to perform the Haj, that received many criticisms from renowned international human rights organisations, in support of Qatar. Siege countries also unleashed propaganda battle led by Al Arabiya and Sky news Abu Dhabi and state-affiliated media outlets to insult Qatar, its lead-ership and people in a desperate attempt to back the allegations about Qatar’s “support for ter-rorism”. To the extent that some Saudi journalists said that they had come under government

pressure to criticise Qatar. One Saudi editor described how offi-cials have been using a mobile phone messaging group to instruct journalists on how to shape coverage and what stories to focus on. “These are orders, not suggestions,” Financial Times quoted him as saying recently.

Under pressure of interna-tional community the siege countries presented 13 points list of allegations presented to Qatar on 22 June. “The list of 13 alle-gations was made to be rejected,” said the Qatari For-eign Minister, H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, adding that Qatar was ready to discuss any grievances.

In his first speech since the crisis merged, Emir H H Shiekh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani repeated call for dialogue stress-ing that “any solution to the crisis must be based on two principles: first, the solution should be within the framework of respect for the sovereignty and will of each State. Secondly, it should not be in a form of orders by one party against another, but rather as mutual undertakings and joint commit-ments binding to all.”

These demands were not only rejected by Qatar but seemed to be ridiculous for many in the world, including Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who questioned the list of

demands saying, “very difficult for Qatar to meet”.

Tillerson called for more realistic and usable demands. On 11 July, Tillerson signed a memorandum of understand-ing with Qatar on terrorism financing, pushing towards fur-ther consolidation of the US – Qatar ties and cooperation. German Foreign Minister Gabriel Sigmar called for the lift-ing of the blockade on Qatar describing the 13 point list as provocative calling for “serious dialogue” to resolve the crisis as stability in the region was also a matter of international interest.

Turkey’s position on this cri-sis has been patently clear from the beginning. It has rejected the measures against Qatar as ille-gal, against Islam and brotherly relations of the GCC states. The Emir thanked Turkey for “putting into force quickly a cooperation agreement signed between us and meeting our basic needs”.

Similar positions were made by UK, France and Russia and the rest of the European coun-tries. Under pressure from the international community the Saudi-led bloc retreated from the 13 point list of demands and said on July 18, they were no longer insisting Qatar comply with the demands and instead wanted it to commit to six broad “principles”.

Construction firms have sufficient stocks

Siege nations used propagandaTurkey’s position on this crisis has been pat-ently clear from the beginning. It has rejected the measures against Qatar as illegal, against Islam and brotherly relations of the GCC states. The Emir thanked Turkey for “putting into force quickly a cooperation agreement signed be-tween us and meeting our basic needs”.

QC executes 285 projectsQNA

Qatar Charity (QC) suc-cessfully implemented 285 healthcare projects

in 19 countries during the first half of this year to benefit thousands of people in these countries, a QC press state-ment said.

03SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017 HOME

The Peninsula

The Cultural Village Foundation-Katara is gearing up to host the first edition of Katara International Falcon

and Hunting Exhibition next month.

The festival, which will be held from September 20 to 24, has attracted numerous institutes specializing in falconry and hunt-ing, guaranteeing visitors a unique opportunity to get up-close and observe birds of prey.

The festival reflects Katara’s keenness to preserve and pro-mote Qatar’s rich culture and heritage by providing a world-class platform for enthusiasts and practitioners of falconry and associated activities.

Commenting on the exhibi-tion, Katara General Manager Dr Khalid bin Ibrahim Al Sulaiti, outlined Katara’s role in sup-porting traditional events and activities. He pointed out that such endeavors are significant as they encourage the bond between Qataris and their envi-ronment and heritage, while at the same time passing on authentic cultural values and traditions to the upcoming gen-

eration of young Qataris.He said, “Katara works

eagerly to shed light on Qatar’s identity, through its festivals, competitions and events. It also conveys a vivid picture of Qatar’s heritage by highlighting and pre-senting its unique aspects to a non-Qatari audience, both inside and outside of Qatar. Investing in culture is one of Katara’s objectives and one of its most important challenges, as it calls for investing in innovative activ-ities that enrich the Qatari cultural scene and stimulate tourism.

“We expect that the first edi-tion of the exhibition will witness

a wide range of local and inter-national participants, as this sport is considered to be the passion of many. The fact that it is held in Katara, is a matter of pride for us, as it will enhance the reputation of the Village. Katara is already renowned for its heritage-based activities and has successfully made its presence felt in the tour-ism-heritage market, in the region and beyond. By hosting this exhibition, we expect to attract diverse sectors, such as institutes that promote heritage, culture and tourism, and com-mercial organisations.”

He pointed out that necessary coordination has been held with

a number of competent author-ities in Qatar such as the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Munic-ipality and the Environment and the General Authority of Customs to provide all facilities essential to traders, falconers’ and hunt-ing weapons institutes.

It aims to support various cultural, sport and commercial sectors in hunting and falconry. In addition, the exhibition hopes to boost mutually bene-ficial relationships between amateur and veteran falcon handlers and traders, as well as to explore products and serv-ices that attract the youth towards this heritage sport.

The event will witness activ-ities like aerial shooting by Qatar Shooting Association and archery by Qatar Olympic Committee. Al-Rami Sports Club, which is associated with the Ministry of Culture and Sports, will present shooting events such as duck, deer, and rabbit shooting. The Shooting Club will also provide a specialized team to greet the public and introduce them to all shooting aspects throughout the duration of the exhibition. The exhibition is scheduled to be held at building 12 at Katara’s Wis-dom Square.

Katara to host first Falcon & Hunting expo

The Peninsula

On a walk-around for its associates, the Qatar Youth Hostels (QYH)

Association checked out the Doha Metro Project, achieved under Qatar Rail, in order to showcase the youth the immense achievements and efforts made in this mega project. Qatar Rail officials warmly welcomed the visitors and provided them with a detailed presentation on the services.

“Everyone living on this land should see the projects of our country and feel pride in its achievements, especially Doha Metro. Information on this project came only from the media. However, our visit showed us the hard work and efforts of the staff and officials of this mega project,”said Mona Abdullah Al Riyashi, of the vis-iting group. “This important visit opened our eyes to the vol-ume of the state projects, which we have to keep up with through creating other projects and reflecting on huge achieve-ments to give back to our country. Our beloved Qatar truly deserves every effort and sweat drop for the benefits and services it renders to its citizens and residents”.

Mona Al Riyashi expressed her sincerest gratitude to the QYH Association and to Wjdani Aseel Initiative for coordinat-ing and organizing the visit, which benefited everyone and manifested the Country’s meg-aprojects, worthy of all praise and support.

“The huge achievement and effort in this megaproject went over all my expectations. It deserves all the commendation

and support since it already stresses the vision of our beloved Country on its journey to global service large-scale projects.” said Tamader Nasser Mashhadi, expressing her pride in this great attainment, which will create a quantum leapfrog in the transportation system in the State and work out serious traffic problems. It is also a leading step forward ahead that will optimally employ our resources. “The explanation provided by the officials on this project and its significant work is a source of pride in Qatar’s vision and wise leadership on providing all the amenities to its nationals and residents”.

“I learned about lots of things and wonderful details about the project and its sta-tions, services and luxurious welfare rendered to its users. This great achievement, which will be completed soon, is a big stride towards globalism on the land of Qatar.”, said Mariam Naji Al Sayegh, who gave her thanks to the QYH Association for organizing this visit, giving her a good opportunity to see this giant project on site. “I took great advantage of viewing the project and learning about its details and rendered services, along with the role it plays in creating a better future for the coming generations through rendering prosperity and mit-igating traffic congestion”.

A major objective of the QYH Association is to introduce the Qatari youth to the most prominent attainments and projects developed in Qatar. The Association is further extending its deepest thanks to everyone who helped to turn this visit into a success, includ-ing Qatar Rail

QYH members visit Doha Metro Project

QYH members during a visit to Doha Metro Project.

Port Louis

QNA

The Prime Minister of the Republic of Mauritius Pravind Jugnauth met yes-

terday with the Cultural Adviser at the Emiri Diwan and the State of Qatar’s candidate for the Director-General post at the United Nations Educational, Sci-entific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) H E Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kuwari.

The Prime Minister of Mau-ritius expressed his appreciation for the State of Qatar and his commitment to maintaining excellent ties between Doha and Port Louis, and advancing it in different fields.

Al Kuwari presented to the Prime Minister the details of his plan for a new start for Unesco. He also provided an overview of the nature of the financial crisis facing the organisation, and his view regarding it.

He believes that the crisis cannot be overcome without dealing with its political back-ground, stressing that it must be addressed to help Unesco regain its role. He also stressed that

Unesco’s commitment to pro-moting education and culture makes it an important tool in the fight against terrorism.

His Excellency then dis-cussed his proposal to organise an international day in memory of victims of terrorism and establishing a fund to support small enterprises.

Al Kuwari also stressed the prominence of Africa in his vision, given his knowledge of the continent since he first worked there with the UN. The Prime Minister of Mauritius wished Qatar’s candidate well on his mission.

Al Kuwari also met with Mauritius’ Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Dwarka Canabady. Al Kuwari gave a presentation of his vision to dealing with the severe crisis that UNESCO is facing, especially the political and financial aspects of it.

The Secretary-General asked His Excellency on the promi-nence of the African continent in his programme, and the importance of documenting the continent’s heritage, wishing his excellency well.

The Prime Minister of Mauritius, Pravind Kumar Jugnauth (left) with H E Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kawari, the Cultural Adviser at the Emiri Diwan in Mauritius yesterday.

Mauritius PM meets Al Kuwari

Amna Pervaiz Rao The Peninsula

Leading media group in Qatar, Dar Al Sharq signed a partnership agreement with Span-ish media group Prisa

to launch the first Arabic foot-ball content in Qatar through the website “as. com”.

The agreement was signed by Dar Al Sharq Group’s CEO, Abdul Latif bin Abdullah Al Mah-moud and Spanish Prisa Group’s Chief Executive Officer, Manuel Mirat. It plans to tap into the entire Arab region to benefit from the sports content provided by the Spanish group in Spain, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Peru, The United States, Argentina and the United Kingdom.

During the event Al Mah-moud said:“This agreement opens the door for both parties to meet our customers’ needs in Qatar and the Arab region, espe-cially in light of the ongoing preparations for hosting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which is the most important event in the

region.” “This requires us (in the media sector) to keep pace with the latest developments through providing world standard sports content to familiarise with Qatar and Arab world along with the efforts exerted by Qatar to host this major international event,” he added. He mentioned that the partnership is expected to achieve one of Dar Al Sharq’s strategic objectives to acquire a share of the digital advertising market in the Arab world, add-ing: “We will obtain it through the site’s expected visits to watch distinctive sport content.”

Spanish Ambassador to Qatar, Ignacio Escober told The Peninsula: “ Speaking about the sports in Arab world only state of Qatar highlights, due to 2022

world cup. Spain is a highly qual-ified country in terms of sports, football in particular. We have very good players from Spain playing for Qatari clubs and many experts as coaches as well.

“PRISA Group already has a connection with Qatar ‘Dar Al Sharq Group’, as they are part of the shares belong to this group. It was natural that this relation-ship expanded in sports field,” he added.

On his part, Mirat said: “We are overwhelmed to partnership with leading media group in Qatar, Dar AI Sharq. Now we can reach out to four hundred mil-lion people with our Arabic content. We are building a plat-form step by step in next three months, as we are officially

launching in December. We are producing quality content on daily basis and we will continue to do the same in future.”

“The AS Group has selected Qatar because it is well aware of the great opportunities that exist

here, which have attracted glo-bal firms to the Qatari market, especially that the Gulf state has great information infrastructure and advanced services in the technology sector. Additionally, It is at the forefront of the Arab

countries in terms of Internet use, digital transformation and transition to knowledge econ-omy, not to mention the opportunities expected in the light of hosting the World Cup 2022 in Doha,” he added.

Dar Al Sharq signs partnership deal with Prisa

Abdul Latif bin Abdullah Al Mahmoud (third right), CEO of Dar Al Sharq Group; Manuel Mirat (second left), CEO of Spanish Priza Group; with Hassan Thawadi (centre), Secretary-General of Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy; Ramy Salama (third left), Ambassador of Spain to Qatar; Juan Canton (left), Diario AS; and Alfredo Relano (second right), Editor-in-Chief of AS; pose after a partnership agreement signing at the Oryx Rotana Hotel in Doha on Thursday evening. Pic: Salim Matramkot / The Peninsula

The agreement plans to tap into the entire Arab region to benefit from the sports content provided by the Spanish group in Spain, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Peru, The United States, Argentina and the United Kingdom.

04 SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017HOME

The Peninsula

Two dozen students who will enter Texas A&M Univer-sity at Qatar’s engineering

degree programmes in Fall are focusing on advancing their mathematics skills this summer ahead of their first semester as university students.

The students are participat-ing in the three-week Pathways for Retention in Engineering Pro-grammes (PREP) initiative organised by Texas A&M at Qatar’s Office of Development, Engagement and Outreach.

PREP aims to provide stu-dents a solid foundation in mathematics, which is essential in sciences and engineering, to support the academic success of incoming engineering students.

The program comprises intense instruction in mathematical top-ics such as functions, trigonometry and linear systems. For the second consecutive year, the course is being taught by Dr Sandra Nite from Texas A&M’s main campus in College Station, Texas, USA.

“Our goal is to help students close any gaps between what they already know and what they need to understand in engineer-ing mathematics,” Nite said. “We reinforce this knowledge with hands-on activities that illustrate the real-world application of mathematical concepts.”

Dr César O. Malavé, Dean of Texas A&M at Qatar, said that the transition between high school and college can be as challeng-ing as an engineering career.

“At Texas A&M at Qatar, we believe that preparing students for the rigors they will face in their university studies is key to their future success,” Malavé said. “We are grateful to Dr Nite for lending her expertise in pre-paring the next generation of engineering leaders who will lead Qatar’s future growth and development, and we are proud of each of these PREP students for committing to their careers and investing in their futures.”

PREP is part of the Dhia: Engineering Leaders initiative, a partnership between Texas A&M at Qatar and longtime collabo-rator Maersk Oil Qatar that aims to help young Qataris to choose — and succeed in — educational pathways in science, technology, engineering and mathematics

(STEM), which are critical to the success of the Qatar National Vision 2030.

Jowaher Al Marri, Texas A&M at Qatar’s outreach and devel-opment manager, said many students come to university each

year suffering from “summer learning loss,” meaning that stu-dents lose much of the information acquired in previ-ous years.

“PREP offers students excit-ing opportunities to apply

knowledge in order to improve their understanding,” she said. “This prepares students for the intensity of engineering studies at Texas A&M at Qatar so they can pursue their degree with confidence.”

The Peninsula

Ooredoo has announced yesterday that it will offer three summer promo-

tions for its Nojoom members with the renowned hotel, Inter-Continental Doha.

Thanks to the promotions, which have been designed to provide special offers for Nojoom and Al Nokhba members stay-ing in Qatar this summer, Members will be rewarded with double points for spending time with family and friends at the

hotel. All Nojoom Members will earn double Nojoom Points on spa treatments at Spa InterCon-tinental, which covers state-of-the-art facilities and innovative treatments and packages.

Members will also earn dou-ble Nojoom Points in all restaurants including the famous Belgian Café, Mykonos, Coral, Lava and Paloma. Al Nokbha Members can benefit from 15% off on the hotels ‘Best Flex Rate’, 40% off Spa treatments of 60-minutes and above, and late

checkout. All promotions are valid from now until 31 August 2017. Nojoom Members earn one Nojoom Point for every QR 1 spent on food, beverage and spa services at the hotel, and redemptions start from just 4,000 Nojoom Points for a QR 100 voucher.

This is the latest dedicated promotion aimed for Nojoom Members in 2017, as the loyalty programme continues to expand its range of rewards for mem-bers. For more information on all Nojoom partners and how to

enrol into Nojoom, customers can visit the Nojoom page of the

Ooredoo website at www.oore-doo.qa/nojoom, download the

Ooredoo App or stop by any Ooredoo shop.

InterContinental Doha & Ooredoo launch Nojoom promotion

The Peninsula

Anyone who is travelling this summer is bound to appreciate reliable, clev-

erly designed travel gear. The MINI Lifestyle Collection includes a wealth of products designed to make the journey as enjoyable as arriving at the destination, with a colourful range of robust and chic luggage.

Keeping the essentials neatly and safely stowed away

Shopping splurge, business trip, Summer vacation or long-haul journey, the new MINI Lifestyle Collection covers every base with its extensive line-up

of bags and suitcases. Alongside their striking

design, the luggage items also offer excellent functionality and a host of well thought-out details. Practical compartments in the bags and the intelligently designed interior of the suitcases provide flexible storage for keeping everything tidy.

The products’ design is pared down to the essentials, yet always surprises in recognisa-ble MINI fashion, with contrasting shapes, colours and materials. One of the Collec-tion’s signature features is its splashes of colour – the famil-iar and much-loved MINI ‘colour block’. Aqua and lemon shades

combine with black, white and grey tones for a compelling col-our scheme to smarten up any trip. MINI Lifestyle items are available in MINI West Bay Area Showroom, Doha, Alfardan Automobiles, Qatar.

Big line-up of items at MINI Lifestyle Collection

The students of Texas A&M University honing up their skills at a training session.

The Peninsula

Aspetar, the world’s leading specialised orthopaedic and sports medicine hospital, has

unveiled its upgraded artificial alti-tude acclimatisation facility. The acclimatisation facility is now the first fully-integrated dormitory in the world, enabling teams to ben-efit from advanced high altitude recovery practices in a highly com-fortable environment.

The state-of-the-art facility houses 25 bedrooms for single and double occupancy as well as two spacious common living areas, each with capacity to allow 8-10 people to relax in comfort. Both the bedrooms and living areas are capable of creating an artificial envi-ronment equivalent to 5500 meters in altitude, double the performance of the previous system and slightly more than Base Camp on the South side of Mount Everest.

The new dormitory is fitted with an upgraded

altitude engine that incorporates a completely new nitrogen generation system and a state-of-the-art control panel, whilst maintaining the existing bedrooms and technical areas.

At full capacity, it takes approximately 4-5 hrs for all rooms to achieve the maximum target alti-tude of 5500 metres. Each room can be individually programmed from a central panel within the control room, however, and when fewer rooms are in operation, it takes even less time to reach the maximum altitude.

The facility includes numerous safety features, including a CO2 monitoring system and an emer-gency shut-off system. The facility also uses advanced technology that enables conditions to be monitored remotely from anywhere in the world. Commenting on the launch of the new dormitory, Dr Mohamed Ghaith Al Kuwari, Act-ing Director General of Aspetar, said: “Aspetar has upgraded this dormitory based on its ten year experience to become one of the most prominent service providers of sports medicine and perform-ance development in the world. Hypoxic training is one of the well-known practices that has been utilised to enhance athlete performance during competitions. This upgraded facility is one of the world’s largest and houses up to 50 athletes at a time, allowing entire teams to benefit from high altitude recovery and adapt themselves to decreased levels of oxygen.” Al Kuwari added, “Such facility will assist both local and interna-tional athletes from different disciplines, particularly runners, cyclists and triathletes and we encourage all sports federations in Qatar to benefit from this practice and the knowledge of our experts.”

Aspetar upgrades altitude acclimatisation facility

Texas A&M holds PREP

initiative for students

05SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017 HOME

The Peninsula

Mazda CX3 was crowned the Best Small Compact SUV by Arab M o t o r s a n d

Maqina annual “Off-Road Awards” where over a dozen of SUVs were put through their paces.

The award was presented to Sheikh Ahmad bin Nasser Al Thani, President Director of National Car Company (the sole agent for Mazda vehicles in Qatar), at a function at the Mazda showroom in Fereej Al Nasr jointly by the representa-tives of Arab Motors and Maqina magazines.

Receiving the award, Sheikh Ahmad bin Nasser Al Thani said, “This award is a recognition for the concept behind the creation of the new Mazda CX3 and we thank Arab Motors & Maqina for their unique initiative. For the very first time, new generation Mazda thinking is combined with enhanced capability and city-friendly size. Natural agil-ity comes from SKYACTIV TECHNOLOGY, along with out-standing fuel economy. MZD Connect brings your online world along for the ride while i-ACTIVSENSE integrates intel-ligent safety. It has already become a sensation among the vibrant and adventurous younger generation in Qatar.”

Arab Motors and Maqina are amongst the leading automo-tive magazine forces in the region and their Off-Road Spe-cial Edition 2017 showcases the most powerful, modern and innovative SUVs of today go head-to-head in a number of challenges, winners eventually emerge and are crowned.

Tested in Qatar, the CX3 was

placed under enormous stress throughout the competition. The CX3 Name was judged on a number of criteria, including but not limited to: performance, luxury, off-road capabilities, safety, comfort & price.

CX-3 was developed to “Create the standard for the next era.” All CX-3 models come standard with a punchy, 146-horsepower SKYACTIV-G

2.0-liter engine paired with a six-speed automatic transmis-sion, featuring Sport mode. Power is routed to either the front wheels or through all four with i-ACTIV all-wheel drive.

Available with Mazda’s i-ACTIVSENSE Technology, CX-3 uses active safety technol-ogies that support safe driving by helping the driver to recog-nize potential hazards, and pre-crash safety technologies, which help to avert collisions or reduce their severity in situ-ations where they cannot be avoided.

Mazda Radar Cruise Control (MRCC), Active Driving Display, Blind Spot Monitoring System (BSM) Rear Cross Traffic Alert (RCTA) - each of these, com-bined with Mazda’s SKYACTIV body and chassis, all working together to instill confidence and safety into drivers and passengers.

CX-3 is tailored to deliver a rich, inviting experience not just for its driver, but also for its passengers, with rear seats set slightly inboard to ease conver-sation between front and rear

passengers. It is a vehicle with interior details that look and feel as elegant as they are for-ward-thinking, from the dark red seat stitching to the soft touch materials. And it is a vehi-cle that carries itself with style, with a long hood, short over-hangs, large wheels and a slim cabin, presenting proportions that lend themselves to a sense of strength and vitality, convey-ing a sense of motion even when standing still.

CX-3 top grade model come equipped with 18-inch alloy wheels, power mirrors, auto-dimming Interior Rear View Mirror, premium leather seats, a seven-inch MAZDA CONNECT touchscreen infotainment sys-tem with voice commands, Navigation system, Bluetooth connectivity for smart phone and audio streaming, a USB input, keyless entry, push-but-ton start, Bose® Sound System with 7-speakers among a long list of other features.

For more information, visit Mazda showroom, call 44435965/44417859 or visit www.mazda-qatar.com

Mazda CX3 bags prestigious award

Officials with the award.

The Peninsula

AFG College with the Uni-versity of Aberdeen is pleased to announce the

award of a three-year contract to SNC-Lavalin Profac Gulf Manage-ment, a joint venture comprised of SNC-Lavalin and Nasser Bin Khaled Al Thani & Sons Holding Company (NBK), to provide end-to-end facilities management services at its new college in Qatar.

AFG College with the Univer-sity of Aberdeen is a newly established university college partnership and will welcome its first cohort of undergraduate stu-dents studying for bachelor degrees in Business Management and Accountancy & Finance in September of this year.

Headquartered in Canada, SNC-Lavalin, is a global fully inte-grated professional services and project management company with revenues recorded in 2016 of $8.5bn. SNC-Lavalin is recog-nised by the industry as a leading facilities management provider

with experience on numerous properties within the Middle East, and AFG College with the Univer-sity of Aberdeen are confident that they have made the right choice of facilities management provider.

The ceremony was attended by Sheikh Khalid Nawaf Al Thani, representing NBK & SNC–Lava-lin, and Professor Richard Wells, Dean of transnational education representing AFG College. Sen-ior delegates from the University of Aberdeen were also present, including the Dean of Middle East and Southeast Asian affairs and the deputy director of estates.

Dr Sheikha Aisha bint Faleh Al Thani, chairperson and founder of AFG College with the University of Aberdeen, said, “The signing of this commercial rela-tionship reinforces AFG and the University’s vision to provide an exceptional campus experience for our students. To this end, I am extremely pleased to have SNC-Lavalin managing the safety and facilities of our newly established university college campus.”

AFG College & SNC-Lavalin venture sign 3-year contract

Sheikh Khalid Nawaf Al Thani (left), representing NBK & SNC–Lavalin, and Professor Richard Wells, Dean of transnational education representing AFG College, during the signing ceremony.

The Peninsula

Since the launch of a new sepsis programme at Hamad Medical Corpora-

tion (HMC) in September 2016, the organisation has imple-mented a number of initiatives aimed at boosting care services for all patients diagnosed with sepsis.

Moving forward with this programme, HMC aims to establish, for the first time, the Qatar National Sepsis Program by reaching out to Primary Health Care Centers and the Ambulance Service. This will ensure any patients with sep-sis will have access to the highest standards of care at any public healthcare facility within Qatar.

Sepsis is a medical emer-gency and a life-threatening condition that arises when the body’s response to a severe infection damages its own tis-sues and organs. If not recognised early and treated promptly, sepsis can lead to shock, multiple organ failure, and death.

Additionally, those who survive sepsis are more likely to develop long-term compli-cations including limited exercise tolerance and a decline in cognitive function.

HMC’s sepsis programme is a corporation-wide initiative involving collaboration between the Critical Care Center and the offices of the Chief Medical Officer, Chief Nursing Officer, and Chief Quality Officer. Several HMC departments are involved in the

preparation, development, and delivery of the sepsis program, including the Hamad Health-care Quality Institute, Nursing Informatics, the Clinical Infor-mation System, the Hamad International Training Center, Health Information and Com-munication Technology and teams from each facility.

Dr Ibrahim Mohamed Fawzy, Director of the Critical Care Center and Deputy Med-ical Director, Ambulance Service at HMC highlighted the benefits of the sepsis program.

“Our commitment to pro-viding the very best care for patients with sepsis has been an ongoing priority for many years at HMC and the launch of the sepsis program has enabled our care teams to work within an evidence-based framework to address this large scale con-dition,” Dr. Fawzy said.

Sepsis was a topic of discus-sion at the recent World Health Assembly Committee A meet-ings, held in Geneva and chaired by H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, Minister of Public Health. Delegates at the assembly agreed on a res-olution to improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of sepsis.

In support of this resolution, a Sepsis Symposium is being planned by HMC, which will provide continuing professional development for healthcare professionals in the care and treatment of sepsis in Qatar. The fourth Qatar National Sep-sis Symposium will be held in Doha on September 16.

HMC to link Sepsis programme with all PHCCs

The award was presented to Sheikh Ahmad bin Nasser Al Thani, President Director of National Car Company (the sole agent for Mazda vehicles in Qatar), at a function at the Mazda showroom in Fereej Al Nasr jointly by the representatives of Arab Motors and Maqina magazines.

QNA

The United Nations High Commissioner for Ref-ugees (UNHCR) has

awarded RAF for Humanitar-i a n S e r v i c e s t h e “Humanitarian Hero Shield “ for the period from June 2017 to June 2018.

“This honouring comes in recognition of RAF efforts to support and fund UNHCR’s refugee projects in Bangla-desh, Somalia and Ethiopia,” RAF said in a press release yesterday.

RAF said that during the past months it had signed three working agreements with UNHCR to finance three relief projects for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, vul-nerable communities in Puntland state, south-central Somalia, and Somali refugees in Ethiopia.

Around 320,000 refugees benefited from the projects implemented by UNHCR in the three countries, RAF added.

UNHCR awards RAF ‘Humanitarian Hero Shield’

06 SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017HOME / MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Second term

Iranian President Hassan Rowhani was sworn-in for a second term yesterday.

Rowhani has intensified efforts to protect the nuclear deal against Washington’s return to an aggressive Iran policy.

President of the Republic of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic met yesterday with Qatar’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, who is currently visiting Croatia. During the meeting, they discussed relations between the two countries. (Below) H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi also met Croatia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Marija Pejcinovic Buric.

Muraikhi meets Croatian President

Ankara

Anatolia

Over 850,000 refugees will receive special debit cards soon financed by

the European Union and imple-mented by the Turkish Red Crescent, according to European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office in Turkey.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency yesterday, ECHO head Jane Lewis said the target was to access over a million refu-gees by September. “As of this month, over 850,000 refugees

under temporary international protection will be receiving the card and receiving the monthly transfer,” Lewis said. “We hope that by September, we’ll have a million people under the pro-gram,” Lewis said. “However, the actual target is 1.314 million, depending on who is eligible to receive the card.”

Lewis said the monthly transfer for each refugee, stay-ing out of the refugee camps and registered by the regional migra-tion office directorate, had increased from 100 Turkish liras to 120 Turkish liras per month.

Tripoli

AFP

The new UN envoy to Libya yesterday started his first visit to the conflict-

plagued North African country with a pledge to “respect” its sovereignty and unity.

Ghassan Salame, a Lebanese academic and former culture minister, takes over from Mar-tin Kobler with the task of leading political unity talks between rival factions in the deeply divided country.

He flew in to Mitiga airport, a former air base in Tripoli, and held talks with Fayez al-Sarraj, the embattled head of a

UN-backed Government of National Accord contested by a rival administration in eastern Libya. “I assume my role with the utmost respect for the national sovereignty, independ-ence and unity of Libya,” Salame told a news conference flanked by Sarraj at the prime minister’s office in the capital.

The talks focused on the eco-nomic, political and security “challenges” facing Libya since its 2011 uprising that ousted and killed longtime dictator Muam-mar Gaddafi, the UN envoy said.

Salame said the meeting with Sarraj, also attended by Foreign Minister Mohamed al-Taher Siala, had been

“constructive” and that they had “agreed on the urgency to end the suffering of the Libyan peo-ple”. The UN mission would return in stages to its headquar-ters in Tripoli, which it had left in the aftermath of fierce fight-ing in 2014 between rival militias.

Sarraj said he briefed Salame on an agreement he reached with military strongman Khal-ifa Haftar, who is based in the east and backs the rival admin-istration, for a ceasefire, political talks and elections. The deal was struck last month at talks hosted by French President Emmanual Macron, and it has been endorsed by the UN Security

Council. It is the latest attempt to put an end to six years of chaos in oil-rich Libya where rival militias and administrations have been vying to control the country’s wealth and cities.

The chaos has hampered Libya’s efforts to rebuild its economy which is heavily dependent on oil, and improve condition for its war-weary cit-izens who complain of water and electricity shortages and spiral-ling prices.

The United Nations has been struggling for months to relaunch talks on a deal reached in 2015 on setting up a national unity gov-ernment that has been rejected by Haftar and other factions.

Nouakchott

AFP

Mauritanians began voting yesterday on several conten-

tious changes to their constitution sought by President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz but opposed by a wide swathe of opposi-tion lawmakers and civil society groups.

Aziz is pushing to abol-ish the country’s Senate and several other state bodies and to make a small alteration to the national flag, measures that have galvanised a boycott movement hoping to sap the vote’s credibility by forc-ing a low turnout.

Polling stations opened at 7am and were due to close at 7pm in the conservative west African nation, where violent clashes have broken out after the authorities banned several rallies planned by opponents of the changes.

After voting, President Aziz told journalists the changes would bring Mauritania “peace, security, stability and develop-ment”, and dismissed the boycott movement as existing “only on paper and social media”. Few others were visi-ble casting their ballots in

several Nouakchott polling sta-tions. While Aziz and his supporters and several opposi-tion parties are seeking a “Yes” vote, one moderate opposition party is seeking a “No”, while the rest have joined civil society groups to call for a total boycott for amendments they consider unconstitutional.

Jemil Ould Mansour, head of the Islamic Tewassoul party spearheading the movement against the vote, said the coun-try’s leaders would fix the vote and warned of violence on the eve of the referendum.

The opposition also fears that despite Aziz’s claims to the contrary he is laying the ground-work for a third term in power, as his own prime minister said

back in July he supported the idea. Aziz himself fuelled speculation on Sat-urday by saying that “in two years, or even 10 years other amendments could arise to adapt our constitution to reality,” without elaborating.

He also said journal-ists questioning why European Union observ-ers were not present had a “colonial mentality”, describing the EU as “not a barometer for the truth.” The boycott movement

draws broad political support from figures as diverse as reli-gious conservatives and anti-slavery activists.

They have held protests attracting thousands of support-ers, but have also been prevented from demonstrating by the secu-rity forces, who on Thursday shut down several planned rallies close to the capital with tear gas and baton rounds.

The UN Human Rights Office said Thursday that “protest lead-ers were reportedly beaten up and a number of them were arrested” during campaign ral-lies in the last few weeks, urging the government “take all nec-essary measures to ensure free, transparent and credible elections”.

London

Reuters

Iranian President Hassan Rowhani, who was sworn-in for a second term yesterday, has accused the United States of trying to

undermine Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers, telling Pres-ident Donald Trump that it will be his political suicide.

Rowhani, who was deci-sively re-elected in May after promising to open Iran to the world, took the oath of office before parliament in Tehran in the presence of foreign dignitar-ies including senior European figures.

“The US lack of commitment to implementation of the nuclear deal ... proved it to be an unrelia-ble partner to the world and even to its longtime allies,” Rowhani

Ankara

Reuters

Turkey has sent military reinforcements to its southern border with Syria, dispatching artillery and tanks to the area overnight,

Dogan news agency said yesterday.It said six howitzers and tanks with military

vehicles were sent to Kilis province across the

border from the Kurdish-controlled Syrian region of Afrin. The Turkish army has clashed with Kurd-ish forces and their allies in the area in recent weeks, exchanging artillery and rocket fire, according to Kurdish officials.

The mounting tensions between two US allies in northwest Syria raised fears last month of another major front in the multi-sided Syr-ian war.

Rowhani accuses Trump over N-deal

Qatar’s Minister of Economy and Commerce H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani taking part in the swearing-in ceremony of Iranian President Hassan Rowhani, at the parliament in Tehran, yesterday. H E Sheikh Ahmed participation was upon invitation from the Iranian government. On the sidelines of the ceremony, the Minister also met Venezuela’s Vice President of Planning and Knowledge, Dr. Ricardo Menéndez and discussed bilateral relations.

said in a ceremony broadcast live on state television.

The deal he championed with the United States and five other major powers in 2015 led to the lifting of most sanctions against Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear programme. Row-hani has intensified efforts to protect the deal - the biggest achievement of his first term - against Washington’s return to an aggressive Iran policy.

In comments aimed at Trump, Rowhani said: “Those who want to tear up the nuclear deal should know that they will be ripping up their own politi-cal life.” The US Senate voted in late July to impose new sanc-tions on Iran over its missiles programme and human rights issues.

“Iran would not be the first to pull out of the nuclear deal, but it will not remain silent about

the US repeated violations of the accord,” Rowhani said.

In a meeting with European foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini in Tehran in advance of the ceremony, Rowhani said the US stance could hamper implementation of the nuclear deal. Praising the presence of senior European dignitaries at the ceremony, Rowhani said it showed Europe was determined to expand ties with Tehran.

UN envoy to Libya vows ‘respect’ for sovereignty Over 850,000 refugees in Turkey to get debit cards

Turkey reinforces military on Syria border Mauritania votes on constitution changes after tense campaign

A woman casts her vote in Mauritania’s constitutional referendum at a polling station in Nouakchott yesterday.

07SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Opinion polls

With just four days to go until the polling day, opinion polls in Kenya are showing incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga are almost evenly matched, with some predicting Kenyatta will win with a slight margin but others suggesting the same for Odinga.

Kigali

AFP

Rwandans yesterday cele-brated the third term victory of President Paul

Kagame who pledged to continue transforming the nation after winning re-election with a record 98 percent of the vote.

There had been little doubt that the 59-year-old would return to the helm of the east African nation which he has ruled with an iron fist since the end of the 1994 genocide.

“I am very pleased. I had hoped for this victory,” said Yvette Uwineza, a 36-year-old computer scientist. “The

continuity is reassuring,” she said, crediting Kagame with developing the country and cre-ating “a better life for Rwandans.”

Interim results published by the electoral commission on Sat-urday gave Kagame an unprecedented victory, outstrip-ping the 95 percent he took in 2003 and 93 percent in 2010.

Yesterday’s tally matched the proportion of people who sup-ported a constitutional amendment two years ago per-mitting Kagame to run for a third, fourth and fifth term potentially seeing him rule until 2034.

“I honored your request, and this (election) confirms that

Rwandans made a choice based on the future they want,” Kag-ame told thousands of supporters at his ruling party’s headquar-ters in Kigali in the early hours of the morning. “We are going to continue with the work we started by advocating for a bet-ter Rwanda.”

Final results are due later and the commission estimates 97 percent of 6.9 million voters turned out to cast their ballots. Of the results so far announced, Kagame had 98.66 percent while his two little-known rivals barely made a dent.

Frank Habineza of the Dem-ocratic Green Party — the only permitted critical opposition

party — won just 0.45 percent of votes, beaten into third place by the little-known independent candidate Philippe Mpayimana with 0.72.

“I accept the result and con-gratulate the RPF and Paul Kagame,” Mpayimana said. “I am not going to stop here. I urge all citizens to join be so we can become stronger for the next election.”

Rwandans celebrated Kag-ame’s win in muted fashion, with no spontaneous large gatherings in the disciplined nation. Inside a gymnasium in the capital music and dancers entertained hun-dreds of party loyalists who celebrated into the morning.

“We are celebrating the pres-idential election,” said one young man as he danced. “We are cel-ebrating Paul Kagame!” another yelled out next to him.

Kagame has been the de facto leader of Rwanda since, as a 36-year-old, his rebel army routed extremist Hutu forces who slaughtered an estimated 800,000 people — mainly minority Tutsis — and seized Kigali in 1994. He was first appointed president by lawmak-ers in 2000. The lanky former guerilla fighter is one of Africa’s most divisive leaders, with some hailing him as a visionary while critics see a despot aiming to become one of the continent’s

presidents-for-life.Kagame is credited with a

remarkable turnaround in the shattered nation, which boasts annual economic growth of about seven percent, is safe, clean and does not tolerate cor-ruption. Rwanda also has the highest number of female law-makers in the world.

However rights groups accuse Kagame of ruling through fear, relying on systematic repression of the opposition, free speech and the media.

Kagame’s critics have ended up jailed, forced into exile or assassinated. Few Rwandans would dare to openly speak against him.

Gaza City

Anatolia

Palestinian resistance group Hamas has denounced a Saudi

newspaper for describing the group as a “terrorist” organ-ization. The Saudi Al Riyadh daily published a news report on Friday in which it described Hamas as a “terrorist” organ-ization. “This description tarnishes [the image] of the heroic resistance, which rep-resents the spearhead in defending our cause,” Hamas said in a statement yesterday.

“[It] only serves the ene-mies of Palestine, which is the central cause of the Arab and Islamic nation,” it added. The group went on to call on the daily to reverse its stance “which runs counter to the stances of Saudi Arabia, which has always stood by the Palestinian people and their resistance”.

Hamas has been caught in the crisis after four Arab countries imposed a sea, land and air blockade on Qatar and presented a list of demands for Doha or face sanctions. Qatar denies the accusations and contends that the blockade is in violation of international law.

Nairobi

Anatolia

At the Machakos bus station in Nairobi, hundreds of people are bumping into each other, tickets

held firmly on one hand, the other clutching heavy luggage.

One might think it a com-mon scene at every bus station across the globe but in Nairobi, unless you are traveling in the morning, at midday or at night, bus stations usually have little to no activity, so what is trou-bling Kenyans?

At one of the ticketing areas, a notice reads: “No boarding without showing ID and voters card.” Immediately one can piece together that this exodus from the capital has something to do with Kenya’s coming gen-eral election.

With just four days to go until the polling day, opinion polls in Kenya are showing incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga are almost evenly matched, with some predicting Kenyatta will win with a slight margin but others suggesting the same for Odinga.

Kenyans flee Nairobi in fear of poll violence

Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga, the presidential candidate of the National Super Alliance coalition, participates during their final campaign rally at the Uhuru Park grounds in Nairobi yesterday.

Rwandans celebrate Kagame’s record 98% election landslide

However, Kenyans from all walks of life are leaving the cap-ital in droves, fearing a repeat of the 2007 post-election violence that led to the deaths of more than 1,300 people and left more than 500,000 others internally displaced.

Balancing a suitcase on his head, his right hand clutching that of his daughter while the left held firmly onto a large travel bag just next to his son, Joshua Wesonga rushes to board a bus headed for western Kenya.

“I am in a hurry to leave. I

was supposed to actually be out of Nairobi last week. I can’t stay here; I have sent my whole family back to Bungoma in western Kenya because we don’t want to be slaughtered when violence breaks out,” he tells Anadolu Agency.

“They have already put up posters warning us that if they lose then we will be hacked. The police are always arresting the youth in the slums where I come from but even they are afraid to come to Mathare [one of the big-gest slums in Nairobi] now.

“If all goes well I will come back but as for me and my wife we will not vote,” the father-of-two says as he pushes onboard a bus headed out of the city.

Another traveller, Jane Apiyo, who was outside a bus waiting for the conductor to load her disassembled bed and sofa set, tells Anadolu Agency: “I just want to go to Kisumu [a port city in western Kenya] where I feel safe, where every-body is from my tribe.

“Here in Nairobi, we live with people from other tribes. 2007 taught me well after I lost an uncle and two of his sons to the violence; no one will make me stay here.”

At the bus terminus, hun-dreds, if not thousands, were queuing, hoping to get a chance to travel upcountry. A commo-tion breaks out as a woman screams “Thief! Thief!”—every-one around her continues with their business as if they heard nothing.

“They took my money and

half of my bus fare,” she fumes, walking away.

At the Divinity bus com-pany section where the lady had just come from, Jared Odak, a bus conductor, says they are not refunding fares to those who intend to “escape voting”. “No refunds, abso-lutely no refunds.

Hamas slams Saudi daily over ‘terror’ label

Finally! After weeks of speculation and deliberation, Barcelona’s mercurial striker Neymar Jr has landed at the PSG camp. That’s good news for football fans who root for PSG. The French giants — who had

made no secret of having the 25-year-old on their payroll for more than a year — now have put pen to paper with the superbly-fit forward. The stage is set for Brazilian-flavoured football in the French capital where PSG have ruled the show ever since Qatar stepped up and headed the operations just before the start of the 2011 season.

The credit for this rich football transfer goes to one man — the club president.

For a side that finished a poor 16th at the end of the 2007-08 season, PSG’s transformation in the last six years is an amazing story of strong will and desire to be one of the most powerful clubs across Europe. Thanks to the leadership of Nasser Al Khelaifi, the PSG President, the French club has covered all bases to re-emerge as one of the top sides in Europe. Just a little over a year ago, PSG won all four domestic titles (Ligue 1, French Cup, French League Cup and French Super Cup) and reached the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League. Clearly the 2015–16 season was the club’s best to date.

Not the one to rest on the laurels, Al Khelaifi set about making the side stronger, paving way to make

PSG a global brand name in its own right. Even if that meant more money to be spent to get a forward like Neymar who joined PSG on Thursday after the French side paid his $264m buyout clause to smash the world transfer record.

PSG’s young and dynamic president, Al Khelaifi, was thrilled with his new signing, beaming from ear to ear on Friday. “He has already brought a very positive energy to the team. Our supporters dreamed of this moment and now it’s a reality,” Al Khelaifi said at the official player unveiling.

“With him, our project is even stronger, the Ligue 1 is stronger as well. Neymar signed here to win every trophy! Together, we want to write the history of Paris Saint-Germain, in the most beautiful city in the world: Paris.”

If proof was ever needed what kind of an impact Neymar Jr — who is poised to earn around €30m a year — has made in the French capital, then know this: PSG said that more than 10,000 shirts bearing Neymar Jr’s name and new number No.10 were sold on Friday! With each jersey being sold around €100, PSG generated €1m even before he had kicked a ball.

Now only one thing remains: Neymar’s football skills to lift PSG to greater heights!

08 SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017VIEWS

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

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

msalim@pen.com.qa

Let the show begin!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

This is another seven years to take care of issues that affect Rwandans and ensure that we become real Rwandans who areeconomically developing.

Paul KagameRwanda’s President

Thanks to the leadership of Nasser Al Khelaifi, the PSG President, the French club has covered all bases to re-emerge as one of the top sides in Europe.

On January 4 ,2014 the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL)/Daesh declared the capture of the city of Fallujah, Iraq. What followed were a number of reports about

atrocities committed by the new government of Daesh. Early in 2016 the Iraqi forces aided by the US led coalition began an offensive to regain control of Fallujah.

In June 2016 the Iraqi forces and the US led coalition declared victory. Before the offensive began there was a wide spread messaging encouraging residence of Fallu-jah to vacate their homes before the offensive start in earnest, the rational was to avoid civilian casualties. Thousands heeded the calls. What followed was one of the worst destruction of property in the modern history of Iraq. This forced thou-sands more to leave the city adding to the displacement.

Many of those who left the city were mainly Sunni Muslims. After the dust settled in Fallujah people remained internally dis-placed and there were never any attempts to have them resettled. Many are still inter-nally displaced and too afraid to return fearing retaliation from the new occupants of power.

The situation was not different in Mosul, Iraq. Although the offensive was more fierce and took longer in Mosul, it followed almost the same pertain. Mosul like Fallujah was predominantly Sunni Muslim, similar messaging took place before the offensive, thousands left their homes and never returned. Before the offensive ensued there were already high levels of mistrust between the Sunni residence of the city and the Iraqi Shia led government. Those who returned continue to live in fear due to the new demographic reality on the ground.

Aarsal, Jroud is a Lebanese territory, it lies couple of kilometres from the Syrian border. There is a strong family bond between the people across the borders, after all they were fellow country men and women before the partitioning of the region.

The proximity of Aarsal has attracted a number of refugees from Syria into the town, this has inevitable also led to an increased organised Anti-Syrian Govern-ment groups including Jabhat Fateh Al Sham.

Since 2014 there have been continual battles between the Syrian forces, aided by Hezbollah and the Anti-Syrian Government forces in Aarsal. Hezbollah, a proxy of the Syrian government inside Lebanon, has been in the forefront of the battle mainly with Jhabat Fateh al Sham.

Both sides have suffered high casualties over the years. The two parties recently reached a deal which resulted into a tempo-rary cessation of hostilities in Aarsal. The ceasefire was confirmed by Hezbollah’s

Another systematic cleansing

of people in Aarsal?Thembisa FakudeAl Jazeera

al-Manar TV website and Lebanese National News Agency (NNA), which said the pause was part of a deal bro-kered by the country’s general security agency chief Major General Abbas Ibrahim. Amongst the conditions of the deal is to give a safe passage to fighters of Jabhat al Fateh al Sham and their families to to Idlib. Furthermore Aarsal civilians who wish to leave may also do so.

Furthermore the deal also include the exchange of dead bodies. Hezbol-lah has grown in power and might over the years. The war in Syria and its alli-ances with Iran and Russia has entrenched its political power in the region. Hezbollah, a political opposi-tion in Lebanon has become undoubtedly the most powerful and organised force in Lebanon, stronger

than the Lebanese National Army. The demand to hand over their

dead bodies of their fighters demon-strates that power. It seeks to send a message that “we care about our own even the dead”. This attitude towards the enemy is often demonstrated by Israel mainly towards the Palestinians. Israel has demanded their dead in return for hundreds of Palestinians on several occasions.

The development in Aarsal mir-rors those in Fallujah, Mosul and indeed Aleppo. What will happen to the civilians of Aarsal when the dust settles, are they going to be allowed back to Aarsal?

What guarantees are going to be put in place to ensure safety and secu-rity for those civilians who wish to return after the offensive? Given the experiences in Fallujah, Mosul and Aleppo it is almost certain that these people will join the growing number of internally displaced and refugees in Syria and Lebanon.

In 2015 the province of Idlib was suggested to be the seat of the Syrian Opposition in Syria. Does the expulsion of Sunni fighters and their families have to do with the realisation of that suggestion or is Idlib a new destination for the final onslaught? The mass force displacement of people to Idlib is beginning to sound more “like masses tunneled into a slaughter house”. All signs suggest a systematic cleansing of people in making.

The writer is a researcher at Al Jazeera

Center for Studies.

The proximity of Aarsal has attracted a number of refugees from Syria into the town, this has inevitable also led to an increased organised Anti-Syrian Government groups including Jabhat Fateh Al Sham.

ED ITOR IAL

A view of Syrian refugee camp in the eastern Lebanese border town of Aarsal.

09SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017 OPINION

production of the final product. The question is: is this system working as intended, or does it need a tune-up?

A look at a typical report from an importing country raises some pointed questions, such as: discrepancy in the date of slaughter and meat quantity as found on the certificate and on the packaging list; rather than providing the original certificate a copy is furnished with the consign-ment; certificates do not accompany the consignment; correction and re-correction of information; and some companies produce numerous “certificates” trying to correct a lapse. These findings clearly show that the current certi-fication system is fragmented, unreliable, and needs improvement.

Given the existing state of halal meat produc-tion, consumers have every right to ask the importer if a verifiable written program is being used for the production of halal-certified prod-ucts, as these programs serve as checks and balances. It includes information that can be tracked, monitored, and verified. This type of information can also be used to ascertain the ability of a halal certification organisation to monitor and verify the Islamic requirements. This way the consumers can be sure that they are buy-ing meat products that were produced under the supervision of a credible halal certification organisation.

We should also remember that our goal is not just to improve the current certification system but also to achieve long-term food security, because the Muslim population is projected to grow 73% by 2050.

To achieve it we need to invest in agricultural industries such as livestock farms, poultry farms, feed mills, and modern slaughter and processing plants. According to a report in the July 2014 issue of National Geographic, big corporations are reportedly grabbing up large tracts of land on the planet’s hungriest continent–Africa–to convert it into the future breadbasket of the world. Are

The myth of American ‘greatness’

As the world has by now been made painfully aware, Donald Trump’s preeminent goal as president of the United States is to “make America great again”.

But for many students — not to mention victims — of international history, the burning question remains: When exactly was America great?

The answer is surely not to be found in the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, the lethal chemicals used to saturate Vietnam, or the unex-ploded munitions that continue to maim and kill people in Laos decades after the secret US war on that country.

Nor, presumably, would Latin Americans slaughtered by US-backed dictators and death squads be able to provide many clues as to the whereabouts of America’s historical “greatness”.

Ditto for Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis and other civilian populations consistently over-represented in the US-inflicted “collateral damage” category.

On the domestic front, too, the whole concept of greatness has been rather elusive — unless, of course, we take it to mean a centuries-long tradi-tion of crushing Native Americans, blacks, and everyone else whose dignity can be comprehen-sively violated in the service of elite socioeconomic domination.

Competing historiesMoreover, America’s ongoing prioritisation of

the health of the arms industry, a pillar of the cur-rent capitalist system, occurs — naturally — at the expense of human wellbeing both at home and abroad.

In his seminal work “A People’s History of the United States”, the late American historian Howard Zinn noted one particularly gleeful period of Cold War military spending in which a certain Trident submarine — one of various “frightful and super-fluous weapons … totally useless except in a

nuclear war” — came with a $1.5bn price tag. This sum, Zinn reported, was “enough to

finance a five-year program of child immunisation around the world against deadly diseases, and pre-vent five million deaths”.

But why let dying kids get in the way of US greatness?

Alas, few observers are as meticulous as Zinn, who relentlessly connected the dots, exposing the economic foundations and functions of the more than a half-millennium of bloodshed, plunder, displacement, and exploitation that has character-ised the American landscape since Christopher Columbus’ so-called “discovery” of the place in 1492.

In contrast, the official mass-marketed version of US history predictably whitewashes the Ameri-can trajectory, converting potentially unpleasant memories — the wars on Native Americans and blacks, for example — into stand-alone tragedies and unfortunate episodes that in no way taint the moral integrity of the nation itself, which is instead cast as a pioneer in democracy, equality, human rights, and all that good stuff.

Toeing the line Obviously, it would be far easier to buy into the

notion that the US now occupies an enlightened realm of post-nastiness if, you know, American cops didn’t continue to murder innocent black

people with impunity.It would also help if the American non-elite

didn’t continue to be generally asphyxiated by the very society decried by Zinn: One that is engi-neered to ensure that all men are not, in fact, created equal, particularly when it comes to the distribution of wealth.

Fortunately for the powers that be, the US edu-cation system is essentially rigged to toe the official line. Schoolchildren are bombarded with myths of American exceptionalism aimed to coun-teract a physical reality of societal decay, while bellicose shenanigans abroad are presented as freedom and democracy promotion and the natu-ral behaviour of great people.

My own recollections of attending Catholic pri-mary school in the US — aside from being taught that my dog was not going to heaven and that Saddam Hussein could send a missile to my class-room at any minute — include annual festivities surrounding everyone’s favourite whitewash of genocide and land theft: Thanksgiving.

Come mid-November, half the class would set about crafting Pilgrim hats, the other half would craft “Indian” headpieces, and then we’d all har-moniously draw turkeys together and consume pumpkin pie.

Liberty and justice?Another highlight of the school years was the

Muslims comprising 23% of the world total population of 6.8 billion people, import 80% of their food from Australia, New Zea-

land, EU, and North and South America. Officials from Muslim countries visit production plants in these countries, make business deals, and meat and poultry products displaying “halal” logo that supposedly satisfies consumers about the meat being Sharia compliant, start flowing back to Muslim countries. The question that begs answer is: Is it really so?

For an answer, let’s review the proc-ess: With a few exceptions, halal meat products in these countries are prepared in the same plants, under private labe-ling, where non-halal products are routinely produced. To occasionally switch to halal meat production the interested plant first secures the accredi-tation of a halal certification organisation by agreeing to comply with its halal standards.

To ensure reliability, importing Mus-lim countries require that the halal certification organisation under whose supervision the products are produced issue a halal certificate to accompany each consignment destined to Muslim countries declaring that meat and poul-try products have been prepared in accordance with the Islamic require-ments and that the halal chain has been maintained through all phases of

Importing halal meat: Is halal label reliable?

A file photo showing supporters of President Donald Trump holding up signs during a campaign rally at the James A Rhodes Arena in Akron, Ohio.

Muslim corporations also ready to overcome decades of inertia and actually doing something to be self-suf-ficient by establishing a future breadbasket?

Dr Mohammad Abdullah retired after serving 29 years with

the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety

& Inspection Service (USDA, FSIS), the agency that regu-

lates the meat industry. He is the author of “A Closer look

at Halal meat from farm to fork” (2016). It is available

online at amazon.com and other vendors.

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daily standing recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to “one Nation under God … with liberty and justice for all”.

So much for the separation of church and state — or the fact that “liberty and justice” have never been “for all”, being as they are totally irreconcilable with the obscene socioeconomic disparity that continues to prevail in the US.

In August of last year, CNN Money announced that, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office, “the rich are still getting richer in the US, with the wealthiest 10 percent controlling three-quarters of all family wealth in the country.”

The article continued on to note that “the entire bottom half of the population” was left with “just 1 percent of the total pie”.

Now, of course, one particu-larly wealthy character is threatening to “make America great again”. But given that Amer-ican “greatness” has for so long been tantamount to widespread oppression, we might be forgiven our pessimism.

And while much of America is consumed with the furore over “fake news”, much more of a ruckus could stand to be made over what amounts to America’s fake history.

The writer is the author of The Impe-

rial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at

Work, published by Verso. She is a

contributing editor at Jacobin

Magazine.

Belen FernandezAl Jazeera

One particularly wealthy character is threatening to ‘make America great again’. But given that American “greatness” has for so long been tantamount to widespread oppression, we might be forgiven our pessimism.

Dr Mohammad Abdullah

10 SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017ASIA

The wreckage of a minibus is seen after it collided with a container truck in Punganur near Bengaluru yesterday. Five people, including four Spanish nationals, were killed and nine more Spaniards injured in the accident.

4 Spanish nationals dead in mishap

Children form the shape of a ‘Rakhi’ at their school ahead of the upcoming festival of Raksha Bandhan, in Patiala, yesterday.

Special bond

Violence slammed

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said the Congress was a 130-year-old party that had seen many ups and downs and its leaders won’t be scared by such tactics.

Sharma said that the BJP was using every possible means to capture power everywhere.

New Delhi

IANS

The Congress yesterday mounted a fierce attack on Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi and the BJP over the

“potentially fatal” attack on party Vice-President Rahul Gan-dhi in Gujarat, saying the violence was the “style of poli-tics pursued by the BJP and RSS”.

Rahul Gandhi and senior Congress leaders attacked the BJP and RSS even as hundreds of Congress workers, led by Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken, staged a march from Teen Murti to Gujarat Bhawan here, raising slogans against Prime Minister Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The protests came as a BJP youth wing leader was arrested and the Dhanera City BJP president named as an accused yesterday in connec-tion with the attack on Rahul Gandhi’s car.

“Yesterday (Friday) such a large stone was thrown by the BJP workers. It hit one of my PSOs (Personal Security Officer) and he was hurt. This is the style of politics of Modiji, BJP and the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak

BJP leader held for attack on Rahul Gandhi’s car

New Delhi

IANS

Veteran BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu (pic-tured), who had humble

origins in an agriculturist fam-ily in Andhra Pradesh, was elected as the Vice- President of India yesterday, completing the quartet of top four constitutional posts — President, Vice Presi-dent, Prime Minister and Lok Sabha Speaker — going to per-sons from BJP with RSS background for the first time in 70 years.

Muppavarapu Venkaiah Naidu, 68, who was a minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee and later the Narendra Modi govern-ments, defeated the combined o p p o s i t i o n c a n d i d a t e Gopalkrishna Gandhi by a huge margin of 272 votes in a straight contest, whose verdict was already predictable.

At the end of two-hour counting process in the 15th vice-presidential election, Returning Officer Shamsher K

Sherif announced the election of Naidu, who secured 516 votes against 244 by Gandhi. In all, 771 votes were cast out of a total of 785 MPs eligible to vote. Eleven votes were declared invalid.

Soon after his election, Naidu said he as Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, would steer the function-ing of the House “without fear or favour” and uphold its dignity and decorum with the cooperation of all members by acting in accord-ance with the rules and conventions of the House.

In his reaction, Gandhi con-gratulated Naidu on his victory and wished him all the best in his new office.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted Naidu on his vic-tory and expressed confidence that he will serve the nation “as a diligent and dedicated Vice President, committed to the goal of nation building”. “My mind is filled with memories of work-ing with Venkaiah Naidu in the party and the government. Will cherish this aspect of our asso-ciation. My best wishes for a fruitful and motivating tenure,” Modi tweeted.

Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad also congratulated Naidu and said he was sure that he would give time and opportunities to all leaders and parties to express their views in the way the out-going Chairman Hamid Ansari conducted the House. A string of leaders of the BJP and allied parties and ministers also went to Naidu’s residence and greeted him on his victory.

New Delhi/Mumbai

IANS

Signalling the spread of dig-itisation in India, income tax (I-T) offices across the

country did not witness any rush of assessees waiting to manually file their income tax returns for the 2016-17 fiscal by the dead-line yesterday.

The government had extended the deadline for filing of IT returns for the fiscal 2016-17 (assessment year 2017-18) to August 5 from the earlier July 31

date due to technical reasons.The income tax office in Delhi

had a deserted look. According to an official, only short queues of assessees were witnessed at one of the main I-T offices in the national capital located at the Civic Centre near Ajmeri Gate.

“Most of the people have been able to file their returns till July 31st... during the five-day extension period an average turnout of only about 100-150 people a day have been noticed,” an official said. “Out of these 100-150-odd assesses, most head-out

to our online filing assistance desk and very few actually submit the physical form,” the official said The quoting of Aadhaar has been made mandatory in the filing of the I-T return.

In Chennai, filing of income tax returns was going on smoothly at the special counters set up at the Income Tax office on Saturday, with no technical or other glitches reported so far.

Not much of a crowd of assesses was witnessed since many preferred to file their ITRs online. “The filing is being done

smoothly and briskly. We are not facing any technical problem like slowing or hanging of the server,” tax consultant R Badri-narayanan said. “There is no need for any more extensions as the technical issues have been sorted out,” he said.

Kolkata too did not report any extraordinary rush to filr ITRs on the last day. “After the extension of last date, we did not find any extraordinary rush. Till now, about 500 income tax returns have been filed since morning. Around 27,000 paper

returns were submitted here till July 31. In the five-day extension period, additional 2000 returns have so far been filed here,” a tax official at Kolkata’s Bamboo Villa I-T department office said.

In Mumbai, the filing of IT returns have “ontinued smoothly since the past five days and on the last date of the extended deadline. During the period between November 9, 2017, till March 31, 2017, 1.96 crore returns were filed, as compared to 1.63 crore returns filed during corre-sponding period of 2015-16.

New Delhi

IANS

Economist Rajiv Kumar has been appointed the Vice-Chairman of NITI

Aayog in place of Arvind Pan-agariya, said informed souces.

Panagariya, an academi-cian on leave from Columbia University, resigned as the NITI Aayog Vice Chairman on August 1. Kumar, a senior fel-low at Centre for Policy Research (CPR), is also chan-cellor of the the Gokhale Institute of Economics and Politics in Pune and the founding director of Pahle India Foundation, a non-profit research organisation that specialises in policy-ori-ented research and analysis.

Before coming to CPR, he was Secretary-General Ficci. He has also served as Director and Chief Executive of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Rela-tions and chief economist of Confederation of Indian Indus-tries, as well as in positions with the Asian Development Bank and the Indian Ministries of Industries and Finance.

Kumar holds a DPhil in economics from Oxford and a PhD from Lucknow Univer-sity. Apart from Kumar, Vinod Paul, a doctor by professsion, has been appointed member of NITI Aayog. Paul is a pae-diatrician at AIIMS.

Srinagar

IANS

Spontaneous protests broke out yesterday in north Kash-mir areas after three local

LeT militants were killed in a gun-fight with security forces in Sopore town, with three persons injured in firing during clashes.

Three local LeT militants, identified as Danish Ahmad Dar of Sopore, Abid Hamid Mir of Bandipora and Javid Ahmad Dar of Baramulla town, were killed in a gunfight with security forces, which included state police, army and the CRPF, in Amargarh area of Sopore town.

One police constable was injured in the gunfight. His con-dition was described as stable by doctors. Hundreds of mourn-ers attended the funeral processions of two slain

militants in Bandipora and Bar-amulla districts.

Security forces did not inter-vene to stop the funeral processions of the slain militants in Hajin area of Bandipora and Khanpora in Baramulla town after the bodies were handed over to the families. Authorities imposed restrictions in the old town areas of Baramulla as a precautionary measure.

Earlier, protesters clashed with security forces in Sadarkote area of Bandipora district as news about the death of Mir, militant belonging to Bandipora district, spread in the area.

Three protesters sustained bullet injuries and were shifted to hospital for treatment, police said. Protesters also engaged security forces in clashes in Sopore town and at three other places in north Kashmir areas.

An army escort vehicle was attacked by stone pelters on the highway near Anantnag town. The occupants of the escort vehicle fired in the air to ward off the protesters. Police said three over ground workers of LeT were arrested in south Kashmir’s Shopian district.

Authorities closed schools and colleges in Sopore, Baram-ulla and Handwara in addition to suspending mobile phone services and Internet facility in north Kashmir areas, as a pre-cautionary measure. The Internet speed both on mobile phones and fixed landline broad-band connections was brought down to 2G from 3G and 4G.

Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, the senior separatist leader who continues to remain under house arrest in his city outskirts Nigeen residence in Srinagar.

Activists of the Indian Youth Congress shout slogans from a police vehicle after they were detained outside the BJP headquarters during a protest in New Delhi yesterday.

Sangh),” Rahul Gandhi said out-side Parliament House.

He also said that Prime Min-ister Modi would not condemn Friday’s attack on his convoy in Banaskantha in Gujarat as it involved his own party work-ers. “When they have themselves done it, how will they condemn it?” he asked.

Condemning it as a “poten-tially fatal” attack on Gandhi’s cavalcade in Gujarat, senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said the Congress was a 130-year-old party that had seen many ups and downs and

its leaders won’t be scared by such tactics. “This stone could kill a human. What was the police doing? Let me say that Rahul Gandhi and the Congress won’t be intimidated by such tactics,” Sharma said as he showed a piece of concrete allegedly hurled at Gandhi’s car in Gujarat on Friday.

“It deserves the strongest condemnation, and exposes the intent, ideology, and character of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamse-vak Sangh which believe in violence, intimidation, and physical assaults on political opponents or leaders. “It is inte-gral to their thinking and their political philosophy and their actions.”

Sharma said that the BJP was using every possible means to capture power everywhere. Blaming the state government for lack of proper security, the Congress leader said: “It cannot just wash off its hands by say-ing a bullet proof car was offered.” He said the Congress Vice President had every right to go and stand in solidarity with those affected by floods.

Congress spokesman Ran-deep Surjewala accused Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani of shielding the goons behind the attack. “We have lodged a com-plaint of ‘murderous assault’ against four BJP workers, but police has not registered an FIR,” Surjewala said.

He alleged that Gujarat’s BJP government deliberately ignored the protocol followed in the case of the Special Pro-tection Group protectee Rahul Gandhi. “There is an abject fail-ure on the part of Rupani and his administration.”

Earlier in the day, the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) and National Students Union of India (NSUI) workers staged a protest outside the BJP headquarters in central Delhi and raised slogans against the party.

Venkaiah Naidu is Vice-President

Little rush to file hard copy of I-T returns on last dayEconomist Rajiv Kumar appointed NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman

Tension grips north Kashmir

11SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017 ASIA

S China Sea row: Lack of consensus at talksManila

Reuters

Southeast Asian foreign ministers failed to release a customary communique at the end of a high-level meeting

yesterday after what diplomats said was a lack of consensus about how to refer to disputes in the South China Sea.

The South China Sea has long been the most thorny issue for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), with dif-ferent opinions among its 10 members on how to address

China’s assertiveness and its building and heavy arming of its artificial islands in disputed waters.

Philippine foreign ministry spokesman Robespierre Bolivar gave no reason for the delay and said the statement would instead be released at the end of a series of regional events hosted by Manila in the next few days.

“The communique will be issued together with all the chairman’s statements by the end of all the meetings,” he said.

Asean’s problem in agreeing the wording highlight China’s growing influence at a time of

uncertainty whether the new US administration will prioritise relations with Asean, and try to check Beijing’s controversial maritime activities.

Diplomats from three Asean countries said the delay was because Vietnam, which is among four members with com-peting sovereignty claims with China, wanted the text to men-tion the need to avoid land reclamation and militarisation.

A working draft of the com-munique seen on Thursday was a watered-down version of one issued last year and drops refer-ences to both.

China is extremely sensitive

about Asean mentioning its expansion of its military capa-bilities on those islands and some members are concerned about possible repercussions of upset-ting Beijing given its military and economic power.

Three of China’s seven reclaimed reefs have runways several kilometres long, radar, surface-to-air missiles and stor-age facilities for fighter jets.

“It’s only Vietnam holding out. Maybe, by tomorrow every-thing will be ironed out,” said one diplomat involved in the draft-ing process.

What Asean countries could agree on was that tensions on the Korean peninsula stemming from North Korean long-range missile tests seriously threaten global peace and security.

Taking a stronger tone than

previous statements on the standoff, they called for North Korea to comply with United Nations Security Council resolu-tions on its nuclear programme, and make a positive contribu-tion to regional peace.

North Korea’s tests of inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM), are expected to dominate Monday’s Asean Regional Forum (ARF), which gathers 27 foreign ministers - including those of Russia, Japan, the United States, China and North and South Korea - to discuss security issues.

North Korea is determined to develop a nuclear-tipped mis-sile capable of hitting the United States and officials in Washing-ton say its latest test a week ago showed it may be able to reach most of the country.

“We strongly call upon

(North Korea) as a participant of the Asean Regional Forum, to positively contribute to realise the ARF vision to maintain the Asia-Pacific as a region of last-ing peace, stability, friendship and prosperity,” Aseansaid.

The Asean position is short of the tougher line urged by the United States, which wanted it to downgrade relations with the already isolated nation.

Some Asian countries, including South Korea, are hop-ing to have bilateral talks with North Korea’s foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho.

“If there is a chance, I would tell him that we must have dia-logue and that the North must stop the continuous provoca-tions,” South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung Wha said yesterday.

Sharif urges court to hold dictators accountableIslamabad

Anatolia

The recently-ousted Pre-mier, Nawaz Sharif, yesterday called for courts

in the country to hold dictators accountable and not just go after politicians like him.

The Supreme Court disqual-ified Sharif from holding the high office on July 28 in its verdict in the Panama Papers case.

Speaking to hundreds of Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) supporters and workers gathered near Bara Kaho, a town near Islamabad, after his arrival from Murree town, Sharif pre-dicted his party would make a comeback with a overwhelming majority in the 2018 election despite the court verdict that also bars him from holding office.

“Those who tried to push Pakistan back into crises and stop development in the coun-try have failed in their

conspiracy,” he said, adding that nobody could stop Pakistan from becoming a regional power.

He said the apex court had

not disqualified him on corrup-tion charges despite the fact that investigators thoroughly checked his family’s decades-long business records.

The judges had sent Sharif packing from the Prime Minis-ter’s House after considering the report of a six-member investi-gation team, which was formed in April to look into the Panama Papers scandal.

“I have strong reservation on the court verdict; how can I mention the salary in my assets that I had not received? But despite everything I obeyed the verdict and stepped down,” he said.

He also said that military dictators had always damaged Pakistan, but “is there any court that can hold a dictator accountable?”

Two cops dead in ‘insider’ attackKandahar

AFP

TWO Afghan police officers were killed and a Nato soldier was wounded in an apparent insider attack in southern Afghanistan yesterday, offi-cials said.

The so called “green on blue” attack happened at Kandahar airfield when Nato advisors, who had completed a training session with their Afghan counterparts, were returning to their base, Nato said.

“Romanian soldiers returned fire in self-defence and killed the gunman,” the statement said, adding attacker was a member of the Afghan National Civil Order Police.

Hekmatyar rejects US troop increaseKabul

AFP

Infamous Afghan warlord and ex-prime minister Gulbud-din Hekmatyar rejected any

increase in US troops yesterday as he said elections were the only way to bring stability to the war-torn country.

The 70-year-old, known widely in the international press as the “Butcher of Kabul”, said that Afghanistan desperately needed “a strong central gov-ernment led by a powerful president”.

“Without this it is impossi-ble to bring peace and stability to the country,” he said, in his first press conference with for-eign media since returning to Afghanistan after more than twenty years in exile.

Hekmatyar, a two-time prime minister, is one of the most notorious warlords in Afghanistan’s history and is accused of killing thousands of people during the bloody 1992-1996 civil war.

He is back in the political

mainstream after returning to Afghan public life in April due to a landmark, but hugely con-troversial, peace deal he signed with the Kabul government.

“Hezb-i-Islami is ready to co-operate with the government and bring in security and stabil-ity unconditionally,” Hekmatyar said, referring to the largely dor-mant militant group he heads.

“We accept that elections

should be the only way to get to power and the participation of political parties in elections is the only way forward.”

Hekmatyar, white-bearded and wearing his trademark black turban, also said that Don-ald Trump would be wrong to send more American troops to Afghanistan, something the United States president is believed to be considering.

5.8 magnitude earthquake hits MindanaoManila

Reuters

A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck south Mindanao island in the Philippines yesterday, the US Geological Survey said.

The quake’s epicentre was 34km east of the city of General Santos, which has a population of almost 600,000.

The USGS said the quake was 74km deep but European quake agency EMSC put it at only 10km deep, which would increase its impact.

The temblor, initially reported as a magnitude 6.0, struck at 8:30am, the USGS said.

A magnitude 5.8 earth-quake is considered moderate and is capable of causing con-siderable damage.

Jakarta official talks tough on forest burnersJakarta

Reuters

A military official in the Indo-nesian province of Jambi said yesterday he has ordered that anyone who deliberately sets fire to forest areas be shot, as authorities struggle to con-tain fires that cause choking smoke in the region.

Five Indonesian prov-inces have declared emergencies because of for-est fires, according to Indonesia’s disaster mitiga-tion agency (BNPB), with the number of hotspots steadily increasing in many areas over the past week.

The BNPB is working with many government branches, including the military, to con-tain the fires.

UN Council to vote onNorth Korea sanctions

Foreign Ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Asean Secretary-General Le Luong Minh during opening ceremony of the 50th Asean Regional Forum meeting, in Manila, yesterday.

Diplomats from three Asean countries said the delay was because Vietnam wanted the text to mention the need to avoid land reclamation and militarisation.

Asean meeting

What Asean countries could agree on was that tensions on the Korean peninsula stemming from North Korean long-range missile tests seriously threaten global peace and security.

Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif waves to his supporters upon his arrival in Islamabad, yesterday.

3 missing as US aircraft crashes off AustraliaSydney

AP

Search and rescue opera-tions were underway for three US Marines who

were missing after their Osprey aircraft crashed into the sea off the east coast of Australia yes-terday while trying to land.

Twenty-three of 26 person-nel aboard the aircraft have been rescued, the Marine base Camp Butler in Japan said in a statement.

The MV-22 Osprey involved in the mishap had launched from the USS Bonhomme Rich-ard and was conducting regularly scheduled operations when it crashed into the water, the statement said.

The ship’s small boats and aircraft immediately responded in the search and rescue efforts.

The Osprey is a tilt-rotor aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter, but flies like an airplane.

They have been involved in a series of high-profile crashes in recent years.

The aircraft was in Australia for a joint military training exercise held by the US and Australia last month in Shoal-water Bay.

The Talisman Sabre exer-cise, a biennial event between the two nations, involved more than 30,000 troops and 200 aircraft.

Australian Defence Minis-ter Marise Payne said Saturday’s incident occurred off the coast of Shoalwater Bay in Queensland state.

“I can confirm no Austral-ian Defence Force personnel were on board the aircraft,” Payne said in a statement. “The United States are leading the search and recovery effort.”

Payne said she had spoken with US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis “to offer Australia’s sup-port in any way that can be of assistance.”

United Nations

AFP

The UN Security Council was set to vote on tough new sanc-tions drafted by Washington that would deprive North Korea of vital export income after it defied international pressure

to test its second intercontinental ballistic missile.The Security Council was scheduled to vote at 3pm on the

measures, as a diplomat who briefed reporters said he had “high confidence” that neither China nor Russia would exercise their powers of veto.

McMaster, in the interview with MSNBC, said Trump had told China’s President Xi Jinping it was no longer enough for North Korea to “freeze” its programmes since it had already crossed “threshold capability” and the goal was now denuclearisation.

Afghan warlord and former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar during a press conference, in Kabul, yesterday.

12 SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017EUROPE

Operation Storm anniversaryTop German cop seeks tougher cybercrime lawBerlin

Reuters

Germany’s top police official has called for tougher laws to fight cybercrime on the illegal Internet - the

Darknet - and other organised criminal structures, in an inter-view published yesterday.

Holger Muench, president of the Federal Criminal Police Office, told Die Welt newspaper that German law needed to be adjusted to account for the mas-sive harm such criminal activities can do.

“Professional hackers can cause enormous damage. They represent a danger for security and the economy,” Muench said.

“That should be reflected in the sentences as well.”

Muench said current law made it difficult to go after oper-ators of botnet networks that enable large-scale automated cyber attacks.

Muench’s comments came after a German court recently gave a suspended sentence to a British hacker-for-hire who confessed to a cyber attack that knocked out the internet for around a million Deutsche Tel-ekom customers.

The regional court in Cologne handed the man,

named only as Daniel K, a sus-pended sentence of a year and eight months for attempted commercia l computer sabotage.

The maximum sentence was up to 10 years, and prosecutors had asked for two years.

The Federal Criminal Police Office last year reported 83,000 cases of cyber crime that caused damage costing over 51 million euros.

More than half of German

companies have been hit by spy-ing, sabotage or data theft, the IT industry association Bitkom reported last month.

Die Welt newspaper also quoted the federal prosecutor for Frankfurt, home of Germa-ny’s internet crime agency (ZIT) as calling for reforms of current law to account for a growing trade in drugs, por-nography and weapons on the Darknet.

“The criminal code for cyber crime must be reformed and modernised, otherwise many of the crimes that we see cannot be sufficiently prosecuted,” Georg Ungefuk said .

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, whose party wants him take over the federal interior ministry after the September 24 German elec-tion, said that the Germany needed a more comprehensive approach to cybercrime, despite its decentralised fed-eral structure that assigns great responsibility to the individual states.

“The competencies between the federal government, states and military are even more blurred in the cyber realm than in the fight against terrorism,” he told the weekly magazine Der Spiegel.

“We need new structures.”

FDP seeks new approach to Crimea annexationBerlin

Reuters

Germany may have to accept Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimea

region of Ukraine as a “perma-nent provisional arrangement,” the head of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) told a newspaper chain in comments published yesterday.

FDP chief Christian Lindner underscored the importance of good ties with Moscow for Ger-many and the European Union, and said it might be necessary to “encapsulate” the Crimea issue in order to offer Russian President Vladimir Putin

face-saving options to change his policies.

Germany has condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support for anti-govern-ment separatists in eastern Ukraine, leading Europe in maintaining economic sanctions against Moscow.

“We have to get out of the dead-end sitution,” Lindner told the Funke Mediengruppe news-paper chain.

“To break a taboo, I fear that we must see the Crimea as a per-m a n e n t p r o v i s i o n a l arrangement, at least for now.”

The comments drew imme-diate fire from other politicians, including the leader of Germa-ny’s pro-environment Greens.

Pollsters say the FDP is poised to reenter parliament after the September 24 elections after dropping below the requi-site five-percent threshold in 2013.

It is seen as a possible coa-lition partner for Chancellor

Angela Merkel’s conservatives, who want to govern without the current junior partner, the Social Democrats, who also have tra-ditionally favoured a more conciliatory approach to Russia.

Lindner said he backed con-tinued support for the Nato alliance and strong ties to the United States, but called for more creativity in relations with Russia given its importance to German and European security and economic well-being.

Lindner also called for a more nuanced approach to reducing sanctions against Rus-sia, saying that even positive interim steps toward

implementing the Minsk accords should be rewarded.

“We need more dialogue and creativity in our relations today.”

Greens co-leader Cem Ozdemir, also seen as a possible coalition partner for Merkel, blasted Lindner’s comments.

“This is the wrong path for a responsible and strong Ger-man foreign policy,” Ozdemir said.

The latest polls show Mer-kel’s Christian Democrats with an 18-point lead over the SPD, with the FDP, Greens, far-left Left party and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany parties all garnering around eight per-cent support.

19 refugees reach Spain’s coast in two small boatsMadrid

AP

THE Red Cross says that 19 migrants have arrived to Spain’s southeastern coast in two small boats.

The Red Cross says it attended to the migrants at two Civil Guard stations located in and near the coastal city of Cartagena yes-terday morning.

Spain’s maritime rescue service says that the two boats reached the coast using their own power.

On Friday, Spain’s Red Cross said that in the first six months of this year it had attended to more than 7,400 migrants, compared to 3,600 migrants in all of the year 2016.

Governmental authorities released similar figures for the increase in migrants last week.

Polish man arrested over kidnappingRome

AP

A Polish man has been jailed in the kidnapping of a British model held

captive in northern Italy for six days last month, police said yesterday.

Milan police said the man, who holds British residence, was arrested on a charge

of suspected kidnapping for extortion purposes. They didn’t release his identity.

Police official Lorenzo Bucossi said the 20-year-old woman had come to Milan for a photo shoot, apparently a phony setup, and was abducted on July 11.

Based on court documents, Corriere della Sera reported the woman was drugged by her

abductor and held in a small town in the northwestern Pied-mont region of Italy. At one point, the newspaper said, the woman was told she could be freed upon payment of around $60,000.

Corriere said the suspect discovered she had a young child. Bucossi said the suspect dropped her off near the British Consulate in Milan on July 17.

Professional hackers can cause enormous damage. They represent a danger for security and the economy. That should be reflected in the sentences as well: Official

Computer sabotage

The criminal code for cyber crime must be reformed and modernised, otherwise many of the crimes that we see cannot be sufficiently prosecuted: Georg Ungefuk

Belgium says aware of contaminated eggsBrussels

AFP

Belgian officials admitted yesterday they knew in early June there was a

potential problem over insec-ticide-contaminated eggs but kept it secret because of an ongoing fraud investigation.

“We knew since early June there was potentially a prob-lem with fipronil in the poultry sector,” Katrien Stragier, a spokeswoman for Belgium’s food safety agency (AFSCA), said.

“We immediately launched an investigation and we also informed the prosecutor because it was a matter of pos-sible fraud,” she added.

“From that point on the secrecy of the inquiry took precedent. We understand that people have questions about public health and we are trying to answer them,” she added yesterday.

Contacted by AFP over the past few days, the prosecutor in Antwerp handling the case refused to give out any infor-mation on the specific orders of the investigating judge.

Belgian supermarkets have

cleared eggs from the shelves of supermarkets as a precau-tionary while awaiting the results of tests.

In Germany and the Neth-erlands several million eggs from Dutch farms have already been recalled.

German Agriculture Min-ister Christian Schmidt pressed the authorities, par-ticularly in Belgium and The Netherlands, to clear up the situation.

“Someone has clearly pro-ceeded with criminal intent to contaminate (the eggs) with a banned product,” Schmidt told the daily Bild.

Dutch officials closed down 180 businesses earlier in the week and after tests, the Dutch food authority (NVWA) said 138 poultry farms -- about a fifth of those in the country -- would remain closed.

One batch of eggs posing in particular posed “an acute dan-ger to public health”, the agency said.

Eggs from another 59 farms contained high enough levels of the insecticide, fipronil, for the food authority to warn against any children eating them.

To break a taboo, I fear that we must see Crimea as a permanent provisional arrangement, at least for now: FDP Chief

$1.2m awarded to woman after cannister accidentMontauban

AFP

A French court has awarded a million-euro payout to a woman whose skull was cracked by an exploding whipped cream dispenser, in a case echoing the death of a fitness blogger in June.

The woman’s attorney, Emeline Petitgirard, said the sum was unusually large for France, where civil courts are “generally skittish” about big monetary awards “in the absence of death”.

But the attorney said the case of Emilie Lada, who was 30 at the time, was particu-larly tragic -- the “colossal” $1.2m sum is “for a life snatched away.”

When the whipped cream cannister exploded in 2013 it cracked Lada’s skull, prompted intracranial bleeding and tore off part of her face.

French farmers protest wolf attacksSeverac-le-Chateau

AFP

Hundreds of farmers, shepherds and politi-cians rallied in Aveyron,

southern France, yesterday call-ing for action to halt the slaughter of livestock by packs of wolves.

The demonstrators gathered more than 3,000 sheep, about a hundred cattle and a few horses in a field to represent the

number of animals killed by wolves in France in recent months.

“They tell us that 80 percent of French are in favour of the wolf, but that’s because these people don’t know the reality,” said shepherd Melanie Brune.

Brune and other livestock breeders were calling for gov-ernment action to tackle the problem.

So far this year, wolves have killed 4,153 animals in France,

according to an official govern-ment tally.

In 2016, the 10,234 animals were killed, up from 9,112 the previous year. Wolves used to be common in France before dying out in the early 1930s.

They reappeared naturally at the beginning of the 1990s and today they number around 360 across the country, accord-ing to France’s National Office for Hunting and Wildlife (ONCFS).

A ceremony held to mark the 22nd anniversary of 'Operation Storm' at Knin Fortress, in Croatia, yesterday. Operation Storm, a combined military and police operation undertaken in 1995 by Croatia to regain control of Serbia-held areas of the country after five years of occupation.

A sheep breeder walks in a field by a banner which translates as "Pastoralism is not compatible with large predators" during a protest, in Severac-le-Chateau, yesterday.

13SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017 EUROPE

Teens in action

European nations issue extreme heat warningRome

AFP

Swaths of southern Europe sweltered yes-terday in a heatwave that has claimed several lives, cost billions in

crop damage and is, scientists warned, a foretaste of worse to follow in coming decades.

At least five deaths in Italy and Romania have been attrib-uted to the extreme conditions since the heatwave set in around the start of August.

Unusually high, sometimes unprecedented temperatures, are being recorded across an area spanning much of the Ibe-rian peninsula (Spain and Portugal), southern France, Italy, the Balkans and Hungary.

Thermometer mercury has regularly risen above 40 degrees Celsius across the affected areas, exacerbating the impact of an extended drought and the linger-ing impact of a July heatwave which sparked wildfires that claimed 60 lives in Portugal.

Hospital admissions have spiked 15-20 percent in Italy, where at least three people have died. Italians longing for the beach have dubbed the hot spell “Lucifero”.

The latest victim was a

woman whose car was swept away overnight by an avalanche of water and mud as humid con-ditions near the Alpine ski resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo broke into torrential rain.

That tragedy follows the deaths on Thursday of two pen-sioners, a 79-year-old woman and an 82-year-old man, who

were caught up in wildfires in, respectively, the central region of Abruzzo and near Matera in the south of the country.

In Romania, two deaths were linked to the weather, including a farmworker who collapsed after working in fields in the heat at Mogosesti in the northeast of the country.

In Italy, humidity and other factors are making it feel much hotter with the so-called “per-ceived” temperature in Campania, the region around Naples, estimated at a broiling 55 Celsius on Friday.

Hospital admissions are run-ning 15-20 percent above seasonal norms and food pro-ducers are forecast to suffer billions of euros in losses as a result of reduced crop yields.

Italian wine and olive pro-duction is tipped to fall 15 and 30 percent respectively this year.

In Rome, tourists have been risking recently-introduced fines for splashing in the Eternal City’s fountains to cool off.

But there has yet to be any sign of visitors to southern Europe’s summer hotspots being deterred by the rising trend in temperatures.

Tourists were queueing once more yesterday outside Flor-ence’s Uffizi museum, which was

forced to close Friday after its air conditioning broke down because of a lack of water from the dried up River Arno.

Health authorities in France have warned citizens to be par-ticularly aware of the risks faced by the sick and the elderly.

The country is still haunted by memories of a 2003 heatwave which resulted in an estimated 15,000 avoidable deaths among pensioners, some of whom had been left on their own by holi-day-making relatives.

Scientists meanwhile warned that deaths due to extreme weather in Europe could increase

fifty-fold from an estimated 3,000 per year recently to 152,000 by the end of this century - if global warming is not reined in.

Southern Europe will suffer most and heatwaves would account for 99 percent of the deaths, according to research conducted for the European Commission and published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

The conclusions were ques-tioned by Korean peers of the researchers who suggested humans would become less vul-nerable to extreme weather with experience of it.

Meteo France forecaster

Frederic Nathan said he was sure recent heatwaves reflected glo-bal warning.

“We have always had them but their length and intensity has notched up since the 1950s and 60s and they are increasingly coming earlier or later.

“If you look at records for France, the vast majority of new records being set are for high temperatures. Record cold is becoming increasingly rare.”

Scientist warned that large parts of South Asia, home to a fifth of the world’s population, could become unbearably hot by the end of this century.

Prosecutors widen probe over migrant rescuesMilan

Reuters

Italian prosecutors are inves-tigating leading humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans

Frontieres (MSF), a legal source said yesterday, over its role in rescuing migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

A legal source now says that MSF is also part of the investi-gation over the alleged rescue of migrants carried out just off the Libyan coast when there was no immediate threat to their safety.

MSF said in a statement it

had not been notified of the inquiry and that it stood ready to cooperate with prosecutors since similar accusations first surfaced in the press months ago.

“We hope any doubts can be dispelled soon to end this trick-ling of accusations that poisons the atmosphere in an ever gloomier situation,” the state-ment said.

Italy is under pressure to manage new arrivals because some 600,000 migrants have reached it by sea from North Africa since 2014. Immigration has become a potent political

issue ahead of elections in spring 2018.

Yesterday, Luigi Di Maio, who is expected to lead the pop-ulist Five-Star movement in next year’s vote, called for “an imme-diate stop to the sea-taxi service”. The Five-Star is ahead of the ruling Democratic Party in polls.

Rome has asked eight NGOs to sign a code of conduct for the southern Mediterranean, includ-ing a demand that they carry an armed policemen on board their boats. Only four aid groups have agreed to it.

Italy’s Interior Minister

Marco Minniti urged the four NGOs that have not signed the document to do so.

“Those who do not sign can-not remain part of Italy’s rescue system, though nobody is ques-tioning the law of the sea and international treaties,” he said in an interview with yesterday’s Il Fatto Quotidiano.

“Because migrants arrive in Italy, we must find a balance between their rights and those of the country that hosts them. We need complete trust between those who carry out the rescues and the country that opens up its ports,” he said.

People fill their bottles with water from a fountain in front the "Altare della Patria", in central Rome, yesterday.

Thermometer mercury has regularly risen above 40 degrees Celsius across the affected areas, exacerbating the impact of an extended drought and the lingering impact of a July heatwave which sparked wildfires that claimed 60 lives in Portugal.

Worse to follow

At least five deaths in Italy and Romania have been attributed to the extreme conditions since the heatwave set in around the start of August.

Vatican City

Reuters

Cardinal Dionigi Tetta-manzi, once seen as a possible contender to

become pope, died yesterday at the age of 83, the Milan diocese said on its website.

Tettamanzi was made archbishop of the Italian port city of Genoa in 1995 and in 2002 moved to nearby Milan, one of the world’s largest dio-ceses with some 5 million faithful and 1,000 parishes. He had become a cardinal in 1998.

“A key figure of Milan’s social and religious history has disappeared,” Milan’s mayor Giuseppe Sala said in a note.

Pope Francis wrote to Milan’s outgoing Archbishop Angelo Scola and his succes-sor Mario Delpini to express his condolences over the departure of one of “the most loveable and beloved” prel-ates of the Milanese diocese.

A prolific writer, Tetta-manzi helped Pope John Paul draft some of his encyclicals and was seen by some Vati-can watchers as a potential candidate to replace the Polish pontiff when he died in 2005.

But he was little known outside his native Italy and fel-low cardinals instead elected Josef Ratzinger as pope.

While archbishop of

Genoa, Tettamanzi defended anti-globalisation protesters who besieged a Group of Eight summit there in 2001.

“A single African child sick with AIDS counts more than the entire universe,” he said at the time.

He stood out by deciding that pilgrims visiting Genoa for the 2000 Holy Year should stop not only at the city’s great churches but also an old people’s home to get a special indulgence for the jubilee millennium year.

Tettamanzi was born in Renate near Milan on March 14, 1934.

He began studying as a priest at the age of 11 and was ordained at 23 by the then-archbishop of Milan, Giovanni Battista Montini, who went on to become Pope Paul VI.

2005 Italian Papal candidate dies at 83

Pope Francis wrote to Milan’s outgoing Archbishop Angelo Scola and his successor Mario Delpini to express his condolences over the departure of one of “the most loveable and beloved” prelates of the Milanese diocese. 8 still missing

at flooded Russian mineMoscow

AFP

RESCUERS yesterday helped an injured worker out of a flooded Russian diamond mine but the search contin-ued for eight other still missing in the disaster, mine owners Alrosa said.

Alisher Mirzayev, 36, was in intensive care in a serious but stable condition in hospi-ta l suf fer ing from hypothermia, but his life was not in danger, said a state-ment from the company.

Rescue efforts were con-tinuing for eight other miners reported missing since Fri-day’s flooding at the Mir mine in Russia’s vast Sakha region some 4,160km east of Moscow.

“The waters broke through into one of the mine’s pumping stations out of a flooded disused crater that contained some 300,000 cubic metres of water,” the emergency situations minis-try said.

The accident happened at around 4:30pm.

It is believed to have been caused by an “uncontrolled increase in the flow of water” out of the mine’s abandoned crater into the underground shaft, Alrosa said.

Former Russian envoy to US denies accusations of meddlingMoscow

AP

The former Russian ambas-sador to the United States yesterday strongly denied

the accusations of meddling in the US presidential election.

Sergei Kislyak, who has just returned from Washington, said on Russian state Rossiya 24 tel-evision that he was merely doing his job as a diplomat when he

met with members of President Donald Trump’s team.

He said he also had met with representatives of Hillary Clin-ton’s campaign, but didn’t give any names.

Kislyak described the US accusations against him as absurd and “shameful” for the US, adding that official acknowl-edgement that his phone conversations were bugged was “unhealthy.”

“Any diplomat, Russian or not, works to better understand the policy of a country he’s posted to, figure out what the new administration’s course is and understand where cooper-ation is possible,” Kislyak said.

Kislyak’s contacts with mem-bers of Trump’s team have been part of congressional and FBI investigations into possible col-lusion between Trump campaign and Russia. Moscow has denied

any interference in US election.Asked about his contacts

with Michael Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national secu-rity adviser before being fired in February, Kislyak said that they didn’t discuss any secrets.

“We talked about very basic things. There are a few subjects important for Russia-US coop-eration, primarily terrorism, and it was one of the subjects we talked about. Our conversations

were legitimate, calm and abso-lutely transparent.”

Flynn was fired after officials said he misled US Vice President Mike Pence about whether he and the ambassador had dis-cussed Washington’s sanctions against Russia in a phone call.

Kislyak insisted that they hadn’t talked about sanctions, adding that he had specific orders from Moscow not to chat the restrictive measures.

Teenagers demonstrate their skills during a military-style competition, organised by the National Guard security force for military cadets and youth, at a training ground in Balashikha, outside Moscow, yesterday.

14 SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017AMERICAS

Inflaming tensions

Venezuela’s contested new assembly ordered Luisa Ortega to go on trial in a move sure to further inflame international criticism of the leftist government.

The body also said it planned to operate as Venezuela’s supreme power for up to two years.

Rio de Janeiro AFP

Thousands of Brazilian army troops raided Rio de Janeiro slums in a pre-

dawn crackdown on crime gangs yesterday, leaving parts of the city looking like a war zone on the first anniversary of the open-ing of the Olympic Games.

Five favelas were targeted by police and 3,600 of the approximately 8,500 troops recently deployed to Rio in a swoop starting at 0700 GMT, the Rio state security service said in a statement.

Their main goal was to stop gangs behind a surge in brazen robberies of commercial trucks, with arrest warrants issued for 40 people. However, the unu-sually aggressive operation also follows wider concerns that nearly bankrupt post-Olympic Rio is spinning out of control.

Dozens of soldiers in cam-ouflage set up a checkpoint at Lins favela, one of the many lit-tle-regulated, and often gang-plagued communities of working class Brazilians that rise up on the city’s forest-clad hills. The troops stood with fingers on the triggers of assault rifles and an armored personnel carrier and two jeeps blocked the road.

Everyone exiting the favela was subjected to an identity check and search. One man was questioned at length about a scar on his stomach and another man’s bag was searched only to find he was carrying a large Bible.

Favela residents said they had woken to shooting when the troops moved in and that the operation made them feel no safer. “There’s an atmos-phere of tension and fear,” said Vanuza Barroso da Silva, 23, who was going to her job at a supermarket. “People can

hardly get to work.”“They treat us as if we’re

trash,” her father Roberto, 46, said angrily of the security forces. Officials said the other favelas targeted were Camarista Meier, Morros de Sao Joao and Engenho Novo in the north and Covanca in the west.

“The armed forces are responsible for the perimeters in some of these regions and based at strategic points,” the state security service said. “Some roads are blocked and the airspace is restricted to civil-ian flights over the sectors where the armed forces are operating.” Rio’s airports, how-ever, were not affected.

The big crackdown on Rio’s heavily armed criminal gangs came exactly a year after Pres-ident Michel Temer opened the Olympics in a ceremony at the Maracana football stadium, which is close to Lins favela.

Montreal

AFP

Canadian Prime Min-ister Justin Trudeau on Friday promised

that his government would redouble its efforts to han-dle the influx of migrants illegally entering the coun-try from the United States to seek asylum.

“I want to reassure Cana-dians that we are ensuring that the capacity to deal with these refugees is in place and our immigration system remains strong and robust,” Trudeau said.

“We are an open and compassionate country but we have a strong system that we follow.”

Canada’s Quebec prov-ince, which borders several US states, has seen a large influx of migrants, mainly Haitians, but the system is working, and security of ordi-nary Canadians has not been compromised, the prime min-ister said.

“We remain an open and compassionate country, but part of remaining that way is reassuring Canadians that we are processing properly all of these new arrivals,” he said.

He urged migrants arriv-ing in Canada to go through the “proper processes” rather than entering illegally, saying that eventually, they would “still have to go through” all of the red tape if they want to remain in the country.

In July alone, nearly 1,700 people took advantage of services provided by a Mon-treal body tasked with welcoming new asylum seek-ers, as compared with 800 in each previous month since the end of winter.

Bedminster

AFP

Donald Trump, who once asked “what’s the point” of vacations

and often admonished his presidential predecessor for taking them while in office, embarked on a 17-day holi-day to one of his golf resorts.

Arriving in Bedminster, New Jersey for an extended break, the president left behind a capital grappling with a Russia scandal and buffeted by extraordinary leaks from government officials.

He has also failed to seize any major legislative victo-ries in his first seven months in office, and is at odds with several Republican lawmak-ers on multiple fronts.

The White House said Trump’s Bedminster stay would be a “working vaca-tion,” and cited scheduled upgrades of the West Wing’s creaky heating and cooling system during the steamy Washington summer as a rea-son why Trump was leaving town. “The President will continue to work over the next two weeks,” said White House spokeswoman Lind-say Walters.

A president taking time off from a hectic schedule is nothing new. But Trump’s down time is in the spotlight largely because of his relent-less criticism of Barack Obama’s breaks from the White House.

NEWS BYTES

Chicago stabbing death suspects surrender CHICAGO: A Northwestern University professor and a Uni-versity of Oxford employee wanted in the brutal stabbing death of a Chicago man surrendered peacefully in California and will be returned to Chicago for interrogation, federal and local authorities said. Wyndham Lathem, 42, gave himself up on Friday at the Oakland federal building and Andrew Warren, 56, surrendered at about the same time to the San Francisco Police Department, according to Michael McCloud, fugitive taskforce commander with the US Marshals Service. McCloud said the surrender of the two suspects was “nego-tiated,” although he declined to say how that happened. Lathem, an associate microbiology professor at Northwest-ern, was booked into the Alameda County jail. Warren, a Somerville College resident at Oxford University in England, was taken to the San Francisco County Jail. They will appear separately in court before being extradited to Illinois. A man-hunt had been under way since shortly after the body of 26-year-old Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau was found riddled with stab wounds on July 27 in the Chicago apart-ment where Lathem lived.

California police seize 2,000 animalsLOS ANGELES: Investigators discovered more than 2,000 snakes, parrots, chickens and other animals, around half of them dead, at an industrial park on Friday as they responded to reports of a rotten smell. “Almost 2,000 chickens, para-keets, lovebirds, and other exotic birds were rescued from an industrial warehouse this morning... dozens of exotic fish were found at the location,” the Inland Valley Humane Soci-ety and Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said. Officers had shown up at the industrial building 48km east of Los Angeles, as part of a separate investigation into the occupant and noticed a smell emanating from inside, police spokesman John Minook said. A search warrant was served and authorities entered to find more than a thousand chick-ens, baby chicks, parakeets, parrots, love birds, snakes and fish, in “appalling conditions,” the Humane Society said. It said there was little ventilation no food or water provided for the animals, as well as animal waste everywhere.

Emergency in Canada’s fire-hit westMONTREAL: Firefighters were battling more than a hun-dred blazes in western Canada yesterday as authorities in British Colombia province were forced to extend a state of emergency for a second time. Officials said the state of emer-gency would remain in effect until August 18 to ensure the continued flow of resources to fight the forest fires and pro-tect the public. The state of emergency was first put into effect July 7, and extended for the first time on July 19. Most of the 46,000 people who were forced to flee during that period have been able to return to their homes, but 7,000 are still subject to evacuation orders, the authorities said.

Caracas

AFP

Venezuela’s contested new assembly fired t h e c o u n t r y ’ s dissident attorney-general , Luisa

Ortega, yesterday and ordered her to go on trial in a move sure to further inflame international criticism of the leftist govern-ment. The body, which made the decisions its first order of busi-ness since its widely condemned election a week ago, also said it planned to operate as Vene-zuela’s supreme power for up to two years.

Just before the assembly’s first working session in the ornate Legislative Palace in Caracas, dozens of troops posted outside the prosecutors’ offices prevented Ortega from entering. “You didn’t see how they man-handled me, how they attacked me with shields,” Ortega said outside after being rebuffed.

Ortega has been a thorn in President Nicolas Maduro’s side for months, after she broke ranks with him over the legality of the Constituent Assembly. Her sack-ing was widely expected, but its swiftness — and the move to put her on trial for alleged “irregu-larities” while in office — showed the assembly was keen on tak-ing aggressive action right out of the gate.

Citing the “rupture of the democratic order,” Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil unanimously decided to suspend Venezuela from Mercosur, a South American trading bloc.

Foreign ministers from the four founding members of the bloc issued a statement in Sao

Venezuela assembly fires dissident A-G

Venezuela’s chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz speaks to the press during a flash visit to the public prosecutor’s office in Caracas yesterday.

Paulo calling for “the immediate start of a process of political transition and restoration of the democratic order.”

Before Ortega’s sacking, the head of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, tweeted: “An aggression against her (Ortega) is an aggression against Venezuelan democracy.” On Friday, the OAS’ Inter-Amer-ican Commission on Human Rights had ordered Venezuela to protect Ortega, saying her life was at risk after she launched an investigation into the legality of the Constituent Assembly.

US National Security Advisor HR McMaster in an interview that aired yesterday on US cable news channel MSNB accused Maduro of leading an “authoritarian dic-tatorship” that had staged a “coup” against democracy.

But he ruled out foreign mil-itary intervention in the oil-rich nation, and said Washington did not want to give Maduro a pre-text for blaming Washington for his mounting woes. “It’s impor-tant for us to place responsibility

for this catastrophe on Maduro’s shoulders. He is the one who has caused it, and he’s the one who’s perpetuating it,” McMaster said.

The United States, the Euro-pean Union and major Latin American nations including Mex-ico, Argentina and Chile have all rejected the assembly.

The body’s legitimacy was struck a hard blow when a Brit-ish-based firm that supplied the voting technology, Smartmatic, said this week the turnout figure was “tampered with” and greatly exaggerated. Subsequent US sanctions directly targeted Maduro. More were threatened against the assembly’s 545 mem-bers. Maduro has responded by lashing out at US “imperialism”

and calling the heads of other Latin American states vassals to Washington.

Maduro’s former foreign minister Delcy Rodriguez, who now heads the Constituent Assembly, had vowed to go after those seen to be behind months of anti-government protests.

“The international commu-nity should not make a mistake over Venezuela. The message is clear, very clear: we Venezue-lans will resolve our conflict, our crisis without any form of for-eign interference,” she said.

Maduro himself said on Fri-day that “if we had an attorney general here that acted... all these violent protesters would already

be in jail.” The principal task of the Constituent Assembly is to rewrite the constitution. But while working on that, it enjoys supreme powers over all other branches of government.

Initial suggestions were that it would need only six months to complete its mission. But its decision yesterday that it would stay in place for up to two years showed it would be in charge for some time to come. Its 545 mem-bers are all Maduro allies, and their number includes the pres-ident’s wife and son. The opposition has vowed to main-tain street protests against the assembly, but they had grown more muted in the past few days as despondency set in.

Trump begins 17-day vacation as troubles brew in Washington

Canada PM says ‘strong system’ can handle migrant influx

A soldier takes position at Morro do Macaco slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during a pre-dawn crackdown on crime gangs, yesterday.

Brazil army troops storm Rio slums to catch gang leaders

15SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017 BREAK TIME

Yesterday’s answer

SHOWING ATVILLAGGIO & CITY CENTER

BABY

BLU

ES

ALL IN THE MIND

AMAZON, ARKANSAS, COLORADO, CONGO, DANUBE, ELBE, EUPHRATES, GANGES, HUDSON, INDUS, JORDAN, LIMPOPO, LOIRE, MEKONG, MISSISSIPPI, MISSOURI, MURRAY, NILE, ORINOCO, RHINE, RIO GRANDE, SEINE, SHANNON, THAMES, TIBER, TIGRIS, VOLGA, YANGTZE, YUKON, ZAMBEZI.

08:00 News

08:30 Latin America

Investigates

09:00 The Big Picture

10:00 News

10:30 Inside Story

11:00 News

11:30 Talk To Al Jazeera

12:00 News

12:30 Rebel Education

13:00 NEWSHOUR

14:00 News

14:30 Inside Story

15:00 Al Jazeera World

16:00 NEWSHOUR

17:00 News

17:30 The Listening Post

18:00 Newsgrid

19:00 News

19:30 101 East

20:00 News

20:30 Inside Story

21:00 NEWSHOUR

22:00 News

22:30 Talk To Al Jazeera

23:00 Face To Face

10:10 Edge Of Alaska

10:55 Ice Lake Rebels

11:40 How Do They Do

It?

12:47 Storage

Hunters

13:10 Gold Rush

13:55 Impossible

Engineering

14:40 Gold Divers

15:25 Fast N' Loud

16:10 Wheeler

Dealers

17:00 How Do They Do

It?

17:50 Storage Hunters

18:50 Running Wild With

Bear Grylls

21:00 Mega Trains

21:50 Gold Rush

22:40 Ocean Warriors

23:30 Fast N' Loud

00:20 Wheeler Dealers

01:05 Mega Trains

01:50 Gold Rush

02:35 Ocean Warriors

07:00 Call Of The

Wildman

07:25 Animal ER

08:15 The Lion

Queen

09:10 Wildest

Europe

10:05 Dog Rescuers

11:00 Wildest Africa

11:55 Animal Cops

Philadelphia

13:45 Wildest

Islands

18:20 Treehouse

Masters

19:15 Animal ER

20:10 Pit Bulls &

Parolees

21:05 Animal ER

22:00 Treehouse

Masters

22:55 Tanked

23:50 Tanked

01:40 Wildest Islands

13:10 Dog With A Blog

15:15 Austin & Ally

15:40 Austin & Ally

16:05 Descendants

Wicked World

16:10 Girl Meets World

17:00 Good Luck

Charlie

19:00 Star Darlings

19:05 Best Friends

Whenever

19:30 Liv And Maddie

19:55 Elena Of Avalor

20:20 Jessie

20:45 Bizaardvark

21:10 Austin & Ally

21:35 Stuck In The

Middle

22:00 Bunk'd

22:25 Miraculous Tales

Of Ladybug And

Cat Noir

22:50 Lolirock

23:10 Sabrina Secrets

Of A Teenage

Witch

Conceptis Sudoku: Conceptis Sudoku is a number-

placing puzzle based on a 9×9 grid. The object is to

place the numbers 1 to 9 in the empty squares so

that each row, each column and each 3×3 box

contains the same number only once.

CROSSWORD

CONCEPTIS SUDOKU

Yesterday's answer

MALL

LANDMARK

ROYAL PLAZA

ASIAN TOWN

NOVO — Pearl

ROXY

Jawab Leteqal (2D/Arabic) 10:00am, 12:20, 2:40, 5:00, 7:20, 9:40pm & 12:00midnight 6 Days (2D/Action) 1:30, 5:30 & 9:30pmThe Dark Tower (2D/Action) 11:00am, 1:30, 2:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:00, 7:30, 9:30 & 11:30pm Atomic Blonde (2D/Thriller) 10:00am, 2:40, 7:20pm & 12:00midnightBaby Driver (2D/Action) 12:20, 5:00 & 9:40pmFirst Kill (2D/Action) 11:30am, 3:30, 7:30 & 11:30pmMamnoun Min El Ektirab (2D/Arabic) 10:00am, 2:40, 7:20pm & 12:00midnightBling (2D/Animation) 10:00am, 12:50, 2:40 & 4:30pmWar For The Planet of The Apes (2D/Action) 6:40, 9:40 & 11:40pm Jab Harry Met Sejal (2D/Hindi) 10:00am, 3:10 & 8:20pm Baywatch (2D/Comedy) 12:50, 6:00 & 11:20pmBoyka: Undisputed (2D/Action) 10:00am, 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00, 10:00pm & 12:00midnight The Big Sick (2D/Comedy) 12:10, 4:50 & 9:30pmDunkirk (2D IMAX/Action) 11:00am, 1:10, 3:20, 5:30, 7:40, 9:50pm & 12:00midnight Boyka: Undisputed (2D/Action) 2:30, 7:00 & 11:30pm

Bling (2D/Animation) 2:30 & 4:00pm Jab Harry Met Sejal (2D/Hindi) 2:15, 7:00 & 11:15pm 6 Days (2D/Action) 3:00 & 5:30pm The Dark Tower (2D/Action) 3:00, 9:30 & 11:45pm The Big Sick (2D/Comedy) 5:00pm Mamnoun Min El Ektirab (2D/Arabic) 5:00 & 9:30pm Finally Found Someone (2D/Tagalog) 5:30, 7:15 & 9:30pm First Kill (2D/Action) 7:45 & 11:30pm

Mamnoun Min El Ektirab (2D/Arabic) 2:45 & 9:30pm The Big Sick (2D/Comedy) 2:30 & 5:00pm Bling (2D/Animation) 3:00 & 4:30pm Finally Found Someone (2D/Tagalog) 5:00 & 8:45pm Jab Harry Met Sejal (2D/Hindi) 6:00 & 11:00pm Huroob Ezterari (2D/Arabic) 7:30pm First Kill (2D/Action) 7:30 & 11:30pm The Dark Tower (2D/Action) 9:30 & 11:30pm

Bling (2D/Animation) 2:00, 3:30 & 5:30pm The Big Sick (2D/Comedy) 2:30 & 6:30pm Mamnoun Min El Ektirab (2D/Arabic) 4:30 & 9:30pm Jab Harry Met Sejal (2D/Hindi) 2:15, 8:45 & 11:15pm First Kill (2D/Action) 2:30, 7:30 & 11:30pm Finally Found Someone (2D/Tagalog) 5:00 & 7:30pm The Dark Tower (2D/Action) 9:45 & 11:30pm

Jab Harry Met Sejal (Hindi) 6:00, 6:30, 8:45, 9:00, 9:15, 11:30pm & 12:00midnight

Sunday Holiday (2D/Malayalam) 9:15pm & 12:00midnight

Vikram Vedha (2D/Tamil) 6:30pm

Chunkzz (Animation) 12:00noon, 3:00 & 6:00pm The Dark Tower 5:00, 7:00, 9:00, 11:00pm & 01:00amFirst Kill (Thriller) 12:00noon, 2:20, 4:30, 6:50, 9:00 & 11:10pm

Jab Harry Met Sejal (Hindi) 12:00noon, 2:50, 5:40, 8:30 & 11:20pmDunkirk (2D/Thriller) 9:00 & 11:15pm Atomic Blonde 12:00noon & 2:30pm

AL KHORJab Harry Met Sejal (Hindi) 11:15am, 2:15, 5:15, 8:15 & 11:15pm

Dark Tower (2D/Action) 2:30, 7:00, 9:15 & 11:30pm Bling 11:45am & 1:30pmFinally Found Someone (Tagalog) 3:45, 9:00 & 11:30pm

Dunkirk (2D/Thriller) 12:15 & 4:45pm Sunday Holiday (Malayalam) 6:15pm

16 SUNDAY 6 AUGUST 2017MORNING BREAK

Free vegetables at floating garden in New York CityNew York

AP

An old construction barge planted with vegetables, apple trees and fragrant herbs is giving apart-

ment-dwelling New Yorkers a chance to pick something and eat it.

Part floating garden, part artwork and part community organising project, the barge called Swale is cur-rently docked on a river in the South Bronx and will move to Hudson River Park in lower Manhattan from Sep-tember 15 to November 15.

Founder Mary Mattingly created Swale in part to give New Yorkers an opportunity to forage for food, which is illegal throughout the city’s 30,000

acres of public parks. The no-foraging rule doesn’t apply to Swale, since it’s a barge.

“Because not everyone has access to healthy food in New York, I saw Swale as a tool to advocate for policy change,” said Mattingly, an artist who is dividing her time between Swale and her summer residency at Monet’s Gar-den in Giverny, France.

Swale’s harvest is free for the tak-ing. Dariella Rodriguez, director of outreach for Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, a community group that leads tours of Swale, said many visi-tors are surprised they don’t have to pay. “Immediately they’re like, ‘how much?’ And when we tell them that it’s free, they’re really shocked,”

Rodriguez said. Swale was launched in 2016 with funding from Kickstarter and A Blade of Grass, a nonprofit that supports socially engaged art.

The hard cider company Strong-bow is providing additional support this year including a donated “orchard” of eight apple trees. “It aligns with our messaging because we’re about bring-ing nature into the city,” said Reggie Gustave, Strongbow’s brand manager. The 40-metre barge is now docked in the Bronx River at Concrete Plant Park, whose decommissioned con-crete silos recall the area’s industrial past. There was jewelweed, known for its skin-healing properties, and wild carrot, used for centuries as a contraceptive.

The Empire State Building in New York’s Manhattan.

Hop, step and dance for a causeLos Angeles Reuters

A group of black teenage girls stomp, clap and shout in unison in step

dance routines, channeling their anger, frustration and hopes into powerful perform-ances in a new documentary “Step,” out in US theatres this week.

The journey of the found-ing class of the step troupe at the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women shows the girls’ struggles in the aftermath of protests and rioting in the city where 25-year-old black man Fred-die Gray died after suffering a broken neck in a police van in April 2015.

Stepping is not actually a dance, said Cori Grainger, one of the film’s lead sub-jects, because it does not use a beat. Instead, “you are the beat, you are the music, you use your hands, you stomp your feet, you clap, it’s spoken word,” Grainger told Reuters.

As the girls juggle their academics with competing in step tournaments,

they visit Gray’s memorial where their step coach tells them, “as African Amer-ican women, we are considered bottom of the barrel.” The visit inspires the girls to perform a Black Lives Matter routine, which they end with their fists in the air, chanting “It could have been us.”

“We began to use step as a platform to talk about things that were most

important to us, so we used our themes to educate people while we entertained them,” Grainger said.

“There are just rampant misunderstandings about the Black Lives Matter movement in this country and seeing these young women stand up and say ‘it could have been me,’ it feels different,” added the film’s director Amanda Lipitz.

The charter school attended by the girls aims for a 100 percent graduation and college acceptance rate, a goal that challenges some of the film’s protagonists.

Grainger hinges her hopes on a full scholarship to Johns Hopkins University as her family struggles financially

while another girl, Blessin Giraldo, has to face the consequences of her low grades amid a difficult home life. Tayla Solomon clashes with a mother deter-mined to keep her on the right track.

“I think a common misconception is that urban communities don’t really have kids in them who have big dreams and hopes,” Grainger said.

Amanda Lipitz (right), the director of the documentary film Step, and cast member Cori Grainger.

‘Despacito’ is most viewed video on YouTubeNew York

AP

The music video for the No 1 hit song “Despac-ito” has a new record

— it’s become the most pop-ular clip on YouTube of all-time with more than three billion views.

YouTube announced Fri-day that Luis Fonsi’s ubiquitous song with Daddy Yankee has surpassed previ-ous record holder “See You Again,” the song by Wiz Kha-lifa and Charlie Puth from the “Furious 7” soundtrack.

“Despacito” became an international smash hit this year, topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The record-break-ing video does not include the popular remix with Justin Bie-ber; that version has been viewed more than 464 million times. “Despacito” is on track to become the first to reach three billion views on YouTube.

QNA

As part of the North Road Corridor Enhancement project, the Public Works Authority (ashghal) opened Al Kheesa Interchange to

traffic after completing the junction upgrade.

The reconstruction of Al Kheesa Interchange implemented by Ashghal will bring higher capacity and more streamlined traffic for the adjacent res-idential areas, particularly, Al Kheesa and Umm Slal, which are connected with nearby expressways and busi-nesses, as well as provide alternative accesses and exits for Al Shamal Road.

The upgrade of Al Kheesa Inter-change incorporated two new flyovers: one considered as the longest over-pass on Al Shamal Road with a length of approximately 700 metre and three lanes, heading from Al Kheesa to Doha and another 170 metre long with two lanes, heading from Doha to Al Kheesa. The new bridges tripled the capacity up to 12000 vehicles per hour in place of 4000 vehicles per hour. Also, Ash-ghal converted the main bridge roundabout into a light signal enhanc-ing safety and streamlining traffic as well. The revamp will improve traffic and reduce travel time for road users in the surrounding locations, allowing for traffic decongestion on Umm Slal Mohammed Interchange and Al Kharaitiyat Interchange.

Residents in Al Kheesa, Umm Slal Mohammed along with Al Kharaitiyat will find it easier for the alleviated traf-fic around since Al Kheesa Interchange will allow for better traffic flow from and into Al shamal Road.

Also, the interchange is going to work as an access point for the serv-ice roads on Al Shamal road for travellers from Doha and northern areas. The interchange is a key con-nection for Al Shamal Road users and the west side areas towards Al Kheesa

since there is a direct link with the vital Arab League Street, flowing movement to Community College in Qatar, Qatar University and Al Khor Coastal Road.

The overhauled junction improves movement from North Road and the east side areas towards Umm Slal, pro-viding a connection with Barzaan Market, Umm Slal Centre for Health and Wellness and new Umm Slal Wholesale Market along with other educational and business facilities around.

Eng. Yousef Al-Emadi, Expressway Department Manager at the Public Works Authority said that Al Kheesa Interchange is the last interchange to be opened as part of the North Road Enhancement Project, stressing the importance of the interchange, which links the Eastern and Western areas on both sides of the North Road, as well as the commercial, educational, and health facilities in the area.

Eng. Yousef thanked all entities who cooperated in this project, includ-ing the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the Ministry of Municipality and Environ-ment and Umm Salal Municipality, as

well as the project leaders who con-tributed to the completion of the interchange on time, hoping to dou-ble the efforts in order to develop Qatar in the best possible way.

On the impact of the current siege on Ashghals projects, Al-Emadi added that the crisis has been contained and substitutes to primary materials are obtained from other countries such as Oman, India, France, and others. He pointed out that all the materials are available in parts of the world and are not limited to the countries of the blockade.

He also pointed out that Ashghal met with the contractors, suppliers, and all concerned entities and the sit-uation was dealt with quickly, and confirmed that Ashghals projects are not affected by the blockade.

For his part, Mansour Hasan Al Naimi, representative and manager of the services department in Umm Slal Municipality, confirmed that Al Kheesa Interchange connects Al Dhaayen and Umm Slal areas in both eastern and western regions and represents a vital artery for the residents of both regions.

He pointed out that Al Kheesa

Interchange will ease the traffic flow on both Umm Slal Muhammad and Al Khraitiyat Interchanges, adding that the three interchanges have become three main arteries linking the east-ern and western surrounding areas.

The Al Kheesa interchange is part of the North Road Corridor Enhance-ment project impelemented by the public Works Authority as it is finaliz-ing the 200 km service roads and cycling and foot paths.

Ashghal already opened Umm Slal Mohammed Interchange in April 2017 and the vital Al Kharaitiyat Interchange last March to serve areas of Al Kharai-tiayt, Leabib, Al Ebb besides nearby highways and businesses as it creates several alternative routes for travel-ers from and to the North Road.

Also, Ashghal opened late 2016 Izghawa Interchange to bring in alter-native routes from Lusail to Izaghawa and Al Shamal Road and businesses around and sharing more traffic with Duhail Interchange. The bridge link-ing Al Huwaila Road and North Road, enhancing traffic to and from Raas Laffan

The road linking Al Khor and North Road was also completed, a 5 km dual carriageway with three lanes in each direction instead of two lanes in each direction. Ashghal delivered Umm Birkah Road, as well as Al Sakhama and Umm Al Amad Braiding Bridges to bring in easier access to areas of Al Sakhama, Sanae Lehmaidi, Umm Al Amad and Umm Slal

Noteworthy, the North Road Cor-ridor Enhancement project incorporates new services roads 200 km along from Duhail to Al Shamal Town, constructing Izghawa and Umm Slal Mohammed Interchanges, upgrad-ing Lehweilah, Al Kheesa and Al Kharaitiyat Interchanges. Also, the improvements include revamping Al Khor Link Road, Umm Birkah Road and creating new cycling and foot paths.

Ashghal opens Al Kheesa Interchange

A view of the Al Kheesa Interchange after Ashghal opened it for traffic, yesterday.

FAJRSHOROOK

03.40 am

05.03 am

ZUHRASR

11.40 am

03.08 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

06.18 pm

07.48 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 03:00 – 17:00 LOW TIDE 09:15

Hazy to misty at places at first be-

comes hot daytime with some local

clouds and humid by night.

WEATHER TODAY

Minimum Maximum31oC 39oC

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department