CELEBS 7 @newsofbahrain Niki Lauda: F1 legend turned airline … · 2018. 4. 8. · heritage may...

03 Intellect for sale in black market!

04Cyber-spy group based in Iran targeting Bahrain

05Univ ordered to pay BD47,000 to students for fraudulent act

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Civil war continues to devastate the lives of millions of Syrians, while endangering their future. The war has already claimed more than 400,000 lives. Russia has used a closely guarded communications channel with America’s top general to propose the two former Cold War foes cooperate to rebuild Syria and repatriate refugees to the war-torn country, according to a US government memo. The proposal was sent in a July 19 letter by Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, to US Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to the memo which was seen by Reuters. Above, a Syrian boy rides his bicycle with demolished buildings in the background in one of the suburbs of Douma in Damascus.

Rumours of plans to amend indemnity laws dismissed

• Mr Fakhro, who heads the Economic and Financial Affairs Committee in the Shura Council, confirmed to Tribune that the news is false.

• The lawmaker denied that the committee even discussed the matter, as the sole purpose of forming it was to discuss the Pensions Law, which is only related to Bahrainis.

TDT|ManamaMuhannad Mansour

Rumours over amend-ments to Bahrain’s in-demnity laws has been

denied by a Bahraini legislator.This follows messages wide-

ly circulating on social media in the past few days, raising concerns among the expat pop-ulation.

I n t h e m e s s a g e, i t wa s claimed that the Government, represented by the Social In-surance Organisation (SIO), is planning to adjust the exist-ing Pensions Law by only dis-bursing the indemnity of expat workers in the private sector when their residency permits are cancelled.

It was also alleged that this matter is now being discussed

between the Government and legislators, at the govern-ment-parliamentary committee formed as per the Royal Di-rectives of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to to reconsider the new Pensions Law.

The Royal Directives were issued after the proposed law created an outcry among cit-izens, as it grants absolute jurisdictions to SIO, allowing it to determine pensions’ per-centages, retirement age, pen-sions increment and other pow-ers related to the regulation of retirement and pensions of the Bahraini employees in the public and military sectors, as well as members of the Legis-lative Authority and municipal councils.

Tribune yesterday spoke to

Shura Council member Jamal Fakhro about the matter to ver-ify the claims. Mr Fakhro, who heads the Economic and Finan-cial Affairs Committee in Shura Council, confirmed to Tribune that the news is false.

The lawmaker denied that the committee even discussed the matter, as the sole purpose of forming it was to discuss the Pensions Law, which is only related to Bahrainis.

“The indemnity of expatriate workers is regulated by the La-bour Law. This matter is within the jurisdiction of Labour Min-istry. It was never discussed at the committee,” Mr Fakhro affirmed.

Tribune was contacted by many concerned readers with regard to the matter. Labour Ministry comments are awaited.

The indemnity of expatriate

workers is regulated by the Labour

Law. It was never discussed

at the committee.

MR FAKHRO

Endless suffering

Saudi-West enmity was Laden goal My son was a shy boy. He was brainwashed by a Muslim Brotherhood member, says Laden’s mom

• The Al Qaeda leader had developed a political attitude in 1990 when he wanted to evict the communists from South Yemen.

Dubai

Osama Bin Laden, the world’s former most wanted man for terror-

ism charges, was set on using Saudi citizens to destroy re-lations between the west and the east, a newspaper quoted officials in Riyadh, London and Washington DC.

“There is no doubt that he deliberately chose Saudi citi-zens for the 9/11 plot,” a British intelligence officer told British daily the Guardian.

The intelligence officer said that Bin Laden “was convinced” that he was going to turn the west against Saudi Arabia.

The former head of Sau-di intelligence between 1977 and September 1, 2001, Prince

Turki Al Faisal, also said his intelligence agency knew that something “spectacular” was about to happen to the Ameri-cans, British, French and Arabs

just months before 9/11, the report said.

According to the prince, the Al Qaeda leader had developed a political attitude in 1990 when he wanted to evict the communists from South Yem-en. This happened after Bin Laden travelled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation.

However, according to Bin Laden’s mother, Alia Ghanem, he was a shy boy who was aca-demically capable and only be-came radicalised in his early 20s while studying in university.

Speaking for the first time, she told the Guardian that he was brainwashed at uni-versity.

While at university, Bin Lad-en met Abdullah Azzam who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Azzam became Bin Laden’s spiritual advis-er after he exiled from Saudi Arabia.

Since the 9/11 attack in 2001, Bin Laden has been a major target of the US with a $25 million bounty on his head.

He was killed in May, 2011, inside a private residential compound in Pakistan during a covert US operation.

25million American

dollars was placed on Laden’s head by the US

government.

Osama bin Laden

UN to convene Yemen talks London

The United Nations will invite warring sides in

Yemen for talks on Sep-tember 6 in Geneva to dis-cuss a framework for peace negotiations, the envoy has announced.

Martin Griffiths told the Security Council that “a political solution”to end the war in Yemen was “available.”

The two sides will discuss framework for peace talks and confi-dence-building measures, said Griffiths. The UN en-voy said there was a chance for peace in Yemen and the “complexities of Hodeidah will not hinder us from reaching a solution to the crisis of Yemen as a whole.”

Users unhappy over Facebook crash London

Facebook went down across the world yes-

terday afternoon – and people were not happy about it. The problem ap-pears to have affected us-ers across the UK, Europe, the US and Asia, according to Down Detector. Visitors to the Facebook site were met with, well, nothing apart from blank pages.

Names and pictures all vanished from the site. The issue started at around 5pm British time, however ap-pears to have since recti-fied itself. However at the time of the crash, people were not happy at all. In fact, #FacebookDown im-mediately started trend-ing on Twitter – with more than 4,000 people tweet-ing about it.

02SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 2018

Indonesia ties under spotlight Cooperation in the fields of energy, Islamic banking, technology and entrepreneurship

• The Undersecretary for International Affairs praised the positive role played by the Indonesian community in the Kingdom of Bahrain and its contribution to the national development process.

• For his part, the Director General for Asia-Pacific and African Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, Dr Desra Percaya, expressed his country’s aspiration to enhance cooperation and coordination with the friendly Kingdom.

Jakarta

The first meeting of political consultation between the For-eign Affairs Ministry and the

Republic of Indonesia was held in Jakarta.

The consultation was led by the Undersecretary for International Af-fairs, Dr Shaikh Abdulla bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, and the Director General for Asia-Pacific and African Affairs of Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Dr Desra Percaya.

Dr Shaikh Abdulla expressed his honour to visit Indonesia, and imple-ment the Memorandum of Under-standing on Political Consultation between the two Foreign Ministries, signed in September 2015.

He also affirmed that Bahrain is keen

to strengthen cooperation relations with the great Islamic country in var-ious fields, in a manner that benefits the two friendly countries and peoples.

The meeting explored mutually ben-eficial opportunities, assessed pend-ing matters, and exchanged views on regional and international issues of common interest.

Dr Shaikh Abdulla also showcased the common elements between Bah-rain and Indonesia, which pave the way for a strong and extended partnership, especially that the archipelago site in

both countries reflect the characteris-tics of openness, culture, trade move-ment and diversity.

He also noted that two countries have important contributions through their membership in regional and in-ternational organisations, as the coop-eration between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) creates an economic platform for in-teraction and growth with the world, as well as an additional cooperation within the framework of the Asian

Cooperation Dialogue, that seeks to promote understanding and friendship between Asian countries.

The Undersecretary reviewed the principles of the foreign policy of the Kingdom, which His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, implement-ed through international and human-itarian principles, and based on the values of pride, wisdom, brotherhood and interaction, with the aim to spread peace, security and stability.

He also noted that this reflects the success of the Kingdom’s leadership in achieving comprehensive reform, sustainable development and qualita-tive initiatives.

Dr Shaikh Abdulla stressed that the relations between the two countries are heading towards further progress and development at all levels, espe-cially as there is a mutual desire to maximise cooperation in the fields of energy, Islamic banking, technol-ogy, entrepreneurship, in addition to other areas, such as the establish-ment of small and medium enterpris-es, infrastructure, tourism, various exhibitions, health care, youth and sports, and exchange of academic and research experiences.

In this regard, various ideas and vi-sions have been exchanged concern-ing many of the distinct investment

opportunities through which the eco-nomic and investment cooperation frameworks can be developed, based on the coordination between the Bah-rain Economic Vision 2030 and In-donesia’s Strategic Vision to build a knowledge-based society.

The Undersecretary for Interna-tional Affairs praised the positive role played by the Indonesian community in the Kingdom of Bahrain and its con-tribution to the national development process.

He pointed out the Kingdom’s keen-ness to provide appropriate standards and ensure the safety and protection of the resident communities as partners in development and humanity, which is reflected through the Kingdom’s achievement of Tier 1 status in the US State Department’s 2018 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, making Bahrain the only Middle Eastern country that has succeeded in doing so.

In response to the Indonesian side commending the Kingdom’s firm and supportive stance against terrorist acts, Dr Shaikh Abdulla stressed that the Kingdom’s positions are clear, consistent and effective towards this dangerous phenomenon, especially that terrorism is considered a vicious threat imposed upon the countries of the world.

“Terrorism is one of the most serious violations of human rights, in view of the fact that rogue states sponsor, manage and fund terrorism, as well as harbours their groups , in order to destabilise international peace and security.”

He also stressed that the comprehen-sive treatment of terrorism is the most successful and effective, especially if international efforts are combined to eradicate this scourge.

For his part, the Director General for Asia-Pacific and African Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Re-public of Indonesia, Dr Desra Percaya, expressed his country’s aspiration to enhance cooperation and coordination with the friendly Kingdom.

“Bahrain has achieved remarkable developments thanks to the wise lead-ership of His Majesty the King as a re-formist leader, who makes the Islamic world proud, wishing the Kingdom of Bahrain further progress and pros-perity.”

At the end of the meeting, the min-utes of the First Meeting of Political Consultation between the two coun-tries were signed. The two sides agreed to hold the Second Meeting of Political Consultation in Bahrain. Delegations from both nations in talks.

Dr Shaikh Abdulla with Dr Percaya after signing cooperation in various fields.

Voluntary award’s jury announcedManama

The High Organising Committee of the eighth edition of the Shaikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa’s Award for

Voluntary Work, led by the Good Word Society board chairman, Hassan Bu Haz-za, has announced the formation of the jury of the Best Bahraini Voluntary Work Project Award.

According to Bu Hazza, the panel com-prises Dr Faleh Al Ruwaili, Ahmed Ahmadi and media figure, Eman Marhoon.

He highlighted the committee’s keen-ness on selecting high-profile jury mem-bers with expertise in and contributions to voluntary work in Bahrain in order to cope with the developments witnessed by the Best Bahraini Voluntary Work Pro-ject Award in its fourth edition, held on the sidelines of the main award –the HH Shaikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa’s Award for Voluntary Work.

He explained that the new edition will feature the three main categories, includ-

ing those for voluntary individuals, asso-ciations and teams, in addition to a new one allocated for expatriates who partic-ipate in voluntary projects that serve the kingdom.

A total of US$15,000 will be earmarked for the four categories of the prestigious award, which will also honour companies that show a special interest in community partnership through their various initia-tives, he said.

The award, held under the patronage of

HH Shaikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa. aims to encourage voluntary work at the level of individuals and associations in Bahrain, and promote creative ideas in this regard, he added.

He noted that nomination for the Best Voluntary Work Project Award in Bahrain will be open until mid August, calling on Bahraini youth to participate massively and showcase their creative projects that would address the challenges faced by so-ciety in the health, educational, economic and social fields, among others.

The winners will be honoured on the sidelines of the 8th edition of the HH Shaikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa’s Award for Voluntary Work, which will be held in September, marking the Arab Voluntary Work Day 2018.

The HH Shaikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa’s Award for Voluntary Work is organised by the Good Word Society, and sponsored by Tamkeen, Bahrain Airport Services (BAS), Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company (GPIC) and Al Baraka Group.

Director-General of Reformation and Forensic Science, Brigadier Abdulsalam Yousif Al Oraifi chaired the delegation of the Kingdom in the 19th annual Arab conference for heads of Penal and Correctional Institutions, held in the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Arab Interior Ministers Council in Tunisia. The conference discussed topics mentioned in the agenda, including how to deal with convicts in terrorist crimes and measures to classified inmates, along with facts about social services as an alternative to jail terms.

15,000American dollars has been earmarked for

the four categories of the prestigious award.

Anti-terror conference

03

big story

SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 2018

Intellect for sale in black market!

Lazy students buying master’s theses/doctoral dissertations in droves fuelling a racket in the Kingdom and across the region

• How does these networks operate? It’s very simple. They operate in different layers. First thing is to collect copies of old theses and dissertations from universities across the world, which is followed by finding right customers.

• The Ministry of Education is aware of these fraudulent activities. It has warned both students and manipulators of strict legal actions including being referred to Public Prosecution’s Office.

TDT|Manama Thamer Tayfour

Corruption exists in all spheres of life and even students aren’t spared. Many rackets are thriv-

ing in the region by forging master’s thesis and doctoral dissertations, which are bought by students after paying hefty amounts.

Sources say these rackets have a strong network across the region in-cluding Egypt and Morocco, which they use to market “their products” before finding “suitable customers”.

These theses and doctoral disser-tations are sold for amounts varying between BD1,400 and BD3,000 each.

A former library employee in Mu-harraq, who got a deep knowledge on how these network function, spoke to Tribune, on grounds of anonymity.

“There is a plenty of demand for these products among the students as most of them don’t want hard work. The rackets have all resources at their avail. Be it biochemistry or information science, dissertations are manufactured and kept ready and delivered promptly upon receiving payment.”

How does these networks operate? It’s very simple. They operate in differ-ent layers. First thing is to collect cop-ies of old theses and dissertations from universities across the world, which is followed by finding right customers.

Subsequently, well-paid subject experts are deployed to tailor these papers according to the customers’ requirements. “It takes less than three months to forge a thesis. Everything can be cooked up, be it statistics, public opinion or scientific hypothesis.”

“Once the thesis or dissertation is ready, students are provided with dos-

siers, shedding light on the basic aspects of the topic on which the research has been done. This is for the students to convince their su-pervisors or doctoral guides that the research had been done in good faith.”

He said students are lured by the marketing team of these rackets, which operates successful busi-nesses in the Kingdom. “Apart from Bahrain, the network is very well established in Kuwait and Egypt.”

“There are no real resources, but a huge collection of PDF files for all disciplines. There are special web-sites in Arabic, which give infor-mation on the presentation of these theses. Things are copied without making any references to original sources.”

The Ministry of Education is aware of these fraudulent activities. It has warned both students and manipulators of strict legal actions including being referred to Public Prosecution’s Office.

The ministry has stressed that it is exerting great efforts to ensure that all students strictly go through standard and established practic-es before obtaining qualifications. “This is important in preserving the reputation and quality of education-al institutions in the Kingdom and the degrees offered by them.”

The ministry has alerted the General Secretariat of Higher Ed-ucation Council to probe into the matter. “All grades, documents and transcripts at all higher educational institutions in the Kingdom are being reviewed. Suspected cases of frauds will be investigated and people behind these illegal activi-

ties will face legal action.”With regard to Bahraini students

obtaining qualifications from abroad, the ministry has appointed a national committee to evaluate qualifications and projects submitted by these stu-dents. “The ministry’s cultural attaches in other countries work along with the national committee to ensure the validity of qualifications.”

The council, in 2013, referred many cases of fraud to the competent legal authorities. The University of Delmon was also accused of committing fraud-ulent activities.

The Supreme Criminal Court has as well jailed a few university officials for their involvement in forgery. As of now, there are allegations of serious wrong-doings at the Arab Open University.

There is a plenty of demand for these products

among the students as most of them don’t want

hard work.SOURCE

Be it biochemistry or information science,

dissertations are manufactured and kept

ready and delivered promptly upon receiving

payment. SOURCE

3,000Bahraini dinar is the maximum amount charged for a ‘well-

prepared’ dissertation or thesis.

The Education Ministry has alerted the General

Secretariat of Higher Education Council to

probe into the matter.

KNOW

DID


Cyber-spy group based in Iran targeting Bahrain US cyber-security firm Symantec uncovers 112 files including malware, tools and logs files

• The sectors that the cyber-terror group is targeting include telecommunication, energy, financial services, transportation, and government.

• Both custom built malware and publically available tools have been used in the campaign. Targeted data include credentials, emails and files and database.

TDT|Manama

The Kingdom is one of the countries be-ing targeted by an Iran-based cyber-spy group, it emerged.

The cyber terror group Leafminer has re-leased a threat actor to target many countries in the region and Bahrain is one of them, ac-cording to US cyber-security firm Symantec.

The sectors that the cyber-terror group is targeting include telecommunication, energy, financial services, transportation, and gov-ernment.

According to the firm, the cyber-spies have been working on campaigns in the Middle East since 2017 and the most targeted sectors by Leafminer are financial, government and energy sectors.

However, the firm does not specify how much Bahrain has been affected by the threat.

Use of compromised web servers such as watering holes, dictionary attacks, remote exploits, brute force logins are some of the in-filtration techniques employed by the group.

Both custom built malware and publically available tools have been used in the campaign. Targeted data include credentials, emails and files and database.

One of the servers of Leafminer uncovered by Symantec revealed 112 files that included malware, tools, and logs files.

It was further exposed that Leafminer had links to other Iran based groups. “Symantec has uncovered the operations of a threat actor named Leafminer that is targeting a broad list of government organisations and business verticals in various regions in the Middle East since at least early 2017,” the report said.

“The group tends to adapt publicly availa-ble techniques and tools for their attacks and experiments with published proof-of-concept exploits.

“Leafminer attempts to infiltrate target networks through various means of intru-sion: watering hole websites, vulnerability

scans of network services on the Internet, and brute-force/dictionary login attempts.

“The actor’s post-compromise toolkit sug-gests that the group is looking for email data, files, and database servers on compromised target systems.

“One interesting source of target informa-tion discovered during the Leafminer inves-tigation was a list of 809 targets used by the attackers for vulnerability scans.

“The list is written in the Iranian language Farsi and groups each entry with organisation of interest by geography and industry.

“Targeted regions included in the list are Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, and Afghani-stan,” the report said.

Giving tips on how to be protected from the threat, Symantec stated, “Important pass-words, such as those with high privileges, should be at least 8-10 characters long (and preferably longer) and include a mixture of letters and numbers.

“Encourage users to avoid reusing the same passwords on multiple websites and sharing passwords with others should be forbidden.

“Employ two-factor authentication to pro-vide an additional layer of security, preventing any stolen credentials from being used by attackers.

“Educate employees on the dangers posed by spear-phishing emails, including exercis-ing caution around emails from unfamiliar sources and opening attachments that haven’t been solicited.”

Educate employees on the dangers posed by spear-phishing emails,

including exercising caution around emails from unfamiliar sources.

SYMANTEC

A threat actor, also called a malicious actor, is an

entity that is partially or wholly responsible for

an incident that impacts - or has the potential to

impact – an organisation’s security. In threat in-telligence, actors are generally categorised

as external, internal or partner.

KNOW

DID

Sectors targeted by the group

One of the custom tools used by the Leafminer group orangeteghal

No plans for Tamkeen to cut support for programmes TDT|Manama

Tamkeen has no plans to cut its ongoing support for various pro-grammes, said Esam Hammad, its

director of partnerships and advisory ser-vices.

“We are currently in the process of im-proving some programmes apart from in-troducing new categories such as technol-ogy accelerators to boost the technological fields,” he said.

The official was speaking during an

event marking the (Mutamahen pro-gramme) graduation of a new batch.

Praising the programme, Mr Hammad said, “Such programmes help youth find

right employment apart from improving their skills.”

Speaking at the event, Mahmoud Nawar, president of the Association of Certified Financial Analysts, said the programme is aimed at creating groups of well-trained investment professionals.

“A number of private and public sector companies are part of the programme. About 240 youth have graduated and the number will increase with the next edi-tion. We are thankful to Tamkeen for the support.

Teen fake bomber loses appeal TDT|Manama

The High Criminal Appeals Court upheld the three year’s imprisonment sentence handed down to a Bahraini teen-ager who planted a fake bomb on a public road.

The defendant was earlier provided with a clemency sentence citing his age.

According to court files, the defendant made the device using an oil box, electrical wires and tape.

He allegedly wanted to trigger fear among citizens and expa-triates living in A’ali village.

The Bahraini boy landed in police net after the Criminal In-vestigations Department’s report showed matching fingerprints.

Another defendant stood trial with him in connection with this case. The co-suspect was given five years imprisonment.

We are currently in the process of improving some programmes

apart from introducing new categories.

MR HAMMAD

Targeted regions included in the list are Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain,

Egypt, Israel, and Afghanistan.REPORT


Univ ordered to pay BD47,000 to students for fraudulent act University enrolled students for PhD programme not authorised by the Supreme Council

• The students approached the court after realising “that they had been cheated”.

TDT|Manama Ali Tarif

The High Administrative Court has ordered a private university to pay BD47,000 to four GCC national

students for registering them in an unli-censed academic programme.

The university is said to have enrolled the GCC national students in a PhD pro-gramme, which wasn’t authorised by the Supreme Council for Education and Training.

The students are said to have com-pleted the programme, but weren’t given their certificates owing to the licensing issue. They filed a complaint against the university, demanding compensation.

“We came to Bahrain to obtain a PhD certificate and we enrolled for a pro-gramme with a private university. We

paid all the fees as per the contracts we signed with the university. However, the university failed to graduate us de-spite our successful completion of the programme. And this has harmed our future,” the plaintiffs wrote in their com-plaint against the university.

“The university is committed to giving us our certificates since we have complet-ed the programmes. But they have failed to live up to this commitment. We request this honourable court to order the univer-sity to compensate us for the damages the

issue has caused to us,” they added. The High Administrative Court or-

dered the university to compensate the students as follows: BD3,500 each to-wards their travelling expenses, BD5,780 each towards their accommodation and BD10,800 each for the tuition fees they paid to the university.

The court, in its verdict, blamed the university for registering the students without having obtained the necessary licence from the Supreme Council for Education and Training.

The university failed to graduate us despite our

successful completion of the programmes, harming our

future. STUDENTS

Expat acquitted of selling drugsTDT|Manama Ali Tarif

The Lower Criminal Court acquitted an Asian man of selling drugs due to lack

of proof. The defendant was put on tri-

al after he was arrested in con-nection with peddling banned narcotics.

However, the absence of an arrest warrant combined with conflicting testimonies offered by

eyewitnesses helped the defend-ant to walk free.

According to court files, the defendant was captured after a police tip-off revealed that he

was peddling narcotics on a pub-lic road.

Prosecutors said that an under-cover agent planned a special op-eration, and the man was nabbed.

However, the defendant’s law-yer Zainab Sabt questioned the claims against her client, brand-ing the sequence of the events leading to her client’s arrest as irrational.

She also stated that the defend-ant’s apartment was searched without an inspection warrant.

My client’s apartment was searched without an inspection warrant.

MS SABT

Child cancer awareness campaign to be launched TDT|Manama

The ‘Smile’ initiative of the Future Youth Asso-ciation, which provides

psycho-social support to chil-dren suffering from cancer in the Kingdom, has announced its intention to organise the “Our Children as Gold” campaign for the fifth consecutive year.

The President of the Soci-ety, Sabah Abdul Rahman Al Zayani said that the campaign includes a programme of events to be held in different places throughout the month of Sep-tember in partnership with the public and private sectors.

He explained that the events include an awareness platform held in one of the commercial complexes, the festival and a charity ceremony dedicated to support children with cancer and their parents and many others.

“We want this campaign to reach everywhere in Bahrain, to educate everyone about child cancer, its symptoms, the im-portance of early detection, and how to treat the sick child dur-ing the treatment phase,” Mr Al Zayani said.

Mr Al Zayani explained that the month of September every year is the month of awareness about childhood cancer around the world. “We want Bahrain to be through this campaign in the ranks of developed countries in giving its citizens as much information on child cancer.”

Mr Al Zayani pointed out that the organisers of the cam-paign is currently working on communication with partners,

many government institutions and private companies, media and other entities in order to encourage them to participate in this campaign through sev-eral ways including the estab-lishment of lectures and events awareness for employees, and encourage them to participate in the activities of the campaign field.

He said that in addition to the campaign’s main awareness goal, the initiative also aims to achieve other goals including improving psychological and social support services for chil-dren with cancer and their fam-ilies, and providing a greater opportunity for heroic children with cancer to participate in a wide range of entertainment, sports, social and cultural ac-tivities.

Mr Al Zayani added that the campaign “Our children as gold” also aims at raising awareness of different seg-ments of society in Bahrain and how to deal with the children affected by the disease, and put Bahrain on the list of countries that participate annually in the event of cancer of children and highlight it.

The Organisation and Management Engineering Directorate within the Civil Service Bureau held a meeting of procedures’ re-engineering group and representatives of various government entities. Amina Ahmed Al Qoud, director at the Civil Service Bureau, praised the efforts of the re-engineering groups in developing and accelerating the procedures of some government services.

Key meeting held

We want this campaign to

reach everywhere in Bahrain, to

educate everyone about child

cancer.MR AL ZAYANI

Agricultural engineers’ fraternity seeks space for headquarters TDT|Manama

The Society of Agricultural Engineers of Bahrain has reiterated its demand for a headquarters to hold events, courses and

workshops with an aim to lure new talents apart from contributing to the discipline in the Kingdom.

Mohammed Tawfiq Alsheikh, head of the society said, the authorities have failed to treat agricul-tural engineers on par with other professionals in the Kingdom. “We need a place to gather, where subject experts can share their ideas that will con-tribute to the discipline as well as the Kingdom’s development.”

He said the society, which has 70 members, is keen on setting up its headquarters but face nu-

merous challenges. “We have obtained a licence to raise money for one year. We offer workshops and training courses for citizens on various topics including landscaping, non-soil farming, planting vegetables, greenhouses and ornamental trees.”

The General Assembly of the Bahrain Society of Agricultural Engineers recently elected its Board of Directors, which consists Chairman of the Board of Directors Mr Alsheikh, Vice President Fuad Habib Khalifa, Secretary Mohammed Ali Alhindi, Financial Secretary Sayed Mohammed Ali Alhashemi, Chairman of the Social Committee and Environment Abbas Salman Albahrani, Cul-tural Committee Mariam Ahmad Aldarazi, and Chairman of the Committee on Relations and Information Abdulaziz Abdul Rahim Alkhudri.

06

business


Sri Lanka secures $1 bn Chinese loanAFP | Colombo

Sri Lanka’s central bank yesterday announced it

had secured a $1 billion Chi-nese loan as the island, a key link in Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road initiative, de-velops closer relations with Asia’s largest economy.

Central bank Governor Indrajit Coomaraswamy said that first half of the loan will be released later this month and the balance will be received in October.

“During consultations (with the Chinese over the loan) it was clear that they see us as a key stra-tegic partner as far as the (Belt and Road) initiative is concerned, given our loca-tion,” Coomaraswamy told reporters in Colombo.

Canada’s trade deficit in June dips

AFP| Ottawa

Canada’s trade deficit fell to Can$626 million

($482 million US) in June, according to official data re-leased Friday, as it searched for new trading partners and eased its reliance on the United States.

The figure was far below the Can$2.3 billion deficit forecast by economists fol-lowing a Can$2.7bn deficit posted in May.

“Canadian trade was a large and pleasant surprise in June, and a surge in ex-ports for the month capped a solid quarter,” CIBC econ-omist Avery Shenfeld said in a research note, adding that it will likely mean a Bank of Canada interest rate hike in September or October.

Jet Airways has ‘2 months’ to cut costsAFP | Mumbai

India’s Jet Airways is suf-fering major turbulence

and may cease flying in 60 days without major cost cuts, local media reported yesterday, sending shares in the carrier tumbling.

The dire warning was made in talks between managers and employees in recent days, the Economic Times reported, quoting an unnamed senior executive.

The claims, as well as another report in the Mint daily that the airline was in talks with investors to raise cash, sent Jet Airlines’ shares down seven percent.

Mint quoted an uniden-tified source who said the talks included founding chairman Naresh Goyal po-tentially selling some of his 51 percent stake in India’s number-two carrier by mar-ket share.

M&S sandwiches facing Brexit threat in Paris AFP| London

A rare British gastronomic hit in France, the Marks

& Spencer sandwich may no longer appear on Parisian shelves without a post-Brexit trade deal, the supermarket’s chairman warned in an inter-view published yesterday.

Archie Norman told the Finan-cial Times that a no-deal Brexit would spell the “demise” of the sandwiches, which are trans-ported through the Channel Tunnel every day.

“If our lorries are sitting in a lorry park near Dover for half a day, that would be the demise of the great M&S sandwich in Paris,” he told the newspaper.

The lunchtime favourites are made in a factory in central Eng-land, before being shipped to 1,000 stores in Britain and 20

in France, 19 of which are in the capital. The British supermarket

sells around one million sand-wiches each year in France, but

Norman suggested it would not be financially viable to set up a

factory in France in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

British Prime Minister There-sa May was on Friday heading to meet French President Emma-nuel Macron on the Mediterra-nean coast to lobby for her Brex-it plan, which has so far split her government while failing to win over sceptical EU negotiators.

The prime minister has just a few months before an agree-ment on Britain’s divorce from the EU -- set for March 29, 2019 -- must be forged in order to allow time for ratification be-fore the exit. The EU has reject-ed May’s proposed solution to keeping the border between the UK and EU member Ireland open without a “hard border”, with Bank of England chief Mark Carney warning on Friday that the prospects of a no-deal Brexit were “uncomfortably high”.

The British supermarket sells around one million sandwiches each year in France

China stocks lose No 2 spot AFP| Shanghai

China’s stock market has been overtaken as the world’s second-biggest

by Japan’s, having been swiped this year by the threat of a trade war with the United States and slowing economic growth.

Data from Bloomberg News showed the value of equities on the mainland had slipped behind those in their neighbour Thursday for the first time since taking the number-two spot in 2014. The figures showed Chi-nese stocks were worth $6.09 trillion, compared with $6.17trn in Japan at the end of business on Thursday. The US market is worth $31trn.

Equities in China tumbled again Friday, while those in Ja-pan were broadly flat.

While global markets have been broadly hit by fears of a trade war between the world’s top two economies, Chinese equities have been among the

worst performers this year, with the benchmark Shanghai Com-posite Index slumping more than 16 per cent since the start of January.

The pressure was ratcheted up this week when the White House said it was considering

more than doubling threatened tariffs on a range of Chinese im-ports worth $200 billion.

Washington has already im-posed tariffs on $34bn worth of goods and is considering hitting another $16bn in the coming weeks.

“Losing the ranking to Japan is the damage caused by the trade war,” Banny Lam, head of research at CEB International Investment in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg News.

“The Japan equity gauge is relatively more stable around the current level but China’s market cap has slumped from its peak this year.” Adding to the selling has been a string of data indicating economic growth is slowing, while Beijing has em-barked on a drive to cut a wor-ryingly large debt mountain as well as reduce pollution.

Also worrying investors are the yuan’s recent losses, with the currency at its lowest level against the dollar for more than a year, while traders have been mostly unmoved by government measures and promises to sup-port the economy. At the same time, Japanese corporate results have been broadly upbeat, pro-viding some support to markets there, though the Nikkei is still

slightly down this year.“Investors are paying atten-

tion to government policies as the US-China trade war will re-main uncertain for now,” Yoshi-hiro Okumura, general manager at Chibagin Asset Management, said in Tokyo.

China stocks were worth $6.09 trillion, against $6.17 trillion in Japan yesterday

Losing the ranking to Japan is the damage caused

by the trade war. The Japan equity

gauge is relatively more stable

around the current level but China’s market cap has

slumped from its peak this year

BANNY LAM, HEAD OF RESEARCH, CEB INTERNA-

TIONAL INVESTMENT

Huawei eyes top position in smartphone market AFP| Shanghai

China’s Huawei yesterday said it could replace Sam-

sung as the world’s top smart-phone maker by late next year, just days after data showed it surpassed Apple for the num-ber-two spot despite being es-sentially barred from the key US market.

The chief of Huawei’s con-sumer division, Richard Yu, made the remark at the release of business results for the first half of 2018, during which un-listed Huawei said it shipped more than 95 million smart-phones, an increase of about 30 per cent.

“It’s no question that we be-come the number two next year.

In Q4 next year it’s possible we become number one,” Yu said in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese city where Huawei is based.

He added that “the past six months have been incredible”.

Huawei took second place from Apple in a tightening glob-al smartphone market during the second quarter, according to figures released Tuesday by tech-industry trackers Interna-tional Data Corporation (IDC).

South Korean titan Samsung remained on top in April-June, shipping 71.5 million handsets for a 20.9pc market share, IDC said.

But Huawei sold 54.2 mil-lion phones for a 15.8pc mar-ket share, followed by Apple’s 41.3m iPhones that gave it 12.1pc of the market.

It was the first time since ear-ly 2010 that Apple was not in the top two.

Huawei has unseated Apple from No 2 spot

Turkey inflation surges to nearly 16pc in JulyAFP| Ankara

Inflation in Turkey rose again in July to nearly 16 per cent,

official statistics showed yes-terday, increasing pressure on the central bank to hike inter-est rates.

Consumer prices reached 15.85pc in July from the same month in the previous year, slightly up from 15.39 percent in June, according to the Turk-ish statistics office.

However despite marking a new high since late 2003, the figure was lower than the Bloomberg consensus of 16.4pc. The highest annual rise in the month was in transport, up 24.21pc, while prices of food and non-alcoholic drinks were up 19.40pc annually. The Turkish lira has come under

heavy pressure after the cen-tral bank perplexed many economists by keeping interest rates unchanged at its last July 24 meeting despite the high inflation.

KNOW WHAT

The highest rise in the month was in transport, up

24.21pc, while prices of food and non-al-coholic drinks were

up 19.40pc, annually


Djibouti rejects ruling in port row with DubaiAFP| Nairobi

The Djibouti presiden-cy yesterday refused

to recognise a London court ruling which found the Horn of Africa nation wrongly seized a major port facility in the country from its Dubai-based operator.

The Doraleh container terminal, a large shipping hub and key transit route on the northwestern edge of the Indian Ocean, was designed and built by DP World, who have run it since 2006. The company has been accused by Djibou-ti of under-managing the container terminal in favour of the firm’s main port in Dubai and had its 50-year contract terminated. Dubai government said the Lon-don Court of International Arbitration had “confirmed the illegitimacy” of seizure.

Chile enacts historic ban on plastic bags

Santiago

Chile made history on Friday when it became

the first country in Latin America to ban the com-mercial use of plastic bags.

“I want to share with you the joy that as of today we’re enacting the law,” said Pres-ident Sebastian Pinera at a public ceremony in the cen-tre of Santiago, after which he handed out cloth bags to passers-by.

Large businesses have six months to phase out the use of plastic bags, while small-er ones will be given two years to adapt to the new rules.It means that any form of plastic bag other than those constituting primary packaging “necessary for hygiene or to prevent food wastage” are prohibited, the government gazette Diario Oficial said on Friday. Those flouting the ban will be sub-ject to a $370 fine, in a coun-try where the minimum wage is just $800. “With-out a doubt we’re taking a giant step towards a cleaner Chile,” added Pinera.

State-owned Syria firms in infrastructure hiring spree

AFP| Damascus

St a t e - o w n e d S y r i a n companies are hiring

hundreds of employees in the gas, electricity, and technical infrastructure industries, state media an-nounced yesterday, weeks after President Bashar al-Assad said post-war re-construction was a priority. The country’s seven-year conflict has devastated its economy, but as fighting winds down in many are-as, the government and its allies appear to be ramping up efforts to rebuild. Syrian state television announced state-owned companies were looking to take on more than 850 new hires.

Joyalukkas opens showroom in Kuwait • Joyalukkas Farwaniya will showcase a mix of traditional and ethno contemporary and international designs

TDT| Kuwait

Residents of Kuwait’s most populous city now have

more reason to rejoice with the arrival of the world’s favourite jeweller. Joyalukkas Farwani-ya is the newest showroom in Kuwait that offers the brand’s signature world-class jewellery and award-winning service.

The showroom was inaugu-rated by Mohammad Ismaeil Safar Bahzad, Director, Joya-lukkas Kuwait led by no other than the visionary entrepreneur and Joyalukkas Group CMD Joy Alukkas along with top Joya-lukkas Group executives, local dignitaries and VIPs.

A bright new addition to the brand’s ever-growing network of jewellery showrooms around the world, Joyalukkas Farwani-ya features new collections set in spacious, brightly lit interiors offering the pure joy of jewellery shopping with every visit.

“It is a delight to continue to

grow in Kuwait,” said Joy Alu-kkas, Joyalukkas Group CMD.

“And it is all because of the loyal support of its residents. I will be personally welcoming everyone as we open our doors in Farwaniya and look forward

to offering our best here, from products to services, every day for years to come.”

Joyalukkas Farwaniya, Kuwait will feature over a million jewel-lery designs showcasing a mix of traditional, ethno contemporary

and international influences.The new outlet will carry an

exclusive line of Joyalukkas brands, such as Veda Temple Jewellery, Pride Diamonds, Ele-ganza Polki Diamonds, Masaaki Pearls, Zenina Turkish Jewel-

lery, Li’l Joy Kids Jewellery, the Apurva Antique collection and Ratna Precious Stone Jewellery, as well as brand-new diamond collections 7 Wonders Daily Wear and Iris Colorful Diamond Jewellery.

Mohammad Ismaeil Safar Bahzad, Director, Joyalukkas Kuwait, Joy Alukkas, Joyalukkas Group CMD, along with Group executives and dignitaries during the inauguration

AFP| Vienna

On fire in a burning race car cockpit: Formula One legend Niki Lauda will for-ever be known for his 1976 accident.

But that didn’t stop the famous bat-tler -- currently recovering from a lung transplant -- from winning a total of three world titles and later founding his own airlines.

Lauda, 69 and currently non-exec-utive chairman of world champions Mercedes, underwent the operation Thursday at Vienna’s general hospital following a lung infection he picked up while on holiday on Spain’s Ibiza island.

“Everything is progressing very well at the moment, and we are very satis-fied,” Walter Klepetko, who operated on Lauda and leads the hospital’s depart-ment for thoracic surgery, told Austria’s ORF broadcaster.

Lauda won his first Formula One Grand Prix in 1975 with Ferrari, al-though it was on August 1 the follow-ing year that his life changed forever: the reigning world champion’s racecar burst into flames on the Nuerburgring track in Germany.

He stayed in the burning vehicle for almost a minute before being pulled out.

Images of the accident of the defend-ing champion went around the world -- but it was just the start of Lauda’s legend.

Fighting spirit Six weeks after receiving the last rites in his hospital bed, Lauda surprised everyone by taking part in the Italian Grand Prix in Monza.

He finished fourth while still in bandages after having suffered first- to third-degree burns over his face and hands and inhaled toxic fumes.

He had missed only two races but he was unable to resist a challenge from British racer James Hunt, who won four of the last seven races to overhaul Lauda and claim his only world title.

The rivalry between the two men -- which demonstrated the Austrian’s ex-traordinary courage and fighting spirit -- was portrayed in the 2013 film “Rush” by American director Ron Howard.

In 1977, Lauda went on to win his second F1 world championship title with Ferrari and quit Formula One at the end of 1979.

But he came back in 1982, this time with McLaren, with whom he won his last world champion title in 1984.

Quitting as an F1 driver gave him more room to pursue his second pas-sion, civil aviation, and in 1979 he founded Lauda Air, selling it at a profit to Austrian Airlines in 2002.

But that wasn’t his last venture in the airline industry: in 2004, he creat-ed the profitable low cost carrier Niki that he sold to Germany’s Air Berlin in 2011.

Then after Air Berlin went defunct, he won back the airline this January, edging out IAG, owner of British Air-ways, and Ryanair. He re-named it LaudaMotion, but then in another twist sold a majority stake in it to Ryanair in March.

Lauda, who also runs some private business jets, has also suffered catastro-phe in aviation: on May 26, 1991, a Lau-da Air Boeing 767 crashed on its way from Bangkok to Vienna. All 223 people on board died.

Courting controversy Recognisable by the trademark red cap which hides scars from his racing acci-dent, Lauda has stayed in the limelight.

He has never strayed far from For-mula One: he worked as a television commentator, a consultant for Ferrari in the 1990s and was team principal at the short-lived Jaguar outfit in the early 2000s. In 2012, he became Mercedes’ non-executive chairman.

Known for his expertise and some-times brutal frankness, Lauda still reg-ularly comments on F1.

In an interview with AFP on the side-lines of the Monaco Grand Prix in May, he criticised the Halo protection now installed in cockpits, saying it detracted from the sport’s allure of “gladiatorial combat”.

Born on February 22, 1949 in Vienna into an upper middle-class family, An-dreas Nikolaus ‘Niki’ Lauda is the father of four children from two marriages -- Lukas (39), Mathias (37) and eight-year-old twins Max and Mia.

Despite his talent, his family did not share his passion for cars.

“A Lauda should be on the economic pages of the newspaper, not the sports pages,” his grandfather used to say.

But at 15, before he even had his driver’s licence, Lauda bought an old Volkswagen which he took apart and patched up, driving it around his grand-parents’ estate.

In 1968, without telling his parents, he took part in -- and won -- his first race with a Mini Racer he had bought with his grandmother’s help.

Niki Lauda: F1 legend

turned airline

maverickLauda, 69,

and currently non-executive

chairman of world champions

Mercedes, underwent a

surgery Thursday at Vienna’s

general hospital following a lung

infection

Austrian Formula One legend Niki Lauda


Yemeni blacksmiths transform shrapnel into heirlooms|Hajjah, Yemen

In his war-torn city, a Yemeni artisan is transforming shrap-

nel which litters the streets into the country’s celebrated tradi-tional daggers.

For 45 years, blacksmith Mo-hammed Haradhi has crafted swords for his clients’ loved ones and built custom locks.

But after more than three years of war, he and so many other Yemenis have been left struggling to find work.

Haradhi has turned to the con-flict’s debris in Hajjah, his home city in western Yemen, and repurposes the metal to make traditional jambiyya daggers.

A short, curved dagger, the jambiyya is worn by Yemeni men in an ornate sheath tucked into an embroidered belt. They are often gifted to boys during a coming of age celebration that brings the whole family togeth-er.

With steel now hard to come by, Haradhi said shrapnel is a

“cheap, high-quality metal” to make the daggers.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Haradhi said at his workshop, as he hammered a blade still red from the heat of the furnace.

Shrapnel is particularly abun-dant in Hajjah, which has wit-nessed intense military oper-ations aimed at driving rebel fighters out. The city is con-

trolled by the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, who since 2015 have been battling a coalition backing the Yemeni government which is led by Saudi Arabia.

‘To remember the war’ The war has killed nearly 10,000 Yemenis and pushed the coun-try to the brink of famine. Port blockades have prevented hu-manitarian aid and other sup-

plies, including steel, entering the country.

But the conflict has not put an end to the craftmanship which dates back hundreds -- some historians say even thousands -- of years, which has also seen Yemen famed for its hand-em-broidered shawls and skilled silversmiths.

Jambiyyas have been handed down from generation to gener-

ation, across all socio-economic backgrounds.

The daggers range from low-er-end models made in China to daggers with handles carved from rhinoceros horn, tucked into diamond-encrusted sheaths, worth close to $1 million. Those made from repurposed shrapnel sell for up to 20,000 Yemeni ri-yals ($79, 68 euros).

“We pick up the debris on

the spot, or sometimes buy it by the kilogram,” said Yahya Hus-sein, another blacksmith in Hajjah.

Despite the ongoing conflict, residents say demand for the daggers remains high.

“Some buy jambiyyas made from shrapnel and actually wear them,” one Hajjah local told AFP.

“But some buy them as keep-sakes, or to remember the war.”

US job creation slows in JulyAFP| Washington

The US economy con-tinued to create jobs in

July but at a slower pace, while the tighter labor mar-kets drove the unemploy-ment rate back to near-re-cord lows, the government reported Friday.

Employers added 157,000 net new positions, with slower gains in auto man-ufacturing, transportation and mining, while the job-less rate fell a tenth to 3.9 percent, according to the closely-watched monthly Labor Department report.

Economists had been ex-pecting a far-stronger re-sult of 190,000 new hires, but the July number looked smaller after strong upward revisions to gains in May and June.

Job gains were seen in the durable goods manufactur-ing and health care sectors as well as in restaurants and bars, but fell markedly at hobby, toy and game stores, part of the long-suffering retail sector.

Yemenis work on metal salvaged from fallen rockets in air strikes to create blades for new daggers, in the northern district of Yemen’s Hajjah province.- AFP Photos

Petrobras profit leaps in Q2 on higher oil pricesAFP| Rio de Janeiro

Brazil’s flagship oil com-pany Petrobras an-

nounced sharply higher net profits for the second quar-ter of 10.072 billion reals ($2.7 billion) Friday, credit-ing higher crude prices for the improvement.The April to June period saw a 45pc increase over the 6.96 bil-lion reals net profits in the first quarter. It was the best quarterly result since 2011 and came despite the com-pany taking a pounding dur-ing a May truckers’ strike that crippled the country’s economy for almost two weeks, especially impacting fuel deliveries. The truck drivers, angered by rising fuel costs, forced the resig-nation of Petrobras CEO.

China vows tariffs on US goodsAFP| Beijing

Beijing warned yesterday it was prepared to impose new tariffs on $60 billion

worth of US goods if Washington ups the ante in the escalating US-China trade war.

The commerce ministry is-sued a statement saying the new duties would be applied if Washington pulled the trigger on President Donald Trump’s threat to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.

The Chinese reaction is sure to ratchet up tensions with the Trump administration at the end of a week that saw stock markets rattled by the intensifying trade battle. “China always believes that consultation on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit is an effective way to resolve trade differenc-es,” the commerce ministry said.

“Any unilateral threat or blackmail will only lead to in-tensification of conflicts and damage to the interests of all parties.”

The statement said the date of implementation of the taxes will depend on the “actions of the US side” and China reserves the right to apply “other coun-termeasures”.

The threat came a day af-ter Chinese officials appealed for dialogue based on “mutual respect”, with Foreign Minis-ter Wang Yi urging the United States on Thursday to remain “cool-headed”.

The commerce ministry threat came after Wang met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASE-AN) in Singapore on Friday.

Washington and Beijing are locked in battle over American accusations that China’s export economy benefits from unfair policies and subsidies, as well as theft of American technological know-how. Trump has threat-ened to slap tariffs on virtual-ly all of China’s exports to the United States in the tit-for-tat trade conflict.

Defend ‘dignity’ The US already imposed 25 per-cent tariffs on $34 billion in Chi-

nese goods in early July, with another $16 billion to be target-ed in coming weeks, drawing an in-kind retaliation from China.

Days later, Washington un-veiled a list of another $200 billion in Chinese goods, from

areas as varied as electrical ma-chinery, leather goods and sea-food, that would be hit with 10 percent import duties.

But Trump raised the stakes this week by asking the US Trade Representative to consider in-

creasing the proposed tariffs on the $200 billion worth of goods to 25 percent.

The Chinese commerce min-istry blamed the United States for escalating the situation.

“China to take necessary

countermeasures to defend the country’s dignity and the inter-ests of the people, defend free trade and the multilateral sys-tem, and defend the common interests of all countries in the world,” the statement said.

A container delivery truck passes containers stacked at the Port in Long Beach, California including one from COSCO, the Chinese state-owned shipping and logistics company. - AFP Photo

KNOW WHAT

The new duties would be applied if Washington pulled

the trigger on Presi-dent Donald Trump’s threat to raise tar-iffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese

goods

US trade deficit sees biggest jump in 19 monthsAFP| Washington

A dip in auto exports and rising oil prices in June

drove the biggest increase in the US trade deficit in 19 months, reversing much of May’s ex-port bonanza, the government reported yesterday.

The result could weigh on revised calculations of second quarter growth, which Presi-dent Donald Trump hailed as a key achievement of his eco-nomic policies last week after

it was reported as the strong-est GDP increase in nearly four years. The US bilateral trade deficits also expanded with China, the European Union, Canada and Mexico -- all of which have retaliated against Trump’s aggressive tariffs.

The US trade deficit rose 7.3pc or $3.2 billion in June to $46.3 billion, overshooting an-alyst expectations. It was the largest jump in the trade gap since November 2016, accord-ing to the Commerce Depart-

ment. As the numbers were released, Beijing warned it was ready to impose new tariffs on $60 billion in American prod-ucts if Trump pressed ahead with plans to hit another $200 billion in Chinese goods with steep punitive duties. Trump has said trade wars are “easy to win” and made the soaring US-China goods deficit a prin-cipal issue in his nationalist agenda. But industry and allies have expressed fear the dispute could spiral out of control.


Traders are worried the tough line that

both sides are taking could hurt global

growth DAVID MADDEN

ANALYST AT CMC MARKETS, UK

Eiffel Tower strike ends after deal AFP | Paris

The Eiffel Tower plans to test a new access policy

for visitors after manage-ment reached a deal to end a strike by workers complain-ing of “monstrous” waits at the Paris landmark.

The monument reopened Friday after workers walked off the job Wednesday to protest at a new access pol-icy that allocates separate lifts to visitors with pre-booked tickets and those who buy them on site.

The tower now sets aside half of daily tickets for in-ternet customers, who must choose specific time slots for their visit, up from just 20 percent previously.

Labour unions said the changes, implemented in early July, could lead to lop-sided queues that could ex-tend to three hours for those waiting to pay for tickets, and up to an hour for e-tick-et holders. The tower’s op-erator had countered that lines were no worse than before for the more than six million people who vis-it each year. Starting next week it would test a new policy allowing all visitors to queue in separate lines.

Tycoon donates $3.5m for S. Korea football coachAFP| Seoul

Hyundai scion Chung Mong-gyu has hand-

ed over $3.5 million of his own money to hire South Korea’s new football coach, in an outlandish attempt to turn the team’s fortunes around.

Chung, president of the Korea Football Association (KFA), donated the four bil-lion won after South Korea failed to reach the knock-out rounds at the World Cup in Russia.

“Chung has expressed hope that it would help pay the salary of a competent foreign coach,” an associ-ation official told AFP on Friday.

Hacker breaches defenses at social news star RedditAFP| San Francisco

Popular social news web-site Reddit on Thursday

was warning users that a hacker broke into its sys-tems, intercepting some employee text messages to get past defenses.

Reddit didn’t disclose the extent of the hack, saying it was conducting a “pains-taking” investigation to de-termine what was accessed and to harden security.

“Although this was a se-rious attack, the attacker did not gain write access to Reddit systems,” Reddit said in an online post.

“They gained read-on-ly access to some systems that contained backup data, source code and other logs.”

In essence, the hacker could look at data but not change anything.

Stocks brush off trade threats• Approaching midday in New York, both the Dow and S&P 500 were in positive territory

AFP| London

Stock markets pushed high-er yesterday as a positive US jobs report apparently

outweighed the latest volley in US-China trade threats.

Approaching midday in New York, both the Dow and S&P 500 were in positive territory, although the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dipped.

In Europe, the markets in London, Frankfurt and Paris all closed with gains. Drops in the value of the pound and euro helped the business prospects of firms, thus supporting equity values.

Trade tensions ratcheted higher as Beijing warned it was prepared to impose new tariffs on $60 billion worth of US goods if Washington ups the ante in the escalating US-China trade war.

The commerce ministry is-sued a statement saying the new duties would be applied if Washington pulled the trigger on President Donald Trump’s threat to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.

“Traders are worried the tough line that both sides are taking could hurt global growth,” said analyst David Madden at CMC Markets UK.

However traders also had the US monthly nonfarm jobs report to ponder.

It found that the US economy continued to create jobs in July but at a slower pace, while the

tighter labour markets drove the unemployment rate back to near-record lows.

Employers added 157,000 net new positions, with slow-er gains in auto manufactur-ing, transportation and mining,

while the jobless rate fell to 3.9 percent, according to the close-ly-watched monthly Labor De-partment report.

Economists had been expect-ing a stronger result of 190,000 new hires, but the July number

looked smaller after strong up-ward revisions to gains in May and June.

“Some will be inclined to suggest that the headline miss on nonfarm payrolls in July is indicative of a tight labour mar-ket where it is getting hard to find qualified workers and/or a burgeoning sign of some hiring softness due to tariff concerns,” said Briefing.com analyst Pat-rick O’Hare.

However analysts pointed to the revisions and the three-month figure, which showed the pace of hirings increasing, as in-dicative of a positive report that would support further increases in US interest rates.

“During the week, the Feder-al Reserve issued an optimistic outlook on the economy, and suggested there will be two more rate hikes in 2018,” said CMC Markets UK’s Madden.

“Today’s jobs report points to a continuation of the positive

momentum in the jobs market, and adds weight to the argument for a hike in September and De-cember,” he added.

China ranking hit Asian indices traded mixed after another painful week as fears of an all-out trade war between Beijing and Washington.

Adding to the pain of recent losses, China’s stock market was overtaken as the world’s second-biggest by Japan’s on Thursday, having been hit by trade war fears and slowing eco-nomic growth.

Bloomberg News figures showed Chinese stocks were worth $6.09 trillion, compared with $6.17 trillion in Japan. The US market is worth $31 trillion.

“Investors are paying atten-tion to government policies as the US-China trade war will re-main uncertain for now,” Yoshi-hiro Okumura, general manager at Chibagin Asset Management, told AFP in Tokyo.

“On the other hand, Japanese companies are showing strong results in general, sustaining share prices on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.”

Key figures at 1530 GMTNew York - Dow Jones: 0.3% » 25,391.56 points

London - FTSE 100: 1.1% » 7,659.10 (close)

Frankfurt - DAX 30: 0.6% » 12,615.76 (close)

Paris - CAC 40: 0.3% » 5,478.98 (close)

EURO STOXX 50: 0.5% » 3,485.23

Tokyo - Nikkei 225: 0.1% » 22,525.18 (close)

Hong Kong - Hang Seng: 0.1% » 27,676.32 (close)

Shanghai - Composite: 1.0% » 2,740.44 (close)

Euro/dollar: at $1.1598 from $1.1585 at 2100 GMT

Pound/dollar: at $1.3020 from $1.3017

Dollar/yen: at 111.12 yen from 111.66 yen

Oil - Brent Crude: one cent at $73.46 per barrel

Oil - West Texas Intermediate: seven cents at $68.89

Traders working at New York Stock Exchange (File photo)

S. Korea to launch probe into BMW over alleged delayed recall

• At least 28 BMW cars have caught fire this year in South Korea, according to media reports

AFP| Seoul

South Korea will launch an investigation into BMW, a

minister said yesterday over an alleged delay in recalling more than 100,000 cars following a spate of engine fires.

At least 28 BMW cars have caught fire this year in South Korea, according to media re-ports, forcing the German auto-maker to issue a recall last week to fix a faulty component that was aimed at reducing emis-sions from diesel engines.

But angry customers have launched a class-action lawsuit against the company alleging that it was slow to respond to the fires, prompting the author-ities to probe the matter.

“We will investigate the fires of BMW vehicles thoroughly and transparently”, Transpor-tation Minister Kim Hyun-mee said, adding that the probe would examine whether the company had reacted properly to the accidents.

“If any problems are found, we will take stern measures”,

Kim said in a statement.The minister also urged BMW

owners to respond to the recall immediately and refrain from driving their vehicles until fur-ther notice.

There was no immediate re-sponse from BMW Korea.

The German titan has been sued by 17 customers filing for damages worth $4,500 each, Ha Jong-seon, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said, adding that doz-ens of other owners were ex-pected to join the legal action.

Meanwhile thousands of oth-er BMW drivers have joined an internet community to explore the possibility of taking legal action against the carmaker,

Yonhap news agency report-ed, paving the way for more lawsuits to be filed in the near future.

If the government probe finds that the recall was de-layed, BMW could be forced to pay a fine of up to 70 billion won ($62 million) under South Korean law.

The recall applies to 42 mod-els, all with diesel engines.

In South Korea, six out of 10 imported cars are from Ger-many. BMW sold nearly 39,000 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce cars in the first six months to June this year, according to the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association.

Customers have filed a class-action lawsuit against BMW for delayed response

Toyota posts record net profit in Q1

• The trade frictions between US and China do not auger well for Toyota

AFP| Tokyo

Japanese car giant Toyota yesterday reported a re-

cord first-quarter net profit but warned that threatened US sanctions on the auto sector could have a “very big” impact on earnings.

The firm added that ongo-ing trade frictions between the US and China, as well as Washington’s tariffs on metal imports, would also eat into its bottom line. US President Donald Trump has unsettled rivals and allies alike with harsh trade rhetoric and a raft of tariffs that have affected

sectors ranging from agricul-ture to auto. Toyota said strong sales in the US and Asia, helped boost profits 7.2 percent to 657.3 billion yen ($5.9 billion) in April-June, its highest-ever first-quarter result.

Operating profit jumped 18.9pc to 682.7 billion yen, with sales up 4.5pc at 7.4 trillion yen. But it maintained a fore-cast for net profit to fall 15pc for the fiscal year to March 2019, with lingering concerns about threatened auto tariffs and raw material costs rising amid trade tensions.

“On trade issues, we are expecting profits will decline by 10 billion yen because of (higher costs of ) steel and al-uminium in North America,” Toyota senior managing di-rector Masayoshi Shirayanagi, told reporters.

Strong sales in the US and Asia, helped boost the profits of Toyota

10 SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 2018

society

1979 is the year in which GPIC was founded.

Children taking part in the GPIC Summer Camp attended a specialized training course on First Aid to enhance their safety and awareness. The course aimed at educating children on the principles and basics of First Aid and areas requiring First Aid to save lives until necessary medical help arrived. Commenting on the course, Company President Dr. Abdulrahman Jawahery thanked the Chairman and members of the Social Activities Committee for organizing the activity, which, he said, reflected their keenness on the safety of the staff members during their participation in the activities and programmes included in the camp.

The Rotary club of Sulmaniya held a regular lunch meeting on 1st August 2018 at the Golden Tulip Hotel. Guest speaker was Ahmed Alumran who spoke about the “Health Trifecta”.

Northern Governor Ali Al Asfoor visited the jobs fair organised by the Ministry of Labour and Social Development. Mr Al Asfoor praised the organisers for providing the Bahraini youths in the governorate a right avenue to find jobs that match their interest and qualification. The jobs fair was earlier opened by Labour Minister Jameel Humaidan.


society

1979 is the year in which GPIC was founded.

Children taking part in the GPIC Summer Camp attended a specialized training course on First Aid to enhance their safety and awareness. The course aimed at educating children on the principles and basics of First Aid and areas requiring First Aid to save lives until necessary medical help arrived. Commenting on the course, Company President Dr. Abdulrahman Jawahery thanked the Chairman and members of the Social Activities Committee for organizing the activity, which, he said, reflected their keenness on the safety of the staff members during their participation in the activities and programmes included in the camp.



11

society


KNOW

DID

Bahrain Keraleeya Samajam conducts

Malayalam classes for over 1,000 children.



Bahrain Keraleeya Samajam (BKS)in association with Race International For Educational Consulting WLL held a higher education seminar at the BKS Hall. Career Trainer Jinto Mathew explained the higher educational opportunities to the aspiring students. Race 2 IAS Program , a Model Civil Service Examination for Indian Students in Bahrain will be held in November.

The Public Security Sports Association has concluded the thirds week of the summer camp for Interior Ministry officers’ children, organised for 255 children in the 6-12 age group. The week covered a number of visits, and education, sports and entertainment-related activities. The camp is meant to develop self-confidence among children and improve their cultural, social and sports skills to reinforce the community partnership.

The second week of the 10th summer camp of the Royal Academy of Police (RAP) concluded on Thursday with a fun day, including a visit to Wahooo Water Park, Delmon the Lost Paradise and the Fun Land. The students also watched a movie. The fun visits aimed to enhance the social skills of the students and their interactions with the community.

12

world


Russia calls new US claim ‘hysteria’

Moscow, Russia

Russia yesterday called new US election med-

dling claims “hysteria” that “makes a mockery” of America after Washington accused Moscow of a con-tinued campaign to influ-ence its public opinion.

“The two-year hysteria over some kind of Russian interference in elections -- which never happened -- does not only damage bi-lateral relations but makes a mockery of the whole po-litical system in the US,” for-eign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told jour-nalists.

21 die in northern Nigeria boat capsize

Kano, Nigeria

Twenty-one people were killed when their boat

capsized in an area wracked by deadly attacks blamed on cattle thieves in north-ern Nigeria, the emergency services said Friday.

The vessel carrying 50 passengers overturned in strong currents in a river in the Gandi district of Soko-to state around 10:00 am (0900 GMT) on Thursday, Suleiman Karim of the Na-tional Emergency Manage-ment Agency (NEMA) told AFP.

“Rescue teams recovered the bodies of 17 women and four children on board the overloaded boat which cap-sized due to strong waves,” he said.

He said the other 29 pas-sengers were lucky to make it to the shore.

Woman who lost baby in Greek wildfires diesAthens, Greece

A woman who lost her six-month-old baby in

Greece’s worst ever wild-fires last month died in hos-pital yesterday, the coun-try’s health ministry said.

The 35-year-old wom-an, who was the wife of a firefighter called from their home on July 23 to fight the ferocious blaze, died of burn injuries, the ministry added.

Officials indicated last week that more than 90 people had died, but the toll has now been revised down to 88. Police said the bodies of 81 people had been positively identified, while two remain unidentified and five people have died in hospital. Another 40 people including a child remain in hospital, nine of them criti-cal. Opposition parties have accused the government of failing to provide adequate warning and evacuate an area frequently hit by wild-fires.

The ‘crocodile’ president

Mnangagwa hails ‘new beginning’ after Zimbabwe election

• Mnangagwa won 50.8 per cent of the vote

• He needed over 50pc of the vote to secure victory

• Opposition leader Nelson Chamisa lashed the results

Harare, Zimbabwe

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangag-wa is a military-backed

veteran hardliner who outma-noeuvered Robert Mugabe and has promised to turn around his country’s disastrous economy.

Nicknamed “The Crocodile”, Mnangagwa yesterday secured a narrow victory in Zimbabwe’s historic first elections after the ousting of Mugabe last year.

Mnangagwa won 50.8 per-cent of the vote, ahead of Nel-son Chamisa of the opposition MDC party on 44.3 percent, the Zimbabwe Electoral Com-mission (ZEC) said.

“Mnangagwa, Emmerson Dambudzo, of ZANU-PF par-ty is therefore duly declared elected president of the repub-lic of Zimbabwe,” said ZEC chair Priscilla Chigumba.

Mnangagwa said Friday that

he was “humbled” to have won the country’s landmark elec-tion, hailing it as a “new be-ginning” after the ousting of autocrat Robert Mugabe.

“Thank you Zimbabwe! I am humbled to be elected Presi-dent of the Second Republic of Zimbabwe,” he said in a Twit-ter message.

“Though we may have been divided at the polls, we are unit-ed in our dreams. This is a new beginning,” the message added.

“Let us join hands, in peace, unity & love, & together build a new Zimbabwe for all!”

But fraud allegations threat-en to dent his hopes that the election would bring him legit-imacy after he was appointed president when Mugabe was ousted from power last Novem-ber. It was his battle to secure the top job ahead of Mugabe’s wife Grace that triggered the crisis that finally toppled the long-ruling autocrat.

Supporters of the newly reelected Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa celebrate in Mbare, Harare

Opposition rejects victoryHarare, Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s opposition re-jected what it said were

the “fake” results of landmark elections in which President Emmerson Mnangagwa was declared victor.

Chamisa, who has lashed out at what he called “unver-ified fake results”, was due to give a press conference in the capital Harare but it was broken up by several dozen riot police armed with tear gas cannisters. Tense exchang-es followed as police ejected journalists from the hotel.

Opposition allegations of foul play had already sparked a deadly crackdown on pro-testers in Harare on Wednes-

day when troops opened fire, killing six. Soldiers and police had cleared the city centre Thursday as the government vowed not to tolerate any more protests, but by Friday the streets and markets were crowded as usual.

Zimbabwe’s MDC leader Nelson Chamisa

US citizen held for attempt to ‘overthrow state’US Consulate in Saigon confirmed that a Vietnamese-American man was detained with no formal chargesHanoi, Vietnam

A Vietnamese-American man is being held in Vi-

etnam for attempting to over-throw the state, his family and a US lawmaker said.

Michael Nguyen is the sec-ond US citizen arrested in Vietnam in recent weeks for allegedly brushing up against politics in a country.

The 54-year-old father of four daughters went missing last month on a visit to Viet-nam, prompting a panicked search by his wife in Califor-nia.

US Consulate officials in Sai-gon confirmed to the family this week he was detained on July 7 under Article 109 of the criminal code -- “overthrowing the people’s administration” -- and is being held in a Ho Chi Minh City prison with no formal charges.

“Michael is under investiga-tion for Article 109,” Nguyen’s brother-in-law Mark Roberts told reporters in California Thursday, according to a tran-script of the briefing provided to AFP.

California congresswoman

Mimi Walters confirmed in a statement that Nguyen has been detained and she is trying to secure his release.

The maximum sentence un-der Article 109 is death.

Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told reporters Thursday she would ask “rel-evant authorities” about the case, while the US Embassy spokesman Pope Thrower said “we are aware of media reports that a US citizen is being de-tained in Vietnam”, declining to elaborate.

China, SE Asian states hold simulated naval drillSingapore, Singapore

China and Southeast Asian states held simulated na-

val exercises this week for the first time, Singapore said yes-terday, as they seek to lower long-running tensions in dis-puted waters.

The “table-top” exercises at a Singapore naval base came ahead of the first naval drills between the 10 members of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Beijing, scheduled for October.

Four ASEAN states -- Brunei,

Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam -- have rival claims with Beijing over territory in the flashpoint South China Sea.

China claims almost the entire sea and has been con-structing artificial islands ca-pable of hosting military bases in the waters, ratcheting up tensions with rival claimants and the US, the traditionally dominant naval power in the area.

The simulated drill was held Thursday and Friday, Singa-pore’s defence ministry said in a statement.

KNOW WHAT

The Vietnam War or the Second War of Indochina was

formerly America’s longest war until it was surpassed by the war in Afghan

‘Lucky to be alive’: Climber trapped for seven days Terry Harch, an Australian soldier, was spotted waving his hand on the notorious Mount Aspiring

Wellington, New Zealand

A climber trapped for seven days in freezing conditions

on a New Zealand mountain has been found in the nick of time, with rescuers saying he was un-likely to have survived another night alone.

Terry Harch, a 29-year-old Australian soldier, was spotted waving his arm in the snow on the South Island’s notorious

Mount Aspiring, where more than 30 climbers have died over the past decade.

His emergency beacon sig-nal was picked up in the Unit-ed States and the co-ordinates relayed to New Zealand rescue authorities. Rescuers managed to reach Harch late Thursday and he was airlifted out during a break in bad weather on Friday afternoon.

“It’s a great result, as we did

not want the climber spending another night on the mountain. The aim now is to get him to hospital for immediate treat-ment,” senior rescue co-ordina-tor Neville Blakemore said.

Search and rescue officer Geoff Lunt said Harch had “clearly made some good deci-sions to be able to survive the bad weather, heavy snow and high winds.” Helicopter pilot Sean Mullally said initial mis-

sions up the mountain did not detect any sign of Harch and it was not until the fourth sweep that they saw his waving arm.

“He is very lucky to be alive. I don’t think he would have lasted another night,” Mullally told the New Zealand Herald.

The region has seen a lot of fresh snow in the past few days. The wind chill factor is minus 16 degrees Celsius and the ava-lanche advisory is high.Terry Harch


Russia calls new US claim ‘hysteria’Moscow, Russia

Russia yesterday called new US election med-

dling claims “hysteria” that “makes a mockery” of America after Washington accused Moscow of a con-tinued campaign to influ-ence its public opinion.

“The two-year hysteria over some kind of Russian interference in elections -- which never happened -- does not only damage bi-lateral relations but makes a mockery of the whole po-litical system in the US,” for-eign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told jour-nalists.

21 die in northern Nigeria boat capsizeKano, Nigeria

Twenty-one people were killed when their boat

capsized in an area wracked by deadly attacks blamed on cattle thieves in north-ern Nigeria, the emergency services said Friday.

The vessel carrying 50 passengers overturned in strong currents in a river in the Gandi district of Soko-to state around 10:00 am (0900 GMT) on Thursday, Suleiman Karim of the Na-tional Emergency Manage-ment Agency (NEMA) told AFP.

“Rescue teams recovered the bodies of 17 women and four children on board the overloaded boat which cap-sized due to strong waves,” he said.

He said the other 29 pas-sengers were lucky to make it to the shore.

Blend of novices, veterans to fly on first private US spaceships

Tampa, United States

NA S A y e s t e r d a y a n -nounced the first nine

astronauts who will fly to space on Boeing and SpaceX vehicles in 2019, a mix of novices and space shuttle veterans.

These pioneering flights to the International Space Station aboard commercial-ly built crew capsules will restore the American ability to send people into orbit for the first time since the US space shuttle program retired in 2011.

“This is a big deal for our country and we want America to know that we are back, that we are fly-ing American astronauts on American rockets from American soil,” said NASA administrator Jim Briden-stine at a ceremony to an-nounce the crew members in Houston, Texas.

An uncrewed Orbital flight test is scheduled for later this year, with the first crew on board in mid 2019, NASA said. For SpaceX, a demonstration flight with no passengers is set for No-vember 2018.

Twin blasts rock AfghanThere was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack

• At least 20 killed, 50 injured

• Death toll could rise, says officials

• Taliban denied any involvement in the incident

Khost, Afghanistan

Burqa-clad suicide bomb-ers struck a Shiite mosque in eastern Afghanistan

yesterday as it was crowded with worshippers for weekly prayers, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens in the lat-est attack on the minority.

Officials have said they fear the death toll could rise after the assault, the latest targeting civil-ians who have borne the brunt of the violence in Afghanistan’s long conflict.

“Two suicide explosions hap-pened during Friday prayers in the Khwaja Hasan area of

Gardez,” said Abdullah Hasrat, spokesman for Paktia province near the Pakistan border.

Provincial police chief Gen-eral Raz Mohammad Mandozai also confirmed the presence of

two suicide bombers, adding that the assailants were wearing burqas to hide their weapons and explosives.

Once inside the mosque, the two attackers also opened fire

on the crowd before detonating their bombs.

He said at least 20 people had been killed and around 50 others injured.

Other officials said as many

as 25 people had died. Gardez public health department chief Wilayat Khan Ahmadzai said that more than 70 people in total had been killed and wounded, with many rushed to the city’s civilian hospital.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

The Taliban later denied any involvement in the incident, ac-cording to a Whatsapp message from the group’s spokesman sent to reporters.

Afghan civilians have taken the brunt of the gruesome war that began after the 2001 US-led invasion uprooted the Taliban regime.

Insurgent attacks and suicide bombs were the leading caus-es of civilian deaths in the first half of 2018, a recent UN report showed.

A total of 1,692 civilians were killed, the highest number for the period since the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan began keeping re-cords in 2009.

Another 3,430 people were wounded, the report added.

A member of the Afghan security forces gestures as he stands near bodies of victims following a suicide attack in Kabul on July 22, 2018.

Russian spy in US embassy!• The woman, a Russian national, was hired by the Secret Service

• Probe found she was having regular meetings with Russian intelligence agency

Washington, United States

A suspected Russian spy worked at the US embassy

in Moscow for a decade before being quietly dismissed last year, reports said Thursday.

The woman, a Russian na-tional, was hired by the Secret Service and came under suspi-cion following a routine secu-rity sweep carried out by the State Department, according to sources quoted by the Guardi-an, which broke the story, and CNN. The probe found she was having regular unauthorised meetings with the main Russian

intelligence agency, the FSB.“We figure that all of them

are talking to the FSB, but she was giving them way more information than she should have,” an official told CNN.

The woman had access to the Secret Service’s intranet and email systems, the reports said, giving her a window into poten-tially sensitive data including the schedules of the US presi-

dent and vice president.But “she did not have access

to highly classified informa-tion,” the source told CNN.

The Guardian meanwhile reported the Secret Service at-tempted to contain the embar-rassment by letting her go.

“The Secret Service is try-ing to hide the breach by firing [her],” a source told the British newspaper.

File photo of a Russian police officer patrolling a street in front of the US embassy in Moscow (Courtesy of The Guardian)

Canada’s Zombie Boy dead of apparent suicide: reportMontreal, Canada

Zombie Boy -- a model and artist known for his ex-

tensive tattoos, including of a skull and brain on his head -- has died of an apparent su-icide, Canadian media report-ed. Zombie Boy, whose real name was Rick Genest, died around 5:00 pm (2100 GMT) on Wednesday, the Canadi-an Broadcasting Corporation said, citing police sources. He was 32.

“They are classifying his death as a suicide,” CBC said. He held world records for hav-ing the most bones tattooed on his body at 139, and the most insect tattoos, with 176, according to Guinness World Records. Montreal tattoo artist Frank Lewis was “responsible for inking the majority (of ) the designs,” it said.

Lady Gaga -- who appeared with Zombie Boy in the “Born This Way” music video -- said she was “devastated” by his death. “The suicide of friend

Rick Genest, Zombie Boy is beyond devastating. We have to work harder to change the culture, bring Mental Health to the forefront and erase the stigma that we can’t talk about it,” Lady Gaga wrote on Twit-ter. Dulcedo Management, the talent agency that reportedly represented the Canadian, de-scribed him as an “icon of the artistic scene and the world of fashion.”

Canadian artist Rick Genest

Swedish police shot dead autistic man with toy gun

• Eric Torell was shot dead after he ran away from home with a toy gun

Stockholm, Sweden

Swedish police were under investigation yesterday for

shooting dead a 20-year-old au-tistic man with Down Syndrome holding a toy gun in central Stockholm, the special prose-cutor’s office said.

“This is a very tragic incident and I understand that many peo-

ple want quick answers,” chief prosecutor Martin Tiden, who is leading the investigation over suspected misconduct, said in a statement.

Eric Torell was shot dead by a police patrol in the residen-tial neighbourhood of Vasas-tan around 4am (0200 GMT) Thursday, after he ran away from home with a toy gun.

“The man was holding an ob-ject similar to a weapon which the police interpreted as a hos-tile situation and opened fire,” the prosecutor said, adding no police officer was currently sus-pected of any crime.

Daily Aftonbladet reported that three police officers shot

the man who, according to his family, had a three-year-old’s intellectual capabilities and dif-ficulties communicating.

The special prosecutor’s of-

fice would meanwhile only con-firm that “more than one officer fired a service weapon”.

“We are completely de-stroyed... We are in a state of

shock,” the victim’s mother Katarina Soderberg told Afton-bladet.

“He wasn’t capable of being threatening. The only thing he could do was to hug and kiss,” she told the local Mitt i Stockholm newspaper, adding he was like “the kindest and most peaceful teddy bear in the world”. The man frequently ran off on his own, according to his father Rickard Torell, adding he could not understand why police had shot his son. “They said he was carrying a replica of a gun. That’s not true. It was a minia-ture toy gun for a five-year-old... cheap too, and plastic,” Torell told Mitt i Stockholm.

How could there not have been

an alternative to shooting him dead? Why not a warning

shot?ERIC’S MOTHER

Eric Torell was diagnosed with autism and Down syndrome.(courtesy of CNN)

14

features


Who built Stonehenge?

Stonehenge has yielded few secrets

about the people buried amidst

its ring of towering

rocks

Undated handout photo issued by the English Heritage of a Stonehenge as the picture will go on display during their new Wish You Were Here exhibition.

Stonehenge Circle

AFP | Paris, France

Despite a century of scientif-ic scrutiny, the 5000-year old Neolithic monument in southern England known as Stonehenge has yield-

ed few secrets about the people buried amidst its ring of towering rocks.

Most of their remains were cremated, leaving only ashes, a few bone fragments, and an archeological dead-end.

But a eureka moment discovery by Christophe Snoeck, a University of Ox-ford graduate student at the time, re-vealed that many probably came from as far afield as Wales in western Britain, source of the bluestone used to carve Stonehenge’s mysterious and entrancing monuments.

Some of these pre-historic wayfarers -- who may have helped transport the massive stones -- were cremated before their ashes were laid to rest, Snoeck and colleagues reported in a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports.

Others may have died on the job, or set-tled near Stonehenge to finish their days.

What Snoeck discovered in the lab is that strontium, a heavy element found in bone, resists the high temperatures of a

funeral pyre, which can top 1000 degrees Celsius (1832 degrees Fahrenheit).

Indeed, extreme heat seals the ele-ment’s unique signature, isolating it -- even over thousands of years -- from contamination by surrounding soil.

For scientists trying to tease out data from human remains burnt to a crisp, this

opened up a gold mine.Cremation destroys all organic matter,

including DNA.“But all the inorganic matter survives,

and there is a huge amount of informa-tion contained in the inorganic fraction of human remains,” Snoeck explained.

By measuring traces of strontium, he told AFP, “it is possible to evaluate the origin of the food we eat, especially the plants.”

From the forests of WalesPlants absorb strontium from the soil, and that strontium is then incorporated into our bones, reflecting the place where the plants grew.

The researchers examined skull bone fragments from 25 people buried during an early phase of Stonehenge’s history, around 3000 BC.

Ten of them, they determined, had spent at least the last 10 years of their lives in a different region.

Archeologists already knew that Stone-henge bluestone came from Wales, so when the strontium profile of these ten outsiders matched what is known of the region’s flora, it seemed reasonable to assume they did as well.

The scientists were also able to tell

whether the wood used in funeral pyres was from the Wessex area around Stone-henge, or from trees typical of the forests in Wales.

This enabled them to conclude that some of the people buried at the site had probably been cremated in western Brit-ain before their ashes were transported.

Archeologists who excavated the site in the early 1920s -- before reburying the remains -- reported that cremated matter had been deposited in organic containers such as leather bags, apparently brought from a distant place for internment.

Much remains unknown about the pre-historic humans who erected Stone-henge, including the beliefs and rituals that animated their culture.

But the new findings “suggest that people from the Preseli Mountains in West Wales not only supplied the blue-stones used to build the stone circle, but moved with the stones and were buried there too,” concluded John Pouncett, a co-author of the study and Spatial Tech-nology Officer at Oxford’s School or Archaeology.

All told, there are between 150 and 240 cremation burials at Stonehenge, according to a recent study in the journal Antiquity.

Stonehenge’s famous pillars came from a place far, far away.

That much was known. But now, archaeolo-

gists have found anoth-er well-traveled feature

at the monument: 10 ancient people buried there who definitely

weren’t locals

KNOW WHAT

15

entertainment


C R O S S W O R D

S U D O K U

YESTERDAY’S SOLUTION

YESTERDAY’S SOLUTION

How to playPlace a number in the empty boxes in such a way that each row across, each column down and each 9-box square contains all of the numbers from one to nine.

Y O U R S T A R T O D A Y

B E E T L E B A I L E Y

AriesThings are sporadic today, Aries. You may find a thousand things on your plate, and all of them look delicious. There’s a great deal of wind to fuel your fire, so let it burn red hot. You might get caught up in a frenzy of activity. Have a good time but realize that it might not last forever.

TaurusDon’t get pulled off track by empty promises today, Taurus. Someone may try to sell you oceanfront property in the middle of Iowa. Beware of things that sound too good to be true. People may be talking quite a bit, but in reality they probably have nothing to say.

GeminiCatch the wave of activity that’s spinning in your di-rection today, Gemini. You’ll find prosperity and good fortune within your reach. Expand your horizons and connect with others intellectually. Hurdles will shrink to nothing as long as you maintain a positive attitude.

CancerYou may find it hard to trust others today, Cancer. Trust your instincts - they’re probably right. Don’t take anything at face value. There’s a fanciful frenzy that’s threatening to lure you into its madness. Approach things cautiously.

LeoThere may be a bit of opposition coming at you, Leo. There’s a light, airy feeling that’s prevalent every-where. This is definitely the kind of energy you can connect with today. There’s a great deal of strength in numbers. Don’t let anyone try to stand in your way. It could very well be that they are operating on incorrect information.

VirgoWhat seems like the perfect plan today may not necessarily seem like the perfect plan tomorrow, Virgo. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. There’s an expansive feeling in the air that’s working to catch you up in its net and pull you into its plan. Beware of get-rich-quick schemes.

LibraThere’s a flurry of activity around you today that you should latch onto, Libra. You’ll be on a magic carpet ride that takes you into the clouds. The most difficult thing to remember is to not get so carried away that you lose sight of the ground. Keep in mind that things aren’t always exactly the way they seem.

ScorpioYou’ll find yourself working well with any group today, Scorpio. There will be a great connection between you and the people around you. Make sure you ground your relationships in something meaningful or else you could find that you’ve built a whole reality out of something that doesn’t exist.

SagittariusThere’s an incredibly expansive feeling in the air that you should latch onto, Sagittarius. Things are moving rapidly. You’ll find long-term trends come together quite well. The thing to be aware of today is making sure you’re operating based on facts you know to be true. Check your sources.

CapricornSticking close to home may leave you feeling like you’re missing the boat on certain things, but you’re probably better off, Capricorn. People may make outlandish promises that sound good today but will basically flop tomorrow. Stay safe and don’t invest a great deal of time or money in risky ventures.

AquariusYou’re riding a wave of prosperity and things are looking up for you, Aquarius. The situation today may appear too good to be true. The bad news is that’s probably the case. It may be that the truth is being masked, and that there’s a great deal of speculation and hype causing a frenzy of activity.

PiscesThe wind is blowing quite strongly today, and you’ll find that things are flying around in a frenzy, Pisces. This whirlwind of activity is threatening to pick you up, spin you around, and take you away. Be cautious of anything that suggests this. People may take on unrealistic attitudes that lure you into grand schemes. Beware of fanciful promises.

W O R D O F T H E D A Y

PacifyDefinition:1 a : to allay the anger or agitation of : sootheb : appease, propitiate2 a : to restore to a tranquil state : settleb : to reduce to a submissive state : subdue

Did You Know?A parent who wants to win a little peace and quiet might give a fussy baby a pacifier. An employer seeking to avoid worker dis-content might pay employees well. These actions may seem unrelated, but etymolog-ically speaking, they have a lot in common.

Both pacifier and pay are ultimately derived from pax, the Latin word for “peace.” As you may have guessed, pax is also the source of our word peace. Pacify comes to us through Middle English pacifien, from the Latin verb pacificare, which derives from pax.

Across

1- Pro follower; 5- Bailiwicks; 10- Canonized Fr. women; 14- Irish island group; 15- Leaden; 16- Chows down; 17- Big bash; 18- Act of absorbing; 20- Wild guesses; 22- Author Rand; 23- Orgs.; 24- It comes from the heart; 26- ___ rule; 27- Unidenti-fied woman; 30- Lounges; 34- Nevertheless; 35- Gin flavorer; 36- Wager; 37- Spanish appetizer; 38- Faint; 40- Part of a bird’s beak; 41- Acapulco aunt; 42- ___ impasse; 43- Greek island in the Aegean Sea; 45- Supposed; 47- Hallowed; 48- ___ Lingus;

49- Swindler, slangily; 50- I don’t give ___!; 53- Rita Hayworth’s Khan; 54- Scenes; 58- Delicacy; 61- Writer Wiesel; 62- Nagy of Hungary; 63- Heavy metric weight; 64- Hang loose; 65- Imitat-ed; 66- Williams of “Happy Days”; 67- Pickle flavoring;

Down1- Torn clothing; 2- I smell ___!; 3- Currency unit in Western Sa-moa; 4- Blue-green algae; 5- Caught ya!; 6- Sales incentive; 7- Snap course; 8- River which flows through Stratford in England; 9- Isr. neighbor; 10- Attacks; 11- Mai ___; 12- Thames town; 13- IRS IDs; 19- Stickum; 21- Lays down the lawn; 25- Cock; 26- Eternal; 27- Volkswagen model; 28- Be of use to; 29- Sherpa’s home; 30- ___-mo replay; 31- Movie critic Roger; 32- Haunting; 33- Lieu; 35- Male offspring; 39- Roll of bank notes; 40- Solitaire game; 42- Repre-sentative; 44- Capital of the Ukraine; 46- Merited; 47- Declines; 49- Secluded valleys; 50- 1998 Sarah McLachlan hit; 51- Clammy; 52- Suffix with concession; 53- Prolific author, briefly; 55- “The Time Machine” people; 56- Volition; 57- Exchange for money; 59- Give ___ rest; 60- D.C. bigwig;


THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME (15+) (ACTION/COMEDY) NEW

MILA KUNIS, SAM HEUGHAN, KATE MCKINNON

CINECO (20) 11.30 AM + 2.00 + 4.30 + 7.00 + 9.30 PM + 12.00 MN + (1.00 AM THURS/FRI)DAILY AT (VIP I): 10.30 AM + 1.00 + 3.30 + 6.00 + 8.30 + 11.00 PMSEEF (II) (1.00 AM THURS/FRI)SEEF (I) 11.15 AM + 1.45 + 4.15 + 6.45 + 9.15 + 11.45 PM SAAR 10.45 AM + 1.15 + 3.45 + 6.15 + 8.45 + 11.15 PM WADI AL SAIL 11.00 AM + 1.30 + 4.00 + 6.30 + 9.00 + 11.30 PM

HARB KARMOZ (PG-15) (ACTION/CRIME/THRILLER/DRAMA) NEW

AMIR KAKAR, GHADA ABDEL RAZEK, MOSTAFA KHATER

CINECO (20) 11.15 AM + 1.45 + 4.15 + 6.45 + 9.15 + 11.45 PM + (12.45 MN THURS/FRI)SEEF (I) 11.00 AM + 1.30 + 4.00 + 6.30 + 9.00 + 11.30 PM SAAR 10.30 AM + 1.00 + 3.30 + 6.00 + 8.30 + 11.00 PMWADI AL SAIL 10.45 AM + 1.15 + 3.45 + 6.15 + 8.45 + 11.15 PM

OUR HOUSE (15+) (DRAMA/HORROR/THRILLER) NEW

THOMAS MANN, NICOLA PELTZ, XAVIER DE GUZMAN

CINECO (20) 12.00 + 2.00 + 4.00 + 6.00 + 8.00 + 10.00 PM + 12.00 MNSEEF (II) 11.30 AM + 1.30 + 3.30 + 5.30 + 7.30 + 9.30 + 11.30 PM WADI AL SAIL 5.00 + 7.00 + 9.00 + 11.00 PM

PATRICK (PG) (COMEDY) NEW

BEATTIE EDMONDSON, ED SKREIN, TOM BENNETT

CINECO (20) 11.15 AM + 1.15 + 3.15 + 5.15 + 7.15 + 9.15 + 11.15 PMSEEF (II) 10.45 AM + 12.45 + 2.45 + 4.45 + 6.45 + 8.45 + 10.45 PM

FANNEY KHAN (PG-15) (HINDI/COMEDY/DRAMA) NEW

AISHWARYA RAI BACHCHAN, ANIL KAPOOR, RAJKUMMAR RAO

CINECO (20) 10.30 AM + 1.00 + 3.45 + 6.30 + 9.15 PM + 12.00 MNSEEF (I) 12.45 + 3.30 + 6.15 + 9.00 + 11.45 PM SAAR 6.00 + 8.45 + 11.30 PM WADI AL SAIL 12.15 + 3.00 + 5.45 + 8.30 + 11.15 PM

LEO DA VINCI: MISSION MONA LISA (PG) (ANIMATION/COMEDY/ADVENTURE) NEW

JOHNNY YONG BOSCH, CHERAMI LEIGH, BRYCE PAPENBROOK

CINECO (20) 11.15 AM + 1.15 + 3.15 PM

SEEF (II) 12.00 + 2.00 + 4.00 + 6.00 PM SAAR 12.00 + 2.00 + 4.00 PM WADI AL SAIL 11.00 AM + 1.00 + 3.00 PM

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE FALLOUT (PG-15) (ACTION/THRILLER/CRIME)

TOM CRUISE, HENRY CAVILL, VING RHAMES

CINECO (20) (IMAX 3D): 11.30 AM + 2.30 + 5.30 + 8.30 + 11.30 PM (VIP II): 11.00 AM + 2.00 + 5.00 + 8.00 + 11.00 PM (ATMOS): 12.00 + 3.00 + 6.00 + 9.00 PM + 12.00 MN 10.30 AM + 1.00 + 4.00 + 7.00 + 10.00 PM + (1.00 AM THURS/FRI)SEEF (II) 11.45 AM + 12.45 + 2.45 + 3.45 + 5.45 + 6.45 + 8.45 + 9.45 + 11.45 PM + (12.45 MN THURS/FRI) 10.30 AM + 1.00 + 4.00 + 7.00 + 10.00 PM + (1.00 AM THURS/FRI)SAAR 11.30 AM + 2.30 + 5.30 + 8.30 + 11.30 PM WADI AL SAIL 11.15 AM + 2.15 + 5.15 + 8.15 + 11.15 PM

SKYSCRAPER (PG-13) (ACTION/THRILLERA/DRAMA)

DWAYNE JOHNSON, NEVE CAMPBELL, PABLO SCHREIBER

CINECO (20) 10.30 AM + 12.45 + 3.00 + 5.15 + 7.30 + 9.45 PM + 12.00 MN +(12.30 MN THURS/FRI)SEEF (II) 12.15 + 2.30 + 4.45 + 7.00 + 9.15 + 11.30 PM + (12.45 MN THURS/FRI)WADI AL SAIL 7.15 + 9.30 + 11.45 PM

HOTELTRANSYLVANIA 3: SUMMER (PG) (ANIMATION/COMEDY/DRAMA)

ADAM SANDLER, ANDY SAMBERG, FRAN DRESCHER

CINECO (20) 11.30 AM + 1.30 + 3.30 + 5.30 + 7.30 + 9.30 + 11.30 PMDAILY AT (DUBBED IN ARABIC): 10.30 AM + 12.30 + 2.30 + 4.30 + 6.30 + 8.30 + 10.30 PMSEEF (II) 11.00 AM + 1.00 + 3.00 + 5.00 + 7.00 + 9.00 + 11.00 PM WADI AL SAIL 11.15 + 1.15 + 3.15 + 5.15 PM

THE FIRST PURGE(18+) (ACTION/CRIME/HORROR)

MARISA TOMEI, LEX SCOTT DAVIS, LUNA LAUREN VELEZ

CINECO (20) 11.00 AM + 1.00 + 3.00 + 5.00 + 7.00 + 9.00 + 11.00 PM

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP (PG-15) (ACTION/ADVENTURE)

PAUL RUDD, EVANGELINE LILLY, MICHAEL PENA

CINECO (20) 11.00 AM + 1.30 + 4.00 + 6.30 + 9.00 + 11.30 PM SEEF (II) 2.00 + 7.00 PM + 12.00 MN

OCEAN’S EIGHT (PG-15) (COMEDY/CRIME)

SANDRA BULLOCK, CATE BLANCHETT, ANNE HATHAWAY

CINECO (20) 10.30 AM + 12.30 + 2.45 + 5.00 + 7.15 + 9.30 + 11.45 PM

JURRASIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM (PG-15) (ACTION/ADVENTURE/THRILLER/SCI-FIC-TION)

BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD, CHRIS PRATT, JEFF GOLDBLUM

DAILY AT: 10.45 AM + 1.15 + 3.45 + 6.15 + 8.45 + 11.15 PMSEEF (II) 11.30 AM + 4.30 + 9.30 PM

THE ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES (PG-15) (ACTION/THRILLER)

SYLVESTER STALLONE, DAVE BAUTISTA, XIAOMING HUANG

CINECO (20) 11.45 AM + 1.45 + 3.45 + 5.45 + 7.45 + 9.45 + 11.45 PM

THE INCREDIBLES 2 (PG) (ANIMATION/ACTION/ADVENTURE)

CRAIG T. NELSON, SAMUEL L. JACKSON, CATHE-RINE KEENER

CINECO (20) 11.15 AM + 3.45 + 8.15 PM

AL ABLA TAMTAM (PG-13) (ARABIC/COMEDY)

YASMIN ABDULAZIZ, HAMDI ALMIRGHANI, BAYOUMI FOUAD

CINECO (20) 1.45 + 6.15 + 10.45 PM

KARWAAN (PG-13) (HINDI/DRAMA/COMEDY) NEW

IRRFAN KHAN, DULQUER SALMAAN, MITHILA PALKAR

SEEF (II) 11.15 AM + 1.45 + 4.15 + 6.45 + 9.15 + 11.45 PM

THE ASHRAM (PG-15) (FANTASY/THRILLER) NEW

SAM KEELEY, MANOEL ORFANAKI, HERA HILMAR

SEEF (II) 11.15 AM + 1.15 + 3.15 + 5.15 + 7.15 + 9.15 + 11.15 PM

SHOCK AND AWE (PG-15) (BIOGRAPHY/DRAMA) NEW

WOODY HARRELSON, JAMES MARSDEN, ROB REINER

SEEF (II) 8.00 + 10.00 PM + 12.00 MN

MULK (PG-15) (HINDI/DRAMA) NEW

TAPSEE PANNU, RISHI KAPOOR, ABDUL QUADIR AMIN

SEEF (I) 11.30 AM + 2.30 + 5.30 + 8.30 + 11.30

BUYBUST (18+) (FILIPINO/ACTION/THRILLERA) NEW

ANNE CURTIS, BRANDON VERA, VICTOR NERI

SEEF (I) 10.30 AM + 1.00 + 3.30 + 6.00 + 8.30 + 11.00 PM

KOODE (MALAYALAM) NEW

PRITHVIRAJ, NAZRIYA NAZIM, PARVATHY

SEEF (I) 12.00 + 3.00 + 6.00 + 9.00 PM + 12.00 AL HAMRA 12.00 + 3.00 + 6.00 + 9.00 PM + (12.00 MN THURS/FRI)

Ariana Grande, Mendes sign up for MTV awardsNew York | United States

Pop stars Ariana Grande and Shawn Mendes will be among the performers

at the MTV Video Music Awards on August 20, the network an-nounced Thursday.

Announcing the first batch of appearances for the live broad-cast from New York, MTV said Grande would sing “God Is a Woman,” the 25-year-old for-mer child star’s newly mature track about the delights of sex.

The awards will come three days after Grande releases her fourth album, “Sweetener.”

MTV also said that rapper Logic would perform live for the first time his new song “One Day” alongside featured artist Ryan Tedder, the singer of pop group OneRepublic.

MTV earlier announced that Jennifer Lopez would receive an award named after Michael Jackson for her lifetime contri-butions to pop culture.

The bilingual New York-born diva will appear at the awards for the first time since 2001.

Rapper Cardi B is the front-runner at the latest VMAs, nar-rowly taking more nominations than Jay-Z and Beyonce for their Louvre-shot video “Ape-

shit” and Childish Gambino for his politically charged “This Is America.”

But unlike the industry-led Grammys, the VMAs prides itself on outrageous made-for-televi-sion moments with less focus on who wins the awards.

Ariana Grande, Shawn Mendes and Logic will perform at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards

Don’t think India’s musical heritage is dying: A R RahmanPTI | New Delhi

Music maestro A R Rah-man says India’s musical

heritage may lack exposure but it is not dying as its roots are deep in tradition and peo-ple have a spiritual connection with it.

The double Oscar-winner has travelled across India to find rare instruments and hidden musical traditions in his maiden non-fiction series, “Harmony with A R Rah-man”, being launched on Am-azon Prime on August 15.

“I don’t think India’s rich musical heritage is dying, only the exposure is dying. People love traditions and it is beyond anybody’s money or power. It (music) is the lifestyle of so many people.

“I was talking about this place in Kerala, Kalamanda-lam, where they have this gu-ru-shishya thing and they have a place in Chennai which has a fees of Rs 370 per year and they teach folk music, clas-sical music and dance. In Rajasthan, every kid sings amazingly well and also in Punjab,” Rahman told PTI in an interview.

The composer, who is credited with revolutionising Indian cinema music in his 25-year illustrious ca-

reer, says traditional music may lack exposure but exists in a big way.

“We can’t generalise that everybody is watching this... They have the options to watch so many things. They have the option to watch the purest thing or filth.

“What we see exposed is this big splash of Hindi movies and Tamil movies. It does not mean that all this (traditional music) does not exist. It is taken by families who create this legacy. It is their soul. It is not dictated by money. It is a redeeming f a c t o r i n their lives.”

AR Rahman

Affleck, Damon team up for movie about McDonald

Variety.com

Fox is developing “How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s

Monopoly Game and Stole Mil-lions” as a movie with Ben Af-fleck attached to direct and Matt Damon starring.

The studio won the movie rights to Jeff Maysh’s true-crime story, recently published

in the Daily Beast, which de-tailed how ex-cop Jerome Paul Jacobson rigged the McDon-ald’s Monopoly game in 2001, allegedly stealing millions of dollars.

Damon and Affleck will pro-duce through their Pearl Street company. The “Deadpool” writ-ing team of Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese has been hired to

write the script. The auction was handled by IPG’s Joel Got-ler, who repped Maysh. David Klawans is exec producing.

The story starts by describing how Michael Hoover claimed he had won the $1 million grand prize after collecting Monop-oly pieces and a camera crew was dispatched to his home in Rhode Island.

matt-damon-ben-affleck.jpg

Xavier Dolan to make English language debut

Ottawa | Canada

Acclaimed young Que-bec film director Xavier

Dolan will make his Eng-lish language debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in September with the world premiere of “The Death & Life of John F. Do-novan.”

The drama, said to be his most ambitious pro-ject yet, will be part of its Special Presentations programme.

“In only a few short years, Xavier Dolan has drawn film lovers all over the world into his personal vision,” festival artistic director Cameron Bailey said. “That vision and his remarkable skill as a filmmaker are on full dis-play in his English-language debut.”

French Canadian actor and film director Xavier Dolan poses on stage after receiving the Best Director award for “Juste la fin du monde”

17

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Alex Iwobi signs new long-term Arsenal dealLondon | United Kingdom

Alex Iwobi has signed a new long-term deal

at Arsenal, the Premier League club announced on Friday.

Arsenal did not specify the length of the deal for the 22-year-old Nigeria interna-tional, who came through the ranks with the Gunners, but reports said it would run until 2023.

Midfielder Iwobi scored three goals in 26 league games under the now-de-parted Arsene Wenger last season.

“It ’s always been my childhood dream to rep-resent Arsenal,” he told Arsenal Player. “To get an extended contract is an amazing feeling and I hope I’m doing the Arsenal family proud, as well as my family.”

Gabriel Jesus inks deal with Man CityLondon | United Kingdom

Brazil forward Gabriel Jesus has signed a new

deal with Manchester City that ties him to the Premier League champions until 2023. The 21-year-old, who was part of the Brazil squad that reached the World Cup quarter-finals in Russia, joined City in January 2017 and has scored 24 goals in 53 matches. “I would like to thank the fans for the wel-come,” he said after signing the two-year contract ex-tension.

Director of football Txiki Begiristain said: “Gabriel is undoubtedly one of the best young forwards in football, so to have him commit his future to us is a huge boost.”

Musa leaves LeicesterBrno | Czech Republic

Nigeria forward Ahmed Musa has left Premier League side Leicester

for Al-Nassr, the Saudi Arabian club announced yesterday.

The 25-year-old was Leicester’s record signing when he joined the then-English champions for £16 mil-lion from CSKA Moscow in 2016, but

struggled to make an impact and spent last season back on loan at the Russian team.

“The Al-Nassr club management has finalised the transfer for the star of the Nigerian team and English club Leicester City, Ahmed Musa, on a four-year deal,” the Saudi club wrote on Twitter. Al-Nassr did not say how much they paid for Musa.

Ricciardo to leave Red Bull for Renault

Paris, France

Australian driver Dan-iel Ricciardo is leaving

Red Bull at the end of the season and joining Renault, the two Formula One teams announced on Friday.

“Daniel Ricciardo has ad-vised us that he is to leave the team at the end of the 2018 season,” Red Bull post-ed on their website.

Renault followed a little later by tweeting: “We are delighted to announce that @danielricciardo will join @RenaultSportF1 as race driver from 2019.”

Ricciardo is fifth in the 2018 drivers’ standings and has won in China and Mo-naco this season.

Renault supplies engines to Red Bull but have not won a race since fully re-joining Formula One three years ago. Their best-placed driver is Nico Hulkenberg in seventh.

Pedrosa fastest in Brno practice

AFP | Brno, Czech Republic

Spaniard Dani Pedrosa de-livered the fastest time in free practice for the Czech

Grand Prix yesterday, while compatriot and Honda team-mate Marc Marquez, runaway championship leader, was only 10th best.

Pedrosa rode the quickest lap of the day in the dying moments of the second session record-ing a time of 1min 55.976sec, 0.123sec ahead of Italian Danilo Petrucci (Ducati Pramac) and 0.168 better than Spaniard Al-varo Bautista (Ducati).

Pedrosa won at Brno in 2012 and 2014 and during the second victory set the course record for fastest lap during a race at 1min 56.027sec.

Marquez was 0.659 seconds slower than his team-mate on Friday but can still secure an-

other pole position in Satur-day’s sessions.

Frenchman Johann Zarco (Yamaha Tech 3), who domi-nated the morning session, fin-ished the day ninth fastest 0.559 behind Pedrosa. In Moto2, German Marcel Schroetter (Kalex), eighth in the driver standings, finished 0.201 ahead of the championship leader Ital-

ian Francesco Bagnaia (Kalex).In Moto3, the time set by

another German, Philipp Oet-tl (KTM) set a target of 2min 9.194sec in the morning which survived the afternoon. The championship leader Jorge Martin (Honda) broke his left hand in a crash and flew back to Barcelona for surgery. He will miss the race.

Repsol Honda MotoGP Team’s Spanish rider Dani Pedrosa rides his Honda during a free practice session of the Moto GP Grand Prix of the Czech Republic in Brno

German MotoGP free practice combined times

1. Dani Pedrosa (ESP/Honda) 1:55.976, 2. Danilo Petrucci (ITA/Ducati Pramac) at 0.123, 3. Alvaro Bautista (ESP/Ducati) 0.168, 4. Hafizh Syahrin (MAL/Yamaha Tech 3) 0.224, 5. Andrea Dovizioso (ITA/Ducati) 0.242, 6. Maverick Vinales (ESP/Yamaha) 0.416, 7. Valentino Rossi (ITA/Yamaha) 0.504, 8. Tito Rabat (ESP/Ducati) 0.545, 9. Johann Zarco (FRA/Yamaha Tech3) 0.559, 10. Marc Marquez (ESP/Honda) 0.659

Brave CF confirms Africa live dealTDT | Manama

Brave Combat Federation confirms the largest live

broadcast deal in the histo-ry of combat sports in Africa with combined live coverage of Starsat, VodaCom and Adu Dhabi Sports for the continent of Africa. The event will be broadcast live and mark the first mixed martial arts event hosted in Africa to receive global mixed martial arts coverage. The Bahrain based mixed martial arts promo-tion will cover the milestones covered by traditional organ-isations with the first global

mixed martial arts event for the continent of Africa. The event will be hosted under the patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, of Morocco.

Brave Combat Federation has dominated currently as the fastest growing mixed martial arts promotion in the world and the first global mixed mar-tial arts promotion based in Bahrain. Brave 14 will be host-ed in Omni Sports Indoor Club in Tangier, Morocco on 18th August. The event marks the first to be broadcasted to over 53 nation in the continent of Africa apart from global cov-erage.

His Highness Shaikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa along Ottman Azaitar and his team

11 nations to compete in Brave 14TDT | Manama

Bahrain confirmed that 11 nations will be competing

in the first ever global mixed martial arts event hosted in the continent of Africa.

The nations include USA, Canada, Russia, France, Italy, Netherlands, Mexico, Phil-ippines, Brazil, Sweden and Syria.

Brave Combat Federation will also become the first glob-al promotion to create a broad-

cast record for the event being hosted in Morocco.

The event will be hosted under the patronage of His Majesty the King Mohammed VI of Morocco.

The event will take place at the Omni Sports Indoor Club in Tangier, Morocco on 18th August.

The official press confer-ence will be held on August 4th in Rabat, Morocco con-firming the additional fights and event details.

Venus reaches San Jose quarter Los Angeles

Seven-time Grand Slam winner Venus Williams

held off Britain’s Heather Watson 6-4, 4-6, 6-0 on Thursday to reach the quarter-finals of the WTA hardcourt tournament in San Jose, California.

Third-seeded Williams is the highest seed left in a tournament that saw sec-ond-seed Madison Keys follow top-seeded Garb-ine Muguruza in pulling out because of injury on Thursday.

Keys, the defending champion, pulled out with a right wrist injury before taking the court for her second-round open-er against Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic.

“I have been feeling pain in my wrist over the last couple of days and felt worse today,” said Keys, who was replaced in the draw by lucky loser Mag-

dalena Frech.Tomljanovic beat Po-

land’s Frech 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 to book a quarter-final clash with fifth-seeded Roma-nian Mihaela Buzarnescu, a 7-5, 2-6, 6-1 winner over American teenager Aman-da Anisimova.

Williams will take on Greece’s Maria Sakka-r i , w h o d o m i n a t e d

eighth-seeded Hungarian Timea Babos 6-0, 6-1.

Williams, who won the title in this event in 2000 and 2002, came back with a vengeance after drop-ping the second set to Watson. She broke the Briton three times in the final set, dropping just four points on her serve.

“It was a tough match and she played incredible. There were times where I had no answers,” said Wil-liams, who said her goal was to “control the points and enjoy the battle, just get out there and try to do what I know that I can.

“It worked out, thank-fully.”

Williams, now the high-est-ranked player in the draw, will kick off Thurs-day’s night session against Great Britain’s Heather Watson.

Buzarnescu said she felt the pressure against quali-fier Anisimova.

KNOW WHAT

After turning profes-sional in 1994, Venus Willaims won seven

Grand Slam titles and an Olympic gold medal

in singles play


Indonesia beefs up securityJakarta | Indonesia

Indonesia will deploy tens of thousands of security

personnel to prevent street crime and potential ter-rorist attacks during this month’s Asian Games, po-lice said Friday.

Some 40,000 troops and police officers will deployed in the capital Jakarta and Palembang in Sumatra, which are co-hosting the August 18 to September 2 Games.

Another 10,000 police of-ficers will be on standby in Jakarta, while hundreds of CCTV surveillance cameras have been installed inside and outside sports venues.

Vidal set to quit Bayern for BarcelonaBerlin | Germany

Chile midfielder Arturo Vidal is reportedly on

the verge of signing for Bar-celona after leaving the Bay-ern Munich training camp on Friday.

The 31-year-old midfield dynamo was whisked away from Bayern’s pre-season training camp in Bavaria and several media outlets claim an announcement of his transfer to Barcelona is imminent.

According to Spanish newspapers Mundo De-portivo and AS and UK daily The Guardian, Barcelona are prepared to pay 30 mil-lion euros ($35m) for the box-to-box midfielder.

Lysenko suspendedParis | France

Russian high jumper Danil Lysenko will not

compete at the European championships after being provisionally suspended for missing doping tests, athlet-ics’ world ruling body the IAAF said Friday.

Lysenko, the world indoor champion, was one of 74 athletes vetted by an an-ti-doping panel and allowed to compete under a neutral flag despite the ongoing ban on Russian athletes.

But the 21-year-old Lysen-ko was stripped of his status as an Authorised Neutral Athlete (ANA) after failing to “provide whereabouts in-formation as required under the IAAF.

Pedro extends Chelsea dealLondon | United Kingdom

Chelsea winger Pedro has signed a one-year con-

tract extension, the Premier League club announced on Friday.

The 31-year-old, who moved to Stamford Bridge from Barcelona in 2015, is now under contract until 2020.

Pedro has so far played in 131 games for the Blues, scoring 28 goals.

After Pacquiao loss, ex-WBA champ Matthysse calls Buenos Aires | Argentina

Just two weeks after a punish-ing knockout loss to Filipino

great Manny Pacquiao, Argen-tine former WBA welterweight champion Lucas Matthysse announced his retirement on Thursday.

“Today I decided to hang up the gloves, another stage in my life is beginning,” said the 35-year-old Matthysse, who ends his 43-fight career with a record of 38 wins, 36 inside the distance, for just five defeats and one no contest.

Matthysse’s last fight was a

seventh round stoppage loss to Pacquiao in Kuala Lumpur, in which the previously explosive Argentine looked past his best.

“Pacquiao is a great boxer, I lost to a legend,” he said.

“I’m proud to have stayed at the top for 10 years fighting the best in the world.”

He won the WBA welterweight title in January with an eighth round knockout of Thailand’s Tewa Kiram. He previously held the interim WBC super-light-weight title but was narrowly beaten by American Danny Gar-cia in Las Vegas in 2013 when challenging for the full strap.Lucas Matthysse

KNOW

BETTER

Matthysse’s last fight was a seventh round stoppage loss to Pacquiao in Kuala

Lumpur

India top order misfiresNeeds further 84 runs to win with more than 2 days’ play left, Virat 43 not out, Karthik unbeaten on 18 Birmingham | United Kingdom

India were 110 for five in their second innings, needing a further 84 runs to reach their victory target of 194, at

stumps on the third day of the first Test against England at Edgbaston on Friday.

India captain Virat Kohli was 43 not out following his first-innings 149, the star batsman’s maiden Test century in England, with Dinesh Karthik unbeaten on 18

Earlier, India dismissed England for 180 in their second innings, with fast bowler Ishant Sharma taking five for 51 in 13 overs.

Sam Curran made 63, his maiden Test fifty coming in just his second match at this level.

His innings followed the 20-year-old

Surrey left-arm swing bowler’s Test-best return of four for 74 on Thursday.

This is England’s 1,000th Test and the first of a five-match series.

It was an impressive effort by the 20-year-old Curran, batting at No 8 and came just a day after the Surrey left-arm swing bowler had taken Test-best figures of four for 74.

But it also showed up the poor display by England’s top order, with the next best score in the innings Jonny Bairstow’s 28.

England had been on course to build a first-innings lead of more than a hun-dred runs.

But a masterful 149 by India captain Virat Kohli, the star batsman’s first Test century in England, took India to 274 all out, a deficit of just 13 runs.

And before Thursday’s close, India

captured the prize wicket of Alastair Cook, England’s all-time leading Test run-scorer, for a duck when, for the sec-ond time this match, off-spinner Rav-ichandran Ashwin bowled him with a superb delivery that pitched on middle and hit the off-stump.

It was not long on Friday before were England were 18 for two when Keaton Jennings nicked Ashwin to KL Rahul at second slip.

Ashwin struck again when England captain Joe Root, his team’s best bats-man, saw a genuine clip off pads lead to an excellent low catch at leg-slip by Rahul.

Root, who top-scored with 80 in Eng-land’s first innings, put his hand on his head in despair at what he’d done in falling for 14.

Ashwin took three for 59 to follow his first-innings return of four for 62.

Middlesex left-hander Dawid Malan arguably ‘owed’ England a big score after dropping Kohli in the slips on 21 and 51 on Thursday.

But he fell for 20 when, squared up by Sharma’s superb outswinger from around the wicket, he edged to Ajinkya Rahane in the gully.

Sharma then had Bairstow taken by Shikhar Dhawan at first slip and two balls later he dismissed Ben Stokes (six) via a fine low catch by Kohli at third slip off what became the last ball before lunch, with England 86 for six off 30.4 overs at the interval.

Two balls after play resumed, Shar-ma had dangerman Jos Buttler caught behind and England were 87 for seven.

But Curran, after a couple of fortu-nate edges and being dropped on 13 by Dhawan in the slips -- a tough chance -- found his form.

He struck Ashwin for a magnificent straight six and next ball drove him down to long-on for four.

Curran then brought up his maiden Test fifty in style when he lofted Sharma over extra-cover for a second six to reach the landmark in just 54 balls, including eight fours.

He was eventually last man out on the stroke of tea, caught behind off Umesh Yadav.Kohli wipes his head with a towel after England bowler Sam Curran took the wicket of Ajinkya Rahane

SCORECARD

1st Test scoreboardEngland 1st Innings 287 (J Root 80, J Bairstow 70; R Ashwin 4-62, M Shami 3-64)India 1st Innings 274 (V Kohli 149; S Curran 4-74)England 2nd Innings (overnight: 9-1)A. Cook b Ashwin 0K. Jennings c Rahul b Ashwin 8J. Root c Rahul b Ashwin 14D. Malan c Rahane b Sharma 20J. Bairstow c Dhawan b Sharma 28B. Stokes c Kohli b Sharma 6J. Buttler c Karthik b Sharma 1S. Curran c Karthik b Yadav 63A. Rashid b Yadav 16S. Broad c Dhawan b Sharma 11J. Anderson not out 0Extras (b10, lb2, nb1) 13Total (all out, 53 overs, 233 mins) 180Fall of wickets: 1-9 (Cook), 2-18 (Jennings), 3-39 (Root), 4-70 (Malan), 5-85 (Bair-stow), 6-86 (Stokes), 7-87 (Buttler), 8-135 (Rashid), 9-176 (Broad), 10-180 (Curran)Bowling: Shami 12-2-38-0; Ashwin 21-4-59-3; Sharma 13-0-51-5 (1nb); Yadav 7-1-20-2Match position: India set 194 to win

India’s Ishant Sharma (R) celebrates after taking the wicket of England’s Stuart Broad

• The explosive left-hander will be 39 in September

• Holds the T20 record of 18 sixes in an innings

• Kis run-scoring antics have not helped West Indies in recent times

New Delhi, India

Veteran West Indies batsman Chris Gayle is confident he will still

be hitting sixes at the World Cup next year and insists his explo-sive style has changed the one-day game.

Gayle is a well known one-day mercenary appearing in T20 events around the world and has scored more than 3,000 runs in the

Indian Premier League -- including hundreds of boundaries. He hit 142 runs in a recent one-day internation-

al series against Bangladesh that the West Indies lost 2-1.

The explosive left-hander will be 39 in September however and his often rocky relationship with the West Indies Cricket Board has led critics to predict the end of his international career. He

disagrees.“Leading up to the 2019 World Cup and play in

England, that is the objective to meet,” Gayle told reporters in New Delhi on Friday.

“We are going to have a discussion with the se-lectors, captain and coach and see how we go about it,” the batsman added.

Gayle equalled former Pakistan batsman Shahid Afridi’s record of 476 sixes in all formats during his 73-run knock in the third match against Bangladesh this week.

He also holds the T20 record of 18 sixes in an innings during a Bangladesh Premier League game last year and says his smash-the-ball style has changed the limited-overs game.

“I think you want to thank Mr. Gayle for do-

ing that. He is the man who made those things possible,” said Gayle -- the self-proclaimed ‘Uni-verse-Boss’ on Twitter.

“Overall everything has changed, Test cricket has changed. It’s more entertaining for people who come to watch the game.”

But his run-scoring antics have not necessarily helped West Indies in recent times.

‘Kohli inspires’West Indies dominated world cricket in the 1970s and 80s but are now ranked seventh in T20s, ninth in ODI and eighth in Test matches.

“Things won’t just happen overnight. Talent is there but consistency is not there. Players need to go out there and have the self-belief to win series and not just win a one-off game,” he said.

“Get into the habit of winnings series. It’s a long process. We definitely have a bright future with lot of youngsters coming in,” he opined.

Gayle is tipping names like Evin Lewis, Shimron Hetmyer and Shai Hope to make an impact at the World Cup in England next year.

Gayle also hailed his former Royal Challengers Bangalore IPL teammate Virat Kohli for his gritty 149 that lifted India against England in the first Test.

Kohli defied critics and dragged India from a precarious 100-5 to 274 in response to England’s 287 in the first innings.

“It was a fantastic innings and a captain’s knock. He converts a lot of those half-centuries into hun-dreds which is very good,” said Gayle.

“From the captain’s point of view he boosts his players up to have that self-belief to go there and and win games,” he added.

“The way he batted with the tail enders, you can see the guys were very determined. Because of his presence they play with more and more guts and determination.”


Gayle storm warning!

Veteran West Indies batsman foresees sixes at 2019 World Cup

Gayle equalled former Pakistan batsman Shahid

Afridi’s record of 476 sixes in all formats

KNOW WHAT

Lampard returned to football because he ‘missed the bug’London, United Kingdom

Frank Lampard says he swapped the relative com-

fort of the pundit’s chair for the fraught job of manager be-cause he missed the “bug” as he prepares for his first competi-tive game at the helm of Derby County.

Lampard has worked primar-ily in the media since retiring from playing in 2017 following a glittering career that included three Premier League titles, four FA Cups and a Champions League at Chelsea.

His first competitive game in charge sees the Rams kick off the new Championship season against Reading at the Madejski Stadium on Friday.

Asked why he is back in foot-ball in a hands-on role, Lam-pard, 40, said: “Because you miss the bug.

“It (television work) is com-fortable, but there is pressure there because you want to do the job as best as you can. But when you’ve been competitive for a long time as a player, you miss it.

“Myself and Steven (Ger-rard) were talking about that openly last year when we were

working on BT Sport. Football draws you back in and for all the 24-hours-a-day talk and lack-of-sleep talk you can’t help but love it.

“This was something that I couldn’t not do and I couldn’t settle for that easy life when there was an opportunity to come and do this.”

Gerrard is another former England international midfield-er set to take charge of his first league game this weekend, at Scottish giants Rangers.

The ex-Liverpool captain has already overseen three Europa League games and remains un-beaten as a manager, winning

twice.Lampard added: “We were

texting back and forth (on Tuesday), actually discussing the mad life of management and how we both see it.

“We are both the same, we are enjoying every minute of it. It’s strange and you can’t switch off because you want to do so well, that’s certainly how I feel.

“Some days you can’t switch off, which means giving it every moment of the day. I’m sure Steven will be the same because I know how competitive he is and I’m guessing if you ask him then he will give you some sim-ilar answers.”

Frank Lampard, a byword for consistency, makes his managerial debut with Derby County. (Courtesy of the national)

Tiger ready to roar againSt. Louis, United States

Tiger Woods says he has im-proved enough after spinal

fusion surgery to snap a five-year win drought just ahead of the season’s final major tour-nament, the 100th PGA Cham-pionship.

Woods, a 14-time major champion, tees off next week at Bellerive after briefly leading last month’s British Open at Carnoustie. The former world number one boosted his rank-ing from beyond 1,200th last December to 50th.

“I went from just hoping to be able to play the tour to now I feel that I certainly can win again,” Woods said.

“Within a year to get down to 50 is a pretty good accom-plishment. At the beginning of the year, if they had said you’re playing the Open Champion-ship, I would have said I’d be very lucky to do that.”

Woods, who hasn’t won a ma-jor title since the 2008 US Open, struggled with back pain the past two years but has served notice his shotmaking skills are returning to form. He shared second at the Valspar Cham-pionship in March and in June shared fourth at the National after his best final round in six

years. “I’ve had an opportunity to win a couple times this year. I had a great chance at Valspar early in the year and even (at Carnoustie) I had a great shot at it,” Woods said. “My game has gotten better and good enough where I feel like I can win again out here.”

Woods has one last major be-fore turning 43 in December. Only 14 times has a player 43 or older won a major and only two men have multiple wins beyond their 42nd birthday -- Old Tom Morris in the 1864 and 1867 British Opens and Julius Boros at the 1963 US Open and 1968

PGA Championship.Woods has not won any event

since the 2013 WGC Bridgestone Invitational, but held the out-right lead with eight holes to play at Carnoustie before a dou-ble bogey and bogey dropped him from the top for good.

“I played myself into a great position. I made a couple of mistakes there at 11 and 12, end-ed up costing me the tourna-ment.”

Woods shared sixth at the Open, his best major result since 2013, and will chase his first consecutive top-10 major finishes since 2010 at Bellerive.

Tiger Woods playing a shot

Chris Gayle of West Indies runs during the 2nd ODI match between West Indies and Bangladesh at Guyana National Stadium, Providence, Guyana

AFP | Washington, United States

A tearful Andy Murray advanced to the ATP Washington Open quarter-finals in a three-hour marathon ending at

3:00 am yesterday, then ripped organisers for putting him in such a situation.

Three-time Grand Slam champion Mur-ray, in his first hardcourt event after an 11-month layoff for a right hip injury, out-

lasted Romania’s 93rd-ranked Marius Copil 6-7 (5/7), 6-3, 7-6 (7/4).

The 31-year-old Scotsman won his third three-set victory in four days, having been on the court for eight hours 11 minutes in all, and he started at midnight thanks to a fourth day of rain delays.

“I don’t think I should be put in a position like that,” Murray said. “(My body) doesn’t feel great right now.

“I’ve had a few long matches. Finishing matches at three in the morning isn’t good for anyone involved in the event, players, TV, fans, anyone.

“When you’re expected to come back and perform the next day, I think that’s unreasonable.”

And the sheer lateness of the hour wasn’t good for players.

“That’s something the tour needs to look at,” Murray said.

The British star said he was unlikely to finish post-match conditioning and get to sleep before 5:30 am, ahead of a scheduled Friday quarter-final against 19-year-old Australian Alex De Minaur.

“Not playing, potentially, is possible. I don’t know how players are expect-ed to recover from that,” Murray said.

“It’s like playing two matches in a day. I’m not sure how well I’ll recover from that.”

After the final point, Murray went to his chair, buried his face in a tow-el and wept, sobbing at times, and kept his head down and face covered as he exited the court.

Former world number one Murray, now ranked 832, de-nied Copil on all four break chances in the first set and took a 5-0 tie-breaker lead only to drop the next seven points and squander the set, yelling at himself several times before net-ting a backhand to end the misery.

Murray broke to open and close the second set, then traded breaks in the sixth and seventh games on the way to a final tie-breaker.

Murray hit a forehand long to fall level 3-3, then slammed his rac-quet to the court, recovered it and hit three winners to reach match point, winning when Copil netted a backhand.

If his body can take it, Murray plays for a semi-final spot in against 72nd-ranked De Minaur, who pulled two upsets Thursday after rain, dump-ing US 11th seed Steve Johnson 6-4, 7-5 and South Korean eighth seed Chung Hyeon 6-2, 4-6, 6-2.


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Titanic 117-shot rally wows badminton ChampionshipsNanjing | China

A mammoth 117-shot rally lit up the badminton World Cham-

pionships quarter-finals on Friday, leaving spectators in giggles and the players panting.

The seemingly never-ending ex-change took place during an attri-tional men’s doubles clash between Indonesia and Japan in Nanjing.

The Indonesian top-ranked duo of Marcus Fernaldi Gideon and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo, and Ja-pan’s Takeshi Kamura and Keigo Sonoda, traded shots early in the second game.

The Indonesians were down a game 21-19 and came off worse at the end of the rally, during which the duos repeatedly waited before attacking, only to be repelled.

Spectators laughed as the pairs hit the shuttlecock back and forth, before Kamura finally forced Gide-on to hit wide.

The Badminton World Federa-tion counted 117 shots before Japan won the point to go up 7-4 in the second game.

It helped Kamura and Sonoda, the fifth seeds, pull off an upset and reach the semi-finals.

Takeshi Kamura (R) and Keigo Sonoda of Japan hit a shot against Marcus Fernaldi Gideon and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo of Indonesia

Weeping Murray wins 8-hr marathon

Alex wins Zverev battle

Third-ranked defending champion Al-exander Zverev took bragging rights

in his sibling rivalry, beating 15th-seeded older brother Mischa 6-3, 7-5 in their first ATP meeting.

“We had a great time,” Alex said. “I was happy and enjoying the moment. I hope we meet again someday in a final.”

Mischa was nearly in tears at the start at a family dream come true.

“When we came back to the benches I had to fight back my tears,” he said. “It was a big day, big match. It was very emotional for me. It was just a great day.”

Next up for Alex will be Japanese sev-enth seed Kei Nishikori, who dispatched Canadian ninth seed Denis Shapovalov 7-6 (7/1), 6-3.

“There will be a lot of points from the baseline,” Nishikori said. “I’ve got to work the point, play more aggressively and move the ball around.”

Low-energy Isner falls

US second seed John Isner was ousted by 152nd-ranked compatriot Noah

Rubin 6-4, 7-6 (8/6).Ninth-ranked Isner, fatigued after a

first-ever Grand Slam semi-final at Wim-bledon and an Atlanta title run, blamed his low-energy outing on his workload.

“Noah played with more energy. He was just tougher than I was. He was hungry,” Isner said.

“This could very well be a good loss. I need a little rest. There are some big tournaments coming up. I want to be full of energy for those.”

Japanese third seed Naomi Osaka, nagged by a right leg injury, lost to Po-land’s Magda Linette 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 in the companion WTA event.

“It definitely bothers me a bit out there on the court, but it isn’t anything serious,” Osaka said. “We’re going to prep and get healthy.”

It took 539 tour-level main draw matches for Alexander and Mischa Zverev to meet on the ATP World Tour

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