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Volume 22 | Number 7265 | 2 RiyalsSaturday 26 August 2017 | 4 Dhul-Hijja 1438 www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

3rd Best News Website in the Middle East

Ankara

QNA

Attorney-General H E Dr Ali bin Fetais Al Marri said yesterday that five people were detained for their connection to the hacking of

Qatar News Agency (QNA), which took place in late May.

He told QNA that, as part of cooperation between the State of Qatar and the Republic of Turkey in the field of combatting cybercrime, the Turkish authorities detained five people involved in the hacking and broadcasting false statements attributed to the Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Al Marri said that, after the hacking crime, Qatari authorities began investigations inside and outside Qatar. They contacted friendly countries and

asked for help on the subject, given that electronic crimes do not recognise borders by their nature.

Dr Ali bin Fetais Al Marri said that the five people involved in the hacking are being interrogated, and added that all the details regarding the subject will be

Five detained in hacking of QNA

FM holds phone talks with UK counterpartMINISTER of Foreign Affairs H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani held a telephone conversation today with the Foreign Sec-retary of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson . They dis-cussed bilateral relations and means of boosting and devel-oping them, as well as the developments of the Gulf cri-sis and a number of issues of mutual interest.

Emir and Abbas discuss Palestine issue over phoneEMIR H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held a tele-phone conversation with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestine State, on the lat-est developments on the Palestinian arena.

President Abbas briefed the Emir on the results of his meetings with the US delega-tion headed by Presidents senior adviser Jared Kushner, and the efforts exerted to resume the peace process.

Discussions during the phone call also dealt with international efforts aimed at finding a lasting, just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian question .

The Palestinian President expressed his appreciation to the Emir for Qatar’s firm stance in support of the Pal-estinian cause. The two sides also discussed the assistance provided by Qatar to the Pal-estinian people, especially the reconstruction projects in the Gaza Strip, and exchanged of views on a number of regional and international issues of common interest.

Mohammed OsmanThe Peninsula

Qatar National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) has said it has registered as many as

3,446 complaints related to human rights violations committed by the siege countries since the blockade imposed on Qatar on June 5.

The complaints varied between violations related to residency, properties, religious practices, health, family, travel movements, education and the right to work.

Saudi Arabia topped the three blockading Gulf countries with total number of violations 2,045 out of

total 3,446 complaints received by the NHRC so far, which makes the 60 percent of total human rights violations committed.

The majority of violations reported are related to restriction of movement with total 724 com-plaints followed by violations related to properties 633, family related violations 331, violations linked to the right of religious prac-tices 158, residency related violations 58 and education related complaints are 55.

The UAE has committed 367 violations with regard to the right to own property since the begin-ning of the siege of Qatar, said

QNHRC, followed with 307 viola-tions related to the right to movement. Comparing to other two Gulf states, UAE has the highest number of violations with regard to the right of education with 61 percent of the violations (130 out of total 213 education related complaints).

NHRC has repeatedly stated that the large number of violations against Qatari owners of proper-ties and companies in three Gulf countries that imposed siege on Qatar, shows the absence of a safe legislative environment for inves-tors and business in general.

→ Continued on page 3

Tehran

Agencies

Riyadh’s policies in the region are destructive and even to the detriment of

itself, said Iranian Foreign Min-ister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in an exclusive interview with Isna.

Zarif pointed out that “Iran has always wanted to have good relations with its neighbours, but we believe that Riyadh’s poli-cies in the region are destructive and even to the detriment of itself”

“We insist on the establish-ment of a safe, strong and convergent region which is in

line with the national interests of Iran and the region. Iran’s policy for interaction with the regional countries and Saudi Arabia is within this framework and has not changed,”

“We have always empha-sised that we are ready to dialogue with Saudi Arabia to resolve the crises in the region, whereas Riyadh unfortunately

did not do this and sees its inter-ests in creating tension in the region,” Zarif noted.

Zarif who won the confi-dence vote of Parliament for the second term spoke about the latest development in the Ira-nian foreign policy, region, structural changes in the foreign ministry’s management positions.

Saudi is top rights violator since siege

Agencies

The UN and Russia are set to begin separate tours of the Gulf in an effort to end the

deadlock in the diplomatic row between Qatar and the blockad-ing countries led by Saudi Arabia. Delegations will tour the region

as the blockade enters its third month.

UN Secretary-General Anto-nio Guterres will begin his tour today followed by the Russians, who will send their team tomor-row for a three day visit.

The trip was announced by Guterres’s spokesman Stephane

Dujarric at a press conference in New York yesterday. Dujarric said that Kuwait would be the first leg of the UN chief’s visit to the region, where he will meet the Emir and other senior offi-cials tomorrow to discuss the situation in the region.

The Secretary-General’s visit

follows multiple efforts to end the blockade against Qatar. The US State Department is said to be “very concerned” about the continuation of the crisis, hav-ing itself failed to break the deadlock.

State Department spokes-woman Heather Nauert told a

news conference that the crisis has gone on for too long, stress-ing the need to reduce the rhetoric between the parties. Earlier this month Saudi state TV sparked outrage by suggesting that a Qatari passenger jet could be shot down by a missile if it enters Saudi airspace.

While it’s not yet clear what impact Guterres will have in uniting the parties, his visit comes on the back of what appears to be failed American attempts to exert pressure on the blockading countries to end their s iege on their neighbour.

Diplomatic move by UN and Russia to break Qatar blockade

Riyadh’s regional policies destructive: IranIrfan Bukhari The Peninsula

OVER 51 million service transactions have been made by citizens and residents in the first half of 2017 through Ministry of Interior’s website and Metrash 2.

The figures of first 6 months of cur-rent year were shared by the Ministry on its social media sites. Total number of service transactions made during this time is 51,261,450. On average, 8,543,575 (8.5 million) service transactions were made per month, 284,786 transactions per day, 11,866 per hour and 198 transactions were made per minute.

→Full report on page 3

Over 51 million transactions via MoI social media sites

Attorney-General H E Dr Ali bin Fetais Al Marri (second left), with Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul (second right), and other officials in Ankara, yesterday. Also seen is Qatar’s Ambassador to Turkey, Salem bin Mubarak Al Shafi (left).

Attorney-General H E Dr Ali bin Fetais Al Marri, who is in Ankara, said that the five people involved in the hacking are being interrogated and all the details regarding the subject will be announced once the investigation is over.

announced once the investigation is over.“Our friends in Turkey answered us

a short time ago. Five people were detained and they are being investigated. Qatari prosecutors are working with

Turkish authorities to follow this case,” Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah quoted Al Marri as saying after meeting with Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul in Ankara.

“Iran has always wanted to have good relations with its neighbours, but we believe that Riyadh’s policies in the region are destructive and even to the detriment of itself” says Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

02 SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017HOME

EMIR H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent yesterday a cable of congratulations to the President of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, Tabare Vazquez, on the occasion of the anniversary of the country’s national day.

Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Thani and Prime Min-ister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani also sent similar messages.

Emir congratulates Uruguay President

PRIME Minister and Interior Minis-ter H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani sent a written message to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria Boyko Borisov.

The message was handed over by the Ambassador of the State of Qatar to Bulgaria, Rashid bin Ali Al Khater, during a meeting yesterday with R Petrov, Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister for Judicial Reform and Bul-garian Foreign Minister.

PM sends message to Bulgarian counterpart

Raynald C Rivera The Peninsula

The Vietnam Embassy yester-day celebrated the country’s 72nd National Day on a high note with positive outlook for the future of bilateral ties

between Qatar and Vietnam.Vietnam is keen on deepening its

relations with Qatar in various fields such as tourism, labour, trade and investment, said Vietnam Ambassador Nguyen Hoang.

“With Vietnam’s world class resorts and attractions and Qatar Airways ram-ping up flight frequencies to Vietnam from next year, tourism is one of the areas which we are looking forward to strengthen and develop,” said the envoy.

He added: “Investment in real estate in Vietnam like luxury hotels and resorts is one of new areas for Qatari investors to explore as real estate markets in Viet-nam saw growth in the past few years thanks to the continuous inflow of for-eign direct investment, strengthening domestic business cycle and a support-ive policy environment.”

An investment plan for the construc-tion of a $311.9m seaport and industrial park complex in Quang Yen province of Quang Ninh has been approved, one of the biggest investors of which is Con-struction Development Company (CDC) with more than 70 percent capital.

“This cooperation will open for Viet-nam and Qatar much more opportunities in construction and investment relations in the upcoming time,” he said.

With regard to trade, he said Viet-nam is looking to explore new agricultural products to export to Qatar such as coffee, pepper and fruits.

Vietnam appreciates Qatar’s deci-sion to officially recognise Vietnam’s market economy status, he stressed.

“This vividly reflects the multi-fac-eted cooperation and mutual trust between the two countries. This recog-nition is a key contributor to deepening the bilateral relations between Vietnam and Qatar, particularly the potential economic and trade ties,” he said.

“The relationship between the two countries has made huge strides in dif-ferent fields including politics, economics, investment, culture and sports during the past years,” he said.

He noted that there had been regu-lar exchange of visits between the two countries such as the visit to Qatar of Vietnam’s Minister of Health during the World Innovation Summit of Health in Qatar and visit of the leaders of Minis-try of Economy and Commerce of Qatar to Vietnam for the second Government Joint Commission on Economic, Com-mercial and Technical Cooperation between Vietnam and Qatar.

More exchange visits are expected as the two countries celebrate the sil-ver jubilee of bilateral relations next year, he said, adding the Prime Minis-ter, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam had sent an official invitation to their Qatari counterparts to visit Vietnam.

As part of the silver jubilee celebra-tions, the Embassy will organise a Vietnamese Food and Culture Festival with InterContinental Doha The City, he added.

Yesterday’s occasion was marked by a community gathering during which the envoy recalled Vietnam’s hard strug-gle for national independence and the

country’s achievements during the proc-ess of regional and international integration.

He urged the Vietnamese commu-nity to further contribute to national construction and development.

There are around 1,400 Vietnam-ese citizens in Qatar working in various fields such as research and engineer-ing, but mostly in construction and other services.

“In recent years, Vietnam and Qatar

have been working to promote cooper-ation in many fields, especially labour cooperation aimed at increasing the number of Vietnamese in Qatar. Fol-lowing this development, I believe that the Vietnamese population in Qatar will increase in the future,” he said.

The event also saw the distribution of prizes to winners of the Vietnamese community sports competition which was followed by community dinner and karaoke contest.

Nguyen Hoang (second left), Vietnamese Ambassador to Qatar, with people who received award at Vietnam National Day celebrations at Vietnam Embassy yesterday. (Below) Nguyen Hoang speaks during the celebrations.Pic: Baher Amin / The Peninsula

Huge strides in Qatar-Vietnam ties: Envoy

THE State of Qatar has strongly condemned the armed attack on a mosque in the Afghan capital, Kabul, which resulted in a number of deaths and injuries.

In a statement, the Foreign Min-istry reiterated Qatar’s firm stance rejecting violence and terrorism, regardless of motives and reasons.

The statement stressed Qatar’s total rejection of targeting places of worship and intimidating civilians.

The Ministry’s statement expressed its condolences to the families of the victims, the gov-ernment and people of Afghanistan, and wished speedy recovery to the injured.

Qatar condemns Kabul mosque attack

It was noted that there had been regular exchange of visits between the two countries. More exchange visits are expected as the two countries celebrate the silver jubilee of bilateral relations next year. As part of the silver jubilee celebrations, the Embassy will organise a Vietnamese Food and Culture Festival with InterContinental Doha The City.

03SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017 HOME

Vodafone Executive Director for External Affairs, Mohamed Mehdi Al Yami (sixth right in second raw); Afif Charity CEO, Ibrahim bin Ali (fifth right in second raw); Ahmed Abdullah (fourth left in second in raw) from Qatar Charity and other officials at the closing ceremony of third edition of the Giving Challenge campaign held at Four Seasons Hotel.Pic: Kammutty VP / The Peninsula

Vodafone’s ‘Giving Challenge’ concludes

Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera has con-demned Egypt’s treatment of its jour-nalist Mahmoud Hussein who was

arrested 247 days ago, saying he has been refused medical atten-tion for a broken arm.

Speaking to Al Jazeera by tel-ephone, Hussein’s daughter Zahra said her father was suf-fering from depression because of his continued imprisonment and lack of medical care.

She said authorities were preventing him from receiving X-rays and scans on a broken arm. It was unclear how Hussein suffered the injury.

“Hussein has had a broken arm while in prison, and the prison’s warden has refused to

send him to an outside hospital to receive medical treatment, using unconvincing security excuses,” Al Jazeera Media Net-work said in a statement.

“Al Jazeera is ready to take full responsibility for all expenses related to any medical treatment Hussein should receive in a pri-vate hospital.”

Hussein, an Egyptian national who lives in Qatar, was detained and questioned by Egyptian authorities on Decem-ber 20 after travelling to Cairo for a holiday.

He’s been charged with “dis-seminating false news and receiving monetary funds from foreign authorities in order to defame the state’s reputation”.

Al Jazeera, human rights groups and media organisations have rejected the allegations against him, denouncing his detention and calling for his unconditional release.

Zahra said her family has repeatedly appealed to Egyptian authorities to have him released on bail considering he has nine children to care for - the young-est being three years old.

“We were hoping that my

father would be released to come home to us last Eid holiday, but when he did not we cried and were very upset,” she said.

“It looks like they will not release him this coming Eid hol-iday as well.”

The United States on Tues-day informed Egypt it would withhold $290m in official assistance because of Cairo’s failure to make progress on respecting human rights and democratic norms.

Hussein has repeatedly com-plained of suf fer ing mistreatment during his incar-ceration, being denied legal rights, and not receiving suffi-cient food and clothing. Over the past few years, Egyptian author-ities have arrested several Al Jazeera employees, raising con-cerns over media freedom in the

country.In May 2016, a Cairo court

sentenced Ibrahim Helal to death, charging the former edi-tor-in-chief of Al Jazeera Arabic in absentia with endangering national security.

Al Jazeera’s Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy, and Peter Greste - along with seven col-leagues outside the country - were accused of spreading “false news” during their cover-age of the aftermath of the military overthrow of then-pres-ident Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Mohamed and Fahmy spent 437 days in jail. Greste spent more than a year in prison before being released.

The judge who sentenced the journalists said they were brought together “by the devil” to destabilise the country.

Al Jazeera slams Egypt’s treatment of its journalist

The Peninsula

A Nepali community in Qatar organised a pro-gramme on August 24 at

Radission Blu to show solidar-ity with the state of the Qatar.

The slogan of the pro-gramme was ‘we love Qatar, we support Qatar, we are in Qatar and Qatar is our second home’.

It was chaired by Dr Dev K Aji Dangol, Chairman of Nepali community Doha. Rashid Al Dehaimi, Assistant Director of Asian Department at the Minis-try of Foreign Affairs of Qatar was the chief guest. Fahad Sal-lam Almarri (pictured), an official from the ministry, was the guest of honour.

Representatives from differ-ent communities from countries like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Srilanka and the Philippines were also present. The pro-gramme started with reading of The Holy Quran and played the national anthem of both Nepal

and Qatar. Nepali art-ist Ramesh Shrestha made a live painting of the Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Father Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. The images were later handed over to Rashid Al Dehaimi.

The community also presented a doc-umentary on the relationship between both the countries. It was pre-sented by Shiba Raj Gautam . Fahad Sallem Almarir, said, thanked the community for their support to Qatar. Sandhya Sharma and Kamachha Cham-lagai recited a poem. Both sharma and Chamlagai was the school students and in the poem they mentioned Qatar is their second home , they found homely environment in Qatar so they love Qatar .

Dev Kaji Dangol thanked all

the participants. The pro-gramme was financially supported by Raj Regmi, RK Sharma, Prakash Koirala, Mahendra Chaulagain, Badri Prasad Pandey, Narendra Bhatt and Dr. Dev Kaji Dangol and coordinated by Shiba Raj Gau-tam and Sagar Nepal.

The Ambassdor of Qatar to Nepal Yousuf bin Mohammed Al Hail supported, directly and indirectly, the organiser to make this a success.

Qatar is our second home, say Nepali expatriates

Speaking to Al Jazeera by telephone, Hussein’s daughter Zahra said her father was suffering from depression because of his continued imprisonment and lack of medical care.

Nepali community members and other officials pose for a group picture.

Irfan Bukhari The Peninsula

Over 51 million service transactions have been made by citizens and

residents in the first half of 2017 through Ministry of Interior’s website and Metrash 2.

The figures of first 6 months of current year were shared by the Ministry on its social media sites. Total number of service transactions made during this time is 51,261,450.

On an average, 8,543,575 (8.5 million) service transactions were made per month, 284,786 transactions per day, 11,866 per hour and 198 transactions were made per minute.

Separately, the Ministry of Interior has also shared figures regarding emergency calls it received on 999 Emergency Service in the first half of 2017 which shows that emergency service received total 1,132,627 (over one million) in the said

time. The data indicate that 999 Emergency Service received 188,771 per month, 6258 per day, 261 per hour and 5 calls per minute.

“Emergency Service (999) receives hundreds of calls daily with various emergency requests. This service works round the clock to receive calls in six languages Arabic, English, French, Chinese, Filipino, Urdu/Hindi. Public is advised to give the specific address (building no, street and zone details) for quick reach of assistance,” the Minis-try further said while posting the figures on its Facebook account.

It adds that people with hearing disability can contact

992 for emergency services either by video call or SMS. As well they may email to 992@moi.gov.qa. The figures indicate people’s trust on Ministry of Interior’s services delivery channels and procedures. Met-rash 2 offers various kinds of services to the public which are mainly divided into six catego-ries; traffic services, residence permit services, exit permit services, entry visa services, eGate services, queries; and general services.

Metrash 2 enables Qatari nationals and residents to apply for and obtain more than 100 services that save their time, effort and money, while enjoy-ing the convenience of using their smart phones.Overall more than 250 electronic services are accessible on the MoI Website and Metrash 2 that are associ-ated with different sectors of the Ministry including Passports, Traffic, Borders and Criminal Evidence and Information etc.

51 million service transactions in six months via MoI webiste & Metrash 2

Continued from page 1The chairman of the NHRC,

Dr Ali bin Dr Ali bin Smaikh Al Marri, said earlier this month at the British Parliament in London, “no country has the right to threaten the interests of individuals, close down companies, confiscate proper-ties, prevent money transfers and lay off workers or commit other violations on the grounds of political differences.

The latest statistics released by the NHRC yester-day also show that the Saudi Arabia’s violations of the right to property are more than that committed by the UAE (367) in terms of the number of

complaints which was 633 and most of these complaints were related to the livestock of Qatari citizens in Saudi Arabia as many of these livestock were deported and some others are still in Saudi Arabia while own-ers were forced to leave the country within 14 days.

Regarding complaints of families suffering separation, which is one of the most cruel act taken by these countries, the statistics reveal that 331 violations were committed by Saudi Arabia, while Bahrain ranked second committing 211 violations, and the UAE 78 vio-lations of the right of families to live together.

Saudi Arabia is top rights violator since blockade

Attorney-General H E Dr Ali bin Fetais Al Marri meeting with Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul and other officials in Ankara, yesterday.

Attorney-General meets Turkish officials

QNA

The sale of subsidised sheep for Qataris will start today with every

individual aged 20 or above entitled to one sheep at a fixed price of QR1,100, the Ministry of Economy and Commerce announced yesterday.

The initiative has been launched by the MEC for the fifth year in row aiming at cre-ating a balance in prices at the local market, which experi-ences a surge in demand for sheep ahead of and during the blessed Eid Al Adha.

The Ministry has made a contract with Widam Food Company to provide 12,500 heads of Syrian sheep, each weighing 45kg or above. These will be sold to Qataris directly at Abu Hamour Cen-tral Market at the automated and public slaughterhouses, in addition to the other Widam slaughter houses at Al Shamal, Al Khor and Umm Salal Central Market.

The conditions of the Min-istry contract with Widam ensures the sheep to be sold within this initiative should be of good health and weight and compliant with the approved standards. The sheep should also meet the standards and conditions necessary for sac-rificial sheep in accordance with the Islamic Law.

The sale of the live sheep will continue till September 3. The purchaser should present his Qatari ID at the selling point. The Ministry will inten-sify its inspection campaign until September 3 to make sure that the sellers abide by the sale conditions and the fixed sub-sidised prices.

Sale of subsidised sheep for citizens from today

On an average, 8.5 million service transactions were made per month.

04 SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Palestinian men set up a barbed wire on the border with Egypt, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, yesterday.

Securing the border

Beirut

AP

Islamic State (IS) militants pushed back government forces advancing on one of the last towns still in IS hands in the province of

Raqqa, killing over two dozen soldiers and seizing vehicles, a Syria monitoring group and the extremists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the early yesterday coun-terattack by IS short-circuited a government advance on Maadan, which brought them within only a few kilometers in recent days.

The Russia-backed govern-ment forces have been on a multi-pronged offensive, mov-ing toward the IS-held territories in Deir Al Zour prov-ince in the east from northern, central and southern Syria.

Yesterday, the Russian mil-itary said its air force is now focusing on supporting the Syr-ian army’s offensive in Deir Al Zour. Syrian government forces control around half the city and a nearby air base, both of which are besieged by the IS militants. Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the military’s General Staff said the Russian two-year campaign backing the Syrian government has allowed President Bashar Assad’s forces to quadruple the territory under their control.

At a news conference in Moscow, he said the area under Syrian government control has increased from 19,000 to 78,000 sq km since Russia launched its air campaign in September 2015. Russian pilots have flown more than 28,000 missions since the campaign’s launch, he said. Rudskoi said Syrian government troops are advancing from three directions to encircle Deir Al Zour. “Break-ing the blockade of the city will

mark the defeat of the most capable part of the IS in Syria,” he said.

The IS attack yesterday set the government back about 30km to the west of Maadan and allowed the militants to recapture a number of villages in the areas they lost to advanc-ing government troops last month. Maadan lies halfway between Raqqa city and Deir Al Zour city, which is divided between government- and IS-controlled areas.

The Observatory called the IS attack its biggest in south-eastern Raqqa. It said at least 34 Syrian soldiers and 12 mili-tants were killed.

IS media channels posted pictures of the attacked Syrian army convoy and bodies of over a dozen soldiers. Maadan lies along the southern banks of the Euphrates River and is 60km east of the city of Raqqa, where the USbacked Syrian opposi-tion forces are separately battling IS.

The militants have unsuc-cessfully tried to push back against government advances in central Syrian town of Aker-bat. Russian officials said Syrian troops have encircled IS mili-tants in the town and Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the head of Russia’s military in Syria, said controlling Akerbat would allow the Syrian government to take full control of the oil and gas fields north of Palmyra.

Sana’a

AFP

Children were among at least 14 people killed in an air strike that toppled res-

idential blocks in Yemen’s capital Sana’a yesterday, wit-nesses and medics said.

The attack was the latest in a wave of deadly raids on resi-dential areas of Yemen blamed on a Saudi-led military coalition, drawing strong international condemnation. The United Nations has accused the Arab coalition of killing 42 civilians in the week to Thursday, includ-ing many children.

Amnesty International’s Middle East research director, Lynn Maalouf, said the coalition “rained down bombs on civil-ians while they slept”. She called in a statement for the UN to take action against Saudi Arabia over the list of civilian facilities struck in deadly air raids over the past two years.

“We are calling on the UN to

look at the evidence - the schools and hospitals that lie in ruins, the hundreds of young lives lost to reckless air strikes,” Maalouf said. The International Committee of the Red Cross condemned the latest deadly raid as “outrageous”.

“Eight of the victims were members of the same family, including five children between three and 10 years old,” said the deputy head of the ICRC’s del-egation in Yemen, Carlos Morazzani, after visiting the site.

“Such loss of civilian life is outrageous and runs counter to the basic tenets of the law of armed conflict,” he said. “From what we saw on the ground, there was no apparent military target.” Yesterday’s air raid destroyed two buildings in the southern district of Faj Attan, leaving people buried under debris, said a photographer on the scene.

His images showed severely damaged buildings, piles of smashed concrete blocks and

splintered beams of wood. Med-ics at the site said at least 14 people including six children and two women had died in the strike at 3:15 am (0015 GMT).

Al Massira television chan-nel, run by the Shiite Huthi rebels who control the capital, said those killed were all civil-ians, and blamed the Saudi-led coalition for the strike.

Mohammed Ahmad, who lived in one of the buildings, said he was among those who had taken nine bodies to a hospital.

“We extracted them one by one from under the rubble,” he said. “When the rocket hit, one of the buildings was immedi-ately destroyed which caused the building next door to col-lapse too. Some residents got out, but others were trapped.”

Diggers worked at the site for hours after the raid as med-ics and residents searched for the missing. Survivors helped move the wounded to ambulances.

11 dead in Boko Haram attack in CameroonDOUALA: Suspected Boko Haram militants killed at least 11 people and kidnapped eight others in an overnight raid on a village in northern Cameroon near the Nigerian border, officials said. The attackers burned down around 30 houses in Gakara village, just outside the town of Kolo-fata, which has been a frequent target of suicide bombings by the Islamist group.

An army colonel put the death toll at 11, while a dis-trict official said that 15 people had been killed. The mayor of Kolofata confirmed that an attack had taken place but said he did not know the death toll. Boko Haram attacks have killed more than 20,000 people and displaced 2.7 million during the group’s eight-year insurgency to carve out an Islamic caliphate in the Lake Chad region.

Mogadishu

AP

Ten civilians, including three children, were killed in a raid by foreign and Somali

forces on a farm in southern Somalia, a deputy governor said yesterday as officials displayed victims’ bloodied bodies in the capital. The US military confirmed it supported a Somali operation in the area and said it would look into the allegations.

The farmers were killed “one by one” after soldiers stormed the farm in Barire village early Friday, the deputy governor of Lower Shabelle region, Ali Nur Mohamed, told reporters in Mogadishu.

Somalia’s information min-istry said al-Shabab extremists were killed instead. Three chil-dren aged 8 to 10 and a woman were among the dead, the dep-uty governor said. Their blanket-wrapped bodies were

laid out in a grassy courtyard for display. Bodies of civilians, espe-cially those killed in misdirected attacks, often are taken from remote areas to Mogadishu to draw media attention.

“These local farmers were attacked by foreign troops while looking after their crops,” Mohamed told reporters. “The troops could have arrested them because they were unarmed but instead shot them one by one mercilessly.”

A statement by Somalia’s

information ministry said the raid killed eight Al Shabab fight-ers and that the extremists began shooting at Somali forces after they entered the farm. “No civil-ians were harmed or killed in this operation,” the statement said. The US Africa Command confirmed that US forces were supporting the Somalia National Army while it conducted an operation in the area. It gave no details about the operation. The US military has stepped up

efforts this year against the Somalia-based extremist group Al Shabab, often in support of Somali forces.

“We are aware of the civil-ian casualty allegations near Barire, Somalia. We take any allegations of civilian casualties seriously, and per standard, we are conducting an assessment into the situation to determine the facts on the ground,” the US Africa Command said in a statement.

Jerusalem

AFP

The Israeli official charged with negotiating the return of Israelis held captive in Gaza

by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has resigned, a statement said yesterday.

Lior Lotan’s role was to seek the return of five Israelis from the Gaza Strip, including the bodies of two former soldiers killed during the last war between Israel and Hamas.

The resignation of Lotan, a law-yer and former army colonel, was interpreted by Israeli commenta-tors as a sign of his frustration at the lack of progress.

Lotan was mandated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with

seeking the return of three Israeli citizens, as well as the bodies of Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin — two soldiers believed to have been killed in the 2014 war in Gaza.

“During my mission, I was con-fronted with the cruelty and cynicism of Hamas,” Lotan said, quoted in a statement from the prime minister’s office.

Netanyahu said in the state-ment he would continue to “do all he can to bring back the prisoners,” and appointed his military secre-tary to take up the matter.

Hamas is believed to have held Hisham Al Sayed and Avraham Mengistu since April 2015 and Sep-tember 2014, respectively, after they sneaked into the blockaded Palestinian enclave.

Children among 14 dead in Saudi-led air strike in Sana’a

IS pushes back Syrian troops near Raqqa

Poll body urges court to uphold Kenyatta’s victoryNAIROBI: Kenya’s election commission urged the Supreme Court to uphold the results of this month’s vote that returned President Uhuru Kenyatta to power and dismiss a legal challenge by his political opponents, say-ing the process was “impartial, neutral and accountable” to the constitution.

The Independent Elec-toral & Boundaries Commission called on the court to throw out a petition filed by the opposition National Super Alliance chal-lenging Kenyatta’s win against former Prime Minis-ter Raila Odinga in the Aug. 8 vote. That petition “lacks merit and should be dis-missed,” the commission’s lawyers said in opposing papers filed at the Supreme Court.

Workers missing after tremor at S Africa gold mineJOHANNESBURG: Five mine workers were missing yester-day at a gold mine in South Africa following a tremor, the mining company announced.

Harmony Gold said “five employees remain unac-counted for” following “a seismic event” at a mine 80 km west of Johannesburg. The accident occurred at 10:30 am yesterday morning at Kusa-salethu mine in Carletonville. Rescue efforts are underway,

10 civilians, including kids, dead in US-backed Somalia raid

Israeli negotiator for return of Hamas captives quits

Grace Mugabe in first appearance after alleged assaultHARARE: Zimbabwe’s First Lady Grace Mugabe appeared in public for the first time yes-terday since she returned from South Africa where she was accused of assaulting a model and granted diplo-matic immunity.

The wife of President Robert Mugabe allegedly attacked 20-year-old model Gabriella Engels with an elec-trical extension cord at an upmarket hotel in Johannes-burg where the couple’s two sons were staying.

Grace Mugabe appeared at the Harare annual agricul-tural fair, smiling and stopping to chat with exhib-itors as she toured stands alongside her husband.

A man carries an injured girl, rescued from the site of a Saudi-led air strike in Sana’a, Yemen, yesterday.

The Observatory called the IS attack its biggest in southeastern Raqqa. It said at least 34 Syrian soldiers and 12 militants were killed.

05SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017 ASIA

Festival preparations

32 dead as Indian guru’s conviction sparks riotsPanchkula

AFP

At least 32 people were killed yesterday when clashes broke out in northern India after a court con-

victed a controversial religious leader of raping two of his fol-lowers, sparking fury among tens of thousands of supporters who had gathered for the verdict.

Authorities rushed hundreds

of troops to the city of Panchkula after followers of guru Ram Rahim Singh torched cars went on a rampage throwing rocks and attacking television vans and setting fire to dozens of private vehicles.

More than 100,000 were estimated to have gone to the city in Haryana state, where India’s federal investigations agency had set up a special court to rule on the charge that he had raped two female devotees.

Authorities said 32 people had been killed and around 180 injured after rioting broke out in Haryana, where many areas were now under curfew.

“The situation continues to be grim but we are gaining some ground. Hopefully we will mobi-lise more forces in the night to take control,” a senior state offi-cial said.

He said the large crowd went berserk soon after the verdict was pronounced and attacked police and set vehicles afire

before the police took action.“Most of the fatalities were

caused by gunshots.”Ram Rahim Singh has a vast

following in many states of northern India, including in Har-yana, where he runs a spiritual movement that claims to have millions of devotees around the world.

Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in Panchkula, where mobile internet services had earlier been cut off.

“I don’t understand what the government and the police are doing. We have been feeling unsafe since yesterday and all our fears came true today,” local resident Sandeep Singh said.

“Why did the police not act swiftly and forcefully against these followers?”

As news of Singh’s convic-tion spread there were reports of violence in several districts of neighbouring Punjab state and on the outskirts of the cap-ital Delhi, which borders Haryana.

Authorities imposed curfew in at least four districts of Pun-jab to curb spread of violence.

“Two train stations have been burnt in Punjab and two empty (train) coaches have been set on fire in Delhi’s Anand Vihar station,” said Neeraj Sharma, a spokesman for Indian Railways.

Hundreds of trains passing through Punjab and Haryana have been cancelled, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the violence on Twitter, saying “the instances of violence today are deeply distressing”.

He said the federal govern-ment was monitoring the situation and urged everyone to “maintain peace”.

Prosecutor Harinder Pal Singh Verma said the guru was “calm after the verdict was passed” and had been flown by helicopter to another city in Haryana.

He will be sentenced on August 28.

Haryana CM admits lapses in security arrangementsChandigarh

IANS

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar yesterday admitted lapses in security arrangements following a ver-dict against Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim

Singh, but later said that no advance action was taken as it could have created bigger problems.

Talking to reporters yesterday evening, after around 30 peo-ple were killed in violence following the Dera Sacha Sauda chief being convicted for rape, Khattar, admitting to mistakes, said: “We are identifying the lapses.”

However, in an interview, he said action was not taken in advance as it could have made the situation worse.

“We made all efforts, we tried to make them understand. Our forces worked whole night. But taking action before time could have caused more damage. What if a bullet had been fired two days back... or violence could have erupted... this could have hap-pened two days back as well.

Congress clips Gujarat chief Solanki’s wingsAhmedabad

IANS

The Congress high command yesterday appointed four working presidents of its

unit in poll-bound Gujarat in addition to existing party chief Bharatsinh Solanki and set up a state election team, a day after it expanded the state leadership to include as many as 122 office-bearers at different posts.

However, to maintain a bal-ance among all factions, the State Election Committee is chaired by Solanki and has Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel, party General Secretary Madhusudan Mistry as well as senior state leaders Shaktisinh Gohil and Arjun Modhwadia as ministers.

Congress sources disclosed that the appointment of the four working presidents was appar-ently to clip the wings of Solanki,

who has been facing charges of being arrogant, inaccessible and insensitive to aspirations of the party’s rank and file, besides giv-ing effective representation to the key regions and castes.

Removal of Solanki from his post was the key demand of rebel leader Shankersinh Vaghela, who engineered a revolt of sorts in the party by get-ting 14 MLAs close to him resign of which three of them joined the BJP. The others too are in queue, except him.

Vaghela, who quit as a leg-islator after the Rajya Sabha elections when his desperate

efforts to ensure Ahmed Patel’s defeat failed, wanted himself to be named the party chief and made the Chief Ministerial candidate.

Among the four working presidents are aggressive young Amreli legislator Paresh Dhanani and former Lok Sabha MP from Rajkot and four-time legislator Kunwarji Bavaliya. Both of them are from the key Saurashtra region and belong to the influ-ential Patidar (or Patel) community, which has turned against the ruling BJP ever since the beginning of the pitched Pati-dar agitation led by firebrand

young leader Hardik Patel. Former union minister

Tushar Chaudhary, a tribal leader from Surat district in South Gujarat and son of former Chief Minister Amarsinh Chaud-hary, and veteran North Gujarat leader Karsandas Soneri are the other two working presidents. Chaudhary is from the Sched-uled Tribes and Soneri is a Scheduled Caste or Dalit leader from Sabarkantha.

Besides Dhanani and Baval-iya from the Patidar community, the Congress high command picked Siddharth Patel, son of former Chief Minister Chiman-bhai Patel, as the chairman of Election Campaign Committee.

Senior leaders Mistry, Gohil and Modhvadia have been appointed as chairmen of Elec-tion Manifesto Committee, Election Media Committee and Election Publicity and Material Committee respectively.

Mistry, who is believed to be close to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, has also been named Chairman of the Election Coordination Committee for Urban Areas which is the tough-est territory for the Congress in Gujarat.

A senior leader said that with a view to have a vast represen-tation from the second and third rung leaders “to make them feel part of the decision-making process and responsible for the party’s victory”, the high com-mand has expanded the State structure at various levels by appointing over 100 new office-bearers.

The appointments include 10 Vice Presidents, 14 General Sec-retaries, seven spokespersons, 63 Secretaries, four Executive Committee members and nine special invitees. This is besides 13 presidents of various city and district party committees.

Coast Guard ups vigil along Bengal and Odisha coastsDoctor stabbed

to death in DelhiNew Delhi

IANS

A doctor working with the city’s St Stephen’s Hospital was stabbed to death and his throat slit by a former col-league within the hospital premises in north Delhi over personal animosity, police said yesterday.

Police said the accused, identified as Suyesh Gupta, went missing after killing his friend, deceased Sashwat Pandey, 26, in the Radiology Department of the hospital. A manhunt is on to nab the killer doctor.

The incident came to light when the body of Pandey, 26, hailing from Allahabad, was found lying in a pool of blood by senior doctors and police late on Thursday night in the X-ray Department of the hospital.

Kolkata

IANS

The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) has increased its vigil along the West Ben-

gal and Odisha coasts following intelligence inputs of possible sea-borne strikes by terrorists during the upcoming festive season, an official said.

K S Sheoran, Inspector Gen-eral, Coast Guard North East region, has also directed all dis-trict commanders to be on their toes and respond to any situa-tion that may arise due to the ongoing standoff between India and China at Doklam, ICG spokesperson Deputy Com-mandant Avinandan Mitra said.

“On receipt of intelligence inputs of possible sea-borne strikes by terrorists during the upcoming festive season of Durga Puja and Diwali, the Indian Coast Guard has increased vigil along West Ben-

gal and Odisha coasts.”Commanders of the Coast

Guard District Headquarters at Haldia and Paradip, Command-ing Officers of various Coast Guard stations and Air Squad-rons attended a two-day operations conference.

The performance of the Coast Guard Region was also assessed during the conference and it emerged that the Head-quarters had maintained 1,336 ship days at sea last year.

The Coast Guard Com-mander also reviewed the operational readiness of assets of the North East Region and apprised the District Command-ers of Odisha and West Bengal to remain alert and respond to Coast Guard charter of duties swiftly and pro-actively.

He also emphasised on strengthening the coastal secu-rity network amongst all stake holders for ensuring safety and security of the coastal states.

Authorities rushed hundreds of troops to the city of Panchkula after followers of guru Ram Rahim Singh torched cars went on a rampage throwing rocks and attacking television vans and setting fire to dozens of private vehicles.

Deadly clashes

Prosecutor Harinder Pal Singh Verma said that the guru was “calm after the verdict was passed” and had been flown by helicopter to another city in Haryana.

Security forces walk next to burning vehicles set alight by rioting followers of a religious leader convicted of rape, in Panchkula, yesterday.

Men bathe their goats before selling them at a livestock market ahead of the Eid Al Adha festival, in Delhi, yesterday.

Six hurt after Mumbai local train derailsArrayMumbai

IANS

SIX commuters sustained minor injuries when four coaches of a Harbour Line sub-urban train bound for Andheri derailed at a railway crossing near Mahim yesterday morn-ing, an official said.

Due to the derailment, services on the Andheri-Wadala sector of the Harbour Line on Central Railway were suspended.

The official said around 9.50am, a train arriving from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus and bound for And-heri derailed around 50 metres outside Mahim station.

As per prima facie inves-tigations, the incident occurred while the train was changing tracks at a crossing outside the railway station, and coach numbers six to nine jumped the tracks.

The Congress high command appointed four working presidents of its unit in poll-bound Gujarat in addition to existing party chief Bharatsinh Solanki and set up a state election team.

06 SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017ASIA

20 dead in Kabul mosque attackKabul

AP

Militants stormed a packed Shia mosque in the Afghan capital during Friday

prayers, in an attack that lasted for hours and ended with at least 20 worshippers killed and another 50 seriously wounded, many of them children, an offi-cial said.

“Two of the assailants blew themselves up and another two were shot to death by Afghan security forces,” according to police official Mohammed Sadique Muradi.

The IS militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest to target Shias.

The Taliban condemned the violence, with a spokesman for the militants, Zabihullah Muja-hid, saying that the group had nothing to do with it.

President Ashraf Ghani con-demned the violence and said the militants were turning to attack-ing places of worship because they were losing on the battle-field. He urged Islamic clerics everywhere to condemn the bloodshed.

The death toll of 20 was

expected to rise because many of the victims were seriously wounded, said Mohammad Salim Rasouli, chief of Kabul’s hospitals.

Terrified worshippers endured about four harrowing hours of gunfire and explosions during the afternoon before the four attackers were killed.

The IS group said in a state-ment on the website of its Aamaq news agency that it had deployed two attackers to the mosque. There was no immediate expla-nation for the contradictory

number of attackers.Security forces had sur-

rounded the mosque in the northern Kabul neighborhood but did not initially enter to pre-vent further casualties to the many worshippers inside, police official Mohammed Jamil said. Later, as police tried to advance, one of the attackers set off an explosion that forced them to withdraw, Muradi said.

The cleric who was perform-ing the prayers was among the dead, said Mir Hussain Nasiri, a member of Afghanistan’s Shia clerical council.

The gunmen had taken over both the cavernous prayer hall for the men and the separate, second-floor prayer area for the women, he said.

“The mosque could accom-modate up to 1,000 people.”

When police initially tried to get inside, they discovered the militants had blocked the door leading to the second floor, turn-ing the women upstairs into hostages, Nasir said.

In southern Kandahar prov-ince yesterday, Afghan security forces repulsed a Taliban attack on an outpost overnight, accord-ing to provincial police chief’s spokesman, Zia Durrani.

“Four members of the

security forces died in the exchange and another seven were wounded,” he said yesterday.

Durrani said the Taliban sus-tained heavy casualties. There was no immediate comment from the militants.

Elsewhere, provincial dep-uty police chief Nisar Ahmad Abdul Rahimzai said Afghan security forces recaptured a dis-trict in eastern Paktia province from the insurgents.

The summer fighting season in Afghanistan has seen relent-less Taliban attacks as the

insurgents battle to expand their footprint.

On Thursday, Gen John Nicholson, the top US general in Afghanistan, and Hugo Llorens, the US Embassy’s special charge d’affaires, said that the new US strategy was a promise to Afghans that together they would defeat terrorism and prevent ter-rorist groups from establishing safe havens.

Nicholson vowed to defeat both the Islamic State group affil-iate and the remnants of Al Qaeda, and he had the following message to the Taliban: “Stop

fighting against your country-men. Stop killing innocent civilians. Stop bringing hardship and misery to the Afghan peo-ple. Lay down your arms and join Afghan society. Help build a bet-ter future for this country and your own children.”

President Donald Trump had announced the new plans for Afghanistan on Monday.

While he did not give specif-ics, senior US officials have said that he might send up to 3,900 more troops, with some deploy-ments beginning almost immediately.

Census: Pakistan population rises to over 207 millionIslamabad

AFP

Pakistan’s population has surged by more than half to 207 million, according

to provisional results of the country’s first census in almost two decades released by the sta-tistics board yesterday.

Once confirmed in the final report, Pakistan could be set to overtake Brazil as the world’s fifth most populous country, according to statistics on the US Census Bureau website.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi praised the work of census officials and called for “early completion” of the final figures, a statement from his office said. No date has yet been announced for the release.

Abbasi also lauded the vic-tims of several attacks targeting census officials, including a bomb blast in Lahore in April.

Pakistan had not held a cen-sus for nearly two decades due to years of bickering by politi-cians concerned it could redraw the political map, raising fears over power bases and federal funding.

The provisional results pub-lished by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics showed an average annual growth of 2.4% since 1998, when the total population was put at 132.35 million.

The updated figure—an increase of around 57% since 1998 -- is higher than the esti-mate of 200 million that had been in wide use.

Central Punjab province remained far and away the most populated, home to more than 110 million people or more than half the country—but it also showed the slowest average

annual growth rate, at 2.13%.The areas with the fastest

growth rates were restive south-ern Balochistan province, with a population of more than 12 mil-lion and an average growth rate since 1998 of 3.37%, and the Islamabad Capital Territory, whose population passed two million with an average growth rate of 4.91%.

The results from the count, which began in March, are also set to help give a clearer picture about religious minority num-bers in the Muslim-majority country.

The weeks-long process, a challenge in a country known for corruption and dysfunction, deployed a team of more than 300,000 people and involved 55 million forms.

The results will be the basis for revising political boundaries, parliamentary seat allocations and finances ahead of national elections, due to be held by the end of 2018.

Powerful Punjab province, for example, could see its polit-ical grip weaken as a result of its population not rising at a simi-lar rate to other provinces.

Top court issues arrest warrant for YingluckBangkok

Reuters

THAILAND’S Supreme Court issued an arrest war-rant for former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the court said in a statement yesterday.

The country’s deputy prime minister said earlier that it was possible Yingluck, who was ousted by a military coup in 2014, has fled the country. Thailand’s immigra-tion police chief said he had no information to suggest she has left Thailand through the c o u n t r y ’ s b o r d e r checkpoints.

Yingluck faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty in a negligience case brought by the ruling junta that cent-ers on her role in a rice subsidy scheme for farmers that resulted in multi-billion dollar losses.

Shark-detecting drones to patrol AustraliaSydney

Reuters

DRONES equipped with a shark detection system pow-ered by artificial intelligence will start patrolling some Aus-tralian beaches from next month in a bid to improve safety.

The battery-powered drones will provide a live-video feed to a drone operator who then uses the shark-spot-ting software to identify sharks in real time and with more accuracy than the human eye.

Studies have shown that people have a 20-30 percent accuracy rate when interpret-ing data from aerial images to detect shark activity. Detection software can boost that rate to 90%, said Dr Nabin Sharma, a research associate at the University of Technology Sydney’s School of Software.

Japan to impose additional sanctions on North KoreaTokyo

Reuters

Japan will impose additional sanctions against North Korea following the reclusive

country’s repeated missile launches and unresolved abduction issue, its top govern-ment spokesman said yesterday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that Japan would freeze the assets of six more organisations and two more individuals linked to

North Korea. He said they included four Chinese entities and one Chinese individual and two Namibian entities.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying expressed “strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition” to the Japanese sanctions.

The US on Tuesday imposed new North Korea-related sanc-tions, targeting Chinese and Russian firms and individuals for supporting Pyongyang’s weapons programmes.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned the violence and said the militants were turning to attacking places of worship because they were losing on the battlefield.

Death toll likely to rise

According to chief of Kabul’s hospitals, the death toll of 20 was expected to rise because many of the victims were seriously wounded.

Men try to clear the road for an ambulance after a suicide attack on a Shia Muslim mosque, in Kabul, yesterday.

Philippines monitors suspected bird flu cases in humansManila

Reuters

The Philippines started monitoring suspected bird flu cases in humans after 34 farm workers in two towns north of the capital Manila developed flu-like symptoms after

direct exposure to infected fowl.Officials from the Departments of Health and Agriculture

said laboratory tests in Australia confirmed an outbreak of the deadly H5N6 strain of the bird flu virus. The strain is transmis-sible to humans, but the mortality rate is low.

Health Minister Paulyn Ubial said that the 34 suspected cases of bird flu infection in humans were detected in prov-inces of Pampanga and Nueva Ecija.

“They developed fever, cough and cold,” she said, adding some of them had diarrhoea.

Manila police face charges over teen’s deathManila

AP

Murder complaints were filed yesterday against Philippine police offic-

ers in connection with the killing of a teenager that has sparked an outcry against the president’s anti-drug crackdown, which has left thousands dead.

Lawyer Persida Rueda-Acosta of the Public Attorney’s Office said murder and torture

complaints were filed with pros-ecutors against three officers and their commander in the August 16 shooting death of Kian Loyd delos Santos in a Manila suburb.

His family, however, says he was mercilessly killed by police as he was pleading for his life and telling the officers he had an exam in school the next day.

“I wish they had just shot him in the foot. Somehow, I could accept that,” the slain

teenager’s mother, Lorenza delos Santos, said. “But why did they finish off my son just like that without evidence?”

During the televised hear-ing, Commission on Human Rights Chairman Chito Gascon expressed astonishment at police claims that most of the more than 3,200 drug suspects they have gunned down since the crackdown began last year fought back, prompting law enforcers to shoot them.

Philippines National Police (PNP) officers Jeremias Pereda, Jerwin Cruz and Arnel Oares take an oath during a hearing, at the Senate headquarters in Pasay city, Metro Manila.

07SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017 EUROPE

Submarine death: Danish man faces murder chargeIstanbul

Anatolia

Danish inventor Peter Mad-sen has denied the murder of Swedish jour-

nalist Kim Wall, police said in a statement yesterday.

Madsen had been charged with manslaughter until a DNA match between a female torso found in waters south of Copen-hagen and Wall’s hairbrush and toothbrush was made this week.

Danish police are now

saying Madsen is also being charged with the “indecent treatment” of Wall’s corpse.

Autopsy results on the torso found on Monday revealed that the missing limbs and head had been cut away deliberately.

On Monday, police said 46-year-old Madsen claimed Wall, 30, died in an accident, and that he buried her at sea in his private submarine.

Wall had been onboard Madsen’s craft as part of research she was conducting for

an article on the inventor.“The defendant has

explained to the police and the Court that there was an accident on board which caused Kim Wall’s death and that he conse-quently buried her at sea at a non-defined location in the Bay of Koge,” police said.

However, Madsen’s lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, said that the DNA match did not change “my client’s explanation that an accident has occurred”.

Madsen had invited Wall on

a short voyage on the night of August 10, but the journalist was later reported missing.

In a statement about the case on Friday, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Har-lem Desir, said: “Regrettably, journalism is a risky profession for many of those practicing it.

“Those working in the field fully deserve public respect and protection.

“Female journalists are par-ticularly vulnerable to attack and intimidation.”

Varna

AP

A bitter exchange of words erupted between France and Poland yesterday after French Presi-

dent Emmanuel Macron sharply criticised Poland’s opposition to plans to change European Union rules on “posted workers”-- the cheap labour from eastern coun-tries sent to more prosperous EU nations.

On a trip yesterday to Bul-garia, Macron said the Polish reluctance to reform the bloc’s labor rules is “an illustration of the mistakes made by this government.”

His comments came on the final leg of a three-day visit to Central and Eastern Europe that has included meetings with Aus-trian, Czech, Slovak and Romanian leaders but not with Polish officials.

“Poland has decided to iso-late itself from Europe and its refusal to revise this directive doesn’t change my confidence in (getting) a positive outcome” on the rules change, Macron said, adding Poles “deserved better.”

“The (Polish) prime minister will have difficulty explaining why it’s good to pay the Poles badly,” Macron said.

Poland is the largest source of posted workers, about 300,000 to 400,000 a year.

Critics say having posted workers leads to lower wages and fewer jobs for workers from wealthy nations and reduces the taxes coming in to fund social programs in wealthy nations.

Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo hit back, calling the French leader’s criticism “arro-gant,” advising him to “mind the business of his own country.”

She also accused France of trying to “take apart one of the pillars of the EU” - the free movement of workers among the bloc’s 28 nations.

“The future of Europe will not be decided by the president of France, or by any other indi-vidual leader, but jointly, by all the member states,” she said.

Later yesterday, Poland’s deputy foreign minister urgently summoned a French diplomat to express his “indignation” over Macron’s criticism of the Polish government.

On Thursday, Szydlo vowed to defend “Poland’s interests and Poland’s workers,” but added that “all member states are putting their heads together” over the issue.

Posted workers, while abroad, continue to pay into the tax and social security systems of their home countries, allow-ing their employers to hire them for less than workers in Western countries where government taxes are generally higher. The largest number work in con-struction, but many also work caring for the elderly.

Macron, said Poland “cannot be the country that gives Europe its direction.”

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said it was important not to violate the EU’s basic princi-ple of free movement when it considers changes to rules on posted workers. He said new rules should seek a balance between the older and newer EU

members, such as Poland, Bul-garia and Romania.

Radev said he shared Macron’s “anguish about social dumping.”

“Bulgaria is against all social security fraud,” he said.

Bulgaria’s prime minister said

he regretted divisions that have emerged in the EU over the issue.

“Poland and Hungary are our friends and it is fatal that there is such confrontation in the European Union,” said Prime Minister Boyko Borisov Friday after talks with Macron.

Borisov said officials would discuss the issue with Szydlo when she visits Bulgaria in Sep-tember. He said Bulgaria wanted a solution on posted workers before it takes over the rotating presidency of the EU on January 1, 2018.

Human traffickers using social media to extort moneyLondon

Reuters

People smugglers are using Facebook to broadcast the abuse and torture of

migrants in order to extort ran-som money from their families, the UN migration agency said.

The International Organi-zation for Migration (IOM) lambasted the tech giant for fail-ing to police the platform and help crack down on traffickers.

One video hosted on the site since June shows Libyan gang-masters threatening emaciated and abused migrants - mostly Somalis and Ethiopians - hud-dled in a concrete room.

IOM said the traffickers had sent clips to the captives’ fami-lies via the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp - a Facebook channel - along with threats that their loved ones would be killed unless ransoms of up to $10,000 were paid.

British newspaper The

Times, which ran the story on its front page yesterday, quoted a young Ethiopian who had been held for 15 months. “They beat me with iron bars,” he said. “They ordered me to pay $8,300 and my family cannot afford to pay that amount.”

Hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe since 2014, and thousands have died trying.

Facebook, which has also

been criticised for failing to stop traffickers using the platform to advertise their services, said posts by smuggling groups would be removed if reported.

“We encourage people to keep using our reporting tools to flag this kind of behaviour so it can be reviewed and swiftly removed by our global team of experts, who work with law enforcement agencies around the world,” a spokesperson said.

But Facebook said it had not removed the June video as it had

been posted by a Somali jour-nalist and was important for raising awareness of the problem.

However, IOM spokesman Leonard Doyle accused Face-book of “arrant nonsense”, adding that the smugglers had used the journalist to publicise their demands.

He said that it was totally inappropriate for Facebook to host a video showing the faces of vulnerable people being abused.

France and Poland clash over labour reform

Call for coordination in anti-terrorism effortsMadrid

AFP

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy yesterday said he intended to bring

up how to improve anti-terror-ism cooperation in the EU at a summit in Paris next week, after the deadly attacks in Catalonia.

“My intention is to be able to analyse current (anti-terror) cooperation mechanisms in the EU and look at options to strengthen and improve them.”

Rajoy is due in Paris on Monday to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Min-ister Paolo Gentiloni, after twin vehicle attacks in Spain last week left 15 people dead and more than 120 injured.

Interior Minister Juan Igna-cio Zoido met with his French counterpart Gerard Collomb on Monday to discuss the matter.

Rajoy said he “asked French President Emmanuel Macron that we broach this issue in the summit that will take place next Monday in Paris.”

He recalled that Spain had already participated in various EU initiatives such as the fight against money laundering and financing of terror groups, or arms control measures.

Extremist attacks such as the ones that hit Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils are “a global threat that require a global response,” he said.

“Unfortunately Barcelona was not an exception but yet another element in a long sequence of attacks in various parts of Europe.”

18 dead as bus plunges off pier in RussiaMoscow

AFP

Eighteen people died in southern Russia yesterday after a bus carrying con-

struction workers veered off a pier and plunged into the Black Sea.

The bus was carrying peo-ple from their shift building a pier for the Tamanneftegaz oil company in the port of Taman when the accident happened.

“Currently we know of 18 dead and 33 people injured in the tragedy,” said a statement on the website of the local authorities in Temryuk, a town in Russia’s Krasnodar region.

“All of those injured were hospitalised and five are in seri-ous condition after the bus fell into the water from a height of four metres,” it added.

A spokesman for OTEKO, a conglomerate which owns

Tamanneftegaz, said that the bus was carrying people who were working on the company’s construction site but who were not employed by the company directly, adding that the bus did not belong to the company.

In a statement, OTEKO’s deputy director Irina Trifonova

called the accident a “terrible tragedy”.

Russia’s Investigative Com-mittee said in a statement it had launched a probe into violation of traffic rules and providing unsafe services and was look-ing into the technical condition of the bus.

Rescuers working on a wreckage, after a bus veered off a pier and plunged into the Black Sea, in Krasnodar region, yesterday.

Macron said that the Polish reluctance to reform the bloc’s labour rules is “an illustration of the mistakes made by this government.

War of words

Polish prime minister hit back, calling the French leader’s criticism ‘arrogant,’ advising him to ‘mind the business of his own country.’

French President Emmanuel Macron with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov following a press conference at the Euxinograd Palace, in Varna, yesterday.

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy arrives to hold a news conference at Moncloa Palace, in Madrid, yesterday.

8 still missing as new mudslide hits Swiss Alps villageGeneva

AP

A new mudslide yesterday plowed into houses in the same Swiss Alpine village that was cleaning up from a devastat-ing landslide two days ago that left eight people missing.

Video from Bondo showed images of mud, rocks and debris tumbling down from a mountainside at a walking pace into the village along the Italian border.

At least two or three houses were hit by the new mudslide, Michael Kirthner, director of Bregaglia regional tourism authority, said.

The regional Graubuenden police said the new mudslide hit areas that were already sealed off for safety reasons following a more powerful landslide on Wednesday. The zone is littered with rocks and caking mud,

Police said no one was hurt yesterday. Authorities had earlier allowed some res-idents to return home, partially lifting an evacuation order.

Four Germans, two Aus-trians and two Swiss citizens remained missing after the first landslide, said police spokeswoman Chiarella Piana. “The more time wears on, the harder the search becomes,” she said, adding that the search would con-tinue until the missing were found or authorities deemed it was virtually certain they could not be located.

08 SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017VIEWS

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

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Our country will maintain its strategy to increase its trade and economic effectiveness in the Far East, mainly in Asian market.

Binali YildirimTurkish Prime Minister

Future generations of historians will study the times we live in out of a particular, if morbid, curiosity. They will puzzle over why it was that we left intact the banking system that created that the crash of 2008,

an event that was to repeat itself on a bigger scale.They will examine the meltdown of social

democracy and liberalism. They will ask them-selves why Muslims were targeted in Europe and why terrorism was recast as a monopoly of Islam; they will study the speeches of ministers who saw Trojan horses where none existed.

A future Edward Gibbon, writing about the “Decline and Fall of the Western Empire,” will scrutinise other symptoms of malaise — the vol-atility of public opinion; the outbreak of identity politics, the application of incoherent tests of citizenship, the obsessive compulsive reliance on past heroics (Battle of Britain, Dunkirk); the anxiety about the future.

They will ponder the US withdrawal from the Middle East and the shrinking of Britain.Much of this can be seen without the benefit of hindsight. To take just one line of inquiry, is there such a thing as British foreign policy? Can you define it? Do we even have a foreign minister?

John Kerr, former head of the diplomatic service and former ambassador to the US and Brussels, does not seem to think we have. In an excoriating demolition of the current govern-ment this week, he shredded Boris Johnson for saying and doing nothing.

“Why are we silent while President Trump refuses to rule out military action against Vene-zuela? Or threatens trade measures against China? Or rages against the nuclear agreement with Iran which we helped to negotiate? Where do we stand on the Saudi/Qatari crisis? Are we still relaxed about the Saudis bombing cholera-struck Yemen?” Kerr wrote.

What indeed is the policy? We know what has died — the theory of liberal interventionism, after the military fiascos of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, but what replaces it? Does policy on Saudi Arabia merely consist of keeping tens of thousands of jobs going at BAE?

In practice, much of the traffic and influence runs the other way. No longer does Britain scour the world for raw materials, as China does today. It does the reverse. Britain sells its raw material — land prices in London — to emerging markets and former colonies. That is what the London Borough of Haringey has just done with the biggest urban redevelopment in Europe

For centuries, national politics were manip-ulated openly by colonial powers from their embassies in vast tracts of the world. British colonial policy in the Gulf consisted of replacing difficult sheikhs with docile ones. Now, how-ever, this relationship is being reversed. Their ambassadors lecture us in the same way our ambassadors used to lecture them.

To Russian eyes, the claims of the US secu-rity establishment that Moscow interfered in the US presidential elections carries a heavy irony. What was post-Soviet Russian politics about if not for a doomed American attempt to mould Boris Yeltsin’s Russia in its image? That went on for a decade under the veil of democracy pro-motion and state building. When it failed, Washington even asked itself the question of how it had “lost” Russia.

Sensing the inner decay in Washington sim-ilar to the one which doomed the Soviet Union, the master tactician Vladimir Putin has reversed the trend. Like it or not, Putin’s former Russian ambassador to Washington, the gregarious

What the UAE fears most: DemocracyDavid Hearst

Sergei Kislyak, became a political player in Washington.

Yousef Otaiba still is. Like Kislyak, Otaiba, as the UAE ambassador to the US, sees himself as a power player in his host nation. He can place uncritical encomiums to Mohammed bin Salman in the New York Times and the Washington Post. He can grab parts of Trump’s presidential schedule. He can arrange secret meetings with the president. He can poison the rep-utation of bin Salman’s rival cousin. Otaiba sees the dimensions of his job as being very much bigger than merely represent-ing a tiny Gulf state, the United Arab Emirates.

For one thing, he has spent most of his energy promoting a prince from another country, Mohammed bin Salman, the future Saudi king, whereas the Saudi embassy has been almost totally passive and out of the loop.

For another, Otaiba has huge ambition. It is to construct a plausible narrative in which his tiny state, through money and proxies, takes over the US role in the Middle East as America retreats to confront China in the Pacific. Otaiba already thinks his master, Mohammed bin Zayed, has got control of Saudi Arabia with the rise of the young prince, the ideal ball of soft wax on which to imprint Emirati designs. That is being repli-cated in Yemen, where a split between the Houthis and the former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh plays into Emirati hands.

They need this to happen in Libya, and they have already switched sides in Syria. The Arab world will soon be dominated by like-minded dictatorships.

The words that Otaiba uses in his emails to cloak a future Emirati seaborne empire — the ports that stretch from the Arabian Gulf to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal — are pure sham. He talks of a Middle East domi-nated by secular governments. He said to PBS’s Charlie Rose: “What we would like to see is more secular, stable, prosperous, empowered, strong governments.”

In reality, the Gulf’s absolute monar-chies use Islam and imams to endorse dictatorship even more than political Islamists do. Bin Salman picked a very important night in the Islamic calendar to receive allegiance as the new crown prince, and of course it happened in Makkah. It was the 27th night of Ramadan, Laylat Al Qadr, the night of power when prayers are magnified in importance a thousand times. Rival preachers are cast as terrorists — but not because their interpre-tation of Islam is more extreme. It’s their moderation the Saudi clerics fear.

One of the objects of Emirati (and Israeli) ire comes in the form of an emi-nent Muslim Brotherhood scholar, Yousef

Al Qaradawi, who lives in Doha. Qaradawi is no social liberal. He is not about to embrace West-ern feminism but it is not those qualities that have

put him on the Saudi terror list.In May 2008, Qaradawi issued a fatwa

permitting the building of churches in Mus-lim countries. He said it is allowed in Islam and Muslims have to respect and protect them. Qaradawi has been attacked ever since for betraying sharia texts. In May 2008, Sheikh Abdallah bin Mani’, a mem-ber of the Committee of Senior Scholars, wrote that the building of churches should be considered an act of collaboration in committing sin and aggression.

In March 2012, Abd Al Aziz Abdallah Al Sheikh, the chairman of the committee of senior scholars, and Saudi mufti took up the same theme. He was asked to rule on calls by the Kuwait’s parliament to demolish churches. He replied: “Kuwait is part of the Arabian Peninsula where all churches should be demolished since approving the existence of those churches would amount to approv-ing a religion other than Islam. ”This Saudi ruling continues to this day. From the website of Saudi Sheikh Salih bin Fawzan Al Fawzan: “As for the Arabian Peninsula, it is not permissible in it to keep any churches or other temples because it is the source of the mission, the source of Islam.”

For how long will Washington swal-low the argument that the Emiratis and Saudis are fighting terrorism? In 2004, George Tenet, former CIA director, told the 9/11 commission of the time when they had to call off a suspected air strike against Osama bin Laden, because in his words “you might have wiped out half the royal family in the UAE in the process”.

In Yemen, the UAE is continuing to use Al Qaeda proxies to undermine the Islah party in the besieged rebel stronghold of Taiz. A confidential UN report on Yemen by a panel of experts reporting to the UN Security Council highlighted the emer-gence of the Salafi anti-Houthi commander in Taiz, Sheikh Abu Al Abbas.

The report read: “Abu Al Abbas receives direct financial and material sup-port from the UAE. His strategy in Taiz is to engage the Houthis as his primary target, whilst constraining al-Islah’s political and military influence. His direct engagement of the Houthis means that he has allowed the spread of AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Ara-bian Peninsula] elements within the city as a force multiplier.”

What makes Qaradawi a threat to the ruling elites has nothing to do with Islam. It is the fact he provides an alternative reading and that the Muslim Brotherhood continues to have democratic legitimacy.

Look at what has just happened in local elections in Jordan, an autocracy which has tried really hard to split the Ikhwan, by closing their offices and setting up official sanctioned splinter groups. When you have free-ish elections, the MB continues to emerge as the biggest single party. If the Brotherhood were to give up the ghost, and Arab nationalists re-emerged, the same would happen to them.

That is what Otaiba and his like fear. It is called democracy. And that is why their plans are doomed. They can intervene, install dictators, and arrange coups. They can apply maximum force. They can never, however, govern with consent.

The writer is Editor-in-Chief of Middle East Eye.

He was chief foreign leader writer of The Guard-

ian, former Associate Foreign Editor, European

Editor Moscow Bureau Chief, European Corre-

spondent, and Ireland Correspondent.

The Emiratis can intervene in the region’s conflicts, install dictators, and arrange coups. They can apply maximum force. They will never, however, govern with consent.

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

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

msalim@pen.com.qa

Global financial markets have been keenly waiting for two key speeches from the remote Wyoming resort town, in the US, where the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City hosted

central bankers, economists and policy makers, yesterday. Famously known as annual Jackson Hole gathering, investors were looking for speeches of the world’s most powerful central bankers-Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.

Most Fed-watchers were hoping to get a clue from Yellen’s speech on monetary policy. Unlike former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, she preferred not to use the venue as a pulpit. Instead, the Fed Chair used the high-profile gathering to give a robust defence of the regulations put in place under the Obama administra-tion in the aftermath of the financial crisis; and offered no clues to the central bank’s policy path.

Passionately defending the post-crisis regulations, Yellen said: “Any adjustments to the regulatory frame-work should be modest and preserve the increase in resilience at large dealers and banks associated with the reforms put in place in recent years.”

Her statement was a strong rebuttal to Republicans in Congress and the White House who blamed regula-tory red tape for holding back the US economy. According to market strategists, it was one of the broadest defence so far of Trump administration’s response to the 2008 financial-market meltdown

while outlining some areas that regulators could review to improve effi-ciency in the financial system.

Markets were quick to respond to Yellen’s speech. US stocks extended gains. The main indexes added to early gains despite Yellen avoiding remarks about current interest-rate pol-icy. Sterling jumped to its highest level in four days quick after the speech. The drop in the dollar and the rise in Treasurys and equi-ties – is a relief rally due to

the fact that Yellen did not signal a desire to extend the rate tightening cycle, analysts said.

Jacob Frenkel, chair of J.P. Morgan Chase Interna-tional, said Yellen’s speech included an “implicit” message on interest-rate policy. The Fed chairwoman was saying that financial stability concerns would not slow down future rate hikes, Frenkel said in an inter-view on CNBC.

“She came out with a very balanced discussion,” said James Furman, who was Obama’s former chief economic adviser, on Bloomberg.

Yellen’s speech comes just hours after the Financial Times published an interview with Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser. In the interview, Cohn openly criticised the way Trump handled the Charlottesville violence.

Yellen’s Jackson Hole speech is expected to doom her chances for a second term in Fed. The Chair’s pas-sionate defence of the post-crisis tightening of financial regulation is unlikely to go down well at the White House. Remember, ‘roll back of Obama-era regula-tions’ is one of the top priorities of Trump administration.

Trump vs Yellen

Any adjustments to the regulatory framework should be modest and preserve the increase in resilience at large dealers.

ED ITOR IAL

09SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017 OPINION

interview with Reuters this week that his Workers Party must be ready to field another candidate, a prospect welcomed by investors who see a 2018 race without him improving the chances of Brazil sticking to fiscal austerity pursued by Temer.

“Obviously, if you look at the current scenario, I am the most important figure to lead the Workers Party campaign. But we have to accept that in poli-tics, things happen that are out of our control,” Lula said, referring to his conviction for accepting bribes that could land him prison.

Political VacuumUnder Brazilian law, a politician is barred from

participating in politics for at least eight years if they are convicted of a crime and it is upheld on appeal.

Lula faces another five trials on corruption charges, but only his July conviction is likely to have been weighed by an appeals court before next Octo-ber’s election.

While there is some disagreement among legal experts, the consensus is that if he is convicted and it is upheld on appeal after he runs for and poten-tially wins the election, Lula would be protected and retain immunity from jail time for as long as he were to remain president.

A Datafolha poll taken in late June showed Lula’s popularity steady at 30 percent in a first-round vote, double his closest potential competitors.

But in a likely second-round runoff, the poll found Lula in a technical tie with his former envi-ronment minister, Marina Silva, a two-time losing presidential contender.

“There is a political vacuum in Brazil since the corruption investigations brought charges against

Nationalists 1st: Trump, Charlottesville, & racists

Donald Trump successfully drew on the many success stories of right-wing populist parties in Europe to win the elections and become president of the United States of America. He used a

slogan that has been popular in Europe’s plagued history of right-wing populist parties.

In France, the National Front has been cam-paigning with the slogan “France First” for a long time. And its support has since increased. Thus, numerous right-wing parties followed suit.

In many cases, the turn to an exclusive nation-alism often meant abandoning a cruder form of racism. So, “Austria first,” for example, implied stopping speaking about the “Germanic volk” and the Third Reich.

Therefore, the “nation first” attitude became a way of introducing a type of nationalism seemingly disconnected from older forms of racism; less obvi-ous, less blatant, and seemingly more “civilised”.Nevertheless, all these European parties’ attempts to keep away from open racism never fully materi-alised. Anti-Semitic and anti-Black racism repeatedly surfaced in its classical forms.

Even though the new strategy of most Western European right-wing populist parties is to distance themselves from anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic state-ments by their representatives in various ranks are commonplace.

Ultimately, most of these parties, such as the Swiss Democrats or the Austrian FPÖ, are histori-cally linked to fascist and Nazi parties. And although they attempt to project their own fascism on the new “other” in Europe — Muslims, that is — by inventing the word “Islamofascism,” their own racism resurfaces again and again.

So this trend seems to be the case with Trump now. Many commentators felt astonished by the Charlottesville rally, where white supremacists, the KKK, which many considered to be dead already, and the so called “alt-right” marched together.

But the success of the “America first” policy restored their consciousness, which many of them seemed to have lost under the preceding centrist politicians of the Republicans, and especially under the first black president, Barack Hussein Obama, who represented not only the loss of the white man, but also the humiliation of the white supremacists.

Trump, the candidate, relied heavily on those sectors of society who felt convinced that the lib-eral, libertarian, and leftist camp did not represent them.

When he spoke of “both sides” being responsi-ble for the violence in Charlottesville, he actually did nothing but become the voice of those on the right that would not have anyone speak for them in the past.

It is them and their “real news,” represented by such media outlets as Breitbart, that he speaks for. He speaks for his electorate and those who want (white) America to be first again. He is the voice of the ultra-right, which acts as if it were alternative and new, but in essence, it is as racist and “classi-cal” as the KKK.

And it is the same racist fulfillment that we wit-ness in so many European countries. Like the former KKK “grand wizard” David Duke put it bla-tantly, for him, the Neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville means “the fulfillment of President Donald Trump’s

vision for America” designed to give the country back to whites.

One may, on the other hand, argue that Donald Trump is just a necessary means to many in the US to realize that they live in a seemingly progressive enclave that ignores the broader US society.

Maybe it was necessary for many liberals and leftists to realize what the other groups in the coun-try think and feel, and how deeply racism is entrenched in the US society, and more impor-tantly, that racism can actually be found in their midst, too.

To take one example: After Iraq was bombed and after the emergence of the terrorist militia Daesh caused millions of people to flee from Iraq and Syria — where the influence of Daesh kept spreading — the US under Barack Obama was more than hesitant to accept refugees.

While German Chancellor Angela Merkel was celebrated for opening the borders, little critique was heard from the liberal and leftist political camps in the US towards the restrictive policies of their government.

Whereas today thousands of people take to the streets to protest Trump because of his open sup-port of racists, which is an easy task to accomplish.

But it is much more difficult to criticize a black president for upholding white supremacy through the private prison-industrial complex or other institutions that are deeply colored by racist structures.

What is needed in such a crucial moment on the part of the liberals and leftists is self-criticism.

This way, Trump may actually become an opportunity for all of the anti-racist forces in the US society and for a better America: an opportunity to challenge the deeply entrenched racism in their history.

On the other hand, Trump can also be a trap, if anti-racism is limited to combating symbols and openly racist hate groups, such as the KKK, while ignoring the fact that racism is a much bigger prob-lem of injustice with many faces.

Racism is not only a problem for Jews, when they are attacked. Or African-Americans, when they are the victims. Or Muslims, when they are

Thousands have turned out to see leftist former President Luiz Ina-cio Lula da Silva on his marathon bus tour of impoverished north-east states, the region where

Brazil’s first working-class leader was born and where he has maintained the most support. Rural workers whose lives improved dramatically with Lula’s social programs swarmed his bus at every stop to greet the union leader born of an illiterate mother. Some, weeping, reached out to touch him as if he were a demigod.

The three-week tour is an unofficial launch of a possible campaign for next year’s presidential elections.

A prolonged economic crisis and cor-ruption scandals that have engulfed President Michel Temer and much of Bra-zil’s political class, including Lula, rekindled the ever-popular veteran politi-cian’s hopes for returning to power.

Yet even as support for a Lula come-back has pushed him to the top of early election surveys, thanks to nostalgia for the commodities-based economic boom he presided over, the rate at which voters reject the divisive leader looks too high for him to win, said Mauro Paulino, the direc-tor of the respected Datafolha polling group. And there is a more serious hurdle.

Lula faces the likelihood of being barred from running if a conviction on corruption charges handed down by a fed-eral judge last month is upheld on appeal.Lula acknowledged in an exclusive

Brazil’s Lula on the rise, but comeback likely out of reach

Supporters of Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attend a rally in the northeastern city of Nossa Senhora da Gloria in Brazil.

other politicians, even President Temer,” said the pollster Paulino. “That reinforced the view of Brazilians that corrup-tion went well beyond Lula and the Workers Party, and increased support for his return.”

The proportion of Brazilians who say they would never vote for Lula has dropped over the past few months to 46 percent in July, down from 53 percent in April and 57 percent in March, according to polls by Datafolha.

But that rate of rejection is still too high to win a presi-dential runoff and it is likely to rise, since Datafolha has not conducted a survey since Lula’s conviction and a nearly 10-year prison sentence were announced.

Plan BBrazilians are eager to find new leaders untarnished by

their country’s largest-ever corruption scandal. Fresh names such as Sao Paulo mayor Joao Doria, a millionaire who won by landslide last year, are emerging as possible candidates for 2018.

In such a context, the Workers Party would be better off fielding a less polarising candidate than Lula, such as the former Sao Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad, who was easily defeated by Doria last year, said Adriano Oliveira, a political scientist at the Federal University of Pernambuco.

Haddad would take just 3 percent of potential first-round votes, according to a late-June Datafolha poll.

Despite that, Oliveira said, Brazil’s lower-middle and working classes are looking to the Workers Party as the main opponent of Temer’s unpopular belt-tightening reforms to labor laws, his efforts to lessen generous pensions and aggressive privatisations of state-held enterprises.

“Lula is not the party’s best option because his candidacy would lead to a very aggressive campaign,” Oliveira said. “Haddad faces little rejection and would benefit from the resurgence of Lulismo.”

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targeted. As we saw in Charlottes-ville, the demonstrators at the rally were against Blacks, Jews, and Muslims altogether. In addi-tion, racism is a problem not only for the minorities, who are por-trayed to be the main targets.

Racism is, first and foremost, a problem of the larger society, that is, the so-called “majorities”.

When Trump repeatedly brings in his “real news,” like the myth about US Gen. John J. Persh-ing in the Philippines dipping 50 bullets in pig’s blood before killing 49 “Muslim terrorists” in the early 1900s, such stories cause people to compromise more and more of their humanity.

When Trump reacts quickly to the Barcelona killings but is hesi-tant to put out a statement about the killing in Charlottesville, he delivers an implicit message about which lives are worth being men-tioned and which are less valuable. And again, this attitude causes the society to lose some of its humanity whereas it should treat all people equally regardless of anything.

Looking at Charlottesville from this perspective, one can see it as a chance to see more clearly and with eyes wide open what the United States of America is and what kind of efforts must be undertaken to fight these racist, nationalist and exclusivist projects to make the US a better place of equal citizens.

The writer is political scientist at Aus-

tria’s Salzburg University and senior

research fellow at the Bridge initia-

tive at Georgetown University.

Anthony BoadleReuters

Dr Farid HafezAnatolia

When Trump reacts quickly to the Barcelona killings but is hesitant to put out a statement about the killing in Charlottesville, he delivers an implicit message about which lives are worth being mentioned and which are less valuable.

The proportion of Brazilians who say they would never vote for Lula has dropped over the past few months to 46 percent in July, down from 53 percent in April and 57 percent in March, according to polls by Datafolha. But that rate of rejection is still too high to win a presidential runoff and it is likely to rise, since Datafolha has not conducted a survey since Lula’s conviction and a nearly 10-year prison sentence were announced.

10 SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017AMERICAS

Category 3 storm

Harvey became a Category 3 hurricane, the National Hurricane Center said, the third most powerful on the Saffir-Simpson scale with winds of 111-129 mile per hour (178-208 km/h) that can uproot trees, damage homes and disrupt utilities for days.

Businesses closed and lines of cars streamed out of coastal Texas as officials called for residents to evacuate ahead of Harvey.

Corpus Christi

Agencies

Hundreds of thou-sands of people in Texas and Louisi-ana were urged yesterday to flee the

path of Hurricane Harvey as the Gulf Coast braced for the most dangerous storm to hit the US mainland in over a decade.

Businesses closed and lines of cars streamed out of coastal Texas as officials called for res-idents to evacuate ahead of Harvey, expected to arrive about midnight as the most powerful storm to hit the US mainland in more than a decade.

The hurricane is forecast to slam first near Corpus Christi, Texas, drop flooding rains along the central Texas coast and potentially loop back over the Gulf of Mexico before hitting Houston, some tracking models showed. “My urgent message to my fellow Texans is that if you live in a region where evacua-tion has been ordered, you need to heed that advice and get out of harm’s way while you can,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a televised address.

Fuel stations and grocery stores in the region were packed as residents readied their cars and pantries for any shortages following the storm. Coldplay, the British rock band, cancelled a concert in Houston, telling fans

Washington

AFP

Donald Trump’s top eco-nomic adviser criticised his failure to unequivo-

cally condemn neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups, break-ing ranks with the president and exposing deep unease inside the White House yesterday.

Gary Cohn — head of the White House national economic council and one of the most prominent Jewish-Americans in Trump’s administration — went public with his displeasure over the president’s response to recent deadly violence in Char-lottesville, Virginia.

“This administration can and must do better in consist-ently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities,” Cohn told the Financial Times, without spe-cifically naming Trump.

Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive tipped as a pos-sible future chairman of the

Federal Reserve, said he faced “tremendous pressure” to quit after the president appeared to draw moral equivalence between white nationalist dem-onstrators and anti-racism counter-protesters.

One woman was killed when an avowed white supremacist plowed his car into a crowd of people after the Charlottesville rally turned violent, and numer-ous demonstrators were injured during the events of August 11 and 12.

Trump drew widespread condemnation when he sug-gested there was blame “on both sides,” and that there were “very fine people” among the white supremacist protesters—who were opposing the removal of a statue honoring secessionist Civil War general Robert E. Lee.

Cohn told the FT that “citi-zens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white suprema-cists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK”. Having faced calls to quit, Cohn said he decided he could be more effective by remaining in

the administration and would not be pushed out.

“I have come under enor-mous pressure both to resign and to remain in my current position,” the former banker told the British daily. “As a patriotic American, I am reluctant to leave my post... because I feel a duty to fulfill my commitment to work on behalf of the Amer-ican people,” Cohn said.

“As a Jewish American, I will not allow neo-Nazis ranting ‘Jews will not replace us’ to cause this Jew to leave his job,” he added.

Cohn is a crucial link between the White House and Wall Street, which has gener-ally welcomed Trump’s presidency. Trump’s ambassa-dor to Israel, David Friedman, has also criticised the president’s response saying it “wasn’t fine”.

But another Jewish-Ameri-can in the administration, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — who also faced calls to quit in the aftermath of Char-lottesville — has staunchly defended Trump.

Storm: Thousands flee Texas and LouisianaWaves pound the shore from approaching Hurricane Harvey in Corpus Christi, Texas, yesterday.

Shelves sit nearly empty in a Walmart store as residents stock ahead of Hurricane Harvey approaching landfall near the Texas coastal area, in Houston, yesterday.

it didn’t want to risk anyone’s safety. At a Willis, Texas, station, about 77km north of Houston, Corey Martinez, 40, was head-ing to Dallas from his Corpus Christi home. “It has been pretty stressful. We’re just trying to get ahead of the storm,” he said. “We’ve never been through a hurricane before.”

Harvey became a Category 3 hurricane yesterday, the National Hurricane Center said, the third most powerful on the Saffir-Simpson scale with winds of 111-129 mile per hour (178-208 km/h) that can uproot trees, damage homes and disrupt

utilities for days. That would make it the first major hurricane to hit the mainland US since Hur-ricane Wilma struck Florida in 2005. The storm was about 140km off Corpus Christi and packing winds of 110 mph in early afternoon. It projected windspeeds could reach 120 mph just before landfall.

The NHC’s latest tracking model shows the storm sitting southwest of Houston for more than a day, giving the nation’s fourth most populous city a dou-ble dose of rain and wind.

“Now is the time to urgently hide from the wind. Failure to

adequately shelter may result in serious injury, loss of life, or immense human suffering,” the National Weather Service said.

Up to 35 inches (97cm) of rain are expected over parts of Texas, and sea levels may surge as high as 12 feet (3.7 metres). Louisiana could get 10 to 15 inches of rain. Flood warnings are in effect for Louisiana and northern Mexico.

“Life-threatening and dev-astating flooding expected near the coast due to heavy rainfall and storm surge,” the NHC said. The storm’s approach triggered evacuations in south Texas

communities and central coast residents were voluntarily leav-ing the area. Cities cancelled classes yesterday and on Mon-day at dozens of schools along the south Texas coast, home to 5.8 million people from Corpus Christi to Galveston.

David Ramirez left his home in Corpus Christi to wait out the storm in San Antonio, Texas. “With the level of storm surge they’re talking about, there isn’t a lot I could do to protect my house,” he said in an interview while awaiting directions to an emergency shelter.

Harvey also forced the

cancellation or delay of at least 40 flights in and out of major air-ports in Texas, according to Flightaware.com, which tracks airline traffic. Louisiana and Texas declared states of disas-ter, authorising the use of state resources to prepare. President Donald Trump has been briefed and is ready to provide resources if needed, the White House said.

The port of Houston, the nation’s busiest petrochemical port, closed its terminals at noon, and earlier halted inbound and outbound ship traffic yesterday. The city of Houston warned resi-dents of flooding from close to 20 inches of rain over several days.

One-third of the US refining capacity is potentially under threat. One oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico has been evacu-ated, as well as 39 manned production platforms, represent-ing an estimated 9.5 percent of oil output and 14.7 percent of natural gas output in the Gulf.

In Louisiana, where the storm was feared to deluge flood-prone New Orleans, Gov-ernor John Bel Edwards described the situation as “par-ticularly dangerous”. Edwards issued an emergency declaration for his entire state. In New Orle-ans, where Katrina killed more than 1,800 people, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said high-water rescue vehicles and boats were at the ready — although there were no evacuations planned.

Top aide breaks ranks with US President on neo-Nazis Washington

AFP

The White House yesterday unveiled tough financial sanctions against the Ven-

ezuelan regime, banning the trade in new bonds issued by the government and its cash-cow state-run oil company PDVSA.

In a move that leverages Washington’s vast financial power against Nicolas Maduro’s regime, President Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting Venezuela’s access to vital bond and equity markets.

Wall Street banks will be allowed to trade existing debt, but “the president’s new action prohibits dealings in new debt and equity issued by the gov-ernment of Venezuela and its state oil company,” a White House statement said.

“It also prohibits dealings in certain existing bonds owned by the Venezuelan public sector, as well as dividend payments to the government of Venezuela.” The measures would “deny the Maduro dictatorship a critical source of financing to maintain its illegitimate rule,” the White

house claimed. Maduro’s social-ist government has been accused of hijacking state institutions and moving ever-deeper into auto-cratic rule.

Yesterday’s move may have little immediate financial impact, but could stymie cash-starved Venezuela’s ability to tap the world’s largest capital market in the future. For now it is likely to have a chilling effect on lenders, who were already concerned that Caracas will default.

Venezuela’s outstanding debt is estimated at over $100bn, but oil revenues have been declining, and its currency reserves have shrunk to just $10bn. October and November will be a crunch period. That’s when a hefty $3.8bn in bond payments need to be paid by Venezuela and PDVSA.

US officials said the latest sanctions were also designed to stop the government from stripping state assets in order to pay the bills. President Maduro’s “officials are now resorting to opaque financing schemes and liquidating the country’s assets at fire sale prices,” one official said.

White House imposes fresh sanctions on Venezuela

Ottawa

AFP

A new wildfire forced 1,100 residents in Can-ada’s westernmost

province of British Columbia to flee overnight and the blaze was still burning out of con-trol yesterday, officials said.

The blaze started about 20km east of the Okanagan wine region in the residential community of Joe Rich, near Kelowna. Stoked by high winds, it caught many off guard, including one woman who told public broadcaster CBC that flames shot up trees around her while she was out jogging on backcountry trails.

“The fire exhibited aggres-sive behaviour,” Justine Hunse of the British Columbia wild-fire service said. “It’s still out of control.” However, she added, “due to a drop in temperature and winds, the fire did not grow significantly overnight”.

British Columbia chief wildfire information officer Kevin Skrepnek said it was likely human-caused.

Wildfire forces 1,100 to flee in western Canada

BUSINESSBUSINESS7,401.46

-5.60 PTS0.08%

FTSE100

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire (right) speaks with a Somfy employee during a visit to the headquarters of the company in Cluses, eastern France, yesterday. Somfy is a world leader in the automatic control of openings and closures in homes and buildings.

French minister visits Somfy

PAGE | 12PAGE | 12

Britain heads back to Brexit table as economy declines

Qatar businesses need to look for

new networkingDow & Brent before going to press

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Amazon to cut goods pricesWashington

Reuters

Amazon.com Inc said it will cut prices on a range of popular goods as it

completes its acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc, send-ing shares of rival grocers tumbling on fears that brutal market share battles will intensify.

Amazon’s $13.7bn purchase of Whole Foods, which will be completed on Monday, has been hanging over a brick-and-mor-tar retail sector unsure of how to respond to the world’s big-gest online retailer.

Shares of Kroger Co, the biggest US supermarket oper-ator, closed down 8 percent, while Wal-Mart Stores Inc , the biggest US food seller, closed down 2 percent.

Amazon also said it will

start selling Whole Foods brand products on its website, a move that sent down shares of pack-aged food sellers.

Amazon said members of its $99-per-year Prime shop-ping club would eventually be rolled into Whole Foods’ cus-tomer rewards programme and be eligible for special offers and discounts. Amazon will cut prices on organic grocery sta-ples such as bananas, avocados, brown eggs, farmed salmon and tilapia, some apples, butter and other products.

Lowering prices could stem defections by price-sensitive shoppers, and help the grocer shed its “Whole Paycheck” rep-utation for high prices that are generally 15 to 25 percent above rivals. Amazon’s willingness to take lower profit margins ups the ante in the increasingly costly grocery price war.

Financial rules have made economy stronger: Yellen

Oil up as US rigs & refineries brace for hurricaneLondon

Reuters

Oil prices rose yesterday as the US petroleum indus-try braced for Hurricane

Harvey, which may become the biggest storm to hit the US main-land in more than a decade.

Harvey became a category 2 storm as it crossed the Gulf of Mexico with winds of 169 kph, 220 miles 355 km off Corpus Christi, Texas, the National Hur-ricane Centre said.

The hurricane is forecast to make landfall early today

between Corpus Christi and Houston, both important oil refining centres.

US light crude, also known as West Texas Intermediate or WTI, rose 0.4 percent to $47.62 per barrel and Brent was last at $52.14, up 0.19 percent on the day.

Energy companies have pulled workers from offshore oil platforms and halted onshore drilling in south Texas. Just under 10 percent of offshore US Gulf of Mexico crude output capacity and nearly 15 percent of natural gas production had been halted

by midday on Thursday, govern-ment data showed.

“Damage and flooding to refineries and shale fields, dis-rupted production in the Gulf of Mexico and infrastructure dam-age are unlikely to be bearish for WTI,” said Jeffrey Halley, mar-ket analyst at brokerage OANDA.

US gasoline prices have risen almost 10 percent since Wednes-day to a high of $1.74 a gallon, their loftiest since April as refin-ers shut down in preparation for the storm.

The Port of Corpus Christi, Texas, was closed to vessel

traffic, a spokeswoman for the city’s Port Authority said.

Oil refineries in the city run by Citgo Petroleum, Valero Energy Corp and Flint Hills Resources also began shutting down.

Beyond the storm’s potential impact on the oil industry, crude remains in ample supply globally despite efforts led by the Organ-isation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to hold back production in order to prop up prices.

Opec, together with non-Opec producers, has pledged to

cut output by 1.8 million barrels per day (mb/d) this year and in the first quarter of 2018. But not all producers have kept to their pledges and supplies remain high.

A joint Opec, non-Opec monitoring ministerial commit-tee said on Thursday that an extension to the supply-cut pact beyond March was possible.

Part of the reason for the crude glut has been rising US production, which has jumped by 13 percent since mid-2016 to 9.53 mb/d, close to its 9.61mb/d record from June 2015.

Qantas records strong profits; flags ultra-long haul flightsSydney

AFP

Australia’s Qantas unveiled plans for the world’s longest non-

stop commercial flight yesterday, calling it the “last frontier of global aviation”, as it posted healthy annual net profits on the back of a strong domestic market.

The firm, which hopes to fly non-stop from Australia to London and New York by 2022, announced a 17.2 per-cent slip in annual net profit to Aus$852m after record results last year. “Three years ago, we started an ambitious turnaround programme to make the Qantas Group strong and profitable,” chief executive Alan Joyce said.

Joyce unveiled ambitious plans for non-stop flights from Australia’s eastern sea-board to Europe, a major undertaking the airline has dubbed “Project Sunrise”.

“Qantas will challenge both Airbus and Boeing to deliver an aircraft capable of regularly flying direct serv-ices like Sydney to London, Brisbane to Paris, Melbourne to New York non-stop with a full payload by 2022,” he said.

Joyce said the two man-ufacturers were working on planes that were almost capa-ble of doing the job, the 777X and the A350ULR.

Jackson Hole

Reuters

Reforms put in place after the 2007 to 2009 crisis have strengthened the financial system

without impeding economic growth and any changes to these rules should remain modest, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen (pictured) said yesterday in her fullest defence yet of the regulations enacted after the Great Recession.

“The balance of research suggests that the core reforms we have put in place have substan-tially boosted resilience without unduly limiting credit availabil-ity or economic growth,” the Fed chair said at an annual central bank research conference.

Yellen’s remarks amount to a broad defence of the existing regulatory framework, and an

implicit rebuke of President Donald Trump’s desire to dras-tically lighten the oversight of the financial sector in a bid to boost the economy.

They also may amount to her parting view on financial rules, as Trump considers whether to

re-nominate Yellen to another four-year term as head of the central bank, with her current term expiring in February.

Yellen acknowledged some possible changes to individual regulations may be warranted, specifically mentioning possible relaxation of the Volcker rule limit on banks’ equity trading, and further relaxation of rules that apply to medium-sized and smaller banks. Steps may be needed, she agreed, to improve liquidity in parts of the bond market, though that system remained “robust.”

But she also defended sev-eral financial rules that have come under scrutiny by top Trump administration officials and leading Republicans in Con-gress. Specifically, Yellen defended the annual stress test-ing of large banks, allowing regulators to assign stricter over-sight to firms critical to the

financial system, and permitting regulators to step in and wind down failing financial institutions.

Republicans have long argued that the raft of new finan-cial rules put in place as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law are hindering lend-ing and the overall economy. An intense partisan divide in Con-gress will likely hinder any broad

legislative rewrite of existing rules, but the Trump administra-tion is slowly replacing regulators who drafted the ini-tial post-crisis rules with new officials much more sympathetic to a lighter regulatory touch.

Overall, Yellen said, “any adjustment to the regulatory framework should be modest and preserve the increase in resilience” in a financial system she said is now better able to weather future shocks.

She did not mention mone-tary policy in her prepared remarks, disappointing some investors who had hoped she might offer hints on the Fed’s path on interest rates.

US stocks rose and the dol-lar fell, while Treasury yields dipped slightly.

Yellen said she and other current Fed members are not averse to revisiting how differ-ent regulations are working in

practice, “and considering appropriate adjustments.”

But she cautioned against putting the events of a decade ago too far in the rear view mirror.

“Already, for some, memo-ries of this experience may be fading - memories of just how costly the financial crisis was,” she told an audience of Fed staff and central bank colleagues from around the world.

The stability of the current system guards against a repeat, she said, while outside analysts have noted that it could also free central bankers to leave interest rates lower instead of worrying about the impact of those low rates on financial markets.

“The Fed is committed to evaluating where reforms are working and where improve-ments are needed to most efficiently maintain a resilient financial system,” she said.

Modest changes

Any adjustment to the regulatory framework should be modest and preserve the increase in resilience.

There was no mention of monetary policy in her speech, disappointing some who had hoped she might offer hints on the Fed’s path on interest rates.

There are an esti-mated 8.4 billion connected devices today and this number is racing

ahead to reach hundreds of billions. According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecasts, over 500 bil-lion devices and objects will be connected by 2030. The present and ongoing phase of digital transformation is more powerful and challeng-ing than previous technological transforma-tional phases. In the past, we have leapfrogged from main-frames to PCs and from the informational web to e-com-merce driven Internet. At present, digital disruption is radically changing econo-mies, cities, communities and the landscape of business.

The connected world has become too big and too com-plex for us humans to effectively administer by our own skills. The networks of tomorrow, with their dense array of devices, sensors, sys-t e m s , a p p l i a n c e s , applications, will not be man-ually administered. They will be too complex, too cumber-some, too complicated, and fast changing, that much more than manual adminis-tration will be required. Traditional networking mod-els simply do not scale and perform to meet the expec-tations of this digital era.

With this spate of chal-lenges, businesses in Qatar need a new networking framework that is simplified and more secure to use. IDC indicates that businesses that have invested in modern net-works, have improved their rate of growth in revenue, customer retention and profit, by a factor of two to three times. For digital organizations, the network is the foundation of their business and success.

In the connected world of today, every company is becoming a technology com-pany. While connected devices present useful busi-ness opportunities, the complexity of managing the devices and the network itself, in an efficient and secure manner, is a challenge for present day technologies. This means every company needs to have security, on the top of its boardroom agenda. Organizations that make cybersecurity a critical foun-dation for their digital growth strategies will accelerate their innovation and reduce their time to market. Secu-rity is the most sensitive and

critical component of digital transformation.

Increasingly industry analysts now agree that the way forward to tackle secu-rity challenges in digital organizations in Qatar is through the network. It is within the network that peo-ple, processes and data collide, and technology itself presents solutions to move forward.

From the field of analyt-ics, machine learning can be used to build complex mod-els and algorithms within networks that are capable of generating forward looking trends. Analytical models inbuilt inside networks can produce reliable and repeat-able decisions.

Networks with such inbuilt algorithms can learn and make predictions from data. With the help of these algorithms, networks can overcome the limitation of static programming and can make data-driven predic-tions and decisions, through building a model from data inputs. In the past data min-ing has been used to discover new trends in wide arrays of collected data. However, in the case of such intuitive net-works built on machine learning, algorithms discover known trends that are prev-alent in data as it is aggregated.

New intuitive networks shift from the traditional manual, time-intensive, static mode of operation, towards one that is capable of contin-uously learning from the data that it manages for an organization.

An intuitive network will gain the trust of business and IT executives in Qatar want-ing to select a platform to build their digital business models of tomorrow. This will be on the basis of its machine learning capabilities that it is constantly learning and evolving to become highly secure and provide insights.

Qatar businesses need to look for new networking

IN-DEPTH

Osama Al ZoubiChief Technology Officer,

Cisco Middle East

12 SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017BUSINESS

Britain heads back to Brexit table as economy declines

London

Reuters

Britain’s economy is beginning to feel the Brexit pinch, or per-haps given the strong performance of the

rest of the world economy, it should be punch.

After a prolonged period of relatively benign economic numbers following last year’s vote to leave the European Union, there are now signs of a potentially serious slow down.

They stretch from retrench-ing households to hesitant businesses, from a widening trade deficit to lacklustre man-ufacturing. They also come just as the EU and Britain return to the negotiating table, the latter with a handful of new post-Brexit position papers.

Since mid-August, London has been releasing official papers on issues such as trade, customs, the European Court of Justice, and what the province of Northern Ireland’s future bor-der with EU member Ireland will look like.

The performance of Britain’s pound over that period suggests few people were impressed enough with them -- or with the

likelihood they will come to pass -- to overcome the economic signs.

Running through the release of five official Brexit papers, the pound has lost more than 1.4 percent against the dollar since Aug 14 and the euro has gained the same against sterling.

While the pound weakness is not directly linked to the papers, their release has clearly done nothing to improveconfi-dence in the currency. That is at least in part because the UK economy is starting to feel the impact of Brexit.

“Economic momentum looks uncertain. Monthly factory orders this year suggest that the sector is failing to capitalise from a weaker sterling and a pick-up in global trade,” Jaisal Pastakia, investment manager at Heartwood Investment Man-agement, said in note.

Elsewhere, second quarter economic growth figures showed consumer spending slumping to a two and a half year low of just 0.1 percent quarter-on-quarter.

Business investment was also at a standstill. Barclays said this was “highlighting just how much businesses are holding back investment in the face of high levels of uncertainty regarding the outlook for business conditions.”

Add to that a warning from Britain’s heavyweight food sup-ply industry that EU workers it relies on are already leaving or considering doing so.

It is not completely linear, of course. Car manufacturing bounced back in July and the unemployment rate is falling.

Last month’s purchasing managers indexes also pointed to steady -- albeit sluggish -- economic growth over the

coming months. So the wheels have not come off. But the back-drop for Britain as it returns to the table on Monday is nonethe-less a stark contrast to what the other side is experiencing.

The euro zone, which com-prises 19 of what will be the remaining 27 EU members, is fly-ing high.

The latest data shows annual growth at 2.2 percent, the high-est for more than six years; economic sentiment is cruising at levels last seen before the financial crisis; even the bloc’s notoriously high unemployment rate is falling. Improvement is fairly widespread among euro zone countries, meanwhile.

Florian Hense, an economist with Berenberg bank, notes the euro zone has now had 17 con-secutive quarters of growth.

“And most countries of the currency union were at the party,” he said in a note. “Coun-tries that have for a very long time... struggled do get a stable footing, are beginning to recover, too.”

Whether this continues or is peaking may become clearer in the coming week when various sentiment indicators, unemploy-ment and manufacturing reports are released.

The flash composite purchas-ing manager index has already shown the bloc to be well in expansion mode with no sign of an August slowdown.

Inflation too will be on the agenda. It is expected to be 1.4 percent year-on-year, too far below the European Central Bank’s near 2 percent target to impact rates decisions on its own.

But the growth picture is enough to have the ECB at least thinking about tapering its quan-titative easing bond-buying programme.

Samsung heir guilty of briberySeoul

AFP

The heir to the Samsung empire was convicted of

bribery and other offences yesterday and jailed for five years in connection with the scandal that brought down South Korean p r e s i d e n t P a r k Geun-Hye.

Lee Jae-Yong’s penalty could leave the vast conglomerate, which includes the world’s biggest smart-p h o n e m a k e r , rudderless and hamper its ability to make key investment decisions for years.

The vice-chairman of Samsung Electron-ics, 49, arrived at Seoul

Central District Court on a justice ministry bus handcuffed and bound with white rope around his dark jacket.

Lee was found guilty of bribery, per-jury and other charges related to payments Samsung made to Park’s secret confi-

dante Choi Soon-Sil.In total 8.9 billion

won ($7.9mn) was paid in bribes in return for favours including gov-ernment support for Lee’s hereditary suc-cession at the group after his father was left bedridden by a heart attack in 2014, the

court found.Lee had denied the

charges, but presiding judge Kim Jin-Dong said: “He offered bribes in response to strong demands by the president.”

Four other top Samsung executives were also convicted, with two jailed for up to four years, and the other pair given sus-pended terms.

Supporters demon-strating outside the court broke down in tears while Lee’s law-yers said they would appeal “immediately”, with lead attorney Song Wu-Cheol saying he “cannot possibly accept” the court’s “interpretation of law and finding of facts”.

EM stocks at multi-year highs ahead of Jackson Hole meetLondon

Reuters

Emerging market stocks rose to multi-year highs yester-day and were set to end the

week up 2.5 percent, led by gains in Poland and China, ahead of a central bankers’ meeting that is not expected to rock the boat.

MSCI’s benchmark emerg-ing markets index was up 0.36 percent in morning trade to its highest since September 2014, with gains across the board in Asia and emerging Europe.

Amongst the outperformers was Poland, up 4.7 percent for

the week, its biggest weekly gain since late April, and trading at more than two-year highs.

Polish shares had leapt 2.7 percent on Thursday in their big-gest daily gain since March, supported by solid energy com-pany results, whilst signs of a tight labour market have helped the zloty firm against the euro.

Chinese mainland shares jumped between 1.6 and 1.8 per-cent, with the blue chip index at its highest since December 2015 and the Shanghai Composite at its highest since January 2016.

The latter delivered its best daily performance in a year,

powering past a key resistance level after a flurry of stronger than expected earnings reports f rom major Chinese companies.

Hong Kong shares also gained 1.2 percent to end the week up nearly 3 percent, whilst Hungary shares hit record highs, up 0.2 percent, and Turkish stocks rose 0.7 percent.

Jakob Christensen, head of emerging markets research at Danske Bank, said the market was supported by a combination of good global growth and expectations that the US Federal Reserve and European Central

Bank won’t signal any big policy shifts at the Jackson Hole sym-posium today.

“The strong indicators out of Europe and the US suggest the recovery is alive and kicking, yet inflation pressures remain muted, meaning major central bank leaders won’t suggest any hawkish change,” Christensen said.

“This means flows to emerg-ing markets will be ongoing – the Fed and ECB are not in an abrupt tightening phase and there is still good demand for emerging mar-ket products.”Some emerging currencies also enjoyed a solid

week, with the South Korean won up 1 percent as tensions on the Korean peninsula eased, whilst the Brazilian real has ral-lied around 1.5 percent against the dollar on signs of reform progress.

The South African rand strengthened 0.4 percent and the Mexican peso firmed 0.2 percent, continuing its recovery from a mid-week wobble.

In emerging Europe, the Hungarian forint was steady ahead of a debt ratings review by S&P Global that is not expected to result in any changes.

Traders dial back rate hike view

US short-term interest rate futures rose yes-terday as traders

scaled back expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates further this year after Fed Chair Janet Yellen skipped mention of monetary policy in a widely anticipated speech.

Yellen’s comments focused on financial stability and bank regulation in defense of stronger oversight of the financial system after the Great Recession.

“The balance of research suggests that the core reforms we have put in place have substantially boosted resilience without unduly limiting credit availability or economic growth,” Yellen said on Friday at an annual central bank research conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Some traders had prepared for possible hints from Yellen on the Fed’s plan to reduce its $4.2 trillion worth of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities holdings as well as her view on the chances for a third rate increase in 2017.

The Fed raised US overnight borrowing costs in March and June. Its target range on the federal funds rate is 1.00 percent to 1.25 percent. At 1.02pm, fed funds futures contracts implied traders priced in a 37 percent chance the US central bank would raise rates at its December 12-13 policy meeting, compared with 44 percent prior to Yellen’s speech.

Tencent stake: Bekker defends keeping $132bnJohannesburg

Bloomberg

Chairman Koos Bekker (pictured above) coun-tered criticism Naspers

Ltd. relies too heavily on its $132bn stake in Chinese media company Tencent Holdings Ltd. by reminding investors that they would have been a lot poorer if he’d given in to similar pressure to sell the holding years ago.

“Five years ago there was also a lot of unhappi-ness,” Bekker told shareholders at the annual meeting in Cape Town yesterday.

“If we had sold then, you would have gotten 45 Hong Kong dollars, now you get 325. We are not married to the share, but at this point in t i m e i t ’ s p a y i n g shareholders.”

Africa’s biggest internet company has ridden the coattails of the WeChat cre-ator to be the best performer on Johannesburg’s FTSE/JSE Africa Top 40 Index this year with a 50 percent rise.

The catch is that the market values the 33 percent stake in the Shenzhen-based company at almost $32bn more than Naspers as a whole, suggesting investors don’t see value in the Cape Town-based company’s many other businesses.

Weak sterling

Monthly factory orders this year suggest that the sector is failing to capitalise from a weaker sterling.

The performance of Britain’s pound over period suggests few people were impressed.

Samsung Group heir Lee Jae-Yong (right) leaves the Seoul Central District Court following his verdict in Seoul, yesterday.

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15SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017 BREAK TIME

Yesterday’s answer

BABY

BLU

ES

ALL IN THE MIND

BLAZER, BLOUSE, BOLERO, BOOTS, BOW TIE, BRACES, CARDIGAN, COAT, CRAVAT, DRESS, DRESSING GOWN, FOOTWEAR, FROCK, GLOVES, HAT, HEADWEAR, JACKET, JERKIN, JUMPER, KILT, KNITWEAR,NIGHTWEAR, OVERCOAT, RAINCOAT, ROBE, SANDALS, SCARF, SHIRT, SHOES, SKIRT, SOCKS, STOCKINGS, SUIT, SWEATER, TIE, TRACKSUIT, TRAINERS, TROUSERS, VEST, WAISTCOAT.

08:00 News

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13:00 NEWSHOUR

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15:00 Circle of Poison

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17:30 Women Make Change

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Investigates

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23:00 Al Jazeera World

09:00 How Do They Do

It?

09:40 First In Human

11:10 X-Ray Mega

Airport

13:30 Running Wild With

Bear Grylls

15:02 Cooper's Treasure:

The Hunt For A

Secret Fortune

17:25 Legend Of Croc

Gold

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19:15 Deadliest Catch

20:35 How Do They Do

It?

21:00 Gold Rush:

Remembering John

Schnabel

21:50 Edge Of Alaska

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23:30 Cooper's Treasure:

The Hunt For A

Secret Fortune

00:20 What On Earth?

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08:15 Treehouse

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Uncut

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Masters

17:25 Deadliest

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Africa

18:20 The Vet Life

19:15 Bad Dog

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21:05 Deadliest

Snakes Of South

Africa

22:00 The Vet Life

22:55 North America

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Middle

22:00 Bunk'd

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Of Ladybug And

Cat Noir

23:10 Sabrina Secrets

Of A Teenage

Witch

Conceptis Sudoku: Conceptis Sudoku is a number-

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

place the numbers 1 to 9 in the empty squares so

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

contains the same number only once.

CROSSWORD

CONCEPTIS SUDOKU

Yesterday's answer

MALL

LANDMARK

ROYAL PLAZA

ASIAN TOWN

ROXY

Captain Underpants (2D/Animation) 2:00, 3:30, 5:45pm A Gentleman (2D/Hindi) 2:30 & 11:30pm Vivegam (2D/Tamil) 2:30, 5:15 , 6:45 & 11:15pm The Beguiled(2D/Drama) 5:00pm Logan Lucky (2D/Drama) 5:15 & 9:45pm The Hitman's Bodyguard (2D/Action) 7:30 & 11:45pm The Recall (2D/Action) 8:00pm Bushwick (2D/Action) 9:30pm It Comes At Night (2D/Horror) 9:45pm

A Gentleman (2D/Hindi) 2:15 & 11:30pm Captain Underpants (2D/Animation) 2:00 & 3:30pm Vivegam (2D/Tamil) 2:30, 5:15 & 11:00pm It Comes At Night (2D/Horror) 5:15pm The Hitman's Bodyguard (2D/Actin) 7:00 & 9:15pm The Beguiled(2D/Drama) 7:30pm Logan Lucky (2D/Drama) 8:00 & 11:30pmBushwick (2D/Action) 9:15pmThe Recall (2D/Action) 10:00pm

Captain Underpants (2D/Animation) 2:30 & 4:15pm Vivegam (2D/Tamil) 2:15 & 11:30pm It Comes At Night (2D/Horror) 5:00pm The Beguiled(2D/Drama) 6:00pm The Recall (2D/Action) 7:45pmA Gentleman (2D/Hindi) 9:15pm The Hitman's Bodyguard (2D/Actin) 9:30pm Bushwick (2D/Action) 11:45pm

Vivegam (2D/Tamil) 5:30, 6:00, 6:30, 8:15, 8:45, 9:15, 9:45, 11:00pm,

12:00midnight, 12:30, 01:45, 02:15 & 02:45am

A Gentleman (Hindi) 7:00pm

Captain Underpants (Animation) 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00 & 6:00pm

Vivegam (Tamil) 12:00noon, 2:50, 5:40, 7:30, 8:30, 10:20 & 11:20pm

Logan Lucky 12:00noon, 2:30, 5:00, 7:30, 10:00pm & 12:30am Hitman's Bodyguard (Comedy) 12:00noon, 2:30 & 5:00pm Annabelle (Horror) 8:00 & 11:20pm

AL KHORVivegam (Tamil) 12:15, 3:00, 5:45, 8:30 & 11:15pm Hitman's Bodyguard (Comedy) 11:00am, 1:30, 4:00, 6:30, 9:00 &11:30pm Annabelle (Horror) 6:00, 8:30 & 11:00pm

Captain Underpants (Animation) 12:00noon, 2:00 & 4:00pm

HAGA

R TH

E HO

RRIB

LE

Yesterday's answer

SPORT16 SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017

Hamilton sets pace ahead of 200th race Spa-Francorchamps,

Belgium

Reuters

Title contender Lewis Ham-ilton prepared for his 200th Formula One race

with the fastest time in Belgian Grand Prix practice yesterday, before rain brought an early end to the day’s action.

The Mercedes driver, who can equal Michael Schumach-er’s all-time record of 68 pole positions in Saturday’s qualify-ing, lapped the longest track on the calendar with a best time of one minute 44.753 seconds.

Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, who had been fastest in the morning session with a time of 1:45.502 on ultra-soft tyres while Hamilton stayed on softs, was second on the timesheets with an afternoon best that was 0.262 slower than the Briton.

Hamilton also used the ultra-softs to set his best time before the rain set in with 20 minutes remaining.

Valtteri Bottas, Hamilton’s team mate, made it two Finns in the top three while Red Bull’s Dutch teenager Max Verstap-pen kept his travelling orange army of fans happy with fourth in both sessions.

Verstappen was fastest in last year’s second free- prac-tice, and went on to put his Red

Bull on the front row, but the new cars are significantly faster and Hamilton was more then three seconds quicker.

Ferrari’s world champion-ship leader Sebastian Vettel was third and fifth, just 0.01 slower than Verstappen, respectively, in Friday’s sessions.

Vettel leads Hamilton by 14 points with nine rounds remain-ing and both men on four wins apiece.

The first session was halted

after 15 minutes when Brazil-ian Felipe Massa, who missed the previous race in Hungary after feeling dizzy in practice, crashed heavily into the tyre barrier at turn seven out of Les Combes.

He was taken to the medi-cal centre for checks, before returning to the pitlane, with his team beginning the long job of rebuilding the car.

Massa did not take part in the second session, with

Williams saying the changed chassis could not be readied in time.

Fernando Alonso suffered an early lack of power in his McLaren, but still ended up 13th fastest. The Spaniard was 11th after lunch.

His Belgian team mate Stof-fel Vandoorne, who will start his home race last on Sunday thanks to a 35 place penalty due to a power unit change, was 10th and 14th.

Spa-Francorchamps,

Belgium

Reuters

Triple world champion Lewis Hamilton says he is hungrier than ever,

and out for ‘blood’, as the Mercedes driver prepares for his 200th race in Formula One this weekend.

The 32-year-old Briton is 14 points behind Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel with nine races remaining and has yet to take an outright lead in the championship against a for-midable opponent.

But he expects to remedy that, starting in Belgium tomorrow.

“One thing for sure in this second part of the season... is that I’m here for blood. I’m here to win and I’m here to stay,” he said.

“It’s strange. When you’re racing for so long, it’s my 200th race, you would think that maybe your passion or your desire to win would fade. But it’s stronger than ever. And that’s exciting for me.”

The most successful cur-rent racer, in terms of wins if not titles, Hamilton can also

equal seven-times world champion Michael Schu-macher’s all-time record of 68 pole positions at Spa today.

That would be a symbolic milestone to reach, with Spa also marking the 25th anni-versary of Schumacher’s first grand prix win, but Hamil-ton’s thoughts were focused on the task at hand.

Reinvigorated by his August break, and smitten by his first visit to Cuba, Hamil-ton said he was ready for anything and determined to raise his game.

Hamilton made his debut with McLaren in 2007, miss-ing the title by a single point but winning in 2008 - again by one point after making a crucial overtake on the last corner of the last lap in Brazil.

His move to Mercedes in 2013 brought two more championships - in 2014 and 2015 - but he missed out last year to now-retired German team mate Nico Rosberg.

He has won 57 of his 199 races, four this year, and could soon become the first Briton to win four titles - the same number Vettel has.

Pace-setter Hamilton hungry for ‘blood’

Al Sadd off to a flying start at IHF Super Globe in DohaThe Peninsula

Hosts Al Sadd started their IHF Super Globe Champion-ship campaign with flying colours when

they defeated Austraia’s Sydney Uni Handball Club 33-25 at the Duhail Sports Complex in Doha yesterday.

Al Sadd’s squad featured the likes of 2015 IHF Men’s World Championship silver medallists Danijel Saric and Abdulla Al Karbi and it was clear from the outset that the Aussie boys were in for a tough task. Sydney Uni side kept up with the pace of the game through the opening 10 minutes, though they trailed by three goals after five minutes (1-4) before coming back.

The six-time Oceania cham-pions began to find their own game and closed the gap to two by the time the clock showed 10 minutes. Al Sadd remained in control with a steady two to three-goal lead for some min-utes, but Sydney Uni continued fighting and were rewarded with a one-goal deficit thanks largely to the performance of their goal-keeper Tomasz Szalkucki.

As the 20-minute mark approached Al Sadd created a more decisive advantage of three goals (11-8), and Sydney coach Lionel Puyhardy called his first time-out. The hosts kept the same score line through to the half-time whistle however, but Sydney Uni left for the break still with a strong chance to decrease the deficit.

A suspension for Pierre Bon-nin in the opening minutes of the half did not help Sydney’s chances, and while he was off the court Al Sadd pulled further ahead to lead 18-14 as the Aus-tralian side received another two minutes – this time for Luka Kra-jnc. When Sydney Uni returned

to full strength the hosts had taken firm control with a six-goal score line that appeared to decide the semi-finalists.

The same difference remained as Puyhardy called a time-out just inside the last quar-ter of the game (18-24), and though Sydney fought hard they simply could not reduce it. Al Sadd had replaced Saric with Rasheed Yusuff between the posts, and he made a spectacu-lar save on a fast break in the 54th that kept his team in front

by six at 29-23, while at the other end of the court Maikkel Takken had come into goal.

In the 57th minute Bonnin received a red card after three suspensions and as he left the court it was clear the game was over for his team. Al Sadd cele-brated an eight-goal win at the buzzer and with it a place in the semi-finals, where they will meet Berlin.

Earlier, two-time IHF Super Globe champions FC Barcelona opened the 11th edition of the

tournament with an emphatic win over Esperance Sportive de Tunis, qualifying for the semi-final where they will meet the current EHF Champions League title holders HC Vardar.

Vardar made their way to the semi-final with a clear victory of their own, beating Iranian side Naft-O-Gas-Gachsaran by eight goals.

Defending champions Füchse Berlin followed with a hard-fought two-goal win against determined Esporte

Clube Pinheiros, and will there-fore contest the semi-final against Al Sadd today.

The 2015 and 2016 IHF Super Globe champions were level with their opponents through the first 15 minutes, with the score at 8-8 as the first quarter came to an end.

At that point, the Fuchse Ber-lin’s game was clearly dominated by two players – centre back Steffen Fäth and right wing Hans Lindberg, who had contributed three goals each.

The German team opened a two-goal advantage with a counter attack goal scored by Ignacio Plaza Jiminez in the 17th minute. Pinheiros 6-0 defence could not contain Berlin’s attack led by creative Petar Nenadic and back court shooters like Marko Kopljar, and it seemed the European team were ready to run away with the momentum.

In the 21st minute Pinheiros goalkeeper Marcos Santos saved a penalty attempt that kept the score at 9-12 – but perhaps the European team relaxed a little too much while their opponents did not decrease the pressure, because the Pan American team soon came back. Pinheiros reduced the score line to one goal with just over a minute left until the break before Nenadic added the last of half to regain a two-goal advantage for Berlin.

Pinheiros worked hard through the opening minutes of the second period and were rewarded when they levelled at 16-16 seven minutes into the period. The score remained locked as the clock ticked on, with Pinheiros taking the lead (23-22) as the last quarter began off a fast break scored by Arthur Flosi after Santos made a diffi-cult save.

From that point it was a one-for-one match, with the score still equal at 27-27 in the 53rd when Santos saved another penalty, against Nenadic. Less than two minutes later the Ger-man side created an important two-goal distance however, when right wing Mattias Zachrisson scored a fast break that took Berlin in front to 30-28. That was the decisive moment, and the two-time champions held on to the final whistle to finish with the same score line.

Al Sadd’s Amine Guehis leaps to score against Austraia’s Sydney Uni Handball Club during their quarter-final match of the IHF Super Globe Championship at the Duhail Sports Complex in Doha yesterday. The Qatari champions defeated Sydney Uni by 33-25 to advance into today’s semi-final in which they will meet the defending champions Füchse Berlin. INSET: Al Sadd’s Mustafa Alkrad (centre) shoots to score.

Al Sadd beat Sydney Uni HC: 33-25

FC Barcelona beat Esperance Sportive de Tunis: 42-24

Füchse Berlin beat Esporte Clube Pinheiros: 33-31

HC Vardar beat Naft-O-Gas Gachsaran: 30-22

YESTERDAY’S RESULTS

Mercedes’ British driver Lewis Hamilton prepares to leave the pits for the second practice session at the Spa-Francorchamps Circuit in Spa ahead of the Belgian Formula One Grand Prix yesterday.

17SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017 SPORT

LIverpool ready to add to Arsenal woesLondon

AFP

Energised by Liverpool’s emphatic progress in Europe, Simon Mignolet

has challenged the Reds to underline their ascension with a victory against Premier League title rivals Arsenal this weekend.

Jurgen Klopp’s side swept into the Champions League group stage for the first time in three years with a 4-2 win over Hoffenheim on Wednesday.

The electric atmosphere at Anfield fuelled Liverpool’s vibrant display in midweek and Belgian goalkeeper Mignolet expects Arsenal to be greeted with another hostile reception from the Kop on Sunday.

After their opening weekend draw with Watford, Liverpool have reeled off three successive victories in all competitions to prove they can thrive without injured Barcelona target Philippe Coutinho. Now Mignolet wants Liver-

pool to build their momentum by securing a statement of intent victory over the Gunners.

“At Anfield it is always a spe-cial night and I think we showed what we can do over here. It is electric, that is what Anfield is about and this is where we belong,” he said.

“Everybody has been really eager to play again at this stage, that is where all the history has been made at this football club.”

In contrast to Liverpool’s s u r g e , A r s e n a l a r e

already facing a familiar crisis of confidence after coming from behind to narrowly beat Leices-ter and then slipping to a 1-0 defeat at Stoke last weekend.

Losing to Stoke exposed the fault lines in Arsenal’s defence, while Arsene Wenger’s side were once again unable to turn pos-session into goals with star forward Alexis Sanchez sidelined.

Sanchez has missed the start of the season due to injury and illness, but the Chile interna-tional is expected to make his

first appearance tomorrow.Amid continued speculation

that Sanchez wants to leave Arsenal before his contract expires at the end of the season, Wenger insisted he was happy to welcome back a player wanted by Manchester City and Chelsea.

“He has always been focused on his job, he loves to play foot-ball and I don’t think he is too disturbed by all the noises that happen,” Wenger said.

“Players at that level are used to it now, some deal better

with it than others but I don’t think he is too bothered by that.”

Manchester United have set the early pace with two succes-sive 4-0 wins to climb to the top of the table and Jose Mourinho’s men hope to cap a positive week by defeating Leicester at Old Trafford. Mourinho was boosted on Thursday by Zlatan Ibrahi-movic’s decision to sign a one-year contract with United after his impressive first season in England was curtailed by a serious knee injury.

Ibrahimovic won’t be back for a few months yet, but in his absence United’s British record signing Romelu Lukaku has hit the ground running.

The Belgian international has scored three goals in his first two league games and Ibrahimovic believes that, despite losing club captain Wayne Rooney this sum-mer, United are far stronger thanks to the development of Marcus Rashford and the arrival of Lukaku.

“Signing Lukaku makes us even stronger because he has different qualities from me as a striker and from Rashford as a striker. He is a powerful guy and he brings extra qualities in a game,” said Ibrahimovic.

Rooney’s move back to his boyhood club Everton has also started well, with the 31-year-old scoring in his first two league matches. Ahead of Everton’s trip to champions Chelsea on Sun-day, Rooney this week announced this retirement from England duty.

Gunners face tough Europa League groupMonaco

AFP

Arsenal face a tricky Europa League group stage with ties against

Cologne and Red Star Bel-grade as Arsene Wenger’s side play in Europe’s second-tier competition for the first time since 1997.

The Gunners, who were also given a difficult assign-ment in Belarus against Bate Borisov in Friday’s draw, are playing in the Europa League after they finished fifth in the Premier League last season.

Another European giant, AC Milan, have an easier pas-sage with ties against Austria Vienna, AEK Athens and Rijeka of Croatia.

Wayne Rooney’s Everton will have a stern test in a group containing French club Lyon, whose Groupama Sta-dium will host the final on May 16.

Italian side Atalanta and Cypriot minnows Apollon Limassol round out Everton’s group.

Everton manager Ronald Koeman said: “It’s a strong group, all in a good part of Europe. Easy to travel. Tough but it ’s tough for everybody.”

Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas said he was glad to have been paired with “footballing nations”.

“Everton and Atalanta are good teams in good leagues and we will also have to go to Limassol which hasn’t been successful for us in the past,” he said.

French club Nice, who have strengthened their star-studded squad with the addition of Dutch veteran Wesley Sneijder this summer, drew a big-name Italian opponent in the shape of Lazio.

Nice also face early Dutch league leaders Vitesse Arn-hem and Zulte Waregem of Belgium.

Paul Pogba of last sea-son’s winners Manchester United was voted the best player of the 2016-2017 com-petition and received the trophy in a pre-recorded video message shown at the draw in Monaco.

Henley leads Johnson by oneNew York AFP

Russell Henley got off to a quick start in the US PGA Tour FedEx Cup playoffs

on Thursday, firing a six-under 64 to lead the Northern Trust by one stroke from top-ranked Dustin Johnson.

Johnson, whose early-sea-son surge saw him win the Genesis Open in Los Angeles and two World Golf Championship titles to reach number one in the world before injury forced him out of the Masters in April, notched his lowest round since February.

He shook off an early bogey to post four of his six birdies on the back nine en route to his five-under 65.

Henley admitted he “didn’t really know what to expect” in his first competitive round on the Glen Oaks Club course in Old Westbury, New York.

But he benefitted from benign early conditions to make eight birdies.

That included a chip-in at the fifth hole, but mostly relied on his determination to keep the ball in play.

“I just tried to hit the fairway, make sure I hit the green when I was in the fairway, and the greens are great and I rolled in

a couple of putts,” he said.Henley, who won the Hou-

ston Open in April, thrived in the morning as stars including Hideki Matsuyama and Rory McIlroy struggled.

Colombian Camilo Villegas and Americans Scott Brown and

Chris Kirk shared third on 64.Henley’s showing was a

turnaround from his last two starts, in which he finished tied for 66th and 71st.

“My attitude was just bad,” he said of those outings, but the start of the playoffs, the four-tournament series capped by next month’s Tour Champion-ship, has him feeling energized.

He came into the post-sea-son 19th in the standings and on course to reach the season finale -- where a $10 million bonus is on offer to the series points win-ner -- for the second time.

Matsuyama came in atop the standings, but had four bogeys in his last six holes in a four-over 74. McIlroy, the defending FedEx Cup champion whose season has been hampered by injury carded a 73, unable to build any momentum in his bid to gain a first victory of the year.

Major winners Bubba Watson and Louis Oosthuizen were among half a dozen play-ers sharing sixth on 67.

Dembele agrees to five-year Barca dealBarcelona

AFP

French starlet Ousmane Dembele (pictured) brought an end to pro-

tracted transfer talks by agreeing a five-year deal with Barcelona worth $125m plus add-ons, the Spanish giants announced yesterday.

Dembele, 20, moves from Borussia Dortmund, where he has been suspended since he boycotted training on August 10 in protest after the German club rejected Barca’s first bid.

The add-ons amount to a maximum of 42m euros, accord-ing to Dortmund, which would make it the second biggest trans-fer in history after Neymar’s move From Barca to Paris Saint-Germain earlier this month.

It will surpass the highest transfer by a French player, cur-rently held by Paul Pogba in his 105m-euro move plus five mil-lion add-ons from Juventus to Manchester United.

“FC Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund have reached an agreement for the transfer of Ousmane Dembele for 105m euros plus add-ons,” Barca revealed in a statement.

“The player will sign a five-year contract and his buy-out clause is set at 400m euros.”

The winger, capped seven times by France, will arrive in Barcelona tomorrow and undergo a medical on Monday.

Barca were in desperate need for reinforcements since being caught cold by Neymar’s decision to join PSG for a world record 222m euros.

Dembele, who cost Dort-mund just 15m euros from Rennes last year, has paid the price for the ongoing saga over his future, with France coach Didier Deschamps opting to omit him from the national squad for upcoming World Cup qualifiers against the Netherlands and Lux-embourg on Thursday.

“Without doubt he is a hugely talented player, one of the

best on the continent,” Barca gushed in their statement.

Barca coach Ernesto Val-verde added: “He is a player who guarantees us depth, something that we have lost and that we need. He can play on the wing and also as a striker, and in that sense offers us many possibilities.

“He is fast, deep, technical and we hope he brings us many things.”

Dembele scored 10 goals in 49 matches last season and topped the Bundesliga’s success-ful dribbles table, with 103.

The Frenchman has been attracting ‘Wunderkind’ head-lines with Dortmund since July 2016 when he ghosted past Man-chester United’s Luke Shaw and Marco Rojo before scoring an outrageous solo goal in

Dortmund’s 4-1 win on a pre-season tour of China.

“I’m not a phenomenon, I’m just trying to be decisive for my team-mates, there are a lot of talented young people in foot-ball,” Dembele modestly said in a roundtable interview in Feb-ruary. Having shown he was capable of making a brave deci-sion, last summer, to resist the advances of Barca and Madrid to move to Dortmund from Rennes and ensure his develop-ment wouldn’t be restricted by a lack of game time, the 20-year-old will now have to show himself ready for the step up to the big time at the Camp Nou.

Dembele’s move, following Neymar’s Barca’s exit, comes at a time the footballers union FIF-Pro has blasted as “transfer market madness”.

Alex sets early pace in CanadaMontreal

AFP

Marina Alex set the early pace, and her five-under par 66 was good

for a one-shot lead on Thurs-day after the first round of the LPGA’s Canadian Pacific Wom-en’s Open in Ottawa.

Alex, who just missed out on a berth in last week’s Sol-heim Cup, at least had the luxury of being well rested as she tackled the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club course. And her early tee time meant she enjoyed great scoring condi-tions at the start of her round.

“They were rolling unbe-lievably well,” she said of the greens. “Really quick. The nice thing is they’re still a bit soft, so the shots are holding into the greens, so it kind of makes for a good combo. “You can hit

shots in there pretty tight, and then you have really nice pace to hold them.” Alex said her performance on the greens was the key to her round.

“I hope I can just carry that into the next couple days and just tidy up the ball-striking a little bit,” she said.

South Korea’s Chun In-Gee and England’s Holly Clyburn shared second on 67.

Seven golfers were a shot further back on 68 -- China’s Feng Shanshan, South Korea’s Kim Sei-Young and Kang Hae-Ji, Thailand’s Pavarisa Yoktuan and Sherman Santiwiwatthan-aphong, and Americans Brittany Lincicome and Angel Yin.

Both Lincicome and Yin played on the US team that beat Europe in the Solheim Cup match play showdown last week.

Russell Henley of the United States plays his shot from the 18th tee during round one of the Northern Trust at Glen Oaks Club in Westbury, New York on Thursday.

Liverpool midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum (left), teammate Alberto Moreno (right) and Hoffenheim’s midfielder Dennis Geiger vie during the Champions League qualifier, second leg match at Anfield Stadium in Liverpool on Wednesday.

Fixtures (1400 GMT unless stated)Today

Bournemouth vs Manchester City (1130 GMT),

Crystal Palace vs Swansea, Huddersfield vs

Southampton, Manchester United vs Leicester

(1630 GMT), Newcastle vs West Ham, Watford vs

Brighton

TomorrowChelsea vs Everton (1230 GMT), Liverpool vs Ar-

senal (1500 GMT), Tottenham vs Burnley (1500

GMT), West Brom vs Stoke (1230 GMT)

ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE

18 SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017SPORT

Stokes hundred lifts EnglandLondon

Reuters

A battling century from Ben Stokes rescued England on the first day of the second Test at Headingley

but West Indies still dismissed Joe Root’s side for 258 on a much better day for the tourists.

Stokes was eventually dis-missed for exactly 100 -- his sixth Test century -- with Kemar Roach (4-71) and Shannon Gabriel (4-51) the main wicket-takers as West Indies put their first-Test rout behind them.

The tourists’ batsmen then negotiated a tricky final 45 min-utes to finish on 19-1, with Kraigg Brathwaite on 13 and night-watchman Devendra Bishoo on one.

The day would have had an even better had they held their catches but Stokes was dropped twice, on nine and 98, and Root, who went on to score 59, also put down on eight.

England’s batsmen rode their luck and Root’s half-century was his 12th in successive Tests -- equalling the world record of South Africa’s AB de Villiers.

Even though their total could prove a good score on a helpful pitch, it was hardly what Root would have imagined when he won the toss and chose to bat.

With the ball nipping around, England’s former captain Alastair Cook was the first to depart, edg-ing Gabriel to Kyle Hope at third slip having made 11.

Tom Westley lasted only 11

balls, his innings ending when he was trapped plumb lbw by Roach, and England slumped to 37 for three shortly after the hour mark when Mark Stoneman was caught by wicketkeeper Shane Dowrich when his attempted drive off Roach found the inside edge.

This was a familiar England tale of top-order woe and worse followed after the interval when Dawid Malan was bowled off an inside edge by a delivery from Jason Holder.

It was left to Root and Stokes to stem their advance until Eng-land’s captain was dismissed, tickling an attempted sweep off Devendra Bishoo to Jermaine Blackwood at first slip.

The wicket swung the day back towards the visitors who were celebrating again when Jonny Bairstow was caught low down at second slip by Holder off Gabriel.

At the other end, Stokes motored on, adding 64 runs with Moeen Ali in 10 overs after tea

before Moeen was caught slash-ing to cover.

If anything, England’s for-midable middle order has been strengthened by the introduc-tion of Chris Woakes and he added 23 to help Stokes through to his century off 122 balls.

Stokes did not add to that score and, in the same over he had been dropped on 98, was caught behind off Gabriel, who gave the batsman a verbal send-off.

England’s last three wickets fell for no runs off 10 balls, leav-ing West Indies, who had lost 19 wickets in a day in the first Test, to face England’s Jimmy Ander-son and Stuart Broad in overcast conditions.

Backed up by a ring of close fielders, Anderson proved par-ticularly challenging and had Kieran Powell snaffled at slip by Cook, his 150th Test catch, for five.

But West Indies held on to give provide themselves with a good platform on which to build on Saturday.

England are one nil up in the three-Test series.

Pakistan drop Hafeez, Kamran for World XI seriesKarachi

AFP

Pakistan left out experi-enced allrounder Mohammad Hafeez and

mis-firing opener Kamran Akmal from the 16-man squad for the three-match Twenty20 series against a World XI next month.

The series, to be played in Lahore and given interna-tional status by the International Cricket Coun-cil, is seen as an attempt to revive international cricket in Pakistan.

Pakistan have not hosted international cricket -- bar-ring a short limited over series against Zimbabwe in 2015 -- since terrorists’ attacks on the Sri Lankan team bus in Lahore in March 2009.

The World XI will be led by South African skipper Faf du Plessis and will have 13 other players from seven Test playing countries.

The three-match series will start from September 12 with the remaining two matches scheduled to take place on September 13 and September 15.

Sarfraz Ahmed will lead the Pakistan side which also sees the recall of paceman Sohail Khan, allrounder Aamer Yamin, and Umar Amin.

Hafeez and Kamran were part of Pakistan’s squad for the tour of the West Indies in March this year but were una-ble to keep their spot due to lack of performances.

Also out from that squad are Sohail Tanveer and Wahab Riaz.

Chief selector Inzamam-ul-Haq believed the series will give youngsters a chance to mature.

“The squad is a combina-tion of the fine blend of youth and senior players. It would be good for the young play-ers to get a chance to play on the home ground and per-form in front of the local public”, said Inzamam.

Pakistan squad:Sarfraz Ahmad (capt),

Fakhar Zaman, Ahmed She-hzad, Baber Azam, Shoaib Malik, Umar Amin, Imad Wasim, Shadab Khan, Mohammad Nawaz, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Aamer Yamin, Mohammad Amir, Ruman Raees, Usman Shin-wari, Sohail Khan

Spin-wary Australia face confident BangladeshDhaka

AFP

Australia is wary of the threat posed by Bangla-desh’s spinners ahead of

their two-Test series starting tomorrow in Dhaka, batsman Glenn Maxwell said.

The Australians have not won a Test series on the subcon-tinent since 2011, when they beat Sri Lanka 1-0, and have been preparing hard for the slow and turning tracks.

Steve Smith’s team have not played a Test in Bangladesh in more than a decade and their preparations were hampered when their only practice game was washed out because of flooding in Fatullah.

The opening Test at Mirpur will be the first between the countries since Ricky Ponting’s

side toured the country in 2006, winning the two-match series 2-0. Part of the visitors’ drills this time has included batting in the nets without a front pad, a lay designed to emphasise the importance of using the bat in order to avoid leg-before deci-sions against the slow bowlers.

Despite their lack of match practice, Maxwell, who suffered a heatstroke during training this week, believes the tactic will help the Australians against an upbeat Bangladesh unit, that has won two of their last three Tests.

“If you don’t have the safety of your front pad it makes you get your leg out of the way and actually your bat,” he said.

“So I think it is more about refining your defence and mak-ing sure you trust the fact that you can hit the ball and not hop-ing that your pads are there just

to save you.” Maxwell added: “It is more about guys who are hit-ting the stumps regularly and Bangladesh do that really well. They bowl stump to stump and put pressure on your defence so I suppose that’s one thing we will work on.”

Australia’s most recent trips to the subcontinent ended in

defeat. In 2016, they lost 3-0 in Sri Lanka and earlier this year they were beaten 2-1 in India.

Currently ranked fourth in the world, the former top-ranked team risk slipping further down the International Cricket Coun-cil ratings if they lose either Test, or draw both matches.

Bangladesh, meanwhile, are approaching the series as a great opportunity to register their first Test win against Australia since they were awarded Test-play-ing status in 2000.

Spinners Shakib Al Hasan, Mehedi Hasan and Taijul Islam, who combined for 20 wickets during their historic win against England last year, loom as the key players for the hosts.

Star all-rounder Shakib is confident his team’s home advan-tage and spin force will trouble their Australian counterparts.

The visitors are also expected to rely heavily on spinners in Dhaka by playing left-arm spinner Ashton Agar, for his first Test in four years, alongside veteran off-spinner Nathan Lyon.

Bangladesh: Mushfiqur Rahim (captain), Tamim Iqbal, Soumya Sarkar, Imrul Kayes, Liton Das, Shakib Al Hasan, Mominul Haque, Nasir Hossain, Sabbir Rahman, Mehedi Hasan, Shafiul Islam, Taijul Islam, Mus-tafizur Rahman and Taskin Ahmed.

Australia: Steve Smith (cap-tain), David Warner, Ashton Agar, Hilton Cartwright, Pat Cummins, Peter Handscomb, Matthew Wade, Josh Hazlewood, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, Glenn Maxwell, Matt Renshaw, Mitchell Swepson and Jackson Bird.

Federer could face Nadal in US Open semisNew York AFP

World number one Rafael Nadal could face third-ranked

Roger Federer in the semi-finals of the US Open under the draw unveiled yesterday.

Swiss star Federer, a 19-time Grand Slam champion who won this year’s Wimbledon and Aus-tralian Open titles, has never faced Spanish legend Nadal on the New York hardcourts in the year’s final Grand Slam tournament.

Nadal, a 15-time major champion who this year won his 10th French Open title, owns a 23-14 edge in his career rivalry with Federer, but the Swiss has won their past four meetings, including at this year’s Austral-ian Open final.

Nadal begins his quest for a third US Open crown after 2010 and 2013 against Serbian Dusan Lajovic. He could face

Frenchman Richard Gasquet in the third round, a foe he has defeated in all 15 of their previ-ous meetings.

The 31-year-old Spaniard could meet Czech Tomas Ber-dych in the fourth round and Bulgarian seventh seed Grigor Dimitrov in the quarter-finals.

Federer, 36, opens his run in the Flushing Meadows fortnight against American Frances Tia-foe and could meet Australian Nick Kyrgios in the fourth round as well as Austrian seventh seed Dominic Thiem in the quarter-finals.

Tiafoe upset Germany’s Alexander Zverev in the second round at Cincinnati last week.

British second seed Andy Murray plays American Tennys Sandgren in his first match with French 16th seed Lucas Pouille a possible round of 16 opponent and French eighth seed Jo-Wil-fried Tsonga potentially awaiting him in the quarter-finals.

Tsonga’s first match will be

against Romanian Marius Copil.Fourth seed Zverev and

Croatian fifth seed Marin Cilic are also possible last-eight oppo-nents. Zverev opens against a qualifier while Cilic begins against Frenchman Gilles Simon.

Zverev could face South Afri-can Kevin Anderson, whom he beat earlier this month in the Washington final, in the third round and US 13th seed Jack Sock in the fourth round.

Cilic, the 2014 US Open win-ner, could meet US 10th seed John Isner in the last 16.

The field is missing several top contenders due to injury, including defending champion Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland, two-time US Open winner Novak Djokovic of Serbia, Japan’s Kei Nishikori, the 2014 runner-up, and Canada’s Milos Raonic.

Meanwhile, Russian wild-card Maria Sharapova, making her return to Grand Slam tennis after a 15-month doping

suspension, will face world number two Simona Halep in the first round of the US Open.

Sharapova has a 6-0 career record against Halep, who last Sunday missed out on a third chance in as many months to climb to the top of the rankings. Five-time Grand Slam champion Sharapova was issued a two-year suspension after testing positive for the banned heart and blood boosting drug meldonium at the 2016 Australian Open, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport reduced the ban on appeal.

She said that she had taken it for several years and did not know it had been placed on the banned list at the start of 2016.

Former world number one Sharapova made her return in April at Stuttgart, reaching the semi-finals as a wildcard, but such invitations sparked criti-cism from some WTA rivals, saying she should have to work her way back without such ben-efits, some suggesting a life ban.

West Indies bowler Shannon Gabriel (third left) celebrates with teammates after taking the wicket of Ben Stokes (right) during play on the first day of the second Test match at Headingley cricket ground in Leeds, northern England, yesterday.

Venus Williams of the USA poses with world number one tennis player Rafael Nadal of Spain following their match in the Lotte New York Palace Invitational Badminton Tournament at the Lotte New York Palace in New York on Wednesday.

England (I innings):A Cook c K Hope b Gabriel ............................ 11

M Stoneman c Dowrich b Roach ................ 19

T Westley lbw Roach ...................................... 3

J Root c Blackwood b Bishoo ......................59

D Malan b Holder .............................................8

B Stokes c Dowrich b Gabriel ................... 100

J Bairstow c Holder b Gabriel ........................2

M Ali c Chase b Roach ................................. 22

C Woakes c Dowrich b Roach .....................23

S Broad b Gabriel .............................................0

J Anderson (not out) .......................................0

Extras (B-2, LB-3, W-4, NB-2) .................... 11

Total (all out) .................................258Fall of wickets: 1-19, 2-26, 3-37, 4-71, 5-140,

6-152, 7-220, 8-258, 9-258, 10-258.

Bowling: Roach 19.5-1-71-4; Gabriel 17-4-51-4

(1w); Holder 16-5-45-1 (3w, 2nb); Chase 12-1-59-

0; Bishoo 6-0-27-1.

West Indies (I innings):K Brathwaite (batting) ................................. 13

K Powell c Cook b Anderson ......................... 5

D Bishoo (batting)............................................1

Total (for 1 wkt) .............................. 19Fall of wicket: 1-11.

Bowling: Anderson 6-3-5-1; Broad 5-1-12-0;

Woakes 1-0-2-0.

SCOREBOARD

19SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017 SPORT

Las Vegas

AFP

Hype will collide with reality today as boxing legend Floyd Mayweather takes on mixed martial

arts superstar Conor McGregor in a battle of combat sport kings tipped to be the richest fight in history.

A little over two months after the fight was confirmed in June, Mayweather and McGregor will touch gloves at Las Vegas’s T-Mobile Arena in a 12-round boxing contest which will be beamed to more than 200 coun-tries and territories.

Fight promoters have breathlessly talked about the bout surpassing the $600m gen-erated by Mayweather’s 2015 fight with Manny Pacquiao, insisting that interest has been off chart.

“This is the biggest event that has ever happened in combat sports,” said Dana White, the chief executive of MMA’s Ulti-mate Fighting Championship.

“This fight will reach over a billion homes worldwide.”

Ringside seats were being offered on secondary ticket mar-kets for an eye-watering $100,250 apiece as of Thursday, even though some 1,700 seats in the 20,000-capacity venue remained unsold.

Millions of fans across the United States meanwhile are expected to shell out $99.95 to watch the fight on pay-per-view television, the most important economic engine of the spectacle.

The sense of anticipation has endured despite an unrelenting chorus of disparagement across the boxing world.

Farce. Freakshow. Circus. Mismatch. Rip-off. Bad for boxing.

It has been impossible to fol-low the build-up to the fight without being made aware of the near-universal tide of derision.

A cursory glance at the tale of the tape explains the cynicism.

Mayweather, 40, is one of the most skilled boxers of his gener-ation, a master of ringcraft who retired in 2015 after a glittering 21-year career with a perfect 49-0 record.

McGregor, a two-time world

champion in UFC, has never boxed professionally and has looked awkward and ungainly during training camp sparring sessions.

He has demonstrated punch-ing power in the UFC, but has never faced an opponent as elu-sive as Mayweather.

Anything other than a con-vincing Mayweather win will be regarded as a surprise; a McGre-gor victory a monumental upset.

Yet the millions who will gladly part with their cash to watch the fight in the arena or on television do not appear to be bothered by the possibility that they may be taken for an expen-sive ride.

Stephen Espinoza, the head of cable network Showtime Sports which is selling the fight on pay-per-view in the US, said many would tune in on the off-chance of witnessing “something incredible.”

“We did some focus group

testing, and the casual fans were absolutely adamant,” Espinoza said.

“Their response almost uni-versally was ‘We don’t care if it’s a mismatch. We don’t care if it’s non-competitive -- if there’s a .01 chance that something incredible could happen, we need to watch it.’

“And that’s why they’re going to watch it.”

Irrespective of the outcome, the two men at the centre of the action will be laughing all the way to the bank.

If pay-per-view targets are met, Mayweather could earn as much as $200m, pushing his career earnings towards $1bn.

McGregor, who four years ago was living off unemployment benefit in Dublin before his emergence as a star of MMA, could pocket $100m.

A gaudy “Money Belt” is also up for grabs to the winner, com-prising 3,360 diamonds, 600

sapphires, 300 emeralds mounted in 1.5 kilos of solid gold and set in alligator leather.

Both fighters engaged in a global publicity tour to drum up interest in the fight last month that was marked by a series of lurid verbal exchanges, ranging from expletives and homopho-bic slurs to allegations of racism.

Yet a final press conference between the two fighters on Wednesday saw something close to an outbreak of civility, with both men refraining from the trash-talking in a strangely sub-dued showdown.

McGregor insists that he is ready to stun the sceptics by knocking out Mayweather inside two rounds.

“I will go forward and put the pressure on and break this old man,” McGregor said.

“I don’t see him lasting two rounds. I think I could end him in one round if I want. Everyone

is going to eat their words on Saturday.”

A relaxed-looking May-weather was unfazed by McGregor’s warnings of impend-ing calamity, instead reminding the Irishman that he had faced plenty of explosive punchers through his career -- and emerged victorious.

“We can both do a lot of talk-ing, but it comes down to the skills,” said Mayweather, a 1/4 favouri te with some bookmakers.

“After 21 years I’ve been hit with everything and I’m still right here. One thing you must know about combat sports, if you give it, you must be able to take it.

“I go out there and do what I do. I’ve been here before and fought many different fighters with different styles.

“There have been plenty of guys who talked a lot of trash, but when it’s all said and done, I came out victorious.”

Mayweather, McGregor face off in ‘Money fight’

Mayweather vs McGregor

200 countries

49-0 record

UFC Champion

$1bn

$100m

$100,250

The fight was confirmed in June, Mayweather and McGregor will touch gloves at Las Vegas’s T-Mobile Arena in a 12-round boxing contest which will be beamed to more than 200 countries and territories.

Mayweather, 40, is one of the most skilled boxers of his generation, a master of ringcraft who retired in 2015 after a glittering 21-year career with a perfect 49-0 record.

McGregor, a two-time world champion in UFC, has never boxed professionally and has looked awkward and ungainly during training camp sparring sessions.

If pay-per-view targets are met, Mayweather could earn as much as $200m, pushing his career earnings towards $1bn.

McGregor, who four years ago was living off unemployment benefit in Dublin before his emergence as a star of MMA, could pocket $100m.

Ringside seats were being offered on secondary ticket markets for an eye-watering $100,250 apiece as of Thursday.

Lin, Son set up World semi-final showdown Glasgow

AFP

Five-time champion Lin Dan and top seed Son Wan-Ho set up a semi-

final showdown at the World Badminton Championships after coming through their quarter-final matches yesterday.

Chinese star Lin, who won the last of his world crowns in 2013, overcame Hong Kong’s Vincent Wong Wing Ki 21-17, 21-18 in Glasgow.

“I really enjoyed today’s match,” said 33-year-old Lin, who was taken to three games in his two previous matches.

“I am very happy that I managed to minimise my opponent’s performance today. It was good to get it done quicker today and I expect to perform fully to m y 1 0 0 p e r c e n t tomorrow.”

Son, the world number one, beat India’s Kidambi Srikanth 21-14, 21-18 to

guarantee his first world medal.

“Today I am really happy with my performance because this is my first semi-final,” said the South Korean star, Son.

“Srikanth was coming back in the second set and won seven points in a row and I was getting very nerv-ous. I was just telling myself, ‘One point at a time.’

“If I had lost the second one, who knows what might have happened?”

Beating Aussies second only to World Cup, say All Blacks Dunedin

AFP

The All Blacks insisted they were under “massive” pressure for today’s Test against Australia,

despite thrashing them last week -- and said they rate the trans-Tasman Bledisloe Cup second only to the World Cup.

Bookmakers in both countries have New Zealand as red-hot favourites to clinch the Cup for the 15th consecutive year, after they opened the three-Test series by beating the Wallabies 54-34 in Sydney.

But as the world champions wrapped up preparations in Dune-din, with lock Brodie Retallick among several players practising long-range drop goals, captain Kieran Read said they were taking nothing for granted.

The Bledisloe Cup doubles as part of the Rugby Championship, the southern hemisphere competition also featuring South Africa and Argentina.

“This (Bledisloe Cup) is the most important trophy we play for out-side the World Cup. I’m really desperate for it. I want it,” Read said.

New Zealand built a 54-6 lead against Australia last week, but they are still smarting at the way they conceded 28 unanswered points as the Wallabies staged a revival.

“The key from our point of view is to start again,” said backrower Read, who will be playing his 102nd Test.

“We certainly weren’t happy with the last 30 minutes of last week. It was probably a great kick in the guts for us.

“We slightly took our foot off the throat, and if we’re not there men-tally then they are a team that can do that. They’re dangerous, they’re hungry and they’ve certainly got a point to prove.”

In addition to the lure of seal-ing the Bledisloe Cup, the All Blacks are also drawing on the memory of New Zealand rugby icon Colin Meads, who died last Sunday aged 81.

The All Blacks will be wearing special jerseys in honour of Meads and both sides will observe a minute’s silence before the game.

This August 19 file photo shows New Zealand’s All Blacks centre Sonny Bill Williams (centre) performing the haka with team-mates Sam Cane (left) and Ben Smith before their Rugby Championship test match against the Australian Wallabies in Sydney. Williams will start in Dunedin today after showing no after effects from the head knock he took early the opening match against Australia, won by the All Blacks 54-34 in Sydney last weekend.

China’s Lin Dan returns against Hong Kong’s Vincent Wong Wing Ki during their men’s singles quarter-final match of the 2017 BWF World Championships of badminton at Emirates Arena in Glasgow yesterday.

SATURDAY 26 AUGUST 2017

FAJRSHOROOK

03.52 am

05.12 am

ZUHRASR

11.36 am

03.05 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

06.01 pm

07.31 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

20 MORNING BREAK

New York

AP

You can finally shake it off: Tay-lor Swift has released her new s i n g l e . T h e

27-year-old singer dropped the upbeat song “Look What You Made Me Do” — which uses an interpolation from Right Said Fred’s 1991 hit — late Thursday to streaming platforms and iTunes.

The song, featuring ele-ments of pop, dance and house, includes sharp lyrics like: “Honey, I rose up from the dead I do it all the time/I got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined I check it once/Then I check it twice.”

The track ends with a voice message of Swift say-ing, “I’m sorry, but the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, ‘cause she’s dead.”

The anticipation of “Look What You Me Do” helped

Swift trend heavily on social media. The song is the first single from her sixth album, “reputation,” to be released on November 10. A clip of the song’s video premiered yes-terday on “Good Morning America.”

Swift wiped her social media pages clean last week and caused a frenzy online with video snippets of slith-ery snake parts. Fans dissected the clues in hopes it would reveal details about her new music, and the pop star finally announced Wednesday that a new song would come this week fol-lowed by an album three months later.

“Reputation” is the fol-low-up to 2014’s “1989,” Swift’s first official pop album after years of dominating in country music. “1989” launched seven hit singles, from “Shake It Off” to “Bad Blood,” and won three Gram-mys, including album of the year. The album helped her

produce a star-studded world tour, featuring guest appear-ances from musicians such as Justin Timberlake and John Legend to A-List celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Chris Rock.

“Look What You Made Me Do” uses an interpolation of a melody from a No.1 hit that was written by Richard Fair-brass, Fred Fairbrass and Rob Manzoli. After the song’s release, Right Said Fred tweeted thanks to Swift and called the new song a marve-lous reinvention.

Swift wrote and produced the new song with frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff, who performs in the bands Bleachers and fun. Antonoff, who has produced for Lorde, Sia, Sara Bareilles and others, earned a Grammy Award for his work on three songs from Swift’s “1989.”

He also produced and co-wrote Swift and Zayn’s Top 5 hit from the “Fifty Shades Darker” soundtrack, “I Don’t

Want to Live Forever,” and the two shared a Golden Globe nomination for the song “Sweeter than Fiction,” from the 2013 film “Once Chance.”

Swift’s “reputation” could

become the singer’s fourth album to sell more than one million albums in its debut week, following “1989,” 2012’s “Red” and 2010’s “Speak Now.”

Taylor Swift releases new song

A file picture of Taylor Swift performing “Out of the Woods” at the 58th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles

AP

The director of “Wonder Woman” says James Cameron’s criticism of

the film is “unsurprising” because he can’t understand it. In an interview with Brit-ish newspaper The Guardian, Cameron called “the self-con-gratulatory back-patting” Hollywood’s been doing over the film “misguided.” Cam-eron says Wonder Woman is “an objectified icon.”

He points to Sarah Con-nor, the gritty protagonist from his Terminator films, as a better role model.

“Wonder Woman” direc-tor Patty Jenkins fired back in a tweet Thursday night, writ-ing that Cameron can’t understand the character because he’s not a woman. She adds that “if women have to always be hard, tough and troubled to be strong ... then we haven’t come very far.”

‘Wonder Woman’ director slams James Cameron

Ramat Gan

AFP

A lonely monkey at an Israeli zoo has found a way to soothe her maternal urges: by adopt-

ing a chicken.Niv, an Indonesian black

macaque, has spent the past week caressing, cleaning and playing with the bird at the Ramat Gan Safari Park near Tel Aviv. “It seems that Niv, who is four years old and has reached the age of sexual maturity, has difficulty finding a partner,” the zoo’s spokeswoman Mor Porat said.

“This probably explains the maternal instinct she expresses to this chicken.”

The bird, which doesn’t have a name, could easily escape through the bars but chooses to stay near Niv.

“These kinds of relationships are rare,” Porat said. “Sometimes macaques kill and eat chickens that enter their pens or play with them until they die.” To avoid such a tragic end, officials separated Niv and her feathered companion from the other macaques -- apart from her mother, who is often the target of hostilities from other females.

Porat said the chicken “seems very happy to have found a surro-gate mother. At night they sleep together.”

A few months ago, Niv attempted to adopt a previous chicken, but it spurned her advances. Seemingly unlikely ani-mal friendships are often the result of different species being put together by humans.

A bear, lion and tiger discovered during a drug raid in the United States remained inseparable for life after they were moved to an animal sanctuary. But Porat said it wasn’t clear where the chickens at the zoo had come from. The black macaque is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for the Con-servation of Nature.

The domesticated chicken is the most common bird in the world.

New York

IANS

If you often tend to belittle your four-year-old son or daughter’s ability to do a task, think again.

According to psychologists, young children may have a sense of self-worth similar to that of older kids and adults, and may become discouraged.

The findings revealed that our ability to reason about our self-worth as individuals develops early in life.

Young children can think of themselves as possessing abstract traits and abilities, and they can also reason about their self-worth, which has implications for self-esteem, the researchers said.

“Young children’s self-concepts are not qualitatively different from those of older children and adults,”

said Andrei Cimpian, Associate Pro-fessor at the New York University in the US. “However, this level of matu-rity in reasoning about the self also means that young children can become dispirited in the face of fail-ure and are not the undaunted optimists that previous theories have described,” Cimpian added.

It has long been thought that young children think of themselves in concrete, behavioural terms and, unlike adults or older children, are cognitively incapable of reasoning about their traits or their worth as individuals.

For the study, which appeared in the journal Child Development, the team conducted a series of studies of children ranging from four to seven years in age, where the children were asked to imagine they could not com-plete a task despite “trying really

hard”. In some cases, they were told the task was easy and in others that it was difficult. The results showed that children lowered their estima-tion of their abilities, but not their global self-worth, when told they failed an easy, as opposed to hard, task.

Conversely, they lowered their estimation of their global self-worth, but not their abilities, when informed they failed an adult-requested (vs. self-initiated) task.

Importantly, adult involvement could negatively affect self-esteem, independent of the task.

“It is therefore important for both parents and educators to understand that children may become more dis-couraged than we previously realised and find ways to foster a productive learning environment,” Cimpian noted.

Lonely monkey adopts chicken at Israeli zoo

Innovative farming

London

AP

It was the wedding that captivated the world. Lady Diana Spencer said “I will” to Britain’s Prince Charles,

becoming Princess of Wales and bring-ing fresh youth and glamour to Britain’s royal family.

Now, 36 years later, The

Associated Press has restored original footage from the July 29, 1981, wed-ding and is releasing it in 4K resolution on YouTube.

The 25 minutes of footage comes from the archive of British Movietone, which AP acquired in 2016. British Movietone was the only company to film the wedding on high-quality 35 mm film, making it possible to restore

it to a higher quality.“The restored 4K film is simply

stunning and a world away from the 1980s videotape versions that we’re familiar with,” said Alwyn Lindsey, AP’s vice president of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The public had huge affection for Diana, whose marriage to Charles later dissolved. Her sons, Princes William

and Harry, have carried on her legacy by promoting frank discussions of mental health issues, among other causes.

Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. A year later, she and companion Dodi Fayed died in a high-speed car crash in Paris. The 20th anniversary of the crash is Thursday.

Restored footage of Charles & Diana’s wedding released

Sense of self-worth in kids similar to adults

A wolf-like robot “Super Monster Wolf” stands beside a rice field to drive away wild animals that cause damages to crops in Kisarazu, Chiba prefecture, yesterday.

HIGH TIDE 08:00 – 19:45 LOW TIDE 02:00 – 13:30

Hazy to misty at places at first be-

comes hot daytime and humid by

night.

WEATHER TODAY

Minimum Maximum

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

32oC 39oC