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Volume 23 | Number 7639 | 2 RiyalsTuesday 4 September 2018 | 24 Dhul-Hijja I 1439 www.thepeninsula.qa

Roof installation of Al Bayt Stadium beginsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The construction of Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor City, a proposed semi-venue for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, has taken another step forward as work began on installing the venue’s retractable roof.

Once fully assembled, the roof will weigh around 1,600 tonnes – the equiv-alent of almost 380 medium sized motor cars. It will be possible to close the roof at the touch of a button, in a three-phase movement that takes approximately 20 minutes, the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy announced yesterday on its website.

Each roof truss measures 94.4 metres and weighs between 82 and 104

tonnes. Each truss was fabricated into eight pieces at the workshop, trans-ported to site, and welded together at a dedicated area outside the stadium before being lifted into place.

The lifting of the roof trusses is done only when there’s little or no wind, takes approximately three hours, and can be done every two to three days.

Aspire Zone Foundation’s Project Director for Al Bayt Stadium, Al Khor City, Dr Nasser Al Hajeri, said: “This structure will allow more flexibility in lighting and climate conditions within the stadium, making it fit for the purpose all year round.”

“Installing the roof structure is a sig-nificant milestone as it completes the

major lifting required on-site and means the big cranes can soon be removed.”

Engineer Majid Al Bader, Aspire Zone Foundation’s Al Bayt Stadium, Al Khor City Project Manager, added: “We’re very pleased with the progress to-date and look forward to unveiling this unique stadium to the world.”

Designed in the style of a traditional Bedouin tent, Al Bayt Stadium – Al Khor City will have a capacity of 60,000 during the World Cup. Post-tour-nament, the capacity will be reduced to approximately 30,000, with parts of the stadium donated to countries in need of sporting infrastructure.

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Workers watch as a section of the roof truss is being lowered onto the top of the Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor City.

Qatar most open country

in Middle East: UNWTOTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar has become the most open country in the Middle East and the 8th most open in the world in terms of visa facil-itation according to The World Tourism Organisation’s (UNWTO) recently updated visa openness rankings.

The high ranking reflects a string of visa facilitation measures introduced by Qatar, including allowing nationals of 88 countries to enter Qatar visa-free and free-of-charge. As a result, Qatar’s openness score has leapt by 71.3 points since 2014, when it ranked 177th.

Already, Qatar’s increased openness is showing in the growing number of visitors from markets which can now access the country visa-free. Notable increases in arrival volumes in the first half of 2018 compared to the first half of 2017 came from India (18%), China (43%) and Russia, which grew most significantly with a 366% increase.

Hassan Al Ibrahim, Qatar Tourism Authority’s Acting Chairman, said: “Openness and ease of access are crucial ele-ments of the visitor experience. That is why, in addition to the accelerated development of our tourism offering, we have com-mitted to providing a seamless experience to our visitors even as they are planning for their

journey. We will continue to work with our partners on further facilitating entry to Qatar through additional streamlining of the immigration process at Qatars ports of entry, as well as ensuring that all visitor visas and visa procedures are electronic.”

The UNWTO also measures the mobility of a country’s cit-izens, or the extent to which cit-izens are affected by other countries’ visa policies with highly mobile citizens being able to travel easily and seamlessly to most other countries.

While Qatar currently ranks 106th in the world in terms of mobility, it is worth noting that 20 of the countries benefiting from the Qatari visa waiver are

already reciprocating. Brigadier Mohammed

Ahmed Al Ateeq, Director General of General Directorate of Passport in Qatar’s Ministry of Interior, said: “MOI has long been committed to working with its partners to enhance the visitor experience while opti-mising resources. We are delighted to see the results in this remarkably improved openness ranking, which places Qatar in a stronger position to negotiate better mobility for its citizens.”

Qatar embarked on a journey to enhance visa facili-tation and ensure Qatar is ready to welcome the world in 2014, when QTA commissioned UNWTO to conduct a visa facil-itation study.

“Qatar has implemented and over-achieved the recommen-dations of the study, setting an example by spearheading safe and seamless travel, enhancing the visitor experience and better placing itself to improve mobility for its citizens,” said UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili.

In September 2016 an agreement was signed between QTA, Qatar Airways, Qatar’s Ministry of Interior and VFS Global to create an online platform for processing visa applications and issuing e-visas.

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Qatar Central Bank Governor H E Sheikh Abdulla bin Saoud Al Thani (third left) with top executives of the award winning banks (QIIB, al khaliji, QIB, QNB) and QDB officials during the ‘Best Partner Bank Award’ event hosted by QDB to honour the banks for supporting SMEs through its Al Dhameen Program, yesterday. PIC: BAHER AMIN / THE PENINSULA →SEE ALSO PAGE 13

Qatar Development Bank honours banks for supporting SMEs

The high ranking

reflects a string

of visa facilitation

measures introduced

by Qatar, including

allowing nationals

of 88 countries to

enter Qatar visa-free

and free-of-charge.

As a result, Qatar’s

openness score has

leapt by 71.3 points

since 2014, when it

ranked 177th.

HTC treats around 2,000 trauma cases annuallyFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Hamad Trauma Center (HTC) receives around 2,000 cases annually, and among them 40 to 45 percent are due to road-related acci-dents.

These accidents involve motorists, pedestrians, motor-cyclists as well as ATV riders, said Dr Rafeel Consunji, Con-sultant, Director Injury Pre-vention, Department of Surgery at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) while talking to media persons.

HTC at the Hamad General Hospital is the hub of the national trauma system in Qatar and provides care to people who get serious injuries across the country.

Besides providing highest standard of care to patients, HTC also aims at prevention as 70 percent of deaths due to trauma occur prior to hospital admission.

HTC also receives around 35 to 40 percent of patients of work related injuries.

“The entire trauma system starts from the 999 emergency call which is the pre-hospital

service and it goes to all the way up to rehabilitation. The HTC is right at the centre of the system and it provides the most emergency and urgent care needed by patients. The ambulance service provides the pre-hospital service,” said Dr Consunji.

HTC, through the Hamad Injury Prevention Program (HIPP), is actively involved in preventing trauma and injuries among the population. In this regard it provides evi-dence-based data on trends of accidents and globally accepted recommendations

to entities of different min-istries which could provide direct intervention to prevent accidents.

The most important part of the HTC is prevention. We are doing our best to provide local based evidence for pre-ventive measures for eve-ryone in Qatar including children, adults and workers.

“We want to reduce the number of injuries and deaths. Because, 70 percent of people who die from trauma or injuries in Qatar are in the pre-hospital services, no ambulance, no doctor, no

operating room machine can save them as they have died at the scene. We are working to avoid this 70 percent of preventable deaths,” said Dr Consunji.

“We were able to prevent 30 percent of deaths through quality improvement, hospital programmes, increasing capacity of physicians, quality of equipment and training of all healthcare professionals,” he added.

HTC has received the Trauma Distinction award from Accreditation Canada International (ACI).

The number of people from Qatar and

around the world seeking registration as

volunteers to support Qatar 2022 is

continuously increasing at a fast pace.

8 8 1 0 1

Ministry of Finance starts budget discussionsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: As a part of its efforts to prepare budget for 2019, which starts from January 1 and ends on December 31, the Ministry of Finance has issued directives to different Ministries and government institutions to prepare budget.

The instructions, copy of which is with Lusail newspaper, issued by Minister of Finance H E Ali Shereef Al Emadi, include rules and guidelines for its

implementation. The Ministry’s discussion with different Minis-tries and institutions started from September 2 and will continue until September 25.

The budget plan focuses on enhancing food security by boosting local production and supporting food sector, increasing contribution of non-oil sectors by encouraging and supporting private sector and attracting local and foreign investments. The budget aims to achieve efficiency in expenditure and maintain

financial stability of the country. The Ministry has asked gov-

ernment institutions to provide their estimates for 2019 budget, vision and expectations for two financial years, including estimate of revenue and expenditure along with targets that need to be achieved. The Ministry directive have set three standards for preparation of budget. One of the criteria is maintaining the current policy of the state to estimate the oil and gas prices.

02 TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018HOME

Ooredoo sponsors S’hail 2018THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Ooredoo is the “Adham Falcon sponsor” of the Katara International Hunting and Falcons Exhi-bition (S’hail) 2018 for the second year in a row.

This was announced at a press conference which witnessed the agreement signing yesterday at the Cultural Village Foundation – Katara Building 32.

The agreement was signed by Ahmed Abdul-rahman Al Sayyed, Assistant General Manager at Katara and Yousef Al Kubaisi, Head of Opera-tions at Ooredoo.

Al Sayyed said that the first edition of (S-hail) exhi-bition witnessed an out-standing success as its second edition this year is receiving more than 150 participants from 20 countries and that the area of the exhi-bition has doubled.

Commenting on this agreement, Al Kubaisi empha-sized Ooredoo’s commitment to support activities and cultural events that aim to preserve the Qatari national heritage.

“We give our support to this valuable exhibition by spon-soring it for the second year

now as it sheds light on a sig-nificant prominent part of our heritage which is falconry and hunting and we look forward to make it a significant inter-national event,” Al Kubaisi said.

Al Kubaisi added that Ooredoo will be having a large booth at the exhibition dis-playing all the hunting-related services and products they provide such as GPS tracking

devices and network boosters in the remote areas. “We will be also distributing gifts to visitors such as Car-Fi devices and other products that assist hunters and desert safari goers,” he explained.

At the end of the conference, both sides exchanged greetings and assured that this agreement is to strengthen cooperation between the two institutions.

Ahmed Abdulrahman Al Sayyed (third right), Assistant General Manager at Katara, and Yousef Al Kubaisi (third left), Head of Operations at Ooredoo, along with other officials at the agreement signing event yesterday at Katara.

Qatar, Greece review ties in transport, communications

Minister of Transport and Communications H E Jassim bin Saif Ahmed Al Sulaiti with the Ambassador of Greece to the State of Qatar, Constantinos Orphanides. The two officials discussed cooperation relations between the two countries in the fields of transport and communications and means of further enhancing them.

Change in school hours eases traffic congestionSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The new strategic decision made by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education related to change and reduction in school hours for all grades in public schools has helped alleviating traffic congestion.

“Traffic patrols have also been intensified to manage traffic flow that may face problems due to increased traffic on the roads with the opening of schools,” said Lieu-tenant Colonel Mohammed Radi Al Hajri, Director of Media and Traffic Awareness.

“Many roads are expected to be open by the end of this year to contribute easing traffic flow. Also places which were witnessing highest congestion in previous years like Al Markhiya signals and Hamad bin Jassim signals didn’t witness too much traffic this year at the opening schools. This is because of new working hours of inde-pendent schools,” he added during to a visit to Jawaan Bin Jassim Model School for Boys in order to spread traffic awareness among school students.

Al Hajri said that the aim of the visit is to educate students on concepts and traffic culture. In the meeting which was held in the theater hall of the school, Al Hajri pointed out the impor-tance of adhering to traffic safety rules, in particular the obligation of remain seated in a moving bus and avoid excessive movement or speak

loudly. He pointing out that such behavior bothers the driver, which could cause a traffic accident and this is a great risk for students and bus passengers.

He also stressed that the students under the age of 10, should sit in the back seats of the car because it is a safety for them, explaining the danger of crossing the road without fol-lowing traffic rules.

“Any person who wants to cross the road must be sure that the road is free of cars coming from both directions and cross only from the places designated for pedestrian crossing,” he explained.

Brigadier Mohammed Abdul Rahim Marafia, Director of Engineering and Traffic Safety Department at the General Directorate of Traffic said that the back to school preparations started early, adding that Engineering and Traffic Safety Department is in communication and contact with Ashghal to install traffic boards around the schools.

At the end of the visit, a lot of gifts were distributed among students on the occasion of the beginning of the academic year.

Brigadier Mohammed Abdul Rahim Marafia, Director of Engineering and Traffic Safety Department at the General Directorate of Traffic (centre) and Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Radi Al Hajri, Director of Media and Traffic Awareness (right) at the event.

Qatar, Serbia discuss bilateral relationsMinister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi met yesterday with the Ambassador of the Republic of Serbia to Qatar Jasminko Pozderac. Talks during the meeting covered bilateral relations and cooperation between the two countries and ways of enhancing them, as well as issues of mutual interest.

‘Traffic patrols have

also been intensified

to manage traffic

flow that may face

problems due to

increased traffic on

the roads with the

opening of schools.’

Registration for entry of 12th Education Excellence Award to begin on October 1THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Education and Higher Education has announced that the regis-tration for the entry of 12th edition of Education Excellence Award will begin from October 1, 2018 and it will continue till the end of the month.

The award is an occasion to honour Qatari citizens who excelled in different fields to spread the culture of creativity and excellence in the Qatari society, said a release. The award also encourages students further excellence and out-standing academic achievement, the integration of individual and institutional efforts to improve the outcomes of the education process and to meet global standards.

The nine categories of the award are outstanding student award for primary, preparatory and secondary levels, as well as bachelor’s level, master’s and PHD level and an award for dis-tinguished teachers and out-standing school and scientific research awards.

Chief Executive Officer of the Award, Dr Hamda Al Sulaiti said that one of the goals of the

award is to appreciate and honor those scientifically dis-tinguished, deepen the concept of excellence, encourage indi-viduals and educational institu-tions to develop their per-formance and promote posi-tivity towards knowledge and scientific research.

The award also aims to inspire innovation among stu-dents, researchers and educa-tional institutions and stim-ulate the spirit of scientific excellence and channel

individual and institutional energies towards scientific excellence in areas that serve the development directives of the State, she said.

Dr Hamda Al Sulaiti said that the most prominent is organ-ising an introductory meeting for school principals and coor-dinators, ministries and institu-tions and hold training work-shops for the award categories . She also explained the benefits and rewards offered to indi-vidual award winners.

Chief Executive Officer of 12th Education Excellence Award, Dr Hamda Al Sulaiti (right) is announcing the registration of the award at a press conference, yesterday

Qatar condemns attacks in IraqDOHA: The State of Qatar strongly condemned the two attacks on a mosque in the south of Al Shirqat district and a village in western Anbar in Iraq, which killed a worshiper and wounded six others in the mosque, and killed two people in the village.

In a statement, the Min-istry of Foreign Affairs reit-erated Qatar’s firm position on rejecting violence and ter-rorism regardless of motives and reasons.

Qatar most open country in region, according to UNWTO rankings

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

The new service, launched in 2017, has signifi-cantly eased visitor access to Qatar, offering a more efficient and transparent visa application system, with standardised fees. In the same month, a new process to facilitate disembarkation of cruise pas-sengers was put in place, and before the end of the year, Qatar had launched a free, 96-hour transit visa, doubling the amount of time stopover passengers could remain in the country and enjoy its offerings.

In August 2017, Qatar applied the new visa waiver policy for nationals of more than 80 coun-tries. In September 2017, Qatar made an Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) available to visitors of

all nationalities who hold valid residence permits or visas from the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the Schengen countries. This system allows eligible vis-itors to obtain an ETA by completing a simple online application prior to travel at www.qatarvisaservice.com.

According to the UNWTO, 60% of the world’s population is required to obtain a traditional visa prior to departure to destinations in the Middle East. Europe continues to be among the most restrictive destinations, requesting on average the highest pro-portion of the worlds population to obtain a tradi-tional visa prior to departure (66%).

Sheikha Al Mayassa expresses concern over Brazil infernoDOHA: The Chairperson of Qatar Museums H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani has expressed her concern over the fire incident of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro in tweet. In 2014, Qatar ran a cultural exchange programme with Brazil. “A sad day for the museum community around the world. Qatar and Brazil shared an exciting year of culture in 2014, connecting between our cultures. Hoping the artefacts can be recovered.” Sheikha Al Mayassa tweeted. One of Latin America’s biggest cultural, scientific and historic treasures, the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, has gone up in flames, leaving little more than a charred ruin behind.The blaze destroyed most of the 20 million items in the 200 year-old former palace, including Egyptian mummies, dinosaur replicas and one of the oldest human skeletons found in the Americas, local media reported.

Roof installation of Al Bayt Stadium beginsCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

The upper concourse of the stadium will be converted into a hotel, while a shopping centre and branch of Aspetar, the leading sports medicine facility, will also be incorpo-rated into the structure, alongside entertainment and shopping centres, multi-purpose halls and other venues. Parks and greenery will also form an integral part of the surrounding precinct.

03TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018 HOME

Qatar, Arab League review tiesThe Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, has received the credentials of Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al Sahlawi as Permanent Representative of the State of Qatar to the League of Arab States. During the meeting, they reviewed the cooperation between the State of Qatar and the Arab League and the most important developments on the Arab and international arenas.

Judicial power status accorded to some labour inspection staffTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Administrative Development Labour and Social Affairs has granted judicial power status to a number of employees from the labour inspection department to implement the provisions of the labour law and its related decisions.

The new batch of inspectors have been sworn in yesterday in front of Min-ister of Administrative Devel-opment, Labor and Social Affairs, H E Dr Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi.

This new batch is part of the ministry’s jurisdiction represented by the labor inspection department to ensure the implementation of the labor law and its decisions.

QF’s PUE hosts orientation for 200 new teachersTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Education Devel-opment Institute (EDI) and The Learning Centre (TLC), under the umbrella of Qatar Foundation’s (QF) Pre-University Education (PUE), jointly held an orientation event for around 200 new teachers who will join QF schools this year.

The event, organised to give educators a better cultural and linguistic understanding of their new environment, took place at Awsaj Academy, in Education City. The sessions demonstrated how learners can master a lan-guage through effective language strategies, and focused on approaches to teaching and learning, helping the teachers align themselves with the goal of improving the language profi-ciency of all students at QF schools.

Joanna Moe, Assistant Director, EDI, said, “We want to ensure that new teachers receive ongoing professional learning in order to have a greater understanding of ways to support students.”

Pedagogical sessions con-ducted during the event focused on differences in the use of Arabic and English in teaching and learning; the planning involved in developing and delivering the International Bac-calaureate (IB) curriculum and

strategies to enhance vocabulary.

Each session also high-lighted the importance of embedding language instruction in every classroom, a key com-ponent of the IB program.

EDI, a centre of excellence in professional development and lifelong learning, was

established by QF to support the growth of the educational com-munity within Qatar and inter-nationally, through sessions such as the recent orientation event; while TLC helps every child become a successful learner by supporting all QF teaching staff through providing expertise and resources.

The participants at the QF orientation for new teachers.

Al Khater praises skill-basedcurriculum development THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The upgrading of educa-tional curricula in the country in terms of quality is based on the skills that the Ministry seeks to teach students, said Assistant Undersecretary for Educational Affairs at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Fawzia Al Khater.

She said that the move also aims at enhancing students’ educational abilities and ideas and enable them to perform their duties better, which con-tributes to raising their aca-demic level.

The development of the educational curriculum in Qatar includes all levels and courses, and the learning resources developed in the current aca-demic year will be applied from grades 1 to 10, and will be applied at the 11th level in the coming year, followed by the 12th level.

Al Khater added in a press statement after her visit to Tiba Primary School and Al Wajbah Preparatory Girls School that such visits aim to follow up the preparations that represent all

the inputs of the educational process, adding that this is not limited to knowledge and explo-ration, but to exchange ideas with teachers, coordinators, supervisors, school principals and female students, to ensure that the laws and circulars of the ministry are followed and applied in the field of education.

The visit aims at following up the absorptive capacity of the school classrooms and the read-iness of the schools academi-cally, administratively and pro-fessionally to coincide with the launch and development of the new educational curricula that were updated this year to the academic levels in all subjects from grades 1 to 10.

The Assistant Undersecretary for Educational Affairs at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Fawzia Al Khater, interacting with the students during her visit to a government school.

QSRSN holds program to develop skills, capabilities of persons with disabilitiesTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Qatar Society for Rehabilitation of Special Needs (QSRSN) concluded the first season of annual program to develop the skills and capabil-ities of persons with disabilities.

The six-week program, attended by a number of persons with disabilities from the QSRSN’s educational and reha-bilitation centre for girls, included a range of educational,

training and recreational activ-ities to develop their skills and capabilities.

QSRSN Chairman Sheikh Thani bin Abdullah Al Thani said that the program was part of the QSRSN’s objectives to rehabil-itate persons with disabilities and discover their talents, skills and abilities in order to develop them through specialized super-vision by the QSRSN’s experts.

He pointed out that the program was in line with the

objectives of the QSRSN to inte-grate persons with disabilities into society and involve parents and guardians in such activities in order to motivate them to explore and enhance the abil-ities and skills of their children.

Sheikh Thani bin Abdullah Al Thani added that the program will be developed annually to include all types of disabilities and addi-tional programs to accommodate all persons with disabilities reg-istered with QSRSN.

Community-based care facilities to be expanded THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Minister of Public Health H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari has said that plans for the expansion of community-based Care Facilities in the coming year, especially with the opening of the new Daam building, will enhance the capacity to continue providing quality medical care to more patients in the future.

The Minister visited patients and staff at Hamad Medical Cor-poration’s (HMC) Enaya Spe-cialized Care Center and inspected the construction site of the new Daam building.

Opened in early 2015, the Enaya Specialized Care Center provides an advanced care system for long-term patients with chronic illnesses and degen-erative diseases that restrict their ability to care for themselves. The facility offers a healing envi-ronment with over 150 patient

beds, state-of-the-art facilities, and round-the-clock monitoring and treatment from specialist nurses and doctors.

“The care that our teams at Enaya are providing is so important to patients and their families. Dedicated care teams provide specialised medical care while also working to enhance the ability of patients to function independently, to engage more with family and friends, and

where possible, to bring a sense of normalcy into patients’ lives. Our plans to expand Qatar’s community-based care facilities in 2019 with the opening of the Daam Specialized Care Center will ensure we can continue to provide patient-centred medical care to even more people in the future,” said Dr Al Kuwari.

Late last year, Dr Al Kuwari and H E Sheikh Abdulla Bin Saoud Al Thani, Qatar Central Bank Governor and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Sports and Social Activities Support Fund (Daam), signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish the Daam Spe-cialized Care Center.

The donation from Daam covers one hundred percent of the costs to retrofit and com-mission the new facility, which has already commenced con-struction in Hamad Bin Khalifa Medical City.

The new facility, which will join HMC’s existing Enaya Spe-cialized Care Centers, is expected to open in late 2019 and will have 67 beds.

This inpatient specialised

care centre will provide an advanced care system for patients who are well enough to be discharged from hospital but still require specialised medical treatment that is often long term.

It will expand the capacity of the current Enaya facilities while also providing more privacy for patients who require long-term medical care outside of the hos-pital setting.

Minister of Public Health H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari visiting patients and staff at HMC’s Enaya Specialized Care Center.

Minister of Public

Health H E Dr Hanan

Mohamed Al Kuwari

visited patients and

staff at HMC’s Enaya

Specialized Care

Center and inspected

the construction site

of the new Daam

building.

NHRC chief discusses cooperation with German parliament memberThe Chairman of the National Human Rights Committee (NHRC), Dr Ali bin Smaikh Al Marri met yesterday with Roderich Kiesewetter, member of the German Federal Parliament and foreign relations officer of the Christian Democratic Union. The meeting discussed means of cooperation on issues of common concern and exchange of expertise in the rights field.

The sessions demonstrated how learners can

master a language through effective language

strategies, and focused on approaches to

teaching and learning, helping the teachers

align themselves with the goal of improving

the language proficiency of all students at QF

schools.

04 TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018HOME

QNL lines up

events to mark

literacy dayTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: With the summer holidays coming to an end, Qatar National Library (QNL) has invited members of the community to participate in a full schedule of events this month promoting learning, creativity, and sense of community.

On the occasion of Interna-tional Literacy Day on Sep-tember 8, parents and teachers are encouraged to join an inter-active lecture entitled, ‘Our Children and Books’, to learn about early childhood devel-opment and children’s natural attraction to books, said a statement.

Also on September 8, an interactive lecture, ‘Outrageous Headlines and Suspect Sources: The Importance of Media Lit-eracy’, will highlight ways to identify so-called ‘fake news’ and the impact of misinfor-mation on society.

In collaboration with Wifaq (Family Consulting Center), the Library will host ‘How to Manage Your Household Budget’, a workshop that will provide families with tips on how to efficiently manage their household finances. The event will take place on September 9 in the Library’s auditorium and will be conducted in Arabic.

The library has invited all lovers of classical music to join a screening of ‘The Art of Chopin’ by Gérald Caillat, on September 11. The documentary highlights the 200th birthday of famed Polish pianist Frederic Chopin, and the screening will conclude with a recorded per-formance of Chopin’s 1st piano concerto.

On September 12, Dr Sarah Savant will deliver a lecture entitled ‘Studying the Prophet’s Biography in the Digital Age: How Digital Technology Can Help’.

Patrice Landry, Chief Librarian and Deputy Director, QNL, said, “These events provide an excellent

opportunity for everyone in the community to learn and become engaged, which is a prime goal of our library. The list of events has something for everyone who plans to take some time after work hours and explore their creative side, learn a new topic, and get tips on improving their lifestyle.”

On September 15, the THIMUN Qatar executive team will host an interactive workshop, ‘United Nations Sus-tainable Development Goals’, that will explore the impact of human activities on the environment.

Individuals with hearing challenges and their families are invited to a demonstration of the Library’s assistive tech-nology devices on September 16. This month’s session of the Book Club for the Blind will take place on September 17 and will discuss the life story of Hellen Keller, the renowned author and educator who was afflicted at the age of 19 months with an illness that left her with permanent seeing and hearing disabilities but later achieved greatness in various fields.

‘Philharmonic at the Library’ in collaboration with Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra will resume on September 20. The session will offer a variety of musical pieces themed around ‘Sounds of the Sea’ with CineMoon Ensemble.

NU-Q welcomes its largest and most diverse freshmen class THE PENINSULA

DOHA: As Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) marks its 10th anniversary in Education City, it welcomed its largest class with a week of orientation that culminated in the Northwestern tradition of “March Through the Arch.”

This year’s class — the Class of 2022 – includes more than 100 students and is the most diverse class to enroll at NU-Q.

More than 40 percent of the class are Qatari, and 30 nation-alities are represented from countries as varied as Ethiopia, Mexico, Moldova, Nepal, Russia, and Rwanda.

“The breadth of experience and diversity that our incoming class brings to NU-Q adds dynamism and excitement to our student body,” said Everette E Dennis, Dean and CEO. “Their enrollment goes beyond the walls of NU-Q, as the Class of 2022 joins the global North-western community in embarking on an education journey that focuses on learning for the purpose of making the world a better place.”

The student orientation at NU-Q was a time for new stu-dents to explore academic options, register for their first semester of classes, learn about student life programs, and explore the campus and its resources.

They also participated in a number of Northwestern tradi-tions, including the colourful “March Through the Arch,” which involves each new student marching through a

replica of the home campus’s Weber Arch as they are cheered on and welcomed by the rest of the NU-Q community.

And, if there is one thing that NU-Q’s Class of 2022 all have in common, it is a passion for pur-suing media and communi-cation to tell stories that shed light on topics that matter.

Meanwhile, Noor Haddad, a

Yemeni who was raised in Oman, found NU-Q to be the perfect university for her to pursue her passion for both acting and com-munication. “Northwestern appealed to me as a university because the work of its faculty and alumni really speaks volumes about their dedication to media and journalism, and the industry as a whole,” she said.

At the end of a busy orientation week, NU-Q’s Class of 2022 joins Dean and CEO Everette E Dennis at NU-Q’s Arch.

WCM-Q offers research experience for studentsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: College students with ambi-tions to pursue careers in biomedical science were welcomed to Weill Cornell Medicine Qatar (WCM-Q) this summer to learn essential research skills.

The Research Internship for College Students program, admin-istered by WCM-Q’s Research Division, gives students aged 18 and over the opportunity to join working laboratories and learn from senior biomedical researchers in a chal-l e n g i n g a n d d y n a m i c environment.

Each of the students learned

practical laboratory skills, as well as completing modules focused on a set of key research management competencies, including research operation, laboratory management, grants management, research com-pliance, clinical management, and professional skills.

Students can choose to take a four-week internship or an intensive

eight-week internship; those who complete all of the taught modules and practical training elements on either internship are awarded a cer-tificate of complete.

This year three nationals com-pleted the program. Alaa Abdeen, who is in her third year studying biomedical genetics at Newcastle University in the UK, spent four weeks at WCM-Q working in the lab of Dr Khaled Machaca, Professor of Physiology and Biophysics & Asso-ciate Dean for Research.

Alaa said: “I have had a fantastic experience and wish I could stay longer. The most valuable thing is that I have been able to spend a lot

of time actually working in the lab and helping with a real research project. It has been very hands-on and I feel it has given me a really good boost for starting my career when I graduate.”

The Research Internship for College Students program targets students who are 18 years old and above.

Alaa Abdeen (right), a third-year student at Newcastle University in the UK, learned key lab skills this summer on WCM-Q’s Research Internship for College Students program.

QIC Group sponsors Gyer category of Katara’s S’hail 2018 THE PENINSULA

DOHA: As a progressive leader in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and socially responsible business practices, Qatar Insurance Group, the leading insurer in Qatar and the MENA region QIC Group has sponsored Gyer category of Katara’s International Hunting & Falconry Exhibition S’hail 2018.

Slated to start tomorrow, S’hail is regarded as the largest interna-tional exhibitions that specialises in exhibiting falcons. Besides hosting an interactive session for

children and adults, the exhibition will also display various falcons and its handling equipment. Now in its second year, the exhibition boasts of participants from 20 countries, namely, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Spain, Kuwait, China, Oman, Kazakhstan, UK, United States, Portugal, Turkey, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Azerbaijan, Iran, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Netherland, and Qatar.

Qatar Insurance Group has long demonstrated its eagerness towards supporting activities that showcase Qatar’s rich culture and

enhance the Qatari individual’s connection with his environment and heritage.

Commenting on the spon-sorship, Salem Al Mannai, Deputy Group President & CEO of QIC MENA Region stated, “As the leading insurer in Qatar, we have a long standing commitment to acting as a trusted and ethical partner with the Qatari community and to playing a vital role in the sustainability of Qatar’s social fabric.”

He further added, “We have ensured that the core values of our

business and operating principles align with our objectives for CSR. In effect, being socially conscious has allowed us to respond, engage and solve the common concerns of the society along with the cooper-ation of our customers, business partners and affiliates. Contribution to and participation in S’hail dem-onstrates our relentless efforts in highlighting the culture and tradi-tions of the Nation. It also underpins our keenness towards maintaining and reviving the legacy of falconry for our future generation.”Salem Al Mannai ,Deputy Group President & CEO- QIC MENA

Workshop on child rights programmes heldTHE PRENINSULA

DOHA: A three-day training workshop on child rights results-based programmes, organised by the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs in cooperation with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), was held yesterday with the participation of representatives of institutions and social institutions.

The aim was to familiarise participants with the general principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and how to use them in applying child rights-based approach in prac-tical and interactive ways through the general provisions and principles of the Con-vention on the Rights of the Child, and laws that take into account the procedures for children and practical studies.

The training would also cover other key child rights instruments, such as the three optional protocols of the Con-vention on the Rights of the Child, Convention 182 and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. A special emphasis was placed on social integration and capacity-building to implement results-based management to improve the effectiveness of programmes. Participants also learned more about RBM prin-ciples by improving knowledge and understanding about concept, design, planning, implementation, monitoring, programme evaluation and documenting results.

On the occasion of

International Literacy

Day on September 8,

parents and teachers

are encouraged to

join an interactive

lecture entitled, ‘Our

Children and Books’,

to learn about

early childhood

development and

children’s natural

attraction to books.

The Research Internship

for College Students

program targets

students who are 18

years old and above.

HMC to welcome international consultantsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Hamad Medical Corpo-ration (HMC) will welcome a number of visiting consultants from various medical specialties during the months of September and October.

Abdul Razzak Juratli, an ENT, Head and Neck Surgery Spe-cialist, will visit from September 8 to 13. Dr Manu Shankar-Hari, an Intensive Care Medicine Spe-cialist at Guy’s and St Thomas’

Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK, will visit from Sep-tember 14 to 16.

Dr Vitaly Kisilevsky, Medical Director of Vestibular Labora-tories and Services at the Uni-versity of Toronto, Canada, will visit from September 26 Sep-tember to October 3.

Dr Zeynel Abidin Dogan, an ENT, Head and Neck Surgery Specialist, will visit from Sep-tember 22 to 27. Dr Helmuth Billy, a highly-experienced Bariatric

and Metabolic Specialist from Ventura Advanced Surgical Asso-ciates in Thousand Oaks, Cali-fornia, USA will visit from Sep-tember 30 to October 6.

Dr Aldo Campanini, an ENT, Head and Neck Surgery Specialist from Morgagni-Pierantoni Forlì Hospital, Forli, Italy, will visit HMC from October 20 to 26.

While, Dr Filippo Mon-tevecchi, Medical Director at the ENT Operative Unit at Morgagni-Pierantoni Forlì Hospital, Forli,

will visit from October 20 to 26. Dr Marius Scarlat, a Con-

sultant Orthopaedic Surgeon from the Clinique St. Michel in Toulon, France, will visit from October 22 to 24.

Members of the public wishing to book an appointment with one of the visiting consultants are advised to discuss this option with their physician. If your doctor agrees that an appointment with a visiting consultant is appro-priate, they will provide a referral.

05TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Militants must be

‘cleaned out’ of

Idlib: Iran FMREUTERS

BEIRUT: Iran called yesterday for militants to be “cleaned out” of Syria’s Idlib province, as it prepared for talks with Syria and Russia about confronting the last major enclave held by rebels opposed to President Bashar Al Assad.

Syrian government forces are planning a phased offensive in Idlib and surrounding areas held by insurgents fighting Assad, who has been backed by both Russian and Iranian forces in the country’s conflict.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said Washington views any government assault on Idlib as an escalation of Syria’s war, and the State Department warned that Washington would respond to any chemical attack by Damascus.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Damascus to discuss plans for an upcoming summit between the leaders of Iran, Russia and Turkey, which Tehran will host on Sept. 7 to discuss Idlib, Iran’s Fars news agency reported.

Zarif met Assad, Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis

and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al Muallem, who asked for Iran to continue its support, according to Iran’s Fars News.

“All of Syrian territory must be preserved and all the sects and groups should start the round of reconstruction as one collective and the displaced should return to their families,” Zarif said, according to Fars News. “And the remaining ter-rorists in the remaining parts of Idlib must be cleaned out and the region should be placed back under the control of the Syrian people.”

Assad’s office said in a statement: “The two sides asserted that the pressures from some Western states on Syria and Tehran will not deter the two countries from con-tinuing to defend their principles.”

Iraq’s rival blocs vie for majorityAP

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s newly-elected parliament held its first session yesterday as two blocs, both claiming to hold the most seats, vied for the right to form a new government.

The session opened with a prayer and an orchestral per-formance of the national anthem, as lawmakers con-vened for the first time since national elections were held in May. The new parliament faces

the twin tasks of rebuilding the north of the country following the war against the Islamic State group and rehabilitating services in the south, where severe water and electricity shortages have fuelled protests.

“We must focus in the next stage on reconstruction, services, and providing jobs. It is the time for economic reforms and expanding our security achievements,” said caretaker Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi in an address to parliament. Al

Abadi, who came to power in 2014, oversaw the war on IS after the extremists seized Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and close to one-third of Iraqi territory. Al Abadi declared victory last year, but the mili-tants continue to raid, kidnap, and murder Iraqis in lawless and underserved regions in the west and centre of the country.

Lawmakers must now select a parliament speaker before electing a president, a largely ceremonial post.

Iraqi Parliament Speaker Salim Al Jabouri (foreground) walks along with other lawmakers to attend the first session of the new Iraqi parliament in Baghdad, Iraq, yesterday.

Rwandans vote in parliamentary elections AFP

KIGALI: Rwandans voted in parliamentary polls yesterday that are expected to shore up the power of President Paul Kagame’s ruling party a year after he was

re-elected with 98% of the vote.The Rwandan Patriotic Front

(RPF), in power for 24 years, its allied parties and one critical opposition party are vying for 53 of the 80 seats in parliament.

The remaining 27 seats are

reserved for women, youth and the disabled and they are elected by special councils and national committees. “Our party is gaining momentum across the country despite numerous hurdles. We are hopeful that we will win at least

ten seats in parliament,” said Frank Habineza of the Democratic Green Party, the only permitted critical opposition party, casting his vote in Kigali. Habineza secured only 0.45 percent of the vote in last year’s presidential

election. There were strict restric-tions on opposition parties who were given only three weeks to campaign. Currently all 53 seats up for grabs are held by the RPF and parties that are allied with it or back government policies.

Palestinian shot dead near HebronHEBRON, PALESTINE: Israeli troops yesterday killed a Palestinian youth near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron (Al-Khalil), according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. In a statement, the ministry said a young Pales-tinian man — who the ministry did not identify — had been shot dead near Hebron’s Jewish-only Kiryat Arba settlement.

38 Yemeni rebels dead in HodeidaKHOKHA, YEMEN: The coalition fighting in Yemen killed 38 rebels in the past 24 hours in air strikes on the strategic port of Hodeida, military and medical sources said yesterday.

The latest raids come just days before peace talks in Geneva between the interna-tionally recognised gov-ernment backed by the coa-lition and the Shiah Houthi rebels linked to Iran.

Gunmen shoot 11 dead in NigeriaLAGOS: At least 11 people were killed and 12 others injured when unknown gunmen opened fire at locals in central Nigeria, police said yesterday.

The victim of the attack late on Sunday was the Lo Pamyeti community of Plateau state. “We got a dis-tress call at around 9.30pm that the community was under attack and we quickly mobilized to the area but we met some people lying lifeless while others were crying for help,” Plateau police spokesman Tyopev Mathias said. “We quickly evacuated them where 11 persons were confirmed dead.”

Syrian government

forces are planning a

phased offensive in

Idlib and surrounding

areas held by

insurgents fighting

Assad.

06 TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018ASIA

Karnataka civic polls: Congress wins majority seats IANS

BENGALURU: Less than four months after the Assembly election, the Congress yesterday won the most seats in Karnataka’s 105 urban local bodies, pushing the BJP to the second spot, and voicing confi-dence that a Congress-JD(S) combine will sweep the Lok Sabha polls.

“The Congress winning 982 of the 2,662 civic body seats across the state shows people’s confidence in the party and our coalition government with the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S),” state Congress President Dinesh Gundu Rao told reporters here.

“The Congress cannot be written off in Karnataka any more. We (Congress and JD-S) will have a pre-poll alliance for the Lok Sabha elections which we are confident of winning,” Rao added.

In the polls for urban bodies across 22 of the state’s 30 dis-tricts held on August 31, the Congress has won 982 of the total 2,662 seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came second with 929 seats while the JD-S remained far behind with 375 seats.

Independents bagged 329 seats, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 13 and other regional parties and fringe outfits won 34 seats.

While the Congress won majority seats in 10 districts, it was looking at an alliance with JD-S in a few regions to keep the BJP out of power, as it did in the Assembly election in May which threw up a hung verdict, Rao said.

Even as the BJP won majority seats in seven dis-tricts including the coastal dis-tricts of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada, the JD-S and Con-gress tie-up will control most of the urban bodies in the state.

In the Assembly election, of the 224 constituencies, the BJP won 104 seats, the Congress 80 and JD-S along with BSP (38)., JD-S leader and Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy termed

yesterday’s results a victory for the coalition government.

“The outcome shows that JD-S and Congress have won the trust of not just the rural electorate but urban voters as well,” Kumaraswamy told reporters here.

The BJP, on the other hand, blamed the JD-S and Congress for its poor showing.

“The BJP should have won more seats but we could not perform the way we wanted to because of the Congress-JD-S coalition,” BJP state unit Pres-ident B S Yeddyurappa told reporters here.

But the BJP is confident of winning a majority in the Lok Sabha election, he said.

The BJP performed well in its traditional bastions of coastal districts while the Con-gress retained its position in its strongholds of northern districts.

Polling took place last Friday across 22 districts of the state spread over 29 city munic-ipalities, 53 town municipal-ities, 23 town panchayats and 135 wards of three city corpo-rations — Mysuru, Shivamogga and Tumakuru.

The polling in 45 seats of Kodagu district’s civic bodies has been postponed due to heavy rains and floods.

In the 2013 elections held for 4,976 seats, the Congress won 1,960 seats, while BJP and JD-S won 905 seats each while Independents bagged the remaining 1,206 seats.

Indian President Ram Nath Kovind (front centre) addresses the Cypriot parliament in Nicosia yesterday, while Cypriot’s President Nicos Anastasiades (top left) and President of the parliament Dimitris Sillouris (top centre) listen.

Kovind addresses Cypriot parliament

Traffic snarls as heavy rains lash Delhi, NCRIANS

NEW DELHI: Heavy rains lashed several parts of Delhi and its suburbs yesterday as the skies in the region remained engulfed in dark clouds with predictions of more rain in the coming days.

The downpour caused water-logging in parts of the Delhi-NCR region leaving many roads, lanes and bylanes flooded with rainwater.

The morning commuters had a tough time reaching their destinations due to traffic con-

gestion at several crowded junc-tions in Delhi and Noida.

Twitter and other social media channels were flooded with complaints of vehicles getting stuck in bumper to bumper traffic jams.

“Rains in Noida have gone bonkers this morning, have had to drive like a snail,” Twitter user Aahna Sharma posted on the microblogging site.

Anurag Dutta, who works with a Noida-based publishing house, said: “The Rajnigandha crossing (near Sector 16 Noida)

is flooded with knee-deep water. Vehicles hardly moved for a long time and I reached office late.” In Delhi, commuters complained of heavy traffic con-gestion in Lakshmi Nagar, Geeta Colony, Patparganj, Lajpat Nagar, Old Delhi railway station, Yusuf Sarai, Dhaula Kuan, Rajouri Garden. At Ashram, several vehicles were stuck in the carriageway towards AIIMS.

The heavy rain also led to a drop in mercury from 29 degrees Celsius around 10am to 26 degrees in the afternoon.

AAP blames Modi govt for ‘economic mess’IANS

NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) yesterday blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the deteriorating economic condition, saying “the economy was never in such a mess”.

“The BJP’s central lead-ership, in the last few months, either does not know what to do or is simply not bothered about the hardships it is heaping on the Aam Aadmi,” Delhi’s ruling party said in a statement. “The economy was never in such a mess.” The AAP said that petrol and diesel prices were touching an all-time high while the rupee was falling to a historic low.

The “grossly incompetent BJP government, led by Modi, has failed to address the con-cerns of rising fuel prices and depreciation of the rupee”, he said.

“The Central government has shown remarkable care-lessness when it comes to the economy. The country’s Finance Ministry is caught in a power struggle between two high ranking Ministers...

“In this situation, the blame for the country’s poor macr-oeconomic indicators lies squarely with the Prime Min-ister.” The party urged the Central government to address these issues at the earliest.

“The people of this country are waiting for an opportunity to defeat those who keep the Aam Aadmi at the bottom of their priorities.,” it added.

Congress demands probe into coal scam involving AdaniIANS

NEW DELHI: Taking the attack further against Prime Minister Narendra Modi over crony-capi-talism, the Congress yesterday targeted the centre over a stalled probe against the Adani Group and demanded a time-bound, independent probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into an alleged Rs 29,000-crore scam involving over-valuation of coal imports.

Days after Adani Group moved the Bombay High Court

seeking to quash all Letters Rog-atory (LRs) issued by the Direc-torate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), the Congress launched a frontal attack on the Prime Min-ister and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for being silent on the scam involving “Modi’s indus-trialist friend” Gautam Adani.

“Jailtley writes blogs on every issue, but he is silent on this. He should write a blog on this. He doesn’t have the power to take any action,” said Con-gress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh.

Earlier, a Singapore court had rejected Adani Global’s plea, seeking a stay to produce docu-ments pertaining to coal imports to India mostly from Indonesia. After that, the group moved the Bombay High Court on August 28.

The DRI had alleged that the companies inflated the price of coal they were importing from Indonesia to siphon off money abroad and to avail higher power tariff compensation.

“In October 2014, Direc-torate of Revenue Intelligence

announced that there was a huge scam on coal import and a probe was initiated on the over-invoicing of import of coal.

On March 31, 2016, DRI gave a new statement that 40 com-panies are involved in this scam and it is worth Rs29,000 crore,” said Ramesh.

In September 2017, a PIL was filled at the Delhi High Court by an NGO run by (Advocate) Prashant Bhushan and it demanded a Special Investi-gative Team (SIT) probe.

A municipal worker sprays pest-control chemicals to kill mosquitoes and larvae while a resident looks on in Kolkata, yesterday. Heavy monsoon across West Bengal has increased cases of vector-borne diseases.

Warding off vector-borne diseases

Dogs give Lalu sleepless nights in hospitalIANS

RANCHI: Former Bihar Chief Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Monday requested the authorities of Rajendra Institute of Medical Science (RIMS) here to shift him to another ward as he cannot sleep due to the

incessant barking of dogs near the super speciality ward of the hospital.

According to RJD legislator Bhola Yadav, Lalu Yadav cannot sleep due to barking of dogs and it has had an adverse impact on his health. He said Lalu Yadav has requested the hospital authorities to shift him to a

paying ward of the RIMS.Bhola Yadav also said that

the RJD chief’s sugar level was above normal limit and he needed to walk.

Lalu Yadav surrendered on August 30 in a special CBI court of Ranchi. On the same day he was shifted to RIMS from Birsa Munda Central Jail for treatment.

Reserve Bank employees withdraw two-day strikeIANS

MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) employee unions yesterday deferred their two-day mass casual leave planned for September 4-5 after the bank management sought “some time” to consider their demands.

“As responsible and rea-sonable trade unions, we decided to respond to the Gov-ernor’s and the Deputy Gov-ernor’s appeal for giving them ‘some time’ to resolve the issues,” the United Forum of Reserve Bank Officers and Employees said in a statement.

“We decided for a short deferment of our mass casual leave programme up to first week of January 2019, beyond which, if issues linger further, we will go for a flash strike, which we have unequivocally commu-nicated to Deputy Governor Viral Acharya,” it added.

The forum had called the two-day mass casual leave to press for demands related to pension updation for about 21,000 retirees of RBI and another chance to switch from Contributory Provident Fund (CPF) to pension for 2,600-odd CPF holders.

Myanmar court jails reporters for 7 yearsREUTERS

YANGON: A Myanmar judge yesterday found two Reuters journalists guilty of breaching a law on state secrets and jailed them for seven years, in a landmark case seen as a test of progress towards democracy in the Southeast Asian country.

Yangon northern district judge Ye Lwin said Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, breached the colonial-era Official Secrets Act when they collected and obtained confi-dential documents.

“The defendants... have breached Official Secrets Act section 3.1.c, and are sentenced to seven years,” the judge said, adding that the time served since they were detained on December 12 would be taken into account. The defence can appeal the decision to a regional court and then the supreme court.

The verdict comes amid mounting pressure on the gov-ernment of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi over a security crackdown sparked by attacks by Rohingya Muslim insurgents on security forces in Rakhine State in west Myanmar in August 2017.

More than 700,000

stateless Rohingya Muslims have fled into Bangladesh since then, according to U.N. agencies.

The two reporters, who were investigating the killing by the security forces of Rohingya villagers at the time of their arrest, had pleaded not guilty.

Press freedom advocates, the United Nations, the European Union and countries including the United States, Canada and Australia had called for the journalists’ acquittal.

“Today is a sad day for Myanmar, Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, and the press everywhere,” Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J Adler said in a statement.

The reporters had told the court two police officials handed them papers at a res-taurant in the city of Yangon moments before other officers arrested them.

One police witness testified the restaurant meeting was a set-up to entrap the journalists to block or punish them for their reporting of a mass killing of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine.

More than 80 people, including senior diplomats, were packed into the court yesterday.

Even as the BJP

won majority seats

in seven districts

including the coastal

districts of Udupi and

Dakshina Kannada,

the JD-S and

Congress tie-up will

control most of the

urban bodies in the

state. Congress won

majority seats in 10

districts.

07TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018 ASIA

Pakistan girds for ‘exchanges’ with Pompeo as U S halts aidREUTERS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s new foreign minister said he will “have exchanges” with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over Washington’s cancellation of a $300m disbursement for the Pakistani military when he visits Islamabad tomorrow.

Adopting a tougher line with an ally that US President Donald Trump considers unreliable, the United States halted the dis-bursement of Coalition Support Funds due to Islamabad’s per-ceived failure to take decisive action against Afghan Taliban militants operating from Paki-stani soil.

The United States has now withheld $800m from the CSF so far this year.

The latest move comes just as the less-than-one-month-old government of Prime Minister Imran Khan faces a looming

balance of payments crisis that could force it to seek a fresh bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or other lenders.

“On the 5th, the American (secretary of state) Pompeo will be arriving, and we will have a chance to sit down with him. There will be exchanges,” Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters late on Sunday night.

“We will take our mutual respect for each other into con-sideration and move forward,” he added.

Qureshi argued that the US was not justified in cutting the $300m because it was intended to reimburse Pakistan’s military for money spent fighting the Taliban and other militants threatening US troops in Afghanistan.

“It is not aid. It is not assistance, which was sus-pended. This the money, which we have spent. This is our money. We have spent it,” Qureshi said. “We did it for our betterment, which they had to reimburse.” Officially allies in fighting terrorism, Pakistan and the United States have a com-plicated relationship, bound by Washington’s dependence on Pakistan to guarantee a supply route for US troops in Afghanistan.

Khan moves to bring new local govt systemINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan yesterday constituted a committee to recommend within a week a proposal for a new local government structure that will be scrutinised and presented before the provincial assem-blies to initiate the required legislation process within a month.

While presiding over a meeting at PM Office, Khan said that new laws must be prepared within a week so that they could be enforced in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the provinces where his PTI has its government.

Sindh, where the PPP has its government, and Balo-chistan, where a BAP-led coa-lition is in power, would be asked to enforce the new LG system under Article 140-A of the Constitution, he added.

At the meeting, which was

also attended by the chief min-isters of three of the four prov-inces besides federal and pro-vincial ministers and secre-taries, Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Chief Secretary, gave separate briefings on the local gov-ernment system.

The prime minister said the transfer of power at the grassroots level and people’s empowerment in the real sense was the main plank of PTI’s agenda of reforms. Khan said the past practice of cen-tralisation of power had deprived the people of any meaningful say in government affairs.

It was learnt that the prime minister endorsed the new system proposed by the infor-mation minister and decided that after completion of the tenure of the current local bodies, the district government would cease to exist.

“On the 5th, the

American (secretary

of state) Pompeo

will be arriving,

and we will have a

chance to sit down

with him. There will

be exchanges,” said

Foreign Minister Shah

Mehmood Qureshi.

US service member dies in Afghan attackAP

WASHINGTON: A US service member has been killed and another wounded in an apparent insider attack in eastern Afghanistan.

Resolute Support and US Forces-Afghanistan Com-manding General Scott Miller says “the sacrifice of our service member, who volun-teered for a mission to Afghanistan to protect his country is a tragic loss for all who knew and all who will now never know him.”

He added: “Our duty now is to honor him, care for his family and continue our mission.”

White House spokes-woman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the adminis-tration was monitoring the situation and President Donald Trump had been briefed by chief of staff John Kelly.

Western countries

say they will

not approve

reconstruction

funding for Syria,

or drop sanctions,

without a political

settlement.

Meanwhile,

sanctions are

making it hard for

foreign companies

to work there.

08 TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018VIEWS

Long reach of US sanctions hits Syria reconstruction

As Syrian President Bashar Al Assad attempts to turn military success into postwar recon-struction, Western sanctions

are a major obstacle that could scare off foreign companies.

Syria has suffered immense physical destruction, while millions of workers have fled, been conscripted or killed. A UN agency estimates the war has cost $388 billion.

Extensive reconstruction still looks far off. Assad’s allies Russia, as well as China, have made some investments in the country, but they cannot afford the cost of rebuilding and want other coun-tries to share the burden.

Western countries say they will not approve reconstruction funding for Syria, or drop sanctions, without a political settlement. Meanwhile, sanc-tions are making it hard for foreign companies to work there.

Although some have managed to do business in Syria, the wide scope of the sanctions and broad US powers to enforce them mean companies risk inadvertent breaches.

Most Western companies are steering clear. One that hopes for future work in Syria, German pipe manufac-turer Ostendorf Kunststoffe, exhibited at an international trade fair in Damascus and is building relationships

with potential customers.

However, it has not agreed any contracts yet and its local represent-ative, Nabil Moughrabie, based in Beirut, said the company was waiting for the political climate to clear.

“We have obstacles. There isn’t any direct

shipping from Germany to syria. There are Syrian banks that cannot receive any money from Europe, and European companies that are afraid to receive any more from syria,” he said.

US sanctions on Syria predate the crisis, but were extended after Assad’s crackdown on protests in 2011 and again as the country slid into war.

The sanctions have frozen the assets of the Syrian state and hundreds of companies and individuals, including government figures, military and security personnel and others accused

of involvement in making or using chemical weapons.

They ban exports, sales or supply of services, along with any new invest-ments, into Syria by any US person. They also bar any dealings by US persons in Syrian oil and hydrocarbon products, or their import into the United States.

US persons cannot finance or facil-itate any transactions by foreigners that would fall under sanctions if done by Americans. European Union sanctions were imposed in May 2011, for Syria’s “brutal repression and violation of human rights”, and have been updated several times since.

They are not as sweeping as the US sanctions, but are still extensive and include asset freezes, travel bans, trade restrictions, financial sanctions and an arms embargo.

They bar trade in items that could be used militarily or for repression, luxury goods, precious stones and metals and equipment or technology for some oil and gas sectors including exploration and production, refining and gas liquefaction. The European sanctions also target Syria’s electricity network, banning EU companies from building power plants, supplying tur-bines or financing such projects.

US and EU sanctions include excep-tions for humanitarian supplies, and for items needed by United Nations mis-sions in Syria. The EU also allows com-panies to carry out work in the energy and power sectors covered by contracts signed before the sanctions were imposed. “It’s not for the faint hearted,” said Anna Bradshaw, a partner at law firm Peters & Peters in London, who advises on sanctions. US rules pose a bigger risk to companies involved in Syria than EU ones, she said.

American authorities have pursued violations more assiduously than the EU, where enforcement may be com-plicated by differences among its 28 states in how to interpret rules and penalties.

US sanctions, besides being wider in scope, have a longer reach: American jurisdiction extends to the worldwide activities of all “US persons”. That term includes both American citizens and companies, as well as US permanent

residents and under some sanctions programmes - at present not including Syria - foreign subsidiaries of American firms.

In April, US authorities arrested a Bulgarian man working for the Bul-garian office of a US company in a Syr-ian-related sanctions case for which three Americans were jailed in December.

Washington does not only target US sanctions violators. It can also blacklist foreign companies or people who help others to skirt sanctions - naming them as foreign sanctions evaders barred from most business with Americans. Non-US companies risk trouble if any part of a transaction involves Amer-icans or American companies.

“If you do something that causes someone else who is subject to US jurisdiction to violate US sanctions, then you are on the hook as well,” said Bradshaw. Even diligent companies might inadvertently fall foul of the asset freezes by dealing with a listed indi-vidual or entity in Syria’s opaque business climate.

That risk has grown as Assad has consolidated control, Bradshaw said: “The people who will be commis-sioning the reconstruction efforts and the people in charge are likely to be the very people targeted by financial sanctions.

“The more you can demonstrate that your due diligence is reasonable, the better chance you have of per-suading the authorities that they shouldn’t pursue you,” she said, warning it may not always be possible to spot that a counterparty is sanctioned.

Syrian Finance Minister Mamoun Hamdan told last week that the sanc-tions were unjust because they affected ordinary people as well as the gov-ernment and army.

Despite the humanitarian exemp-tions, sanctions have hit Syrian healthcare, the World Health Organisa-tion’s Syria representative Elizabeth Hoff said.

Sanctions affected procurement of some medicines by preventing transac-tions with foreign banks and stopping many international companies from dealing with Syria, she said.

ANGUS MCDOWALL REUTERS

QUOTE OF THE DAYThe coming months

will be critical in shaping the future

of our country and I am clear about my mission conceding

that there was still a lot more negotiating

to be done.

Theresa May

British Prime Minister

S Korea must maintain ties with US over North’s nuclear issue

Diplomatic maneu-vering has been intensifying between the United

States, which is calling for denuclearization, and North Korea, which is trying to stall proceedings. To make progress on the nuclear issue, it is imperative for the inter-national community, including China and South Korea, to maintain pressure by enforcing sanctions against Pyongyang.

President Donald Trump has directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to cancel his planned visit to North Korea. Trump also said, “At this time ... I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denucleari-zation of the Korean Peninsula.”

The bilateral negotiations

have deadlocked because the North ramped up its tactic of giving priority to its calls for the lifting of sanctions and security guarantees for its regime while delaying denuclearization.

The International Atomic and Energy Agency has com-piled a report, confirming that the North has been pro-ceeding with nuclear devel-opment programs, including the continued operation of nuclear-related facilities in Yongbyon in North Korea’s northwestern region.

This is a move that runs counter to a commitment for the “complete denucleari-zation of the Korean Peninsula,” which was made by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea, during his June summit with Trump, and thus cannot be overlooked.

Pyongyang should proceed with formulating a road map for its aban-donment of nuclear weapons while standing at the start line for denuclearization by reporting all its nuclear arms and development programs.

North Korea, which gives weight to obtaining US guar-antees of security for its regime, has been persistently calling for an early decla-ration of the end of the Korean War. The United States has already made a concession of canceling its joint military exercises with South Korea. Washington should not comply with the North’s demand for a decla-ration of the war’s end as long as it does not take any con-crete action toward denuclearization.

A matter of concern is that South Korean President Moon Jae In leans toward promoting

exchange and cooperation with the North.

It has been agreed by the two Koreas that Moon will visit Pyongyang in September to confer with Kim. Empha-sizing that the development of the South-North relations is the only driving force for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Moon has disclosed his intention to hold within this year a ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of a railway and a highway linking the two Koreas.

The Moon administration is expediting efforts to open a South-North joint liaison office in Kaesong, North Korea. By establishing a close relationship between the two Koreas, Moon likely has the ulterior motive of bolstering the South’s position as a mediator between the United States and North Korea.

The recent Times

report revealed

that the UAE had

asked an Israeli

spyware company

to hack into the

phones of various

politicians,

leaders and

journalists, and

had a particular

interest in spying

on Arab nations’

leaders.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFIeditorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMEDm.salim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED OSMAN ALI osman@pen.com.qa

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Immoral spying

A report on leaked emails submitted in two lawsuits against the spyware’s maker, the Israel-based NSO Group carried by the Times recently, revealed how

far the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was involved in secret wars against its close neighbouring countries, its own citizens and visitors of the country including tourists.

For long, observers have noted the significant changes in the policies of the UAE and its motive to implement unprecedented political ambitions of hegemony in the region using all illegal means, military and security inter-ference undermining sovereignty of other states by its involvement in Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Egypt and Eritrea.

The recent Times report revealed that the UAE had asked an Israeli spyware company to hack into the phones of various politicians, leaders and journalists, and had a particular interest in spying on Arab nations’ leaders including Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani; Saudi Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, and Leb-anese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. The agreement was signed to license the company’s surveillance software “as early as August 2013.” The International community

should impose restrictions on the misuse and trade of such hacking tools.

Although, it was not clear whether communications of those officials were actually hacked or not, but the infor-mation itself was a big shock to the Arab citizens and the international community closely following the UAE’s political behaviorus and practices in the region and beyond.

The malicious link of UAE to a network of sites tied to the NSO Group inflamed the social media with serious criticism of the UAE’s behaviour and aims and was widely condemned by people who consider it an open col-lusion with Israel against its very close brothers.

News of this immoral and illegal act has made the

public opinions recalling the incident of hacking of Qatar’s state-run news agency and government social media accounts on May 24, 2017, which paved the way for the ongoing Gulf crisis that began from June 5 last year.

The two lawsuits against the Israel-based NSO Group were filed in Israel and Cyprus by a Qatari citizen Abdullah Al Athbah, who came to know that his phone had been targeted by hacking software made by Israel’s NSO Group and cases were filed by five Mexican jour-nalists and activists who were targeted by the company’s spyware programme.

What is the use of UAE’S collusion with Israel against the closest brothers and leaders of brotherly countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Lebanon spying on them by using software which is used only for crime and ter-rorism. This act has revealed the evil intention of the UAE as a country habitual of violating civil rights.

THE JAPAN NEWS

People who don’t

consume mainstream

news for these reasons

tend to be the most

vulnerable to this kind

of propaganda because

they start off with the

belief that the lying

media ignore, bury or

misreport real news.

09TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018 OPINION

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What next after Lula’selection ban?

Twitter’s trolls are coming for Sweden’s election

EUAN MARSHALL AL JAZEERA

LEONID BERSHIDSKY BLOOMBERG

The decision of Brazil’s top elec-toral court to bar former Pres-ident Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva from contesting the

country’s polls in October has forced his party - and a large chunk of the Brazilian electorate — into a rethink.

After a marathon session, the Superior Electoral Court deemed Lula’s candidacy to be ineligible under Bra-

zil’s “Clean Slate” law, which forbids those with appeals court convictions from running for office.

The 72-year-old, who is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence for corruption and money laundering, has been a clear leader in all opinion polls held so far in the run-up to the October 7 elections.

His leftist Workers’ Party, which has promised to “fight through all means to secure his candidacy”, is expected to file an extraordinary appeal to the Federal Supreme Court this weekend.

Ricardo Ribeiro, a political analyst at MCM Consultores, told that the success of the court appeal depends on which judge hears the case. “If it goes to [Supreme Court Justice] Ricardo Lewandowski, there is a chance that he will grant an injunction in favour of Lula’s candidacy,” said Ribeiro.

Still, the Workers’ Party is expected to decide on a new candidate to replace Lula — while its Federal Supreme Court request is pending. According to the electoral court decision, the party has 10 days from Saturday to nominate a new presi-dential candidate, with all signs pointing towards Fernando Haddad, Lula’s running mate and a former mayor of Sao Paulo.

A party meeting in the city of Curitiba, when Haddad’s candidacy is likely to be confirmed. If Lula’s Supreme Court appeal is successful, the Workers’ Party will still be able to put the former president back on the ballot.

If not, the party will face the uphill

task of transferring Lula’s votes to Haddad, a politician who is not instantly recognisable around the country and currently polls at just four percent. “It’s the only strategy available to them,” said Ribeiro. “But Lula’s pop-ularity means there is a good chance it will be successful.”

Indeed, Haddad can take heart in the fact that recent polls show 31 percent of the electorate would vote for any candidate endorsed by Lula, which would be more than enough to propel him into a potential second-round runoff with Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right candidate with the Social Liberty Party.

With Lula’s removal from the pres-idential race, Bolsonaro, a former army captain and Rio de Janeiro con-gressman since 1991, has emerged as a frontrunner. Due to the long-perceived inevitability of Lula’s candidacy being blocked by the electoral courts, major pollsters have been conducting two different scenarios: one which includes the former president, and one without him.

In opinion polls without Lula, Bol-sonaro appears ahead of all compet-itors, with a vote share varying between 20 and 22 percent. Bolsonaro has managed to present himself as a credible outsider candidate, despite a track record of homophobic and racist statements.

The far-right politician has a bel-ligerent stance on crime, declaring in a recent TV interview that police officers who “kill 10, 15, or 20 people” should be rewarded and not punished.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist and pro-fessor of international relations at Rio de Janeiro State Uni-versity, stressed that for a significant portion of voters, “Bolsonaro has been able to establish himself as the spokes-person for the feelings of anger and revolt which many Brazilians feel today”.

Bolsonaro is popular among young, educated, middle-class male voters. While his support appears to have hit a plateau, it has not yet dropped, sug-gesting that he has a solid voter base, which is likely to push him into the

expected runoff, scheduled to take place on October 28. To avoid a second round of voting, a candidate would need to win more than 50 percent of the votes on October 7.

In six of the seven presidential elections held since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985, the two candidates with the most votes have come from the centre-left Workers’ Party and the centre-right Brazilian Social Democracy Party - a trend set to be bucked in the upcoming election.

Geraldo Alckmin, the Social Dem-ocrat candidate who is seen as “market-friendly”, is severely lagging behind in the polls, despite having the support of a vast coalition of centrist and centre-right parties.

Alckmin is also considered as the candidate of the establishment, a par-ticularly damning title given that the current government, under President Michel Temer, is hugely unpopular.

Alckmin’s broad coalition may yet work in his favour, benefitting from the start of election campaign mes-sages broadcasted on television and radio.

In Brazil, free airtime is distributed among the parties in accordance with their number of seats in the lower house of Congress, with Alckmin’s numerous alliances giving him the lion’s share.

In each commercial block of 12 minutes and 30 seconds, the Social Democrat candidate will be allotted five minutes and 32 seconds. In com-parison, Bolsonaro will receive just eight seconds. “Alckmin’s biggest opponent isn’t the Workers’ Party, as it has been in years past,” said Santoro. “Now, it’s Jair Bolsonaro.”

Twitter bots are proliferating ahead of Sweden’s election and they are 40 percent more likely to support the

anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats than human users.

That’s the finding of the coun-try’s Defense Research Agency, which says the social media platform has moved to suspend many of these malicious accounts.

Democracies across the world need to prepare for this threat: Radical parties, with or without external help, are using and per-fecting this form of digital propa-ganda — because it appears to work so well.

It’s spreading, too. Sweden didn’t figure in this year’s list of 48 coun-tries where Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Research Project found evidence of social-media manipulation. In 2017, there were only 28 such countries.

In 14 of the countries highlighted

in the Oxford report, among them the US, UK, Mexico, Brazil, Austria and Poland, parties hired con-sultants to spread propaganda online.

Their tools: bots and trolls that amplify fake news, make mali-cious comments, micro-target political messages and engage in “astroturfing,” the creation of fake evidence of grassroots support.

This activity is expanding beyond its roots on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The Oxford researchers noted attempts to optimise search-engine results as well as the growing use of mes-saging platforms such as WhatsApp, Snapchat, Telegram, Line, WeChat, and even Tinder, a dating app, to spread propaganda.

The technology is evolving as social media platforms try to shut down obvious bot activity. In a recent article for the MIT

Technology Review, Lisa-Maria Neudert, who is also part of the Oxford research project, predicted that artificial intelligence of the kind used to power digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa will search out sus-ceptible users and guide them toward an extremist viewpoint.

Rather than broadcasting propaganda to everyone, these bots will direct their activity at influential people or political dis-sidents. They’ll attack individuals with scripted hate speech, over-whelm them with spam, or get their accounts shut down by reporting their content as abusive.

There’s a reason Neudert men-tioned extremist viewpoints. Last year, she published a paper ana-lyzing computational propaganda in Germany. There, the majority of the bots supported a far-right agenda. In the US, the Oxford researchers found that on both Facebook and on Twitter, Trump voters and “hard conservatives” are responsible for the bulk of traffic sent to “junk news” sites - essentially, propa-ganda factories.

That matches the pattern the Swedish Defense Research Agency found. The Sweden Democrats, which never garnered the support of more than 6 percent of voters before 2014, are heading toward their best electoral performance, with polls predicting support for the grouping could surge to 20 percent.

This isn’t about foreign powers trying to influence the election, though. Russian troll farms and even intelligence services don’t have enough fluent Swedish speakers to get involved on a massive scale, especially to create fake news resources.

So the Swedish authorities aren’t screaming “Russian interference” - even if the Kremlin has an interest

With Lula’s

removal from the

presidential race,

Bolsonaro, a former

army captain and

Rio de Janeiro

congressman

since 1991, has

emerged as a

frontrunner. Due to

the long-perceived

inevitability of

Lula’s candidacy

being blocked by

the electoral courts,

major pollsters have

been conducting

two different

scenarios: one which

includes the former

president, and one

without him.

in promoting the success of European far-right parties because of their destabilizing effect.

The political bias of the bots can best be explained as the con-sequence of the distrust right-wing audiences everywhere have of mainstream media, which they perceive as leftist, internationalist and pro-immigrant.

People who don’t consume mainstream news for these reasons tend to be the most vul-nerable to this kind of propa-ganda because they start off with the belief that the lying media ignore, bury or misreport real news.

Anyone who claims to do oth-erwise automatically gets their trust. In Sweden, almost one in every five people doesn’t trust the mainstream media. That 20 percent likely intersects with the Sweden Democrats’ 20 percent base.

The radical left hasn’t had much electoral success yet with slogans of resisting their right-wing counterparts. But if it ever does, it will likely be thanks to similar manipulation techniques. The parts of society not served by professional journalists are the ones on which the propa-ganda experts from all sides are, and will keep, lab testing their tricks.

The writer is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering European pol-itics and business. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.

10 TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018ASIA / EUROPE

Duterte apologises for insulting ObamaAFP

JERUSALEM: Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte has apologised to former US president Barack Obama for abusing him in 2016, which sparked a new low in their nations’ long alliance.

Duterte lobbed the insult in response to steady criticism from the United States over his

violent drug crackdown, which has been a target for interna-tional condemnation.

However, the Philippine president said his nation’s rela-tionship with America has since improved under President Donald Trump, who he described as a “good friend” who “speaks my language”.

“It would be appropriate

also to say at this time to Mr. Obama that you are now a civilian and I am sorry for uttering those words,” Duterte said in a speech before Filipinos in Israel.

Duterte cursed Obama ahead of a regional summit in Laos two years ago prompting the US to cancel a meeting between the two leaders there.

Philippines and Israelsign three agreementsAP

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extended a warm welcome to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte yesterday at the start of an official visit, despite being criticised for embracing a leader accused of human rights abuses in his deadly drug crackdown.

The two leaders oversaw the signing of three agreements in trade, science and care-giving.

Netanyahu highlighted the countries’ long friendship, how the Philippines took in Jewish refugees after World War II and was the only Asian nation to vote for Israel’s establishment. He noted how in recent years Filipino health aides have assisted the elderly in Israel, including Netanyahu’s own father. “We remember our friends, and that friendship has blossomed over the years and especially over the last few years,” Netanyahu told Duterte. “There has been a remarkable phenomenon in Israel where thousands and thousands of families have taken heart from

the support given by Filipino caretakers for the elderly.” Duterte thanked Israel for hosting some 28,000 Filipino workers and for assisting his country in its times of need.

“We share the same passion for peace, we share the same passion for human beings but also we share the same passion of not allowing our country to be destroyed by those who have the corrupt ideology, who know nothing but to kill and destroy. And in this sense Israel can expect any help that the Philip-pines can extend to your country,” he said at a joint appearance with Netanyahu.

The visit is the first by a Phil-ippine president to Israel since the countries established diplo-matic relations in 1957. Netanyahu has worked to cul-tivate allies in Asia, Africa and

Latin America, where many countries have historically shunned Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians.

But Netanyahu has come under fire for embracing Duterte, whose forces are accused of killing thousands in anti-drug raids since he took office in 2016. Duterte drew outrage that year when he com-pared his anti-drug campaign to the Holocaust, and himself to Hitler. He later apologised.

Official Philippine police tallies place the number of sus-pects killed in police-led anti-drug raids at more than 4,500 since Duterte took office. Inter-national human rights watchdogs have cited far higher death tolls. Duterte, a 73-year-old former government prose-cutor, denies condoning extra-judicial killings but has openly threatened drug dealers with death.

He also visited yesterday the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and later a monument commemorating the Philippines’ rescue of Jews during the Holocaust.

The two leaders

oversaw the signing

of three agreements

in trade, science and

care-giving.

Japan claims China ‘escalating’ military activitiesAFP

TOKYO: Japan’s defence chief yesterday warned the country faces a tough security envi-ronment, with China and Russia stepping up military activity and North Korea posing “imminent threats”.

Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said China had been “unilaterally escalating” its mil-itary activities in the past year,

including carrying out new air-borne operations around Japan and running a nuclear submarine near disputed East Coast isles.

“China has been rapidly improving its military strength and fast increasing its military activities,” Onodera told an annual gathering of the top brass of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.

“It is unilaterally escalating its military activities in the sea and aviation spaces around our

country. This has become a sig-nificant concern for our coun-try’s defence,” he said.

Onodera made the remarks as Tokyo attempts to improve its tense diplomatic ties with Beijing, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expected to visit Japan’s biggest trade partner next month.

On coming to power, Abe took a firm position on Japan’s claims to a disputed island chain

in the East China Sea, aggra-vating tensions with Beijing.

But he has since softened his rhetoric, and called on China to press North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programmes. Japanese businesses have also voiced desire for closer ties with China to boost trade.

Onodera said Russia was also flexing its military muscle.

Moscow is planning to hold its biggest drill since the Cold

War era and is bringing powerful weapons, including ground-to-air missiles, to the disputed Southern Kuril islands, he said.

“We are seeing movement to again push forward its military activities in the Far East,” he said.

Onodera also repeated that North Korea continues to pose a “serious and imminent threat” to Japan, despite international diplomacy intended to convince Pyongyang to denuclearise.

Malaysian finance minister cleared in corruption caseAFP

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s finance minister was yesterday cleared of corruption charges brought against him by the former government, which critics said were a bid to neutralise a potent political threat, official media reported.

Lim Guan Eng is a leading politician in the reformist alliance that unexpectedly swept to power at May elec-tions, toppling the coalition that had ruled Malaysia for 61 years and was criticised for becoming increasingly authoritarian.

Lim was a vocal critic of the former leader Najib Razak, who allegedly had a central role in a massive financial scandal that helped persuade voters to boot him out of power.

Cambodian government critic flees after receiving threatsREUTERS

PHNOM PENH: A Cambodian political analyst said yesterday he has fled the country after receiving threats since his release from a 1-1/2 year sentence for accusing Prime Minister Hun Sen’s party of orchestrating the 2016 murder of government critic Kem Ley.

Kim Sok, who has a six-year-old daughter, was released on August 17 and since then has criticised Hun Sen’s appointment to government of some leaders of parties that participated but won no seats in July 29 elections.

He told Reuters that on August 29 he received six anon-ymous calls in which he was told: “’I know you have a daughter and if you don’t stop talking, you must be careful.’” “I and my daughter are seeking asylum in a third country,” he said. “Once my daughter is safe, I will go back to Cambodia and continue my advocacy,” he added.

He declined to say where he had gone but said he had reported the threats to a U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh on

August 30. The embassy declined to comment.

Tens of thousands protested the murder of prominent activist Kem Ley, many of whom said they suspected a political motive in his death. A man was jailed for life last year for the killing and testified that he killed Kem Ley over a debt.

Human rights groups and Kem Ley’s supporters said they were skeptical of the convicted man’s testimony. The family said the activist did not owe any money.

Hun Sen, whose Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) swept all parliamentary seats in largely unopposed elections, said on August 29 that Kim Sok must pay a $200,000 court fine dating from his conviction or return to prison.

Phay Siphan, a spokesman for the Cambodian government, said Kim Sok was lying.

“This is his intention to do anything to get asylum abroad without having to care about truth and laws,” Phay Siphan told Reuters. “Like the prime minister has said, if you want to get asylum, just curse him,” he said.

Outrage in Romania over video clip by ValcovAFP

BUCHAREST: A Romanian government adviser sparked outrage yesterday after posting a video clip comparing the coun-try’s president to Hitler as political tensions simmer after mass anti-corruption protests last month.

The clip shows an altered photo of centre-right President

Klaus Iohannis, a strong gov-ernment critic and ethnic German, sporting a hairstyle and moustache like Adolf Hitler.

Under the photo, it reads “Heil Iohannis” with a Nazi salute. The video, posted by the left-wing government’s advisor, Darius Valcov, on Facebook, also describes the group Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania (FDGR), which Iohannis led until

2013, as a “Nazi organisation”.Valcov, a former finance

minister of the ruling Social Democrats who is appealing an eight-year-prison sentence for corruption meted out by a court in February, removed the video after a flood of outraged comment.

Opposition National Liberal Party spokesman Ionel Danca called for Valcov’s dismissal,

saying the clip “was extremely damaging, undermining the presidency and the memory of the Holocaust victims”.

FDGR president Paul-Jurgen Porr said that such attacks were “deplorable, even more so as Romania gets ready to take over the EU rotating presidency” from Austria in January next year.

He said his group would w r i t e a l e t t e r t o

the prime minister also urging Valcov’s dismissal. The gov-ernment, long besieged by anti-corruption protests, came under renewed pressure last month fol-lowing violent clashes when 80,000 Romanians rallied in Bucharest. More than 450 people were injured after security forces charged protesters with teargas, drawing strong criticism from Iohannis.

US soldiers take part in the opening ceremony of the “Rapid Trident-2018” international military exercises in Starychi, outside Lviv, yesterday.

Ukraine launches joint military drills with NatoAFP

STARYCHI, UKRAINE: Ukraine yesterday launched joint military exercises with the United States and a string of other Nato countries as tensions with Russia remain high over the Kremlin-backed insurgency in the country’s east.

The annual Rapid Trident military exercises, taking place in the western Ukrainian village

of Starychi until September 15, involve some 2,200 soldiers from 14 countries.

“(The participants) stand in solidarity with Ukraine, for Ukrainian security, Ukrainian sovereignty, and Ukrainian ter-ritorial integrity,” the US Ambas-sador to Ukraine Marie Yovano-vitch said at the opening ceremony.

The drills start a week before Russia holds its biggest

military exercises since the Cold War, in the east of the country and with the participation of China and Mongolia.

A spokesman for the Ukrainian drills Taras Gren said that some 350 pieces of military equipment will be used during the exercises.

The Ukrainian Border Guard Service and the National Guard troops will be involved for the first time, he said.

Inter-Korean talks ‘under way’ over liaison officeANATOLIA

SEOUL: The Koreas are actively engaged in “consul-tations” over launching a joint liaison office in the North’s border town of Kaesong, the South’s Unification Ministry said yesterday.

The facility had been expected to start up by the end of August, following an agreement reached between Seoul and Pyongyang during April’s first inter-Korean summit in over a decade.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in recently her-alded the “opening of an era in which the South and North communicate with each other 24 hours a day, 356 days a year”.

However, Seoul’s presi-dential office also said late last month the plan needed to be reviewed amid souring ties between its ally the United States and North Korea.

The South Korean gov-ernment was specifically worried about US President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s scheduled trip to North Korea last week.

A Filipina takes a selfie with an effigy of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte as fellow Filipinos await the arrival of their President at the start of an official visit to Israel.

11TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018 EUROPE

Putin wants to ‘dismantle’ EU,claims Macron BLOOMBERG

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron weighed in on Sweden’s looming election, condemning the nationalist candidate who threatens an upset in next weekend’s vote.

“This person is not com-pliant with your story and your values,” Macron told Sweden’s SVT Television in an interview.

The 40-year-old French leader was referring to a statement by Sweden’s nation-alist figure and chief of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Akesson, who declined to dif-ferentiate between Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin in an earlier interview.

Sweden’s general election on September 9 could rewrite the political rule book with the rise of the Sweden Democrats, a nationalist party with roots in the country’s white supremacy movement. Despite having been ostracised by the main-stream parties, the group’s message of halting immigration has resonated with voters after a record inflow of foreigners over the past few years.

“I think it’s for your voters and your people to react to that. I think it says a lot,” Macron said of Akesson’s stance on Putin. The Swedish politician “doesn’t know the right ranking of values and interests,” Macron said.

The French president has fanned controversy by com-menting on domestic politics before, most recently in Italy

where he clashed with Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini over the latter’s anti-immi-gration stance.

Macron is now focusing much of his attentions on next year’s elections to the European Parliament, saying last week that Salvini and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban were right to see him as the main opponent in their bid to bring trigger a nationalist wave of support.

In his interview, Macron said that Putin’s vision is to dis-mantle Europe, and that Swe-den’s eastern neighbour doesn’t share the same human rights values as the rest of the Continent.

“I do respect Vladimir Putin and I am one of the leaders who says we need to construct a new security and defense archi-tecture with Russia. We need this discussion with Russia,” Macron said. “But Putin’s dream is the dismantling of the European Union.”

Merkel urges citizens to stand up against hateAFP

CHEMNITZ: Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday urged Germans to stand up against the far right’s message of hate and division, after the eastern city of Chemnitz was rocked by xeno-phobic protests.

Scenes of far-right protesters chasing down foreign-looking people in violent demonstrations last week against the fatal stabbing of a man, allegedly by an Iraqi national, shocked Germany.

Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said it was under-standable that such crime would provoke sadness and concern among the population.

But the marches by “vio-lence-prone right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis have nothing in the least to do with sadness for a person or with concern for a city’s cohesion”, he said.

“These people who march and are prone to violence, they stand neither for Chemnitz nor for Saxony overall, neither are they ‘the people’,” said Seibert, referring to a popular “We are the people” chant used by far-

right protesters. “We must make that clear

to them,” be it through political or legal means, he said.

“Every citizen can also raise his or her voice to clearly show them their attitude against hate, against the attempt to divide this country.”

But the criticism of the right-wing extremist protesters was immediately rejected by far-right party AfD.

“An entire state and its people are vilified here in general because there is a dis-tinct and understandable resentment about the

circumstances,” Joerg Meuthen, AfD co-chief said at a street fes-tival in Bavaria.

After a weekend of rival pro-tests in Chemnitz that saw far-right demonstrators vastly out-number counter-protesters by 8,000 to 3,000, calls have grown for the silent majority to mobilise.

Chancellor Angela Merkel (centre) with representatives from German unions and industry before the meeting, in the government’s guesthouse, Schloss Meseberg, in Meseberg, Germany, yesterday.

Migrant jailed for German girl’s murderAP

BERLIN: A migrant was convicted yesterday of murdering his 15-year-old German ex-girlfriend and sentenced to 8.5 years in prison, the German news agency dpa reported.

The stabbing of the 15-year-old girl at a drugstore in the southwestern town of Kandel in December 2017 shocked Germany and fueled a debate about violence by migrants.

The verdict comes at a time when Germany is struggling to come to terms with the influx of more than one million migrants since 2015.

Because of privacy rules, the victim in the Kandel stabbing has been identified only as Mia and the migrant as Abdul D, who was also convicted of assault at the district court in Landau.

Authorities did not confirm the perpetrator’s nationality and his age, but German media have reported that he is most likely

Afghan and he was tried as a minor.

Abdul D said he was 15 at the time of the murder, but an age evaluation during the trial con-cluded he was at least 17, dpa reported.

Young asylum-seekers, especially unaccompanied minors, have more privileges and get better care in Germany than older asylum-seekers, which is why some of them lie about their age when they apply for asylum.

Brexit: Johnson slams UK Premier over Chequers planAP

LONDON: Former British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (pictured) slammed Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit policy in a newspaper column yesterday, heightening specu-lation that he plans to challenge her leadership.

Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph that May’s so-called Chequers plan for continued close economic ties with the European Union would leave Britain tethered to the bloc and getting little in return.

Johnson said that Britain has “gone into battle with the white flag fluttering over our leading tank” and had agreed to pay a

$51bn divorce bill in return “for two-thirds of diddly squat.”

Britain is due to leave the EU in March, but negotiations on a divorce deal have stalled amid divisions within May’s

Conservative government over how close an economic rela-tionship to seek with EU.

A proposal hammered out by May’s Cabinet in July at the prime minister’s Chequers country retreat proposes keeping the UK aligned to EU regulations in return for free trade in goods.

The plan infuriated Brexit-backers in May’s Conservative party including Johnson, who quit the government in protest. Johnson claims the Chequers deal would prevent the UK from striking new trade deals around the world.

“We will remain in the EU taxi; but this time locked in the boot (trunk), with absolutely no say on the destination,” Johnson

wrote. “We won’t have taken back control - we will have lost control.”

May’s official spokesman, James Slack, said Johnson’s opposition to the Chequers plan was well known, and there were “no new ideas in this article to respond to.”

“What we need at this time is serious leadership with a serious plan and that’s exactly what the country has with this prime minister and this Brexit plan,” he said.

With Parliament due to return today from its summer break, Johnson and his fellow Brexit enthusiasts are not the only obstacle Theresa May faces as she tries to get her Brexit deal

past the Conservative Party, Brit-ain’s Parliament and the European Union.

The deal has been received coolly by EU leaders, who warn Britain cannot “cherry pick” aspects of membership in the bloc without the full cost and responsibilities.

On Monday Conservative supporters of “soft Brexit” put forward a rival proposal, arguing that Britain should stay in the EU’s single market for goods and services for three years after Brexit while it negotiates a future free trade deal with the bloc - a plan summed up as “Norway, then Canada,” a reference to those countries’ trade relations with the EU.

Macron said that

Putin’s vision is to

dismantle Europe,

and that Sweden’s

eastern neighbour

doesn’t share the

same human rights

values as the rest of

the Continent.

Spain tourist arrivals drop by 4.9% in JulyAFP

MADRID: The number of foreign tourists visiting Spain in July fell for the first time in nearly a decade, official data showed yesterday, as European sunseekers returned to cheaper rival sunshine desti-nations like Turkey and Tunisia.

Spain, where tourism accounts for around 10 percent of the economy, has enjoyed a surge in international visitors to its cities and beaches in recent years partly due to security concerns in other popular sunshine destinations in the Middle East and North Africa.

The country surpassed the United States last year to become the world’s second most visited country after France as the number of arrivals in 2017 — 82 million — beat records for the fifth straight year.

Visitor numbers to Spain fell 4.9 percent to just under 10 million in July over the same month last year, figures released by national statistics institute INE showed, the first drop during the key summer holiday month since 2009.

The number of Britons visiting fell by 5.6 percent, with the weak pound making it more expensive to visit eurozone nations like Spain.

Foreign visitor numbers during the first seven months of the year inched up by just 0.3 percent to 47 million, compared to the double-digit growth recorded in 2016 and 2017.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez shrugged off the decline in visitor numbers in July during an interview with radio Cadena Ser, saying arrivals numbers overall were still “historically high”.

France bans mobile phone use in schoolAFP

PARIS: Texting under the table should be a thing of the past after French children returned to class yesterday following a nationwide ban on mobile phones in schools.

The new rule, a campaign pledge of President Emmanuel Macron, was brought in under a law passed in July which for primary and junior schools also banishes tablets and smart watches.

High schools, which teach students aged 15 to 18, can introduce partial or total bans on electronic devices as they reopen after the summer break, though this will not be obligatory.

Proponents said the law, which has prompted vigorous debate, will reduce dis-traction in the classroom, combat bullying, and encourage children to be more physically active during recess.

Nearly 90 percent of French 12- to 17-year-olds have a mobile phone, and supporters hope the ban will limit the spread of violent and pornographic content among children.

Five dead as bus ploughs into Spanish bridge pillarAFP

MADRID: Five people died and 20 others were injured yesterday when a bus crashed into the pillar of a viaduct in northern Spain, authorities said.

The accident took place in Aviles in the Asturias region, a spokeswoman for emergency services said.

“Five people have died,” a spokesman for the central gov-ernment’s representative office in Asturias added — all of them passengers.

Among the 20 injured was the driver, who had to have a limb amputated, the spokesman said.

Photos published in local media showed the front of the bus split in half by the pillar.

The bus was travelling on a highway at the base of the viaduct when the accident hap-pened, the causes of which are still unknown.

It is the worst bus crash since March 2016, when 13

foreign students, most of them from Italy, died in a bus accident

in the northeastern region of Catalonia.

Civil guards survey the wreckage of a bus crash which left at least five people dead, in Aviles, Spain, yesterday.

12 TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018AMERICAS

Kavanaugh faces tough hearings in CongressAFP

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s newest Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is expected to face punishing questioning from Democrats this week over his endorsement of presidential immunity.

Some two dozen witnesses are lined up to argue for and against confirming Kavanaugh, who could swing the nine-member high court decidedly in conservatives’ favour for years to come.

Democrats have mobilised heavily to prevent his approval, arguing that while Trump faces investigation for alleged obstruction of justice and pos-sible collusion by his campaign with Russia, he should not be able to choose a judge who could cast a decisive vote in his case.

When Kavanaugh appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday for the first of up to four days of hearings, Democrats aim to show that his record as a judge and a former White House legal counsel is coloured by extremist views.

They are concerned about his views that the president should be immune from inves-tigation and prosecution while in office — issues that could come before the Supreme Court if Special Counsel Robert Mueller determines Trump violated laws.

Kavanaugh, a 53-year-old

conservative from a wealthy Washington suburb, has the backing of powerful right-wing judicial groups and deeply reli-gious — both of which are key constituents of the Republican voter base.

Kavanaugh began his career as a clerk to Anthony Kennedy, the justice long considered a critical swing vote on Supreme Court, who retired at the end of July.

In the 1990s, he worked with special prosecutor Kenneth Starr in his probe of president Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, which led to Clinton’s impeachment trial.

In 2001, he joined President George Bush’s White House legal team, where his role in key ter-rorism-related decisions.

As a US Court of Appeals judge in Washington for the past 11 years, Kavanaugh has ruled

and written on some of the nation’s most sensitive cases, including when he opposed the Affordable Care Act, the sig-nature health reform of Pres-ident Barack Obama that Trump has sought to dismantle.

“There is no one in America more qualified for this position and no one more deserving,” Trump said in announcing Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Kavanaugh’s record of court opinions and legal analyses shows a mainstream conserv-ative supportive of corporations against regulation, and — despite his work in the Clinton case — holding beliefs that a sitting president should not be distracted by legal proceedings against him.

“The elephant in the room on Tuesday is going to be the pres-ident’s implication as an unin-dicted co-conspirator in very, very serious criminal wrong-doing,” said Blumenthal.

He was referring to the assertion by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in a recent plea deal that then-can-didate Trump had directed him in late 2016 to make a payment to a film star in possible vio-lation of election law.

Democrats are also angry that the Trump administration has not released all the records of Kavanaugh’s work while he was in the White House.

But Republicans insist that his judicial history shows a fully qualified jurist able to see all sides of the law.

Some two dozen

witnesses are lined

up to argue for and

against confirming

Brett Kavanaugh,

who could swing the

nine-member high

court decidedly in

conservatives’ favour

for years to come.

Blaze destroys 200-year-old Brazil museumAP

RIO DE JANEIRO: A massive fire tore through a 200-year-old museum in Rio de Janeiro yesterday, lighting up the night and sending plumes of smoke into the air as firefighters tried to save historical relics from the flames.

The esteemed National Museum in northern Rio, which houses artefacts from Egypt, Greco-Roman art and some of the first fossils found in Brazil, was closed to the public at the time of the fire and there were no reports of injuries, it said in a statement.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the fire began. The museum said the blaze began around 7:30pm.

President Michel Temer said it was “a sad day for all Brazilians.”

“Two hundred years of work, investigation and knowledge have been lost,” Temer said in a statement.

According to the museum’s website, it has more than 20,000 items related to the history of Brazil and other coun-tries, and that many of its col-lections came from members of Brazil’s royal family.

Roberto Robadey, a spokesman for the fire department, said 80 firefighters were working to put out the blaze and that some pieces had been spared.

“We were able to remove a lot of things from inside with the help of workers of the museum”.

Connected to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the museum has expositions that include anthropology, archae-ology and paleontology, among others.

The vice director of the museum, Luiz Fernando Dias Duarte, said the museum suf-fered chronic underfunding.

“Everybody wants to be sup-portive now. We never had ade-quate support,” he said.

Latin America’s largest nation has struggled to emerge from its worst recession in decades. The state of Rio de Janeiro has been particularly hard hit in recent years thanks to a combination of falling world prices of oil, one of its major revenue sources, mis-management and massive corruption.

A massive fire engulfs the National Museum, one of Brazil’s oldest, in Rio de Janeiro, yesterday.

LatAm nations discuss migrant crisisAFP

QUITO: Ministers from a dozen Latin American nations began a two-day meeting in Ecuador yesterday on how they can cooperate to end the massive Venezuelan migrant crisis that has jolted the region.

Officials discussed calls for international funding for over-whelmed public services and whether to impose tighter restric-tions to curb migrant flows in the first concerted drive to agree a common policy on the crisis.

The two-day meeting is

scheduled to conclude with a joint statement today, the host Ecuador said.

“A regional effort will help our countries respond better to these situations, so that we can coordinate efforts and provide humanitarian assistance to people on the move,” Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Jose Valencia told reporters ahead of the talks.

Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have all called for more funding from developed countries to assist their utterly overwhelmed public services.

The three countries have

received the bulk of migrants flowing out of Venezuela.

The EU announced a $35m aid package on Friday to support Venezuelans both at home and in host countries.

Ministers from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico, Panama, Par-aguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay will be present at the Quito meeting, Ecuadoran officials said.

“Venezuela and its ally Bolivia have also been invited, but by late Sunday had not sig-nalled they would attend.”

Ministers from a dozen Latin American nations during a meeting on Venezuelan migrant crisis that has jolted the region, at the Foreign Ministry, in Quito, yesterday.

Trump lashes out at union leader on Labor DayAP

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump started his Labor Day with an attack on a top union leader, lashing out after criticism from AFL-CIO Pres-ident Richard Trumka.

Trump tweeted yesterday that Trumka “represented his union poorly on television this weekend.” He added: “it is easy to see why unions are doing so poorly. ”

The president’s attack came after Trumka appeared on “Fox

News Sunday” over the weekend where he said efforts to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement should include Canada.

Trumka, whose organisation is an umbrella group for most unions, said the economies of the United States, Canada and Mexico are “integrated” and “it’s pretty hard to see how that would work without having Canada in the deal.”

Trump said on Twitter that there was “no political necessity” to keep Canada in NAFTA. But

it’s questionable whether Trump can unilaterally exclude Canada from a deal to replace the three-nation NAFTA agreement, without the approval of Con-gress. Any such move would likely face lengthy legal and con-gressional challenges.

Trump administration nego-tiations to keep Canada in the reimagined trade bloc are to resume this week as Washington and Ottawa try to break a deadlock over issues such as Canada’s dairy market and US efforts to shield drug companies

from generic competition.Trump wants to get a trade

deal finalised by December 1.Trumka also said of Trump:

“the things that he’s done to hurt workers outpace what he’s done to help workers,” arguing that Trump has not come through with an infrastructure program and has overturned regulations that “will hurt us on the job.”

Asked about the low unem-ployment rate and economic growth, Trumka said “those are good, but wages have been down since the first of the year.”

“Gas prices have been up since the first of the year. So, overall, workers aren’t doing as well.”

Yesterday, Trump touted the economy, saying “Our country is doing better than ever before with unemployment setting record lows.” He added, “The Worker in America is doing better than ever before. Cele-brate Labor Day!”

The unemployment rate of 3.9 percent is not at the best point ever — it is near the lowest in 18 years.

REUTERS

LOS ANGELES: Eight people were shot at a San Bernardino, California apartment complex, including a 17-year-old boy who was in critical condition, police said yesterday.

Police in the Southern Cali-fornia city were unsure what motivated the shooting yes-terday in an outdoor common area where a group of people had gathered, said San Ber-nardino police spokesman Captain Richard Lawhead.

“Right now, nobody is coop-erating and providing us with

the information we need to help us locate a suspect or what led to the shooting or anything else,” Lawhead said in a phone interview.

Two people, including the 17-year-old boy, were hospi-talised in extremely critical con-dition, Lawhead said.

The conditions of the other six people were not immediately known. Victims were taken to three hospitals.

Police initially said 10 people had been hit by gunfire at the apartment complex, but Lawson later said a total of eight people had been shot. Police had

initially received conflicting reports, he said.

The shooting happened during a hot holiday weekend in San Bernardino, a city of more than 216,000 residents about 96km east of Los Angeles.

San Bernardino was the scene of a 2015 mass shooting in which a husband and wife killed 14 people and wounded 22 others before police shot the couple to death. The couple was inspired by IS extremists, authorities said.

There was no indication that the gunfire was in any way con-nected to the 2015 shooting.

Brazil court bans Lula poll campaign ads

8 hurt in gunfire at California apartment

REUTERS

BRASÍLIA : Brazil’s top elec-toral court has banned political campaign ads showing former president Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva as a candidate, according to a ruling made in response to a complaint by the Novo party.

Novo made the complaint after Lula appeared as a can-didate on a radio ad on Sat-urday, hours after the court,

known as TSE, barred the jailed former president from running in this year’s presidential race because of a corruption conviction.

TSE set a $123,000 real fine in case the order to remove Lula from the ads is breached.

Da Silva has been banned from running for president in October after months of com-motion that had tainted what is already the most unpredictable election in decades.

Tropical Storm Gordon forecast to gain strengthREUTERS

MIAMI: A tropical storm whipped the southern tip of Florida with high winds and rain yesterday and was forecast to gain strength as it passed over the Gulf of Mexico toward Louisiana, officials said.

Tropical Storm Gordon was forecast to drop as much as 20cm of rain in some areas of the US South still reeling from hurricanes a year ago.

The storm was generating winds of 72 kmh yesterdayas it steamed west-northwest at 27 kmh, National Hurricane Center Director Kenneth Graham said in a video briefing on Facebook.

“It looks like for the next three or four days we’re going to be having to really watch close,” Graham said, “and remember if you’re even inland you can get some of these heavy rainfall totals so now is the time to be prepared.”

Last year, hurricanes wal-loped Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, causing thou-sands of deaths, hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, massive power outages.

20 TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2018HOME

HIGH TIDE 12:30 – 22:15 LOW TIDE 04:30 – 19:45

Misty to foggy at places by early morning,

becomes hot and relatively humid day-

time, humid by night.

WEATHER TODAY

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum 32oC 38oC

FAJR

SHOROOK

03. 57 AM

05. 15 AM

11. 33 AM

03. 02 PM

05. 52 PM

07. 22 PM

ZUHR

ASR

MAGHRIB

ISHA

PRAYER TIMINGS Mathaf to host renowned Iraqi artist THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art will host a series of work-shops delivered by established Iraqi artist Salim Matkhour, who will introduce emerging talents, art teachers and university students to the techniques of watercolour painting.

The workshops are part of Mathaf’s popular Artist Encounters programme which invites artists to discuss art con-cepts and lead sessions that introduce participants to different creative proc-esses. The programme is one of several educational initiatives presented by Mathaf to provide art enthusiasts tools to appreciate the complexities of the visual language.

The three-hour workshops, which will be conducted in Arabic, will be held daily from September 23 to Sep-tember 27 from 4pm to 7pm at the Manara learning space inside the museum.

Based in Qatar since 1999, Salim Mathkour is an established figure in the country’s creative community and has previously exhibited in a number of locations in Qatar and beyond. Although his work appears to be inspired by daily life, the scenes are created as optimistic social and urban landscapes in opposition to the reality of conflicts that made him choose exile from his hometown of Baghdad. Salim has conducted several workshops in the past, where he introduced

participants to his dream-like artistic style, evident by his distinguished tech-niques and use of texture and colors.

Maryam Al Attiya, Head of Art Pro-grams Section at Mathaf, said: “Mathaf aspires to become a resource that introduces visitors to Arab artists and celebrates their contributions to the global art world. Thus, educational programmes are at the core of our community engagement initiatives. We are incredibly proud to host Salim Matkhour, an artist known for his unique style and poignant paintings.”

Since its launch, the Artist Encounters programme has been incredibly successful with emerging artists such as Fahad Al Maadheed and Eman Al Hidous leading sessions that

reflect their working styles and cre-ative processes.

The upcoming fall season is set to be a busy one for Mathaf. The museum has recently announced a series of ground-breaking exhibitions that shed light on key chapters of Arab modern art. Revolution Generation, curated by Abdellah Karroum, will introduce artists as vital actors of social change since the 50s when it opens on October 17.

In parallel, Mathaf will also present an exhibition by Mounira Al Solh, “I strongly believe in our right to be friv-olous,” curated by Hendrik Folkerts and Laura Barlow. In the series of drawings, the exhibition collects per-sonal histories and experiences that

emerge from the humanitarian and political crises in Syria and the Middle East.

Two Focus exhibitions will also be on view at the same time, continuing the in-depth display series dedicated to historical artists from the museum’s Collection. Fateh Al Moudarres: Colour, Extensity and Sense, guest curated by Sara Raza and JassimZaini: Represen-tation and Abstraction, curated by Fatma Mostafawi will introduce vis-itors to the two artists’ creative vision and the contexts that shaped their works.

Those interested to attend Artist Encounters may register through: h t t p s : / / f o r m . j o t f o r m .me/82441159475461

One of the paintings by Iraqi artist Salim Matkhour. RIGHT: Salim Matkhour during his work.

CMU-Q welcomes Class of 2022 THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q) welcomed the incoming students at the Class of 2022 convocation ceremony.

The first-year class is made up of nearly 100 students studying biological sciences,

business administration, com-puter science and information systems.

Dr. Amal Mohammed Al Malki delivered an inspiring address during the ceremony. “CMU-Q’s interdisciplinary approach to education will offer you many opportunities to reach your full potential. As you

embark on this new journey and take advantage of these oppor-tunities, keep in mind that your degree, important as it is, should not be the sum total of your life’s achievements. Look around you to see how you can tackle challenges within a local and global context, and strive to become an active agent

within your community.”Dr. Al Malki is the founding

dean of the College of Human-ities and Social Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. She was part of the CMU-Q faculty for more than a decade.

Michael Trick, Dean of CMU-Q, welcomed the class to the community and introduced the faculty members who will teach and guide them: “Throughout your academic journey, your professors will challenge you, inspire you, and teach you. Each class you take will be a window into a spe-cialised area of knowledge with your professors as your guides. And remember, one of the most valuable skills you will learn here is how to work as a team and make the most of every-one’s unique talents.”

This year, CMU-Q received a record number of applications from candidates living outside Qatar, resulting in an excep-tionally diverse class. Freshman students represent 26 nations, including the first students from Switzerland and Tanzania. About 40% of the Class of 2022 is Qatari.

CMU-Q is now accepting applications for students starting university in the fall of 2019. The students and staff of CMU-Q at the Class of 2022 convocation ceremony.

QA congratulates organisers of 18th Asian GamesTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Airways extends its congratulations to the organisers of the 18th Asian Games Jakarta Pale-mbang 2018 for providing a spec-tacular, star-studded closing ceremony to the prestigious compe-tition, featuring a host of Asia’s most celebrated dancers, musicians and artists at the Gelora Bung Karno (GBK) Main Stadium, Jakarta, September 2.

The national carrier of Qatar is proud to have been the Prestige Partner and Official Airline for the games, which saw the nation’s most talented athletes bring home a total of 13 winning medals including six Gold, four Silver and three Bronze, across several sporting events.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Exec-utive, Akbar Al Baker, said “Qatar Airways was delighted to see such a fitting end to the 18th Asian Games Jakarta Palembang 2018, which has been a successful and exciting tour-nament from start to finish. As the Prestige Partner and Official Airline of this world-class sporting event, Qatar Airways has been extremely proud to play such a significant part in uniting fans from around the globe, something which is central to the air-line’s belief in the power of sport and its ability to bring people together”.

“We now have the privilege of transporting more than 200 of our national athletes home to share the celebration of their incredible success with the people of Qatar,” he added.

This is the second time that Qatar Airways has sponsored the pres-tigious Asian Games; the multiple award-winning airline was also the

Official Airline of the 15th Asian Games Doha 2006, in what was the largest sporting event in the history of Qatar at the time.

The national team members at the Hamad International Airport before the departure to Indonesia for the 18th Asian Games Jakarta Palembang 2018.

Katara International Hunting and Falcons Exhibition starts todayTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The second edition of the Katara International Hunting and Falcons Exhibition (S’hail 2018) starts today at the “Wisdom Square” in the Cultural Village Foundation —Katara.

The five-day exhibition will host more than 150 participants from 20 countries. Exhibitors include companies that offer hunting weapons, tools manu-facturers, hunting trips agencies, restaurants, falconers and many more.

The exhibition also provides daily lectures about falconry and breeding falcons, delivered

by experts in this field, in addition to awareness lectures on safe hunting trips and overland safaris.

It is also an opportunity to introduce Qatari culture and heritage to international visitors displaying a main element of the heritage of Qatari ancestors related to hunting and falconry. Falcon auctions will be also carried out during the exhi-bition with new breeds intro-duced to the local market. The organising committee of the exhibition has allocated QR30,000 in prizes for the best display booth and best falcon mask, in a bid to support hand-icrafts in this field.

One of the displays at S’hail 2018 which starts today at the “Wisdom Square” in the Cultural Village Foundation — Katara.