By Yuram Abdullah WeilerAnalyst and journalist

PERSPECTIVE

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 Y

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Trump’s whiplash reversal on Syria“Tonight, I ordered a targeted mili-tary strike on the air field in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched,” announced Donald Trump to reporters at his luxurious “Mar-a-Lago southern White House” resort in Palm Beach, Florida, as he pre-pared to meet with Chinese Presi-dent Xi Jinping.

At 8:40 p.m. Eastern Time, while Trump and his guests were dining on pan-seared Dover sole and New York strip steak surrounded by ornate luxu-ry, 59 tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from U.S. navy warships in the Mediterranean enroute with their destructive payloads to Al-Shayrat air-base near Khan Sheikhun in the Syrian Arab Republic.

The strike marks a complete rever-sal by Trump, who in September of 2013, sent a message by social media to then U.S. president Obama. “Pres-ident Obama, do not attack Syria,” Trump said in his message. “There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your “powder” for another (and more important) day!” The abrupt about-face by the commander-in-chief nee real estate tycoon resulted from an emotional reaction over the victims of a chemical attack, which Trump, without presenting a shred of evi-dence, alleges was carried out by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The “targeted military strike” on Syria, which plausibly is an act of war and thus puts Trump in violation of the U.S. constitution and internation-al law, came upon the heels of an emotional appeal by U.S. envoy to the United Nations Nikki Haley. “How many more children have to die be-fore Russia cares?” Haley pontificat-ed while staring fixedly at the Russian Ambassador. This comes less than a week after the former South Carolina governor parroted U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that “our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out.” 1 3

Strike on Syria divides U.S. lawmakers in both partiesMembers of Congress are split on the question of whether President Don-ald Trump’s ordered Tomahawk missile strikes against a Syrian airbase were in accordance with U.S. law. Lines drawn on the issue did not follow the pattern of partisanship often seen in Washing-ton, DC.

The U.S. airstrikes on the Shayrat Air Base in Homs, Syria, prompted Sena-tor Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) to take to Twitter to criticize the U.S. escalation in the region, not only as a strategic error, but as an act that failed to meet the standard set in the U.S. Constitution that makes Congress responsible for declaring war.

Senator Paul has long made his opposition to U.S. intervention in Syr-ia clear, even after Tuesday’s chemical gas attack near Idlib, Syria, which left dozens of Syrian civilians dead, includ-ing children.

Senator Paul garnered support from across the aisle, as Democrat-ic Congressman Ted Lieu of Califor-nia tweeted his agreement. Lieu also questioned the purpose of the strike and called Trump a warmonger for breaking his campaign promises to get the U.S. out of foreign wars.

There was also bipartisanship on the other side of the controversy.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said attack-ing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was “the right thing to do,” accord-ing to ABC News. However, he also said that it was important for the Trump administration to “come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. I salute the professionalism and skill of our Armed Forces who took action today.”

Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina issued a joint statement similar to Schumer’s, but with an add-ed jab at the Obama administration.

“Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action. For that, he deserves the support of the American people,” Senators McCain and Graham said, encouraging Trump to “[follow] through with a new, 1 3

Exports from PSEEZ up 22% yr/yr

TEHRAN — The value of exports

from Pars Special Economic Energy Zone (PSEEZ), an energy hub in the southern province of Bushehr, rose by 22 percent in the past Iranian calendar year (March 2016-March 2017).

According to Mehdi Yousefi, the managing director of PSEEZ Organi-zation, exports stood at $14.917 billion last year, PSEEZ website reported.

Gas condensates, urea fertilizers, methanol, and cement were the main products exported to 29 countries, Yousefi noted.

In terms of weight, exports from the zone amounted to 34.195 million tons, an increase of 41 percent year on year.

The official further said that gas condensate exports from the zone witnessed 43-percent and 59-percent growth, respectively, to stand at $7.011 billion and 17.515 million tons.

He also put the value and the weight of non-oil products exported from the zone at $7.906 billion and 16.680 million tons, respectively, in the mentioned period.

Iran’s non-oil trade reached $87.646 billion in the past Iranian cal-endar year, an increase of 4.34 percent compared to its preceding year.

According to the country’s customs administration, Iran’s trade balance re-mained positive for the second con-secutive year, while non-oil exports surpassed imports for $246 million.

Raisi stands out as

principlists’ leading

presidential candidate

TEHRAN — The principlist Popu-

lar Front of Islamic Revolution Forces (JAMNA in Persian) has shortlisted its potential presidential candidates, with Ebrahim Raisi heading the list, ISNA reported.

JAMNA on Thursday announced the names of its final candidates, con-sisting of five people among whom one will be chosen to represent the principlist camp.

The final list includes: Hojjatole-slam Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi, who gar-nered 2,147 votes, followed by Alireza Zakani, a former lawmaker, with 1,546 votes, Mehrdad Bazrpash, also a for-mer lawmaker, with 1,404 votes, Mo-hammad Baqer Qalibaf, who is the current mayor of Tehran, with 1,373 votes, and Parviz Fattah, the current head of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, with 994 votes.

The five were elected from an ini-tial list of 10 potential candidates who were chosen by JAMNA on February 23. The front will soon decide on who has the greatest chance of victory, and the other four candidates would resign as to pave the way for the strongest candidate to presidency. 2

16 Pages Price 10,000 Rials 38th year No.12799 Saturday APRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 2017 Farvardin 19, 1396 Rajab 10, 1438

Zaribar Lake on verge of disappearance

Iran climb to 28th in latest FIFA rankings

Iran sells all its offshore oil storages

Fajr festival announces lineup for Cup of Divination 1612 155

P O L I T I C S

d e s k

TEHRAN — A senior Iranian lawmaker said the US has used the recent chemical attack in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province as a pretext to launch missile strikes on the Arab country, while no chemical weapon is in possession of Damascus.

“The whole world knows that based on a deal with the United Nations, the Syrians have handed over all of their chemical weap-ons,” Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Com-mission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said on Friday.

Therefore, the Syrian government does not

have chemical weapons, the lawmaker said.Boroujerdi then questioned the logic be-

hind possibility of the use of such weapons by the Syrian army, saying armies in the world usually use such weapons at a time when they feel defeated, this is while, the Syrian army is in best conditions; Aleppo has been liberated and the government forces are recapturing other areas.

The US military attacked the Syrian gov-ernment’s Shayrat Airfield near Homs with 59 tomahawk missiles on Friday.

Officially announcing the strike, US Presi-

dent Donald Trump claimed that the targeted airfield had launched the chemical attack on the rebel-held area in Idlib.

Earlier on Thursday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said the country’s armed forces “did not and will not” use chemical weapons, even against extremist groups.

Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011 with various terrorist groups, in-cluding Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL), currently controlling parts of it.

(Source: Tasnim)

STOCKHOLM — A large beer truck crashed into an upscale department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing three people, according to Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who called the crash a terror attack. One person was arrested.

People in the downtown area fled in pan-ic, and Stockholm’s Central Station for trains and the subway, which is a few hundred yards from the scene, was evacuated.

Broadcaster SVT said at least five people were killed in the attack while Swedish ra-dio reported three dead, but police could not immediately confirm those reports. The country’s intelligence agency said a large number of people were wounded in the crash.

Live television footage showed smoke

coming out of the upscale Ahlens de-partment store on Drottninggatan Street, which the truck smashed into. The de-partment store is part of Sweden-wide chain.

“Sweden has been attacked,” Lofven said in a nationally televised press conference. “This indicates that it is an act of terror.”

Police said there were no indications of shooting in the area, as Swedish broadcaster SVT reported earlier.

There was no immediate claim of respon-sibility for the attack. The prime minister said one person was arrested, but gave no further details.

“We stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream,” witness Jan Granroth told the Afton-

bladet daily. “I looked out of the store and saw a big truck.”

Photos from the scene showed a large beer truck sticking out of the de-partment store. Aftonbladet reported that Swedish beer maker Spendrups said one of its trucks had been hijacked earlier Friday.

Lofven, who was visiting a school in cen-tral Sweden hit by a bus crash Sunday that killed three high school students, said he and the Swedish government were being updat-ed on developments.

Friday’s crash is near the site of a Decem-ber 2010 attack in which Taimour Abdulwa-hab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others. 2

No chemical weapon in Syrian government’s possession: Iranian MP

Deadly truck crash into Stockholm store is terror attack

E C O N O M Y

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Iran: U.S. joining failing terrorists

See page 2

IRNA

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Water transfer to dust-stricken

Khuzestan begins

First-Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri travelled to the southwestern prov-ince of Khuzestan on Thursday and paid a visit to a project channeling water from Karun River to the dust storm-stricken areas of the province.

While Khuzestan is suffering from recurrent periods of dust storms, which are originating from dried up wetlands both in Iran and neighboring countries and crippling local residents once in a while, it is believed that the project which is yet to be completed might mitigate the predicament to some extent.

By Ali Kushki

APRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 2017

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

P O L I T I C S

Time to stop hype and cover-ups, Zarif says of U.S. attack on Syria

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

5,500 to oversee council elections

TEHRAN — Some 5,500 inspectors will oversee the council elections of

May 19, according to Bahram Parsaee, member of the central committee of council elections.

Parsaee also said that the council elections will be held by e-voting in 150 cities, accounting for 10,000 polling booths.

According to Parsaee, e-voting will be held in cities with at least 7 council members. The exceptions, he said, will be in provinces of Kohgiluyeh-Boyer Ahmad, Qom, South Khorasan, and Hormozgan.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Popular Front narrows down potential candidates

TEHRAN — On Thursday, the Popular Front of the Islamic Revolution Forces

narrowed down its shortlist of potential presidential candidates to five, Tasnim reported.

Their shortlist included Hojjatoleslam Raeisi, who garnered 2,147 votes, followed by Alireza Zakani, a former lawmaker, with 1,546 votes, Mehrdad Bazrpash, also a former lawmaker, with 1,404 votes, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who is the current mayor of Tehran, with 1,373 votes, and Parviz Fattah, the current head of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, with 994 votes.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Cleric urges all to participate in election

TEHRAN — Tehran’s interim Friday prayer leader has invited all the eligible

voters to participate in the upcoming presidential and council elections, Fars reported.

“A country with all this scientific progress, independence, and prestige in the world, the enemy is seeking (to find) a weak point in it,” therefore a high turnout is necessary to safeguard “this precious homeland”, the ayatollah remarked.

“A high turnout is service to Islam, service to the nation, and service to history,” he stressed.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Rouhani has no serious rival: aide

TEHRAN — The presidential aide for ethnic and religious minorities has said

the Rouhani administration has no serious rival in the May elections.

The only hope of Hassan Rouhani’s rivals is to magnify shortcomings, which can itself turn into an Achille’s heel for them, Ali Younesi said on Thursday, ILNA reported.

Elsewhere in his speech, Rouhani’s aide underlined the significance of election, saying it is the biggest political act of the country because it legitimizes a ruling system.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Rostam Qassemi: Iran needs ‘economic government’

TEHRAN — Rostam Qassemi, who has announced his candidacy for presidency,

has said Iran needs an “economic government”.Eighty percent of the Supreme Leader’s speech in

the New Year related to economic issues, underlined Qassemi, who used to serve as oil minister in the previous administration, Mehr news agency reported on Thursday.

He stressed that Iranian officials should be motivated and believe in the system in order to be able to solve problems.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Majlis to launch permanent council election secretariat

TEHRAN — The Majlis is going to launch a permanent secretariat for

council elections, Mohammad Javad Kulivand, chairman of the Councils and Majlis’ Internal Affairs Committee, told IRIB on Friday.

According to Article 73 of the council elections law, overseeing the elections is within the duties of the Majlis, based on which the secretariat is going to be formed, Kulivand stated.

Elsewhere, he said the candidates’ qualification started on Friday and will run for seven days.

TEHRAN — Iranian Foreign Minister

Mohammad Javad Zarif condemned on Friday the U.S. airstrike against a Syrian airbase, saying it is the “time to stop hype and cover-ups”.

“Not even two decades after 9/11, U.S. military fighting on same side as al-Qaida and ISIS in Yemen and Syria. Time to stop hype and cover-ups,” he tweeted.

Zarif said in a separate post on Twitter, “U.S. aids Saddam’s use of CW against Iran in 80’s; then resorts to military force over bogus CW allegations: 1st in 2003 and now in Syria.”

The U.S. launched cruise missiles at the Shayrat airfield from which President

Donald Trump claimed a chemical weapons attack had been launched.

The airstrike is the first direct U.S. assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war.

On Tuesday, a suspected chemical attack was carried out in the northern Syrian province of Idlib which left at least 80 people killed and hundreds injured.

Russia said on Wednesday that the chemical attack was caused when rebel chemical munitions workshops were hit by a Syrian airstrike.

“As the only recent victim of mass use of chemical weapons (by Saddam in the 80’s), Iran condemns use of all WMD by anyone against anyone,” Zarif said in another Twitter message.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

TEHRAN — Iran’s Foreign Ministry

spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Wednesday that instabilities in the Middle East region is largely due to “colonial” and “expansionist” policies of Britain and its allies.

He made the comments in response to British Prime Minister Theresa May’s remarks during her trip to Saudi Arabia.

In an interview with al-Riyadh newspaper, May claimed that Iran is undermining security in the region by interfering in Arab countries’ affairs.

Qassemi said, “Selling weapons to aggressors to kill innocent people in the region especially the unjust and inhuman war in Yemen do not conform to May’s claims.”

He described the British prime

minister ’s claims as “repetitive, unfounded and illogical” and noted that it is not the first time that she makes such allegations.

He also said that Iran’s efforts and determination are in line with helping establish “security, peace and stability” in the “sensitive” and “strategic” region.

“The unjust accusations of Theresa May are being made while everyone

is aware of Iran’s effective role in supporting security, stability and peace of the countries that have been attacked by the terrorists and asked Iran’s help,” Qassemi added.

He urged the British officials to “understand the realities” and “use their experiences in the Persian Gulf region in past decades” and take actions in “correcting their wrong position”.

1 Coming into existence in late December, JAMNA intends to unite the principlist camp in order to introduce a single candidate to challenge incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, who will seek re-election in the upcoming election.

Iran’s presidential election is scheduled to be held on May 19. Presidential candidates will have the opportunity to register for the election from April 11-15. All individuals who have a direct role in the presidential election process must resign before registering their candidacy.

Raisi, who is the current custodian and chairman of Astan Quds Razavi in the northeastern city of Mashhad, officially announced his plan to run in the upcoming election on Thursday.

“Raisi has accepted the request to run as candidate [for president] and his plans will be announced soon,”

said Seyyed Sowlat Mortazavi, Raisi’s representative.He also said that Raisi has resigned from an election

supervisory board in order to be able to run.Qalibaf, who has been mayor of Tehran for almost 12

years, had a great chance within the principlist camp, but after Raisi’s decision to run, his chance was considerably reduced.

Among other conservative politicians who may run for president, Saeed Jalili, Iran’s former nuclear negotiator, appears to be a serious candidate. However, he decided to be excluded from JAMNA list, due to his opposition to the process with which the front chooses the final candidate.

Analysts predict the May election to be a very close contest between Rouhani and Raisi.

Regional crises largely tied to Britain’s ‘colonial’ policies, Iran says

Raisi stands out as principlists’ leading presidential candidate

TEHRAN — Iran has strongly condemned the U.S. for its missile attack on an airfield in Syria on Friday, warning that such unilateral measures will “strengthen failing terrorists” in the Syrian battlefield.

“We, while strongly condemning any unilateral military action and the missile attacks on Shayrat air base in Syria by U.S. warships, believe that such measures ...will strengthen failing terrorists and complicate the situation in Syria and the region,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said on Friday.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, as the biggest victim of chemical weapons in contemporary history, condemns any application of such weapons, regardless of their culprits and victims, and at the same time, considers it dangerous, destructive, and in breach of international law to use it as a justification for unilateral acts.”

An Iranian diplomat in Syria rejected news that families of the Iranian diplomatic team had moved to Southern Lebanon.

Iran, coupled with Russia, are the main supporters of the Syrian government and have provided it with military and political backing since 2011.

The U.S. on Friday fired dozens of cruise missiles at Shayrat air base from which it said a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched this week, the first direct military action Washington has taken against Syrian government forces in the six-year-old conflict.

Two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea, the USS Ross and the USS Porter, fired 59 Tomahawk missiles intended for the airfield in Homs province in western Syria, the Defense Department said.

U.S. officials told NBC News that aircraft and infrastructure at the site were hit, including the runway and gas fuel pumps.

The attack comes in retaliation to a suspected chemical weapons attack on rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday, which the U.S. held the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as accountable for.

On Wednesday, President Trump said the chemical weapons attack “crossed a lot of lines,” but offered no indication of any plans by his administration to

respond to the attack. Russia, a main ally to al-Assad,

rejected the accusation, saying that a bomb hit a chemical weapons depot controlled by the rebels.

It took the Trump administration not too long to change status on Syria just a week after it called the current Syrian government a “political reality.”

“Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons,” Trump said in a statement after the missile attack.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the strike did not mean the wider U.S. policy on Syria had changed.

“This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” he told reporters. “I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today. There has been no change in that status,” Reuters quoted Tillerson as saying.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said: “Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and

equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons.”

The Syrian army said the missile attack killed six people and caused extensive damage, adding it would respond by continuing its campaign to “crush terrorism” and restore peace and security to all of Syria.

A statement from the army command described the attack as an act of “blatant aggression”, saying it had made the U.S. “a partner” of ISIS, the ex-Nusra Front and other “terrorist organizations”.

The escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria immediately raised tension with Russia.

Just hours after Trump announced he had ordered the attack, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the

strike had seriously damaged ties between Washington

and Moscow.“ P r e s i d e n t

[Vladimir] Putin regards the U.S. attacks on Syria as an aggression

against a sovereign state

in violation of the norms of

international law, and under a trumped-up

pretext at that,” Kremlin

spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.Also, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey

Lavrov underscored on Friday that attack “was an “act of aggression under an absolutely false pretext.”

“It is reminiscent of the situation in 2003, when the U.S., the United Kingdom with its few allies invaded Iraq without Security Council approval, in gross violation of international law,” Lavrov said in Uzbekistan.

However, Pentagon spokesman Davis said in an official statement: “Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield.”

Bloomberg reported that Russia has suspended a cooperation pact with the U.S. aimed at avoiding incidents between the two countries’ planes in the crowded airspace over Syria by establishing direct hotlines between their militaries.

Other countries have reacted to the attack differently.

Saudi Arabia said it “fully supports” the strikes, adding that it was a “courageous decision” by President Trump in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons, according to Al-Jazeera.

In a televised statement Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu expressed Ankara’s support for the attack, highlighting that al-Assad must be removed ‘as soon as possible.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supports the “strong and clear message” sent by the strikes.

Italy says the U.S. strikes on Syria were “proportionate”.

The British government said it was informed in advance about U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian airbase, and firmly supports the American action.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s office noted the action was “an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks.”

Meanwhile, French President Francois Hollande said he will convene an emergency defense meeting on Friday to discuss next steps in Syria after the airstrikes, as France tries to relaunch international peace negotiations for Syria.

Iran: U.S. joining failing terrorists

ELECTION COUNTDOWN

The Islamic Republic of Iran condemns any application of chemical weapons, regardless of

their culprits and victims.

Iran believes such attacks will strengthen failing terrorists and complicate the situation

in Syria and the region.

This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” he told reporters. “I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today. There has been no change inthat status,” Reuters quoted Tillerson as saying.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said: “Initial ndications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and

strike had seriously damagedties between Washington

and Moscow.“ P r e s i d e n t

[Vladimir] Putinregards theU.S. attackson Syria asan aggression

against asovereign state

in violation of the norms of

international law, and under a trumped-up

pretext at that,” Kremlin

U.S. draws Iran rebuke over missile attack on Syrian airfield

By staff & agenciesA spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the U.S. missile attack against a Syrian army airbase had seriously damaged ties between Washington and Moscow. Putin regarded the U.S. action as “aggression against a sovereign nation” on a “made-up pretext”, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Russian television showed craters and rubble at the site of the airbase and said nine aircraft had been de-stroyed.The United States military launched 59 missiles during the early hours of Friday targeting an airbase in Syria.

In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presi-dency so far, Trump ordered the step his predecessor Barack Obama never took.

That catapulted the United States into a confron-tation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground assisting its close ally Assad.

“Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically,” Trump said as he announced the attack from his Flori-da resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Syrian army said the U.S. attack killed six people at its air base near the city of Homs. It called the attack “blatant aggression” and said it made the United States a “partner” of “terrorist groups” including Islamic State. Homs Governor Talal Barazi told Reuters the death toll was seven.

Putin reaction

President Vladimir Putin believes a U.S. missile attack on a Syrian airbase near Homs has violated interna-tional law and seriously hurt Russia-U.S. relations, the Kremlin says.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that the Russian leader regards the U.S. attack as an act of “aggression against a sovereign nation,” which was carried out based on a “made-up pretext.”

The attack was a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq, he added.

Russia did not believe that Syria possessed chemi-cal weapons, Peskov said, adding the U.S. attack would inevitably create a serious obstacle to creating an inter-national coalition against terrorism.

Earlier in the day, the head of the defense and se-curity committee at the Russian upper house of parlia-ment said Russia will call for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council over the attack.

Viktor Ozerov warned against the ramifications of the massive U.S. airstrike, saying it “could be viewed as an act of aggression of the U.S. against a UN nation.”

Chairman of the international affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament Konstantin Kosachev also said the attack had put Russia’s coopera-tion with the U.S. on the Syria crisis in doubt.

The strikes were intended to “stamp an earlier ver-dict about (Syrian President Bashar) al-Assad’s respon-sibility for a chemical attack in Idlib with gunpowder,”

Kosachev said. Avoid further escalation: Beijing

China also reacted to the U.S. military strike, urging calm in dealing with the Syria conflict.

“What is urgent now is to avoid further deterioration of the situation,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokes-woman Hua Chunying on Friday.

She added, “We oppose use of chemical weapons by any country, organization or individual in any cir-cumstance, for any purpose.”

On President Donald Trump’s order, the U.S. launched a military strike Friday morning on a Syrian army airfield in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib Province earlier this week.

The Pentagon said the Russians deployed to the tar-geted military facility were given prior notice, and that attack did not hit sections of the airbase where Mos-cow’s forces were reportedly present.

Since 2014, the Russian military has been providing air cover to the Syrian forces operating on the ground against the terrorist groups.

Russia halts U.S. deal

Meanwhile, Moscow says it is halting an agreement with Washington aimed at avoiding mid-air collisions during their military missions in the Syrian airspace af-ter U.S. launched a missile attack against a Syrian army airbase.

“The Russian side is halting the effect of the memo-

randum for prevention of incidents and ensuring safe-ty of air flights during operations in Syria which was agreed with the U.S.,” said a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday.

It was referring to the 2015 agreement, under which Russia and the U.S. agreed to exchange infor-mation on their flights in Syrian skies, where the two sides have been involved in separate military opera-tions.

The announcements came after some 59 U.S. Tom-ahawk missiles were fired from U.S. warships deployed to the Mediterranean at the Shayrat airfield southeast of the western Syria city of Homs earlier in the day.

Russian Defense Ministry pledged to beef up Syrian air defenses following the attack. It also played down the effectiveness of the U.S. raid, saying 23 missiles had hit their targets while it was unclear where 36 others had landed.

Russia had warned on Thursday that there could be “negative consequences” if Washington took military action against Syria.

“All responsibility if military action occurs will be on the shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful tragic enterprise,” Russian Deputy Permanent Repre-sentative to the UN Vladimir Safronkov said.

“Look at Iraq, look at Libya,” he said, referring to the countries which have been rocked by violence, terror-ism and chaos since the West launched a military in-tervention.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he has ordered troops to deploy on unoccupied South China Sea islands, boosting the military presence on re-mote reefs claimed by Manila in a move that could provoke rival claimants in-cluding Beijing.

“It looks like everybody is making a grab for the islands there, so we bet-ter live on those that are still vacant,” he told reporters during a televised visit to a military camp on the western island of Palawan, near the disputed Spratly group.

China asserts sovereignty over al-most all of the resource-rich South Chi-na Sea despite rival claims from South-east Asian neighbors and has rapidly built reefs into artificial islands capable of hosting military planes.

Duterte has previously sought to im-prove his nation’s relations with Beijing by adopting a non-confrontational ap-proach over their competing claims in the strategically vital waters.

But the president appeared to alter his tone with his announcement Thurs-day, saying it was time to “erect struc-tures there and raise the Philippine flag”.

“I have ordered the armed forces to occupy all,” Duterte said.

“At least, let us get what is ours now and make a strong point there that it is ours,” he said, adding Manila was claim-

ing “nine or 10” Spratly islands, reefs and cays.

The defence department later said that nine outcrops “are already in our possession” and occupied by marines, including Thitu island where the Philip-pine military maintains an airstrip.

Its statement suggested that Duterte’s plan was to beef up contin-gents on the reefs.

“The president wants facilities built such as barracks for the men, water (desalination) and sewage disposal sys-tems, power generators, light houses, and shelters for fishermen,” the defence department said.

- Race for possession -

After China occupied Mischief Reef in the mid-1990s, the Philippines ma-rooned a decrepit navy vessel atop nearby Second Thomas Shoal to assert Manila’s territorial claim and has kept the rusting boat manned ever since.

Duterte also said he could visit Thitu island on June 12 to mark Philippine In-dependence Day and raise the nation’s flag there.

An official at the Chinese embassy in Manila seemed surprised when asked by AFP to comment on Duterte’s dec-laration, but referred questions on the matter to the Chinese foreign ministry in Beijing.

The Philippines under Duterte’s pre-

decessor Benigno Aquino actively chal-lenged China’s claim to control most of the South China Sea including tak-ing the claim to a UN-backed tribunal, which ruled in its favor last year.

But the controversial Duterte, who took office last year on a promises to kill thousands of people in a drug war, reversed that policy as he sought bil-lions of dollars worth of investments and grants from Beijing.

China now controls several reefs in the South China Sea including Scarbor-ough Shoal -- which Beijing seized from the Manila in 2012 -- and is just 230 kilometers (143 miles) from the main Philippine island of Luzon.

The two neighbors are scheduled to hold talks in China in May to tackle is-sues related to the sea row.

Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Tai-wan have also sparred with Beijing over territory in the disputed waterway.

US President Donald Trump’s admin-istration has so far taken a tough stance on China’s claims in the South China Sea, insisting it will defend international interests there.

Trump is set to sit down with his Chi-nese counterpart Xi Jinping later in the day to discuss a range of issues which will likely include tensions in the South China Sea.

(Source: AFP)

APRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 2017 INTERNATIONALI N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Russia reacts strongly to U.S. attack on Syria

North Korea: The elephant in the room at Trump-Xi talksAs the leaders of China and the United States sit down for a sum-mit, North Korea has made sure it also has something on the ne-gotiating table: A nuclear-tipped bargaining chip.

North Korea launched a projectile on Wednesday, which U.S. officials said appeared to be a liquid-fueled, extended-range Scud missile that only traveled a fraction of its range before spinning out of control and crashing into the sea.

The launch was North Korea’s latest in a long series of missile and nuclear tests that have accelerated in their variation and inten-sity over the last two years.

Now, experts agree, North Korea is closing in on the ability to hit the United States with a missile, a goal that for decades has been the subject of Pyongyang’s vivid propaganda posters.

“They’ve been able to put a nuke on a missile for a while now,” said Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

“The stated purpose of the last test was to validate the nuclear weapon design that would arm all of North Korea’s missiles,” Lewis said of North Korea’s September 2016 nuclear test - its fifth and largest to date.

Since then, North Korea has further ramped up its tests and rhetoric, emphasizing a consistent message: To create a nuclear device small enough to mount on an intercontinental ballistic mis-sile (ICBM), and fire it at the United States.

“If we push the button, the bombs will be fired and reduce the U.S. to ashes,” an editorial in the ruling Workers’ Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said on Wednesday.

North Korea now has the strength to “wipe out” the United States “in a moment” with an H-bomb, it said.

“This is again our warning.” Bargaining chip

From last year, North Korea took the rare step of publicizing images of its missile equipment tests, convincing analysts that Pyongyang’s banned program was further along towards suc-cessfully testing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) than first thought.

“The first few tests might fail, but that’s not good news be-cause they’ll learn,” said Lewis. “How long it takes to make it work

is anyone’s guess. Maybe a couple of years, maybe the first time.”North Korea has been pursuing its nuclear and missile pro-

grams at an unprecedented pace since last year, with an aim to expand its deterrence against Washington and diversify its line-up of nuclear-equipped missiles, another expert said.

“They have been doing so many test launches last year and this year to develop systems to transport nuclear warheads,” said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Seoul.

“The whole thing is about expanding their deterrence and continuing to keep upgrading their missiles to deliver nuclear warheads,” said Kim.

It was not clear if Wednesday’s launch was deliberately timed to coincide with Thursday’s summit between China’s President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Florida, where North Korea is expected to be a prime topic of discussions.

Some analysts say North Korea has tried to make sure the two world leaders are aware Pyongyang has a bargaining chip in any forthcoming moves to clamp down on its weapons programs.

Cheong Seong-chang, a senior research fellow at Sejong In-stitute outside Seoul, said that could come in the form of an-other nuclear or ICBM test after the summit. Perhaps first with a low-level show of force - enough not to upset China - followed by a period of intensified weapons testing.

(Source: Al Jazeera)

Duterte orders Philippine troops to South China Sea reefs

India has awarded the Israeli regime a $2 billion contract to provide the Indian mili-tary with advanced missile systems.

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), in a statement announced that the deal will in-clude medium-range surface-to-air missile (MRSAM) systems, which is known in Israel as the Barak 8 (the Hebrew word for Light-ning), and long-range surface-to-air missile (LRSAM) systems for India’s first aircraft car-rier, which is still being built.

The statement described the nearly 2-billion-dollar contract as the largest mil-

itary deal Israel has ever signed.“Over the past 25 years, IAI has worked

with the Indian... armed forces in many are-as as part of our strategic partnership. The current contracts represent an enormous expression of confidence by the govern-ment of India in IAI’s capabilities and ad-vanced technologies,” said IAI President and CEO Joseph Weiss.

The deal came after Indian Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi approved the budget for the contract in February.

The Barak 8 is an advanced missile sys-

tem, which operates on land and in the air. The system is designed to operate against cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, helicop-ters, fighter jets, and unmanned aerial ve-hicles.

The system can reportedly target air-craft, drones, and AWACS planes at a strike range of 50-70 kilometers in the sky.

The first delivery of the missile system is expected in 2023.

The missile system will reportedly be de-veloped jointly by India’s Defense Research and Development Organization in collabo-

ration with Israel.Israel has been supplying India with var-

ious weapons systems, missiles and drones over the past few years, making India one of Israel’s largest buyers of military hardware.

Israel has signed around $10 billion worth of military contracts with India over the past 15 years, according to Indian me-dia.

India is also reportedly set to receive 10 Israeli Heron-TP armed drones worth about $400 million.

(Source: France 24)

Israel inks missile system contract with India worth almost $2 billion

Deadly truck crash into Stockholm store is terror attack

1 Abdulwahab rigged a car with explosives in the hope that the blast would drive people to Drottninggatan — the street hit Friday — where he would set off devices strapped to his chest and back. The car bomb never went off, and Abdul-wahab died when one of his devices exploded among panicked Christmas shoppers.

Vehicles have been common weapons in recent extremist attacks.

Last month, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, a man drove into a crowd on London’s Westminster Bridge, killing three people and injuring many others before stabbing a po-liceman to death. He was shot dead by police. A fourth person, a woman thrown into the Thames by the force of the car attack, died Thursday.

The IS group has also claimed responsibility for a truck attack that killed 86 people in Nice, France, in July during a Bastille Day festival and another truck attack that killed 12 people at a Christmas market in Berlin. (Source: startribune.com)

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 APRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 2017

TEHRAN — Iran produced 16.831 mil-lion tons of crude steel in the first eleven

months of the past Iranian calendar year 1395 (March 20, 2016-February 18, 2017), with 10 percent rise compared to the same time span of 1394.

The country produced 15.319 million tons of crude steel in the first eleven months of 1394, IRIB reported citing the public relations office of Iranian Mines and Mining Indus-tries Development and Renovation Organization (IMIDRO).

Of the mentioned figure for the first eleven months of 1395, some 3.694 million tons of steel was produced by the private sector, the report added.

Meanwhile, Iran exported 3.225 million tons of crude steel during the first eleven months of the past year, regis-tering a 108 percent rise compared to the same period in its preceding year, IRNA reported on April 5.

The country’s crude steel export stood at 1.554 million tons during the first eleven months of 1394.

According to a January report published by the World Steel Association, Iran produced 17.89 million tons of crude steel in 2016, registering an 11 percent growth compared to the figure in 2015.

Iran’s crude steel output in 2015 stood at 16.14 million tons, the report said.

Maintaining its 2015 record the country ranked 14th among global crude steel producers in 2016.

Also, Europe’s steel import from Iran has increased by nearly eight times between 2013 and 2016, placing the country at the third spot next to China and India.

Crude steel production up 10% in 11 months

E C O N O M Yd e s k

E C O N O M Yd e s k

Turkey’s imports from Iran doubled in 2 months

Iran to add 900km to railway network by March 2018

TEHRAN — Exports of Iranian goods to Turkey doubled in January and Feb-

ruary 2017 and reached $1.15 billion, Tasnim news agency reported.

Iran exported $763 million of goods to Turkey in the first two months of 2016, the report said.

Iran’s trade transactions with it western neighbor grew 29 percent in the said months and hit $1.712 bil-lion. The figure stood at $1.323 billion in January and February 2016.

TEHRAN — Iran’s domestic railway system is expected to grow by 900

kilometers by the end of the current Iranian calendar year 1396 (March 20, 2018), the CEO of Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructures Company announced.

As IRNA quoted Kheirollah Khademi, Iran has im-ported 2,000 kilometers of rails through financing and the said 900 railroad track will be supplied from the imported volume to be laid by the yearend.

Before this, Iran used to add 200 kilometers to its domestic railway network per annum, he added.

E C O N O M Yd e s k

E C O N O M Yd e s k

N E W S I N B R I F E

Yen gains, rouble tumbles after U.S. missile strikeThe safe-haven yen climbed and the Russian rouble tum-bled on Friday, after the United States launched cruise missiles at an airbase in Syria, raising tensions with Russia.

After U.S. President Donald Trump said he had ordered the strike, which hit a base from which the United States said Syria had launched a chemical weapons attack, a spokesman for the Russian president said the strike had seriously damaged ties between Washington and Moscow.

The yen, which investors tend to flock to at times when they perceive an increase in political or financial risk, strengthened to an 11-day high of 110.135 to the dollar JPY= in Asian trading.

By 0800 GMT, though, it was up just 0.2 percent on the day at 110.60 yen per dollar.

UBS Wealth Management’s head of currency strategy in Zurich, Constantin Bolz, said more significant market moves would depend on the fallout from the strike.

“Is this just Donald Trump just giving a warning sign, showing that he is a strong man, but he doesn’t really want to do anything, or is this the start of an escalation?” he said.

The rouble, meanwhile, skidded over 1 percent to 57.14 roubles per dollar RUB=, putting it on course for its big-gest one-day falls in a month.

“The geopolitics in the region is not positive for the currency so what we see is a knee-jerk reaction,” said ING’s chief EMEA currency and rates strategist Petr Krpata, in London.

“But unless these things are followed up and there is a further escalation, they do not usually last.”

The dollar index, which gauges the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, was flat on the day at 100.69 .DXY=, up 0.3 percent for the week.

(Source: Reuters)

TEHRAN — Ac-cording to the latest

report of American Statistical Associ-ation (ASA), Iran-U.S. trade balance tipped in favor of Iran during January and February 2017, due to the sharp fall of the U.S.’ exports to the Islamic

Republic.In general, U.S. trade transactions

with Iran witnessed a 44 percent de-crease in the said time, the report con-firmed. Iran-U.S. trade stood at $25.7 million in the named two months of 2017, while the figure was $46.2 mil-

lion during the same months last year.Exports of the U.S. to Iran in the

said period was one fourth of that of the preceding year in the same time; in January and February 2017, the U.S. exported $12.2 million to Iran, while the figure stood at $44.1 million in the

named two months of 2016.Exports of Iranian goods to the

U.S. hit $13.5 million in the same time span, registering 6.5 times growth, compared to the previous year, when Iran’s exports to the U.S. stood at $2.1 million in January and February 2016.

Iran’s trade balance with U.S. positive in Jan., Feb. 2017

Traders were preparing for an important day on Friday, with the key U.S. monthly jobs report and the first Si-no-American summit since Donald Trump took office set to offer direction.

Then Trump launched a missile attack against Syria.The move triggered an instant reaction across

everything from stocks to commodities and currencies, as seen in the charts below. While some of the initial moves have tapered off -- for example, Korean won losses have eased -- the strike raised questions about Trump’s broader foreign and national-security strategy. It came just as he meets his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jin-ping, where North Korea’s nuclear program is likely to be on the agenda. The U.S. hasn’t ruled out unilateral action against the nuclear-armed China ally.

“The markets will just be very jittery all day,” said James Audiss, senior wealth manager at Shaw and Part-ners Ltd. by phone from Sydney. “Markets have been looking for a reason to sell off. The uncertainty that sur-rounds this gives them a definite cause to do that and there’s absolute spillover into the South Korean market because of the North Korean situation.”

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 0.2 percent as of 7 p.m. Tokyo time, after fluctuating between an intraday high of 0.5 percent and a low of 0.3 percent. Benchmarks in Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and Indonesia declined. Japan’s Topix index initially pared gains, but rose 0.7 percent at close.

Emerging-market currencies fell on the news, with the won leading declines in Asia. South Ko-rea’s currency is now little changed, after slipping

as much as 0.6 percent.Gold is driving a strong rally in precious metals,

favored in times of uncertainty for their fixed re-turns.

“Whether the market reaction is temporary or will continue will depend on the reactions from the international community,” said Ayako Sera, a Tokyo-based market strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank Ltd. “We can’t see that at the moment so it’s hard to digest.

Investors are probably preparing to escape to safe havens when the next news strikes.”

Likewise, government debt is finding bids, led by the U.S.

Elsewhere in currencies, the yen is being favored over other havens given news of the missile launch landed at the start of the Asian trading day.

The prospect of an uptick in tensions in the Mid-dle East buoyed oil prices, with both Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude surging more than 1.2 percent.

(Source: Bloomberg)

Here’s what Trump’s Syria strike did to markets, as impact eases

Bank of England Governor Mark Car-ney called on Friday for Britain and the European Union to recognize each others’ bank rules after Brexit or risk a potentially damaging hit to financial services across Europe.

Carney also said in a speech at Thomson Reuters’ London office that the BoE and banks had to be ready, simply for contingency reasons, for a “hard” Brexit.

He set a July 14 deadline for all cross-border financial firms operat-ing in Britain to tell the BoE how they would cope with an abrupt EU exit.

Banks, including many from the United States and other countries around the world, use EU “passport-ing” rights to offer their services from London across the bloc, the region’s biggest financial center by far.

But that arrangement is set to end once Brexit pulls the UK from the sin-gle market in two years’ time, and it re-mains far from clear what kind of deal will replace it.

Prime Minister Theresa May men-tioned the importance of reaching a trade deal with the EU that includes financial services as a “crucial sector ” when she triggered the two-year pro-cess of Britain’s exit from the EU last week.

However, many bankers have said they are not convinced the govern-ment will prioritize their industry, with May making controls on immigration a top aim for Brexit.

Carney said he expected financial services to be part of a “bigger deal” on trade between the UK and EU

And in an apparent reference to

signs that U.S. President Donald Trump may undo some of the reforms im-plemented since the financial crisis, Carney said on Friday that the global financial system was at a “fork in the road”.

Governments had to choose be-tween maintaining high standards of regulation and respecting each others’ rules, or looking inward with big costs to global trade, he said.

Trump has said that international-ly-inspired banking rules are holding back U.S. lending, and has ordered a review of regulation, raising concerns that the global approach to financial regulation will splinter.

“How Brexit negotiations conclude will be a litmus test for responsible fi-nancial globalisation,” Carney said.

“The EU and UK are therefore ide-

ally positioned to create an effective system of deference to each other ’s comparable regulatory outcomes, supported by commitments to com-mon minimum standards and open su-pervisory co-operation,” he said.

This system could be bolstered by third-party peer reviews and a new in-dependent dispute resolution mecha-nism, he said - adding that this could be a template for the wider world.

Such a system of mutual recog-nition of financial rules has not been tried before on the scale envisaged by Carney, which could make negoti-ations tricky and protracted.

The EU may also be reluctant to forgo the jurisdiction of the bloc’s top court in policing rule breaches.

Banks concernedBanks are concerned that Brit-

ain and the EU will not reach a deal in time, and are preparing to move staff from London, and Germany and France are trying to lure jobs to their financial capitals.

HSBC, UBS and Morgan Stanley have decided to move about 1,000 staff each from London in the next two years, sources familiar with their plans have told Reuters.

Goldman Sachs (GS.N) said last month it would begin moving hun-dreds of people as part of its contin-gency plans.

Carney said the BoE needed to be prepared for a worst-case Brexit outcome, and alongside his speech, the BoE’s top banking regulator, Sam Woods, sent a letter to financial firms with cross-border activities ordering them to set out Brexit plans.

European banks which operated in London on the basis of passporting should be prepared to set up sepa-rately capitalized subsidiaries in Britain and submit to direct BoE regulation if Britain and the EU could not reach a deal, Woods added.

The BoE has said the UK financial sector accounts for almost a quarter of all EU financial services income and 40 percent of EU financial services ex-ports. Eighty of the of the 358 banks operating in the UK are headquartered elsewhere in Europe.

Financial services account for 7 per-cent of British economic output, ac-cording to the BoE, although industry lobbyists say this rises to 12 percent if related professional services compa-nies are included.

(Source: Reuters)

Bank of England’s Carney calls for UK-EU bank rules pact after Brexit

German industrial output unexpectedly rose in Feb.German industrial production unexpectedly rose in Feb-ruary, led by the construction sector, reaffirming the strength of the country’s economic outlook.

Output, adjusted for seasonal swings and inflation, gained 2.2 percent from January, when it rose a revised 2.2 percent, the Economy Ministry in Berlin said on Friday. The typically volatile measure compares with a median estimate for a 0.2 percent drop in a Bloomberg survey. Production was up 2.5 percent from a year earlier.

The data come a day after a report showed German factory orders recovered in February, led by a jump in domestic demand. Citigroup responded to the produc-tion numbers -- and an increase in exports in Febru-ary -- by raising its estimate for first-quarter economic growth to 0.7 percent from 0.5 percent, which would be the strongest performance in a year.

“All is set for brisk growth led by the resurgence in global trade and its positive impact on German industrial activity,” said Andreas Rees, chief German economist at Unicredit in Frankfurt.

The economy expanded at the fastest pace in five years in 2016 and recent indicators have shown private-sector activity accelerating and unemployment at a record low. Even so, national elections, Brexit and uncertainty over U.S. trade policies could still pose risks for spending and investment in Europe’s largest economy.

“Overall the output in the manufacturing sectors has done extremely well in the first quarter,” the ministry said in an e-mailed statement. Order numbers as well as senti-ment indicators provide “confidence for economic activity in the first quarter.”

After cold weather held back construction in previous months, it surged almost 14 percent in February. Output of investment goods increased 1.1 percent and consump-tion goods rose 1.4 percent.

(Source: Bloomberg)

APRIL 8, APRIL 8, 20172017 5I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

E N E R G Y

Iran has sold all the oil it had stored for years at sea with the easing of international sanctions in January 2016, Reuters reported citing shipping and oil sourc-es.

Since the implementation of the nuclear deal, for-mally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Iran tried to make up for lost sales by re-leasing millions of barrels parked on tankers offshore.

Tanker tracking and oil sources said Iran had sold its last stocks from the floating storage in the past two weeks. Much of the oil stored was condensate, a very light grade of crude.

After Western sanctions were eased, Iran’s output jumped from about 2.9 million barrels per day (bpd) to about 3.6 million bpd in June.

But it has barely risen since then- fluctuating be-tween 3.6 million and 3.7 million bpd - even though Iran fought hard with fellow OPEC members to be excluded from production cuts that came into effect on Jan. 1 and will last till June.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries pledged to reduce output by about 1.2 million bpd, but Iran was allowed an increase to compensate for years of isolation.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said last month Tehran was prepared to produce 3.8 million bpd if OPEC agreed to extend cuts to the second half of 2016.

Prior to the lifting of sanctions, Iran stored unsold oil on ships, which peaked in 2015 at 40 million bar-rels on around 25 tankers. The country has up to 60 oil tankers in its fleet.

Iran’s drawdown of floating storage gathered pace in September. By the start of 2017, Iran still held an estimated 16 million barrels of oil on ships. Since then, they have emptied. (Source: Reuters)

BP and Iran’s state-run oil company received a license from the U.S. Treas-ury last year to operate their joint gas field in the North Sea following the lifting of Western sanctions on Tehran, BP said on Thursday.

Production at the Rhum field was suspended in 2010 when Europe im-posed sanctions on Iran over its nu-clear program and only resumed four years later after Britain agreed to set up a temporary management scheme whereby all revenue due to Tehran would be held until sanctions were lifted.

Following the removal of European

Union and United Nations sanctions on Iran in January 2016, the tempo-rary management scheme ceased.

Iran regained control of its stake and on Sept. 29, 2016 BP obtained a license from the U.S. Treasury, through its sanctions enforcement arm - the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), to continue operations at the field, BP said in its 2016 annual report.

BP, which was founded more than a century ago as the Anglo-Persian oil company, has multiple business operations in the United States and therefore needs an OFAC license to avoid potential breaches of existing

U.S. sanctions.Last year BP created an executive

committee to explore business in Iran, which would exclude its American chief executive Bob Dudley in a bid to avoid potential sanctions violations.

London-based BP recorded a net profit of $31.6 million in 2016 from its 50 percent stake in the field, which supplies around 4 percent of Britain’s gas demand.

“BP currently intends to continue to hold its ownership stake in the Rham joint arrangement and act as opera-tor,” it said in the annual report.

While international sanctions on

Iran were removed more than a year ago, the United States has held sepa-rate measures in place and President Donald Trump’s administration has promised a tough line.

BP did not specify for how long the Rhum field license was valid.

Previous U.S. President Barack Obama tried to encourage non-U.S. companies and non-U.S. banks to increase trade with Iran, although Tehran said Washington did not do enough to ease its access to interna-tional financial markets and banks for vital capital after years of isolation.

(Source: Reuters)

It was meant to be a given that a re-bound in oil prices would slow the de-pletion of Saudi Arabia’s foreign-cur-rency reserves. That hasn’t happened yet, and economists are wondering why.

Net foreign assets held by the Sau-di central bank have fallen by an av-erage $6.5 billion a month over the past year, and now stand at just over $500 billion – having peaked at $737 billion in 2014 when oil prices were above $100 a barrel. The drop in Jan-uary and February was $11.8 billion and $9.8 billion respectively, the latest data show.

“The burn rate is a cause of con-cern because it shows no sign of abating,” said Mohamed Abu Basha, a Cairo-based economist at EFG-Hermes. “It can’t be explained by government spending alone. They haven’t sold domestic bonds, so that could be a reason, but on the other hand, they have had more revenue because of the increase in oil prices.”

As Saudi Arabia’s long-term plan

to wean the kingdom off oil takes a toll on growth, officials are trying to strike a balance between stimulating the economy and keeping enough savings to prevent speculation about a currency devaluation. While the government has said that it will fi-nance its budget deficit by drawing on reserves as well as by issuing debt, it doesn’t explain monthly move-ments in net foreign assets or predict the pace of decline.

Policymakers are also trying to avoid financing the deficit with do-mestic bonds due to last year ’s bank-ing liquidity squeeze, according to Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank.

“We expect that the authorities will look to reduce the pace of for-eign-exchange draw-downs in the coming months,” she said.

The decline in oil revenue has damaged Saudi’s public finances, with the budget deficit rising to $79 billion in 2016, or $107 billion including de-layed payments to contractors. The

government is pushing ahead with its blueprint for a post-oil era, which in-cludes subsidy cuts and new taxes as well as a plan to expand its sovereign wealth fund into the world’s largest.

Apostolos Bantis, a credit analyst at Commerzbank AG in Dubai, said Saudi Arabia still has breathing room and expects no change to currency policy, or any plan to devalue the ri-yal, unless net foreign assets fall be-low $350 billion. Though reserves are falling faster than expected, the over-all level still remains high relative to historic levels, he said.

“The reserve levels are still ample and there is significant borrowing ca-pability on the government balance sheet, as long as oil prices remain above $40,” said Emad Mostaque, chief investment officer at Capricorn Fund Managers. “Their goal for sta-bilization long-term is not to rely on hydrocarbon flows, but to ramp up foreign direct investment and over-seas dividends.”

(Source: Bloomberg)

Oil prices hit a one-month high on Friday after the United States attacked a Syrian government airbase, sending shockwaves through global markets and raising concerns of the conflict spreading in the oil-rich region.

The toughest U.S. action yet in Syria’s six-year-old civil ramped up geopolitical uncertainty in the Mid-dle East. Oil, gold, foreign exchange, German and U.S. 10-year bonds, all reacted strongly to the air strikes.

Brent crude futures were up 88 cents at $55.77 a barrel at 0827 GMT, the highest since March 8, after

reaching an intra-day high of $56.08 a barrel shortly after the overnight air strikes were announced.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up 85 cents at $52.55 a barrel, having reached an intra-day high of $52.94 a barrel.

“Oil markets are back in a bullish mode after the setback of the previ-ous weeks. This news flow seems to bring geopolitical risks back on the radar,” said Frank Klumpp, oil ana-lyst at Stuttgart-based Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg.

Although Syria has limited oil pro-

duction, its location and alliances with big oil producers in the region mean any escalation of the conflict has the potential to increase supply-side fears.

Other analysts were more cau-tious, saying the conflict in Syria had no bearing on oil fundamentals.

“This might just be a speculative move higher because there’s nothing fundamental that’s supporting this rise,” said Hamza Khan, head of com-modities strategy at ING.

Oil markets remain oversupplied, even with efforts led by the Organ-ization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut supplies to prop up prices.

Russia, which is part of a deal be-tween OPEC and non-OPEC oil pro-ducers struck late last year to rein in supplies, said on Friday it was too early to say whether a deal could be extend-ed into the second half of the year.

The government has held discus-sions on a possible deal extension with domestic oil producers, said Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak.

(Source: Reuters)

Iran sells all its offshore oil storages post JCPOA

Asian spot LNG prices edge up on slightly tighter market Asian spot LNG prices edged higher this week, albeit from low lev-els, as tight production supported a market undergoing fundamen-tal changes amid a surge in new sellers and buyers.

Spot price for May delivery of LNG in Asia rose by 10 cents to $5.80 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) as seasonal tightness supported the market.

Trading data in Thomson Reuters Eikon shows that global LNG supplies have dipped slightly below demand, although ana-lysts said that this was likely only a temporary effect as several production units go into main-tenance following the end of the northern hemisphere’s peak demand winter heating season.

Neil Beveridge, senior oil and gas analyst at AB Bernstein in Hong Kong, said the “market was tight over the winter period (strong China demand and out-ages), and you could see that in the spot price”, but he added that prices would likely soften soon “with the seasonal demand downturn.”

LNG markets are undergoing fundamental changes, as a grow-ing number of supplies are coming to market, forcing producers to offer their buyers more flexible terms in order to retain market share.

Following months of rising pressure from big buyers in Japan, South Korea and China, major producers including Royal Dutch Shell, Woodside Petroleum, and BP said at an industry event in Ja-pan this week that they would allow more supply flexibility in future contracts.

With supplies expected to outstrip demand in the coming years, many producers are expected to sell excess cargoes into the spot market, while more contract flexibility means that utilities may also start selling more LNG into the spot market.

Some producers are warning that the current glut will end in the early 2020s due to a lack in investment because of low prices.

Despite this, there are signs that investment into new production that would hit the market in the early 2020s is picking up again.

Qatar said this week that it has lifted a self-imposed ban on de-velopment of the world’s biggest natural gas field, ending a 12-year moratorium as the world’s top LNG exporter looks to see off an expected rise in competition.

Italy’s ENI said this week that it was “very close” to making a final investment decision on the Coral floating LNG project in Mozam-bique, with start-up expected around 2022.

In a similar development, Japan’s Mitsui & Co expects a final in-vestment decision on the U.S. Anadarko-led offshore LNG project, also in Mozambique, in April-June 2018, four months later than ex-pected. (Source: Reuters)

BP to operate joint North Sea field with Iran

Saudi Arabia is still burning through its cash pile

Oil at one-month high after U.S. strikes in Syria rattle markets

N.I.O.C1395.5499

National IranianDrilling Company

Brief discription of subject:National Iranian Drilling Company(NIDC) address pasdaran Blev., Airport Saqare, Ahvaz, Iran hereby intends to purchase its requirements from qualified and interested tenderers through one-stage public tender ( semi-pressed) upon following terms and conditions:A) Qualitative evaluation of tenderer:

The evaluation is based on article ( J ) implementing regulations of the law of tenders and also carried out base on worksheets qualitative evaluation inquiry in the tender doucments. Minimum acceptable point of quality is 60.

B) Preparation of tender documents:Purchasing of documents:

In order to receive the tender documents, 510,000 Rials should be paid to SIBA account number 2174652205004 of NIDC in Bank Meli Iran and providing the original deposit receipt.Reciving of documents:Tenderers must be obtain the quality evaluation documents along with tender documents maximum 2 week after the date of second publication in person at the following address: Hall No.:316,3 th floor, Foreign Procurement Dept.(DRILLING PROJECTS) National Iranian Drilling Company, Airport square, Ahwaz, IRAN B) jomhouri street .yaghma alley nioc 8th building floor no : 04 room no 428 –tehran.-iran.Note 01: only the real or legal persons who apply to purchase and receive tender ducments from foreign procurment department in due date will be known as tenderer from tender committeeNote 02:the tender would be held in a tight period so the participants . should hand over all prequalification documents along with all enveiopes (A.B.C)before closing date.

C) Delivery of call quality evaluating:prequalification documents and envelopes (A.B.C)shoud be submited before closing date:Tenderers shall submit the completed documents including qualificaion worksheets in form of software in CD and documentary within 45 days from last day of document recived deadline to the following address: Hall No.:107, 1thfloor ,Tender Committee, Building operations, National Iranian Drilling Company, Airport square, Ahwaz, IRAN. D) Tender Guarantee:Type of guarantee: A)Bank guarantees or guarantees issued by non-bank institutions that have activites licensed by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran.B) The original cash deposit receipt paid to National Iranain Drilling Company. Duration of credit guarantee:This duration should be valid for 90 days and extendable maximum For one time in initial credit amount.

More on this & other tenders is accessible by click on. WWW.NIDC.IRForeign Procurement Dept. (DRILLING PROJECTS)

National Iranian Drilling Company

First Anno

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ent

There’s still hope for the established political parties of Europe

The political center of Europe might hold after all.Established parties of the democratic right and

left have experienced unusually good news over the past few weeks.

The most significant came in mid-March, when the governing center right-liberal party in the Netherlands, the VVD, beat the far-right Freedom Party of Geert Wilders in the country’s presidential election.

In France, liberal presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron had a strong performance in the first debate on March 21. He beat Marine Le Pen of the National Front, who shared third place with the center-right Francois Fillon – who has been wounded by allegations of corruption.

The leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon of France Insoumise (Unsubmissive France) was second in that debate, and in the next debate on April 4 Melenchon came in first, with Le Pen in fourth place after Fillon. With a pugnacious, at times witty style, Melenchon – a former Socialist party minister who found the party too far to the right – may now push Le Pen out of the first round of voting on April 23 and face Macron in the final vote in May.

Like Macron, Melenchon created his own party: the likely losers in France will be the parties that have governed the country, under different titles, since World War Two.

In Austria, the ruling Social Democrats have gained the lead in opinion polls, beating the far-right Freedom Party – whose candidate for presidency narrowly lost the run -off election last year. Austria has its parliamentary election next year, but divisions in the governing coalition may force a snap poll, which the Freedom Party had thought it would win. That’s now an open question.

In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) leader Frauke Petry has talked of resigning, less than six months before national elections. The party has plummeted in opinion polls, down to seven percent from 15 percent last summer. The AfD was never likely to be in national government: if it falls further it may not even gain seats in the national parliament, which has a five percent qualification threshold.

European Union seems to be recoveringAgainst this background, the European Union seems

to be recovering. The assumption that Brexit would motivate other countries to leave the Union has not materialized.

Growth is averaging 1.6 percent this year and is expected to rise to 1.8 percent in 2018. Unemployment is likely to fall from 10 percent last year to 9.6 this year, and 9.1 percent next. These are not stellar figures – unemployment is still considerably above pre-crisis levels – but they are much more hopeful than they were in the first years of this decade.

Germany in particular has never been healthier, showing a record 252.9 billion euro ($270.05 billion) trade surplus for 2016.

German strength illuminates Mediterranean weakness, the big “but” when heralding EU recovery. Greece, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, Spain and France all have debt levels that are higher than the EU average. Greece, with debt nearing 180 percent of GDP, is now in talks on yet another bailout which, if it fails, may mean default. Italy, still faced with an unresolved crisis with 360 billion euros ($383 billion) of problematic loans in the banking system, has stubbornly slow growth, forecast to be 0.9 percent this year, with unemployment at 11.6 percent, much higher among the young, and debt rising to 133.3 percent this year.

There’s more on the “but” side: the long and perhaps rancorous Brexit negotiations ahead; the increasing distance the Central European members – Hungary, Poland, Slovakia – take from the liberal politics of the EU (although not from the billions they receive in support); the possibility of an anti-EU government being elected this year or next.

The larger issue, rarely raised, is how extensively the Union can address its arcane and undemocratic politics, its tendency to centralize power, the fragility of the euro and the widening gulf between the Union’s official adherence to “ever-closer union” and the need to devolve responsibilities back to elected governments.

In Rome last week, EU leaders gathered to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding treaty and declared that “Our Union is undivided and indivisible”. It isn’t. It needs radical restructuring: had its members adopted such an approach last year, Brexit could have been avoided. Perhaps, in the course of Britain’s long withdrawing roar, some of that lesson will be learned.

(Source: Reuters)

APRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 20176I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

INTERNATIONAL

By Bradford Richardson

By John Lloyd

EU leaders renew fraying Union’s vows on 60th anniversary

When it comes to the bombshell report that former National Security adviser Susan E. Rice “unmasked” members of the Trump transition

caught up in U.S. surveillance of foreign officials, it’s difficult to tell the difference between mainstream media reports and Democratic Party talking points.

Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, called the “nothing to see here” reporting shameful.

“We have a smoking gun that points to criminal activity by president Obama’s national security adviser, and the media have shown an utter lack of interest in pursuing the story,” Mr. Bozell said in a statement.

Ms. Rice does not lack friends in the mainstream media. Among her most vociferous defenders is CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, who spun the story as a further indictment of the Trump administration’s ties to Russia.

No evidence of wrongdoing“There’s no evidence of any wrongdoing,” Mr. Cuomo

said Tuesday on “New Day.” “And in fact, if anything, the NSA asking for identities was a reflection of exactly how much traffic there was involving Trump people and foreign players. The White House (is) blasting the press for another fake scandal being peddled by right-wing media.”

But if the story is evidence of a cozy relationship between Moscow and the Trump administration, CNN national security correspondent Jim Scuitto didn’t get the memo.

On the contrary, Mr. Scuitto, a former Obama administration appointee, said the “ginned-up scandal” reflects the White House’s desire to deflect attention from the investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential race.

“Former president Barack Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice, at the center (of) President Trump’s latest attempt to renew his unproven wiretapping claim and divert attention away from his team’s contacts with Russia,” Mr. Sciutto reported on “New Day.”

Bloomberg News’ Eli Lake reported Monday that Ms. Rice “requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign.”

Despite claiming to know nothing about the unmasking last month, Ms. Rice insisted Tuesday that she never unmasked members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle for political purposes. She said revealing the identities of U.S. citizens swept up in surveillance is “necessary to understand the

importance of an intelligence report in some instances.”“If I saw an intelligence report that looked potentially

significant — and, by definition, if it is being provided to me, it is significant — then I can make that request,” Ms. Rice told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “That’s necessary for me to do my job.”

The mainstream media have largely reported Ms. Rice’s talking points verbatim.

A common practiceNBC White House correspondent Kristin Welker called

the unmasking of U.S. citizens inadvertently caught up in foreign surveillance a “common practice” in the intelligence community.

Citing sources close to Ms. Rice, ABC White House correspondent Cecilia Vega said the story is far from a “smoking gun.”

“In fact, some of the president’s conservative allies are applauding this. They are calling this the smoking gun that proves his wiretapping claims,” Ms. Vega reported. “It is not that, Amy. A former aide close to Rice doesn’t deny that she did, in fact, seek out these names, but they say she did nothing illegal or nothing out of the purview of her job.”

Other members of the media blasted their colleagues’ apathetic coverage.

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said there are still “a lot of things we don’t know” about the story.

“I do know this, though: I heard the hallelujah chorus come in immediately on cue last night saying ‘nothing to see here, move along, move along,’” Mr. Scarborough said on “Morning Joe.”

If it had been Republicans unmasking Democrats, reporters would be far more curious to investigate the story, he said.

“What if Dick Cheney had asked for the unmasking of names for Barack Obama’s incoming administration?” Mr. Scarborough said. “It’s a very simple question to ask the next time anybody says this is much ado about nothing.”

The Bloomberg report said information collected about members of the Trump transition team included “valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.”

MSNBC political analyst Mark Halperin said that report “begs a lot of questions about what was going on, and people who want to dismiss it as routine, I think, are uncurious.”

(Source: The Washington Times)

Mainstream media deems Rice unmasking bombshell ‘another fake scandal’

The Donald Trump-Xi Jinping summit was off to a good start: Xi nailed the handshake. But as Presidents Trump and Xi scooped sorbet and sipped wine ahead of high-stakes talks on North Korea, trade and other issues, the U.S. military fired 59 missiles at a Syrian airfield in retaliation for a recent chemical attack that killed scores of civilians. It was the first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar al-Assad since the outbreak of the war — an assault that could shape the future of the conflict and will certainly shape the summit.

China does not want the U.S. military taking unilateral action in Syria. Beijing has long said it prefers a multilateral approach, though, over the course of six brutal years of war it has repeatedly used its veto power to vote with Russia against United Nation Security Council resolutions on Syria, including a December 2016 plans for a 7-day ceasefire in Aleppo and more, recently, a call for sanctions over the use of chemical weapons.

At a daily press briefing on Friday, Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry reiterated China’s support for a “political settlement” and said it was urgent to prevent any further deterioration of the situation in Syria.

Time of tremendous uncertaintyThe timing of the U.S. strike is

remarkable. The Trump-Xi summit comes at a time of tremendous uncertainty in East Asia. The Chinese and U.S. presidents already had a rather long list of things to discuss: thwarting North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, negotiating the future of U.S.-China trade, not to mention the South China Sea and Taiwan. By launching the strike while Xi is in town, Trump may have added an another item to the list.

It is not yet clear when Trump decided to launch the strike, why he chose to hit the airfield in the early hours of the morning Friday, or which countries were, or were not, informed. Whatever the circumstances or rationale, the fact that Xi was photographed shaking Trump’s hand and smiling at his declaration of “friendship” while the U.S. made a surprise military move is not going to be popular — at all.

Xi does not like surprises. Top Chinese leaders exist in a world were public appearances are tightly choreographed, the press is controlled and protocol in

paramount. During the weeks of planning and negotiation that went into the Mar-a-Lago summit, every interaction and angle would have been discussed — from the handshake, to media availability, to the possibility of a rogue Trump tweet.

Given that Xi decided to attend the event, we have to assume the Chinese side was assured that things would go smoothly. But a smooth summit, from the Chinese perspective, is definitely not a summit where Xi sits through dinner apparently unaware that Trump changed course on a major foreign policy issue — or one where his presence is utterly overshadowed.

Shen Dingli, an expert on Sino-U.S. relations at Shanghai’s Fudan University, predicted that Trump and Xi would still talk about the big issues that brought them together, rather than switch the

focus to Syria. Syria is not central to bilateral ties, he said, and both leaders want to tout progress on trade.

But the Chinese side must privately be wondering, “Is this a message for Xi?”

On Thursday night, conservative U.S. media painted the Syria hit as a bold but calculated warning. “He’s sending a message to the Chinese,” former General Jack Keane told Sean Hannity on Fox News.

“He’s telling the Chinese that, listen, the North Koreans are trying to weaponries intercontinental ballistic missiles and the rhetoric is they will use them against my country and my people. Don’t push me into a corner where I have to use a military option to deal with them. That would be horrific. That would mean war on the Korean peninsula,” Keane said.

“I think he’ll get the Chinese

attention for sure, as a result of that. It’s not rhetoric. We’ve had rhetoric for eight years, with passivity, and no action,” he added.

Interestingly, Global Times, a Communist Party-controlled newspaper known for its nationalist tone, also saw the move as a projection of strength. In an editorial, the paper said Trump launched the strike “to establish his authority as the U.S. president.”

“He wants to prove that he dares to do whatever Obama didn’t dare to do. While Obama hesitated, Trump’s attitude is clear,” the paper said.

“He also wants to prove to the world that he’s not a president-businessman and he will use U.S. military force without any hesitation when he thinks it is necessary.”

(Source: The Washington Post)

Syria strike adds awkward twist to high-stakes China-U.S. summit

At a daily press briefing on Friday, Hua Chunying, a spokesperson

for the Chinese Foreign Ministry reiterated China’s support for a

“political settlement” and said it was urgent to prevent any further

deterioration of the situation in Syria.

ANALYSISAPRIL 8, APRIL 8, 20172017 7I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Part TwoAn article on Al-Akhbar reports that Congress-woman Gabbard had delivered President Trump’s message to Syrian President Assad in her visit to Damascus earlier this year. Here is the second part of the translation of the report:

Assad asked her: “Is this your impression after meeting Trump”?

Gabard replied: “No, that’s his idea, and he asked me to convey it to you. In short, we want to cooperate with you in fighting the Da’esh. Trump is impressed by Russia’s intelligence in managing the Syrian file and wants to build an understand-ing with the Russians in Syria.”

Then Gabbard suddenly asked Assad: “If Pres-ident Trump called you, would you answer the call”?

Assad smiled and asked: “Is this a hypothetical question, or is it a suggestion”?

She told him: “It’s not a hypothetical one”.Assad: “Is that a suggestion from you”?Gabbard replied: “No, this is a question for

you from President Trump, who asked me to convey it to you, and I will reask the question: If he calls you, will you answer the call”?

Gabbard was surprised by a quick response from Assad: “Of course, I will give you a phone number that he can reach me on quickly”.

Later, Trump’s administration thought that As-sad would ask for some time before answering, in order to consult with his Russian and Iranian allies. The Americans thought frankly that Assad “would not dare to communicate with them with-out Moscow’s permission.”

Before the end of the meeting, Gabbard re-explained to Assad her need for a tour of Syria to prepare her report on what was going on. She asked if she could visit Aleppo, after the Syrian

Army and their allies who had regained control of the city.

In about two hours, Assad heard Gabbard’s presentation, then presented his views and data on what was happening and the role of the United States of America directly or indirectly in support of terrorist groups. After that, Gabbard moved to another office, where she also met for two hours with the first Syrian Lady Asma al-Assad, and talked about the social aspects and negative effects of the war on the people of Syria. Then she met with the Grand Mufti of Syria, Badr al-Din Hassoun, and she visited the Great Mosque in Damascus, and then met with Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem, after which she met with businessmen and academics who presented the effects of the war on Syria.

The delegation arrived at an official hospitality. That evening, Gabbard paid a visit to Assad’s ad-visor, Dr. Buthaina Shaaban, to attend a dinner, in the presence of Syria’s UN representative Bashar al-Jaafari, and arrangements were made for a meeting with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem.

The next morning, an official political and se-curity team from the (Syrian) presidential palace joined the American guest and everyone left on a presidential plane to Aleppo. Over there, an-other team was waiting, and Gabbard was taken on an extensive tour, during which she met with the governor, members of parliament, clerics, activists and citizens, and visited a camp for the displaced.

Before her departure from Aleppo, her assis-tants received a call that President al-Assad had decided to host her on Wednesday throughout the day, and that he had arranged for detailed meetings, including a working luncheon, and would provide her with compelling documents

confirming the direct involvement of American security officials at the request of the admin-istration of former President Barack Obama, in supporting terrorists in Syria. This is what happened, and the decision to postpone her departure from Damascus from Wednes-day to Thursday. On Wednesday, Gabard met al-Assad twice with officials of the Syrian state who brought the documents and files. And presented her with what she felt as a shock rather than a surprise. She was given evidence to verify its authenticity when she returned to the United States.

Gabard returned to Beirut on Thurs-day, where she was supposed to have a schedule full of scheduled dates, ac-cording to a list did not include for the first time the characters that the US Em-bassy requires every American visitor to meet. The proposals came in response to Gabbard’s requests. The schedule in-cluded the meeting of the three presi-dents (the troika of the Lebanese system: the President, the Prime Minister, and the Speaker of the Parliament), army chief, general security chief, former president Émile Lahoud and Maronite Patriarch Bechara ar-Ra’i, stressing that no em-ployee from the US embassy in Beirut would attend the meetings. She had set a date to meet with Ambassador Richard in a rapid and ephemeral meeting.

What happened, which was a surprise (to Gabbard’s team at the beginning), that the Speaker of the Parliament’s of-fice refused to arrange a meeting be-tween Gabbard with Mr. Nabih Berri (The Speaker of the Parliament). The

Gabbard team quickly discovered that the US Embassy had intervened and informed the of-fice of the Speaker of the Parliament, as well as those involved in the Presidential and Govern-ment Ministries and even security leaders, that the visit was uncoordinated with the U.S. Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Gabbard learned of the matter and asked her assistants to inform the ambassador that what she was doing was illegal and would be report-ed to the White House, and the ambassador would be held accountable for an act contrary

to the interests of the United States.Before departing Beirut, Gabbard held an

unscheduled meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minis-ter Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who was in Beirut by co-incidence, and later travelled back to the Unit-ed States to face a crowd of opponents who campaigned against her trip to Syria for several weeks. She was waiting for a meeting with Pres-ident Trump to brief him on the results of the visit, while working on preparing her own report on Syria…”

(Source: 21st Century Wire)

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani paid an official visit to Russia on March 27-28 at the invitation of Rus-

sian President Vladimir Putin.Diplomatic contacts between Russia

and Persia date back to the 16th centu-ry. On May 20, 1920, the governments of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and Persia exchanged notes on mutual recognition. On December 25, 1991, Iran voiced its readiness to contin-ue relations with Russia as the legal suc-cessor to the Soviet Union.

On March 12, 2001, the presidents of both countries signed a treaty on the basic principles of mutual relations and cooperation between Russia and Iran. The treaty, which entered into force on April 5, 2002, became an important con-tribution to the strengthening of the legal base of the Russian-Iranian relations.

Russian-Iranian political dialogue is based on corresponding or similar positions of both countries regarding majority of issues on the global and re-gional agendas, including the creation of a multipolar world order, strengthening the role of the United Nations in interna-tional affairs, countering new challenges and threats, the Syrian and Iraqi peace settlements, and the situation in Afghan-istan.

Russia proceeds from the assumption that cooperation with Iran is an impor-tant condition for guaranteeing its na-tional interests and strengthening stabil-ity in the South Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East.

Russia and Iran maintain permanent top-level and high-level contacts.

In 2013-2014, Putin and Rouhani met four times: on the sidelines of the meet-ing of the Council of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO) heads of state in Bishkek on September 13, 2013, the summit of the Shanghai Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia on May 21, 2014, the

meeting of the Council of SCO heads of state in Dushanbe on September 12, 2014 and the 4th Caspian Summit in the Russian southern city of Astrakhan on September 29, 2014.

On January 28, 2015, Putin received Ali Akbar Velayati, the adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, who delivered a mes-sage from Rouhani to the Russian pres-ident. Both parties discussed a number of issues of bilateral relations and on the regional and international agendas.

On July 9, 2015, Putin and Rouhani met on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in the Russian city of Ufa.

The leaders discussed key issues of Russian-Iranian relations, including pros-pects for expanded trade and economic ties and energy cooperation.

On September 28, 2015, Putin and Rouhani met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session.

On November 23, 2015, the Russian president paid a brief working visit to Iran and attended the third meeting of heads of state and government of mem-

ber states of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum.

Putin met with Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran. During their meeting, the parties focused on regional crises, primarily the crisis in Syria.

While in Tehran, Vladimir Putin also held talks with Rouhani. After the talks, a package of documents stipulating coop-eration in various areas was signed in the presence of both leaders.

In February 2016, the Iranian Su-preme Leader’s adviser paid a four-day visit to Russia and met with Putin, De-fense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other high-ranking officials.

On August 8, 2016, Putin visited Baku at the invitation of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and attended the first trilat-eral meeting of Azerbaijani, Iranian and Russian leaders.

While in Baku, the Russian president held talks with Rouhani. Both leaders discussed bilateral relations and cooper-ation on Syria.

Russian and Iranian foreign minis-ters hold telephone conversations and regular meetings during UN General Assembly sessions and on the sidelines of other international events. Regular consultations are held between Moscow and Tehran at the level of deputy foreign ministers, who discuss issues on the bi-lateral agenda as well as key issues in the Middle East and North Africa.

The countries maintain inter-parlia-mentary ties and have established con-tacts between their respective ministries and departments.

Russia made a weighty contribution to resolving the situation around the Ira-nian nuclear program.

Iranian-Russian relations continue to develop actively in many areas after the lifting of anti-Iranian sanctions. This con-cerns bilateral cooperation and regional partnership. Bilateral economic ties and the Russian-Iranian trade turnover con-tinue to expand.

Contracts worth about $40 billion were drafted during numerous visits by representatives of various ministries and departments.

They encompass a wide range of subjects, including manufacturing, the aerospace sector, the heavy and light au-tomotive industry, aircraft manufactur-ing, the oil and gas sector, petrochemis-try, agriculture and more.

In November 2014, Russia and Iran signed a contract for building the second and third reactors at the Bushehr nuclear power plant (the Bushehr-2 project) on a turnkey basis. The Bushehr-2 project was launched on September 10, 2016. The new reactors will have a total capacity of 2,100 megawatts.

The second and third reactors are to be completed in 2024 and 2026, respec-tively. On March 15, 2017, media report-ed that construction and assembly op-erations had commenced at the future Bushehr-2 nuclear power plant.

In late June 2016, sources at the Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Ros-

selkhoznadzor) said both countries had coordinated a protocol for the delivery of boneless beef to Iran after bilateral talks. This decision officially opened the Iranian market to Russian meat produc-ers.

According to the Russian Federal Customs Service, the bilateral trade turn-over reached $2.1843 billion in late 2016, with Russian exports and imports total-ing $1.8818 billion and $302.6 million, respectively.

Russia mostly exports cereals, ferrous metals, timber, wood goods, electric ma-chinery and equipment, fats and oils, mineral fuel, paper and cardboard, inor-ganic chemicals, nuclear reactors, boilers and fertilizers to Iran.

Iran mostly exports fruits, vegetables, nuts, salt, sulfur, stone, lime, processed fruits and vegetables, plastics and relat-ed goods and organic chemical com-pounds to Russia.

Russian-Iranian military-technical cooperation is developing in strict com-pliance with current international legal norms. In 2007, both countries signed a contract for the delivery of S-300 sur-face-to-air missile (SAM) systems to Iran. The contract was suspended after the UN Security Council passed its Resolution 1929 on June 9, 2010. The document banned the sale of modern weaponry, including rockets and missile systems, to Iran. In April 2015, Russian Putin lifted the ban on delivering S-300 SAMs to Iran. In June, media reported that Moscow and Tehran were drafting a new contract. The S-300 delivery contract entered into force in November 2015.

In October 2016, media reported that Russia had delivered all S-300s to Iran.

On December 11-13, 2016, Tehran hosted the 13th meeting of the perma-nent Russian-Iranian Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation, co-chaired by Russian En-ergy Minister Alexander Novak and Ira-nian Minister of Communications and In-formation Technology Mahmoud Vaezi.

The Russian-Iranian Business Forum was also timed to coincide with the meeting. Moscow and Tehran signed a $2.5 billion agreement on building a thermal electric power station in Bandar Abbas city in southern Iran and on in-stalling power transmission lines along the Garmsar-Inche Borun railway.

After the inter-governmental com-mission’s meeting, media reported that Tehran intended to discuss new oil and gas contracts with Russian partners soon. Iranian authorities are drafting the Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC) for cooperating with oil companies after the lifting of sanctions.

Russia and Iran continue to expand their cultural, humanitarian and science and education cooperation. In 1998, Iran’s Embassy in Moscow opened its cultural mission here. The mission co-operates with Russian universities and organizes the annual All-Russian Ol-ympiad in the Persian language and literature, provides advanced training to Russian lecturers and students at Ira-nian universities and Persian language courses in Iran.

In an effort to help Iran train its own specialists, the Russian Education and Science Ministry allocates state stipends for Iranian students enrolling at Russian universities. The Joint Russian-Iranian Commission on Orthodoxy and Islam also continues its work.

Assad heard Gabbard’s presentation, then presented his views and data on what was happening and the role of the United States of America directly or

indirectly in support of terrorist groups.

On August 8, 2016, Putin visited Baku at the invitation of Azerbaijani President

Ilham Aliyev and attended the first trilateral meeting of Azerbaijani, Iranian and Russian

leaders.

Russia-Iran relations and Pres. Rouhani’s visit to Moscow

y y

N.I.O.C1396.54

National IranianDrilling Company

Brief discription of subject:National Iranian Drilling Company(NIDC) address pasdaran Blev., Airport Saqare, Ahvaz, Iran hereby intends to purchase its requirements from qualified and interested tenderers through one-stage public tender ( semi-pressed) upon following terms and conditions:A) Qualitative evaluation of tenderer:The evaluation is based on article ( J ) implementing regulations of the law of tenders and also carried out base on worksheets qualitative evaluation inquiry in the tender doucments. Minimum acceptable point of quality is 60.B) Preparation of tender documents:Purchasing of documents:In order to receive the tender documents, 510,000 Rials should be paid to SIBA account number 2174652205004 of NIDC in Bank Meli Iran and providing the original deposit receipt.Reciving of documents:Tenderers must be obtain the quality evaluation documents along with tender documents maximum 2 week after the date of second publication in person at the following address: A) Hall No.:316,3 th floor, Foreign Procurement Dept.(DRILLING PROJECTS). National Iranian Drilling Company, Airport square, Ahwaz, IRAN B) jomhouri street .yaghma alley nioc 8 th building floor on : 04 room on 428 –Tehran-iran.Note 01: only the real or legal persons who apply to purchase and recive tender ducments from foreign procurment department in due date will be known as tenderer from tender committee.Note 02:the tender would be held in a tight period so the participants. should hand over all prequalification documents along with all enveiopes (A.B.C)before closing date.C) Delivery of call quality evaluating including prequalification documents and envelopes (A.B.C)shoud be submited before closing date:Tenderers shall submit the completed documents including qualificaion worksheets in form of software in CD and documentary within 45 days from last day of document recived deadline to the following address: Hall No.:107, 1th floor ,Tender Committee, Building operations, National Iranian Drilling Company, Airport square, Ahwaz, IRAN. D) Tender Guarantee:Type of guarantee: A)Bank guarantees or guarantees issued by non-bank institutions that have activites licensed by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran.B) The original cash deposit receipt paid to National Iranain Drilling Company. Duration of credit guarantee:This duration should be valid for 90 days and extendable maximum For one time in initial credit amount.

More on this & other tenders is accessible by click on. WWW.NIDC.IRForeign Procurement Dept.(DRILLING PROJECTS)

National Iranian Drilling Company

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REVEALED? The story of President Trump’s message to President Assad via Tulsi Gabbard

By Hamid Reza

APRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 20178I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

INTERNATIONAL

Even though the Supreme Court has been an active player in American politics — Bush v. Gore leaps quickly to mind — the process of choosing its members has been seen as mattering more than the partisan combat in Congress. With rare exceptions, nominees to the court have been largely insulated from the escalating political warfare over the judi-ciary, and have been approved.

Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative standard-bearer, was confirmed with 98 votes. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon, got 96. Even Clarence Thomas, whose confirmation hearings marked a flash point in sexual and racial politics, drew no filibuster.

Now, however, partly as a result of its own actions, but more important as a result of increasing polarization in Washington and the nation as a whole, the court is de-volving into a nakedly partisan tool. How did this happen? Some of the blame rests with the Democrats. Many of them over the years have played to their base by casting cost-free votes against Republican nominees. Republicans like to say that Democrats’ 1987 blocking of Robert Bork marked the beginning of the politicization of Supreme Court nomina-tions, but Democrats did give Mr. Bork a vote. The polariza-tion of the court itself, with a pronounced rightward swing among its conservatives, has also helped turn confirmations into political battles.

The lion’s share

But the lion’s share of the blame now belongs to one man — Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. In blocking even a hearing for Judge Merrick Garland, President Ba-rack Obama’s moderate and eminently qualified candidate, as well as dozens of Obama nominees for other positions, he deeply degraded the nominating process. There was a time when the leaders of the Senate were responsible stew-ards of republican traditions and ideals. Not Mr. McConnell, whose determination to steamroll and humiliate political opponents exceeds any other consideration.

Which brings us — and the nation — to the unfolding

mess in the Senate over President Trump’s nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch. On Monday, Senate Democrats secured the votes needed to filibuster Judge Gorsuch’s nomination, a procedural mechanism the Senate minor-ity party can use to stall or block a vote by the majority. Whether Democrats will or will not remains to be seen.

But many of them are still furious, and rightly so, that Mr. McConnell and the Republicans stole the seat after Justice Scalia died by denying Judge Garland a vote for eight months.

A simple majority

For their part, the Republicans, who want to con-

firm Judge Gorsuch this week, need 60 votes to overcome the filibuster. They’re a few votes short, so they have threatened a new weapon: using their 52-vote majority to eliminate the filibuster, allow-ing them to confirm Judge Gorsuch with a simple majority, “up or down” vote. Such a move — known as the nuclear option — would end the filibuster not just for Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation, but for all Su-preme Court nominees. It would also mean that the only Senate votes still subject to the filibuster rule would be on legislation.

That leaves it to Democrats to consider whether the filibuster is worth saving. Whether legitimately outraged at Mr. McConnell’s treatment of the Garland nomination or opposed to Judge Gorsuch on the merits, if they lose the filibuster now — as they will — then it is not available to use against another

Trump nominee, who may be objectionable not only to Democrats but to a few Republicans, as well. Yes, the Republicans could possibly strip the filibuster away the next time, too. But surely having some slight chance of being able to deploy it to stop a renegade justice is better than having no chance at all. And the danger some Democrats appear to fear of seeming naïve by clinging to a goal of bipartisan support for the court seems less acute than the certainty of their appearing ineffectual in a futile effort to block the Gorsuch ap-pointment.

What matters, of course, is not some arcane voting pro-cess in the Senate. What matters is that Americans believe they are governed by law, not by whatever political party manages to stack the Supreme Court. That is what Mitch McConnell has driven the Senate to put at risk — a very great risk indeed — and it may, in the end, fall to the court itself to find a way to rise above the steadily encroaching tide of factionalism.

(Source: The NYT)

The Supreme Court as partisan tool

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H E A L T HAPRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 2017 9I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Prolonged antibiotic use tied to colon polyps

A variety of assistive devices can improve balance, provide support, and prevent fur-ther disability.

If you’re recovering from an injury or surgery, struggling with arthritis, or having trouble with your balance, your doctor may recommend one or more assistive devic-es—simple tools that have been shown to prevent falls and injuries and preserve your mobility. Don’t let pride or vanity keep you from using them. “Maintaining your mobil-ity—the ability to move easily around your home and neighborhood, stay connected to your loved ones, and remain engaged in the world—can safeguard your independ-ence,” says Dr. Scott Martin, associate pro-fessor of orthopedics at Harvard Medical School and medical editor of the Special Health Report Mobility and Independence.

Once you begin to shop for an assis-tive device, you may be surprised at the selection that awaits you. Whichever type is recommended for you, you’ll need profes-

sional help with “fitting,” so that you can use it safely and comfortably.

1. Walking poles

Walking poles, which are often used for trekking, can provide some additional stability and improve posture, balance, and coordination. They can be helpful for people who don’t need a lot of support but want to relieve weight on their hips and knees. For example, they may be a good choice if you have arthritis but can usually get around well. They’re also good for hik-ing, even if you don’t have mobility prob-lems.

2. Walking sticks

Like walking poles, walking sticks don’t provide a lot of support, but they help you sense the terrain if you have neuropathy and have trouble feeling the ground be-neath your feet. They also allow you to walk with a fairly natural posture and gait.

3. Canes

All canes are variations of three basic

types:Standard canes. These usually have a

curved or T-shaped handle and a variety of grips and tips. They are good for helping with balance but don’t bear a lot of weight.

Offset canes. The upper shaft of an off-set cane bends outward, and the handle grip is usually flat. The design shifts weight from the wrist to the forearm. It is a good choice for people who need the cane to bear more weight or who have a weak grip.

Multiple-legged and -tripod canes. Their sturdy bases offer a lot of support and allow these canes to stand when not in use. They are very useful in taking the weight off an injured or painful leg, but will slow down your walking speed.

4. Crutches

Crutches transfer the bulk of your weight from your legs to your upper body. They provide better support than canes but are more difficult to learn to use. It’s extremely important to have crutches fitted properly

and to undergo training in using them on different surfaces.

5. Walkers

Walkers provide the best support, but also alter your gait considerably. Walkers come with legs, wheels, or a combination of the two. Some have seats to allow the user to rest. Because using a walker is more complicated than pushing a grocery cart, you’ll need professional help selecting a walker that is a good fit and learning how to use it properly.

Additional considerations

Using an assistive device often requires making a few changes to avoid accidents. You may have to move furniture to make a path for a walker and remove rugs to cre-ate an even surface to navigate with a cane, crutches, or walking stick. Avoid smooth-soled shoes and slippers. Once your device has a permanent role in your life, you’ll wonder how you got along without it.

(Source: health.harvard.edu)

For patients with coronary artery dis-ease (CAD), swinging back and forth with weight gain and weight loss was associat-ed with death and other adverse events, a study suggested.

Separate from traditional risk factors, every increase in one standard devia-tion of body weight variability between follow-up visits (1.5-1.9 kg) was tied to greater risks of:

Compared with patients with the low-est variation in body weight (0.93 kg on average), their peers with the most weight seesawing (3.86 kg on average) had higher risks of coronary events (by 64%), cardiovascular events (by 85%), death (by 124%), myocardial infarctions (by 117%), and strokes (by 136%), ac-cording to Sripal Bangalore, MD, MHA, of NYU School of Medicine, and colleagues.

This post hoc analysis of the Treat-ing to New Targets (TNT) trial -- which studied the effect of atorvastatin (Lipitor) on lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels -- was published in the April 6, 2017 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Increased body weight variability was also tied to new-onset diabetes (adjust-ed HR 1.08, 95% CI 1.02-1.14).

The caveat to the study is that base-line weight mattered: coronary events were not more common if people with normal body weight at baseline ex-

perienced subsequent weight fluctua-tions; on the other hand, overweight and obese individuals did show the link between weight variability and adverse events.

In other words, this doesn›t mean that overweight CAD patients shouldn›t try to lose weight in the first place.

Dramatic weight loss

“Dramatic weight loss, as seen after bariatric surgery, has been shown to produce clinically significant improve-ments related to the risk of cardiovas-cular disease, including reductions in the risk of hypertension, hypercholes-terolemia, and diabetes. As such, weight loss is an important lifestyle interven-tion,” Bangalore›s group wrote.

The investigators also warned against making a causative link between weight fluctuation and coronary events.

Asked for her perspective, Sadiya S. Khan, MD, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, agreed: “In patients with CAD, greater body weight variability was associated with worse coronary and cardiovascu-lar disease outcomes and greater risk of new-onset diabetes,” she told MedPage Today via email.

“However, participants with high body weight variability were heavier at baseline and had a greater proportion of cardiometabolic risk factors at base-

line (hypertension, diabetes, and known heart failure), which may result in resid-ual confounding even after adjustment.

Pharmacologic intervention

“This study did not assess whether intentional weight loss through either lifestyle or pharmacologic interven-tions in overweight and obese patients was associated with worse outcomes from a heart standpoint,” she added, arguing that unintentional weight loss would have reflected poor health, frailty, and pre-existing illness. The “overarch-ing message should still be to aim for a normal weight as this reduces risk for development of heart disease to begin with.”Weight fluctuations have previously been shown to be a risk factor for death and coronary events in patients without cardiovascular disease.

The TNT trial originally randomized 10,001 patients with coronary artery dis-ease (and without elevated levels of LDL cholesterol) to low- or high-dose atorv-astatin. Included in the analysis by Banga-lore et al were the 9,509 participants who had at least two post-baseline measure-ments of body weight.

Median follow-up was 4.9 years in the original trial. The primary endpoint of coronary events combined the rates of death from coronary heart disease, non-fatal myocardial infarction, resuscitated cardiac arrest, revascularization, and an-

gina.“Although the approach of calculat-

ing body weight variability until a certain cutoff point and then evaluating its ef-fects on events beyond that time frame offers a potential ‹causal› hypothesis, the disadvantage is that the body-weight variability calculated may not remain the same in the follow-up phase, resulting in misclassification,” the researchers ac-knowledged.

(Source: MedPage Today)

Taking antibiotics for an extended period in early to middle adulthood might increase your risk for precancerous growths in your colon, a large study

suggests.Women who took antibiotics for two weeks or more

in their 20s through their 50s were more likely to have colon lesions in their 60s than women who didn’t take the drugs for an extended period, researchers found.

If not removed, these lesions -- called polyps or ad-enomas -- can lead to colon cancer.

“This suggests that alterations in the naturally occur-ring bacteria that live in one’s intestines caused by anti-biotics might predispose individuals to colorectal cancer,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Chan.

But, although the risk for colon cancer was raised, it wasn’t to a level “where it should worry individuals who need to take antibiotics for clear medical reasons,” said Chan, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

He also cautioned that this study cannot prove that long-term antibiotic use was the cause of the polyps, only that the two seem to be associated.

And, though the study was limited to women, the link likely also holds true for men, Chan said.

“More research needs to be done to understand the interaction between alterations in one’s gut bacteria and future risk of colorectal cancer,” he said.

Antibiotics disrupt the diversity and number of bacte-ria in the gut, or “microbiome.” They also reduce resist-ance to toxic bacteria. All of this might play a role in the development of precancerous growths, Chan said.

In addition, bacteria that require antibiotics may cause inflammation, which is a known risk for colon can-cer, he added.

For the report, Chan and his colleagues collected data on more than 16,600 women 60 and older who took part in the Nurses Health Study.

The women provided a history of antibiotic use be-tween ages 20 and 59. They also had had at least one colonoscopy between 2004 and 2010. Nearly 1,200 pre-cancerous polyps in the colon were found during that time.

Use of antibiotics within the previous four years wasn’t associated with a heightened risk of polyps, but long-term use in the past was, Chan said.

For example, two months of antibiotic use in her 20s or 30s upped a woman’s odds for polyps 36 percent compared to those who didn’t the drugs for a prolonged period. The risk rose further when the extended medica-tion use occurred in one’s 40s or 50s, researchers found.

Shorter-term use wasn’t without risk, either. Taking antibiotics for more than 15 days between ages 20 and 59 also increased the chances of finding polyps, the study found.

One New York City specialist agreed that bacterial changes in the gut wrought by antibiotics may up the odds for colon cancer.

“The biological plausibility of these findings may be explained by changes in the bacterial diversity of the co-lon after exposure to antibiotics, said Dr. Patrick Okolo, chief of gastroenterology at Lenox Hill Hospital.

This adds to the increasing evidence that gut bacteria may be important in human health, he said.

“Further research to determine cause and to examine nuances will be important in determining the full extent of these findings as well as their veracity,” Okolo said.

Chan and his team acknowledged the study had limi-tations. For one, there was no information on the types of antibiotics used. Also, it’s possible that some growths existed before antibiotics were taken, the researchers said.

(Source: HealthDay News)

The one thing no one realizes about happinessLast year I was reading about a European billionaire who, after losing a good chunk of his wealth in a bad investment, ended his life. The day he committed suicide, he was still a billionaire, albeit a less well-off one.

Most people would think, this guy was still rich! What was he thinking?

But what most people don’t understand is that happiness is not about what you have (or own) or even wherever it is you stand right now. It’s about where you feel you’re headed, about whether or not the future is looking brighter.

Contrast the billionaire with a long-time job seeker who finally lands a position (which certainly doesn’t match billion-airedom). What emotions would come up then?

Progress! Happiness! Joy! Put simply, happiness is progress. Or as happiness re-

searcher Shawn Achor explains: “Happiness is the joy you feel moving toward your potential.”

If you feel like you “should” be happier (because, hey, you already express gratitude for what’s going right in your life, right?), here’s what you can do:

1. Set yourself up for success.

When I was a recruiter, the No. 1 thing candidates wanted (even more than a salary bump) was a workplace where they could get better. They wanted to work for a good mentor, have a clear career acceleration path, and be an environment that promoted advancement.

Does your career make you feel like you are getting smart-er, faster, and better year after year? Or have you been on a long plateau the last couple of years (or more)? If it’s the lat-ter, no wonder you’re not excited or energized. Feeling stifled, stuck, or bored means we’re not making use of our potential. And we’re here on Earth for the purpose of expansion. Not stagnation.

Luckily there are plenty of ways to get out of this rut. Is there a new project you can volunteer to help out with? Or another position you’ve been gunning for at work? What about explor-ing a side hustle, or even looking at job openings at other companies?

2. Trend upward (everywhere)!

It isn’t just our work that gives us fulfillment. Beyond our professional/creative contributions, there are other ways we can always be growing too. And it can be fun.

My sister took up tennis two years ago, and she and her husband always make sure there’s a court nearby when they take vacations. They also play together every Saturday morn-ing. The fact they are improving at something gives them a feeling of great satisfaction.

Where can you be growing? Could it be picking up piano, finessing your French, mastering improve classes, sassing it up at salsa classes, or getting a stronger core? Whatever it is, if you can measure your level of accomplishment month over month, it’s tremendously gratifying.

3. Always be thinking: What’s next?

When you think about spring, summer, 2017, and beyond, are you excited? What do you visualize? Is it constantly get-ting better—more exploration, increased adventure, career success, ticking off bucket list items—with exciting plans and opportunities on the horizon?

Whether or not every single thing comes true, they matter in the present moment. Because there’s joy in anticipation too. According to a 2010 study published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life, just thinking about and planning a vacation can make you happier than actually taking it.

I used to daydream about my next holiday (and plan it) whenever I was unhappy at work. Having experiences to look forward to making a massive difference in our day-to-day happiness levels. Especially when Monday happens. And it’s raining.

Turns out a billion dollars might not even be enough if you’re not happy about where you’re headed. But a shake-up and a little strategizing just might be.

(Source: greatist.com)

Drugs that alter gut bacteria might set stage for polyp development, researcher says

5 tools to maintain your mobility

Typically harmless virus may trigger celiac diseaseA usually harmless virus may play a role in triggering celiac disease, a new study in mice suggests.

The researchers found that, among mice that were geneti-cally engineered predisposed to celiac disease, those that were infected with a virus called reovirus were more likely to have an immune response against gluten than mice not infected with a reovirus. This immune response is similar to what›s seen in people with the condition.

Although human infections with reoviruses are common, the viruses don›t cause symptoms in people. But the study also found that patients with celiac disease did have higher levels of antibodies against reovirus, compared to people without the condition.

The findings suggest that reovirus infection may leave a “permanent mark” on the immune system that sets the body up for developing celiac disease, the researchers said.

A “virus that is not clinically symptomatic can still do bad things to the immune system and set the stage for an auto-immune disorder,” such as celiac disease, study co-author Dr. Bana Jabri, director of research at the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center, said in a statement.

The researchers also found people with celiac disease who had high levels of reovirus antibodies also had increased ex-pression of a gene that encodes a protein called IRF1. In the mouse studies, the researchers saw that IRF1 played a role in developing gluten intolerance after reovirus infection.

(Source: Live Science)

Weight fluctuation tied to mortality in CAD population

“Alterations in the naturally occurring bacteria that live in one’s intestines caused by antibiotics might predispose individuals to

colorectal cancer.”

10I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

T E C H N O L O G Y APRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 2017

It may surprise you that Google had a chief game designer, as it doesn’t really make games. And that may also explain why Noah Falstein has announced that he resigned his job at Google.

Falstein said in a blog post that he is looking forward a new challenge making games.

“Four years ago this month I became Google’s Chief Game Designer. It seemed an auspicious time to be able to make games at a company known for its world-spanning technology,” Falstein wrote. “Unfortunately, the opportunity to actually build the big, consequential games that I had been hired to help create failed to materialize, even as the world market for games has continued to grow in size, diversity, and geographic

reach. Accordingly, I’ve decided to leave Google, and today, April 6, was my last day.”

Falstein evidently was hired as part of a project to build its own games, but it never really got around to that, even as one particular game — Pokémon Go — had its origins at Google. That game started within Google’s Niantic Labs autonomous division, headed by John Hanke, creator of Google Earth. Hanke’s division spun out of Google, raised money from outside investors, and then made its momentous Pokémon Go game, which generated more than $1 billion in revenues to date.

That may have been the right path for Niantic, but it clearly showed that making games inside Google wasn’t

necessarily the best route. Falstein apparently tried to stay on and get things going, but now it looks as though he wants to make games by joining a game company.

It’s also a pretty clear sign to me that Google wants to be a platform company, not a game company, regardless of whether there are game makers or game projects within the huge company. Google reaps huge benefits from its Google Play app store, which receives about 30 percent of the revenue for all game revenues associated with the Android platform. It was the No. 8 publicly traded game company in the world in 2016, according to market research Newzoo, with an estimated $4.1 billion in revenues.

(Source: theinspiracy)

After months of secrecy since its reveal back in E3 2016, Microsoft has decided to reveal a few details about their upcoming Xbox console, codenamed ‘Scorpio’.

So here’s what we already knew before this; Scorpio is a mid-generation spec bump to the Xbox One platform (never mind the Xbox One S, which was also a minor spec bump) and not a whole new generation of console. The main goal here was to have native 4K gaming on all titles, unlike the upscaling or checkerboard rendering trick used by Sony on the PS4 Pro. It has 6 TFLOPs of performance on offer, making it the fastest console ever made, ahead of the 4.12 TFLOPs of performance possi-ble on the PS4 Pro.

Now, this is where the new information comes in. Project Scorpio is based on an evolved version of the same x86 custom AMD Jaguar SoC, with the same 8-core CPU with 4MB L2 cache but clocked to 2.3GHz

from the 1.75GHz on the original Xbox One, which makes it roughly 30% more powerful. The GPU gets an even bigger bump, with 40 compute units, up from

12 on the Xbox One and 36 on the PS4 Pro with a massive 1172MHz clock speed on top, up from the 853MHz on the Xbox One and 911MHz on the PS4 Pro. This makes it 4.6x more powerful than the Xbox One GPU. Looking back at the compute power, the Scorpio manages 6 TFLOPs while the Xbox One could achieve only 1.31 TFLOPs. This is a huge boost by any stretch of imagination.

Working alongside all that horsepower is faster and increased memory. While the Xbox One had 8GB DDR3 memory with additional faster but smaller ESRAM, the Scorpio goes for standard GDDR5 like the PS4 Pro, ex-cept instead of 8GB like the Pro it has 12GB of it. Out of the 12GB, the OS takes about 4GB but that still leaves 8GB for all your games, 3GB more than the Xbox One and PS4 Pro.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Chief game designer Noah Falstein leaves Google

Xbox ‘Scorpio’ hardware gets detailed

The next big update for Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows 10 operating system is here. The so-called Creators Update adds a host of new features from MS Paint reinvented to privacy tweaks.

The Creators Update will begin being pushed out to users via Windows Update on 11 April, but for those eager to get their hands on it early, it’s available via a manual update or a fresh install of Windows using the Media Creation Tool. It sounds ominous, but using its ability to upgrade the PC it’s running on is very straightforward. Here are the top seven features worth hitting update for:

1-Game Mode

Other operating systems might pretend to be PC gaming capable, but for the most part it’s all about Windows. Now Windows 10 has a dedicated game mode which diverts resources away from unnecessary background tasks to the game at hand. Whether it’ll make a huge difference to game performance isn’t yet certain, but in cases where your PC’s hardware can only just manage the latest and greatest game, every little helps.

2- Paint 3D

Microsoft’s perennial Paint program has finally been dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era. Now called Paint 3D, at its heart it’s still a lightweight image editor for cropping, drawing and adding simple text. But it can now author 3D images as well as simple 2D ones, taking flat images and putting them onto 3D shapes, importing and creating shapes in 3D and various other forward-looking tools. It’s quite fun to play with, whether it’ll be a serious

3D maker tool remains to be seen. 3- Night Light

Following the lead of Apple, Google and many third-party developers over the years, Windows 10 now has a Night Light feature, which reduces the amount of blue light emitted by the screen either on demand or in time with sunset. The idea is that wavelengths of light at the blue end of the spectrum prevent

people from getting to sleep at night, and so by tuning the color of the screen towards warmer shades less blue light is emitted.

4- Dynamic Lock

Dynamic Lock uses the Bluetooth signal from a smartphone to tell whether a person is actively sitting in front of the PC and if not, to lock the screen. Once logged in, the PC functions as normal

while you’re sitting at it and locks when you go away, if you have your phone with you at all times.

5- Edge

The Edge browser has gained a few new tricks. You can now collect tabs for later, removing their load from your PC while you’re not using them but not losing the page. It blocks some Flash elements by default, requiring a click to run them, and Edge now has built-in support for Microsoft Wallet for buying things online.

6- Start menu folders

The Start menu has gone full circle. First it was all about folders in a massive list. Then it was a full page of icons, then a smaller pop-out menu of icons, but now users can put those icons in folders. They look a little different to the Start menu folders of old (that still exist in the full list of programs) resembling folders on an Android or iOS device, but do the same job.

7- Greater privacy

With the Creators Update, Microsoft has reduced the amount of data it collects from user machines and refined what is needed to support various functions. The majority of data collected is done so to help fix problems, but users can now tailor some of the things that are collected on installing or updating Windows to the new version. Non-enterprise users will still have difficulty preventing Windows from sending any data back to Microsoft, but Home and Pro users now have more control, which is a step in the right direction.

(Source: Guardian)

Windows 10 Creators Update: 7 best new features

10 hot titles of IT world

Here are high rated IT titles in the world that reviewed by savvy tech users:

Facebook to offer users tips on spotting fake news.

Social network says it has responsibility to reduce amount of fake news on platform and help users make informed decisions.The new “educational tool” is part of a multi-pronged strategy which will also see a growing range of “signals” from user behaviour and third-party fact checkers used to make misinformation less prominent on the social network.

Twitter sues the US Department of Homeland Security for trying to break the first amendment.

Twitter is suing the United States Department of Homeland Security for demanding that Twitter unmask the anonymity of Twitter account @ALT_USCIS (Alternative US Citizenship and Immigration Services), which voices its direct opposition of the Trump Administration.

Apple planning new iMac for 2017 and ‘completely rethinking’ Mac Pro.

Company apologises to Pro users for neglect of product line as it prepares for the launch of its first new desktop computer since 2015.

Lyft has reportedly raised a new round of funding to support its on-demand ride hailing service. It’s

believed that investors have put $500 million more into the company’s coffers, probably invigorated by its recent market growth and Uber’s stumbles.

The Quanzhou Intermediary Court ordered Samsung to pay CNY80 million to Huawei after

infringing patents. The sum equals $11.6 million and is a compensation for using a 4G license in over 20 devices, including the Galaxy S7.The verdict is a result of a lawsuit filed in May by Huawei in two countries - China and the United States. The Korean company responded with filing a lawsuit for infringing IP certification patents.

Android Wear 2.0 is now headed to the LG G Watch R and original Watch Urbane.

It’s already made it to the Fossil Q Founder, Casio Smart Outdoor Watch, Tag Heuer Connected, Polar M600, Fossil Q Wander and Q Marshal, the Michael Kors Access line, and Nixon Mission.

Facebook Messenger has released a new assistant called “Messenger M”.

M is not a fully-fledged smartphone assistant. It’s more like Google Assistant’s debut in Google Allo when it first came out.M can offer suggestions via a pop-up bubble that can send money to your friends, request a car with ride-share apps, and coordinate plans with friends.The best example of this is: when your friend asks “Where are you?”, M will suggest that you share your location with them.

WhatsApp to implement UPI-based payment system in India.

Facebook-owned WhatsApp is finally throwing its hat in the online payment system, starting first with India, its biggest market in the world.

Apple Watch Series 3 to land in the second half of this year.

we know that the Series 3 should come with enhanced performance and battery life compared to its predecessor.

The next Moto Z will unsurprisingly be called Moto Z2.

And the only pretty certain idea we have about the Z2 is that it will keep the modular system of its predecessor.

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UK games industry: 40% of companies considering relocating after Brexit Two fifths of games companies based in the UK are considering relocating out of the country in the wake of Brexit, a survey has found.

The primary concern across the industry is over a loss in international talent from EU countries creating a skills shortage which 40% say could make them move some or all of their operations. Ukie, the industry trade body that carried out the research, found 57% of UK games companies employ workers from the EU, and that at those companies EU workers represent an average one third of all employees.

Some 98% of those surveyed believe EU nationals who have the necessary skills should be given a blanket right to work in the UK in the future. With a shortage of skilled UK candidates, barriers for EU workers wanting to live and work in the UK would have a negative impact on the industry.

According to Ukie’s latest market valuation, the UK is the sixth largest games market in the world in terms of consumer revenues. Consumer spend in 2016 reached £4.33bn, up 1.2% from the previous year. The country boasts more than 2,000 games companies, with 12,100 full-time employees.

Bossa Studios co-founder and CEO Henrique Olifiers said: “The damaging uncertainty caused by Brexit to our EU employees, and not having open access to the brightest and best European talent, some of whom are now refusing to resettle in the UK, is forcing us to have to assess whether it will be at all possible to produce our future games in this country.”

(Source: UKie)

NVIDIA announces new faster Titan Xp along with Mac support

Samsung ordered to pay $11M to Huawei over patent infringements

The Quanzhou Intermediary Court ordered Samsung to pay CNY80 mil-lion to Huawei after infringing pat-ents. The sum equals $11.6 million and is a compensation for using a 4G license in over 20 devices, including the Galaxy S7.

The verdict is a result of a lawsuit filed in May by Huawei in two coun-tries - China and the United States. The Korean company responded with filing a lawsuit for infringing IP certification patents.

Huawei sought compensation for

over 30 million products sold in 2016 that generated $12.7 billion revenue for the Korean conglomerate. After the court’s decision three Samsung units have to pay for the damage, and five other firms have to stop using Huawei’s copyrighted products and patents.

Fiscal 2016 was good for Samsung’s IT & Mobile Communications division with $2 billion operating profit, so the $11 million penalty is probably not going to be that hard for the Korean company to handle.

(Source: Reuters)

NVIDIA has announced a new variant of last year’s Titan X based on the Pas-cal architecture, mercifully called the Titan Xp so there is no more confusion.

The Titan Xp is a spec boost over last year’s Titan X Pascal and gets back the crown of the fastest graphics card avail-able on the market from the 1080Ti. The CUDA core count goes from 3584 to 3840. The base clock speed hasn’t been specified but the boost clock speed goes from 1531MHz to 1582MHz. The float-ing point performance has gone from 11 TFLOPs to 12 TFLOPs.

Meanwhile, the memory remains the same 12GB GDDR5X but the memory speed has been increased from 10Gbps to 11.4Gbps with the memory interface being the same 384-bit. The memory bandwidth has now gone up from 480GB/s to a colossal 547.7GB/s. Apart from that the two cards are identical, with exact same design, connectivity, as well as thermal and power characteristics.

The Titan Xp is priced at the same $1200 as the outgoing model.

(Source: nvidia)

By Alireza Khorasani

Using a ground-based telescope, an international team of astronomers has detected traces of an atmosphere around an exoplanet located 39 light-years away. This exoplanet is not much larger than our own, making it the most Earth-like planet known to harbor an atmosphere.

Detecting atmospheres around distant exoplanets isn’t anything special, particularly when the exoplanet in question is as big as Saturn or Jupiter. But as for smaller, Earth-sized planets, that’s a different story.

Prior to this latest discovery, astronomers had con-firmed the presence of atmospheres on only two super Earth-sized planets, including the super-Earth 55 Cancri e.

The term “super-Earth” is apt; this planet weighs as much as eight Earths, and its surface temperature blazes at 2,050 degrees Celsius. Let’s face it, 55 Cancri e is not very Earth-like at all.

Discovery of atmosphere

That’s what makes the discovery of an atmosphere around exoplanet GJ 1132b so intriguing. As described in the Astronomical Journal, this planet is just slightly bigger than our own, weighing in at 1.6 Earth masses, and featuring a radius just 1.4 times larger than Earth’s. It’s the lowest mass super-Earth to have its own atmos-

phere—a discovery that represents an important step forward in the quest to find alien life.

Astronomers have known about GJ 1132b for a while, but a team led by the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy wanted to get a better sense of its chemical composition. Using the GROND imager at the 2.2 meter ESO/MPG telescope in Chile, the astronomers scanned the planet in different wavelengths as it orbited its red dwarf every 1.6 days.

“We looked at how strongly the amount of light com-

ing from the star decreased when the planet moved in front of its star,” explained study co-author Paul Mollière in an interview with Gizmodo. “We did that by letting the light pass through filters of multiple colors, and then found that the planet seems to block more stellar light in one of these filters. Hence, when viewed in light of that specific color, the planet is bigger.”

This “bigger” perspective suggests the presence of an atmosphere around GJ 1132b—one consisting of possibly water and methane steam. This atmosphere is opaque when viewed at a specific frequency of infrared light (making the planet appear larger), but it’s invisible at other frequencies. That’s not the kind of thing you see in a planet without an atmosphere.

Tom Louden, a physicist at the University of Warwick who wasn’t involved in the study, was impressed that the astronomers were able to make these observations using a relatively small ground based telescope.

Louden also liked the way the astronomers measured multiple transits events (instances of the planet passing in front of its host star) in each of the spectral bands, making it less likely that the signal was due to an error or some kind of visual artifact. (Source: Gizmodo)

Coleoid cephalopods, a group encom-passing octopuses, squid and cuttlefish, are the most intelligent invertebrates: Octopuses can open jars, squid commu-nicate with their own Morse code and cuttlefish start learning to identify prey when they’re just embryos.

In fact, coleoids are the only “animal lineage that has really achieved behavio-ral sophistication” other than vertebrates, said Joshua Rosenthal, a senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. This sophistication could be related to a quirk in how their genes work, according to new research from Dr. Rosenthal and Eli Eisenberg, a

biophysicist at Tel Aviv University.In the journal Cell on Thursday, the

scientists reported that octopuses, squid and cuttlefish make extensive use of RNA editing, a genetic process thought to have little functional significance in most other animals, to diversify proteins in their nervous system. And natural selec-tion seems to have favored RNA editing in coleoids, even though it potentially slows the DNA-based evolution that typ-ically helps organisms acquire beneficial adaptations over time.

But sometimes, enzymes swap out some letters — the ACGU you might have learned about in school — in the

RNA’s code for others. When that hap-pens, modified RNA can create proteins that weren’t originally encoded in the DNA, allowing an organism to add new riffs to its base genetic blueprint.

Cuttlefish species

This RNA editing seemed to be hap-pening more in coleoids, so Dr. Eisenberg, Dr. Rosenthal and Noa Liscovitch-Brauer, set out to quantify it by looking for dis-agreements in the DNA and RNA se-quences of two octopus, one squid and one cuttlefish species.

They found that coleoids have tens of thousands of so-called recoding sites, where RNA editing results in a protein

different from what was initially encoded by DNA. When they applied the same methods to two less sophisticated mol-lusks — a nautilus and a sea slug — they found that RNA editing levels were orders of magnitude lower.

Next, the researchers compared RNA recoding sites between the octopuses, squid and cuttlefish species and found that they shared tens of thousands of these sites to varying degrees. By comparison, hu-mans and mice share only about 40 recod-ing sites, even though they are hundreds of millions of years closer in evolution than octopuses and squids.

(Source: The NYT)

More than 400 icebergs have drifted into the North At-lantic shipping lanes over the past week in an unusually large swarm for this early in the season, forcing vessels to slow to a crawl or take detours of hundreds of miles.

Experts are attributing it to uncommonly strong counter-clockwise winds that are drawing the icebergs south, and perhaps also global warming, which is accel-erating the process by which chunks of the Greenland ice sheet break off and float away.

As of Monday, there were about 450 icebergs near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, up from 37 a week earlier, according to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Internation-al Ice Patrol in New London, Connecticut. Those kinds of numbers are usually not seen until late May or early June. The average for this time of year is about 80.

In the waters close to where the Titanic went down in 1912, the icebergs are forcing ships to take precautions.

Instead of cutting straight across the ocean, trans-At-lantic vessels are taking detours that can add around 400 miles to the trip. That’s a day and a half of added travel time for many large cargo ships. Close to the Newfound-land coast, cargo ships owned by Oceanex are throttling way back to 3 or 4 knots as they make their way to their homeport in St. John’s, which can add up to a day to the trip, said executive chairman, Capt. Sid Hynes.

One ship was pulled out of service for repairs after hitting a chunk of ice, he said. “It makes everything more expensive,” Hynes said Wednesday. “You’re burning more fuel, it’s taking a longer time, and it’s hard on the equipment.” He called it a “very unusual year.”

Three icebergs discovered

Coast Guard Cmdr. Gabrielle McGrath, who leads the ice patrol, said she has never seen such a drastic increase in such a short time. Adding to the danger, three icebergs

were discovered outside the boundaries of the area the Coast Guard had advised mariners to avoid, she said.

McGrath is predicting a fourth consecutive “extreme ice season” with more than 600 icebergs in the shipping lanes.

(Source: AP)

Newborns babies can be at risk of con-genital blindness, presenting sight de-fects due to lesions or to genetic muta-tions in their genome. Among the latter, Leber Congenital Amaurosis -- or LCA -- is one of the most widespread causes of child blindness and accounts for near-ly 5% of vision impairments overall. The syndrome can be genetically transmitted to a child when both parents possess at least one dysfunctional copy of a gene in-volved in eye development. However, the molecular mechanism behind the disease remains unclear.

Now OIST researchers in the Develop-mental Neurobiology Unit have exposed a similar syndrome in zebrafish, which are an excellent model for studying human diseases. From this research published in Scientific Reports (provide link to online paper when possible), scientists aim to unravel the causes behind the disease in zebrafish and therefore provide new leads for a treatment for human LCA.

LCA affect the retina, the thin layer of tissue at the back of the eye that detects light as well as differentiates colors and communicates the information to the brain via the optic nerve. A healthy ret-ina usually features light-sensitive cells -- photoreceptors -- called cones and rods.

Cones are specialized in bright envi-

ronment and detect colors while rods are used in dim light but are monochrome, which is why we see in black and white at night. A person with LCA will display deformed or absent cones and rods, thus preventing the detection of light. A total

of 24 genes including a gene called Aipl1 -- standing for aryl hydrocarbon recep-tor interacting protein like 1 -- have been linked to LCA in humans and mice.

DNA mutation

The illness occurs when a DNA muta-

tion within one of the genes affects the normal ocular development or induces photoreceptor - the cones and rods - de-generation.

The researchers studied a genetically mutated zebrafish embryo that did not react to visual stimuli. They discovered that zebrafish DNA contains two Aipl1 genes, namely Aipl1a and Aipl1b, which are respectively active in rods and cones.

The mutant -- called gold rush (gosh) -- presents a genetic mutation in the Aipl1b DNA sequence, losing Aipl1 activ-ity in cone photoreceptors. Consequent-ly, the cone photoreceptors showed a deformed morphology and sustained degeneration. Rods however were not affected, suggesting the degeneration is cone-specific.

Probing further, the authors of the study also revealed that Aipl1 is critical for the sta-bility of two enzymes -- the cGMP-phos-phodiesterase 6 and the guanylate cyclase -- which mediate phototransduction, the process of converting light into an electrical signal. Without these enzymes, the zebraf-ish is unable to react to light stimulus as the information is stopped in photoreceptors and fails to initiate the transmission of visual information into the brain through the op-tic nerve.

(Source: EurekAlert)

Climate change could make future flights a lot rougherAirplane rides could get extra bumpy in the future thanks to climate change. Turbulence could become two to three times more common because of it, according to a new study from the University of Reading.

The study, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, is the first to investigate turbulence strength levels and how they’ll change in the future. Researchers found the average amount of light turbulence in the atmosphere will increase by 59 percent.

The reason? Scientists believe higher carbon dioxide levels will create stronger vertical wind shears at aircraft cruising altitudes, which will make the shear instabilities that create clear-air turbulence more prevalent. CO2 levels are expected to double later this century.

“For most passengers, light turbulence is nothing more than an annoying inconvenience that reduces their comfort levels, but for nervous fliers even light turbulence can be dis-tressing,” said the study’s author, Dr. Paul Williams, in a press release. “However, even the most seasoned frequent fliers may be alarmed at the prospect of a 149 percent increase in severe turbulence, which frequently hospitalizes air travelers and flight attendants around the world.”

Dr. Williams added that his top priority now is to investi-gate alternate flight routes. “We also need to investigate the altitude and seasonal dependence of the changes, and to analyze different climate models and warming scenarios to quantify the uncertainties,” he said. But, Williams isn’t the only one tackling this problem. IBM, which bought The Weather Company for $2 billion, recently teamed up with Gogo Inc. to give pilots a heads up when turbulence happens, so they can adjust their flight paths accordingly.

(Source: Engadget)

New study finds exposure to heat causes blood clots, heart attacksFirefighters put themselves at greater risk of having fatal heart attacks because prolonged exposure to heat can make their blood clot, a pioneering new study has found.

Physical analysis of 19 firefighters in Scotland also found that tackling blazes put a strain on their hearts and worsened the functioning of their blood vessels.

Previous work has shown that firefighters have the highest risk of heart attack of all the emergency services.

In the U.S., around 45% of on-duty deaths each year among firefighters are due heart issues, and researchers at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and Edinburgh University believe the situation in the UK is comparable, although they did not know the cause.

They attended on two occasions, at least one week apart, and either performed a mock rescue from a two-story build-ing for 20 minutes or undertook light duties, in the case of the control group, for 20 minutes.

The firefighters wore heart monitors that continuously as-sessed their heart rate and its electrical activity.

Blood samples were also taken before and after, includ-ing measurement of a protein called troponin that is released from the heart muscle when it is damaged.

Those taking part in the rescue had core body temperatures that rose by 1C and stayed that way for three or four hours.

There was also some weight loss among this group, while their blood vessels also failed to relax in response to medi-cation.

Their blood became “stickier” and was more than 66% more likely to form potentially harmful clots than the blood of people in the control group.

(Source: The Telegraph)

UMass joins global effort to explore black hole at center of Milky WayUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst astronomers this week are joining researchers around the world as they train their telescopes at the center of the Milky Way for what could be one of history’s most revealing looks at a black hole.

The university is using the Large Millimeter Telescope in Mexico in collaboration with seven telescopes in Hawaii, Ari-zona, Chile, Spain, and at the South Pole to create the effect of an Earth-sized device powerful enough to see the center of our galaxy, which is 26,000 light-years away.

The goal is to examine the thin edge, or event horizon, of the black hole, which has a mass 4 million times that of the sun. Such an extreme environment could provide an oppor-tunity to gather data to evaluate theoretical concepts, includ-ing Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

“These are the observations that will help us to sort through all the wild theories about black holes.

UMass Amherst astronomy research professor Gopal Narayanan said in a statement.

“With data from this project, we will understand things about black holes that we have never understood before.”

UMass, which operates the the Large Millimeter Telescope with Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, said the tech-nique in the study has been used before, but this is the first time it has been carried out on such a large scale. The ob-servations began Wednesday and will conclude by April 15.

(Source: Boston Globe)

S C I E N C EAPRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 2017 11I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

This is the smallest exoplanet known to have an atmosphere

A genetic oddity may give octopuses and squids their smarts

Unusually large swarm of icebergs drifts into shipping lanes

As a powerful financial institution, insurance industry plays a leading role in materialization of objectives of resistance economy, Public Relations Dept. of the com-pany announced the above statement.

Dr. Kardgar Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive of Asia Insurance Company pointed to the naming the current year 1396 after “Resistance Economy, Production and Job Creation” by the supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution and said: “As a strong and powerful financial body, insurance industry plays an important role in the field of realizing objectives of resistance economy, production and generation of employment.”

With the appraisal of risk of economic activities, in-surance industry of the country can take giant stride in financing these activities in subsequent stages, he said,

adding: “Generally speaking, this industry can demon-strate objectives of national production.”

Elsewhere in his remarks, he pointed to the positive performance of Asia Insurance Company in the past Iranian calendar 1395 (ended March 20, 2017) and said: “It is hoped that the company will continue its success trend in the current Iranian calendar year in coopera-tion with the unflinching efforts of all staff and person-nel of this economic enterprise.”

It should be noted that a grand visiting and get-to-gether ceremony on the occasion of Iranian New Year (1396) was held at Amphitheater of Asia Insurance Company on April 4 in the presence of chief executive, members of the Board of Directors, deputies, senior managers and staff of the Company.

Insurance Industry Plays a Leading Role in Materializing Objectives of “Resistance Economy”

Fish eyes to help understand human inherited blindness

The researchers studied a genetically

mutated zebrafish embryo that did not react

to visual stimuli.

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

I N F O C U S APRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 201712

Abotaleb NadriTehran Times photographer

PHOTO

Zaribar Lake ,a wetland situated in Marivan ,western province of Kordestan ,stands on the verge of dryness for some time now which is a growing threat to the ecosystem.

The lake has a length of 5 kilometers and a maximum width of 1.6 kilometers .The lake‹s water is fresh and has a maximum depth of 5.5 meters varying depending on the season.

The fresh water has made the lake a great habitat for various species of fish such as Caspian white fish, common carp ,and barred sicklefish .Little grebe, black-headed gull ,grey heron ,gull ,and pelicans are of the lake‘s native bird species .The lake also play host to the birds wintering at the area such as coot, mallard ,and common merganser.

Beaver ,Indian wolf ,rabbit ,Wild boar ,and red fox also inhabit in the area.

The lake is also a great tourist hub not only in the district of Kordestan but the whole country ,however dumping domestic sewage water into the lake, digging wells illegally and climate change have had an adverse effect on the lake and its surroundings.

Illegal construction sprawling around the lake has had a direct effect on the lake dryness. Water depletion and using the water for irrigation purposes have resulted in a sharp decrease in the depth of the lake so that the bottom of the lake have emerged from the water.

Some people earn a living by fishing in the lake which is now unfulfilling due to the lake’s current condition.

Digging numerous wells and depleting groundwater resources are threatening the lake’s future.

Pouring the domestic sewage in the lake is also presenting a great hazard to the species inhabiting the lake.

Kaveh Kordestani, an environmentalist, is talking to a group of locals warning them of the environmental predicaments posed against the lake.

Contrary to how they are causing problems for the lake the locals are very protective of the storks and even during winter they take care of the vacant nests and prepare them for the storks’ comeback.

The lake is a habitat for various species whose lives are endangered by the lake’s current looming status.

Despite the fact that the lake used to be a source of providing fish for the locals, currently they have to buy fish from fish farms in Amol and Babol, northern province of Mazandaran.

Zaribar Lake on verge of

disappearance

WORLD IN FOCUS 13I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

APRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 2017

Germany investigating 20 Turks on suspicion of spyingGerman authorities are investigating 20 Turkish citizens on suspicion of conducting espionage in Germany, a newspaper reported.

Die Welt said it received the information in an official gov-ernment response to a question about the issue filed by Se-vim Dagdelen, a German lawmaker with the hard left party Die Linke.

Tensions are running high between the two NATO allies ahead of a referendum in Turkey next month that proposes expanding the powers of President Tayyip Erdogan. Berlin in-furiated Ankara after cancelling several campaign rallies by Turkish ministers in Germany, drawing accusations from Tur-key of “Nazi” tactics.

Germany’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office (GBA) said last month it had launched a probe into suspected spying by Turkey.

German media said at the time that the entity being in-vestigated was the Turkish Intelligence Agency (MIT) and that it was suspected of spying on supporters of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. Ankara accuses Gulen of organizing a failed coup last July, a charge he denies.

“At the moment we are investigating a total of 20 suspects on suspicion of conducting secret service agent activities on behalf of the Turkish government,” the German government wrote in its answer to the German lawmaker, Die Welt said.

German police in February raided the apartments of four imams suspected of spying on followers of Gulen on behalf of the Turkish government.

(Source: AP)

Strike on Syria divides U.S. lawmakers in both parties 1 comprehensive strategy in coordination with our al-lies and partners to end the conflict in Syria” and “bolster support for the vetted Syrian opposition and establish safe zones” in order to defeat ISIL (ISIS).

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida), who often aligns with McCain and Graham on foreign policy, told CNN, “I don’t be-lieve this is a message. I believe this is actually a tactical action that furthers an objective, which is important.”

(Source: RT)

Farage warns UK against joining another U.S. military interventionBritish politician Nigel Farage, who Donald Trump has once said would be great as the UK’s ambassador to Washington, has criticized the U.S. president for ordering a military strike against government targets in Syria, and called on London not to follow Americans into another military intervention in the Middle East.

In an interview on Friday, Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Brexit campaigner, said he was very surprised by the attack. “I am very surprised by this.”

“I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morn-ing and scratching their heads and saying ‘where will it all end?’” he said.

“As a firm Trump supporter, I say, yes, the pictures were horrible, but I’m surprised. Whatever Assad’s sins, he is secular,” added Farage, member of the European Parlia-ment.

The U.S. military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat airbase in Homs province in western Syrian ear-ly Friday.

The missiles were launched from the destroyers USS Por-ter and USS Ross in the eastern Mediterranean. The strike killed nine civilians, including four children on Friday, accord-ing to Syria’s state news agency SANA.

Farage warned Prime Minister Theresa May against fol-lowing Washington into another war in the Middle East.

“Previous interventions in the Middle East have made things worse rather than better,” the anti-interventionist pol-itician stated.

In a statement issued earlier in the day, the British govern-ment said it “fully supports” the U.S. missile strike against a Syrian army airbase.

The show of support was a departure from a warning the day before by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson after Trump raised the specter of unilateral action.

Johnson warned against rushing into a war with the Syrian government, and said the top priority should be peace talks and passing a United Nations resolution to investigate the April 4 chemical attack.

“It is very important to try first to get out a UN resolution,” the foreign secretary insisted.

(Source: Press TV)

Syria blasts U.S. ‘aggression’, terrorists and Israel hail it

Syria has condemned a U.S. missile attack targeting an army airbase near Homs as a “blatant act of aggression,” while Israel hailed it and a foreign-backed terrorist coalition called for further attacks.

Some 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles were fired from U.S. warships deployed to the Mediterranean at the Shayrat airfield southeast of Homs early Friday.

In a statement issued Friday morning, the Syrian army said the U.S. attack on the airbase killed six Syrian soldiers, lead-ing to “big material loss” at the targeted facility.

The official SANA news agency quoted sources as saying the the U.S. raid also left nine civilians, including four children, dead and seven others injured.

Homs Governor Talal Barazi said U.S. missile strikes serve the goals of “armed terrorist groups” and Daesh, reit-erating that the “aggression” will not pre-vent the Syrian government from “fight-ing terrorism.”

“This attack will not prevent us from continuing fighting terrorism. We are not surprised to see America and Israel sup-porting this terrorism,” Barazi said in a phone interview with state television.

Bolivia requested a closed-door UN Security Council to be held on Friday. Russia also said it would call the 15-na-tion body into session.

The foreign-backed National Coali-tion, an alliance of terrorist groups, said it “welcomes the strike” and urged Wash-ington to neutralize Syria’s ability to carry out air raids.

“We hope for more strikes... and that these are just the beginning,” coalition spokesman Ahmad Ramadan was quot-ed by the French news agency AFP as saying.

The Saudi kingdom also joined the militants to laud U.S. strikes against Syr-ia, calling it a “courageous decision” by

Trump.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Ne-

tanyahu’s office celebrated the attack with an early morning statement, saying he supported “strong message” sent by U.S. strikes.

Tel Aviv, which is widely viewed as a supporter of terror groups in Syria, has time and again carried out airstrikes on the Syrian territory under various pre-texts. Israel and France also said they had been informed by the U.S. ahead of the military strike.

Ankara urges no-fly zone over

Syria

Meanwhile, Turkey welcomed the U.S. air strike on a Syrian airbase early Friday as a “positive” move.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Friday it was necessary to enforce a no-fly zone and create “safe zones” in Syria without delay.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airfield from which a chemical weapons attack was allegedly launched this week.

Syria has categorically denied carrying out a chemical attack. Russia has said the deaths in Idlib were caused when a Syri-an airstrike struck a “terrorist warehouse” used for making bombs with toxic sub-stances.

The strategic base targeted in the U.S. attack is a frontline in Syria’s operations against terrorists. It was used to respond to an Israeli aerial attack in March which prompted Tel Aviv to threaten to destroy Syria’s air defense systems.

The Pentagon said the Russians de-ployed to the targeted military facility were given prior notice, and that the missiles did not hit sections of the airbase where Moscow’s forces were reportedly present.

(Source: SANA)

France’s foreign minister said on Friday he was confident that the United States would not seek cuts to the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali, but said Paris was ready to study its efficiency as Washington reviews its overall UN strategy.

Former colonial power France intervened in 2013 to drive out al Qaeda-linked militants who seized northern Mali the year before. It has since deployed some 4,000 soldiers, known as the Barkhane force, across the region to hunt down extremists.

That operation has paved way for the UN to deploy its more than 10,000-strong MINUSMA peacekeeping force to the West African state at a cost of about $1 billion a year.

A surge in violence from militants, difficulties in im-plementing a peace deal between the government and northern rebels and the mission’s lack of equipment and manpower have raised eyebrows at a time when Wash-ington wants to review its funding to the UN.

“It doesn’t mean that just because you are looking to make savings that you abandon these peacekeep-ing missions,” Jean-Marc Ayrault told Reuters ahead of

visiting French troops in the central Malian city of Gao.The United States is the largest contributor to the

United Nations, paying 22 percent of the $5.4 billion core UN budget and 28 percent of the $7.9 billion UN peacekeeping budget. These are assessed contributions - agreed by the UN General Assembly - and not volun-tary payments.

“As far as Mali is concerned ... it’s clear that it’s an in-dispensable mission,” Ayrault said. “Everyone recognizes that France took the lead on this and that the peace-keeping operation would not have happened without us, so I’m not pessimistic.”

He said Paris would look objectively on how to im-prove things ahead of the mission renewal on June 30, but that as a whole Washington should think twice be-fore dropping missions in high-risk areas.

Speaking at a UN Security Council on Thursday, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley criticised the mission saying progress in stabilizing the country was stalled, equip-ment did not meet the standards, and that countries were too slow in committing troops.

“This is a dangerous situation. But if we act urgently,

there is hope. We can – and we must – do better,” she said, adding that Washington would be “taking a careful look at the force’s mandated tasks and the distribution of its forces.”

Ayrault, whose trip to Mali comes after a French sol-dier was killed in clashes in the south of the country on Wednesday, will be accompanied by his German coun-terpart Sigmar Gabriel.

Earlier this year, Germany decided to increase its troop numbers in Mali to about 1,000 as part of MINUS-MA and add eight attack helicopters.

The two ministers, who want to show that European Union member states are sharing the burden in over-seas operations, are also expected to be in Bamako to pressure President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta to do more to implement a stuttering peace deal brokered in Al-geria.

“It is difficult. The Algiers accords must be imple-mented and we are encouraging the Malian author-ities to do everything they can. It’s all very fragile,” Ayrault said.

(Source: Reuters)

Venezuelan opposition protesters and security officers clashed as the country’s fragmented opposition gained new im-petus against a socialist government it blames for the country’s social and eco-nomic collapse.

The demonstrations were sparked by Supreme Court action last week to assume control of the country’s opposi-tion-led congress in what demonstrators said was a lurch toward dictatorship.

While the widely condemned decision was quickly overturned, the opposition has stepped up street protests against President Nicolas Maduro, despite such demonstra-tions having achieved little in the past.

Thousands of people blocked a main Caracas highway on Thursday, chanting “Out with Maduro!” and “No more dicta-torship!” and vowed to march to the office of the state ombudsman, the government’s principal human rights advocate.

“The human rights advocate has to stop being the Socialist Party advocate!” opposition leader Henrique Capriles said in an online broadcast as he marched wearing a hat in the Venezuelan colors of yellow, red, and blue.

Security forces blocked the march, sparking clashes with dozens of masked youths in a scene repeated over and over again in the past 15 years in volatile Ven-ezuela.

Protesters threw stones and petrol bombs while security officials fired tear gas and dispersed the crowds by mid-af-ternoon. The opposition called for anoth-er nationwide march on Saturday.

Maduro critics are demanding the re-moval of seven Supreme Court justices who signed last week’s decision. They ac-cuse the government of stalling elections for state governors, which polls suggest would not go well for the ruling Socialists.

State ombudsman Tarek Saab on Thursday evening shot down a censure measure against the Supreme Court jus-tices that had been approved by the op-position-controlled assembly this week, saying the controversial ruling had been “clarified” by the reversal of the decision.

Maduro said in a televised address that authorities had detained 30 people involved in the demonstration.

Tensions flare

Three opposition legislators late on Thursday said via Twitter that a young man was killed in a suburb of Caracas by security forces who were breaking up a protest there.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm the incident, and interior ministry officials were not immediately available for comment.

Venezuela is suffering from triple-dig-it inflation, shortages of basic foods and

medicines, and one of the world’s highest murder rates.

Maduro’s government has said that a U.S.-backed business elite is responsible for Venezuela’s economic downturn and that it is trying to foment a coup to im-pose right-wing rule. His supporters also rallied in Caracas on Thursday.

“Mr. Capriles, you’re trying to ignite the country,” Socialist Party official Freddy Bernal said during the government ral-

ly. “You’re looking for deaths. Don’t then come like a sissy saying that you’re a po-litical prisoner. Don’t then come crying that you’re being persecuted.”

Tensions have been simmering after tear gas and rocks flew between protest-ers and security forces during a major demonstration on Tuesday. The confron-tations injured 20 people and led to 18 arrests, according to the Caracas-based Penal Forum rights group.

Not since 2014’s major unrest has the opposition held such sustained demon-strations, despite protester fatigue, fear of violence, and the necessity for so many Venezuelans to spend much of their day looking for food.

The opposition has said it faces in-creasing persecution. The leader of one of its parties, Copei, sought refuge in the home of the Chilean ambassador in Ca-racas on Wednesday, according to Chile’s foreign ministry.

Opposition protesters have said their demonstrations are being stymied by authorities closing subway stations and adding checkpoints on major highways.

“They can do whatever they want, but the people of Venezuela will today make their voices heard on the streets,” tweet-ed opposition lawmaker Juan Requesens, who has led protests this week.

(Source: Reuters)

1 Russia insists that an air strike by the Syrian gov-ernment struck an insurgent chemical warehouse and re-leased toxic vapors into the atmosphere. The U.S. along with other western powers are accusing the Syrian govern-ment of using poisonous gas in a manner identical to the accusations generated by the chemical incident in Ghou-ta near Damascus in August 2013, which appears to have been orchestrated by Saudi Arabian controlled rebels.

Evidence that the latest chemical attack was orches-trated by opponents of the Assad government includes a message in Arabic posted on social media on April 3—a day before the attack—by an anti-Assad reporter, who spoke of covering attacks in the Hama countryside, including the use of chemical weapons. Earlier on April

1, observers on the ground noted that Dr. Shajul Islam of Khan Sheikhun had received several shipments of gas masks. Dr. Islam, as reported by the Daily Mail, appears to have ties to Daesh, which has expanded its chemical warfare capabilities by capturing some 2,500 sarin-filled rockets from an Iraqi facility in 2014.

Overall congressional reaction to Trump’s impulsive assault on the sovereign Syrian state has been posi-tive on both sides of the aisle. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement, “Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despica-ble atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do.” Likewise, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who opposed missile strikes under the Obama administration in 2013,

concurred, “Tonight’s strike against the Assad regime’s Shayrat Air Base will hopefully diminish his capacity to commit atrocities against innocent civilians.”

Clearly, Trump has resurrected regime change in Syr-ia but what will come next? This unknown will largely be determined by Russia’s reaction. If the volatile U.S. leader can assure Russian President Vladimir Putin that the missile strikes will be strictly confined to President Assad’s forces and avoid any Russian personnel, then perhaps this high-ly inflammable, high risk game can continue briefly. But how long will it be before another Russian warplane is shot down or the trigger-happy Trump strikes Russian troops, elevating and intensifying the conflict into a showdown be-tween the U.S. and Russia?

France confident U.S. will not cut into Mali UN mission needs

Venezuelan opposition, security forces clash in anti-Maduro protests

Trump’s whiplash reversal on Syria

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 APRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 201714

Juventus defender Giorgio Chiellini has graduated in Business Administration at the University of Turin after writing a thesis about the club’s business model.

Chiellini, 32, graduated on Thursday and received the highest possible mark of 110 with distinction and a special mention.

“To the end,” the Italy international wrote on his Instagram profile, borrowing the Juventus slogan.

“This motto accompanies me every day on the field and

it has supported me over these years spent with my head in books.

“I’m proud of this degree; proud to have done it. Happy to have reached this objective.”

Chiellini -- who can now call himself Dr Giorgio Chiellini -- compared the Juventus model with those of other leading clubs.

“He examined Juventus’ business model with reference to promotion of their own brand and the management of human capital and the impact this had on their football and economic performance,” professor Pietro Biancone, who guided Chiellini through his degree, told Sky Sport Italia.

“The business model was then compared with those of other top European clubs such as Real Madrid, Athletic Bilbao and Porto.”

Marina Nuciari, the director of Turin’s school of management and economics, added: “Chiellini has proven himself to be an example of tenacity and dedication, not only in sport but also in culture and in his studies.”

(Source: Soccernet)

Antoine Griezmann’s advisor has told RMC that Premier League trio Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City as well as La Liga giants Barcelona and Real Madrid have made enquiries regarding the Atletico Madrid striker ’s future.

Sources told ESPN FC in February that Griezmann is a No. 1 target for United this summer, and speculation continues over the France international’s future.

Eric Olhats, who first spotted Griezmann’s talent and took him to Real Sociedad as a youngster, said no deal has been done with any club. However,

he added that the pair are considering what the next move in Griezmann’s career should be with the number of potential suitors limited for a player of his calibre.

“There are not 50,000 clubs that can put 100 million on the table, it’s quickly figured out. That’s the price of the clause, they won’t give anything away cheaply. That limits the number of candidates right now,” Olhats said.

“I had heard that Manchester United was done, was signed, but we don’t even know if they’ll play in the Champions League! That’s important, I must say. Manchester United have made an approach to inform themselves, just like all the others. They come to find out what our thinking is, what the player’s thinking is, if there are possibilities, how much, how...But it seems logical.

“Chelsea, Manchester City, Barcelona and even Real have knocked on the door to see where things are, everyone comes to see what is do-able, and what is not do-able, that’s normal. It’s a game of musical chairs.”

(Source: Soccernet)

Jemima Sumgong, who last year became the first Kenyan woman to win Olympic gold in the marathon, has tested positive for the banned blood-booster EPO in an out-of-competition test carried out by the IAAF, the sport›s governing body said on Thursday.

“The IAAF can confirm that an anti-doping rule violation case concerning Jemima Sumgong (Kenya) has commenced this week, the International Association of Athletics Federations said in a statement.

«The athlete tested positive for EPO (Erythropoietin) following a no-notice test conducted by the IAAF in Kenya.

«This was part of an enhanced IAAF out-of-competition testing program dedicated to elite marathon runners which is supported by the Abbott World Marathon Majors group.»

If Sumgong›s B sample is confirmed as positive and she is subsequently banned it will be a massive blow for African distance powerhouse Kenya, where her Rio victory was greeted with near-delirium after such a long and inexplicable barren spell over the classic distance at the Olympics.

Kenya took silver in the women›s marathon at the three previous Games and a bronze in 2000 having failed to medal before that after the race was introduced to the Games in 1984.

Sumgong, 32, had a stellar 2016, winning the London Marathon in April then claiming the elusive Olympic gold in Rio despite being disturbed by a protester on the course.

Sumgong›s former compatriot Eunice Jepkirui, who switched allegiance to Bahrain in 2013, took silver.

Eliud Kipchoge won the men›s race to complete a Kenyan double.

Thursday›s news comes in the wake of a four-year ban handed to Kenya›s multi-marathon champion Rita Jeptoo, Sumgong›s former training partner, after she tested positive for EPO in 2014.

Kenya›s middle and long distance success has been marred by doping cases involving elite athletes. Officials estimate the number of positive tests at about 50 in the past four years.

The latest cases will be seen by observers as evidence of how the IAAF is making

progress in the region after previous official criticism of anti-doping regimes in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Both countries have in the past been deemed non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency›s (WADA) code.

(Source: Reuters)

Griezmann targeted by United, City, Chelsea, Barca, Real

Giorgio Chiellini earns top marks with thesis on Juventus business model

Malaysia will stage its final Formula One Grand Prix in October after the government and the sport’s commercial rights holders announced on Friday that their hosting agreement would end a year early.

The Southeast Asian country has hosted a round of the world championships at the Sepang International Circuit (SIC) since 1999 but the government said last November that the deal would not be renewed when it expired at the end of 2018.

On Friday, however, both parties announced that the Oct. 1 race this year would be the last.

“It’s always sad to say goodbye to a member of the Formula 1 family,” Formula One commercial operations managing director Sean Bratches said in a statement.

“Over nearly two decades, the Malaysian Formula 1 fans have proven themselves to be some of the sport’s most passionate supporters.”

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Friday that declining ticket sales, viewership and tourism were behind the decision to pull out of hosting the race.

“The Cabinet has agreed to end the contract for hosting the Formula One race... after considering lowering returns to the country compared to the cost of hosting the championships,” he said in a statement.

State oil and gas firm Petronas [PETR.UL] is the title sponsor of the F1 race. The company has been hit hard in recent times by tumbling oil prices.

Petronas, however, would continue to sponsor the Mercedes Formula One team as part of its marketing strategy, Najib said.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said he hoped the last race at the circuit would provide a fitting finale.

“It’s been a very successful race over 18 years but they have decided to call it a day and we have to respect

that decision,” Wolff told reporters in Shanghai, where Mercedes are preparing for this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.

“I hope we can mark 2017 with a special result in Sepang -- it will be the last grand prix on a really challenging circuit and it would mean a lot to win there for all our fans in Malaysia.

“Although we will miss the event from the calendar, our long and successful partnership with Petronas means Malaysia will continue to have a world-class presence in F1 in the years ahead.”

Government funds allocated for the race will be redirected towards other types of motor racing, upgrading the circuit, and training future Malaysian Formula One drivers, the Prime Minister added.

Formula One faces an uncertain future in Southeast Asia as the other race in the region, the Singapore Grand Prix, has yet to agree terms on an extension to its contract that expires this year. The first Singapore race was held in 2008.

The Sepang Circuit will continue to host a round of the motorcycling world championships until 2021 under the terms of a deal signed with MotoGP rights holders Dorna Sports last year.

(Source: Reuters)

Malaysia to host final F1 race this year

Exclusive: Rio Olympic marathon Exclusive: Rio Olympic marathon champion Sumgong fails drugs test - IAAFchampion Sumgong fails drugs test - IAAF

Dani Alves: The change in mindset was vitalBrazil are currently enjoying their best spell of form in many a year. Fresh from booking their place at the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018™, they have just reinstalled themselves at the top of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking.

We spoke to Dani Alves, one of their most experienced players. Now 33, the Juventus full-back is playing a key role on A Canarinha’s right flank.

FIFA.com: What’s your take on the tremendous run of form Brazil have had since Tite took over as coach?

Dani Alves: Obviously we’re delighted, but we know that things weren’t so disastrous before and they’re not so wonderful now. We’re the same players, and though the philosophy has

changed, we worked just as hard before. The thing is, sometimes when results aren’t going your way, a change in mindset can be the catalyst you need. And that’s what happened with us.

What was the change exactly?

I think the difference is that we’ve got a clearer idea of what to do now, and that’s allowed us to go from the bottom to the top. But we need to be patient. We know that only time will tell if this

improvement is going to last and if we can strive for even more. We achieved our objective of reaching the World Cup, but we need to keep it going and not settle for what we’ve got. We need to maintain our balance and have a settled squad – that way we’ll be able to keep on getting good results.

In the last few years we’ve seen Brazil peak the year before world finals, winning the 2009 and 2013 FIFA Confederations Cups, and then fall short at the World Cup. How can you prevent that from happening again?

It’s true that we created too much in the way of expectation and that we didn’t live up to it with our results. We won’t be playing in the Confederations Cup this time, but we have learned from the experience. The challenge facing us now is to do well in the rest of our qualifying matches and prepare well so that we can peak at the World Cup.

You were struggling in the qualifiers for Russia 2018 a few months ago and now you’re on top of the table, while Argentina made a good start and are now struggling themselves. What do you put that down to?

It’s because the South American qualifiers are tough, the hardest in the world if you ask me, the ones where you have to adapt the most. You have to go to Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and the like. They’re tough games to play, and the atmosphere can be hostile. You have a lot of problems to overcome. It wasn’t easy before and it’s not easy now, but the important thing is to be prepared and not come up with excuses. The qualifiers are a test of how mature you are.

But do you think Lionel Messi and Co will make it to Russia?

Argentina will recover and they’ll make it to the World Cup. They’re one of the traditional powerhouses of the game, and history counts for a lot. And they’ve got great players too, of course. It’s hard to picture a World Cup without the best, and Argentina have got Messi, Mascherano and many more. They’ll be there.

Part two of this interview with Dani Alves, in which he talks about the upcoming UEFA Champions League quarter-final between his current employers, Juventus, and his former club, Barcelona, will be published on Monday.

(Source: FIFA)

Former Man United star Andrew Cole undergoes kidney transplantEx-Manchester United striker Andrew Cole has undergone a kidney transplant, the club have announced.

Cole, 45, is now an ambassador at United and the club said he had “undergone a kidney transplant operation at Manchester Royal Infirmary.”

The transplant has been carried out as part of Cole’s treatment for a condition called Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis.

A United statement said: “During his recuperation, Andrew will be taking a break from his role as Manchester United ambassador.

“Andrew and his family would like to thank the club and fans for their support.

“They also request that he can continue with his treatment in private, and ask

that their privacy is respected.”Cole suffered kidney failure in June 2014 as a result of

contracting an airborne virus.One of the side effects of Cole’s condition, which causes

scarring of the kidney and impacts on levels of protein in the body, is weight gain.

Speaking to BBC Sport in February 2016, he said: “Seeing the change in my body, that has been tough -- it wreaks havoc with you.

“I have to take it day by day. It has been tough going through this process.”

Cole won 15 caps for England and made 275 appearances for United, for whom he scored 121 goals and won five league titles as well as the 1999 Champions League.

He also played for Arsenal, Bristol City, Blackburn, Fulham, Manchester City, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Sunderland, Burnley and Nottingham Forest and retired in November 2008.

(Source: Sky Sports)

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S P O R TAPRIL 8, 2017APRIL 8, 2017 15I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Real Madrid vs. Atletico Madrid: PreviewThe giants of the Spanish capital clash in La Liga on Saturday, as Real Madrid host Atletico Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium.

Los Blancos are seated at the summit, but Barcelona are just two points behind their Clasico rival.

Atletico have made progress in recent weeks, climbing to third after Sevilla’s shocking loss of form.

The Vicente Calderon club has little chance of puncturing the top two places in the division, but pride will be at stake as they battle the Galacticos.

There is always bad blood when the regal team of Madrid meets Atletico in derby action.

Real are in cruise control at the top of the division, and Atleti would be more than happy to do Barca a favor at the Bernabeu.

Colchoneros boss Diego Simeone has been disappointed with his club’s fans in recent weeks and went as far as comparing them to Madridistas.

Simeone accused his team’s fans of being “asleep” and “like Real Madrid’s fans” during the recent 1-0 win over Real Sociedad in La Liga, according to Alberto R. Barbero for Marca. Television images reportedly captured Simeone addressing his supporters as follows: “Come on, guys. Are you asleep? What’s wrong? There’s not long left, so cheer the team or else you’ll be like Real Madrid’s fans. Get rid of the sandwich and shout, because it’s almost finished.

The comments will not have gone down well with certain sections of the Atletico fanbase.

Real were comfortable winners when they met their neighbours at the Calderon in November, triumphing 3-0, but Atleti have stabilised since Christmas.

Cristiano Ronaldo slammed in a hat-trick that day, and Atletico will need to produce their best defensive efforts to stop the Portugal captain on Saturday.

Ronaldo was rested, along with Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema, for the match against Leganes on Wednesday, preparing them for a huge effort in the derby.

The iconic 32-year-old remains as dangerous as ever, having scored 19 goals in 23 league appearances this term, according to WhoScored.com.

It is always impossible to predict a winner in a derby match, but form is on the side of Real as they march to the title.

This will be one of the hosts’ most difficult challenges of their remaining league programme, and any slip will blow the doors wide open for Barca to take control of their destiny.

(Source: Bleacher Report)

Sadio Mane ruled out for rest of season Sadio Mane will miss the rest of the season and is likely to need surgery on his injured knee, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has said.

Klopp also revealed that Philippe Coutinho is a doubt for Saturday’s trip to Stoke City because of the illness that led to his substitution against Bournemouth on Wednesday.

The manager said Mane would be sidelined by the injury he suffered in the 3-1 victory over Everton at Anfield.

The absence of the Senegal international forward for the remaining seven games of the Premier League season is a blow for Liverpool as they pursue Champions League qualification.

“Sadio will, we’re pretty sure, need surgery. We’re not 100 percent sure when it will happen, but it is clear his season is over,” Klopp told a news conference.

“That’s what I expected, actually, when I saw the video af-ter the game. I thought he was lucky in this situation that not more happened, but it will be pretty much impossible that he will play again this season.

“But then he’ll have a long break and be ready for next season, so that’s the only good news.”

Mane has been one of Liverpool’s best players this season, scoring 13 goals in 29 appearances after joining in a £30 million summer move from Southampton.

Meanwhile, Coutinho has yet to fully recover from an illness that forced him off early in the 2-2 draw with Bournemouth.

The Brazil international was substituted midway through the second half at Anfield after vomiting at half-time and has not yet returned to training.

“Phil is still ill and was not at Melwood yesterday and he will not be here today,” Klopp said.

“He had a conversation with the doc and he feels much better, but it doesn’t look too good. We will have to see if we [can] bring him in tomorrow.

“We will give him all the time he needs, but it will be really close.”

Liverpool will be without the injured Jordan Henderson and Adam Lallana for the trip to Stoke.

The home team are 12th in the Premier League after a disappointing recent run and Klopp said: “They have maybe not had the best results in the last few games, but they’re good and always a difficult team to play.

“Stoke is not an easy place to go, and everybody knows about this. The style of play should be pretty clear, and it’s a good football-playing side.

“It’s a difficult place to go, but it’s the only place we want to be at tomorrow.”

(Source: Soccernet)

Tractor Sazi football team suffered a 3-0 heavy defeat against Saba in Iran

Professional League (IPL) on Friday.In the match held in Qom’s Yadegar-e Emam

Stadium, Omid Jahanbakhsh opened the scoring in the hour mark with a long-range shot.

The visiting team reduced to 10-man after Saeid Aghaei was shown his second yellow card.

Jahanbakhsh was on target once again five minutes after the regular time after he found the back of the net with a classic chip over Tractor Sazi goalkeeper

Mohammadreza Akhbari. The referee sent off Tractor Sazi midfielder Karrar

Jassim for protesting a correct penalty decision in the 97th minute.

Meysam Majidi made it 3-0 from the spot just before the final whistle.

With four weeks remaining, Tractor Sazi remain third in the table, 12 points adrift of IPL leader Persepolis.

Elsewhere, Saipa edged past Naft Tehran and struggling Machine Sazi lost 2-0 to Padideh.

Tractor Sazi beaten by Saba in Iran Professional League

Mohammad Jafar Moradi, who represented Iran at the 2016 Olympic

Games, won the Tehran’s first-ever marathon on Friday.The course took male runners from the Azadi

Sports Complex through the Azadi square in western Tehran. Women ran separately, inside the Azadi sports complex, where Parisa Arab finished in first place in 10 kilometers race.

Ali Akbar Barzi crossed the finish line in 21 kilometers race and Hossein Keyhani won the 10 kilometers race.

According to Majid Keyhani, the head of Iran’s track and field federation, at least 160 foreign runners, including 50 women, had signed up, in addition to 600 Iranian runners, including 156 women.

Only amateurs took part in the inaugural event, but the organizers say they hope to attract professional runners in the coming years.

Iran organized a similar race in the southern city of Shiraz last year to convince the officials that a marathon can be done in the country.

Tehran Marathon: Iran’s Moradi crosses finish line first

Head coach of Iran’s Persepolis football team has been shortlisted

to take charge of Algeria football team, regionalni.com reported.

Algeria is without a coach since Georges Leekens resigned following the team’s early exit from the Africa Cup of Nations in late January.

Ivankovic has said it’s an honor for him to link with the job.

The 63-year-old coach was appointed as Persepolis coach in April 2015 and he is on the verge of winning Iran Professional League (IPL) title in the current season after becoming runner-up in the last season only due to their inferior goal difference.

Iran national football team coach Carlos Queiroz had already linked with a move to Algeria but the Portuguese coach will stay at Team Melli to steer the team to the 2018 World Cup.

Persepolis coach Ivankovic linked with Algeria coaching job: report

A pair of strong \results in last month’s World Cup qualifiers helped Iran

national football team climb five places in the latest FIFA World released on Thursday.

The recent wins over Qatar and China in booking their place at Russia 2018 sent Team Melli to 28th place.

Iran followed by South Korea (N0. 43), Japan (No. 44), Australia (No. 50) and Saudi Arabia (No. 52) in AFC.

Five-time world champions Brazil returned to what they will consider their rightful place at the top of the FIFA rankings for the first time in seven years.

With 129 games played across the month there was movement throughout the table, as just 19 of the 211 member associations stood steady in their March placings. With five of those 19 within the top ten, Switzerland (9, plus 2) were the only side to break into the top ten, with Uruguay heading in the opposite direction (15, minus 6).

The next FIFA World Ranking will be published on 4 May 2017.

Top ten rankings (previous month’s places in brackets)1. Brazil (2)2. Argentina (1)3. Germany (3)4. Chile (4)5. Colombia (7)6. France (6)7. Belgium (5)8. Portugal (8)9. Switzerland (11)10. Spain (10)

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Iran climb to 28th in latest FIFA rankings

The Iranian U-20 futsal team defeated France in their second friendly match Wednesday night.

The Iranian team defeated their host 5-2.

Mohammad Jame (two goals), Hamzeh Kadkhodaei, Omid Khani and Tohid Lotfi scored for Iran.

Iran had defeated France 6-2 in their

first friendly on Tuesday.Ali Sanei’s team prepares for the AFC

Futsal U-20 Championship 2017.Iran have been drawn in Group D

along with Kyrgyzstan, China, Mongolia and the UAE.

The competition will be held in Bangkok, Thailand from May 16 to 26.

(Source: Tasnim)

Iran U-20 Futsal Team defeat France in friendlies

Iranian basketball club Shahrdari Tabriz completed the signing of Nigerian basketball forward Ndudi Hamani Ebi.

The 2.06 m basketball player has joined Shahrdari for an undisclosed fee.

The 32-year-old player started his playing career at Minnesota Timberwolves and has also played at Basket Rimini Crabs, Carife Ferrara,

Virtus Bologna, Virtus Roma, Manama and Byblos Club.

Shahrdari Tabriz have previously signed a contract with USA basketball player Eric Jacobsen.

Shahrdari Tabriz will face Shahrdari Arak in Iran Professional League on Monday.

(Source: Tasnim)

Nigerian Ndudi Ebi joins Iran’s Shahrdari Tabriz Basketball Club

Iranian photographer snaps “Romeo and Juliet” in “Mr. Shakespeare’s Backyard”

In a first, German art exhibition documenta opens in Athens

Fajr festival announces lineup for Cup of Divination

“Your Name” draws modern love film from ancient poem

TEHRAN – The 35th Fajr International

Film Festival announced on Friday the lineup for Cup of Divination, a section dedicated to screening films acclaimed at various international events.

Sixteen films from Iraq, China, Germany, Italy, Egypt, France, Slovakia, Spain, Czech, Chile, Australia, the U.S., the U.K. and Argentina are scheduled to go on screen in this section of the festival, which will open on April 21.

“The Teacher”, a joint production of Slovakia and Czech Republic by Jan Hrebejk, “Mr. No Problem” by Feng Mei from China, “In the Last Days of the City” by Tamer El Said from Egypt, “Pyromaniac” by Erik Skjoldbjarg from Norway and “King of the Belgians” by Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth from Belgium are

among the films.The lineup also includes “Self-

Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog” by Julian Radlmaier, “Greetings from Fukushima” by Doris Dorrie and “Anisoara” by Ana Felicia Scutelnicu, all from Germany, “The Shepherd” by Jonathan Cenzual Burley from Spain, “The Confessions” by Roberto Ando from Italy, “150 Milligrams” by Emmanuelle Bercot from France and “Cold of Kalandar” by Mustafa Kara from Turkey.

“Wastelands” by Miriam Heard from Chile, “The Distinguished Citizen”, a joint production of Argentina and Spain by Gaston Duprat and Mariano Cohn, “Lion”, a joint production of Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. by Garth Davis, and “The Dark Wind” by Hussein Hassan from Iraq have been selected for the section as well.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — A thousand-year-old Japanese poem inspired filmmaker Makoto Shinkai to create “Your Name,” an animated story that weaves love and time travel into what he called a message of hope for Japanese millennials.

“Your Name” (Kimi No Na Wa) follows Mitsuha, a young girl fed up with living in an idyllic rural Japanese village, and Taki, a teenage boy in Tokyo. The two find themselves waking up randomly in each other’s bodies.

Shinkai, speaking in Japanese, told Reuters that he drew from poet Ono no Komachi’s words written centuries ago in which she described meeting a lover in a dream and waking up feeling sad.

In “Your Name,” Taki and Mitsuha live each other’s lives, leaving notes on their cell phones of their experiences, but when Taki tries to find Mitsuha, his fate takes a fantastical turn as time bends into alternate realities.

The film opened in U.S. theaters on Friday after topping the Japanese box office in 2016 with nearly $215 million, according to film tracker BoxOfficeMojo.com.

Shinkai, 44, the filmmaker behind 2013’s “The Garden of Words”, said he wanted to make a movie aimed at younger Japanese audiences in which “they can believe in their future.”

“I created this movie hoping that younger audiences would believe that ‘maybe there is the one in my life I

might have not met yet but hopefully will see tomorrow or in the future,’” he said.

The juxtaposition of Mitsuha’s rural, traditional lifestyle with Taki’s modern city life was something Shinkai said he drew from his own life, growing up in a small village and later moving to Tokyo, a city that he said “feels like almost a different country” within Japan.

“I think it is one of the common themes for many Japanese people to choose where to live, Tokyo or their hometown,” he said.

Shinkai has been hailed as the successor to animator Hayao Miyazaki, the Studio Ghibli co-founder behind films such as “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Spirited Away.” But Shinkai said that while he was “honored and flattered” by the comparison, “people are overestimating me.”

TEHRAN – Iranian p h o t o g r a p h e r

Roshan Noruzi’s collection featuring scenes of several rehearsals of “Romeo and Juliet” by his fellow director Hasti Hosseini is on display in an exhibition entitled “In Mr. Shakespeare’s Backyard” at the Tehran Independent Theater.

The collection contains 20 photos of the rehearsals held at the theater over the past few weeks, the theater announced on Friday.

Shakespeare’s masterpiece “Romeo and Juliet” is currently on stage at the theater located at 50 Razi St. near Daneshju Park.

Noruzi is founder of the Sheed Photography Awards, which are presented to documentary works on

social themes. He also is the chief editor of Iran Images, an online private photo agency.

TEHRAN — Persian miniature was

discussed during a session at Iran’s Cultural Center in Paris on Friday.

Former director of the Sorbonne University Press, François Moureau, and Iranian writer Mohammadreza Asadzadeh delivered speeches at the session.

Moureau drew a comparison between the miniature created in Iran and those produced in France, and reviewed the evolution of the art in the two countries.

He also praised “Suffer and Color”, Asadzadeh’s biography of Iranian miniaturist Hossein Behzad (1894–1968), which has recently been published in French and English.

Asadzadeh also talked about the high position of Behzad in miniature and the key role of his student Abbas Moayyeri in the promotion of the art in France.

Asadzadeh authored the book based on Behzad’s sketches kept at some museums in Iran, France and the United States.

Behzad was mostly famous for his innovations in Persian miniature painting. He created his works in large

sizes. He also used shading for subjects in his works for the first time in this

genre. He visited Europe and America several times and his paintings were

showcased in several exhibits on the continents.

ATHENS (Reuters) — Documenta, one of Europe’s most important modern art exhibitions, opens in Athens on Saturday, the first time in its history it is being held outside the German city of Kassel.

Documenta 14 - “Learning from Athens” - will run in the Greek capital until July 16, extending over more than 40 landmark locations including squares, cinemas, and libraries. It will also still run in Kassel this year - from June 10 to Sept. 17.

More than 160 artists are showcasing new works in documenta 14, touching upon issues such as migration, the financial crisis and censorship.

Adam Szymczyk, its artistic director, described the long process of organizing the event in Athens as both “excruciatingly difficult” and “amazingly beautiful”.

“And yet, the journey has only begun,” he said.

Organizers have said Greece’s role at the center of Europe’s financial and migration crises drove the decision to twin the fair between Athens and Kassel, though exhibits will not be limited to those themes.

One exhibit in the Athens National Museum of Contemporary Art features thousands of green and black olives and is titled “Payment of Greek Debt to Germany with Olives and Art.”

Greece’s long economic crisis has strained relations with Germany and many in the country blame Berlin, their biggest creditor, for the painful austerity and record unemployment associated with three

financial bailouts.Other exhibits include an open kitchen

in a central Athens square where visitors are encouraged to grab a bite to eat with strangers. And there are exhibits at landmarks such as the Ancient Agora, the Temple of Zeus and the First Cemetery of Athens.

Held every five years, documenta - first run in 1955 - is one of Europe’s top exhibitions, alongside the Venice Biennale, Art Basel and Monumenta in Paris. In 2012, it drew more than 900,000 visitors.

It takes pride in its avant-garde image - in 2007, China’s Ai Weiwei brought 1,001 of his compatriots to Kassel as “live exhibits”.

The fair was founded by Arnold Bode, a curator, artist and teacher, who was one of many German artists forbidden to work by the Nazis. A native of Kassel, he hoped to provoke Germans with forms of international modern art after the stifling Nazi era.

TORONTO (Reuters) — Anne Hathaway has ventured back into independent cinema to star in one of the quirkiest films of the year, “Colossal”, which she refuses to categorize.

“I think it’s all genres and none”, she said, in a viewpoint similar to how she sees her role in the movie.

“The thing I loved about Gloria was she’s just a mess, she’s human, she’s lost, and smart, and sweet, and compassionate and foolish, and just really, really alive and figuring it out”, Hathaway said.

In “Colossal”, Hathaway stars as Gloria, whose life is spiraling out of control after her drinking gets too

much for her boyfriend, played by Dan Stevens, and she finds herself having to return to her hometown from New York.

There, she reconnects with an old friend of hers, Oscar, played by Sudeikis. However, when a monster begins a rampage through Seoul, Gloria begins to believe that the monster ’s life is connected to hers.

The film is directed by Spanish writer, director and actor Nacho Vigalondo and has been a film festival favorite, showing at Toronto, Sundance and San Sebastian.

“Colossal” is on limited release in the United States from April 7.

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A R T & C U L T U R E

Iranian animations line up for Gandia festival in Spain

Tennessee Williams’ “Glass Menagerie” on stage in Tehran

Busan festival to screen “Not Yet” from Iran

TEHRAN — Eight animated movies by Iranian directors are scheduled to

compete in Cortoons Festival Gandia, an international festival of short animations, which will be held in the Spanish city from April 27 to 30.

“Nostalgia” by Fereidun Boruji, “OBC” by Amin Haqshenas, “Darza” by Iraj Mohammadi Rezini, and “From the Eastern Lands” by Sarah Tabibzadeh are among the films, the organizers have announced on the website of the event.

The lineup also includes “The Switchman” by Mehdi Khorramian, “The Servant” by Farnush Abedi, “Icky” by Parastu Cardgar and “Inversion” by Ario Saffarzadegan.

TEHRAN — Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” by Iranian director

Mikail Shahrestani is currently on stage at Tehran’s Theater House.

“The Glass Menagerie” is a play first produced in 1944. The play revolves around a young man who is begrudgingly supporting the family his father has abandoned.

It also features a painfully shy and slightly crippled sister character, whose preoccupation with a collection of glass animals draws her away from reality. Set against the backdrop of the Depression, the family struggles together with the past, the future, and one another.

The play will be on stage until May 1.

TEHRAN — Iranian director Aryan Vazir-Daftari’s “Not Yet” will compete in

the official section of the Busan International Short Film Festival (BISFF), which will be held in the South Korean city from April 25 to 30.

The film is about a middle-aged couple who try to celebrate their expatriate young daughter ’s birthday via Skype.

Painting Seyhun Gallery is showcasing paintings by Afshin

Baqeri in an exhibition entitled “Mashianeh”.

The exhibition will run until April 19 at the gallery located at No. 11, 4th St., Vozara Ave.

Paintings by Marjan Qadiri, Mahnaz Morad and Elham Hashemi are on display in an exhibition at Negar Gallery.

The exhibit named “At the Moment” runs until April 12 at the gallery located at 33 Delaram Alley, East Roshanai

St. in the Qeitarieh neighborhood. An exhibition of paintings by Mehdi Asasian, Saeid

Hatami, Iraj Delavari, Mahsa Karimi and several other artists is currently underway at Hepta Gallery.

The exhibit entitled “What Dreams May Come” will run until April 12 at the gallery that

can be found at No. 3, Nikushahr Dead End, Iranshahr St., Karim Khan Ave.

Cartoon An exhibition of cartoons

by Bahman Rezai Nameqi is underway at Vaali Gallery.

The exhibition will be running until April 18 at the gallery located at 71 Khoddami St. off Vanak Square.

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Cast member Anne Hathaway poses at the premiere of the movie ‘’Colossal’’ in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 4, 2017.

(Reuters/Mario Anzuoni)

Japanese anime director Makoto Shinkai poses for a photo in front of posters of his animated film “Your Name” after an interview with Reuters in Tokyo, Japan, November 16, 2016.

(Reuters/Toru Hanai)

Visitors view the art work ‘Artist book’ from Daniel Knorr during ‘Documenta 14’ art exhibition in Athens, Greece April 6, 2017.

(Reuters/Michalis Karagiannis)

Anne Hathaway back in “Colossal” independent comedy

Persian miniature discussed in Paris