Iran-Russia co-op bearing fruit: oﬃcialmedia.mehrnews.com/d/2016/09/15/0/2209488.pdf2016/09/15...

Tehran hosting 3

international exhibitions

TEHRAN — Three international exhibi-

tions are being concurrently held at the Tehran Permanent International Fair-grounds, IRIB news reported on Tuesday.

The 7th international beverage, coffee and tea related industries exhi-bition, the 15th international confec-tionary fair, and the 1st international exhibition of dairy products and re-lated industries kicked off on Tuesday and will last for four days.

Some 80 Iranian and 10 foreign companies from 8 countries name-ly the United Arab Emirates, Indo-nesia, Italy, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Den-mark, Colombia and South Korea are showcasing their latest products and achievements in the 7th international beverage, coffee and tea related in-dustries exhibition.

Also, the 15th international confection-ary fair is being attended by 361 Iranian and 85 foreign companies from 22 coun-tries including Austria, Germany, Spain, Britain, the U.S., the United Arab Emir-ates, Ukraine, Italy, Belgium, Turkey, China, France, the Switzerland, Sweden, Den-mark, Poland, Lebanon, Malaysia, Canada, Colombia, South Korea and India.

According to Jamshid Maqazeie, the secretary for Association of Iranian Confectionary Manufacturing Compa-nies, confectionary industry in Iran has witnessed significant improvements during the last ten years and the num-ber of foreign exhibitors in this year’s fair has doubled compared to the last’s edition of the event.

Moreover, in the first edition of Iran international exhibition of dairy prod-ucts and related industries 29 domes-tic companies and one German exhib-itor are showcasing their products.

By Mohammad Javad ZarifIranian Foreign Minister

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54 15 16Iranian tilework gives Malaysian museum a facelift

Exports of agro products from Iran rises 12% in 5 months

Iranian archer Rahimi shines in Rio 2016 Paralympics

Works by five Iranian artists to compete in Sofia poster triennial

W W W . T E H R A N T I M E S . C O M I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L YAdvisor slams Kerry for trying to buy sympathy for MKO 2

16 Pages Price 10,000 Rials 38th year No.12650 Thursday SEPTEMBER 15, 2016 Shahrivar 25, 1395 Dhul Hijjah 13, 1437

Iran one of handful of states vital for success

of Silk Road: SISU professor

TEHRAN — A professor of Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) tells the Tehran Times that “Iran is one of a handful of countries that are indispensable to making the new Silk Road a success.”

Robert R. Bianchi says, Iran, along with neighboring Turkey and Pakistan, “enjoys an irresistible combination of geographic advantage, market size, natural resourc-es, and regional political influence” to help realize the new Silk Road, also known as the “One Belt, One Road”.

Following is the text of the interview: We witness that China is trying to revive the

ancient Silk Road. Why?A: China’s New Silk Road initiative—also known as

the “One Belt, One Road” strategy—seeks to translate China’s economic strength into greater political influ-ence around the world. The project is a comprehen-sive effort to integrate all of Eurasia and Africa, cre-ating an interconnected megaregion encompassing the entire Eastern Hemisphere and linking the Pacific

and Atlantic Basins through the Indian Ocean and the

Mediterranean Sea. The wider geopolitical goal is to rival—and perhaps surpass—America as the preeminent global power,

but to avoid open warfare for at least a decade or two so that China can strength-

en its still modest mili-tary capacity.

TEHRAN – The

secretary of the Expediency Council has said Washington has agreed with the ceasefire in Syria on “behalf of terrorists” as there is no other side in Syria that Washington can side with.

“The truce took effect in Syria today (Monday). Russia singed the truce on behalf of the Syrian government as well as Mr. Bashar al-Assad. But on behalf of whom did the U.S. sign it? Principal-

ly, on behalf of terrorists as there is no other side,” Mo-hsen Rezaie tweeted.

The U.S. and Russia agreed on a tentative ceasefire deal for Syria after 13 hours of talks in Geneva on September 9, intended to lead the way to a joint U.S.-Russian air cam-paign against Islamic State and other extremist groups and new negotiations on the country’s political future.

“Perhaps the U.S. intends to show off with such acts

both its presence and in-fluence in all international events. But they (the Ameri-cans) need to ask themselves if their fruitless and disgrace-ful participation has pro-duced any result ever,” the former IRGC chief noted.

Tehran has announced it welcomes any internation-al initiative to restore peace and stability to the belea-guered Syria while warning of terrorists using the truce as an opportunity to get

equipped by their patrons, the point referred to by the Iranian defense minister.

“Backers of the Takfiri ter-rorism may use the curfew as an opportunity to arm the terrorists,” said Hossein Dehqan on Saturday.

Washington signed Syria truce on terrorists’ behalf: Mohsen Rezaie

Let us rid the world of WahhabismPublic relations firms with no qualms about taking tainted petrodollars are experiencing a bonanza. Their latest project has been to persuade us that the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, is no more. As a Nusra spokesman told CNN, the rebranded rebel group, sup-posedly separated from its parent ter-rorist organization, has become “mod-erate.”

Thus is fanaticism from the Dark Ages sold as a bright vision for the 21st century. The problem for the P.R. firms’ wealthy, of-ten Saudi, clients, who have lavishly fund-ed Nusra, is that the evidence of their ru-inous policies can’t be photoshopped out of existence. If anyone had any doubt, the recent video images of other “moderates” beheading a 12-year-old boy were a horri-fying reality check.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, militant Wahhabism has under-gone a series of face-lifts, but under-neath, the ideology remains the same — whether it’s the Taliban, the various incarnations of Al Qaeda or the so-called Islamic State, which is neither Is-lamic nor a state. But the millions of peo-ple faced with the Nusra Front’s tyranny are not buying the fiction of this disaffil-iation. Past experience of such attempts at whitewashing points to the real aim: to enable the covert flow of petrodollars to extremist groups in Syria to become overt, and even to lure Western govern-ments into supporting these “moder-ates.” The fact that Nusra still dominates the rebel alliance in Aleppo flouts the public relations message.

Saudi Arabia’s effort to persuade its Western patrons to back its shortsight-ed tactics is based on the false premise that plunging the Arab world into fur-ther chaos will somehow damage Iran.

(See full text at tehrantimes.com)

Iran’s 4-month non-oil exports to Indonesia up 25% yr/yr

TEHRAN — The worth of Iran’s non-oil exports to Indonesia during the

first four months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20-July 21) witnessed a 25-percent growth compared to the same period of time in the preced-ing year, according to Iran’s Commercial Attaché to Indonesia Anvar Kamari.

The official said that the country’s worth of non-oil exports to Indonesia rose to $27 million in the mentioned time from $21.5 million in the first four months of the previous year, the portal of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) an-nounced.

Kamari also said that the value of trade between Iran and Indonesia stood at $65 million in the first four months of this year, showing 26 percent rise from $51.5 million in the same period of time in the past year.

TEHRAN — Iranian Deputy Foreign Min-

ister for Middle East and African Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari said on Wednesday that the effective and growing regional

cooperation between Iran and Russia is producing positive results by helping sta-bilize the Middle East region.

“The positive results of the cooperation between Iran and Russia at the regional lev-

el is being revealed day by day and this rela-tionship is being expanded in various areas,” he said during a meeting in Moscow with director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies Leonid Reshetnikov. 2

Iran-Russia co-op bearing fruit: official

See page 15

By M.A. SakiEXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

See page 1 3

TEHRAN - Moham-mad Javad Larijani, the

head of the Iranian High Council for Hu-man Rights, said on Wednesday that Iran attaches great value to relations with Italy and hopes the ties would be expanded in various spheres.

“Our relations with Italy are historic and we hope that Ita-ly would restore its status in economic ties with Iran…,” Larijani said during a meeting with President of the Ital-

ian Senate Piero Grasso.Larijani expressed hope that the

relations between the two countries would expand in various areas with the

implementation of the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Com-prehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

He also said that terrorism is a se-rious threat to the whole world and

added that Iran is the forerun-ner in fighting terrorism.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran believes in a compre-hensive and international

fight against terrorism and does not ac-cept division of terrorism into ‘good and bad’ and considers it unconstructive,” he remarked.

For his part, Grasso said that terror-ism poses “serious threat” to Europe and added that cooperation with Iran in fighting terrorism will be “effective”.

Grasso also said that Italy attaches great importance to expansion of rela-tions with Iran.

Larijani is in Italy to attend the third round of talks on the human rights and judiciary issues.

Iran’s human rights chief says Tehran favors close ties with Italy P O L I T I C Sd e s k


Four Iranian gamers qualify for ESWC

TEHRAN — Four Iranian gamers have qualified for the Electronic Sports World

Cup (ESWC), a pioneering and leading international eS-ports event, which will be held in Paris from September 27 to 31.

Navid Borhani-Marand, ESWC FIFA World Champion 2014, will compete again in this category this year, Iran’s Nation-al Foundation for Computer Games (NFCG) announced in a press release on Wednesday.

Mohammad Kamali was selected for Pro Evolution Soccer (PES), a series of football video games developed and pub-lished by Konami.

Amir-Hossein Asadi and Parsa Sadeqi will compete in the Clash Royale category.

Established in 2003, the ESWC brings together the best players in the world and their fans to organize entertaining shows.

The competition is held 3 to 5 times per year with cham-pions from the 5 continents by Oxent, a company that runs Toornament.com, the eSports platform for tournaments or-ganizers, their participants and their fans. P O L I T I C S

d e s kP O L I T I C Sd e s k

IRGC tells U.S. to quit Persian Gulf to avoid clash

Supreme National Security Council has agreed on FATF: Shamkhani

TEHRAN – On

Wednesday, the IRGC Navy chief called on the United States to withdraw its war-ships from the Persian Gulf in order to avoid any con-frontation in the territorial waters of Iran.

“The Americans should end their presence in the important region of the Persian Gulf in a respect-ful way in order to prevent problems,” Ali Fadavi said.

There have been some incidents between IRGC speed boats and U.S. Navy warships in the Persian Gulf in the recent years.

In the most recent one on September 25, four IRGC vessels made a quick

intercept of a U.S. warship, what Washington described as “harassment” and Iran rejected as a common practice by IRGC forces.

In January 2016, the crews of two U.S. Navy boats were detained by IRGC Navy patrol guards after they strayed into the Iranian territorial waters.

The IRGC Navy is re-sponsible for the security of the Hormoz Strait, where a number of U.S. navy carri-ers and warships are pres-ent.

Despite such incidents, Tehran and Washington, coupled with five world powers, thrashed out a deal in July 2015 over Tehran’s nuclear deal.

TEHRAN – The

Supreme National Securi-ty Council has reached an agreement on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the decision is await-ing a confirmation by the Supreme Leader, the SNSC Secretary Ali Shamkhani said on Wednesday.

On whether there is a positive view toward the implementation of the FATF, he said the decisions by the council are implemented only when they are “signed” and “confirmed” by the Su-preme Leader and since it has not yet been approved by the Leader “I cannot say anything in this regard.”

The SNSC chief also

dismissed media reports that he is scheduled to go to Majlis on Saturday to explain to MPS about the FATF.

“I have not heard such a thing,” he told reporters.

When asked isn’t it nec-essarily that the treaty be approved by the Majlis, he said, “I cannot give techni-cal views.”

However, he added, if there is much backing for the treaty “there will be less problems in the future”.

Shamkhani also said the approval of the FATF by the SNSC is definitely in line with “national in-terests”, saying anything other than this cannot be imagined.

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TEHRAN — The IRGC as the guardi-

an of the Islamic Revolution is close-ly monitoring every military and non-military threat to the revolu-tionary cause so as to react appro-priately and timely, the IRGC chief has noted.

Major General Mohammad Ali Ja-fari made his comments on Wednesday in Tehran after four vessels of the IRGC Navy made a high-speed intercept of a U.S. warship in late August near the Strait of Hormuz.

Under Article 150 of the Iranian Con-stitution, the IRGC, which was created af-ter the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has the responsibility to shield the Islamic Revo-lution against both internal and external threats.

“As asser ted by the Supreme Leader, protecting the Islamic Rev-olution and its achievements is the IRGC’s main mission, only one di-mension of which is military action. The IRGC keeps itself prepared for dealing with threats through precise and ongoing monitoring,” Jafari ex-plained.

It is this revolutionary quality of the elite guards which distinguishes it from other regular armies around the world, the commander stressed, where a multi-pronged effort is made to defend the revolutionary move-ment.

“The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps keeps boosting all-encompassing preparation to defend the revolution in all areas,” he added.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016SEPTEMBER 15, 20162I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a lN A T I O N

MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS

TEHRAN — An MP sitting on the Majlis

National Security and Foreign Policy Committee has thrown his full support behind the Rouhani administration’s decision to cooperate with the Finan-cial Action Task Force, contrasting the pessimism shown by opponents inside the country.

“Technically speaking, the FATF is a banking inevitability for us in the post-sanctions era that will pave the way for interaction with internation-al systems,” said Alireza Rahimi on Wednesday.

The support comes one day after government spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht said the Supreme National Security Council had ap-proved cooperation with the inter-national body, ending opponents’ acerbic criticism of the move by the government.

The opponents say if Iran becomes a member of the FATF, then it should consider restrictions for some or-ganizations, including the IRGC-con-trolled Khatam al-Anbiya construc-tion company, as long as they are backlisted by the U.S.

There are others who also cite ac-cession to the money laundering body a national security threat, fearing dis-closure of the Iranians’ banking infor-mation.

Trying to soothe the concern, CBI governor Valiollah Seif has said Ira-nians’ bank accounts information will remain safe and not passed on to the FATF in exchanges with the pol-

icy-making body of the international financial system.

At a meeting of the task force at-

tended by its 37 members in June in South Korea, the money launder-ing monitoring body acceded to a 12-month moratorium of some re-strictions on Iran.

"The FATF welcomes Iran's adoption of, and high-level political commitment to, an Action Plan to address its strategic (anti-money laundering and anti-terror financing) deficiencies," the task force said in its statement.

"The FATF therefore has suspended counter-measures for 12 months in order to monitor Iran's progress in implement-ing the Action Plan.”

Closer ties between Tehran and the FAFT is an outcome of the deal Iran and world powers reached an agreement on the Middle East powerhouse’s nuclear program.

The accession, if finalized, will make it easier for Iran to re-engage with the global banking and financial systems.

TEHRAN — Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the

top advisor to the Iranian parliament speaker, on Wednesday denounced the United States for trying to buy sympathy for the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) while Washington is completely dismissive of the security of the Iraqi and Syrian people.

The remarks by Amir-Abdollahi-an came after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke about the resettle-ment of the remaining members of the MKO, who were expelled on Fri-day from Iraq and were relocated in

Albania.The MKO, who sided with Saddam

Hussein against Iran in the 1980s, is known as monafeqin (hypocrites) in Iran. They carried out numerous terrorist activities in Iran in the ear-ly years of the Islamic Revolution. It was blacklisted as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union. However, the group was delisted by the EU in 2009 and by the U.S. and Canada in 2012.

“John Kerry

speaks with pride about securing monafeqin, because the United States

completely dismisses the safety and honor of the Muslim people of Syria and Iraq,” Amir-Abdollahian told ICANA.

Referring to Washington’s actions regarding the MKO and other

terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria, the former diplomat

said, “On the one hand, the White House tries

to establish a cease-fire in Aleppo to se-cure terrorists un-

der siege by the Syrian army, and on the other hand Kerry talks about providing security for the members of the terrorist group.”

He added that U.S. official’s ac-tions and words prove that the country has not taken any steps and will not do so to save people from terrorist groups in the region, espe-cially inside Syria.

According to a statement released by the MKO on Friday, the last 280 members of the group were relocated to Albania after leaving Camp Liberty (Hurriya) near Baghdad.

TEHRAN — The Iranian Foreign Min-istry on Tuesday categorically rejected

any consultation between Iran and the U.S. on regional issues including the Syrian conflict.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran and the U.S. have had and will not have any contact, consultation and talk on the regional issues,” ministry spokesman Bahram Qas-semi said.

Qassemi’s comments came in response to claims of contact between Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his U.S. counterpart John Kerry on the Syrian ceasefire.

The Syrian government approved a truce in Syria on Monday which was brokered by the U.S. and Russia.

According to Reuters, twenty-four hours after the truce took effect, UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura declared the situation had improved dramatical-ly, saying UN aid access should be possible soon includ-ing to eastern Aleppo, the rebel-held half of the city that is under blockade.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had not received a single report of combatants or civilians killed by fighting in any areas covered by the truce.

1 The Iranian diplomat also praised Vladimir Putin’s “strategic” view toward the developments in the region and said Tehran is “firmly determined” to expand comprehensive ties with Russia.

Calling Iran and Russia two “influential” countries at the international stage, he said there are many capacities for expansion of ties.

For his part, Reshetnikov said that expansion of co-operation between Tehran and Moscow will be beneficial to the region.

He also said that “regional convergence” of Iran and Russia is very “valuable”.

The Iranian deputy foreign minister left Tehran for Moscow on Monday for talks with Russian offi-cials on regional developments, especially the Syr-ian conflict.

Jaberi Ansari’s visit took place upon the invitation of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister for Middle East Mikhail

Bogdanov. The visit started exactly the day that the truce in Syria went into effect.

Iran and Russia have been helping the Syrian govern-ment against the militants.

Jaber i Ansar i sa id the current s i tuat ion in the Middle East has provided a “h is tor ic op-por tuni ty” for cooperat ion between the two countr ies .

In an interview with Azerbaijani state news agency AZERTAC in early August, Putin said, "In certain areas, Russian-Iranian cooperation has already become stra-tegic in nature.”

The Russian leader also said, "We are also in-terested in strengthening our partnership with Teh-ran in regional affairs. We consider it an important factor of maintaining stability and security across a large territory from Central Asia and the Caspian region to the Middle East.”

Parliamentarian backs FATF deal, calls it a banking must

Advisor slams Kerry for trying to buy sympathy for MKO

Tehran dismisses consultation with U.S. on Syria

Iran-Russia co-op bearing fruit: official





TEHRAN — Russian Foreign Ministry’s director of the Second

Asian Department said on Wednesday that the for-eign ministers of Iran and six world powers are likely to hold a meeting in New York.

They will meet during of the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Zamir Kabulov said, ILNA reported.

Elsewhere, he commented on the Afghan crisis, saying, “There can be no prospect of a solution to the crisis without Iran.”

Iran, 5+1 FMs likely to hold talks in New York


TEHRAN — The Interior Minis-try is hopeful that a bill on finan-

cial transparency of election campaigns is passed by the Majlis, the deputy interior minister for politi-cal affairs said on Wednesday.

“This is so good to have a law that clarifies elec-toral expenditure,” Mohammad Hossein Moqimi said in a press conference, Mizan reported.

However, he said, “The bill has been rejected by the Councils and Majlis Internal Affairs Committee, but we hope it gets enough votes on the Majlis floor.”

Ministry wants Majlis to ratify bill on financial transparency of election campaigns


Zarif visits Mexico

TEHRAN — Iran’s foreign minis-ter visited Mexico on Wednesday,

where he met with Mexican counterpart Claudia Ruiz Massieu.

Mohammad Javad Zarif is slated to attend the Non-Aligned Movement foreign ministers meeting which will be held on Thursday and Friday in Vene-zuela’s Margarita Island.

Zarif will deliver his speech to NAM on Thursday.The NAM’s foreign ministers meeting will be fol-

lowed by a heads of state meeting on Saturday and Sunday. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will also attend the conference.

Together, Zarif and Rouhani will leave Venezuela for Cuba afterwards.


Qatar seeking close ties with Iran: ex-Iranian diplomat

TEHRAN — A former Irani-an ambassador to Doha on

Wednesday said that Qatar is seeking to improve relations with Iran.

Speaking to Radio Iran, Abdollah Sohrabi hailed the Qatari emir ’s recent phone call to President Hassan Rouhani as a precursor to more intimate relations.

Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani telephoned Rou-hani on the occasion of the Eid al-Adha feast on Tuesday, during which he urged Arab countries of the Persian Gulf and Iran to settle their differences through dialogue.


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U.S. harassment claims untrue: IRGC commander

TEHRAN — A senior com-mander of the Islamic Revolution

Guards Corps has joined other top ranking military officials in dismissing claims by the U.S. Navy that an American warship patrolling the Persian Gulf was harassed by Iranian boats.

“Reports by American officials about the failure of the IRGC naval forces’ vessels to keep their dis-tance and their confrontation with … [American] vessels are sheer lies,” Ali Fadavi, commander of the IRGC Navy, said on Tuesday, Press TV reported.


Iranian armed forces gearing up for parades

TEHRAN — Iran’s Armed Forces will stage military parades across

the country next week to commemorate the Sacred Defense Week, which marks the anniversary of the onset of the Iraqi war on Iran 36 years ago.

While the most impressive ceremony is ex-pected to be held in Tehran, at the mausoleum of the late Imam Khomeini, the IRGC has also ar-ranged a large-scale parade in the Persian Gulf port city of Bandar Abbas, Tasnim reported on Wednesday.


“Technically speaking, the FATF is a banking inevitability for us in the post-sanctions era that

will pave the way for interaction with international systems,” said Alireza Rahimi on Wednesday.

Jaberi Ansari says the current situation in the Middle East

has provided a “historic opportunity” for cooperation

between Iran and Russia.

U.S. ambassador is ‘not a governor of Turkey,’ says Turkish FMForeign Minister Mevlüt Çavu?o?lu has slammed the recent statement by the United States Embassy in Ankara, saying the U.S. ambassador in Turkey “is not a governor.”

“Some statements, especially coming from our allies, make us sad at a time when we are fighting against terror-ism,” Çavu?o?lu said on Sept. 13 in his hometown Antalya.

“No elected official can be untouchable if they are aiding terrorists,” he added.

The U.S. Embassy on Sept. 11 released a statement on its website expressing concern about a government decision to replace 24 mayors in Turkey’s east and southeast with trus-tees, calling for early local elections as soon as possible.

“First of all, the method of such an interference cannot be accepted,” Çavu?o?lu said in response.

“We voice our concerns about issues in many countries, for example the rising racism in the U.S. The police have killed countless people in the U.S., but I don’t call my ambas-sador in Washington and tell him to make a statement. We voice our concerns directly to our American counterparts, this is just politeness,” he added.

The foreign minister also complained that “the Americans feel entitled to say anything.”

“None of you are the bosses of Turkey … If you want to have a strong relationship with Turkey, you will consider Turkey as an equal partner,” Çavu?o?lu said. “It is not a sec-ond-class country.”

“Your ambassadors are not governors in Turkey. They should do their jobs properly within the framework of the Vienna Conventions,” he added.

Çavu?o?lu also reiterated Ankara’s official arrest request for U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, who is ac-cused of leading the July 15 failed coup attempt.

“[Gülen] should be extradited to face trial. All those who fled abroad who are linked to the failed coup will have to account for it eventually,” he stated. (Source: Hurriyet Daily News)

New York attorney general probes Trump's charityNew York's attorney general has disclosed that his office is investigating Donald Trump's charity to determine whether it has abided by state laws governing nonprofits.

The disclosure came on a day Democrats in the United States House of Representatives called for a federal inves-tigation into a donation the Trump Foundation made to a political group supporting Florida's attorney general after her office said it was considering legal action against Trump University.

“My interest in this issue really is in my capacity as regula-tor of non-profits in New York state,” Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, told CNN on Tuesday.

“We have been concerned that the Trump Foundation has engaged in impropriety from that point of view.”

Schneiderman has been at loggerheads with the Repub-lican presidential nominee over the Trump University real es-tate program, which he has called “straight up fraud”.

The Trump Foundation has faced a series of damaging stories, including by The Washington Post, which reported over the weekend that the White House candidate himself had not donated to his own charity since 2008.

The newspaper found other irregularities, including that Trump spent $20,000 of money that had been set aside for charitable purposes to purchase a 6ft painting of himself.

Trump Foundation made an illegal $25,000 donation to a campaign group affiliated with Pam Bondi, Florida's attorney general, in 2013 as she was considering joining Schneider-man's fraud case against Trump University.

“We've inquired into it and we've had correspondence with them. I didn't make a big deal out of it or hold a press conference,” Schneiderman said.

“But we have been looking into the Trump Foundation to make sure it's complying with the laws governing charities in New York.”

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee issued an open letter asking the United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate the donation to Bondi. (Source: agencies)

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016SEPTEMBER 15, 2016 INTERNATIONALh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l 3I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

The United States Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday sought to dif-fuse criticism of a U.S.-Russian ceasefire agreement on Syria arguing that without it violence would increase significantly with many more Syrians slaughtered or forced to flee the war-torn country.

The deal struck between Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on Friday agreed to a seven-day period of reduced violence and increased humanitarian aid deliveries.

If the truce holds, U.S. and Russian militaries would begin to coordinate air strikes against Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS/Front for the Conquest of the Levant/ formerly known as al-Nusra Front/Jabhat al-Nusra) and Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) terrorist group in an agreed area.

The plan aims to bring together the warring Syrian sides for talks on a political transition, which would involve Syrian Pres-ident Bashar al-Assad stepping aside.

“It's a last chance to be able to hold Syria together,” Kerry said in an interview with NPR's Morning Edition. “If you fail to get a cessation in place now and we can-not get to the table, then the fighting is going to increase significantly.”

He added: “What's the alternative? The alternative is to allow us to go from 450,000 people who have been slaugh-tered to how many thousands more? That Aleppo gets completely overrun? That the Russians and Assad simply bomb indiscriminately for days to come and we sit there and do nothing?”

The five-year war has killed an esti-mated 430,000 people since the start of the conflict, with roughly 11 million peo-ple made homeless in the world's worst refugee crisis.

Senior U.S. military and intelligence have criticized the plan saying Russia cannot be trusted. The plan envisions the U.S. military sharing targeting infor-

mation for strikes against militants with Russian forces.

Kerry said the agreement had the support of U.S. President Barack Obama, with whom he met on Tuesday.

“Well, the president of the United States is ready and I think the military therefore will be ready,” he said.

“Nobody's asking people to abrogate our standards, but it is important for us to keep our part of the bargain,” Kerry added.

The agreement marks the biggest test yet by Washington that it can work with Moscow to end a war that President Vladimir Putin transformed a year ago when he sent warplanes to join the fight on Assad's side.

Kerry said moderate opposition fight-ers, backed by the United States and Persian Gulf Arab allies, had been losing ground to Russian-backed government forces.

“The dynamic of Assad hammering them and Russia hammering them is go-ing to drive them into the hands of Nusra

(al-Nusra) and ISIL,” said Kerry, “And you'll have a greater degree of radicalization of increased intensity.”

Twenty-four hours after the truce took effect, senior State Department officials said there had been a reduction in vio-lence.

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura declared that UN aid access should be possible soon, includ-ing to eastern Aleppo, the rebel-held half of the city that is under blockade.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the most intense fighting since the ceasefire began took place on Tuesday night in the village of Maan in Hama province. Insurgents op-erating in the Hama area included ex-tremists and nationalist rebels fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.

It was not immediately clear whether the insurgents were part of the ceasefire, although the senior U.S. official said all groups except al-Nusra and ISIL terrorist group had to abide by the cessation of hostilities rules.

Syria summit in NYMeantime, Staffan de Mistura said if

the cessation of hostilities holds there may be a meeting of the coalition of some 20 countries trying to end the conflict on the sidelines of next week's gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York.

Staffan de Mistura said the meeting of the International Syria Support Group — which includes regional and world pow-ers and Syria's neighbors — may be held before a ministerial meeting of the UN Security Council on Syria on Sept. 21.

If the coalition meets, the political process needs to be on the horizon and invitations for a new round of political talks could follow, he said.

De Mistura said an announcement is expected late on Wednesday or Thurs-day from the U.S. and Russia on whether the cease-fire is holding.

The UN says there has been “a sig-nificant drop in violence” in Syria as the ceasefire in the country appears to be holding. Staffan de Mistura says he hopes that aid deliveries to stricken areas will take place “very soon.”

Delay in UN aid delivery Elsewhere, the UN claimed no hu-

manitarian aid has entered Syria yet, de-spite the de-escalation of violence across the country following the coming into effect of a nationwide ceasefire.

The Syrian foreign ministry on Tues-day said it would not allow any human-itarian aid to enter the rebel-held side of Aleppo without coordination with the Syrian government and the UN.

It said Turkish convoys in particular would not be allowed into Syria.

A diplomatic source, speaking to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, confirmed that the Turkish government's involvement remains a major sticking point.

(Source: agencies)

Kerry defends Syria deal with Russia, says Obama backs plan20 countries seeking Syria peace may meet in NY

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British lawmakers have blamed former British Prime Min-ister David Cameron for the unending crisis in Libya and the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) terrorist group there.

In a damning report, MPs condemned Cameron’s military intervention in Libya in 2011 for lacking both “accurate intelligence” and a coherent strategy.

In March 2011, Britain’s armed forces started military action against the Libyan regime after longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi resisted against the United Nations' request to stop cracking down on Libyan anti-govern-ment protesters.

British warships were also in action in a naval block-ade of Libya. The sources revealed that the Royal Navy's HMS Westminster was among the ships engaged in the mission.

Around 20 French fighter jets also bombed the posi-tions of forces loyal to the beleaguered Gaddafi.

In addition, United States B-2 aircraft dropped for-ty-five 2,000-pound bombs on key Libyan cities, accord-ing to the Stop the War Coalition.

The result of the French, British and U.S. intervention “was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and in-ter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, wide-spread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi

regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL in north Africa,” the MPs said in their report.

“Through his decision-making in the national security council, former prime minister David Cameron was ulti-mately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy,” said the report by the Foreign Affairs Se-lect Committee.

Cameron, who stepped down as an MP on Monday, has claimed the Libyan people must be blamed for fail-ing to take their chance of democracy.

However, he has refused to give evidence to the committee for his claims.

Prior to the military campaign, Britain’s Chief of the Defense Staff Lord Richards opposed the decision to switch the goal of regime change from the protection of the people of Benghazi.

“If the primary object of the coalition intervention was the urgent need to protect civilians in Benghazi, then this objective was achieved in March 2011 in less than 24 hours. This meant that a limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change by military means,” according to the MPs' report.

The ISIL terrorist group has been taking advantage of the chaos embroiling Libya since the NATO-backed overthrow and death of Gaddafi in October 2011. Since then, Libya has almost become a failed state, with the central government holding no sway over the country.

According to American journalist Don Debar, the United States and its allies such as Britain and France are responsible for destroying Africa’s wealthiest na-tion, Libya, in order to re-colonize the African conti-nent.

(Source: Reuters)

British MPs blame Cameron for Libya debacle, rise of ISIL

North Korea says the United States is pushing the Korean Penin-sula to “the point of explosion” following a move by Washington to fly two of its heavy strategic bombers over South Korea in an apparent show of force against Pyongyang.

“These extremely reckless provocations of the U.S. impe-rialist warmongers are pushing the situation on the Korean peninsula to the point of explosion hour by hour,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in an English dispatch on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, two U.S. Rockwell B-1B Lancer bombers took off from an American base in the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam and performed a low-altitude flight over the Osan Air Base near the South capital, Seoul. American and South Korean warplanes also escorted the B-1Bs during the low-speed flight, which took place 77 kilometers (48 miles) from the Demilitarized Zone border with the North.

Washington said the demonstration was “just one ex-ample of the full range of military capabilities” that the U.S. possessed to counter potential threats from North Korea in the face of the latter ’s nuclear and missile tests.

“The U.S. imperialists keep letting their nuclear strategic bombers fly over south Korea [sic] in a bid to seek an op-portunity of mounting a preemptive nuclear attack [against the North],” the KCNA further said. It said Washington was

“bluffing” that these bombers were sufficient for fighting an all-out nuclear war against Pyongyang.

On Friday, North Korea confirmed it had conducted a successful “nuclear warhead explosion,” its fifth nuclear test so far and its second in the current year.

The U.S. has been boosting its military presence in South Korea amid the missile and nuclear tests by the North. Washington and Seoul have planned to deploy the U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile systems in the South.

The two Koreas have been hostile to each other since the end of their 1950-1953 war, known as the Korean War. Since then, the peninsula has been locked in a cycle of military rhetoric.

Pyongyang has pledged to develop a nuclear arsenal in what it says is a bid to protect itself from the U.S. military.

The United Nations and the West have so far imposed a raft of crippling sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and missile activities.

North Korea, however, says it will not give up on its nu-clear “deterrence” unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward Pyongyang and dissolves the U.S.-led command in South Korea.

(Source: al Alam)

U.S. pushing Korean Peninsula to point of explosion: North Korea

N E W S

4I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

E C O N O M Y h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / e c o n o m ySEPTEMBER 15, SEPTEMBER 15, 20162016

Beijing hosts conference on Iran trade, investment opportunities

Iran inks 20 mining co-op MOUs with intl. companies post sanctions

TEHRAN — Iran has signed 20

memorandums of understanding with some renowned international companies on cooperation in the mining projects after the nuclear deal in January which lifted the sanctions against the country, according to an official in Iranian mining sector.

Amir Khorramishad, the deputy head of Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renova-tion Organization (IMIDRO), said that the follow-up measures to imple-ment the mentioned MOUs are cur-rently being taken, IRNA reported on Wednesday.

The West-led sanctions against the country and lack of finance had made implementation of some IMIDRO’s

projects facing over 13 years of delay.Mehdi Karbasian, the head of IMI-

DRO, announced in July that 34 min-ing and mineral industries projects will become operational in the coun-try by his organization by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2017).

He put the worth of investment to complete the mentioned projects at $7.2 billion.

TEHRAN — The first conference of

Iran trade and investment opportuni-ties was held in Chinese capital, Bei-jing, on Wednesday in a bid to expand cooperation between the economic entities of Iran and China in the post-sanction time, IRNA reported.

Addressing the conference, Iran’s Commercial Attaché to China Reza Seyed Aqazadeh said that Iran-China trade ties have experienced a developing trend over the past three decades in a way that China is now the leading trade partner of Iran.

Stressing that the two countries enjoy noticeable potentials to ex-pand bilateral political and eco-nomic relations, the official said that current condition provides proper

opportunities for starting a new round of cooperation between Ira-nian and Chinese traders and busi-nessmen.

On August 17, Chinese Vice Pre-mier Wang Yang in a meeting with Iranian Economy Minister Ali Tayyeb-nia in Beijing said that the economies of Iran and China are intertwined and complement each other.

China and Iran mapped out a wide-ranging 25-year plan to broaden relations and expand trade during President Xi Jinping’s visit to Iran in January. It was the first visit by a Chinese leader to the Islamic re-public in 14 years and came a week after the lifting of international sanc-tions against Iran over its nuclear program.

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F China may slow down implementation of the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) be-cause of security concerns.

A Chinese newspaper has that the two countries should be prepared for “potential setbacks” in what is China’s most ambitious overseas project.

“It is unlikely to be plain sailing for China and Paki-stan in their attempts to push forward the CPEC due to challenges such as a complex regional environment, and people in the two countries should be prepared for potential setbacks,” the paper said in an editorial.

It pointed out that corridor linking China’s north-west Xinjiang province to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port “passes through some turbulent regions, Kashmir in-cluded”.

Ireland’s economy grew by 0.6 percent in the second quarter of 2016, rebounding from a 2.1 percent contraction in the first three months of the year.

Compared with the same period 12 months ago, gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 4.1 percent, while gross national product (GNP), which strips out the effect of multinational com-panies, advanced by 4.6 percent.

The latest quarterly national accounts, pub-lished this morning by the Central Statistics Of-fice, put the economy back on a more normal growth trajectory following recent revisions that suggested the economy grew by 26 percent last year.

Bayer won over Monsanto’s management with a $128 per-share cash offer to acquire the global seed market leader, a person familiar with the mat-ter said, in a move to command more than a quar-ter of the combined world market for seeds and pesticides.

Bayer has signed a deal that includes a fee of $2 billion should the transaction fail to get regulatory clearance as planned, the person said. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2017, the source told Reuters on Wednesday.

Monsanto and Bayer were not immediately available for comment.

Shares in Bayer extended gains to trade 3 per-cent higher on the news, outperforming.

Exports of agro products from Iran rises 12% in 5 months

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Chinese daily warns of setbacks to China-Pakistan economic corridor

Irish economy grew by 0.6% in the second quarter

Bayer signs deal worth close to $66b to buy Monsanto

ECONOMYd e s k

TEHRAN — The ex-ports of Iran’s agricul-

tural products experienced a 12 percent increase in terms of weight and stood at 2.86 million tons during the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20-Auguat 21), IRIB news reported on Wednesday.

According to Abdolmahdi Bakh-shandeh, the Iranian deputy agriculture minister for planning and economic af-fairs, the exported agro products in this period were at the value of $1.92 bil-lion.

“The exported products constitute 4.16 percent of the total weight of the country’s non-oil exports and 10.11

percent of the total value of the non-oil product’s exports,” he added.

Iran’s non-oil exports value with a 20 percent increase is planned to reach over $50 billion by the end of the cur-rent Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2017), IRIB quoted Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Mohammadreza Nemat-zadeh as saying on May 30.

It is predicted that by the end of the current calendar year, the value of exports in industry, mining and trade sphere will reach $38 billion and the figure for the agricultural products and gas condensate will stand at $5 billion and $7 billion, respectively, the minister added.

ECONOMYd e s k

India expected to post first current account surplus in nine yearsIndia is likely to post its first current account surplus in nine years in the latest quarter, which should bolster the rupee though it is not a good sign for the econ-omy as it reflects weak investment demand at home and subdued exports, analysts said.

Forecasts given by investment houses’ research notes and from analysts that Reuters spoke to showed expectations centering on a surplus of $4 billion, or 0.8 percent of GDP, in April-June quarter.

That compared with a deficit of $6.2 billion, equiva-lent to 1.2 percent of GDP, in the same quarter a year ago. And, if the forecasts prove correct it will be the first surplus since January-March 2007, though India is unlikely to keep the surpluses coming.

For the full year ending in March 2017, India is likely to post a deficit even lower than last year ’s 1.1 percent of GDP, as foreign investment inflows remain steady - and that should be broadly supportive for the rupee.

Analysts have revised down their forecasts for the 2016/17 deficit to below 1.0 percent from earlier pro-jections of between 1.2-1.5 percent

The Reserve Bank of India is expected to release the June quarter data this month.

For a developing economy like India slow import growth is a negative sign, as it reflects weak invest-ment demand because Indian firms need to buy capi-tal goods and machinery from abroad.

That weakness in the economy, analysts say, could persuade the Reserve Bank of India to keep liquid-ity easy for now. RBI is also unlikely to let the rupee strengthen too much, and any central bank action to take dollars out of the market will add to rupee liquid-ity.

“The improvement in current account deficit is defi-nitely positive for the rupee...” said A Prasanna, econo-mist at ICICI Securities Primary Dealership Ltd. “But it is not a cause for celebration, so far as the RBI is con-cerned, as it is a reflection of weak investment demand which is impacting the pick-up in imports.”

Trade data released last month showed imports fell 16.33 percent to $114 billion in the four months through July thanks to lower gold and oil import bills, while exports fell 3.62 percent to $87 billion.

(Source: The Economic Times)

The Bank of Japan will consider making negative inter-est rates the centerpiece of future monetary easing by shifting its prime policy target to interest rates from base money at its review next week, sources familiar with its thinking say.

The change would underscore growing concerns in the central bank and financial markets over the limits to the BOJ’s economic stimulus efforts, as more than three years of aggressive bond buying is draining market li-quidity.

It would also be a shift away from the BOJ’s unique monetary experiment that attempted to crush yields across the curve and try to convince the public that its massive money printing will boost economic activity and prices.

“Among the BOJ’s policy tools, the priority will likely shift more towards interest rates and away from huge bond purchases,” said one of the sources on condition of anonymity.

The Nikkei reported earlier on Wednesday that the BOJ will put more emphasis on negative rates as a tool for future easing.

The BOJ is unlikely to abandon its current base mon-ey target, which is the amount of money it commits to print each year, or adopt an explicit cap on long-term rates, they said.

Still, by shifting its policy focus to negative rates, the BOJ hopes to dispel growing market views that the un-popularity of negative rates among the public would dis-courage it to cut rates, even if it would arrest unwelcome rises in the yen.

A prolonged period of indecision by the Federal Re-serve could undermine the dollar and push up the yen, which has already surged nearly 17 percent so far this year, pressuring Japan’s export machine.

There is no consensus in the BOJ yet on whether to deepen negative rates at the Sept. 20-21 meeting, when it conducts the comprehensive assessment of its policies, the sources said.

That decision will depend on yen moves and whether the board members feel that doing so would be neces-

sary to reinforce the bank’s commitment to achieving its inflation target, they said.

Most BOJ board members prefer such a modest fine-tuning of the current policy framework. But with markets increasingly expecting some form of easing at the re-view, more radical options are not off the table, such as ditching setting an explicit cap on bond yields, they said.

Middle ground?The BOJ shocked markets and the government in

January by adding negative rates to its massive asset-buying program launched in 2013. Under that scheme, it has pledged to increase base money at an annual pace of 80 trillion yen ($777 billion) via purchases of bonds and risky assets.

Many BOJ officials have grown doubtful about how much effect increasing base money has had in heighten-ing inflation expectations.

But they are equally wary of entirely abandoning the base money target, the bank’s prime policy target, for fear of triggering market fears it will taper its asset buy-ing.

Policymakers got a taste of how markets might re-act to that this week as investors dumped longer-dated bonds on fears the BOJ will slow the pace of its pur-chases. The 30-year JGB yield rose to a six-month high JP30YTN=JBTC while the 20-year JGB yield rose to 0.495

percent, a level last seen in March.The BOJ will thus maintain the base money target and

the pace of asset purchases. But it will consider changing its prime policy target to the 0.1 percent negative rate it now charges for a portion of excess reserves financial institutions park with the bank, the sources said.

“The base money target does not need to be re-moved because there is indeed some positive effects to it,” said a source familiar with the BOJ’s thinking.

“But it’s feasible to focus more on keeping short-term interest rates low,” the source said.

The BOJ says it has three easing tools: buying more bonds, buying more risky assets and deepening nega-tive rates.

At next week’s review, it will likely signal markets that cutting rates would be the more preferred future option as it directly pushes down short- to medium-term rates that have the biggest impact on corporate borrowing costs.

The BOJ will also consider reducing purchases of su-per-long government bonds to give financial institutions such as insurers and pension funds a better environment for earning returns, the sources said.

Purchases of shorter-term bonds could be increased to compensate, so that the overall bond buying amount would not decrease, they said.

To justify concentrating its purchases on short-term debt, the BOJ will issue an analysis showing that lowering yields of up to 10 years has a bigger positive impact on the economy than pushing down longer-dated yields, sources said.

The BOJ is likely to maintain its pledge to hit its 2 per-cent inflation target “at the earliest date possible.”

But with over three years having passed since deploy-ing its asset-buying program, the central bank will aban-don the two-year timeframe it set for achieving the price goal, they said.

With consumer inflation stuck near zero, the BOJ has been forced to repeatedly push back the target, most recently to the March 2018 end of fiscal 2017.

(Source: Reuters)

BOJ to make negative rates centerpiece of future easing: sources

ECONOMYd e s k

Bond sell-off keeps investors on edgeRising bond yields, sparked in part by deepening worries over the difficulty of the world’s major central banks to stimulate growth, kept investors in broadly risk-off mode on Wednesday.

The possible spillover effects of rising bond yields into stock and commodity markets has hit financial as-sets as funds, betting on a long period of low volatility and suppressed bond yields, are being forced to reas-sess positions.

European shares gave up almost all their early gains dragged lower by shares of major banks. The STOXX 600 is down 3.3 percent over the past week.

Euro zone bond yields rose across the board af-ter European Central Bank Executive Board member Sabine Lautenschlae-ger said the central bank should hold off on new monetary easing meas-ures.

Most yields touched their highest levels since Brit-ain’s vote to leave the European Union in late June, extending a rise that started after the ECB’s policy meeting last week, when it disappointed investors by introducing no new easing measures.

German 10-year bond yields — the bloc’s bench-mark — rose 2 basis points to 0.05 percent on Wednesday, having climbed as high as 0.09 percent in early trades.

“Markets have continued to be spooked by the potential for central banks to scale back the level of monetary support on almost a global basis,” Peter Chatwell, head of euro rates strategy at Mizuho said.

“Lautenschlaeger ’s comments did little to ease fear of withdrawal of central bank’s support.”

Morgan Stanley said trades most vulnerable to any unwind, are equities as well as bullish bets on the Jap-anese yen, emerging market currencies and Asia ex-Japan bonds.

Reports that the Bank of Japan would persist with further monetary easing, including taking interest rates deeper into negative territory sent the yen to a one-week low against the dollar.

The dollar was flat against a basket of currencies, having hit a one-week high the previous day, just a week before the U.S. Federal Reserve’s next policy meeting begins. Markets are pricing in just a 15 per-cent chance that interest rates will be hiked this month, according to CME FedWatch.

Oil prices recovered after falling as much as 3 per-cent in the previous session.

Brent crude futures were trading at $47.41 per bar-rel at 0758 GMT, up 0.6 percent, from the last settle-ment. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were up 38 cents, or 0.9 percent, at $45.28 a barrel.

(Source: Reuters)

HERITAGE & TOURISMh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m SEPTEMBER 15, 2016SEPTEMBER 15, 2016 5I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

HERITAGEd e s k

HERITAGEd e s k

T O U R I S Md e s k

TEHRAN — The Is-lamic Arts Museum

Malaysia in the heart of Kuala Lumpur has been received a facelift by Iranian artist Mohammad Kavand who spe-cializes in creating art by means of lavishly-made ceramic tiles, glasswork, and calligraphy.

The Malaysia-based artist followed traditional Iranian and Islamic patterns to renovate the central dome of the museum during a six-month timespan, IRNA reported on Tuesday.

Winning acclaim for the assignment that features intricate motifs predomi-nant with the color blue, Kavand has also been proposed to launch some other projects related to the museum, the report added.

His art in creating three-dimen-sional and seven-colored tilework has stolen the limelight in several projects he undertook in different countries such as Lebanon, Indone-sia, and Brunei.

Born in 1969 in the city of Broujerd, western Iran, Kavand has designed in-novative ceramic artwork and practiced

Persian calligraphy for over 25 years. Sections of his works have gone on

display in solo and group exhibitions in

Iran and Malaysia.The Islamic Arts Museum Malay-

sia was officially opened doors to the

public in 1998, putting on display over seven thousand artefacts from various spots of the Islamic world.

Iranian tilework gives Malaysian museum a facelift

UNDER TOURISTS’ EYES National Museum of Iran

TEHRAN — The National Museum of Iran is somewhat chock-full of priceless relics

that represent various eras of the country’s rich history. As one of the attractive buildings in downtown Tehran,

it was completed in 1928 based on the design by French architect André Godard who was also an archaeologist and historian of French and Middle Eastern Art.

The façade interweaves some Sassanian-era principles of Iranian architecture notably the grand iwan-style entrance embellished with a lavish brickwork.

Massive and tiny statutes, ceramics, pottery, stone figures and carvings, as well as metal objects, textile remains, and some rare books and coins are amongst objects that build up the innumerable collections inside.

Here is a select of comments that visitors to the museum have posted to TripAdvisor, one of the most popular travel websites in the world:

“Good introduction to the history of Iran”Museums in Tehran are not always the best laid out but

persevere and you will find many treasures. This museum charts the history of Iran from prehistoric times through the various dynasties that shaped the culture of the country. There are exquisite items on display but little explanation… (Duncan W. from Bangkok, Thailand, visited September 2016)

“History is tightly packed in Iran”Excellent museum, exhibits are not all crowded together.

When they say ancient in Iran, they are definitely talking OLD. Good collection of artifacts, many of which were well marked… (Miriahm D. from Boulder, Colorado, visited May 2016)

“A place of interest to Iranian history enthusiasts”At least there were few other visitors due to Ramadan. The

displays are interesting but not as interesting as those I have seen in Egypt, Jordan, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Rajistan. This complex would not be on my recommendations for those with limited time in Iran. (Pam Q. from Adelaide, Australia, visited June 2016)

“Nice but not extensive collections”The national museum is well worth the visit. The Statue of

Darius and the 7-thousand-year old skeleton are not to be missed. A shame it is not air-conditioned. (PGIT from New York, visited May 2016)

“Well worth a visit”An interesting collection though we would have liked to see a

little more context on signs. Some of the pieces in the collection are truly spectacular. (Phebert from London, visited May 2016)

Medieval monasteries in KosovoThe main street in Gracanica, a village on the outskirts of Pris-tina, the capital of Kosovo, is lined with bakeries and markets strung together in a jumble until the shop fronts give way to a high stone wall.

Step to the other side, and the hum of Volkswagens and Skodas falls away almost entirely. At the center of a wide lawn sits Gracanica Monastery, a masterpiece of late-Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture, its rosy domes like steppingstones that draw the eye and the spirit toward the sky.

Gracanica was the last mon-astery constructed, in the early 14th century, by the Serbian King Stefan Milutin, who had promised God that he would build a church for each of the 40-odd years of his reign.

Inside the nave, scarcely an inch of the stone shows through the hundreds of frescoes that ascend the walls and pool in the arches of the cupolas. One need not count oneself among the faithful to be silenced by the suffusion of contemplation and color — seabed blue, the opulent scarlets and gold halos of the sainted patriarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church, their faces blackened remark-ably little over seven centuries.

The city is a postwar boomtown of sorts, with luxury high-ris-es popping up in every other neighborhood and cranes in pri-mary colors punctuating the skyline. Everyone seems to know but won’t say what’s driving the boom; Kosovo remains one of the poorest countries in Europe, and corruption has helped keep it there.

The monastery grounds are carved into the slope of a chestnut forest. Except for the trill of a few blackbirds, a stun-ning silence encircles the church, its facade of alternating lav-ender marble and straw-colored onyx fusing into a bright white in the sun. Decani, which was completed around 1335, is a livelier monastery than Gracanica.

(Source: The New York Times)

The recently renovated dome of the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in the heart of Kuala Lumpur is shown in this undated combination photo released by IRNA on September 13, 2016.

PICTURE OF THE DAY

People are seen at one of the mazes of the 13th-century Tabriz historic bazaar complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the northwestern Iranian city, September 3, 2016.

ISNA/ Amirreza Tavasoli France pledges more aid for

struggling tourism sectorPARIS (Reuters) — The French government on Tuesday pledged more aid to help the country’s struggling tourism sector cope af-ter a wave of Islamist attacks, bring-ing to 10 million euros its contribu-tion to a campaign to promote the country abroad.

The sector represents between 7-8 percent of France’s gross do-mestic product and employs about 2 million people.

Last month, regional and busi-ness officials asked the government for a rescue plan for the sector, say-ing the attacks had cost the French capital about 750 million euros in lost revenue.

“Our message is that we are mo-bilized and that we do not resign ourselves. We will have an ambi-tious tourism promotion campaign,” Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told a news conference.

TEHRAN — Iran and Oman will launch a cruise route between the

port cities of Bandar Abbas in Iran and Khasab in Oman from September 22, IRNA reported on Wednesday.

“The scheme will be implemented in line with the goal of widening bilateral cooperation in the areas of economy, trade, politics, and tourism,” the director of Hormozgan Province’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts Department, Mohsen Ziai, said.

Ziai also expressed hope that the initiative would result in the growth of tourism in the prov-ince as well as further business thrive in its handi-craft industry.

Earlier in July, another marine route started linking Khasab to Qeshm Island in Iran. It takes passengers one hour and a half of sailing.

The distance between Khasab and Bandar Abbas is approximately 113 km.

Tourism is booming, and millions of Iranians are re-discovering the seductions of their northern Caspian Sea coast.

The jungles of Iran’s northern Caspian Sea coasts have drawn generation after generation of Iranians looking for a getaway from the country’s arid central regions. For Iranians, the word shomal—which means simply “north” in Persian—has become syn-onymous with vacation.

Shomal is a verdant paradise of humid

green forests covering high mountains and mile after mile of rice paddies skirting the region’s beaches. In terms of climate and culture, the north is a world away from the country’s center, where most Iranians live.

Across the region, thousands upon thou-sands of holiday homes, optimistically called villas, have been built to cater to the pleas-ure-seeking masses.

Gridlock is a feature of every weekend. But it’s impossible to dissuade them from

coming. There’s a magic in shomal, a magic fostered by the climate and the centuries of isolation imposed by the rugged geography that allowed this region to develop its own royal court, languages, and connections to Russia, the Caucasus, and beyond, giving it a culture all its own even today.

The twin provinces of Gilan and Mazan-deran that make up the region have long rel-ished their independence from the country’s Iranian core to the south. In the north, Per-sian is the language of government, educa-tion, and the tourism industry, but the streets here ring with the lyrical Gilaki and Mazande-rani languages.

The provinces were relatively isolated from the rest of the country until the early part of the 20th century when a road was finally carved through the mountains. That thin, winding thoroughfare is still the main way up from Tehran today.

But when a massive new highway slicing through the mountains opens up at the be-ginning of next year—reducing travel time from Tehran from four or five hours to two—the appeal of shomal, and the sprawl, are

likely to only increase.Chalus, the main junction town north

of Tehran, is built around a river a few miles south of the Caspian coast. It is surrounded by rice paddies and agricultural fields, and a cen-tury ago was nothing more than a quiet road junction with a few houses clustered around it.

However, in the face of an increasingly robust domestic consumer market and a flood of tourists from abroad, it is unclear how much longer the magic of Iran’s north can sparkle. For the millions who trek up every holiday weekend, however, the allure of shomal remains as strong as ever.

(Source: slate.com)

Iran, Oman to launch cruise route within days

For many Iranians allure of shomal remains as strong as ever

My beloved mother, Mrs. Zarrin Malek Akbar has passed away. Her memorial service will be held on Monday 19th September, 29th Shahrivar from 17:00 to 19:00 at her residence located at No. 4, Reza dead-End, Shahid Kolahdouz (Dolat) Ave., Gholhak.Sadegh Samii

An Iranian passenger ship departs from Kish Island in the Persian Gulf in an undated photo.

Frescoes from the 14th cen-tury illuminate the stone walls of Gracanica Monastery in Gracanica.

A scenic view of Chalus road in late fall

An exterior view of the National Museum of Iran

S I G H T S E E I N G

By Andrew Roberts

By Francis Wilkinson


INTERNATIONAL h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m

F E A T U R ENavigating the post-fact era

These are strange times -- times in which facts have less influ-ence on political realities than mood and emotion. Numbers hardly count anymore, not as much, at least, as fear and hate, rumors and mutterings of conspiracy. That’s why the Ger-man right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) was able to do so well in the September 4 state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The vote was essentially a referendum on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policies, yet there are hardly any foreigners living in the state. We have

more data and facts available to us than ever before, and yet we have entered a post-fact era. Why?

Were Germany a company, we would speak of structural change, of upheaval. The country -- blessedly safe and pros-perous -- is surrounded by regions in crisis. The problems elsewhere reach us digitally -- permanently and amplified. But they also reach us in actuality. Our country is changing, with a feeling of uncertainty having become a paramount emotion these days, combined with a sense of indignity.

Angela Merkel has become a victim of this mood, and that is one side of the defeat suffered by her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), in the Mecklenburg-Western Po-merania state election, where it received fewer votes than the AfD. The situation in the country, according to the facts, at least, is quite a bit different than it was in 2015. Residency laws have been tightened and the borders are back under control. But the AfD, which rails against a presumed “Merkel Dictator-ship” on the country’s market squares and baits people who are fleeing from poison gas, is fueled by post-fact politics (as is the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Mer-kel’s CDU). Just as American demagogue Donald Trump is able to keep up with Hillary Clinton, AfD leader Frauke Petry nips at the chancellor ’s heels with emotion. But that’s not the whole story.

Many politicians, companies and institutions fail because they miss decisive shifts or deceive themselves. Former Ger-man Chancellors Adenauer and Kohl thought they were ir-replaceable and became sluggish -- and didn’t notice when they began losing ground. Kodak saw digitalization coming, but didn’t want to see it. In the 1970s, Ford built a car, the Pinto that everyone in top management knew would explode if it was rear-ended, but they all convinced each other that the problem didn’t exist.

Self-deceptionPsychologists refer to such self-deception as the “normali-

zation of deviance,” and it works great -- until it doesn’t.Angela Merkel has made mistakes that could soon cost

her the Chancellery and make a dignified departure impos-sible. Those mistakes are the other -- for her, painful -- side of the defeat. A head of government cannot allow herself petulant mood swings. After a decade of showing little inter-est in migration, Merkel was suddenly deeply moved in the summer of 2015 and decided to follow her emotions. Then, in the winter that followed, Merkel’s actions once again cooled in response to public outrage, but she continued to defend the warm decisions she had made in the summer. She has never adequately explained the incoherence.

It was nice to experience a Germany exhibiting as much solidarity as it did in the summer of 2015. But a chancellor must also consider the possible effects of selfies taken with refugees. She has to think about whether the federal police force and other agencies will be able to keep up when the chancellor suddenly changes course. Shrewd governance requires clarity about, and the effective communication of, goals, strategy and tactics.

No leader can cede control of essential state responsi-bilities in times of upheaval yet Merkel, in claiming that the borders could not be controlled, did exactly that. Today, the Chancellery has come to accept the following facts: For eight weeks, the state lost control and was powerless. That control was soon regained, but in the post-fact era, a nucleus is all that is needed. The attacks in Paris and Brussels, the sexual assaults on New Year ’s Eve in Cologne, the attacks in Nice and Ansbach and the shooting spree in Munich: None of them had much to do with refugees, but they have prevented a return to calm and have kept alive the perception of loss of control that Merkel triggered in the summer of 2015. It has become simple to fan the flames of xenophobia.

What was once celebrated as Merkel’s composed de-termination is now being condemned as obstinacy and the chancellor is taken aback. She thinks it’s unfair, which is a bit self-pitying, but she remains interested in the problems she faces. As always, Merkel wants to continue, but it would be more astute for her to recognize the shift that is underway and the challenges it presents. And to determine in which moments facts and figures make sense and when might ap-peals to emotion be more useful. What strategies and which members of her inner circle have been effective thus far and what must be changed to confront the changed political re-ality?

She needs to go back to the beginning and find clarity about her own course. She must then rebuild trust, and pro-vide extensive and repeated explanations for her actions. Be-cause if she wants to ultimately leave office on top, she must reach out to voters who have thrown their support behind the AfD, to her own party, to CSU head Horst Seehofer and to Social Democratic party head Sigmar Gabriel. Nobody can confront structural change all alone.

(Source: Der Spiegel)

Of all the many splendid opportunities pro-vided by the British people’s heroic Brexit vote, perhaps the greatest is the resuscita-tion of the idea of a CANZUK Union. Win-ston Churchill’s great dream of a Western alliance based on three separate blocs might one day live again, thanks to Brexit.

The first and second blocs – the USA and a United State of Europe – are al-ready in place. Now it is time for the last – CANZUK – to retake her place as the third pillar of Western Civilization.

The Crown countries of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (CANZUK) need to form a new federation based upon free trade, free movement of peoples, mutual defense, and a limited but effective confederal po-litical structure.

As one of the leaders of the nascent CANZUK project, James Bennett, points out in his new book A Time For Audacity: New Options Beyond Europe: “In the era of the internet and cheap global air travel, common language, law, history and tra-ditions of government count far more than geographical proximity.”

Global great powersMuch more unites than divides the

CANZUK countries, and were it to be-come a Union it immediately become one of the global great powers alongside America, the EU and China. It would be easily the largest country on the planet, have a combined population of 129 mil-lion, the third biggest economy and the third biggest defense budget.

A movement towards such an entity is already beginning, with 160,000 peo-ple signing a petition for free CANZUK movement of peoples on www.cfmo.org within a few months.

CANZUK free movement brings an immediate benefit to ordinary Britons, with effective reciprocity in the form of employment, business, and retirement opportunities that ordinary Britons can enjoy, as opposed to the mostly theoreti-

cal benefits that the EU brought.Unlike EU free movement, CANZUK

would provide not only the right to take a job in a member state, but in one where there actually are real jobs available.

The proposed CANZUK Union will be

more like the successful federations the English-speaking world has known, such as the Canada and Australia. Those dif-fered from the EU in that they had the prerequisites for forming a parliament and government that could exercise con-

trol over their bureaucracies, as opposed to the uncontrollable quangos of Brussels.

Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop has recently said that a free-trade deal with post-Brexit Britain could lead to “im-proved access” and more visas for travel between Australia and Britain. There is similar support in New Zealand and Can-ada, which will next week welcome the Duke and Duchesss of Cambridge.

Independent voiceBut this should be just the beginning.

Now that Britain is free of the EU, she can pursue the dream of early 20th century giants such as Joseph Chamberlain – in-cidentally, Theresa May’s political hero – for an Anglospheric combination of free states that would project a strong and independent voice in the world.

The CANZUK Union of free trade and free movement should be the nucleus for the recreation of the dream of the Eng-lish-speaking peoples that was shattered by Britain’s entry into the EU. We must pick up where we left off in 1973.

Sir Roger Scruton’s famous dictum that “A nation-state is the widest span at which it is possible to be meaningfully good” can be inverted with no loss of truth, for if there are a set a peoples who effectively share an idea of what public good is, then they will probably be candidates for a state, at least a federal one.

We CANZUK countries together have far more of the potential for successful state-building than do any four member-states of the EU. A common head of state, a majority language, legal systems based on Magna Cara and the common law, Westminster parliamentary tradition, mili-tary structure, and a long history of work-ing together including in the proudest voluntary military collaboration in human history, resisting Nazi aggression.

All we lack is geographical proximity, which is becoming less and less impor-tant in the modern world. CANZUK is an idea whose time has, thanks to Brexit, fi-nally come again.

(Source: The Telegraph)

After Brexit, Canada, Australia, New Zealand

and Britain can unite as a pillar of Western

civilization

The proposed CANZUK Union will be more like the successful federations the English-speaking world

has known, such as the Canada and Australia.

The “world knows that our counternarcotics model is better

without the Americans,” Mr. Morales said during an event on

Tuesday, alluding to his expulsion of American drug enforcement

agents in 2008.

This week, the White House issued its yearly report on the nations on the front lines of the war on drugs. Predictably, it listed Bolivia as one of three countries that “failed demon-strably” to do enough to combat the drug trade.

President Evo Morales of Bolivia responded, as he does each year, with defiance.

The “world knows that our counternarcotics model is better without the Americans,” Mr. Morales said during an event on Tuesday, alluding to his expulsion of Ameri-can drug enforcement agents in 2008.

The yearly condemnation of Bolivia has been futile. So far, that country’s experience with its drug strategy is showing more promise than Washington’s forced-eradication model.

Over the past decade, the Bolivian government has sought to gradually curb the cultivation of coca — the plant processed to make cocaine — by establishing a tightly regulated market for its consumption as a non-narcotic stimulant.

Bolivians have been chewing coca leaf and using it to make tea for generations.

Eradicating unauthorized cropsThe government eradicates unauthorized crops after

negotiating with, and finding alternatives for growers.This approach, which has been supported and fi-

nanced by the European Union, has shown significant results.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and

Crime, coca leaf cultivation in Bolivia has declined each of the past five years.

In its latest report, UNODC said Bolivia had roughly 20,200 hectares (about 78 square miles) of coca cultiva-tion, a slight drop compared with the previous year.

These tactics have been hailed by scholars and some Western officials because they place a premium on the rights and needs of farmers in poor areas.

Coca growers who have voluntarily registered with the government are given title for small parcels of land and are authorized to grow a limited amount.

Hands-on roleMr. Morales, a former coca growers’ union leader, has

played a hands-on role in negotiating the terms of this arrangement with unions and other local leaders.

This stands in stark contrast to the strategy the United States has long financed in the region — a combination of aerial herbicide spraying, manual eradication and the prosecution of drug kingpins in the United States.

The inadequacy of this approach is most obvious in Colombia, which has been Washington’s closest ally in Latin America on counternarcotics.

Last year, coca cultivation in Colombia increased by nearly 40 percent compared with the previous year, ac-cording to UNODC.

The tough-on-crime approach has often exacerbated violence there.

Colombia, however, did not get the “failed demon-strably” label. It may be time for Washington to drop that marker altogether and study the merits of innovative ap-proaches, including Bolivia’s.

(Source: The NYT)

How Bolivia fights the drug scourge

Hillary Clinton will win overwhelming support from American Muslims in No-vember. She is a safe harbor in a domes-tic political environment roiled by Donald Trump’s direct assaults against them. But for many Muslims, who make up about 1 percent of the U.S. population, a vote for her constitutes a difficult compromise.

“A lot of people in our community are not thrilled about Hillary Clinton because of her foreign policy record in the Muslim world,” said Dawud Walid, executive direc-tor of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “But more people are scared of the wolf than of the fox, even though both can eat your chickens. There are people volunteering in the Hillary Clinton campaign.”

Michigan’s 500,000 MuslimsMichigan has about 500,000 Muslims,

Walid said, one of the highest concentra-tions in the U.S. In the Democratic presi-dential primary, Bernie Sanders carried the state by barely 2 points over Clinton but he dominated among voters 18 to 29 years old by 81 to 19 percent, a group that included many young Muslims.

At the Democratic National Conven-tion, Clinton forces beat back an effort by Sanders’s delegates to make the party platform project greater sympathy for Palestinians.

But Trump’s direct attack on American Muslims has left them with little choice in this election.

The GOP nominee has variously pro-posed blocking all Muslim immigration and tracking American Muslims -- osten-sibly as counterterrorism measures. He has suggested more than once that large numbers of American Muslims have been complicit in domestic terrorism. “They didn’t turn them in,” Trump said of Mus-lims who, he has claimed, withheld vital information about the killers in Orlando and San Bernardino, “and we had death and destruction.”

His success has predictably left many Muslims unnerved and on guard. “Trump is not what scares me,” said Abdullah Hammoud, a first-generation Lebanese-American from Dearborn, Michigan. The more serious threat, Hammoud said, is Trump’s unleashing of latent racism among his supporters.

“He has monetized racism. This man spreads bigotry and captures dollars and votes in exchange,” he said. “My mother, my sister -- individuals now feel empow-ered to attack them because they ob-serve the hijab.”

Hammoud, who said his father works at a grocery store, is 26, has a master’s degree in public health from the Uni-versity of Michigan and is on track to be elected in November, as a Democrat, to the Michigan House of Representatives. He is running in a Democratic district but campaigning has nonetheless been diffi-cult sometimes. “I can’t tell you how many times doors have slammed in my face,” he said.

Muslims identified with DPMuslims nationwide identified with the

Democratic Party (DP) even before Trump came along. A Pew Research survey in 2011 found that “Muslims are far more likely to identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party (70%) than the Repub-lican Party (11%).”

Walid, the Michigan executive director of CAIR, is black, 44 years old and converted to Islam about 25 years ago. “There is a lot of apprehension in our community, particu-larly among suburban, non-African-Ameri-can Muslims,” he said.

Muslims can only counter Trump’s mass-media performances with small, of-ten private acts.

Sumayya Master, a 21-year-old mar-keting student whose parents emigrated from Pakistan, said she wishes Americans would be more mindful of freedom of speech and religion. “I want for every-body to go back and remember why we built this great nation,” she said.

To ease fears, she and some friends have conducted an “Ask a Muslim” cam-paign at their university, where they en-courage questions about their faith over free doughnuts and coffee. “Change is going to come,” she said. But with Trump-ism in the air, Master doesn’t take it for granted. “For Christmas,” she said, “I gave all my neighbors Christmas presents.”

(Source: Bloomberg)

American Muslim voters with nowhere to go

By Klaus Brinkbäumer

Dawud Walid, is the executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

N E W S

E N E R G Yh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / e c o n o m y SEPTEMBER 15, SEPTEMBER 15, 20162016 7I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Iran’s North Azadegan oilfield’s crude exports hit 8mb since Mar.

TEHRAN — Iran has exported about 8 million barrels of crude oil from North

Azadegan oilfield since the beginning of current Iranian calendar year (March 20), Shana quoted Keramat Behba-hani, the operator of project for developing the oilfield, as saying on Tuesday.

North Azadegan is one of the five oilfields, dubbed the West Karoun oilfields, Iran shares with Iraq at the western part of Iran’s southwestern region of Karoun.

The project of developing North Azadegan oilfield is divided into two phases, each aimed at producing 75,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil and 39 million cubic feet per day of gas.

According to Behbahani, since the first phase is almost completed, the payments to the Chinese contractor of this phase are being arranged.

Based on the initial agreement, China National Petro-leum Corporation International (CNPCI) should present its proposal for the second phase, and in case of being approved by National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), the second phase of the development project will be executed.

“For the second phase, producing 25,000 barrels per day is on the agenda,” Behbahani said adding that the pre-liminary studies of the second phase carried out by Petrole-um Engineering and Development Company (PEDC) show that the oil in place amount of the field will be about 6.3

billion barrels in the second phase.Elsewhere in his remarks, the official noted that in the

project of developing North Azadegan oilfield, 67 percent of the contracts are allocated to domestic companies espe-

cially National Iranian Drilling Company.Earlier in July Behbahani told the Tehran Times that for-

eign investment in development of North Azadegan oilfield is conditioned on preserving the national interests of Iran.

ECONOMYd e s k

Gazprom executive Karen Karapetyan named as Armenian PMEnergy executive Karen Karapetyan was named prime minister of Armenia on Tuesday, a week after the abrupt resignation of his predecessor.

Hovik Abrahamyan stepped down on Sept. 8, saying the Caucasus country needed fresh policies, after his government struggled with an economic slowdown and protests in the cap-ital.

The government has also faced political challenges, includ-ing a flare-up of violence in neighboring Azerbaijan’s breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region in April between Armenian-backed separatists and Azeri forces.

Karapetyan, 53, is a former head of national gas distributing company ArmRosGazprom, and was mayor of the capital Yere-van from 2010-2011.

He was deputy CEO of Russian gas producer Gazprom’s Mezhregiongaz unit before Tuesday’s appointment.

(Source: Reuters)

Oil rises on smaller-than-expected build in U.S. crude stocksOil prices rebounded in Asian trade on Wednesday after fall-ing by as much as 3 percent in the previous session, as data from an industry group showed a smaller-than-expected build in U.S. crude stocks.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a crude build of 1.4 million barrels for the week ended Sept. 9, smaller than the 3.8 million-barrel rise expected by analysts. The U.S. government will issue official inventory data on Wednesday.

Brent crude futures were trading at $47.34 per barrel at 0103 GMT, up 24 cents, or 0.5 percent, from the last settle-ment.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were up 29 cents, or 0.7 percent, at $45.19 a barrel.

Crude prices tumbled on Tuesday after the International Energy Agency (IEA) said slowing oil demand growth amid growing inventories and supplies could signal that the market will be oversupplied at least through the first half of 2017.

“Oil came under heavy selling after the EIA released its monthly report showing it expected the surplus in the market to persist well into 2017,” Australian bank ANZ said in a note. “Weaker oil prices are likely to weigh on the sector, with inves-tor appetite remaining weak.” (Source: Reuters)

The global oil market will show a surplus into next year, as an abrupt deterioration in de-mand growth meets rising supply, pushing world inventories to yet another record high and confounding the previous expectations of leading energy agencies.

The International Energy Agency on Tuesday forecast global supply would out-pace demand well into next year, marking an about-face from its assessment just one month ago that the market would essentially show no surplus for the remainder of this year.

Similarly, a monthly report from the Or-ganization of the Petroleum Exporting Coun-tries on Monday showed the world’s largest producers expect their non-OPEC rivals to pump even faster, suggesting a hefty surplus may be on the cards in 2017.

Global refinery runs are expected to grow

at their slowest pace in at least a decade this year, which will curb appetite for crude oil, just as inventories across the OECD rose to a fresh record high of 3.111 billion barrels, the report said.

“With our more pessimistic outlook for the second half of 2016 refining activity and revi-sions to crude supply, the expected draws in the third quarter of 2016 are now lower, while the build in the fourth quarter of 2016 is high-er,” the IEA said.

Global demand growth is slowing at a faster pace than the group initially predicted. The IEA left its forecast for demand growth for 2017 unchanged from its prediction in June at 1.2 million barrels per day, but cut its forecast for 2016 consumption growth to 1.3 million bpd, from 1.4 million.

“The key demand change in this report

is the erosion of 300,000 bpd from the third quarter of 2016’s global demand estimate, and the resulting removal of 100,000 bpd from the net 2016 forecast,” the IEA said.

Brent crude oil futures fell by around two percent on Tuesday to $47.30 a barrel, still showing a 70-percent gain so far this year, but about half where it was two years ago.

Despite oil’s collapse and resulting in-vestment cuts, global oil production is still expanding, although nowhere near the breakneck pace of 2015. High-cost OPEC producers have been hit particularly hard.

However, the loss has been more than made up for by OPEC. Saudi Arabia and Iran have each raised oil output by over one mil-lion barrels a day since late 2014 when OPEC shifted strategy to defend market share rath-er than price.

OPEC forecast demand for its oil will aver-age 32.48 million bpd in 2017, down 530,000 bpd from its previous forecast.

“It seems the situation has deteriorated strongly in the eyes of OPEC as well as the IEA,” Commerzbank head of commodities strategy Eugen Weinberg said.

“.. That we are in the third quarter of 2016 and we won’t see the ‘balancing-out’ over the next six months is definitely a major change,” he said.

Near-record OPEC output, and higher supply from outside, could make it harder for OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, and rival Russia to come up with steps to support the market. Producers are expected to meet in Algeria on the sidelines of the Sept. 26-28 International Energy Forum.

(Source: Reuters)

Global oil outlook darkens more quickly; surplus stubborn


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Who needs a gym when there’s the living room floor? Bodyweight exercises are a simple, effective way to improve balance, flexibility, and strength without machinery or extra equipment. From legs and shoul-ders to chest and abs, we’ve covered eve-ry part of the body that can get stronger with body resistance alone.

Full body1. Inchworm

Stand up tall with the legs straight, and do like Lil’ Jon and let those fingertips hit the floor. Keeping the legs straight (but not locked!), slowly lower the torso to-ward the floor, and then walk the hands forward. Once in a push-up position, start taking tiny steps so the feet meet the hands. Continue bugging out for 4-6 reps.

2. Tuck jump

Standing with the knees slightly bent, jump up as high as possible (pretend Jer-emy Lin is watching!) and bring the knees in toward the chest while extending the arms straight out. Land with the knees slightly bent and quickly jump (on it) again!

3. Bear crawl

Embrace that inner grizzly. Starting on the hands and knees, rise up onto the toes, tighten the core, and slowly reach forward with the right arm and right knee, followed by the left side. Continue the crawl for 8-10 reps (or until you scare your roommates off ).

4. Mountain climber

Starting on your hands and knees, bring the left foot forward directly under the chest while straightening the right leg. Keeping the hands on the ground and core tight, jump and switch legs. The left leg should now be extended behind the body with the right knee forward. Next up? Everest.

5. Plyometric push-up

Ready to catch some air? Start on a well-padded surface and complete a tra-ditional push-up. Then, in an explosive motion, push up hard enough to come off the floor (and hang ten for a second!). Once back on solid ground, immediately head into the next repetition.

6. Stair climb with bicep curl

Turn those stairs into a cardio ma-chine—no magic wand necessary. Grab some dumbbells (or household objects!) and briskly walk up and down the stair-way while simultaneously doing bicep curls to work the whole body.

7. Prone walkoutBeginning on all fours with the core

engaged, slowly walk the hands forward, staying on the toes but not moving them forward. Next, gradually walk the hands backwards to the starting position, main-tain stability and balance.

Who needs a gym when there’s the living room floor? Bodyweight exercises are a simple, effective way to improve balance, flexibility, and strength without machinery or extra equipment. From legs and shoulders to chest and abs, we’ve covered every part of the body that can get stronger with body resistance alone.

8. Burpees

One of the most effective full-body exercises around, this one starts out in a low squat position with hands on the floor. Next, kick the feet back to a push-up position, complete one push-up, then immediately return the feet to the squat position. Leap up as high as possible be-fore squatting and moving back into the push-up portion of the show.

9. Plank

Nope, we’re (thankfully) not walking the plank. Lie face down with forearms on the floor and hands clasped. Extend the legs behind the body and rise up on the toes. Keeping the back straight, tighten the core and hold the position for 30-60 seconds (or as long as you can hang).

10. Plank-to-Push-Up

Starting in a plank position, place down one hand at a time to lift up into a push-up position, with the back straight and the core engaged. Then move one arm at a time back into the plank position (forearms on the ground). Repeat, alter-nating the arm that makes the first move.

(Source: greatist.com)

M E D I C I N Eh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m SEPTEMBER 15, 2016SEPTEMBER 15, 2016 9I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Bodyweight exercises you can do anywhere

AT A GLANCE Bipolar disorder

What is bipolar disorder?Bipolar disorder is a mental illness marked by extreme shifts in mood ranging from a manic to a depressive state. Bipolar disorder is also called bipolar disease or manic depression... Read more. A person with mania will feel excited, impulsive, euphoric, and full of energy.

What is bipolar disorder I?Bipolar I disorder is characterized by one or more man-

ic episodes or mixed episodes (symptoms of both a mania and a depression occurring nearly every day for at least one week) and one or more major depressive episodes. Bipolar I disorder is the most severe form of the illness marked by extreme manic episodes.

What is a manic depressive?Bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression) causes

serious shifts in mood, energy, thinking, and behavior—from the highs of mania on one extreme, to the lows of depression on the other. More than just a fleeting good or bad mood, the cycles of bipolar disorder last for days, weeks, or months.

What is bipolar II disorder?The less-intense elevated moods in bipolar II disorder are

called hypomanic episodes, or hypomania. A person affected by bipolar II disorder has had at least one hypomanic episode in his or her life. Most people with bipolar II disorder suffer more often from episodes of depression.

Who is at risk for bipolar II disorder?Virtually anyone can develop bipolar II disorder. About

2.5% of the U.S. population suffers from some form of bipolar disorder - nearly 6 million people.

Most people are in their teens or early 20s when symp-toms of bipolar disorder first start. Nearly everyone with bi-polar II disorder develops it before age 50. People with an immediate family member who has bipolar are at higher risk.

What are the symptoms of bipolar II disorder?During a hypomanic episode, elevated mood can mani-

fest itself as either euphoria (feeling "high") or as irritability. Symptoms during hypomanic episodes include:

• Flying suddenly from one idea to the next• Having exaggerated self confidence• Rapid, "pressured" (uninterruptable) and loud speech• Increased energy, with hyperactivity and a decreased

need for sleep Bipolar drugs: possible options

Some drugs that are used to treat bipolar disorder in-clude lithium, antipsychotics such as Seroquel or Clozaril, antidepressants such as Prozac, and benzodiazepines like Xanax. Medication use will depend on your individual symptoms, how the disorder presents, and your overall health situation.

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A N A L Y S I S h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a lSEPTEMBER 15, SEPTEMBER 15, 20162016

In only few months, new U.S. president will settle in the White HoU.S.e; in this edition of elections, developments in the Middle

East, especially in Iraq and Syria occupies the center-stage for either presidential campaign or the public in the U.S. The crises in Iraq and Syria came to the foreground after Paris ter-rorist attacks earlier in 2015.

The collapse of the state in the Middle East with current states no longer function-ing properly would jeopardizes grater part of the U.S. interests in the region. Weaker states are easy preys to terrorist groups where states supporting and arming terror-ists regularly recruiting fresh mercenaries. Weak states could pose other challenges to the U.S.: a single most important chal-lenge is which threatens her allies in the region. But, terrorism would have conse-quences to her at home as well. Already a RU.S.sian-Iranian pact and coordination in the Syria and Iraq has challenged some of the U.S. lacklU.S.ter positions in the region, forcing her to take different positions than she would otherwise. Iraq and Syria are im-portant to the U.S. However, she has pur-sued different policies in Syria than in Iraq, adopting to the necessities of the situation. There is however evidence that Syrian crisis will occupy the place of a second priority in U.S. Middle Eastern policies, since the na-ture of interests in Syria is different and less important, while in Iraq, U.S. interests are at stake in some important ways.

U.S. interests in Syria Syria and some of Eastern European

countries had been traditionally falling in the RU.S.sian scope of influence, where the U.S. had no direct interests, Hezbollah and Iran links here being the exception. Syria is impor-tant for the U.S. in some ways:

1- Capacities and resources of Syrian friends (Iran and RU.S.sia, inter alia) which would be excellent means to solve the cri-sis in Syria and thU.S. contribute to U.S. in-terests. With military means to change the equation in Syria laid in abeyance, the U.S. will be unlikely to U.S.e military, with subse-quent decline, albeit for the time being, in his hegemonic role;

2- Syria has been the golden ring in Resist-ance front against Arab conservative front, the major western ally in the region, and a major threat to the U.S.-Zionist joint interests;

3- Syria is important for the U.S. in a pos-sible success of the major rivalry in the re-gion, namely, Turkey and Saudi Arabia vis-à-vis Iran, for the interest of the former;

4- Syria is important for RU.S.sia-U.S. bal-ance of power, since it is the last resort for RU.S.sia to dictate its political and military preponderance in the region, which would be a hurdle for western and American agenda in the Middle East;

5- Syria is important for emergence of a new security arrangement in the Middle East, since it had been the sole Arab state (before the civil war engulfed the country in 2011) which came to oppose Zionism as its major foe, investing what she had in this conflict to win the fame of the only supporter of Resist-ance front; today as well, developments in Syria will have far-reaching consequences for Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan and even Pakistan;

6- Developments in Syria and crisis man-agement will have also impact on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s performance in the region;

7- A quadrilateral coalition in Syria is in conflict with western interests, with the future possibility of a Chinese contribution to the scene, with likelihood that the contribution would bolster Resistance front;

8- The future of energy is in stake; Syrian gas reserves with a shift in modes of energy consumption toward gas, the country would host gas pipelines in the future, which will win for the country a U.S. priority;

9- Syria is a ground where western colla-tion seeks to attain its objectives.

American agenda in SyriaSince 2011, the U.S. have pursued the fol-

lowing in Syria;1- Weakening the government of Bashar

al-Assad and strengthening her own armed fighter groups;

2- Supporting and improving position of so-called moderate opposition in efforts to curb and defeat ISIL;

3- Preparing for filling the possible vacu-um with possible fall of Assad;

4- Advertising her imagined effective role in fighting global terrorism and extremism;

5- Coordinating operation of her collation in Syria against ISIL;

6- Opposing and minimizing Iran’s influ-ence and position in Syria.

Currently, the U.S. have been providing intelligence and arms support for moderate opposition, with a firm belief that this is the best possible option and tactical means to defeat ISIL and Assad government. With the temporary nature of tactics U.S.ed by the U.S. in the region, it is inevitable that the U.S. will work with RU.S.sia in Syria to coordinate fight against ISIL, since RU.S.sians have recognized some groups of moderate opposition in con-

cert with the U.S. to help the mechanism. Iraq

In Iraq, influential groups, purportedly independent and acting on their own, have been under the effect of greater regional players as well as players beyond the region; a surge of terrorist attacks after the Parlia-mentary elections in Iraq would provide evi-dence to this.

Events in Iraq are closely associated with those in Syria. The situation turned to be dif-ferent than what the acting players would as-sume, with Syrian government hitting much success on the ground against opposition and ISIL; the security arrangement has shifted in the interests of Assad’s government, and with a successful elections in June 3 2014, it plunged the opposition in despair, and mounting pressures on them so as to seek new grounds for operations against Assad. In line with this, western intelligence along with their allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia support-ed Iraqi Sunni along Syrian borders to join the fighting terrorists in Iraq.

Syrian presidential elections and govern-ment upper-hand in crackdown on ISIL. Such a situation was dominant in Iraq when elec-tions united the government and people. It was the first election since the withdrawal of U.S. forces and was huge success with the government managing to restore security to ballots. The political participation was hope-inspiring, with all ethnic and religioU.S. groups contributing to a 62-per cent turnout. Inter-national observing body also approved the health of elections to add to the euphoria.

The election success however incited in-tense opposition in other yet hostile groups which hated the course of events in Iraq and who opted to embark on a series of sabo-tage and suicide attacks. This trend of ha-tred is a common denominator of ISIL and its sympathizers in Iraq and Syria during six years of conflict. The losing parties (ISIL and other terrorists) have ever worked to change the situation to worse when Baghdad and DamascU.S. succeeded. Terrorists have mis-interpreted the events, since the situation in Iraq has changed for good, with ancien régime gone and a democratically-elected government ruling with the consent of the republic. In larger part of the Middle East and Persian Gulf states, and even in North Africa, democratic elections and governments have

been rare and have not welcomed by the petty dictatorships ruling hereditarily.

Islamic Awakening and popular Arab upris-ings totally changed the situation in the Arab world, with public finding chances to directly decide on their own future. In such open situations, most of the ruling regimes would see their interests at risk, thU.S. initiating ac-tions to prevent democratic movements and changes. The Awakening however had its own enemies and opportunists; in Iraq, such opportunist states sought a firm foothold to effectively install a regime favorable to their own interests. However, developments have been disappointing for these countries in the past decade and have forced them to resort to drastic tactics to destabilize Iraq through terrorism and sowing discord. The remain-ing cadres of Baathist party have formed the core elite of the ISIL and have been the excellent means to infiltrate Iraq with pernicioU.S. effect. ISIL is a terrorist organi-zation with a religioU.S. label, while ironically, its members and other terrorist groups are

by no means ‘practicing MU.S.lims’ in strict sense of the term. The group have acted in blanket manner in targeting members of all known religioU.S. denominations in the re-gion including Shi’ite, Sunni, Christian, Yazidi, etc. They uphold no certain religion, neither would do they ascribe themselves to a cer-tain countries thanks to multinational nature of their members who come from diverse countries as RU.S.sian MU.S.lim republics of Caspian Sea and AU.S.tralia. As such, ISIL’s sympathizers and the ideology they preach have far-reaching effect all over the world, with Europe alarmed at the prospect of ter-rorist events in France. With improving situ-ation in Iraq and Syria for the interest of rul-ing governments, there is a growing fear that these mercenaries will return to their home countries, with grave implications to the gov-ernments of these countries, for they would work as preachers of hatred and terrorism

towards the majority non-MU.S.lim popula-tion. European fanatics as well as Arab ex-tremists contribute to the composition of ISIL. It is estimated that nationals of over 50 coun-tries fight against Syrian government within a loose body of cacophonoU.S. and diverse extremist and Wahhabist terrorists, who have been seeking their mission in volatile situa-tions and acts of atrocities and savagery they regularly engage in; their hotbed had been Iraq and during the years of instability, they migrated to Syria when the situation was ripe for such groups who saw the time opportune for their adventurism.

U.S. elections and impact on Syrian and Iraqi crises

Within the U.S., Republicans and Democrats share the policies on the future of the crisis in Syria. Observers believe that however the ma-jor parties differ only in their methods of han-dling the issue. However, the present author believes that evidence shows that there will be absolutely no difference between Democrats and Republicans in both tactical and strategic views on the situation in Iraq and Syria given the past misadventures of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama’s flirtations with RU.S.sia has been only tactical, since the fate of Hilary Clinton, his fellow party’s major nominee for the November elections is at stake. The coop-eration will have some agreements on Syria and Iraq with due impact on the presidential elec-tions as well. As tactical, the agreement will in the most probability have no long-term effect on the situation in Iraq and Syria, since the ob-jective is short-term and only seeks to create a margin of security for the Zionist regime. An ex-amination of the presidential election nominees of both parties, we find no drastic difference in their plans for the future of Syria and the Middle East at large. Only the Republicans espoU.S.e a fast-tracked approach and more robU.S.t action, which is shared by Democrats as well. Both par-ties plan for a no-fly zone, provide training and logistics for moderate opposition groups against Assad and ISIL. The scope and intensity of such plans constitute the real point of departure of Dems and Reps. Donald Trump advocates curb-ing the influx of armed groups from the Syrian borders. He also supports sending boots either American or other allied countries to accelerate fight against ISIL; however, Hillary Clinton has a

penchant for diplomatic efforts led by the U.S. in combination with air strikes by coalition and support for local fighters especially Kurds; she also shares with Trump establishment of the no-fly zone to solve crisis in Syria, but supports dividing Iraq to three Shi’ite, Sunni, and Kurd autonomoU.S. units.

With the corollary above, we reach at the following about the U.S. presidential elections and its effect on the future of Iraq and Syria: the U.S. is a hegemonic power regularly resort, as a means, to Takfirist terrorists such as ISIL to destabilize Syria and Iraq and she will do in the future. For example, in an article in The Times in 2015, the author claimed that the U.S. had been the major player behind formation of ISIL and continued to support and arm the group later in the course of group’s evolution to a full-fledged mercenary. The article also implicated U.S. military and intelligence bod-ies. Edward Joseph Snowden revealed that CIA worked closely with Israel’s Mossad and Brit-ish MI6 The former employee at U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), Edward Snowden, has revealed that the British and American intel-ligence and the Mossad worked together to create the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Snowden said intelligence services of three countries created a terrorist organization that is able to attract all extremists of the world to one place, U.S.ing a strategy called “the hor-net’s nest.” NSA documents refer to recent im-plementation of the hornet’s nest to protect the Zionist entity by creating religioU.S. and Islamic slogans. According to documents released by Snowden, “The only solution for the protection of the Jewish state “is to create an enemy near its borders.” Leaks revealed that ISIS leader and cleric Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi took intensive mili-tary training for a whole year in the hands of Mossad, besides courses in theology and the art of speech. The Pentagon and the State De-partment listed Al-Baghdadi as highly wanted, with prizes soaring to $ 10m for him, dead or alive. This catapulted Baghdadi to a position of prominence in leading ISIL in Iraq and Syria. Western double-standards are evident in that Washington has not concealed its support for terrorist groups, but clearly admitted sending arms to some of terrorist groups classified by the U.S. as moderates.

For nearly 6 years, terrorists have had the U.S. support in their fierce fight against Syrian government and people; they have violated all ethical, human, and conventional values. Iraqi government would be paralyzed in its fight against terrorism should the Islamic Republic of Iran fail to support the government. West-ern powers had been crucial to resilience and resurgence of terrorist groups; serioU.S. action against terrorism could have ended them for good in the region. If the U.S. only blocked paths where arms and money provided for ter-rorists, these groups would have been strictly limited in scope and we could have seen a step forward in achieving a region free of terrorism and crisis. However, things are not in the ven-ues we assume and the U.S. have not been true to its apparent pose of fighting terrorism, but U.S.ed terrorism as instruments to her ends. In Iraq, the U.S. have failed to contribute ef-fectively to fight against ISIL, effectively sharing the hostile Arab states’ criticism of the Shi’ite government of Mr. Heidar al-Ebadi and has posed her own political agenda dictated. Evi-dently, the U.S. has abU.S.ed terrorism as de-vices to her political means in especially forging three federations (yet on the paper however) of Shi’ites, Sunnis, and Kurds, which renders Iraq no longer extant. In her attempt, the U.S. actions is in line with her grander scheme of the new Middle East where smaller and smaller governments live in a pandemonium of pet-ty ethnic and religioU.S. conflicts. Such units could be easily manipulated in a region of ut-most importance, and where the U.S. would have an extended presence in the absence of any regional power where Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, etc. cease to exist and new entities appear in the map of the Middle East. The U.S. would seek to appear as the ultimate savior, through her propaganda empire, and encum-ber with favor Iraqi government and nation while they have almost defeated ISIL, largely depriving them of their major strongholds and vast territories in Sunni-majority provinces. The claim then would be sold to the international community that the U.S. ended the crisis in Iraq.

Among the long-term projects of the U.S. are cheap energy and the possibility of an arms race in the newly-established countries which would buy inordinate amounts of weapons from the U.S. and thU.S. recycle their oil in-come back to America. Such strategy is a favor of Hillary Clinton’s and Democrat camp would welcome the initiative. In Syria, the U.S. have appeared more deceptive, seeking to win the Islamic Republic of Iran’s consent in their new schemes of peace in Syria after Geneva round of talks systematically failed. In Syria, they welcome a destabilized country and region where their interests are best met. Whenever the balance of power has moved toward Syr-ian government, with terrorists pU.S.hed on the wall, the U.S., Saudis, and other actors armed the terrorists, with Democrats resorting to di-plomacy to save their mercenaries. Now, the short-term objective ahead of the U.S. elec-tions is to change this balance for their inter-ests.

Syrian and Iraqi crisis post-U.S. presidential

elections

The security arrangement has shifted in the interests of Assad’s government, and with a successful elections in June 3, 2014, it plunged the opposition

in despair, and mounting pressures on them so as to seek new grounds for operations against Assad.

The remaining cadres of Baathist party have formed the core elite of the ISIL and have

been the excellent means to infiltrate Iraq with pernicious effect.

ISIL is a terrorist organization with a religious label, while ironically, its members and other terrorist groups are by no means ‘practicing

Muslims’ in strict sense of the term. The group have acted in blanket manner in targeting

members of all known religious denominations.

By Davoud Shoja

Middle East Affairs Analyst

S C I E N C Eh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m SEPTEMBER 15, 2016SEPTEMBER 15, 2016 11I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

N E W SFloating farm could grow food on empty cargo shipsAbout 90 percent of the world’s goods are carried by sea, with more than 70 percent in shipping containers carrying everything from TVs to sportswear from Asia to the rest of the world. But the global imbalance in trade means most of these containers are empty on the return journey.

Design student Philippe Hohlfeld, from London’s Royal College of Art (RCA), has devised a way to stop this empty space going to waste. Grow Frame is a collapsible hydropon-ic farm that could grow vegetables inside the empty contain-ers during the weeks-long sea voyage.

“Grow Frame tackles the challenge that half of all contain-ers going to China are empty. And that means, right now, 13 million containers annually are traveling around with just air. And when I heard about that I thought ‘no, that’s not a prob-lem, that’s an opportunity’,” Hohlfeld told Reuters.

“Every container is 12 square meters of land, and they’re basically free. And free real estate in the world is really hard to come by, and especially in the countries where they end up in China and Japan and south-east Asia, that land would be really expensive and is at a premium.”

Each plant is grown in small individual plastic bags con-taining all the water and nutrients needed to feed the plant during the trip.

The mini farms would cultivate vegetables using bat-tery-powered LED lights that can be adjusted to provide pre-cisely the right spectrum of light for optimal growth. Hohlfeld said the energy efficient lights and the battery would hold enough power for the duration of the voyage; for example, for the approximately three weeks it takes for the vessel to travel from the UK to China.

(Source: Reuters)

Until very recently, scientists who wanted to study sea creatures in microscopic de-tail usually had to remove those creatures from their habitats in order to place them on glass slides in a laboratory.

This is one reason (along with vast size, crushing pressure, and darkness) why the sea is the earth’s final frontier: The bulk of the important stuff functions best in a place we don’t.

Take coral reefs — they span miles of ocean, but are made up of millions of mil-limeter-wide individual coral polyps. We know that each polyp has a symbiotic re-lationship with single-celled algae called zooxanthellae, which provides energy for the coral.

We know that warm water makes the algae leave, turning the reefs white. But we currently have no idea how to fix a bleaching episode, nor do we have enough information to even imagine how that would work.

The world’s first microscope capable of imaging the seafloor might change this. The Benthic Underwater Micro-scope (BUM) was invented at the Uni-versity of California, San Diego, and named for the ocean’s deepest layer, the benthic zone.

It is the first camera that can take mi-croscopic photos, videos, and time-lapse shots of organisms such as coral polyps

in their natural habitats — watching with-out harming to give us more information than we’ve ever had before.

Dangerous algaeIn Maui, the team discovered that af-

ter a bleaching, dangerous algae invade the coral in a very specific way that might be a target for a solution. Outside Israel, they discovered that healthy coral pol-yps from the same colony periodically

connect their “mouths” throughout the night. “We’re not exactly sure of its pur-pose,” says Andrew Mullen, a lead author on the microscope’s debut study. “But we think that the neighboring polyps are ex-changing or sharing organic materials.” For now, they’re calling it “kissing.”

As for how the scope works, it has two pieces: an imaging unit that houses the lenses and camera, and a control unit with a computer, hard drive, and live display. A diver sets the imaging unit up on a tripod with the optical port about two and a half inches away from its subject, and six LEDs light up the sample.

Because the hardest part of under-water microscopy is focusing, the scien-tists built an electrically tunable lens that works much like the lens in your eye. Soft and flexible, it slightly changes shape in order to focus on objects at different depths.

While easy to adjust, the tunable lens can focus on only one plane of an image at a time. When the diver wants to take a picture, he does some manual focusing to get the image within the rough range he wants, and then the lens rapidly and automatically adjusts through different planes of focus, like the Burst feature on an iPhone.

(Source: Popular Mechanics)

The underwater microscope that can survive on the ocean floor

This is the first camera that can take microscopic photos, videos, and time-lapse shots of organisms such as coral polyps in their natural habitats — watching without harming to give us more information than

we’ve ever had before.

Massive meteorite extracted from hole in ArgentinaSome meteorites are so big they need a name. Meet the Gancedo meteorite, a gigantic space rock extracted from the ground over the weekend using heavy machinery. It was found near the village of Gancedo in Argentina in an area known as Campo del Cielo (“Field of Heaven”).

Campo del Cielo is rife with iron meteorites estimated to have fallen around 4,000 years ago. What makes Gancedo unusual is its massive size, with a weight estimated at around 68,000 pounds (31,000 kilograms).

News organization Compacto Nea posted a video of the meteorite extraction on YouTube Monday.

It was a complicated affair requiring excavation equip-ment, chains, cables and plenty of heavy lifting to remove it from its impact crater. Parts of the iron meteorite have a rusty orange hue.

The largest meteorite ever uncovered sits in southern Af-rica. The Hoba meteorite is estimated to weigh more than 132,000 pounds (60,000 kilograms).

It’s so big, it hasn’t been moved and is now a tourist site. Argentinian news source Norte says the Gancedo meteorite is the second largest ever discovered.

(Source: CNET)

Japanese volcano Sakurajima due for major eruptionA Japanese volcano that last erupted in 1914 could be set to blow in the next few decades, new research suggests.

The pool of liquid magma swelling beneath Sakurajima volcano is growing every year — a sign of a growing threat.

“This big reservoir is growing, and it’s growing at quite a fast rate,” said study co-author James Hickey, a geophysical volcanologist at the University of Exeter’s Camborne School of Mines in England.

At the current rate, Sakurajima could erupt catastrophical-ly in about 25 years, according to the study.

Sakurajima volcano, located on the southwestern edge of Japan’s Kyushu Island, last erupted in 1914, killing 58 people and causing a massive flood in the nearby seaside city of Kagoshima. Sakurajima is fed by a pool of magma lying beneath the sub-terranean Aira caldera, and the filling of this magma reservoir causes the volcano to have minor eruptions roughly every day.

Risk of future eruptionsIn the 1950s, scientists tried to quantify the risk of future erup-

tions at Sakurajima by using a simple model, assuming the Earth’s surface above the volcano was flat and that the pool of magma was spherical. The model had a big advantage: “You can basically solve it with pen and paper,” Hickey told Live Science.

To better forecast eruptions at Sakurajima, Hickey and his colleagues developed a much more complicated computer model — one that incorporated the unique topography of the area surrounding the volcano. That model also took into account that the Earth’s crust is made up of different layers, with different properties. Then, the team incorporated data from seismometers and highly precise GPS devices placed in and around the volcano. Those sensors revealed tiny chang-es in the Earth that were clues to the activity of the magma pool deep below.

The researchers discovered that the reservoir of magma beneath the caldera was growing at a significant rate. From this model, they forecast that it would take 130 years from the past major eruption for the next one to occur — meaning the region is due for a major explosion around 2044.

The new model was better at capturing past behavior at the volcano, the researchers reported on September 13 in the journal Scientific Reports. It also found that the pool of mag-ma beneath the caldera looks more squashed and oblong than spherical, Hickey said.

(Source: Live Science)

In a ceremony held on the occasion of commemorat-ing birthday anniversary of the late legendary Iranian wrestler, Takhti, Bank Pasargad, as the sole supporter of wrestling team, appreciated and honored wrestling medalists of the country in 2016 Rio Olympic.

The award-granting ceremony of the bank was held in the presence of President of Iranian Wrestling Feder-ation Rasoul Khadem who managed recently to win a seat in International Wrestling Federation (FILA), Public Relations Dept. of the bank reported.

This prestigious ceremony was held in Tehran AZA-DI Hotel on Sept. 13 which was attended by the Minis-

ter of Youth Affairs and Sports Dr. Mahmoud Goudarzi, Deputy Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali Morad-Khani, representative of the Islamic Consul-tative Assembly Behrouz Ne’mati, Chief Executive of Bank Pasargad Dr. Majid Ghassemi, wrestling veterans and medalists of country in current competitions held in Rio de Janeiro of Brazil, trainers, technical coaches and senior managers and directors of the bank.

Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Dr. Goudarzi was the first speaker who said: “I deem it necessary to express my heartfelt congratulations to the unprecedented per-formance of country’s wrestling team who brought about

great honor for the Islamic Iran in 2016 Rio Olympic.” As leading supporter and backer of national wres-

tling team, the minister thanked senior managers and directors of Bank Pasargad especially Chief Executive and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the bank Dr. Ghassemi and said: “The bank’s support of national wrestling team of the country is admirable.”

In the end, sports minister said: “It is hoped that other banks and finance and credit association in the country should consider Bank Pasargad as a role mod-el for backing other sports seeds in order to witness growth and prosperity in relevant fields.”

Bank Pasargad Praises Medalists of National Wrestling Team in 2016 Rio Olympic

A “NASA airborne mission designed to transform our understanding of Earth’s valuable and ecologically sensitive cor-al reefs has set up shop in Australia for a two-month investigation of the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest reef eco-system,” reports NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory today.

“CORAL offers the clearest, most ex-tensive picture to date of the condition of a large portion of the world’s coral reefs,” said CORAL Principal Investigator Eric Hochberg of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), Ferry Reach, St. George’s, Bermuda, prior to the briefing.

“This new understanding of reef con-dition and function will allow scientists

to better predict the future of this glob-al ecosystem and provide policymakers with better information for decisions re-garding resource management.”

CORAL’s three-year mission combines aerial surveys using state-of-the-art air-borne imaging spectrometer technolo-gy developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, with in-water validation activities. The mission will provide critical data and new models for analyzing reef ecosystems from a new perspective.

CORAL will generate a uniform data set for a large sample of reefs across the Pacific Ocean. Scientists can use these data to search for

trends between coral reef condition and the natural and human-produced biological and environmental factors that affect reefs.

Reef systemOver the next year, CORAL will sur-

vey portions of the Great Barrier Reef, along with reef systems in the main Ha-waiian Islands, the Mariana Islands and Palau.

In Australia, CORAL will survey six discrete sections across the length of the Great Barrier Reef, from the Capri-corn-Bunker Group in the south to Torres Strait in the north. Two locations on the reef -- one north (Lizard Island Research Station) and one south (Heron Island Re-

search Station) -- will serve as bases for in-water validation activities.

Scientists from Australia’s Common-wealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and the University of Queensland in Brisbane are collaborat-ing with NASA and BIOS to conduct addi-tional complementary in-water validation activities.

Located in the Coral Sea off Queens-land, the Great Barrier Reef encompasses more than 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands. It is more than 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) long and covers an area of about 133,000 square miles (344,400 square kilometers).

(Source: Boing Boing)

What sets our home planet apart from others are the lush forests and jungles, grasslands, swamps, expansive deserts and sprawling savannahs that blanket its terrain.

However, each year, Earth has lesser and lesser of these natural spots because of human activity and dis-turbance, a new report has revealed. Earth’s wilderness is rapidly eroding.

Approximately 10 percent of the planet’s wilderness — the biological and ecological landscapes that are typ-ically free of human disturbance — has vanished in the last two decades alone, the new study says.

In order to determine the loss of the planet’s wilder-ness, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society evaluated satellite and survey data recorded since the 1990s.

By definition, wilderness landscapes begin to cease not when humans settle there, but when human activity disturbs ecosystems via land conversion, large-scale in-frastructure projects and land conversion.

In the end, researchers discovered that globally, 1.2 million square miles of wilderness — twice the size of the state of Alaska — have been lost in the last 20 years.

Amount of wildernessJames Watson, study lead author and an expert

from Australia’s The University of Queensland, says the

amount of wilderness that has vanished in just two dec-ades is staggering. In fact, the greatest loss in wilderness occurred in South America at 30 percent, and in Africa at 14 percent, they found.

A few areas such as the Northwestern Congolian Lowland Forests, as well as the Northern New Guinea Lowland Rain and Freshwater Swamp Forests ecore-gions, have lost almost all of their former wilderness.

Such negative losses on wilderness could have strong impacts on indigenous communities, wildlife and climate change, researchers say.

What’s more, the destruction of a small chunk of

ecosystem could negatively affect the rest, especially because wilderness regions are interdependent and in-terconnected.

When it comes to restoring the lost wilderness, Wat-son says it cannot be done. Once wilderness areas are gone, the ecological processes behind these ecosystems are also gone.

“And it never comes back to the state it was,” says Watson.

On the other hand, the new study offers good news: much of Earth’s remaining wilderness or nearly 80 per-cent is still made up of large chunks of land. This is cru-cial for species living in these regions because if habitats become disturbed by clear-cutting or roads, the animals are less likely to survive. And there is still hope to abate further losses.

Between 2005 and 2012, statistics show that deforest-ation rates in Brazil decreased to 70 percent because of conservation and protection efforts by soybean farmers and cattle ranchers in the country.

Watson says it is clear that more is required to strength-en the protection of Earth’s remaining wilderness. This in-cludes basic conservation, as well as transforming grass-lands and forests into reserves and protected areas.

(Source: Tech Times)

The massive collision that created the moon may have va-porized most of the early Earth, according to a new analysis of samples collected during the Apollo moon missions.

In the early days of planet formation, a grazing col-lision between the newborn Earth and a Mars-size rock named Theia (named after the mother of the moon in Greek myth) may have led to the birth of the moon, ac-cording to a prevailing hypothesis. Debris from the im-pact later coalesced into the moon.

This “giant-impact hypothesis” seemed to explain many details about Earth and the moon, such as the large size of the moon compared with Earth and the rotation rates of the two bodies.

But in the last 15 years, evidence has arisen that has challenged scientists to alter the details of this hypothesis.

In 2001, scientists began discovering that terrestrial and lunar rocks had a lot in common: the two bodies possess many of the same chemical isotopes. (Isotopes of an ele-ment have different numbers of neutrons from each other.

These subvarieties are identified by different num-bers; for example, potassium-39 or potassium-40).

Isotopes can act as geologic fingerprints, because prior work has suggested that planetary bodies that formed in different parts of the solar system generally have different isotopic compositions.

Giant-impact hypothesis

These discoveries threw the giant-impact hypothesis into crisis because previous computer simulations of the collision predicted that 60 to 80 percent of the material that coalesced into the moon came from Theia rather than Earth.

The likelihood that Theia happened to have virtually the same isotopic composition as Earth seemed extremely unlikely.

At first, scientists thought more precise isotopic anal-yses might help resolve this “isotopic crisis.” However, more accurate measurements of oxygen isotopes re-ported in 2016 only helped confirm this problem, said study lead author Kun Wang, a geochemist now at Washington University in St. Louis.

(Source: space.com)

NASA begins study of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

10 percent of Earth’s wilderness vanished in the last 20 years

Moon’s birth may have vaporized most of Earth, study shows

Every action has a reaction. We have one planet; one chance.

S O C I E T Yd e s k

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

S O C I E T Y h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s o c i e t ySEPTEMBER 15, 2016SEPTEMBER 15, 201612

More haste, less speed Explanation: if you try to do things too quickly, it

will take you longer in the end For example: Know we’re all eager to get the new

software released to the public, but remember: more haste, less speed. We don’t want to end up wasting time fixing bugs that could have been avoided.

Be down on somebody/something

Meaning: to have a severe attitude towards some-one or something, especially when this is unfair

For example: Why is Mark so down on her at the moment?

Ants in one’s pants

Explanation: people who have ants in their pants are very restless or excited about something

For example: I wish he’d relax. He’s got ants in his pants about something today.

ENGLISH PROVERB PHRASAL VERB ENGLISH IDIOM

ENGLISH IN USE

Tehran traffic police confront offending motorcyclists decisively The Tehran traffic police has adopted more forceful approaches to deal with offending motorcyclists, the deputy chief of the traffic police has said.Fines of 600,000 rials ($17) for not wearing a helmet, 650,000 rials ($18) for riding in the pedestrian area, 800,000 rials ($23) for using bus only lane, 1.5 million rials ($43) for riding dangerously, and 2 million rials ($57) for running a red light will be imposed on the offending motorcyclists, Hassan Abedi said, YJC reported. In addition to the fines the offenders will face, he said, their motorcycles will be confiscated and taken to the traffic police’s parking lots.

برخورد قاطع راهور با موتور سواران متخلفــور ــا تخلفــات موت جانشــين رئيــس پليــس راهــور گفــت: طــرح برخــورد ب

ســواران تشــديد شــد.بــه گــزارش باشــگاه خبرنــگاران جوان حســن عابــدى گفــت: جريمه عدم اســتفاده از كاله ايمنــى 600، حركــت در پيــاده رو 650، ورود در خــط ويــژه 800 هــزار ريــال،

و حــركات نمايشــى 1,5 و عبــور از چــراغ قرمــز 2 ميليــون ريال اســت.وى بيــان كــرد: در كنــار جريمــه تخلفــات نامبــرده موتــور ســيكلت راكبــان،

ــه پاركينــگ منتقــل مى شــود. توقيــف و ب

LEARN NEWS TRANSLATION

World no.1 Adrian Castro finally achieved his Paralympic ambition at the Rio 2016 Games – at the expense of his future father-in-law.

The Polish fencer defeated the defending Paralympic champion and teammate Grzegorz Pluta in the bronze medal bout in the men’s individual sabre event category B. But his beaten opponent just happens to be his bride-to-be’s father.

And as well as a Paralympic medal being at stake, so was the cost of the wedding.

“I met his daughter during a fencing training camp four years ago,” Castro said. “She accompanied Grze-gorz at that event, and everything between us started from there.

“Me and Pluta train every day together. We already fought against each other in the 2015 world champion-ships final and I won against him. But today before our bout I told him ‘the loser will pay for the wedding’.

But the London 2012 wheelchair sabre champion in-sists it will be Castro who picks up the bill.

“Not at all, I don’t agree,” Pluta said. “I lost the bronze medal, he will earn money from winning it so he has to pay now. Of course he has to. He has just won enough money to pay for the wedding.”

Castro was looking to make up for the disappoint-ment of finishing 11th at London 2012 and he earned the bronze medal with a 15-8 win.

(Source: Rio 2016)

Polish fencer Adrian Castro defeats his future father-in-law to land bronze

Smuggled goods worth $2b seized in Iran over 5 months

TEHRAN — Over a 5-month period

(March 20-August 21, 2016) Iran suc-ceeded in seizing smuggled goods worth 70 trillion rials (about $2 billion), the head of anti-smuggling task force said.

The amount has surpassed the total amount of smuggled goods seized last Iranian calendar year (March 2015-March 2016), totaling 50 trillion rials (about $1.5 billion), Habibollah Haqiqi told IRIB.

“Under a 5-year scheme, we are plan-ning on decreasing goods smuggling into Iran by 10 to 15 percent annually by the end of the current year (March 2017),” Haqiqi added.

Earlier this year, the anti-smuggling task force spokesman Qasem Khorshidi explained that primary estimates show

a 40 percent decline in the smuggling of goods in Iran over the past two years as a result of measures taken by the task force at different levels.

Bringing the inflation rate under con-trol and reducing it, increasing intelligent and online monitoring of the transit net-works, limiting the transit of some specific goods, administrating product tracking ID, doubled with police forces increased cooperation and armed forces supports are of the few steps taken against smug-gling.

Given the aforesaid measure the $25 billion worth of smuggling report-ed in Iranian calendar year 1392 (March 2013-March 2014) diminished to $15 billion in the calendar year ended in March 2016.

L E A R N E N G L I S H

L E A R N E N G L I S H

Designing a Building Kathy: Seeing these blueprints really brings this project to life. I can now envision what this building will look like when it’s built. Brett: I’m really glad. As the architect on this project, it’s my job to turn your ideas into design. Kathy: You did a great job. Brett: I had the help of the surveyors and a civil engineer, so I can’t take all of the credit. Kathy: We’re ready now to solicit bids from general con-tractors, don’t you think? Brett: These plans will give any contractor the specifica-tions they need to give a detailed and accurate bid. There’ll be no problems with permits, I don’t think, because a similar structure was on this building site about 10 years ago be-fore it was torn down. Kathy: I’m hoping not to run into any stumbling blocks, but you never know with a building project. I’ll know we’ve cleared the hurdles when I can bring in the interior designers!

(Source: eslpod.com) Words & phrases

blueprint: a photographic print of a plan for a building, ma-chine etc. on special blue paperbring something to life: to make something exciting or in-terestingenvision: to imagine something that you think might hap-pen in the future, especially something that you think will be good; envisagearchitect: someone whose job is to design buildingsdesign: the art or process of making a drawing of something to show how you will make it or what it will look likesurveyor: someone whose job is to examine the condition of a building, or to measure and record the details of an area of landcivil engineer: someone whose job is planning, building, and repair of roads, bridges, large buildings etc.take credit for something: to allow people to believe that one has done something praiseworthy, whether or not one has actually done itsolicit bid: process of notifying prospective or qualified bid-ders on the bid solicitor ’s wish to receive bids (offer) on the specified product or projectgeneral contractor: a manager, and possibly a tradesman, employed by the client on the advice of the architect, engi-neer or the architectural technologist or the client him/herself if acting as the manager; a general contractor is responsible for the overall coordination of a projectspecification: a clear statement of what is needed or wantedaccurate: correct and true in every detailpermit: an official written statement giving you the right to do somethingbuilding site: a place where a house, factory etc. is being builttear down: to destroy stumbling block: a problem or difficulty that stops you from achieving somethingclear the hurdle: deal successfully with a probleminterior designer: someone whose job is to plan and choose the colors, materials, furniture etc. for the inside of buildings, especially people’s houses

“Shoebox” scheme to provide support for underprivileged students in Tehran

TEHRAN — On the verge of the new school year, starting September 22, Tehrani

citizens are going to donate 10,000 pairs of shoes under a scheme called “shoebox” to underprivileged students.

The scheme is co-organized by the Tehran Municipality and the Imam Khomeini Re-lief Foundation, said an offi-cial with the municipality.

Last year, some 3,800 pairs of shoes were collect-ed, Mahmoud Salahi said, adding, “we have already prepared 10,000 shoe box-es but it is projected that 15,000 pairs will be collected this year.”

“We are ready to supply the additional number of the shoe boxes if necessary,” Sa-lahi noted.

He went on to say that Tehran’s shoemakers trade union has also pledged to provide 3,000 pairs of shoes to the children in need.

Over two other charitable ceremonies scheduled to be held on September 15 and October 1, the contributions made by the citizens will be as well collected and distributed among those children who are in distress.

At the beginning of the school year in Iran it is customary for people to hold humanitarian events to donate essential items and money for the disadvantaged students.


Iran’s 4th grape festival

opens

TEHRAN — The fourth

grape festival of Iran kicked off in the city of Urmia, northwest-ern province of West Azarbai-jan, on Tuesday evening, Nasi-monline news agency reported.

The event which is being held in a coastal village adja-cent to Lake Urmia is coordi-nated in association with Urmia municipality in an attempt to support the framers, garden-ers, Lake Urmia’s restoration program, and register Urmia as a national city of grape.

“We want to support farmers by encouraging grape export,” Urmia mayor Mohammad Haz-ratpour said, mentioning the 286,000 tons of grape produc-tion in the region.

Festivals of this kind would promote economic boom, Hazratpour noted.

He further called on banks and the private sector to pro-vide farmers with financial sup-port to help the grape industry and all other related industries grow both in Urmia and the whole country.


400 tons of smuggled goods including clothing items, footwear, cosmetics, hygiene products and foodstuff, worth 150 billion rials (about $4.3 million), were destroyed on August 17 in Tehran.

WORLD IN FOCUSh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l 13I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

NEWS

Forces opposed to Libya’s unity govern-ment have seized a fourth oil port, Brega, completing their takeover of vital instal-lations in the North African country’s “oil crescent”, according to military sources.

The United Nations-backed Govern-ment of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli is struggling to assert its authority and has been facing staunch resistance from a rival administration based in Lib-ya’s remote east.

Forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar, a ren-egade general, on Sunday launched an offensive on Libya’s “oil crescent” along the northern coast.

Haftar, 73, who sees himself as Libya’s savior after battling conservative armed groups out of most of second city Beng-hazi in the east, backs the Bayda-based parliament which has refused to grant the GNA a vote of confidence.

His forces fought off guards to gain control of the oil terminals at Ras Lanuf, Al-Sidra and Zuwaytania, and they finally secured Brega unopposed on Tuesday.

“We have taken control of the Brega port completely and without any fight-ing,” said Colonel Muftah al-Muqarief, who heads oil guards loyal to Haftar.

“The entire oil crescent region is now under our control,” Muqarief told AFP news agency.

Brega was taken largely thanks to “mediation involving residents and town elders”, he said.

The Brega takeover came just hours after the United States and its major European allies - which back the GNA - condemned Haftar ’s offensive.

The U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain said the UN-brokered gov-ernment based in the capital, Tripoli, is the “sole steward of these resources,” adding that “Libya’s oil belongs to the

Libyan people”.“We also call on all forces to avoid any

action that could damage Libya’s energy infrastructure or further disrupt its ex-ports,” said the joint statement, issued late on Monday.

It also warned against “illicit oil ex-ports”.

The statement echoed remarks by Martin Kobler, the United Nations special envoy, on Monday.

“I call for the respect of UN Security Coun-cil Resolution 2259 which recognizes the Government of National Accord ... as the sole executive authority in Libya,” Kobler said.

Oil is Libya’s main natural resource with reserves estimated at 48 billion bar-rels, the largest in Africa, but production has dropped since 2011 as the country plunged into turmoil.

On Sunday, Haftar ’s forces took Al-Sidra and Ras Lanuf ports before attack-ing Zuwaytina to the east.

The “oil crescent” lies between Beng-hazi and Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, where pro-GNA forces have been bat-tling the Islamic State in Iraq and the Le-vant (ISIL) group since May.

It was the first time Haftar ’s forces and fighters loyal to the GNA clashed directly since the unity government started work-ing in Tripoli in March.

Kobler said oil installations must re-main under the authority of the GNA’s presidential council and stressed that Resolution 2259 “contains a clear prohi-bition on illicit oil exports”.

The GNA called on loyalist forces to “protect and defend” the ports against what it called a “flagrant aggression” of

Libya’s sovereignty.For his part, the head of the rival gov-

ernment, Abdullah al-Thani, said from Bayda that his administration “will work on the oil ports resuming work as soon as possible so as to guarantee all Libyans a decent life”.

Aguila Saleh, speaker of the Bay-da-based parliament, said Haftar ’s forces would withdraw and hand over the ports to the National Oil Corporation (NOC) to resume oil exports.

He said Haftar ’s move was by “popu-lar demand” and was authorized by Lib-ya’s official institutions.

Saleh said Haftar’s forces “liberated the fields and the terminals from the occupiers and those hindering exports”, referring to Ibrahim Jedran, who commands a force known as Petroleum Facilities Guards.

Jedran’s fighters seized the oil termi-nals more than two years ago and have tried to export illegally in the past.

It is now allied with the GNA, and Ko-bler brokered a deal with Jedran in July to resume exports.

The NOC is split into two rival branch-es, one allied to the GNA and the other to the administration that Haftar supports.

On Tuesday, the NOC branch allied with Haftar said it would immediately start working to resume crude exports from ports seized by his forces.

“Our technical teams already start-ed assessing what needs to be done to lift force majeure and restart exports as soon as possible,” Mustafa Sanalla, NOC chairman, said in a statement.

The battle for control of Libya’s oil as-sets has renewed fears of a civil war in the country, which plunged into chaos after the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi.

(Source: agencies)

India, Afghanistan call for end to all support of militantsIndia and Afghanistan on Wednesday called for an end to all sponsorship, support and sanctuaries to militants, including those who have committed violence in the two countries.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghan Pres-ident Mohammad Ashraf Ghani did not name Pakistan in their remarks, though they have previously. The neighboring country has been accused of supporting the Taliban in Af-ghanistan and rebels in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

India offered a fresh $1 billion in aid to Afghanistan for building capacity in education, health, agriculture, energy and infrastructure, said a joint statement by the two sides. They also signed an extradition treaty.

Kabul has cultivated closer ties with New Delhi in recent years as a balance to Pakistan.

Ghani arrived in Indian capital New Delhi on Wednesday for a two-day visit.

Modi and Ghani also reaffirmed their resolve to strengthen their security and defense cooperation, but did not give any details. India already has donated three multirole Mi-35 heli-copters to Afghanistan.

The two sides also stressed that fast implementation of an agreement among Afghanistan, India and Iran to develop the Chabahar port in Iran would increase connectivity within the region.

India said in May it would invest up to $500 million to de-velop the Iranian port, which India plans to use for trade with Afghanistan in the absence of a land route through Pakistan.

(Source: AP)

South Sudan: Surviving on goat bones and water liliesTens of thousands of people in South Sudan are on the brink of starvation with many living in swamps and surviving on water lilies and goat bones.

A hunger crisis affecting an estimated 4.8 million people could turn catastrophic unless humanitarian relief is urgently stepped up, Mercy Corps country director Deepmala Mahla warned.

“The situation is dire,” she said.Mahla said the worst of the hunger is in the south of Unity

State, where people have moved deep into swamp areas.“People have been surviving for weeks, maybe months,

just eating water lilies. People are also cooking goat skin and bones because there is nothing else,” she said, adding about 40,000 people are at risk of dying unless swift action is taken.

In the capital Juba, vegetable traders are now cutting to-matoes in half to sell because some customers can no longer afford to buy a whole one, Mahla said.

The crisis has been fuelled by nearly three years of war that has killed thousands, uprooted more than two million people, and disrupted markets. Inflation is at 661 percent - the highest rate in the world, Mahla said.

The fighting pits supporters loyal to President Salva Kiir against allies of his former deputy, Riek Machar. The pair signed a shaky peace deal a year ago but violence continues.

Mahla said the difficulties of delivering aid in a country the size of France with only 200km of paved road were com-pounded by increasing assaults on aid workers.

South Sudan had more attacks on aid workers than any other country last year, including shootings, rapes and mass lootings. At least 57 aid workers have been killed since the end of 2013 and many more are missing.

Across South Sudan many people have been uprooted multiple times meaning they cannot farm their land. Around South Sudan United Nations peacekeepers are protecting nearly 200,000 people at six compounds.

One third of children are out of school with girls being pulled out first to be married off in exchange for cows.

(Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation)

Khalifa Haftar forces seize oil port Brega in Libya

1 There are also several national and regional objec-

tives such as stimulating the development of China’s backward western provinces, putting surplus foreign ex-change to work in profitable overseas investments, ex-porting the overproduction of inefficient state industries, and building multiple overland routes for vital energy imports instead of relying on vulnerable sea lanes that can easily be cut by the American Navy.

What can be the importance of Iran in this big project?

A: Iran is one of a handful of countries that are indispen-sable to making the New Silk Road a success. Along with neighboring Turkey and Pakistan, Iran enjoys an irresistible combination of geographic advantage, market size, nat-ural resources, and regional political influence. Indonesia and Nigeria occupy equally important positions in South-east Asia and West Africa. China is eagerly courting friends in each of these countries because it sees them as the an-chors of its planned network of transcontinental and trans-oceanic influence. Growing attention from China will also encourage all other great powers —particularly Russia, the United States, Europe, and India—to compete for favor by offering attractive economic and political inducements.

How does the EU look at China’s move in reviv-ing the ancient Silk Road? Doesn’t the EU consider it a threat to itself?

A: Every region of Europe is participating in multiple Silk Road projects because Western Europe is the ma-jor destination for Chinese exports and a major hub for transshipment to Africa, the Middle East, and the Ameri-cas. Throughout Europe, Chinese investment is supporting a host of megaprojects including sea ports, high-speed trains, expressways, pipelines, airports, power stations, and industrial zones. European Union leaders in Brussels com-

plain that member states are negotiating separate deals with China which undercut efforts to develop union-wide policies on trade, human rights, and diplomacy. NATO of-ficials fear that China’s growing influence in Europe will prevent concerted Western responses to Russian asser-tiveness and to recurrent crises in the Middle East and Af-rica. Hence, the more that China appeals to the economic interests of national governments and business leaders the more troublesome it appears to the defenders of pan-Eu-ropean and trans-Atlantic alliances.

Can the revival of the Silk Road result in an im-provement of Iran-EU relations?

A: Iran is likely to follow China’s example of bypass-ing the European Union in favor of cutting bargains with individual governments and businesses. Iran’s trade re-lations can grow in many directions at once, not only with Europe but also with Russia, China, India, and Pa-cific Asia. Because these conditions encourage flexibili-ty rather than long-term commitments, Iranian leaders will want to keep their options open. If deals with one European partner turn sour, Iran can move elsewhere in Europe and beyond. Naturally, Iran’s ability to benefit from these multiple opportunities depends entirely on avoiding a re-imposition of international sanctions.

Iran one of handful of states vital for success of Silk Road: SISU professor

Israel: Shimon Peres put into induced coma after strokeShimon Peres, Israel’s former president, has been put into an induced coma by doctors after suffering a stroke.

The 93-year-old elder statesman was stable and fully con-scious before being rushed to the hospital on Tuesday, his spokeswoman Ayelet Frisch said in a statement.

Israeli TV stations later said Peres was suffering bleeding in the brain and described the stroke as serious.

Speaking from outside the Ramat Gan hospital late on Tuesday, Chemi Peres, the former president’s youngest son, said that he hoped for the best.

Peres had a political career spanning nearly seven dec-ades, serving in a dozen cabinets and twice as a Labor Party prime minister.

He later served as president from 2007-2014 before leav-ing government.

Peres shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Israel’s late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and late Palestinian Leader Yasser Ara-fat for a 1993 interim peace deal that they and their succes-sors failed to turn into a durable treaty.

(Source: agencies)

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

U.S. strikes may have killed Syrian civilians: Pentagon

Israeli spy sat shows signs of malfunctioning after launch: reportsHours after its launch into space, an Is-raeli spy satellite reportedly shows signs of experiencing multiple malfunctions.

Ofek 11, expected to mainly serve the military and Israeli intelligence appara-tuses, was shot into space at an airbase south of Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

“There are a number of things that worry us,” said Amnon Harari, the head of Space Directorate at the Israeli Min-istry for Military Affairs, Israeli paper Ha’aretz reported.

“There are a few matters that don’t seem routine, but the process of diag-nosing the satellite’s situation is contin-uing,” Ofer Doron, aerospace chief at Israeli Aircraft Industries, also said.

Israeli Aircraft Industries Chief Execu-tive Yossi Weiss, meanwhile, blasted the regime for “not looking at what’s going on around it. It invests smaller sums than what’s happening in the world, and it’s far from where it should be.”

It could be days before authorities could say whether the orbiter would

function properly as it could only be ac-cessed for a short period of time each day.

The Amos-6, Israel’s largest ever sat-ellite, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on which it was perched, go up in flames at a launch facility in Florida on September 1, 2016.

Earlier in the month, a test launch in Cape Canaveral, Florida, was hit by an explosion that destroyed Falcon 9, a rocket belonging to the United States aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, and Amos-6, the Israeli “communication satellite” it had been due to carry into space.

Isaac Ben-Israel, the chairman of Is-rael’s space agency, reacted bitterly to the incident, saying, “As far as the Is-raeli communications satellite industry is concerned, this is a very severe blow which could place the future of the in-dustry in doubt if it is not dragged out of the mud.”

(Source: Press TV)

The United States military has admitted its airstrikes in Syria over the past sev-eral days “may have resulted in civilian casualties.”

The military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement that it launched multiple attacks against the Is-lamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) terrorists in Syria during last week.

It said U.S. warplanes may have tar-geted civilians in their strikes near the cities of Raqqah, Dayr al-Zawr, and Shaddadah.

In the September 10 airstrike “near Raqqah, Syria, a strike against an ISIL target may have resulted in the death of civilians near where the strike occurred,” CENTCOM said.

On September 7, a strike near Dayr al-Zawr struck a civilian vehicle that drove into the target area after the weapon was fired from the jet.

CENTCOM added that a similar in-cident also happened near Shaddadah where a strike against ISIL hit a non-mil-

itary vehicle.The CENTCOM statement did not

give the number of dead or injured. ISIL terrorists still control parts of Iraq

and Syria. They are engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.

Since September 2014, the U.S. and some of its Arab allies have been carry-ing out airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damas-cus or a United Nations mandate.

The U.S.-led coalition has done lit-tle to stop ISIL’s advances in Syria and Iraq. Some analysts have criticized the U.S.-led military campaign, saying the strikes are only meant to benefit U.S. weapons manufacturers.

The U.S.-led aerial campaign in Syr-ia has also been criticized for lack of efficiency and high civilian casualties. In July, a U.S. airstrike reportedly killed at least 70 civilians, mostly women and children near Manbij in northern Syria.

(Source: Press TV)

The internet is lighting up with conspiracy theories that a body double was used to stand in for Hillary Clinton as she emerged from her daughter’ apartment Sunday af-ter collapsing at a 9/11 memorial ceremony.

“Nose looks very different,” one person wrote on Twitter.

“Hillary’s index finger is longer than her ring finger. This isn’t Hillary,” wrote another.

An additional person wrote: “The person outside Chel-sea’s apartment has skinny legs and torso! You decide!”

Another conspiracy theorist noted the absence of any obvious Secret Service agents nearby when the Democratic presidential candidate walked out of Chel-sea’s Manhattan apartment building.

Some citizen sleuths claimed the woman emerging

from Chelsea’s apartment was actually someone named Teresa Barnwell — who is the spitting image of the pres-idential candidate.

Barnwell added fuel to the fire when she posted a photo of herself outside the same building wearing sun-glasses with the caption: “Maybe I was in New York.”

But Barnwell has an ironclad alibi to prove that she was not in New York. She was impersonating Clinton 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles over the weekend.

She appeared live on Spike TV’s Lip Sync Battle along with lookalikes of Bill Clinton, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

She told Inside Edition she sent out the message on social media to “just kind of mess with people because of this rumor that had started that some kind of body

double had come out of the apartment instead of the real Hillary. I mean, come on.”

(Source: Inside Edition)

Did Hillary Clinton use a body double after falling ill at 9/11 memorial appearance?

“Iran is likely to follow China’s example of bypassing the European Union in favor of cutting bargains with individual governments

and businesses,” Shanghai International Studies

University Professor Robert R. Bianchi says.

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

W O R L D S P O R T h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / w o r l d s p o r tSEPTEMBER 15, 2016SEPTEMBER 15, 201614

Lopetegui: We expect the team to meet every challengeThe day after turning 50, Julen Lopetegui admitted to hav-ing slept little and to feeling butterflies in his stomach. But it was not the landmark birthday that had disturbed his sleep and provoked his anxiety, it was his imminent first match as Spain’s senior coach.

“Feeling a few nerves is necessary and positive. That ten-sion is a good thing, it’s a sign that you’re doing something you like, that you’re passionate about and about which you have a great sense of responsibility and respect for,” he said, in an exclusive interview with FIFA.com at the end of his first matchweek with La Roja. “If there came a time when we didn’t get nervous, that would be worrying, as it’d mean we didn’t care as much.”

Results could barely have gone better, however, with an impressive 2-0 friendly win over Belgium followed by an 8-0 thrashing of Liechtenstein to kick off Spain’s European Zone qualifying campaign for the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia™.

Lopetegui’s Spain“We’re pleased about the wins but, more than anything

else, we’re happy about the response we’ve seen from the players, the behaviour and commitment they’ve shown, and their determination to take on board all the ideas that we’ve tried to get across to them over these two games,” underlined Vicente del Bosque’s successor. “We haven’t made any drastic changes, but every coach has his own way of working.”

So, did these two performances already manage to reflect the style of play Lopetegui wants from his team? “We want a Spain side that is able to draw the best it has out of the players at its disposal. One that’s able to take the initiative in games, which is part of our footballing make-up, while also being able to respond to situations that could arise at any given time.

“There’s a world of difference from game to game, and the demands on you are different too,” added the former FC Porto supremo. “We expect the team to be capable of meet-ing every challenge, and that the players are able to come up with their own answers when difficulties arrive. I’m certain that in that area the team will respond positively, rise to the challenge and add a lot more strings to their bow.”

On the back of his experiences with Spain’s U-20 squad, who he guided to the quarter-finals of the FIFA U-20 World Cups at Colombia 2011 and Turkey 2013, the U-21s – whom he led to the European title in 2013, and the U-19s, with whom he also tasted continental glory (2012), Lopetegui knows how it feels to win with La Selección. However, he also knows the pressure involved. “You only get short time periods to work, so you have work more intensively on your priority areas,” he said. “But given the attitude and professionalism shown by the players, everything will be that much easier.”

Next up for the new coach will be keeping tabs on his eligible players, overseeing the work done with the country’s youth national teams, analysing opponents and thoroughly preparing the training programme for La Roja’s next get-to-gether in October.

Pelota vasca and cycling “It’s not easy to disconnect from football,” admitted the

former Real Sociedad, Real Madrid, Logrones, FC Barcelona and Rayo Vallecano keeper, who tries to do so by spending time with his family. “They support and encourage me, but they don’t stay silent when they see something they don’t like. They always say so affectionately of course,” he added with a smile, of his two sons and one daughter, all of whom are football fans and follow Real Sociedad, if in part because their dad “gave them no choice”!

Not that Julen himself was exactly faith aboaful to fami-ly tradition, with Lopetegui coming from a long line of har-rijasotzailes (rock-lifters), a very popular sport in his native Basque country and still practised using huge weights of various shapes, sizes and materials. But Lopetegui’s father, who juggled competitions with running his own grill house, dreamed of his children pursuing a different path.

And so they did, with both immersing themselves in an-other local sporting tradition, la pelota vasca, with brother Joxean becoming a reputed pelotari. Julen, though, was also drawn strongly to football, despite taking a while to firmly commit to a career between the sticks.

His experience in pelota vasca contributed to Lopetegui having a characteristic keeping style and, in the end, the beautiful game won the day. “The larger ball had more of a lure for me,” said the former custodian, who travelled with Spain to USA 1994. But though he was selected for La Se-lección’s squad on multiple occasions, he only ever won one cap, Spain legend and fellow Basque Andoni Zubizarreta blocking his path for years.

“They’re the same, footballers who are passionate about what they do and who feel fortunate to have the chance to represent their country,” said Lopetegui, when quizzed if there are differences between the Spain dressing room in his playing days and now.

Yet before he enters that dressing room again with his Roja charges, he is sure to find time for another of his hobbies: cycling. “Ah yes, that’s something that helps me switch off. I grab the bike and do one of the Tour de France hill climbs, the mountain stages are what I most enjoy,” he revealed, but would he be willing to race against one of his colleagues from that USA 1994 adventure? “No, I’m sure Luis Enrique would beat me. He’s much better trained than I am,” he said, of the current Barça head coach and fellow cycling aficionado.

The next footballing stage he will be tackling will be on Italian soil, when Spain face Giampiero Ventura’s Italy on 6 October. The Nazionale are, on paper, the Spaniards’ biggest threat in Group G of European Zone qualifying, which is also made up of Albania, FYR Macedonia, Israel and the afore-mentioned Liechtenstein.

“You have to give every opponent the importance they deserve,” concluded Lopetegui, refusing to hand greater sig-nificance to a clash between the 2010 and 2006 world cham-pions. “Every match matters, and we’ll have to work hard to move forward and get where we want to go. The road will be long and tough.”

(Source: FIFA)

F O O T B A L L

FC Seoul reached the Asian Champions League semi-finals with a 4-2 aggre-gate victory over Shandong Luneng on Wednesday and will face Jeonbuk Hyun-dai Motors in an all-South Korea clash.

Manager Hwang Sun-hong›s Seoul side, who had to protect a 3-1 lead from last month›s home leg, drew 1-1 to set up a clash with Jeonbuk, who thumped China›s Shanghai SIPG 5-0 on Tuesday.

The 2003 champions Al Ain also reached the last four with a 1-0 win at Lokomotiv Tashkent and will face either Al Nasr or El Jaish.

Shandong›s Walter Montillo opened the scoring by heading home Hao Junmin›s cross on the hour to shock the 2013 finalists at the Jinan Olympic Sports Centre.

However, Yun Ju-tae equalised for Seoul seven minutes from time, ending the hosts› chances of reaching their first Asian Champions League semi-final.

Shandong came out all guns blazing from the start, with Italian striker Graziano Pelle, who joined the club from English Premier League side Southampton in July, drawing a save from goalkeeper Yu Sang-hun in the fifth minute.

Shandong›s Zhang Chi missed one of the best chances to break the deadlock by hitting the side netting two minutes later.

Seoul›s Park Chu-young nearly made Shandong pay for their missed opportu-nities when he found himself free on goal midway through the first half, only to be denied by keeper Wang Dalei.

(Source: Reuters)

Usain Bolt has left the door open to run-ning in both the 100 and 200 meters at next year›s world championships where he said he will be more focused on pro-tecting his legacy than topping his world records.

The Jamaican, who last month drew down the curtain on his Olympic career by securing a sweep of the sprint titles for a third successive Games, said his plan was to only contest the 100m in London but that his coach has other ideas.

«That›s the plan, but I still have to dis-cuss it with my coach,» Bolt told Televi-sion Jamaica on Tuesday.

«(Glen Mills) still wants me to do the double, but I›ve told him I would really like to just do the 100m, so at the start of the season we›ll decide exactly what

(to focus on), but that›s what›s on my mind.»

Bolt has wild card entries for both the 100 and 200 meters at the Aug. 5-13 world championships by virtue of win-ning both events at last year›s worlds in Beijing.

But Bolt, who set the 100 and 200 world records of 9.58 and 19.19 seconds in 2009, said he is not planning to top either of those times.

«No (world records), it›s all beyond me now, right now it is just for me to go out there and leave with a big bang as much as possible,» said Bolt.

«I just want to go to the world cham-pionships, do my best as always and stay on a certain level and that›s the plan.»

(Source: Reuters)

Bolt leaves door open to 2017 sprint double at worlds

Seoul set up all-Korean Asian Champions League semi-final

One of Neymar’s agents has claimed that the Brazilian held two meetings with Paris Saint-Germain in the sum-mer before eventually agreeing to extend his contract with Barcelona.

Neymar, 24, penned a new five-year deal at the be-ginning of July with Barca, but Wagner Ribeiro says his client could have earned much more money if he had left for the French capital.

According to Ribeiro, PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi met with the player and his father in Ibiza at the beginning of June and again in Brazil later that same month.

“It was me that brought Nasser to Sao Paulo,” he said in an interview with ESPN Brasil. “I told Neymar that the offer was out of this world; that he’d become the best-paid player in the world and that no player would be earning more than him.

“[PSG] were willing to pay [the €190 million release clause] and then he would have earned €40m a year after tax. We were talking for two hours and Neymar was enthusiastic. Nasser explained that there would be no tax issues at PSG and that he’d be the No. 1 in the team, which isn’t the case at Barca.”

On top of the huge salary, Ribeiro also claims that Al-Khelaifi offered Neymar a private jet to travel to Brazil games and a share in a new chain of hotels that would bear his name -- similar to Cristiano Ronaldo’s venture.

However, Neymar, whose career is overseen more by his father than any of his agents, was keen to remain at Barcelona, although he appreciated the effort made by the Ligue 1 champions.

“If Ney stayed it is because he wants to be at Bar-celona, he’s happy at the club and in the city,” Ribeiro said. “I wanted him to go to PSG, but his father pre-

ferred that he stayed.“[If he left] it would have been for PSG, because their

president spoke directly with him, something which, for example, neither [Real Madrid president] Florentino [Perez] nor Manchester United did.”

Ribeiro has made similar claims about PSG’s interest before, but they have always been rebuked by the club.

Speaking to L’Equipe, an unnamed PSG source pre-viously insisted there was no truth in Wagner’s stories

“It’s totally false,” the source said. “With employer contributions on top, that salary would have cost more than €60m a year. It’s obscene. Neymar used us to strengthen his hand with Barcelona.”

The sports daily added, however, that PSG’s deputy sporting director Olivier Letang had gone to Brazil at the end of June to meet Neymar’s entourage.

(Source: ESPN)

Barcelona’s Neymar held meetings with PSG over summer move - agent

Aleksander Ceferin, a little-known Slovenian soccer offi-cial, was elected as the head of European soccer›s gov-erning body UEFA on Wednesday and promised to stand up to the big clubs.

The 48-year-old will replace disgraced Frenchman Michel Platini after comfortably beating experienced Dutch football administrator Michael van Praag by 42 votes to 13.

«I am not a showman, I have no ego issues and I am not a man of unrealistic promises,» said Ceferin after the poll amongst Europe›s 55 national football associations.

«My small and beautiful Slovenia is very proud about it and I hope that one day you will also be very proud about it.»

Ceferin said his first task would be tackling wide-spread dissatisfaction at controversial changes to the Champions League agreed between UEFA and the Eu-ropean Club Association, which has 220 members from 53 FAs, in favour of the big clubs.

UEFA increased the number of places allocated to clubs from Spain, England, Germany and Italy in the lucrative group stage and cut the slots for the small-er countries. The move came amid threats that the big clubs could form a breakaway Super League.

«Whether I want it or not, I will have to deal with that

and that will be the first thing to deal with,» Ceferin told reporters.

«UEFA is a very good and very strong organisation, it was without leadership for some time and I think that in a way was a problem in dealing with those things.

«We should show we are the ones who are the gov-erning body with our 55 national associations, and at the same time we have to have dialogue with the clubs and I think the situation can be solved.»

PLATINI ADDRESSFormer France international Platini had governed UEFA

since 2007 and been re-elected twice until he was banned by FIFA›s ethics committee last October for ethics violations.

He finally announced his resignation in May after ex-hausting all possibilities of appeal within the sporting tri-bunal system, allowing UEFA to call Wednesday›s election.

Despite his four-year ban, Platini was given permission by FIFA›s ethics committee to address the Congress as a «gesture of humanity», and made a seven-minute speech.

«Thank you for these nine years. I think we did a great job... Friends of football, farewell,» said Platini, who was giv-en a round of applause but not a standing ovation.

«I have a clear conscience, I am certain not to have made any mistake and will continue to fight this in the courts.»

Ceferin, who has crossed the Sahara desert four times by car and once on a motorbike, was elected president of Slovenia›s football federation in 2011 but was not internationally known until he announced he intended to stand in June.

«I was never behind the scenes but obviously, as I said, people trust me and nobody behind the scenes can have 42 votes,» he said.

Both candidates campaigned to help UEFA›s mid-dle-sized and smaller members and said it was neces-sary to close the gap between big and small clubs, al-though Van Praag was more outspoken in Wednesday›s pre-vote speeches.

«I guarantee you, on my watch I will not allow the clubs to put the gun to our head again,» he had said.

«For many years, the million dollar deals have been restricted to the big clubs alone. I believe that top foot-ball is played by too few clubs in too few competitions in limited areas.»

After the result, Van Praag added: «Alex and myself have the same goal, look at our programmes. He want-ed to do it his way and I wanted to do it my way and today democracy has spoken.»

(Source: Reuters)

New UEFA chief Ceferin promises New UEFA chief Ceferin promises to stand up to big clubsto stand up to big clubs

Slovenian Aleksander Ceferin has been elect-Slovenian Aleksander Ceferin has been elect-ed as UEFA›s seventh President at the Extraor-ed as UEFA›s seventh President at the Extraor-dinary UEFA Congress in Athens, taking 42 dinary UEFA Congress in Athens, taking 42 votes to Michael van Praag›s 13. votes to Michael van Praag›s 13.

Aleksander Ceferin has been elected as Aleksander Ceferin has been elected as UEFA›s seventh President at the European UEFA›s seventh President at the European body›s Extraordinary Congress in Athens.body›s Extraordinary Congress in Athens.

The 48-year-old Slovenian received 42 The 48-year-old Slovenian received 42 votes from UEFA›s member associations, votes from UEFA›s member associations, against 13 votes for the other candidate, Mi-against 13 votes for the other candidate, Mi-chael van Praag (Netherlands).chael van Praag (Netherlands).

In taking the helm of European football, In taking the helm of European football, Ceferin follows Ebbe Schwartz (Denmark), Ceferin follows Ebbe Schwartz (Denmark), Gustav Wiederkehr (Switzerland), Artemio Gustav Wiederkehr (Switzerland), Artemio Franchi (Italy), Jacques Georges (France), Len-Franchi (Italy), Jacques Georges (France), Len-nart Johansson (Sweden) and Michel Platini nart Johansson (Sweden) and Michel Platini (France), who have all served as UEFA Presi-(France), who have all served as UEFA Presi-dent since the body was founded in 1954.dent since the body was founded in 1954.

Ceferin was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia Ceferin was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia

on 13 October 1967. A graduate of Ljubljana on 13 October 1967. A graduate of Ljubljana University›s law faculty, he went on to work University›s law faculty, he went on to work for his family›s law firm and developed a spe-for his family›s law firm and developed a spe-cial interest in representing professional ath-cial interest in representing professional ath-letes and sports clubs. He later took over the letes and sports clubs. He later took over the role of company director.role of company director.

He first took a formal interest in local foot-He first took a formal interest in local foot-ball in 2005 through his work with the exec-ball in 2005 through his work with the exec-utive board of KMN Svea Lesna Litija, one of utive board of KMN Svea Lesna Litija, one of Slovenia›s most successful futsal clubs. He has Slovenia›s most successful futsal clubs. He has also been a member of the executive com-also been a member of the executive com-mittee of amateur side FC Ljubljana Lawyers mittee of amateur side FC Ljubljana Lawyers since 2005. since 2005.

A married father of three, fluent in Eng-A married father of three, fluent in Eng-lish and Italian, Ceferin was elected as Foot-lish and Italian, Ceferin was elected as Foot-ball Association of Slovenia president in 2011. ball Association of Slovenia president in 2011. He has also served as a second and third He has also served as a second and third vice-chairman of the UEFA Legal Committee vice-chairman of the UEFA Legal Committee since 2011. since 2011.

O L Y M P I C S

S P O R Th t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s p o r t SEPTEMBER 15, SEPTEMBER 15, 20162016 15I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Anti-doping agency says athlete data stolen by Russian groupThe World Anti-Doping Agency said on Tuesday that hackers stole confidential medical information about U.S. Olympic athletes and published it on the internet, blaming a Russian group for the attack.

The U.S. government is investigating the case because there is evidence that the hackers are linked to the Russian government, though details are still sketchy, according to two sources familiar with the probe who were not author-ized to publicly discuss the matter.

Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying any possible Russian government or secret service participation in the hacking was out of the question.

An FBI representative said she had no immediate com-ment on the release of the medical information, which prompted gymnast Simone Biles to disclose that she has an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

WADA issued a statement attributing the attack to Tsar Team, a hacking group widely known as APT28 and Fancy Bear by U.S. cyber-security researchers.

Fancy Bear is one of two hacking groups accused in June of hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computer network. CrowdStrike, a firm hired by the DNC to respond to those attacks, said in June that Fancy Bear was probably working on behalf of the Russian military.

WADA said that law enforcement had told it the at-tacks originated in Russia. WADA spokeswoman Maggie Durand declined to elaborate or say how the operation had been uncovered.

“WADA condemns these ongoing cyber-attacks that are being carried out in an attempt to undermine WADA and the global anti-doping system,” said Director General Olivier Niggli in a statement.

WADA said it believed the hackers gained access to its anti-doping administration and management system (ADAMS) via an IOC-created account for the Rio Games.

The doping agency made the accusations as a web-site, www.fancybear.net, posted what appeared to be data about four U.S. athletes: Simone Biles, Elena Delle Donne, Serena Williams and Venus Williams.

That site, which internet registration records said was created on September 1, said it planned disclosing infor-mation about athletes from other nations in the future.

BILES RESPONDSOn Tuesday it released documents known as Thera-

peutic Use Exemptions, or TUEs, which are issued by sports federations and national anti-doping organizations to allow athletes to take certain substances.

The leak of a TUE with information about Biles prompt-ed her to disclose on Twitter that she has ADHD.

“I have ADHD and I have taken medicine for it since I was a kid,” Biles said. “Please know, I believe in clean sport, have always followed the rules, and will continue to do so as fair play is critical to sport and is very important to me.”

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), U.S. An-ti-Doping Agency (USADA), International Tennis Federa-tion (ITF) and USA Gymnastics all issued statements say-ing that athletes whose data had been released had done nothing wrong.

The IOC condemned the leak as an attempt to tarnish the reputation of clean athletes.

“The IOC can confirm, however, that the athletes men-tioned did not violate any anti-doping rules during the Olympic Games Rio 2016,” the group said in a statement.

“In each of the situations, the athlete has done everything right in adhering to the global rules for obtain-ing permission to use a needed medication,” Travis Tygart, chief executive of USADA, said in a statement.

“The cyber-bullying of innocent athletes being en-gaged by these hackers is cowardly and despicable.”

ITF president David Haggerty said all TUEs handed out to tennis players were done so in accordance with WADA rules.

USA Gymnastics said that Biles was approved for a TUE exemption and had not broken any rules.

WADA’s chief, who apologized for the hack, said that it was “greatly compromising the effort by the global an-ti-doping community to re-establish trust in Russia”, fol-lowing release of the McLaren Investigation Report.

The independent McLaren report charged that Rus-sians had swapped positive doping samples for clean ones during the Sochi winter Games, with the support of the Russian secret service.

WADA revealed last month that Russian whistleblow-er Yulia Stepanova’s electronic account had been illegally accessed.

Stepanova, who is in hiding in North America, helped reveal the biggest state-backed doping program in Russia and was forced to flee the country with her husband for fear of her life.

(Source: Reuters)

Iranian archer Rahimi shines in Rio 2016 ParalympicsIranian Paralympic archer Gholamreza Rahimi has collected another gold medal for the Islamic Republic at the 2016 Sum-mer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

On Tuesday, Rahimi recorded an impressive performance in the final match of men’s individual recurve section at the Sambadrome Marquês de Sapucaí, and overcame 36-year-old Hanreuchai Netsiri of Thailand 7-3 (23-26, 30-26, 27-24, 30-30 and 27-25).

The bronze medal in this division went to another Irani-an archer, Ebrahim Ranjbarkivaj, who overwhelmed Brazilian Luciano Rezende 7-1 (28-24, 26-26, 26-25 and 27-23) in the third-place encounter.

Moreover, Iranian sportsman Peyman Nasiri Bazanjani won a bronze medal in the men’s 1500-meter T20 final contest. He completed the race with a time of 3 minutes and 56.24 seconds.

The Iranian runner missed the silver by finishing seven tenths of a second behind Poland’s Daniel Pek on Tuesday.

American contestant Michael Brannigan clocked 3:51.73 to grab the gold medal.

Iranian athletes have already taken home 11 medals –four gold, five silvers and two bronzes– putting the Islamic Republic in the 17th slot of the medal count table so far.

China is on the top of the medal count table with 147 (63 gold, 51 silver, 33 bronze) medal.

Great Britain is second with 75 medals (34 gold, 18 silvers, 23 bronzes), and Ukraine is third with a total of 72 medals (27 gold, 21 silvers and 24 bronzes).

The United States, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Nigeria and Germany are in the 4th to 10th places respectively.

(Source: PressTV)

S P O R T Sd e s k

S P O R T Sd e s k

S P O R T Sd e s k

Iran’s powerlifter Ali Sadeghzadeh Sal-

mani seized the country’s third bronze medal at the 2016 Paralympic Games on Wednesday.

In the final event of the men’s un-der 107kg competition, the 32-year-old won the bronze medal lifting 226kg.

Greek powerlifter Pavlos Mamalos

won the gold with 238kg while Mo-hamed Ahmed of Egypt seized the sil-ver with 233kg.

Iran has participated at the 2016 Summer Paralympics with 111 athletes in 12 sports.

The Iranian delegation finished in 11th place in the previous edition, winning 10 gold medals, seven silvers and seven bronze medals.

The 48th Armenian Olympics opened

Wednesday evening at Ararat Club in the Iranian capital.

The Armenian Orthodox primate of the diocese of Tehran, Archbishop Sebuh Sarkisian as well as Armenian ambassador to Iran, Iranian ambassa-dor to Armenia and a number of well-known Armenian athletes were present

in the opening ceremony.President of Iran National Olympic

Committee Kiumars Hashemi was also among the participants of the ceremony.

During the 10-day games, 800 Ar-menian athletes from Iran, Armenia and Georgia will compete in nine sports.

The Armenians Olympics is aimed at finding new talents in Armenian sports and encourage the youth to turn to sports.

48th Armenian Olympics get underway in Tehran

Iranian powerlifter Sadeghzadeh wins bronze at Rio Paralympics

Iran futsal head coach Mohammad Nazemosharia believes Iran will qualify

from Group F of the FIFA Futsal World Cup despite heavy loss against Spain in the first match.

The Asian champions suffered a 5-1 defeat against two-time world champions Spain in the first match. Nazemos-haria’s men will next take on Morocco on Thursday while Spain meet Azerbaijan.

“The first game in any tournament is very difficult, fur-thermore we faced Spain who is the best futsal team in the world. We were not at our best form while we had a couple of mistakes and weaknesses but for now we’re fo-cused on Morocco. No one expect Iran to be eliminated in

the group stage so we’re going to get the best result in the remaining games,” Iran coach Mohammad Nazemosharia told reports.

“Morocco is Africa’s champion and we will definitely have a tough game against them. They lost to Azerbaijan in the first game so they want a win to remain in the com-petition,” he added.

The 2016 FIFA Futsal World Cup is the 8th edition of the FIFA Futsal World Cup, the quadrennial international futsal championship contested by the men’s national teams of the member associations of FIFA.

The tournament is being held in Colombia from 10 Sep-tember to 1 October 2016.

Pepe believes Real Madrid were “hated” during the spell in which they were coached by Jose Mourinho.Mourinho spent three years in charge of Madrid be-tween 2010 and 2013, during which he became em-broiled in feuds with Barcelona boss Pep Guardiola as well his club captain Iker Casillas.Pepe feels such conduct from the Portuguese led to opposition fans from across Spain having little respect for the Madrid players when they took to the pitch each week.“Under Mourinho, people hated us when we got out there,” Pepe told Cadena Ser. “It lasted three years and thank God it went very quick. Things changed when [Carlo] Ancelotti came in, you could see peo-ple started treating us different again.”

While Pepe endured a difficult relationship with Mourinho, the defender says he is enjoying playing under current Madrid boss Zinedine Zidane.

“What happened with Mourinho is in the past now,” he said. “I was strong and got over it. I maintained my high level at Madrid.“Mourinho and Zidane are very different, one could say they are opposites. But it’s not like one is bad and the other is good.“Mourinho has a lot of experience as a coach, with great clubs and players. Zidane has only just started in La Liga last year. But he has played at the highest level himself and always knows what’s expected on the pitch.“Zidane has been a player and knows what we think. He had a brilliant career at Madrid, so understands what the pressure is like here.”

(Source: Soccernet)

Iran football 5-a-side team will play Ar-gentina in the Paralympic Games semifi-nals on Thursday.

On Tuesday, in the match held at the Olympic Tennis Centre in Rio de Janeiro, Iran and host Brazil played out a goalless draw in Pool A.

Iran will face Pool B top team Argenti-na on Thursday, while Brazil meet China in another semis.

Up to now, the Iranian delegation has won four gold medals, five silver medals and two bronzes.

Iran has participated at the 2016

Summer Paralympics with 111 athletes in 12 sports.

The Iranian delegation finished in 11th place in the previous edition, win-ning 10 gold medals, seven silvers and seven bronze medals.

(Source: Tasnim)

Iran coach confident ahead of Morocco match

Pepe: People ‘hated’ Real Madrid during Jose Mourinho era

Iran football 5-a-side to meet Argentina in Paralympic semis

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TEHRAN — Works by five Iranian graphic designers will be

competing in the Eighth International Triennial of Stage Posters to be held in November 2016 at the National Exhibition Center of Modern Art in Sofia.

Mohammad Afshar, Saeid Rezvani, Mehdi Mahdian, Hamed Mehravaran and Mehdi Fatehi are the five graphic designers whose works will be competing in the triennial.

“I submitted a collection of my works to the organizers and they are now among the competing works,” one of the participating artists, Fatehi, told the Persian service of MNA on Wednesday.

He added that he believes international events like the Sofia triennial help the participants get a chance to see works by world graphic designers.

“Moreover, I believe that stage directors are not very familiar with graphic designing, especially theater poster designing. I believe a good graphic designer must produce a poster that represents a visual image,” he said.

Participating works will be competing in the two categories of the printed posters for drama theatre, opera, ballet, circus, pantomime and several more, as well as posters on the theme of enigmas, mysteries and fantasy.

An International Jury with members Kari Piippo from Finland, Istvan Orosz from Hungary and Maja Wolna from Poland will award the prizes.

TEHRAN — The Music Museum of Iran in Tehran will be playing host

to “Rhythmic Paintings”, a collection opening today of sound paintings by the Italy-based Iranian musician and artist Pejman Tadayon.

Tadayon, who has studied composition at the Fiesole School of Music in Florence and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, has used sets of strings of music on his paintings to create his new collection.

“When I was in Tehran, I used to make musical instruments such as santur and setar. This experience helped me choose very thin pieces of wood and I prefer to do my paintings on wood rather than canvas,” Tadayon told the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization (ICRO) on Wednesday.

“When one looks at the paintings closely, he/she can easily notice the delicate strings on the paintings and can even touch the strings and listen to their sounds,”

he added.He next explained that simple pieces of music can

also be played with the strings on the paintings. “I did not mean to invent new types of musical instruments. For me, painting is important and that is why music has found its way into these paintings very delicately,” he added.

Tadayon also said that this is the first time he is displaying his works in Iran, adding, “I preferred to begin this exhibition in Iran and introduce Iran as the cradle of this art.”

He also noted that he has used different styles of paintings in his works, adding, “I have also made use of the relationship between literature, color and Iranian music in my paintings. They bear the Oriental spirit. The colors are also chosen from the ones used in the tiles works of mosques and the historical monuments of Isfahan.”

A collection of 30 paintings will be shown for one week in the museum located on Maqsudbeik St., in the Tajrish neighborhood.

LONDON (Reuters) —Novels on subjects ranging from murder in 19th century Scotland to classical music in revolutionary China were short-listed on Tuesday for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, considered one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards.

Three British authors joined two U.S. writers and one Canadian on the shortlist for the 50,000 pound award for fiction, with the winner to be announced on Oct. 25 in London.

The shortlist included “The Sellout” by

U.S. author Paul Beatty, a satire on black lives in California, and “Hot Milk” by British writer Deborah Levy, which explores the relationship of a woman and her ill mother in a hot Spanish fishing village.

The other finalists were “His Bloody Project” by British writer Graeme Macrae Burnet, a thriller inspired by a spate of killings in 19th century Scotland; “Eileen” by U.S. author Ottessa Moshfegh, about a disturbed young woman working at a boys’ prison.

“All That Man Is” by David Szalay, a British-Canadian writer, which tells the stories of nine men through different stages of life, and “Do Not Say We Have Nothing” by Canadian writer Madeleine Thien, about a young woman’s flight from China after the Tiananmen Square protests.

Deborah Levy is the only author to have previously short-listed for “Swimming Home” in 2012.

Nobel Prize laureate J. M. Coetzee’s “The Schooldays of Jesus,” and “My Name Is Lucy

Barton,” by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, which were both on the longlist, failed to make it to the final six.

First awarded in 1969, the Booker prize was opened in 2014 to include all fiction written in English and published in Britain. It had been limited to writers from Britain, Ireland, the Commonwealth and Zimbabwe.

Previous winners include Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, Iris Murdoch and Ian McEwan.

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Singer Ali Zand-Vakili gives a concert with his band Zand at Hafez Hall in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz on September 12, 2016.

Works by five Iranian artists to compete in Sofia poster triennial

IAF hosting Art for Peace Festival

“Year of the Tree” published in English

TEHRAN — The 4th Art for Peace Festival will open at the

Iranian Artists Forum (IAF) in Tehran today.About 140 artists will showcase a variety of

artworks in categories of painting, photography, sculpture, graphic design, and installation and video art.

The festival is being held on the occasion of International Day of Peace, which falls on September 21.

An individual is awarded a peace medal by the organizers on that day every year. Last year, the medal was presented to President Hassan Rouhani.

The festival will run at IAF’s galleries until September 26.

TEHRAN — An English version of Iranian writer Zoha Kazemi’s

Persian novel “Year of the Tree” has recently been published by the London-based Iranian-British company Candle and Fog.

The book has been rendered into English by the Tehran-based U.S. translator Caroline Croskery.

“Year of the Tree” is about a dead person who narrates the story of her family by tracing through her family tree.

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A poster for the Sofia International Triennial of Stage Posters

Painter Pejman Tadayon speaks in an undated photo.

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Scottish killings and Californian satire on shortlist for Man Booker Prize

Martin Scorsese to receive Japan’s Praemium Imperiale awardLOS ANGELES (L.A Times) — Martin Scorsese will receive Japan’s highest cultural honor as he works to complete his latest film, the Japan-themed religious epic “Silence”.

The filmmaker is set to receive the Praemium Imperiale in October for his lifetime contributions to cinema. Officials in Japan announced Tuesday that the roster of 2016 honorees would also include American visual artist Cindy Sherman, Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer, Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha and French sculptor Annette Messager.

The annual Praemium Imperiale recognizes career achievements in five categories: painting, sculpture, architecture, music and theater or film.

Sherman is being honored in the painting category even though she is most widely known for her photographic portraits. A major exhibition of her work, “Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life”, is on view at the Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles through Oct. 2.

Medals will be presented by Japan’s Prince Hitachi in an awards ceremony held in Tokyo on Oct. 18. Each laureate receives an honorarium of 15 million yen (about $146,000).

“Silence” is Scorsese’s long-gestating adaptation of the 1966 Shusaku Endo novel. Set in the 17th century, the novel follows a pair of Jesuit missionaries from Portugal who travel to Japan in search of their mentor, who has renounced his faith.

Though the movie takes place in Japan, Scorsese filmed it in Taiwan. The film stars Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano and Liam Neeson.

Paramount hasn’t announced a release date for “Silence”, which is in post-production. The official Praeumium site states the film is to be released this year.

Other filmmakers who have received the Praemium Imperiale include Francis Ford Coppola, Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach, Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Marcel Carné and Akira Kurosawa.

Pejman Tadayon to display sound paintings at Music Museum of Iran

Spanish, Tunisian filmmakers tapped

for Resistance festival juries

TEHRAN — Filmmakers Rashed

Radwan from Spain and Anis Lassoued from Tunisia have been selected for the juries f various sections of the 14th International Resistance Film Festival.

Radwan, the director of acclaimed documentary films “Target: Heart of Iraq” and “Human Market”, will join the jury for the documentary section while Lassoued, the director of documentary films “Saba Flouss” and “My Shoes”, will be on the panel for the short film section.

Earlier last week the organizers announced that the renowned Iranian filmmakers Majid Majidi and Ahmadreza Darvish have been selected for the jury of the official competition of festival.

In addition, Ebrahim Hatamikia, the director of the acclaimed political drama “Bodyguard”, is scheduled to hold a workshop during the festival, which will be held in Tehran from September 23 to 30 during the Sacred Defense Week to commemorate the anniversary of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

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Iconic toys vie for spot in museum’s national Hall of FameNEW YORK (Reuters) — The pings of pinball machines, squeaks of swings and the smack of punches between fighting robots have occupied arcades, living rooms and playgrounds for decades as toy-lovers devoted hours to battling for the win.

Now a dozen novelties and games including Care Bears, Uno cards and Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots will compete for a place in the National Toy Hall of Fame after organizers unveiled the list of finalists on Tuesday.

After evaluating each on criteria including innovation, longevity, educational qualities and iconic status, judges at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, will announce just two or three toys on Nov. 10 that have been chosen for a place in the hall.

Nominated by people from around the world, this year’s list includes toys and pastimes such as Transformers action figures, Nerf products and the murder mystery board game Clue made by Hasbro Inc. (HAS.O). It also features an unexpected diversion: bubble wrap.

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