GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978

BUSINESS | Page 1

In brief

WEDNESDAY Vol. XXXX No. 11302

September 11, 2019Muharram 12, 1441 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

QP, partners celebrateAdriatic LNG terminal 10th anniversary in Italy

SPORT | Page 1

QATAR | Blockade

Implications for rights situation in the region

BRITAIN | Politics

Aft er battle with MPs,UK PM seeks Brexit deal

ASIA | Environment

Forest-fi re hazeblankets SE Asia

ARAB WORLD | Accident

More than 30 dead inKarbala stampede

Qatar has said the continuation of the imposed blockade and the discriminatory unilateral coercive measures, without accountability, will foster a culture of impunity for the violators and will have far-reaching implications for the future human rights situation in the region. This came in a speech by Qatar’s Permanent Representative to the UN, ambassador Ali Khalfan al-Mansouri, during a general debate at the Human Rights Council about the High Commissioner’s oral update. Page 2

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted yesterday he was working hard to strike a divorce deal with the European Union, after he suspended parliament following a series of bruising clashes with MPs over his Brexit plan. The day after meeting Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin, Johnson held talks with his Northern Irish allies in London — all key players in the race to secure a deal before Britain’s EU exit on October 31. Page 11

Huge fires are raging across vast swathes of Indonesia’s rainforests — some of the world’s biggest — with toxic smog shutting hundreds of schools in Southeast Asia, off icials said yesterday. Massive jungle areas in Sumatra and Borneo islands are ablaze as thousands of personnel battle to quell the fires, frequently started to clear land for crop plantations. Burning forests to make way for farming is also thought to be behind the enormous fires currently ripping through the Amazon in South America. Page 9

More than 30 pilgrims were killed and dozens injured yesterday in a stampede at a major shrine in the Iraqi city of Karbala on the day of Ashura. It is Iraq’s deadliest stampede in recent history during Ashura. Iraq’s health ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr said the death toll could rise as 10 of the wounded were in critical condition. Outside the Al-Hussein Medical City in Karbala, paramedics wheeled wounded people into the emergency room throughout the afternoon. Page 7

Goalie Sandhu the hero as India hold Qatar goalless

Qatar, Gambia keen to cement tiesQNADoha

As part of strengthening bilateral relations and strategic partner-ships between Qatar and the

African continent, Gambian President Adama Barrow began a three-day of-fi cial visit to Qatar yesterday.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani is sched-uled to meet with President Barrow at the Amiri Diwan today to discuss ways to enhance bilateral relations in vari-ous fi elds, besides issues of common concern.

The visit refl ects the desire and keenness of both countries to cement and expand the bilateral relations, which have been witnessing out-standing development and promising growth for years in various fi elds.

The diplomatic relations between

Qatar and Gambia began in 1978 through non-resident representation, which was developed later with the opening of embassies in each other’s countries.

The relations have been further developed, especially at the level of mutual visits, exchange of views, co-ordination and consultation on issues of common concern. Qatar and Gam-bia have signed many agreements and MoUs.

They include agreements between the foreign ministries, in the fi eld of workforce, maritime navigation, avoidance of double taxation and pre-vention of fi nancial evasion related to income taxes, economic, cultural, commercial and technical co-opera-tion, and air services, and promotion and mutual protection of investments.

The MoU concerns the develop-ment of co-operation between the two countries in all educational and

scientifi c fi elds, including higher edu-cation, scientifi c research and tech-nology through universities and in-stitutions in both countries. There is a twinning arrangement between Doha Municipality and Banjul City Munici-pality.

Qatar participated in the Interna-tional Conference to Support Gambia, hosted by the European Commission in Brussels last May. The conference was devoted to support national de-velopment after the election, which was won by President Barrow and the international donations amounted to 1.45bn euros.

To fulfi l its commitments to the Brussels Conference, Qatar and Gam-bia signed a $3mn grant agreement at the Qatar embassy in Banjul last Octo-ber. The agreement seeks to promote transitional justice and the rule of law and establish a comprehensive democ-racy in the Gambia. Page 2

Amir chairs SC board meeting

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani chaired the sec-

ond meeting of the Board of Direc-tors of the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy of 2019 at the Amiri Diwan yesterday.

The meeting was attended by His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani, His Highness Sheikh Jas-sim bin Hamad al-Thani, Per-sonal Representative of the Amir and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors.

HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, Prime Min-ister, Minister of Interior and board member, and the other board members also attended the meet-ing.

The latest developments of the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar projects and the security opera-tional plan of FIFA Club World Cup which will kick off in De-cember, were reviewed during the meeting.

Qatar condemns Netanyahu’s

plan to annex Jordan Valley

QNADoha

Qatar has condemned in the strongest terms the announce-ment of the Israeli Prime Min-

ister Benjamin Netanyahu about his plan to impose Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea in the West Bank if he is re-elected on September 17.

In a statement yesterday, the Min-istry of Foreign Aff airs stressed that this declaration was an extension of the occupation’s policy of violating international laws and exercising of all despicable methods of displacement of the brotherly Palestinian people and depriving their rights without morality or conscience.

The statement reiterated Qatar’s fi rm rejection of infringement on the rights of the brotherly Palestinian peo-ple to achieve electoral gains, stressing that the occupation’s continued con-

tempt of international laws and the imposition of the logic of force and de facto, will completely eliminate the chances of peace.

The statement reiterated Qatar’s fi rm and permanent stance in support of the Palestinian cause and the steadfastness of the brotherly Palestinian people, based on the resolutions of international legiti-macy and a two-state solution to ensure the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Reuters adds from Jerusalem: Netanyahu announced his intention to annex the Jordan Valley, a large swathe of the occupied West Bank, if he wins a closely contested election just a week away.

Palestinian chief peace negotiator Saeb Erekat called the planned move a war crime under international law governing occupied territory. Israel captured the West Bank in a 1967 war and Palestinians seek to make the area part of a future state. Page 7

Trump fi res national security chief BoltonAFPWashington

US President Donald Trump yes-terday announced the fi ring of hawkish national security ad-

viser John Bolton, a move widely seen as boosting the president’s push to negotiate with US foes in Afghanistan, North Korea and other trouble spots.

Trump, who said he’d disagreed “strongly” with Bolton on policy, an-nounced via Twitter “I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning.”

A replacement — the White House’s fourth national security chief in less than three years — would be named next week, Trump said.

Bolton, who had been due to give a press conference at the White House less than two hours later, denied be-ing fi red and insisted instead that he’d resigned.

The news, coming days after Trump caused uproar by revealing he was cancelling secret talks with Af-ghanistan’s Taliban, stunned Wash-ington.

Bolton is a veteran and controversial fi gure closely linked to the invasion of Iraq and other aggressive foreign pol-icy decisions. He had been seen as one of the main driving forces in the White House’s muscular approach to Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere.

Famous for his large moustache and ever-present yellow legal pad, the hardline former US ambassador to the United Nations had pushed back against Trump’s dramatic, though so far stumbling attempts to negotiate with the Taliban and North Korea’s Chairman Kim Jong-un.

Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller talks about the new iPhone 11 Pro during a special event yesterday at the Steve Jobs Theatre on Apple’s Cupertino, California campus. Apple unveiled its iPhone 11 models, touting upgraded, ultra-wide cameras as it updated its popular smartphone lineup and cut its entry price to $699. Business Page 5

Apple unveils new iPhone 11

UN expert lauds Qatar’srights record, benefi cenceBy Shafeeq AlingalStaff Reporter

A United Nations independent expert has lauded Qatar’s con-tinuing eff orts to ensure the

rights of all and improve human rights standards, while also praising the country for the distinguished role it has played to enhance global solidarity.

Obiora C Okafor, UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and Interna-tional Solidarity, made the observations at a press conference in Doha yesterday while presenting his preliminary fi nd-ings at the end of his mission to Qatar.

Okafor referred to Qatar’s achievements in the health and edu-cation sectors, thanking the coun-try for its achievements in human rights, including economic, cultural and social rights. He also highlighted Qatar’s positive global contribution to development and humanitarian aid and its support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

He also thanked Qatar, which gave him the opportunity to visit as an of-fi cial UN envoy and an independent expert in the fi eld of human rights and international solidarity.

He noted that Qatar has given a number of international experts and specialists, as well as representatives

of diff erent international bodies, the chance to visit the country and host-ed conferences across various fi elds. This confi rms the country’s promi-nent role in international solidarity and its signifi cant contributions in this fi eld, he added.

Okafor praised the laws that were recently enacted in order to further increase the compatibility of Qatar’s legal framework with international human rights standards. “Over 85% of Qatar’s population and over 92% of its labour force are migrant work-ers. The government has committed to improvements and the 2018-2022 technical co-operation agreement with the International Labour Or-ganisation is an example of this en-gagement,” he explained.

The offi cial praised the removal of the exit visa requirement for migrant workers and the new minimum wage, calling it a step in the right direction. “Steps are taken to instate a higher and non-discriminatory permanent minimum wage.” To Page 20

UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity Obiora C Okafor at the press conference. PICTURE: Anas Khalid

Bolton..... sacked

QATAR

Gulf Times Wednesday, September 11, 20192

Envoy calls for UN action on rights abuses reportQatar has said the con-

tinuation of the imposed blockade and the dis-

criminatory unilateral coercive measures, without account-ability, will foster a culture of impunity for the violators and will have far-reaching implica-tions for the future human rights situation in the region.

This came in a speech by Qa-tar’s Permanent Representa-tive to the UN, ambassador Ali Khalfan al-Mansouri, during a general debate at the Human Rights Council about the High Commissioner’s oral update.

Ambassador al-Mansouri said more than two years after the blockade, its repercussions of human rights abuses persist and continue to hope that the Offi ce of the High Commissioner will act to stop these abuses reported by its technical team that visited Doha in November 2017.

He thanked the High Com-missioner for the oral update presented to the Council at this session, stressing the co-opera-tion of Qatar with the commis-sioner and the members of the offi ce.

Ambassador al-Mansouri said Qatar shares the commis-sioner’s views on the impor-tance of addressing the human rights risks as a result of the climate change and the human

activities that cause them.He stressed the interest of Qa-

tar in this regard, recalling the principle of common but diff er-entiated responsibility and the importance of international co-operation in technology transfer and capacity building to address these risks.

Ambassador al-Mansouri stressed that the introduction of a human rights perspective in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goal 7, and other relevant goals, would reduce the negative impacts of climate change and optimise the use of resources.

On the Syrian issue, ambas-sador al-Mansouri expressed concern over the military esca-lation of Syrian and pro-Syrian forces in Idlib province, which caused the death of thousands of civilians and the displacement of hundreds of thousands, indicat-ing that it is clear that Syrian and pro-Syrian forces are continu-ing their military strategy that begins with targeting civilian fa-cilities such as hospitals, schools and residential areas, and then it implements its military op-tion which disregard the amount of human losses and the human tragedy it causes.

He called on the international

community to act swiftly to pre-vent this situation from worsen-ing, and to put pressure to stop this criminal campaign that tar-gets civilians in the fi rst place.

On Afghanistan, the ambassa-dor stressed that Qatar believes that there is no military solution to the confl ict in Afghanistan, adding that Qatar will continue its eff orts and good offi ces to bring the views of the Afghan parties closer, as well as sup-port rounds of talks between the United States and the Taliban, while expressing hope that these eff orts will culminate in achiev-ing lasting peace and ending decades of war and suff ering.

On the Palestinian issue, al-Mansouri expressed Qatar’s strong condemnation for the continued construction of il-legal Israeli settlements and its violation of Palestinian rights, along the violence perpetrated by the Israeli entity (the occu-pying power) and the Israeli set-tlers on a daily basis against the Palestinian people, and the poli-cies of robbery and confi scation of land, the policies of intimida-tion, demolition and displace-ment, and the unfair blockade of the Gaza Strip that are in serious violation of relevant interna-tional resolutions and treaties.

The ambassador stressed the importance of ending the policy of impunity and holding all Is-raeli offi cials accountable for human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories.

QNAGeneva

Ambassador Ali Khalfan al-Mansouri

Gambia President Adama Barrow arrived in Doha yesterday on a three-day off icial visit to Qatar. He was received upon arrival at Hamad International Airport by HE the Minister of Municipality and Environment Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki al-Subaie, Qatar’s ambassador to Gambia Faisal bin Fahad Abdullah al-Mana and Gambia’s ambassador to Qatar Foday Mulang.

Gambian president arrives in Doha

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad met HE the Attorney-General Dr Ali bin Fetais al-Marri in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. During the meeting, they discussed a number of issues related to the rule of law, combating corruption and judicial co-operation between the two countries in a number of criminal cases and joint work in this field. The meeting was attended by Qatar’s ambassador to Malaysia Fahad bin Mohamed Kafood.

Malaysian PM meets attorney-general Amir

condoles with king of Morocco

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani

and His Highness the Dep-uty Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani sent yesterday cables of condo-lences to King Mohamed VI of Morocco on the victims of the overturned bus in Er-rachidia province in eastern Morocco.

HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani also sent yesterday a cable of condo-lences to Moroccan Prime Minister Saad Eddine El Othmani on the victims of the overturned bus in Er-rachidia province in eastern Morocco.

The Commander of Amiri Guard, Major General Hazza bin Khalil al-Shahwani, met with National Gendarmerie of Italy Commander-General (Carabinieri) Giovanni Nistri, during a visit of the Amiri Guard commander to Rome yesterday. During the meeting, they discussed topics of common interest.

Amiri Guard commander meets Italian official

SC-contracted workers benefi t from electronic medical records system

The Supreme Com-mittee for Delivery & Legacy (SC), the

organisation responsi-ble for delivering tourna-ment infrastructure for the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar, has announced that all of its contracted work-ers are now registered with an integrated electronic medical records system - a fi rst-of-its-kind healthcare initiative in Qatar.

The SystmOne software is provided by leading UK electronic health records supplier, The Phoenix Part-nership (TPP) and delivers a ‘one patient, one record’ ap-proach. This enables medi-cal professionals in diff erent locations to view workers’ records so that their health can be monitored and man-aged more effi ciently. The software is also used to support the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).

A total of 29,648 workers - across fi ve stadium sites - have now been registered under the system, launched in February 2018. It enables faster detection of health risks, identifi cation of

health trends and provides data for targeted health campaigns. Patients also have access to their records, in Qatar and abroad via TPP’s patient application which provides continu-ity of healthcare while ena-bling workers to better un-derstand and manage their health status.

All SC workers registered on the system are undergo-ing a comprehensive medi-cal screening carried out by Qatar Red Crescent (QRC) and funded by the SC. The results form part of the centralised medical records,

which can be accessed by clinics at the stadiums and accommodation sites, as well as QRC-operated health centres.

Commenting on the im-pact of the initiative, Has-san al-Thawadi, secretary-general, SC, said: “This is an excellent initiative which further demonstrates our commitment to workers’ welfare. We continually look to embrace new tech-nologies and innovations to enhance the welfare of our workers, and believe that the SC’s successful imple-mentation of this technol-

ogy will provide a legacy of best practice in this fi eld.”

Ashley Brook, TPP Mid-dle East director, said, “TPP is proud to be working with the SC to ‘deliver amaz-ing healthcare services’ for workers through being the fi rst integrated health record system for the con-struction sector in Qatar and the region. Our part-nership is aimed at deliver-ing all the benefi ts of better care, better information and better access to improve the health and well-being of the workforce.”

Mahmoud Qutub, ex-ecutive director for the SC’s Workers’ Welfare Depart-ment, said: “The lack of an automated system was identifi ed as a challenge a few years ago and an inte-grated electronic medical records system was key to enhancing our healthcare standards. We are delighted that our entire workforce now has electronic medical records, ensuring health is-sues are detected as early as possible, and that the right healthcare plan is put in place for our workers.”

A total of 29,648 workers - across five stadium sites - have now been registered under the system, launched in February 2018.

QATAR3Gulf Times

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

$4.5bn worth of projects awarded in Qatar in H1By Peter AlagosBusiness Reporter

Projects worth $4.5bn have been awarded in Qatar in the fi rst six months

of 2019, while just under $5bn worth of contracts are currently undergoing the bidding process, according to a recent report.

“More than $23bn” worth of projects “are in the design stage and expected to come out for bid over the next 24 months,” while projects valued at “more than $46bn” are currently in the study stage, indicating “a healthy pipe-line of construction activity” in the country, stated the MEED Projects report commissioned by ‘The Big 5 Construct Qatar’.

The country’s long-term vi-sion for 2030 and preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup “continue to see increased con-struction demands,” said the report, which was disclosed yes-terday during the announcement of the second instalment of The Big 5 Construct Qatar organised by dmg events from September 23-25 at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre (DECC).

According to dmg events, The Big 5 Construct Qatar is backed by its strategic partner, Qatar Na-tional Tourism Council (QNTC). “Renewed support to the coun-try’s premier construction event comes in the backdrop of a suc-cessful launch in 2018, which fa-

cilitated business opportunities and international investments in Qatar’s $75bn construction project market,” it continued.

Speaking at the press confer-ence, dmg events president Matt Denton said: “With a mission to support the expanding require-ments of Qatar’s construction, transport, and infrastructure sectors, the event is proud to

serve its strategic objectives and Qatar National Vision 2030.”

“It is a great honour for The Big 5 Construct Qatar to receive once again the patronage of HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani,” he continued.

During the press conference, Denton was joined by dmg events

country manager Loubna Agh-zafi , Ahmed al-Obaidli of the Qatar National Tourism Council (QNTC), Ali al-Marri of Taleb Group, and Al Darwish Engineer-ing Group Development manager Ali Chahrour.

Al-Obaidli said, “The business events sector is an important pillar of QNTC’s wider strategy to develop tourism in Qatar. We

value the contribution of busi-ness event organisers such as dmg events (Doha) in attracting both international and regional business players to the country.

“Construction professionals from around the world will be able to witness the opportunities generated by Qatar’s mission to create world-class infrastructure for citizens, residents, and visi-tors.”

Al-Marri said, “Our company always endeavours to accomplish high levels of quality service and aff ord innovative solutions. This is part of our mission to support the pillars of Qatar National Vi-sion 2030.”

Chahrour added: “Al Darwish Engineering has always been a contributor to the construc-tion sector. We are continuously improving our delivery through performance measurement and benchmarking to meet the de-manding and ever changing needs of our clients.”

dmg events said the 2019 edi-tion of the event will host 150 exhibitors from 20 countries, and will also provide industry profes-sionals with learning opportuni-ties from over 35 free Continuing Professional Development (CPD) certifi ed courses.

In 2018, over 5,000 construc-tion professionals attended and received a CPD-certifi cation at the inaugural edition of the show, which welcomed more than 12,000 visitors.

dmg events president Matt Denton (centre) is joined by (from left) Al Darwish Engineering Group Development manager Ali Chahrour, dmg events country manager Loubna Aghzafi, Ahmed al-Obaidli of the Qatar National Tourism Council, and Ali al-Marri of Taleb Group during the press conference. PICTURE: Shemeer Rasheed

Report gives upbeat forecast on Qatar construction marketBy Peter AlagosBusiness Reporter

Qatar’s construction and infrastructure market is set to pick up in 2019 and

accelerate in 2020 and 2021, a summary of reports by The Big 5 Construct Qatar and MEED Projects has showed.

The report was distributed yesterday to media during a press conference announcing the second edition of ‘The Big 5 Construct Qatar’, which will be held at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre (DECC) from September 23-25.

According to the report, which was commissioned by The Big 5 Construct Qatar, the value of the country’s construc-tion projects market “is close to $75bn.” “At $4.5bn, the value of work awarded in the fi rst six months of this year is more than half the total for 2018 as a whole, providing evidence that the market is rebounding posi-tively,” the report said.

MEED Projects also report-ed that there are hundreds of future construction projects in Qatar ranging from small “$10mn boutique hotels to mul-ti-billion-dollar master planned projects.”

“Of the $75bn of construction projects in the pipeline in the state, the largest portion at 68% are defi ned as being mixed-use. This means they are a combina-tion of residential, commercial and retail,” stated the report. Further, the reported stated that

“more than $23bn” of future projects “are in design stage, indicating that they are due to come out to contractors to bid over the next 24 months or so.”

“Longer term, there are more than $46bn worth of projects in the study stage, highlighting the healthy pipeline of project ac-tivity,” it continued.

According to the report, the top three largest projects in the country are the $9bn new city development around Hamad International Airport, which, it stated, “is the largest construc-tion project in the pipeline.” Similarly, the expansion of the Al Udeid Air Base is the “second largest project with a value of $1.8bn,” followed by four iconic towers at Lusail.

The report stated that with “one of the world’s highest GDP per capita, immense gas wealth, and the prospect of the FIFA 2022 World Cup looming, the Qatar market off ers a stable and lucrative opportunity in the years ahead.”

“The state is spending tens of billions of dollars on sport, transport, and tourist infra-structure to ensure the penin-sula is ready in time for the mas-sive infl ux of players, offi cials, and supporters during the event.

“There has been healthy in-vestment in world-class muse-ums and outdoor public spaces, new hotel infrastructure, and an expansion of the Hamad In-ternational Airport in order to accommodate the increase in visitors to the state,” the report added.

Ooredoo virtual store 1st in world launched by telecom operator

Ooredoo has announced that its recently launched virtual store was the

fi rst-of-its-kind to be launched by any telecommunications op-erator in the world.

The virtual store, a revolution-ary 3D retail experience available online to customers from wher-ever they are, has been a success so far, with in excess of 10,000 customers using it in the fi rst few weeks.

Created by Plug & Play and Ooredoo, the virtual store of-fers customers the opportunity to browse and buy products and smart watches, as well as Oore-doo services as if they were actu-ally in one of the many Ooredoo retail shops across the country.

The online retail experience is 360 degree and completely interactive, allowing customers to learn about the products and services in which they are inter-ested. It is also fully integrated with online e-commerce, so pur-chases can be made as and when customers have selected their

chosen products, accessories, and services. In line with Oore-doo’s goal of complete digitalisa-tion, the new virtual store is ac-cessible online from any mobile device, smartphone, tablet, or laptop, as well as a regular desk-top computer.

Ooredoo Qatar CEO Waleed al-Sayed said, “We are im-mensely proud that our new virtual store is a fi rst for any tel-ecommunications company, not just in Qatar and the Mena, but in the world.

Achieving complete digitali-sation is a huge priority for us as part of our corporate strategy, as is remaining at the forefront of technology and development, and we are proud to be a pioneer in virtual retail. “We’re delighted so many of our customers have embraced the new service, and we look forward to serving many more from our virtual store in the near future.”

Customers can access the new Ooredoo virtual store at oore-doo.qa.

HMC expands premium delivery of medical reports

QNADoha

Patients requesting cop-ies of their medical report from Al Wakra Hospital,

The Cuban Hospital and Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital will now be able to have them deliv-ered by Qatar Post to their home as part of premium services off ered to patients by Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).

This service is already avail-able at Hamad General Hospital, Rumailah Hospital, Heart Hos-pital, and the National Center for Cancer Care and Research (NCCCR) and provides patients with the option to request Qa-tar Post deliver their medical reports to their doorstep, for a small fee.

“We received very positive feedback from patients about the convenience and reliability

of the new service. Under the new service, patients only have to visit the hospital once — to request their report — and then HMC and Qatar Post take care of the rest,” said Nasser al-Naimi HMC’s Deputy Chief of Quality, Center for Patient Experience and Staff Engagement and Di-rector of the Hamad Healthcare Quality Institute.

Al-Naimi explained that the day before the agreed deliv-ery date, a Qatar Post customer service representative will call the patient to confi rm the deliv-ery time and location.

Then on the agreed date and time, a Qatar Post representa-tive will deliver the report and collect a delivery fee of QR50 in cash.

Al-Naimi said the new de-livery system will be rolled out to other HMC hospitals in the coming months, benefi ting even more patients.

Katara hosts two exhibitions in Qatar-India Year of CultureQNADoha

The Cultural Village Foun-dation – Katara has opened two art exhibi-

tions in Building 18. The fi rst expo is the Fine Art Exhibition by the Qatari artists Mohamed Junaid, Aisha al-Mohannadi and Indian artist Mahesh Ku-mar, and the second is for the photography exhibition by a group of Qatari and Indian pho-tographers, in co-operation

with the Youth Hobbies Cent-er. The two exhibitions, which were unveiled on Monday, are part of the Qatar-India 2019 Year of Culture.

The Fine Art Exhibition dis-played great artistic experi-ences of artists Mohamed Ju-naid, Aisha al-Mohannadi and Mahesh Kumar, who conveyed various images of Indian rich cultures and human heritage.

In this regard, Mohamed Jun-aid’s drawing of faces from In-dia features a close connection with the land and tells diff erent

stories, saying faces always tell stories, even if they don’t pro-nounce them, some of them tell stories of struggle and some of them tell stories of sadness and pain and some that tell stories of love and joy.

Aisha al-Mohannadi’s paint-ings, however, highlighted the historical depth of the eco-nomic and trade relationship between Qatar and India, and stressed that her works are in-spired by the old relations be-tween the two countries.

Among the most important

types of trade between them is the trade of tea, spices and oud fragrance.

For his part, the Indian art-ist Mahesh Kumar presented paintings of realistic feature, adding touches to the beauty of ancient buildings and places to tell visitors the stories that re-lated to the magnifi cence and richness of charming India.

The photography exhibition, which is organised by Katara in co-operation with the Youth Hobbies Center, includes about 50 paintings by a number of Qa-

tari and Indian photographers, who shed light on several shots from India and Qatar, both in terms of faces and features or customs, traditions or land-scapes.

The two exhibitions will last until September 28. They are among the various Indian ex-hibitions and events hosted by Katara within Qatar-India 2019 Year of Culture events that aim to strengthen the relations be-tween the two countries by in-viting the public to discover the two cultures.

QCS awareness campaign on childhood cancers focuses on importance of early detection

Qatar Cancer Society(QCS) has launched a campaign

named ‘Fadetcom’ to raise awareness about childhood cancers. September is marked as Childhood Cancer Aware-ness Month each year to em-phasise the importance of early detection.

Dr Hadi Mohamed Abu Rasheed, head, Professional Development and Scientifi c Research Department, QCS said, “In 2016, according to Qatar National Cancer Regis-try, there were 42 children un-der 15 years old diagnosed with cancer in Qatar and 62% of the cases were males, and 38%

were females. Furthermore, 38.1% of the cases were Qa-taris, while 61.9% were non-Qataris.”

Most common cancers among children in Qatar are leukaemia accounting for 42.86% of all childhood cancer cases in Qatar and brain and central nervous system which represents 11.9% of all child-hood cancer cases.

Heba Nassar, head of Health Education Department at QCS – said that environmen-tal radiation, radiation during pregnancy, excessive exposure to the ultraviolet radiation are risk factors and some of child-hood cancers are caused by

some viral infections. Other causes are active or passive smoking during pregnancy or during the period prior to con-ception and inherited genetic abnormalities.

Early signs and symptoms of childhood cancers are con-tinued, unexplained weight loss; headache often with early morning vomiting; increased swelling or persistent pain in bones, joints, back or legs; lump or mass, especially in the abdomen, neck, chest, pelvis, or armpits; development of excessive bruising, bleeding, or rash; constant infections; a whitish colour behind the pu-pil among others.

QCS launches campaign to raise awareness about childhood cancers.

QNL lecture series mark Literacy Day

Qatar National Library (QNL) marked Interna-tional Literacy Day with

a series of public lectures high-lighting the importance of a lit-erate world.

The theme of International Literacy Day 2019 was ‘Literacy and Multilingualism’, recognis-ing that embracing linguistic di-versity in education and literacy development is central to ad-dressing literacy challenges and to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In keeping with the theme, the library hosted International Literacy Day: Our Children and Books on September 7, attended by parents, educators and pro-fessionals in the area of child de-velopment.

The event sought to emphasise the importance of establishing an early relationship with books to give children a head start on the path of lifelong learning.

The lecture focused on early childhood development and highlighted how children are naturally drawn towards printed material.

Senior librarians presented simple but eff ective ideas on how to build a home library and tips to encourage reading throughout

everyday family life. Participants learned how to evaluate and un-derstand diff erent books and to appropriately support their chil-dren in selecting reading mate-rial.

On September 8, the library presented a lecture in collabo-ration with the Qatar National Commission for Education, Cul-ture and Science. In ‘Literacy and Multilingualism: Future Pros-pects,’ Dr Hassan Ali Diba ad-dressed Qatar’s eff orts to combat illiteracy while highlighting the importance of learning languag-es throughout history.

He also discussed the impact of technological progress on the literacy of future generations. The lecture was followed by an introduction to the Mango Lan-guages interactive database, which provides step-by-step lessons in more than 70 languag-es, including Arabic, Spanish, French and Russian.

Saleh Hamad al-Nabet, a high school student who attended the lecture, said: “The lecture gave me insights on how to improve my English skills by using the Mango Languages application and other online resources pro-vided by the library for free to members.”

A QNL session in progress.

QATAR

Gulf TimesWednesday, September 11, 20194

‘Eff ective communication vital for addressing major issues’

Gulf Times editor-in-chief Faisal Ab-dulhameed al-Mudahka has under-scored the importance of communi-

cation in dealing with a number of political, social, and other issues in a discussion with journalism students at Northwestern Uni-versity in Qatar (NU-Q) yesterday.

Al-Mudahka was invited by NU-Q’s Journalism and Strategic Communication Programme director Mary Dedinsky, also Associate Professor in Residence, to speak about how a media company such as Gulf Times works and on content production, including “how important news, sports and feature stories are,” among others.

In his speech, al-Mudahka cited the crit-ical role that diff erent media organisations in Qatar play such as Al Jazeera Media Net-work, as well as Gulf Times (the fi rst English newspaper in the country), in delivering the right message to the public on several issues, particularly in the Arab world.

He stressed that communication also played a key role in Qatar’s eff orts to foster peace and stability in the region, including mediating in the Lebanon crisis and host-ing a recent peace talks between the United States (US) and the Taliban.

The US-Taliban talks, which started on June 29 in Doha, was aimed at finding a lasting peace and stability in Afghani-stan. He explained that communication served as an effective tool for Qatar to successfully counter the various narra-tives and accusations spread by block-

ading countries since June 5, 2017. Qatar Media Corporation also plays a

signifi cant role as a platform for the coun-try to push its message about its contribu-tion globally, particularly in the political arena. About opportunities for journalism graduates in the media industry, al-Mu-dahka noted that several media organisa-tions, including newspapers (online news), off er promising careers for talented candi-dates.

He pointed out that the advent of mod-ern technology, Internet (search engines), the social media and artifi cial intelligence, is continuously creating more jobs.

“Nowadays, two to three people can get together and create something,” the editor-in-chief said. “And I see a lot of intelligent and talented people here.”

Such platforms, he added, has the ability to reach more audience than the conven-tional way of circulating a certain number of newspaper copies – a reason for media outlets to invest in smart technologies. Al-Mudahka also highlighted the importance of editorial independence saying that most media companies and institutions in Qatar, including Gulf Times, are privately-owned and generate their own income.

He said Gulf Times is in the process of building its social media and smart tech-nology platforms, as well as collaborating with various organisations, to further gen-erate valuable content for its readers and followers.

Gulf Times editor-in-chief Faisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka with NU-Q’s Journalism and Strategic Communication Programme director Mary Dedinsky, during a discussion with students at NU-Q yesterday. PICTURE: Ram Chand

UNRWA offi cial praises Qatar’s support to agencyQNACairo

Commissioner General for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine

Refugees (UNRWA) Pierre Krahen-buhl said the State of Qatar and Kuwait among others, made gener-ous donations to UNRWA in 2018, enabling the agency to keep its 58 camps open to Palestinian refugees, and called for continued generosity.

This came during the opening of the 152nd Session of the Arab League Council at the Ministerial Level, which began earlier yesterday.

Krahenbul said that there was an unprecedented campaign against the agency to delegitimise the Pal-estinian refugee issue, calling for an easy renewal of UNRWA’s mandate by the UN General Assembly.

He added that he has never seen this fi erce targeting towards any hu-manitarian organisation nor the de-nial of the rights of an entire refugee community.

Krahenbul said UNRWA crisis is not over yet, despite international eff orts to counter US funding cuts.

He added that some are trying to dismantle the refugee issue, al-though the international commu-nity has preserved its recognition of refugees in numerous international resolutions. He added that the big-gest misrepresentation is to repeat that Palestinian refugees are the only refugees in the world whose descendants are refugees.

He said that under internation-al law and the principle of family unity, children and children of any refugee, whether Afghan, Somali or Congolese, are considered refugees provided by the UN, which is not limited to the Palestinians.

He said that the attacks on the agency were aimed at erasing the

idea of a two-state solution and the Arab Peace Initiative.

He added that the UN agency operations in Jerusalem are under constant pressure and face ongo-ing interventions from the Israeli municipality, and the Israeli entity’s challenge to the activities of a UN-mandated agency is an attempt to annex East Jerusalem and is illegal under international law.

Krahenbul said that standing by UNRWA in Jerusalem is of utmost

importance and is a key measure to protect human dignity and maintain stability.

He added that despite the chal-lenges, thanks to the participa-tion of host country partners, in particular with the contribution of Jordan and the support of Pal-estine and Lebanon, the agency has been able to make progress.

Pierre Krahenbuhl called for ensuring the same support for the agency in 2019, and that the

Agency’s course in the coming years should be adequately pro-tected, noting that UNRWA’s budget was $1.2bn for all its ac-tivities and it had reduced the funding shortfall from $211mn to $120mn.

Qatar’s delegation to 152nd Session of the Arab League Council at the Ministerial Level is headed by HE the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi.

HE the Minister of State for Foreign Aff airs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi met yesterday with Commissioner General for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Pierre Krahenbuhl, on the sidelines of the 152nd Session of the Arab League Council at the ministerial level in Cairo. During the meeting, they reviewed co-operation between the State of Qatar and UNRWA and issues of common concern.

Challenges ‘facing region need collective action and solidarity’QNA Cairo

HE the Minister of State for Foreign Aff airs Sul-tan bin Saad al-Muraikhi

has underlined that the Arab na-tion stands at a critical juncture, which is rife with many political, economic and security challenges that threaten its present and fu-ture and which requires collective action, not individual action, soli-darity, not division, determination and will, and not frustration and regression.

Addressing the Arab League’s 152nd ordinary session at the min-isterial level yesterday, the minister said that in the midst of these chal-lenges and dangers, the central is-sue, the Palestinian issue, is facing attempts to liquidate it, by circum-venting its foundations and refer-ences, which have been the subject of international consensus over the past decades, under the pretext of mysterious deals and initiatives contrary to international legiti-macy.

He referred specifi cally to the resolutions of the Security Coun-cil, the United Nations and the in-ternational reference for the peace process, the most important of which is the two-state solution, the principle of land for peace and the Arab peace initiative adopted in 2002, which gained international status as a framework for a solu-tion.

The minister reiterated the State of Qatar’s fi rm position on the his-toric rights of the Palestinian peo-ple, in an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital and the right of refugees to return to their areas and considers any departure from these constants a violation of international law, reminding that the historical, legal and human rights of the Palestinian people are not a bargaining chip, and no party has the right to waive them under any pretext.

On the humanitarian aspect, the minister said the State of Qa-tar will continue to provide hu-manitarian assistance to the Pal-estinians, as well as its support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refu-gees in the Near East (UNRWA) to perform its tasks and to meet the needs of Palestine refugees in

light of the challenges they face.On the situation in Syria, the

minister stressed that the State of Qatar strongly condemns the re-cent massacres committed by the Syrian regime forces in the coun-tryside of Idlib, which have claimed the lives of children and women, and the destruction caused to many cities and villages in the region as a result of the continuous shelling, which was a clear violation of the Astana ceasefi re agreement in the de-escalation zone in Idlib.

The minister stressed the fi rm commitment to maintain Syria’s sovereignty, stability and territo-rial integrity, noting that the State of Qatar believes that the only pos-sible solution to the Syrian crisis is a political solution based on par-ticipation of all Syrian parties, to meet the aspirations of the Syrian people, according to the Geneva Communique of June 30, 2012, and on the basis of the resolutions and statements issued in this regard, in particular Security Council resolu-tion 2254 of 2015.

The minister called on all to abide by agreements or procedures that saves unarmed civilians and helps bring humanitarian aid and health services to besieged areas, while adhering to the principles of international humanitarian law to protect civilians.

On the Yemeni issue, al-Mu-raikhi said that the State of Qatar follows with great sorrow and sad-ness the military developments and bloody confrontations in Aden and Abyan.

The war on Yemen has prolonged, and the humanitarian tragedy has deepened in a way that cannot be overlooked and the recent devel-opments were a clear indication of the futility of war, and the continu-ation of interfering with the capa-bilities of the Yemeni people.

He called on all parties con-cerned to stop the war and spare the Yemeni people further human suff ering.

The minister also stressed Qa-

tar’s fi rm stance on the need to fi nd a peaceful political solution to the crisis to maintain Yemen’s unity, independence and territorial in-tegrity, in accordance with the Gulf Initiative and the outcomes of the National Dialogue in Yemen Janu-ary 2014, May 2015 Declaration and the Security Council resolution 2216.

He said Qatar has urged the in-ternational community to assist the brotherly people of Yemen to overcome the circumstances, and to take all measures to address the grave humanitarian situation and facilitate humanitarian access to all areas. The minister said that the State of Qatar, out of its keen-ness to alleviate the unprecedented human suff ering of the brotherly Yemeni people, continues to abide by its humanitarian and moral duty to provide various types of support and humanitarian assistance.

The minister said: “I would like to refer to the announcement by His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, dur-ing the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly in Sep-tember 2018, to allocate $70mn for Yemen as well as the announce-ment in February 2019 of the sup-port of the United Nations hu-manitarian response plan in Yemen amounting to $27mn in addition to the total assistance that the State of Qatar has been providing in recent years, which amounted to more than $600mn.’’

In light of the tense and escalat-ing situation in Libya, the minis-ter reiterated Qatar’s support for the UN mission’s efforts to find a solution to restore legitimacy, and called on all parties to stop military actions that might hinder the political process, urging the regional powers and the interna-tional community to work to stop the bloodshed and the search for a peaceful solution, while warning that interference in Libyan affairs further complicates the crisis, preventing the national consensus

sought by the Libyan brothers and contrary to Security Council reso-lutions.

“It is regrettable that this coun-cil has not yet been able to meet the request of the legitimate govern-ment in Libya to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the explosive situation there and its serious re-percussions on its unity,” the min-ister said.

The minister added that the State of Qatar reaffi rms its support for the Skhirat Agreement in the Kingdom of Morocco, signed in De-cember 2015 and all its outcomes, and to support the internationally recognised legitimate government to achieve the aspirations of the brotherly Libyan people to restore security and stability.

Regarding the developments in Sudan, the minister congratulat-ed the Republic of Sudan and the Sudanese people on signing the constitutional document and the formation of the new government headed by Dr Abdullah Hamdok.

He said that these steps are im-portant in achieving the aspira-tions of the Sudanese people for freedom, peace and justice and in building a state of institutions and law.

The minister also reiterated Qa-tar’s fi rm stance in support of the unity, stability and sovereignty of Sudan.

On Somalia, the minister said that the State of Qatar reaffi rms respect for the sovereignty, unity, political independence and terri-torial integrity of Somalia, and its continued support for the Govern-ment of Somalia and the brotherly Somali people.

Qatar calls for the full imple-mentation of the resolutions of the League of Arab States in support of Somalia, both at the summit and ministerial levels, to realise their hopes and aspirations and to en-sure a prosperous future for coming generations, the minister added.

In conclusion, the minister said the dangers and challenges facing our Arab nation require all of us to show responsibility and work to-gether to confront them, by resolv-ing our diff erences based on the principle of dialogue and respect for the sovereignty and independ-ence of states and non-interference in the internal aff airs of any state, and away from division and hatred among people.

HE the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi addressing the Arab League’s 152nd ordinary session at the ministerial level has reiterated the State of Qatar’s firm position on the rights of the Palestinian people

QATAR5Gulf Times

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

QU launches 17th cycle of Al Bairaq programmeQatar University’s (QU) Al

Bairaq programme, under the university’s Centre

for Advanced Materials has an-nounced the launch of the 17th cycle of its “I am a Researcher” track, coinciding with the start of the new academic year.

The track, which started on September 5 and is now on its 9th consecutive year, is designed for Qatari high school seniors and aims to engage and stimulate student curiosity about science.

A large number of senior stu-dents in various Qatari secondary schools participated in this year’s symposium. It helps transform high school students to researchers by working within a university en-vironment, alongside experienced professors in the fi eld of research.

Young researchers also benefi t from the opportunity to experi-ence and qualify through the un-dergraduate experience.

The track familiarises students to the broad fi elds of science and improves their knowledge in var-ious scientifi c disciplines.

Consequently, students are aided in choosing appropriate university specialisations.

Through diligent work and a series of theoretical workshops, applied scientifi cally and practi-cally, in a scientifi c environment, students are instilled with the fundamentals to perform scien-tifi c research.

This cycle accommodated stu-dents from four private and pub-lic schools: Al-Arqam Academy for Girls, Qatar Banking Studies and Business Administration In-dependent Secondary School for Boys, Al Maha Academy for Boys and Doha Independent Second-ary School for Boys.

Al Bairaq programme president and head of communication and outreach at QU, Dr Noora Jabor al-Thani, told the event that research is of great importance in solving problems through the combination of knowledge, observations and data, leading to creative solutions and innovative products, which can help individuals, industries and countries to transform theories into practical applications.

Dr Noora expressed gratitude and praised Al Bairaq’s sponsors, Ras Laff an Industrial City Com-munity Outreach Programme and Unesco Offi ce in Doha and

Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science.

Al Bairaq is the only Qatari ed-ucational programme which won

the ‘Reimagine Education’ award for last three consecutive years.

Al Bairaq is the fi rst and only educational programme in Qatar

that won the WISE Innovation Award for Education in 2015.

A group of students with off icials at the launch of the programme.

Jumbo rebrands loyalty programme as Mukafa

Jumbo Electronics has revamped its loyalty programme and re-branded it as Mukafa, meaning

‘rewards’ in Arabic.The new name for the loyalty pro-

gramme also brings with it a new premium design card for members, the company has said in a press statement. The programme was for-merly known as Jumbo Digits.

Earning and redeeming points under the loyalty programme has now become easier. For every QR1 spent at a Jumbo showroom, cus-tomers can earn one Mukafa point, while every 100 points is equal to QR1 when it comes to redemption.

Apart from the new look, Mukafa also comes with a host of other ben-efi ts, the statement notes.

Its membership is free and does not involve any joining fees.

Customers can also expect prior-ity delivery within 24 hours for their purchases, while those shopping on their birthday or anniversary will get a special bonus of 5,000 Mukafa points valid for the same day.

An additional discount of 2% can be availed for all purchases made on JumboSouq.com. Also, members can earn double points during Jum-bo’s Mega Promotion.

In addition, Mukafa card holders are entitled to a 30% discount on labour charges and 5% discount on spare parts for any repairs.

“Our loyalty programme goes be-yond just earning and redeeming

points, it is our way to appreciate and thank our loyal customers and make eff orts to delight them. Hence, we decided to revamp the programme with a name that aptly refl ects this feeling,” said Sajed Jassim Mohamed Sulaiman, vice-chairman and man-aging director, Jumbo Electronics.

Mukafa can also be used for gifting purposes and is best suited for cor-porates and individuals. The mem-bership card can be used to shop from a wide range of electronics and appli-ances at Jumbo Electronics.

Existing members under the Jum-bo Digits loyalty programme will

automatically migrate to the new Mukafa loyalty programme and will be able to avail of all its benefi ts.

Customers wanting to register under Mukafa can do so by visiting any Jumbo Electronics, LG Brand shop and the Harman House show-room in Qatar.

WISH to co-host symposium on religion and medical ethicsThe World Innovation Summit for

Health (WISH), an initiative of Qatar

Foundation and the Vatican’s Pontifi-

cal Academy for Life have announced

a joint symposium titled ‘Religion and

Medical Ethics: Palliative Care and the

Mental Health of the Elderly’, to be

held in Rome on December 11-12.

The first day of the symposium will

focus on palliative care and provide

an overview of current practices in

Qatar and the Arabian Gulf region in

comparison to Western practices.

The sessions aim to highlight the

existing gaps in modern scholarship

on this topic, and investigate ways to

tackle the ethical challenges found at

the intersection of palliative care and

religious bioethics.

Among the sessions will be a dis-

cussion on Muslim and Christian com-

monalities in approaches to palliative

care that will highlight diff erences,

with the aim of better informing inter-

faith approaches to medical care.

These sessions will emphasise the

important role of interfaith chaplaincy

in hospice palliative care.

Discussions and presentations on

the second day of the symposium

will focus on the mental health of

the elderly. Speakers and delegates

will examine the significant potential

benefits of religion and spirituality

in improving elderly patients’ well-

being and quality of life, and explore,

from an interfaith perspective, the

opportunities and challenges related

to improving quality of life through

religiously-informed mental health

service provision.

Further topics being discussed

across the two days include the pal-

liative care of children, and suicide

among the elderly.

Representatives of QF partner

university Georgetown University in

Qatar and QF member Hamad Bin

Khalifa University’s Research Centre

for Islamic Legislation and Ethics will

be among those speaking at the event.

The academic partners for the

symposium will be the BMJ, which will

be represented at the event by editors

of its Journal of Medical Ethics.

Sultana Afdhal, CEO of WISH, said:

“WISH was founded to help build a

healthier world through global col-

laboration. We greatly appreciate this

opportunity to work closely with the

Pontifical Academy for Life to bring

experts together in Rome who can help

shine a spotlight on important issues at

the intersection of religious and medi-

cal ethics and that deeply aff ect people

of faith at critical times in their lives.”

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia,

president of the Pontifical Academy

for Life, said: “This meeting is very im-

portant for us. Palliative care and the

health of the elderly are two specific

themes of great interest to our Acad-

emy; engaging in a dialogue with the

Islamic world responds to the specific

mandate entrusted by Pope Francis to

the Pontifical Academy.

“Pope Francis has asked us to ar-

ticulate an anthropology that sets out

the practical and theoretical premises

for conduct consistent with the dig-

nity of the human person, and ensure

that the tools are made available for

critically examining the theory and

practice of science and technology, as

they interact with life, its meaning and

its value.”

The off icials talk about the symposium.

Qatar expresses concern about human rights violations against Yemeni peopleQNAGeneva

The State of Qatar expressed deep con-cern about the serious human rights violations and crimes committed

against the Yemeni people by all parties in-volved in the confl ict, as well as the failure of the warring parties to abide by international humanitarian law, causing tens of thousands of deaths and injuries, including thousands of children and women.

This came in a speech by the Permanent Representative of Qatar to the UN and other international organisations ambassador Ali Khalfan al-Mansouri during an interactive di-alogue on the report of the High Commission-er on the situation of human rights in Yemen in the 42nd session of the Human Rights Council.

Al-Mansouri welcomed the report by a group of eminent international and regional experts on Yemen, calling for lifting of all im-posed diffi culties and restrictions of access to Yemen to enable them to best fulfi l their mandate. He said the situation in Yemen has become aimless, and all military operations taking place in the country have deteriorated dramatically and increased instability in the country and the region.

The report said about 80% of the Yemeni people, more than 24mn people, need humani-tarian assistance to survive, al-Mansouri added.

He called on all parties to stop these futile wars as the price is being paid by Yemeni vic-tims and they contribute to the dismantling of its social fabric, the destruction of its in-stitutions and the deterioration of economic and humanitarian conditions.

Al-Mansouri also called on all Yemeni parties to implement the political solution and the outcome of the comprehensive na-tional dialogue which was agreed by political forces and all spectra of the Yemeni people.

He also lauded the eff orts of the special envoy of the UN secretary-general to Yemen.

Al-Mansouri also called for an end to the embargoes that prevent humanitarian aid, medicines, water and food, and urged con-tinued eff orts to alleviate the human suf-fering of the Yemeni people. He stressed the importance of achieving accountability and ending impunity for those responsible for violations and crimes committed in Yemen.

He called on the Human Rights Council to pro-vide the necessary support to the experts team, requesting them to submit periodic reports to the council and strengthen their mandate to combat impunity by continuing to gather evidence of al-leged violations and protecting them.

Qatar participates in GCC meet in Muscat

The State of Qatar participated in the 21st meeting of the undersecretar-ies of ministries of justice of the Gulf

Co-operation Council (GCC), being held in Muscat. Qatar was represented by HE the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice, Sultan bin Abdullah al-Suwaidi.

Speaking to Qatar News Agency, he said that

the 21st meeting of the GCC justice ministries’ undersecretaries is a continuation of eff orts to lay the foundations and pillars of the GCC com-mon legal and judicial renaissance and identify the most appropriate systems and principles to the reality of the Gulf society in order to improve the performance of the legal and judicial insti-tutions in the GCC States. — QNA

Jumbo Electronics vice-chairman and managing director Sajed Jassim Mohamed Sulaiman (third from right) and director and CEO C V Rappai (third from left) unveil the new Mukafa loyalty card in the presence of A Hameed A Rahman H A Mohamed (second from left), a longstanding customer, and other off icials of Jumbo Electronics.

Barwa to lease out Al Baraha spacesQNADoha

Barwa Real Estate has announced the completion of the construc-tion of warehouses and work-

shops of Barwa Al Baraha project and will be leased from mid-September. The total land area of the project is 684,134sq m and is located within the Barwa Al Baraha project behind Labor City in Industrial Area (No 91).

The total construction area of the project is about 193,000sq m and in-cludes 561 warehouses with an area of 300sq m for each warehouse and 118 workshops with an area of 144sq m for each workshop.

Barwa Real Estate Group vice chairman and managing director Issa bin Mohamed al-Mohannadi praised the project that serves the Qatari market and comes within the frame-work of support for entrepreneurs and owners of small and medium en-

terprises, which have an important and strategic place in the national economy system and constitute one of the most important sectors on which the Qatari market is betting in achieving economic diversifi cation.

Al-Mohannadi also said that Barwa Real Estate is always working on studying projects that serve and support the urban and economic de-velopment of the country by provid-ing competitive prices to reduce the rent prices in the local market.

The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Aff airs has issued the Qatari calendar for 1441 Hijri (2019/2020) Doha time.The calendar, prepared by the Islamic Research and Studies Department at the ministry, will be distributed to the public at Sheikh Ali bin Abdullah Al-Thani library at Umm Ghuwailina, from 9-11am. The new calendar includes climatic conditions for every month in addition to prayer timings.

Awqaf ministryreleases calendarfor 1441 Hijri

AFRICA

Gulf Times Wednesday, September 11, 20196

Zimbabwe hospitals fi ght against Mugabe’s legacyBy Beatrice Debut, AFPHarare

For Zimbabwe’s doctors, few institutions refl ect their country’s decay under

Robert Mugabe than their public hospitals, once vaunted but now under-equipped and crumbling.

Latex gloves serve as urine bags, operating rooms lack light bulbs and patients are often re-quired to refuel their own ambu-lances, medics say.

Mugabe, who died last week in Singapore at age 95, may have swept to power as a liberation hero, but his rule was marked by economic collapse that left his people scrambling to survive.

Zimbabwean doctors note the symbolism of Mugabe seeking treatment 8,000km from home

in Singapore’s gleaming Glenea-gles clinic, where the cheapest suite costs around US$850 a day.

“It is very symbolic that the former president who presided over all the system for three dec-ades can’t trust the health system,” said Edgar Munatsi, a doctor at Chitungwiza, 30km from the capi-tal Harare. “It says a lot about the current state of our health system.”

Mugabe’s death has left many debating the legacy of a man who ended white minority rule and was initially lauded for advances in public health and education.

In his nearly four-decade rule, Mugabe later brutally repressed opponents and oversaw a cata-strophic mismanagement of economy that led to hyper-infl a-tion, food shortages and misery.

Mugabe was not alone in seek-ing overseas care.

Current Vice President Con-stantino Chiwenga is away for several weeks of treatment in China.

It is not hard to see why.In Chitungwiza hospital, a

glowing sign promising ‘Quality Health’ welcomes patients, but conditions inside say otherwise: Operations are often cancelled for lack of anaesthesia, Munatsi says.

The hospital recently issued an internal memo warning its poor-ly-paid staff against “eating food made for patients.”

The situation is equally dra-matic in paediatrics at Harare Central Hospital, one of Zimba-bwe’s top clinics.

Cleaning is done only twice a week, for lack of staff and deter-gents, doctors told AFP.

The operations are often post-

poned for lack of running water and nursing staff , in a country mired for two decades in eco-nomic crisis.

“In theatre, we have linen full of blood and faeces and you can’t do the laundry,” said one doctor.

He requested anonymity, like many of his colleagues, for fear of reprisals from President Emmer-son Mnangagwa’s government.

Only one of three paediatric operating rooms at the central hospital is working.

“We have a four-year waiting list for inguinal hernias, the most common condition in children,” says one of the specialists. With-out treatment, this hernia can cause male infertility.

Drug shortages, obsolete equipment and lack of staff : the mix is sometimes deadly.

“It is heart-breaking when you

lose patients who are not sup-posed to die under normal cir-cumstances,” Munatsi said.

Since the early 1990s, the public health system has stead-ily deteriorated, whereas before, people came from overseas to be treated in Zimbabwe, recalls one senior doctor.

That is a legacy of the Mugabe years as the country was tipped into endless economic crisis — three-digit infl ation, currency devaluations, and shortages of commodities.

In hospitals, patients and loved ones who experience the situa-tion daily, are resigned.

“It’s pathetic,” says Saratiel Marandani, a 49-year-old street vendor who had to buy a dressing for his mother.

Given her age, she should re-ceive free healthcare.

But the reality is starkly diff er-ent. “Only the consultations are free (...) if you need paracetamol, you need to buy it yourself.”

His mother will have to do without the ultrasound she needs.

At Z$1,000 or 100 euros, it’s beyond his reach.

Doctors say they sometimes have to pay out of their own pocket for patients’ medica-tion, or even just their bus ticket home.

At Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare, Lindiwe Banda lays pros-trate on her bed.

A diabetic, she was given the green light to go home ... but on the condition that she paid her bill.

“But I do not even have Z$4 (less than one euro) to pay for the transport,” she said in tears.

“I can’t reach my relatives. I think they have dumped me. They don’t have money, but they should show some love”.

If hospitals and patients are penniless, doctors too cannot es-cape Zimbabwe’s ruin.

Medics have just begun their latest protest to demand a pay rise after salaries lost 15 times their value in a few months and consumer prices spiralled out of control.

“We are incapacitated,” says Peter Magombeyi, a doctor whose salary is the equivalent of 115 euros a month — a pittance that requires him to do odd jobs to get by.

“We are very aware” of the problems, says Prosper Chonzi, the director of health services in Harare. “The health system re-fl ects the economy of the country.”

Nigerians in South Africa accept free evacuationsReutersAbuja/Cape Town

At least 640 Nigerians have signed up to take free fl ights home from South Africa af-

ter xenophobic attacks on foreign-ers, a spokeswoman for Nigeria’s president said yesterday.

The fl are-up in violence directed against mainly African foreign-ers has been widely condemned by South Africa’s neighbours and has caused a diplomatic dispute be-tween Nigeria and South Africa, the continent’s top two economies.

Private Nigerian airline Air Peace plans to operate two fl ights with Boeing 777 aircraft, the fi rst leav-ing Lagos yesterday night to return today with evacuees. The plane can carry about 300 passengers.

President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday had called for the im-mediate voluntary evacuation of all Nigerians wanting to return home, and Air Peace off ered free fl ights last week.

“A private citizen who owns an airline has off ered to evacu-ate Nigerians from South Africa who want to leave, and obviously

there are immigration rules that go with that, so its a process,” Ayanda Dlodlo, South Africa’s Minister of State Security, told reporters in Cape Town.

Zimbabwe’s Foreign Minister Si-busiso Moyo told reporters in the capital Harare that the government planned to evacuate 171 people from South Africa, including the bodies of two people.

Moyo added that Harare would “escalate” the evacuation if the situation deteriorated and he was seeking support from international organisations to help those aff ect-ed.

In the latest outbreak of xeno-phobic violence in South Africa, deadly riots last week in Pretoria and Johannesburg killed at least 12 people including two foreigners, and targeted foreign-owned busi-nesses.

The root causes of the latest se-ries of attacks are unclear, although analysts suggest stubbornly high unemployment and grinding pov-erty were fuelling criminality.

In Katlehong, a township around 35km south east of commercial hub Johannesburg, 755 foreign nation-als including 228 children are being

cared for at community centres af-ter fl eeing violence.

“While there has been a signifi -cant decline in the number of inci-dents, police forces remain on high alert and are closely monitoring hotspots to ensure further violence does not erupt,” Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said.

Police have arrested 653 peo-ple in connection with the attacks, mostly South African but including foreigners, police minister Bheki Cele said.

South Africa does not know how many undocumented foreigners are in the country of 58mn people.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh and Ethiopia topped the list of countries where people applied for asylum or refu-gee status in 2018.

Nigeria placed seventh with 948 people applying for refugee status and zero accepted, said Home Af-fairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi.

Retaliatory attacks in Nigeria forced South African businesses to shut down for several days, and South Africa temporarily closed its embassy on safety fears. Buhari will visit South Africa next month to ad-dress the attacks and seek a solution.

A woman holds a food plate at the Tsolo Community Hall in Johannesburg’s Katlehong township, where around 250 people, mostly Zimbabwean and Malawian nationals, have taken refuge after a new wave of anti-foreigner violence that hit South Africa’s financial capital.

FBI, Nigeria intensify cybercrime probesAFPLagos

The FBI and Nigeria’s anti-graft agency said yesterday they have intensifi ed a joint

investigation into cyber criminal networks, weeks after the US gov-ernment released a wanted list of 77 Nigerian cyber fraud suspects.

A “sweep” operation from May through to September, with Niger-ia’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), “focused on dismantling the most signifi cant cyber criminal enterprises,” FBI legal attache, Ahamdi Uche told a joint press conference in Lagos.

The EFCC said a “sizeable number” of the 77 Nigerian suspects had been arrested, while a further 167 Nigerians had been detained since August for alleged computer-related fraud, under ‘Operation Re-wired’, coordinated with the US law enforcement agency.

“Our eff orts in coordinating the EFCC/FBI joint operations in Nigeria recorded tremendous successes”, against “the infamous Yahoo Yahoo boys (nickname given to Nigerian internet fraud-sters)”, the EFCC’s director of in-formation, Mohamed Abba said, referring to fraud attempts via Yahoo mail accounts. “We have also recovered from the arrested fraudsters the sum of $169,850 as well as the sum of 92mn naira.”

Africa’s most populous country is saddled with an infamous repu-tation for online fraud committed by so called “yahoo yahoo” boys. Numerous fi gures associated with the criminal activity are of-ten lauded in popular culture and enjoy close ties with politicians.

In May, a popular Nigerian musician, dubbed Naira Mar-ley, controversial in Nigeria for praising internet fraudsters in his songs, was arrested by the EFCC.

Last month an indictment, re-leased by the US Attorney Gener-al’s offi ce in California, revealed 80 people suspected for fraud and money laundering off ences amounting to $46mn. In all, 77 of the 80 suspects were of Nigerian decent, and swiftly condemned by Nigeria’s government.

A spokesperson for President Muhammadu Buhari told local re-porters “the government would not stand in the way of the justice system” and that ordinary Nigerian “should not be tagged ‘fraudulent people’ for the misdeeds of a few.”

The FBI begin working closely with Nigeria’s anti-graft agency in May 2019, as well as with sev-eral other countries, to tackle fraud networks active in the US.

“In 2018, (US agencies) received 20,373 business email compro-mise complaints with losses of over more than $1.2bn,” Uche said, leading to a “an uptake of focused law enforcement activity.”

REGION/ARAB WORLD7Gulf Times

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Russia carried out air strikes on militant targets in northwestern Syria yesterday for the first time since it declared a truce on August 31, a war monitor said. The truce, which brought a halt to four months of devastating air and artil-lery bombardment by the Syrian government and its Russian ally, had held despite persistent skirmishes on the ground. “Russian aircraft carried out two strikes on positions held by militant groups in the Kabani district of Latakia province which borders Idlib,” the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, said.

At least four cases of cholera have been confirmed in Sudan’s Blue Nile state and three people with acute watery diarrhoea have died, the Health Ministry said yesterday, The ministry said it had identified 37 people with acute watery diarrhoea between Aug 28 and Sept 8 and that three of them have died. It was not immediately clear when they died or if they had cholera. Cholera can cause severe acute watery diarrhoea. The four cases of cholera identified were found when a ministry-run laboratory analysed six samples. There are no off icial statistics on cholera in Sudan and the extent of its prevalence is unknown.

New Sudan prime minister Abdalla Hamdok will head to South Sudan for peace talks between the ruling sovereign council and rebel leaders, the information minister said yesterday.Faisal Saleh told reporters after the cabinet’s first meeting that Hamdok, in his first foreign visit, would join five members of the ruling sovereign council in the South Sudanese capital Juba on Thursday. Sudan’s transitional government has made peacemaking with rebels fighting Khar-toum one of its main priorities as it is a key condi-tion for the country’s removal from the United States’s sponsors of terrorism list.

Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun yesterday urged Washington to help mediate a solution to a mari-time border dispute with Israel, as Beirut looks to start off shore oil and gas exploration. Aoun made the request during talks with US Assistant Secretary of Near Eastern Aff airs David Schenker, who is on a two-day visit to Lebanon as part of a regional tour. Schenker recently replaced David Satterfield, who had shuff led between Lebanon and Israel in recent months, in an eff ort to reach a settlement on land and maritime border disputes. “Lebanon hopes that the US will continue its mediation eff orts..where things stopped with envoy David Satterfield,” Aoun said.

Britain said Iran had sold the oil cargo of tanker Adrian Darya 1 to Syria, breaking assurances it had given over the vessel which had been detained in Gibraltar for a suspected breach of European Union sanctions. The vessel, formerly named Grace 1, was seized by British Royal Marine commandos on July 4 on suspicion of being en route to Syria. Gibraltar released it on Aug 15 after receiving formal written assurances from Tehran that the ship would not discharge its 2.1mn barrels of oil in Syria. But Britain’s foreign off ice said in a statement yesterday it was clear Iran had breached those assurances and that the oil had been transferred to Syria.

Russian planes in first Syria strikes since truce: monitor

Four cholera cases confirmed in Sudan

Sudan’s PM to join peace talks in Juba with rebels

US urged to continue mediation on border dispute

Britain accuses Tehran of selling tanker oil

CONFLICT HEALTHDIALOGUE DIPLOMACY ALLEGATION

UN warns Israel over annexation plansAFP United Nations

The United Nations yes-terday warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu that his plan to annex the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank if re-elected would have no “international legal ef-fect.”

Netanyahu issued the deeply controversial pledge as he gears up for September 17 elections.

He also said Israel would move to annex Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank.

Such moves could eff ectively kill any remaining hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict, long the fo-cus of international diplomacy.

“The secretary-general’s po-sition has always been clear: unilateral actions are not help-ful in the peace process,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

“Any Israeli decision to im-pose its laws, jurisdictions and administration in the occupied West Bank is without any in-ternational legal eff ect,” the spokesman added.

“Such a prospect would be devastating to the potential of reviving negotiations, regional

peace, and the very essence of a two-state solution.”

The Jordan Valley accounts for around one-third of the West Bank, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War — a move never recognised by the interna-tional community.

Earlier, Netanyahu issued a deeply controversial pledge to

annex the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank if re-elect-ed. Palestinians immediately re-acted by saying Netanyahu was destroying any hopes for peace, while his electoral opponents accused him of a cynical play for right-wing nationalist votes with polls only a week away.

In his televised speech, the

prime minister also reiterated his intention to annex Israeli settle-ments in the wider West Bank if re-elected.

But he said he would do that in co-ordination with US President Donald Trump, whose long-awaited peace plan is expected to be unveiled sometime after the vote. “There is one place where

we can apply Israeli sovereignty immediately after the elections,” Netanyahu said during the ad-dress that included a map of the Jordan Valley on an easel next to him. “If I receive from you, citi-zens of Israel, a clear mandate to do so...today I announce my in-tention to apply with the forma-tion of the next government Is-raeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea.”

DESTROYING ‘ALL CHANCES OF PEACE’

Senior Palestinian offi cial Hanan Ashrawi said Netanyahu was “not only destroying the two-state solution, he is de-stroying all chances of peace”. She called it “worse than apart-heid”. Saeb Erekat, the chief Pal-estinian negotiator, said the an-nexation would be “manifestly illegal” and called on the inter-national community to act.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ay-man Safadi warned the move would “push the whole region towards violence”. Safadi said the “unilateral measures he (Netanyahu) proposes risk kill-ing off the entire peace process and pose a threat to peace and security in the region”.

Meanwhile, Arab foreign min-isters condemned Netanyahu’s plan. Netanyahu’s plan will un-dermine any chances of progress

in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters after a one-day meeting of Arab foreign minis-ters in Cairo.

Israeli settlements are located in what is known as Area C of the West Bank, which accounts for some 60% of the territory, in-cluding the vast majority of the Jordan Valley. Netanyahu said his annexation plans would not include Palestinian cities, such as the Jordan Valley’s Jericho, though it would be encircled by Israeli territory.

The premier, who used a map of the Jordan Valley to illustrate his plans, said Trump’s peace parameters “will place before us a great challenge and also a great opportunity”. “This is a historic, one-time opportunity to apply Israeli sovereignty on our set-tlements...and other places of importance to our security, our heritage and our future.”

Trump has thrown US support overwhelmingly in favour of Is-rael since taking offi ce, includ-ing by recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and cutting hun-dreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians.

Ahead of April elections, Trump recognised Israeli sover-eignty over the occupied Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the

1967 Six-Day War. It is unclear if Trump, who made clear before April’s vote that he would like to see Netanyahu win, will follow up with any further expressions of support before next week’s election. Netanyahu along with his right-wing and religious al-lies won a majority of seats in April polls, but he failed to form a coalition and opted for an un-precedented second election in fi ve months.

He is again facing a diffi cult challenge from ex-military chief Benny Gantz and his centrist Blue and White alliance.

Gantz, who has in the past spoken of keeping the Jordan Valley under Israel’s control for-ever, said “I have no doubt that this will be yet another empty promise because there is nothing behind it”. “In a week from now, we will replace this spin with ac-tions and deeds,” he said.

Right-wing nationalist votes will be key to Netanyahu’s eff orts to continue his reign as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.

“We understand that the prime minister has said that (annexa-tion) is the carrot of Trump’s plan, the question that remains is what is the stick, what will we have to give?” asked former justice min-ister Ayelet Shaked, who heads a union of far-right parties.

File photo shows a Palestinian man off ering water to goats and sheep in Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank.

More than 30 dead in stampede at Iraqi shrineAFP Karbala

More than 30 pilgrims were killed and dozens injured yesterday in a stampede at a

major shrine in the Iraqi city of Karbala on the holy day of Ashura.

It is Iraq’s deadliest stampede in recent history during Ashura, whose commemorative marches had pre-viously been targeted by extremist groups.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from around the world swarmed Kar-bala, around 100 kilometres south of Iraq’s capital Baghdad.

The packed processions of black-clad worshippers made their way to his gold-domed shrine, carrying fl ags and chanting.

As the massive crowds pressed for-ward, a stampede broke out that left at least 31 people dead and another 100 wounded, according to Iraq’s health ministry.

Ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr said the death toll could rise as 10 of the wounded were in critical condi-

tion. Outside the Al-Hussein Medical City in Karbala, paramedics wheeled wounded people into the emergency room throughout the afternoon.

“The pilgrims started falling down all of a sudden,” said a young man in a wheelchair who had been bruised around the eye and temple.

“They piled up one on top of the other. There was a stampede and peo-ple were suff ocating,” he said.

Authorities at the Imam Hussein

shrine said the nationalities of the vic-tims were not yet confi rmed.

Yesterday evening, Health Minister Alaa al-Din Alwan arrived in Karbala as messages began pouring in, with President Barham Saleh expressing his “deep condolences” to the victims’ families.

Streets across the country were shuttered yesterday to allow for funer-al-style processions and elaborate re-enactments of the Battle of Karbala.

Trump could meet with Iran’s Rouhani at UN with no preconditions: Pompeo

Reuters Washington

US Secretary of State Mike Pom-peo said yesterday that Presi-dent Donald Trump could meet

with Iranian President Hassan Rou-hani at the upcoming United Nations meeting, with “no preconditions.”

Pompeo made the comments at a news briefi ng to unveil new sanctions on groups including Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“He is prepared to meet with no preconditions,” Pompeo said when asked about the possibility of a meet-ing at the UN General Assembly later this month, echoing comments Trump made on Monday.

The Trump administration is ex-ecuting what it calls a “maximum-pressure” campaign to curtail any work by Iran toward developing nu-

clear weapons, using diplomatic and economic measures such as sanctions.

Trump’s abrupt fi ring of his national security adviser, John Bolton, indicates that the pressure strategy is failing, an adviser to Rouhani wrote in a tweet yesterday.

Rouhani has said Iran, which denies seeking nuclear weapons, would not talk to the United States until Wash-ington lifted the sanctions it had reim-posed on Tehran after pulling out of a 2015 nuclear deal.

But the White House has held fi rm on not conducting talks with preset conditions.

Meanwhile, the United States also said it was “totally unacceptable” for Iran to drag its feet in co-operating with the UN nuclear watchdog, which is seeking answers to issues that diplo-mats say include the discovery of ura-nium traces at an undeclared site.

The International Atomic Energy

Agency, which is policing Iran’s nucle-ar deal with major powers, has called in recent days on Iran to step up its co-operation, warning “time is of the essence”.

While the watchdog has declined to comment on what prompted the warn-ing, diplomats told Reuters inspectors had found traces of uranium at a site in Iran which Israel has described as a “secret atomic warehouse”.

“Any indication that Iran is provid-ing insuffi cient co-operation to the IAEA on a matter involving potential undeclared nuclear material or activi-ties raises serious and profound ques-tions,” the US statement to a quarterly IAEA Board of Governors meeting said.

“Iran’s failure to resolve the Agen-cy’s concerns on this matter is com-pletely unacceptable and should be of deep concern to all who support the IAEA and its safeguards verifi cation regime.”

Relatives of one of the victims of a stampede carry a coffin during the funeral in the holy city of Karbala, yesterday.

AMERICAS

Gulf Times Wednesday, September 11, 20198

A Coast Guard video grab of the 656ft vehicle carrier Golden Ray that overturned last week in the St Simons Sound near Brunswick, Georgia.

Hurricane Dorian’s rampage through the Bahamas last week killed at least 50 people, largely on the hard-hit Great Abaco Island, Carl Smith, a spokesman for the islands’ National Emergency Management Agency, told reporters. Evacuees, rescue workers and off icials widely expect the number to climb higher as more bodies are pulled from the rubble of a demolished neighbourhood in Marsh Harbour in Abaco. Some 70,000 people were in need of food and shelter, the World Food Programme estimated. Private forecasters estimated that some $3bn in insured property was destroyed or damaged in the Caribbean.

A Kansas resident was the sixth person to die in the United States of a mysterious respiratory illness related to vaping, state off icials said yesterday, as public health off icials scrambled to understand a nationwide health problem. “It is time to stop vaping,” Kansas State Health Off icer Dr Lee Norman Norman said in a statement. “If you or a loved one is vaping, please stop.” US public health off icials are investigating 450 cases of vaping-related lung illness across 33 states and one US territory. The nationwide investigation led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration has not linked the illnesses to any specific e-cigarette product.

Campaigning for Canada’s October 21 national elections will off icially kick off today, a government off icial told AFP. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is due to meet Governor General Julie Payette at 10am today and ask her to dissolve parliament. The election campaign can then off icially begin, although political leaders and parties have already started wooing voters with election ads, announcements and whistle stops in key battlegrounds across the country. Elected in 2015, Justin Trudeau and his Liberals will be battling for a second term against main rivals Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, Jagmeet Singh and his New Democrats, and the Greens’ Elizabeth May.

US President Donald Trump’s approval rating has dropped sharply amid growing public concern about the prospects of a recession, according to a Washington Post/ABC poll published yesterday. The health of the US economy is one of the central themes of Trump’s campaign for re-election to a second four-year term in 2020. The Post/ABC poll, however, found that Trump’s approval rating has dropped to 38%, from a career-high of 44% in July. Although 56% of those surveyed judged the state of the economy to be “excellent” or “good,” that is down sharply from a year ago when those favourable ratings stood at 65%.

Dorian’s death toll in Bahamas rises to 50

Kansas man 6th to die, vaping is main suspect

Canada parties to start vote campaign today

Trump ratings sink amid worries over economy

CAPSIZE NUMBER CRUNCHILLNESS POLITICS OPINION POLL

Years later, cancer cases linger over 9/11 anniversaryBy Catherine Triomphe, AFPNew York

Jacquelin Febrillet was 26 years old on September 11, 2001 when terrorist hijack-

ers fl ew two passenger jets into the World Trade Center just two blocks from where she worked.

Fifteen years after the attacks that day, Febrillet, by then a mother of three, was diagnosed with metastatic cancer.

The likely cause: a cloud of toxic ash that engulfed her.

“I was there (on) 9/11...For years I have been working down there every day since 9/11. We were never told that something could happen,” she says.

Unlike Febrillet, Richard Fahr-er, then 19, wasn’t in the area on 9/11, but he regularly worked as a land surveyor between 2001 and 2003 in south Manhattan, where the Twin Towers came crashing down.

Eighteen months ago, the young father, now 37, was diag-nosed with aggressive colon can-cer — a disease that usually af-fects older men and which there is no history of in his family.

Febrillet and Fahrer represent a growing category of patient who were living or working close to the World Trade Center in the

wake of the attacks, which killed almost 3,000 people.

They were not among the thousands of emergency person-nel who rushed to the site or who spent months clearing debris at Ground Zero, but their health is being similarly aff ected.

On the 18th anniversary of the attacks, New York continues to count the number of people who have developed cancer or other serious illnesses related to the toxic cloud that hovered over Manhattan for several weeks.

The 9/11 attacks released unprecedented amounts of chemicals into the air, including dioxins, asbestos and other car-cinogenic substances.

Firefi ghters, other fi rst re-sponders and volunteers who helped with the months-long clean-up were the fi rst to be af-fected.

Studies found they faced an increased risk of cancer and car-diovascular disease.

Ten thousand of them have been diagnosed with cancer by the World Trade Center Health Program, a federal treatment program helping survivors.

At the end of June this year, 21,000 people not considered fi rst responders were also in the program — twice as many as in June 2016.

Of these, almost 4,000 have cancer, the most common being prostate, breast and skin.

Febrillet, now 44, is one of them. She recalls that the mes-sage at the time was to get the city back to normal as quickly as possible.

“People were just going about their business a few days later. But look at what happened a few years later, people are dy-ing,” says Febrillet, who also lived close to Ground Zero.

Fahrer, too, laments that city offi cials did not do more to pro-tect residents and offi ce staff in the vicinity.

“My wife asks me, ‘Did terror-ists cause your cancer?’ I can’t say 100 %, but I do know there could have been better eff orts to limit the exposure of healthy adults from entering into the dis-aster area,” he says.

Health experts say it is im-possible to pinpoint exactly the cause of cancer in every patient, but note that there is a clear cor-relation between the rate and ex-posure to toxic debris.

Several studies have shown that the cancer rate “has increased be-tween 10% and 30%” among peo-ple who were exposed compared to those who weren’t, David Pre-zant, New York fi re department chief medical offi cer, told AFP.

The rate is expected to increase further, he said, as exposed peo-ple get older.

The risk of cancer increases with age and some cancers, in-cluding lung, can take 20 to 30 years to develop, Prezant added.

It is because of this that Presi-dent Donald Trump signed a bill in July that extends a deadline for vic-tims to fi le claims for compensation from December 2020 to 2090.

The Victim Compensation Fund will be regularly topped up after exhausting its initial budget of $7.3bn.

The average compensation per patient is $240,000, or $682,000 for a deceased person.

Lawyer Matthew Baione, who represents Fahrer and Febrillet in their pursuit of claims, said the extension recognized that it was appropriate to cover someone “who was a baby during the at-tacks for the rest of their life.”

“We have lost so many people, so many friends are sick,” says Febrillet

“You get to a point where you are not asking, ‘Have you seen so and so, I wonder how she is do-ing, is she retired?’

“Instead you are asking, ‘So how is the surgery, how is the treatment going?’ We are so young, this shouldn’t be hap-pening.”Manhattan resident Jaquelin Febrillet looks at the 9/11 Memorial on the old World Trade Center site.

Democrats up the ante with new gun billsBy David Morgan, Reuters Washington

US Democrats, looking to height-en their profi le on the hot-but-ton issue of gun control, pre-

pared to move forward yesterday with new measures to curb gun violence, while President Donald Trump also planned to huddle with Republican leaders.

The Democratic-led House of Rep-resentatives Judiciary Committee is expected to recommend three pieces of gun legislation for a full House vote, more than a month after gun safety surged back to the forefront of US pub-lic debate in the wake of back-to-back mass shootings in Texas and Ohio.

The bills are part of a coordinated strategy between House and Senate Democrats to put pressure on Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to allow a vote on gun-related bills in-cluding background check legislation that passed the House in February.

So-called red fl ag legislation that would allow courts and law enforce-ment offi cials to remove guns from people deemed a risk to communities is among the bills that the House Judici-ary Committee will consider.

The panel is also due to take up a measure that would ban high-capacity ammunition magazines and extend an existing prohibition against gun ownership for those convicted of hate crimes, from the felony to the misde-meanour level.

Trump and Republican leaders from the House and Senate were to meet at the White House later yesterday.

They are expected to discuss gun legislation among other matters, ac-cording to a source familiar with the matter.

Republicans have shown little sign of movement on the issue since lawmak-ers returned to Washington from a re-cess on Monday.

McConnell opened the Senate’s au-tumn work session without mentioning gun legislation, while Trump stressed the need to protect gun owner rights.

“I strongly urge my Republican col-leagues to prevail on the president to support universal background checks,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said yesterday.

“Leader McConnell has said he will bring a bill to the fl oor if it has the pres-ident’s support. That means there is a truly historic opportunity for Presi-dent Trump to lead his party toward sensible gun safety laws that in the past Republicans in obeisance to the NRA have refused to support for decades,” he said, in a reference to the National Rifl e Association.

With a majority of voters favouring background check legislation, Demo-crats are hoping to underscore the sharp diff erences between them and Republicans at a time when, accord-ing to a new Gallup poll, nearly half of Americans worry that they or a fam-ily member could become victims of a mass shooting.

“This is a representative democracy and the people want it, and we have to perform our offi ces on the assump-tion — whether it is true or not — that everyone else in our political system will do their jobs,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, a House Judiciary Demo-crat.

Staff -level discussions between Congress and the White House during the August break focused on “red fl ag” legislation and proposals to close loops in current background checks that ex-empt internet sales and private gun sales, including those that take place at gun shows.

House Democrats, who are also nearing a majority of support for an assault weapons ban, expect the bills to clear the committee and the full House.

Some were stubbornly optimistic that the Republican-controlled Senate might eventually take them up.

“I choose to be positive that we’re going to listen to the American people at some point and do something,” Rep-resentative Debbie Dingell said.

NRA sues San Francisco over ‘terrorist organisation’ label

The National Rifle Association (NRA)

on Monday sued San Francisco, saying

a declaration by the city’s Board of

Supervisors that off icials should limit

businesses linked to the NRA because

it is a “terrorist organisation” was eff ec-

tively a blacklist.

The confrontation follows heightened

debate in the United States following a

spate of mass shootings, including one last

month at an El Paso Walmart in which 22

people were killed and about 24 wounded

in the city near the US-Mexico border.

The NRA, a gun club and gun rights

lobbying group with deep political

influence, alleged in the suit that the city

was violating its free speech rights for

political reasons.

“This lawsuit comes with a message to

those who attack the NRA: We will never

stop fighting for our law-abiding mem-

bers and their constitutional freedoms,”

Wayne LaPierre, the group’s chief execu-

tive off icer, said in a statement.

The resolution declares: “The National

Rifle Association is a domestic terrorist

organisation’ whose advocacy is a direct

cause of arming “individuals who would

and have committed acts of terrorism”.

Supervisor Catherine Stefani of the

San Francisco board was confident the

measure to limit city and county off icials

working with companies doing business

with the NRA would stand up in court,

according to the New York Times.

Neither city off icials nor a representa-

tive for the NRA were immediately avail-

able for comment.

North Carolina special election may hold vital clues for 2020 presidential voteAFPWashington

North Carolina voters yesterday chose a new congressman in a special election seen as a 2020

test: can Donald Trump win districts that backed him in 2016 but have since cooled on the president?

Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were each in North Carolina’s ninth district on Monday night, urg-ing high turnout for Dan Bishop, a state senator aiming to win a seat that has been safely in Republican hands for half a century.

He faces Democrat Dan McCready, a former US Marine who has positioned himself as the moderate in the race, the fi nal election of the 2018 midterm cycle and which appears headed to the wire.

The do-over stems from election fraud in 2018. Republican Mark Harris narrowly led the original November con-test against McCready by just 905 votes.

But authorities refused to certify the results due to apparent tampering of absentee ballots by operatives tied to Harris.

Ten months later, a McCready vic-tory would be a historic upset in the district, which voted for Trump by a 12-point margin in 2016.

But the district’s Charlotte suburbs have shifted increasingly blue during the Trump era, and brought McCready within a hair’s breadth of victory last year.

The president made an 11th-hour appeal before yesterday’s vote, testing a message he and the party will use in 2020, that extremist Democrats in-tend to reshape the US economy and society.

“A vote for any Democrat in 2020 and a vote for any Democrat tomorrow in North Carolina is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruc-tion of the American dream,” Trump told a crowd on Monday night in Fay-etteville.

The showdown is being closely

watched by both sides for clues about next year’s presidential race and con-gressional battles.

Trump stormed to the White House in 2016 by winning key swing states like Ohio and traditional Democratic strongholds Michigan and Wisconsin.

But Trump and Republicans have struggled to maintain similar levels of support in such states, particularly in suburban districts.

Trump yesterday urged North Carolinians to back Bishop.

“WE NEED HIM BADLY IN WASH-INGTON!” Trump tweeted.

While Bishop has aligned closely with Trump, McCready’s campaign has focused on local issues, health care and his centrist positions.

“This race is gonna come down to the wire y’all,” McCready said, invok-ing a southern twang on Twitter. “I need your help!”

McCready has the backing of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls includ-ing the party’s frontrunner Joe Biden.

A man casts his vote in Charlotte during the special election yesterday in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District.

ASIA9

Gulf Times Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Schools shut as forest fi re haze blankets SE AsiaHuge fi res are raging

across vast swathes of Indonesia’s rainfor-

ests - some of the world’s big-gest - with toxic smog shut-ting hundreds of schools across Southeast Asia, offi cials said yesterday.

Massive jungle areas in Su-matra and Borneo island are ablaze as thousands of person-nel battle to quell the fi res, fre-quently started to clear land for crop plantations.

Burning forests to make way for farming is also thought to be behind the enormous fi res currently ripping through the Amazon in South America, and experts believe they could have a serious impact on the global climate.

In Indonesia the number of hotspots - areas at risk of fi res - has soared in parts, including on Borneo which the country shares with Malaysia and Brunei.

Air quality has dropped to “unhealthy” levels in and around Kuala Lumpur, accord-ing to the government’s air pol-lutant index, and the skyline has been shrouded in thick smog, while haze also hung over Sin-gapore.

The smell of burning foliage fi lled the air, and residents were suff ering respiratory problems and complaining of itchy and sore eyes.

Around 400 schools were closed yesterday in nine dis-tricts of Sarawak state on Bor-neo, with more than 150,000 students aff ected, according to the local education department.

In Indonesia’s Jambi prov-ince, on Sumatra, some kin-dergartens will be closed until Friday, while elementary and junior high schools are also temporarily shut, according to local authorities, who did not give exact numbers.

Jambi Mayor Syarif Fasha urged residents to wear face masks while Malaysia’s national disaster management agency

said it has secured half a million masks, which will be sent to the Sarawak state disaster commit-tee.

On Monday, Malaysia said it was preparing to carry out cloud seeding to induce rain and clear the air by releasing cer-tain chemicals into the clouds - although some experts have questioned its effi cacy.

Indonesian authorities have deployed thousands of extra personnel since last month to prevent a repeat of 2015 fi res, which were the worst for two decades, choking the region in haze for weeks and setting off a diplomatic spat.

Under pressure from neigh-bours, Indonesian leader Joko Widodo last month warned that offi cials would be sacked if they failed to stamp out forest fi res.

The number of hotspots with medium-to-high potential to break out in blazes soared nearly sevenfold to 6,312 over a four-day period this month, ac-cording to Indonesia’s national disaster agency.

AFPJakarta

An Indonesian firefighter battling a forest fire in Kampar, Riau.

Lanka elephants run amok, 17 injured

Seventeen people were in-jured in Sri Lanka when two elephants ran amok at

a religious festival, police said.A temple custodian who was

riding one of the animals was among those hurt, as well as 13 women who were scrambling to get out of the way of the maraud-ing elephants at the Buddhist pageant on Saturday in Colombo.

Nobody was seriously injured, authorities said.

Elephant expert Jayantha Jayewardene said that the ani-mals were in musth, a period when their reproductive hor-mones soar, and that said temple authorities had ignored proper procedures.

“The pair should not have been used in the pageant. There was a clearly laid out system to assess the condition of the ani-mal before allowing it to partici-pate,” Jayawardene said.

Authorities in the central pil-grim city of Kandy were forced to withdraw a 70-year-old cow elephant from a gruelling parade in mid-August.

The highly emaciated animal had been forced to walk for miles despite her visibly failing health.

Three years ago, two elephants brawled during a temple cer-emony and caused a stampede in which one woman died and 12 were wounded.

Offi cial records show there are about 200 domesticated el-ephants in a country where the population in the wild is esti-mated at about 7,500.

A leading Buddhist monk has called for a ban on the use of el-ephants in religious processions after a rampage yesterday.

“Cruelty to the elephants takes place at these events and it is a disgrace to Buddhism,” Ven Omalpe Sobitha said.

AFP/DPAColombo

Indonesian police arrest dozens over Papua riots

Indonesian authorities have arrested 85 people linked to weeks of deadly unrest in

Papua, police said, as Jakarta accused an exiled separatist leader of stoking riots in its easternmost territory.

Tens of thousands pro-tested across Papua - on the western half of New Guinea island - as anger over racism and fresh calls for self-rule fuelled mass demonstrations and violent clashes with se-curity forces.

Offi cially, fi ve demonstra-tors and a soldier were killed, but activists say the civilian death toll is higher.

Jakarta blocked Internet services in Papua, making it diffi cult to independently ver-ify information. The ban has been gradually lifted though remains in eff ect in some cities.

Foreigners have also been restricted from entering the re-gion over what the government said were security concerns.

Indonesian police said they have arrested 85 people in Pa-pua since the unrest broke out in mid-August and are hunting for another 20 suspects.

Authorities have arrested suspects in other parts of the country and issued an arrest warrant for a prominent In-donesian lawyer and Papuan rights defender over allega-tions she spread fake news about the unrest on her social media account.

Authorities also pointed a fi nger at Benny Wenda, chair-man, United Liberation Move-ment for West Papua, saying he stoked riots to draw global attention to renewed calls for an independence vote.

“The riots in Papua hap-pened by design,” National Po-lice spokesman Dedi Prasetyo said late Monday.

Wenda, a former separatist rebel who was granted asylum in Britain years ago, earlier dis-missed Jakarta’s claims as “po-litically motivated”.

A low-level separatist insur-gency has simmered for dec-ades in Papua, a former Dutch

colony, after Jakarta took over the mineral-rich region in the 1960s. A vote to stay within the archipelago was widely viewed as rigged.

Most Papuans are Christian and ethnic Melanesian with few cultural ties to the rest of Muslim-majority Indonesia.

Jakarta has long ruled out talk of Papuan independence, a position it has repeated in re-cent weeks.

In a meeting with tra-ditional Papuan leaders yesterday in Jakarta, Presi-dent Joko Widodo pledged to give government jobs to 1,000 newly graduated Pa-puan students and to con-sider building a presidential palace in the region - the archipelago has six palaces including in the capital and holiday island Bali.

A fi restorm of protests broke across Papua and other parts of the Southeast Asian nation after the arrest and teargassing of dozens of Papuan students, who were also racially abused, in Indonesia’s second-biggest city Surabaya.

AFPJakarta

Indonesian President Joko Widodo, centre, meeting some 61 Papuan and West Papuan religious and student leaders, customary and communities chiefs at the state palace in Jakarta.

Lawsuit dropped against leader

Myanmar’s army said it had dropped a crimi-nal complaint against

a minority leader who told US President Donald Trump the military was oppressing Chris-tians, days after the US voiced concern about the lawsuit.

Reverend Hkalam Samson, of the Kachin Baptist Conven-tion, an organisation based in the northern Kachin state rep-resenting Myanmar’s mostly

Christian Kachin minority, took part in a gathering at the White House in July, when victims of religious persecution met with Trump and other US offi cials.

Samson told Trump that Christians were being “op-pressed and tortured by the Myanmar military govern-ment” in the Buddhist-ma-joity country. He also thanked Trump for imposing sanctions against top generals over My-anmar’s crackdown on Ro-hingya Muslims, saying it was “very helpful”.

A military offi cer, Lieutenant

Colonel Than Htike, then fi led a lawsuit against Samson, but a spokesman said that it had now been formally withdrawn.

“We withdraw the case vol-untarily because it is what we should do,” army spokesman Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun said by phone, without giving a reason.

Samson called the move a positive gesture towards the Kachin people.

“We welcome this issue be-ing fi nished with understand-ing and without needing to be brought to the court,” he said.

ReutersYangon

Thai opposition calls on cabinet minister to clear his name

Thailand’s opposition called yesterday for a cab-inet member and promi-

nent ruling party fi gure to clear his name after Australian media reported that he had been jailed for four years on a drugs charge in Australia in the 1990s.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Thammanat Prompao dismissed the report by two Australian newspapers, the Sydney Morn-ing Herald and the Age. Tham-

manat has previously said that he received a minor conviction in Australia in the 1990s.

Thammanat has described himself as “the main artery” in Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s government and was a key player in forging the former junta leader’s 17-party coalition after elections in March.

The Australian papers said that Thammanat had been jailed for four years for drug traffi ck-ing, citing court documents and old newspaper reports.

“This is a major allegation and

if Thammanat cannot clear his name then he should resign from the cabinet and parliament,” Ad-isorn Piengkes, spokesman for a seven-party opposition alliance called the Democratic Front told Reuters.

“The prime minister should also take responsibility for ap-pointing him to the cabinet,” he said.

Thammanat rejected calls for his resignation and accused his political opponents of planting the story in the Australian media to discredit him.

“I did not commit the wrong-

doings as written,” Thammanat told reporters.

Prayuth defended the decision to appoint Thammanat to the cab-inet, saying: “He is here today after his qualifi cations were verifi ed.”

Before he was appointed to the cabinet, Thammanat had said that he received a minor convic-tion in Australia in 1993 because he was “at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

A spokesperson for the Syd-ney Morning Herald and the Age, both owned by Nine Entertain-ment, said the papers stood by the story.

ReutersBangkok

Nepal deports six Tibetans after they seek asylum

Nepal deported six Tibet-ans who had crossed into the Himalayan country

to seek asylum and handed them over to Chinese police last week, two witnesses told Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan Service.

“When those six Tibetan es-capees arrived on Nepal soil (on foot), at a place called Legme, the Nepalese border police arrested them. From there, the Nepali police led them handcuff ed to Simikto police station,” said a source, a trader who requested anonymity to protect his per-sonal security.

“The Nepali police handed over those arrested Tibetan refu-gees to the Chinese border police on September 5 evening,” added the source, according to the RFA.

“The handcuff ed Tibetan refu-gees were wailing in great distress at their fate, and were pleading with the police with folded hands not to take them back to the Chi-nese,” said the source.

Simikto is the administrative

headquarters of Humla district of Karnali Pradesh in the north-western corner of Nepal. Simikto airport is the main tourist gateway on the Nepalese side to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar, revered pilgrimage sites in Tibet.

The six had crossed the Nepali bor-der from Purang (in Chinese, Burang) county in Ngari (Ari) prefecture. The source said they had ruddy complex-ions and wore Tibetan clothing.

“On the way, many local Nepali bystanders witnessed the Nepali police leading them away in handcuff s,” added the source.

“When the armed Nepalese police were escorting them, the residents were waved off from approaching them closer,” said a second source, a Tibetan living in Kathmandu, the Nepal capital.

“Without even keeping them for one day at Simikot, the Nepali police returned them to the Chi-nese authorities,” said a source in Kathmandu.

“The Nepali police warned residents not to share the news of this incident, and if any of them is caught for doing it, will face severe consequences,” added the Kathmandu resident.

IANSKathmandu

Plan to monitor Sundarbans with dronesBangladesh has planned to monitor the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and a Unesco world heritage site, with drones to check crimes including poaching of tigers and deer, the media reported.To check various crimes, including felling of trees, catching fish defying ban, and the poaching of tigers and deer, the forest department is planning to deploy drones, said Amir Hossain Chowdhury, deputy chief conservator of forest, reports The Daily Star. “Drones will play an eff ective role in

checking illegal intrusion into the Sundarbans, poaching and robberies, and identifying those illegally net fish in the forest,” he said.According to the forest department data, a total of 14 tigers were beaten to death by locals after those entered their localities in the last two decades.Deputy Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Habibun Nahar has said that all kinds of measures will be taken to beef up security in the coastal region, including the Sundarbans, through using modern technology. (IANS)

Aussie veterans hand over details of dead VietnameseAustralian Vietnam War veterans yesterday handed over information to help their former enemies locate the bodies of some of the 200,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers still classed as missing in action. At a ceremony with Vietnamese off icials, a small team of Australian veterans shared a database including map references showing where 3,800 Vietnamese are believed to be buried after fights

with Australian and New Zealand forces. “Basically it was the right thing to do,” said team leader Bob Hall, a Vietnam veteran and researcher at the University of New South Wales who led the project. In total some 200,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War remain missing - buried individually or in groups in unmarked graves in the jungle and fields across southern

Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Collectively they are known as the “wandering souls” - from the Vietnamese belief that souls of those improperly buried will continue to wander. Data in the US National Archives lists 37,000 actions that could have killed around 155,000 people - including infamous battles at Khe Sanh and Hamburger Hill. But many more were killed in smaller firefights in remote locations across Vietnam.

Hall said his research - backed by the Australian Defence Force - revealed data on every fight involving Australian and New Zealand soldiers in their area of operations in Phuoc Tuy Province. “Standard operating procedure for Australians was to bury the enemy bodies at the scene. While that was happening, usually the patrol commander was writing a report about what had happened,” he told AFP. “It’s those reports that have given

us the data we have put into this database,” he said, adding they were accurate to around 100m. “I was one of those patrol commanders and I thought at the time the process of writing all this down was pretty much a waste of time. Here I am years later.”The move is part of a broader rapprochement between the Cold War foes. Vietnam has helped Australia recover and repatriate six of its military personnel missing in action. (AFP)

ReutersHong Kong

Anti-government protests that have roiled Hong Kong for more than three

months spread to the sports fi eld yesterday, as many local fans defi ed Chinese law to boo the country’s national anthem ahead of a soccer World Cup qualifi er against Iran.

The latest sign of unrest in the former British colony followed another weekend of sometimes violent clashes, in which police fi ring tear gas in cat-and-mouse skirmishes with protesters who at times smashed windows and started fi res in the streets.

Earlier yesterday, the city’s Be-ijing-backed leader, Carrie Lam, had warned against foreign in-terference in Hong Kong’s aff airs, adding that an escalation of vio-lence could not solve social issues in the Asian fi nancial hub. Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula that guaran-tees freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland. But many Hong Kong residents fear Beijing is steadily eroding that autonomy.

Weeks of protests over a now withdrawn extradition bill have evolved into a broader back-lash against the government and greater calls for democracy. At Hong Kong’s main stadium yes-terday night, a sizeable contin-gent of the crowd of more than 10,000 football fans jeered and held up “boo” signs as China’s anthem played before the game, while others chanted “Revolu-tion of our time” and “Liberate Hong Kong”. Disrespecting the

national anthem is an off ence in China.

Other fans sang “Glory to Hong Kong,” a song that has become a rallying cry for more democratic freedoms in the semi-auton-omous Chinese territory. “We hope we can unite Hong Kong,” said one of those booing, Ah Wing, wearing a red Hong Kong team shirt and glasses. “Even if we lose, we’ll keep going. That’s what we do against strong teams,

against strong enemies.”Some local fans continued to

chant protest slogans during the match, which saw Iran beat Hong Kong 2-0. During a rally at the US consulate on Sunday, thousands of demonstrators, some waving the American fl ag, called for help in bringing democracy to Hong Kong.

The protesters urged the US Congress to pass legislation that would require Washington to

make an annual assessment of whether Hong Kong was suffi -ciently autonomous from main-land China to retain special US trade and economic benefi ts. Lam, Hong Kong’s chief execu-tive, responded to those calls at a news conference yesterday.

“It’s extremely inappropriate for foreign parliaments to inter-fere in HKSAR internal aff airs in any way, and (we) will not allow (the United States) to become a

stakeholder in HKSAR matters,” she said, referring to Hong Kong by its status as a special adminis-trative region of China.

China denies meddling in the city and Chinese offi cials have accused foreign forces of trying to hurt Beijing by creating chaos in Hong Kong. They have also warned outsiders to keep out of what they call an internal matter.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying,

asked about the protests in front of the US Consulate and Lam’s comments, said Beijing was res-olutely opposed to any foreign government interfering in Chi-na’s aff airs. “We hope they can withdraw their black hands in Hong Kong as soon as possible,” she said.

The sometimes violent dem-onstrations have taken a toll on Hong Kong’s economy, which is on the verge of its fi rst recession in a decade. Hong Kong visi-tor arrivals plunged nearly 40% in August from a year earlier. Stephen Schwarz, head of sover-eign ratings for the Asia-Pacifi c region at Fitch Ratings, said the agency’s downgrade of Hong Kong last week refl ected damage to the city’s reputation as a place to do business.

“The downgrade refl ects months of ongoing confl ict en-vironment which are testing the ‘one country, two systems’ framework and which have in-fl icted damage to the interna-tional perception of the quality and eff ectiveness of Hong Kong’s governance and rule of law as well as the stability of its business en-vironment,” Schwarz said.

China expressed anger yester-day after German Foreign Min-ister Heiko Maas met prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong, reiterating that no foreign coun-try had a right to interfere in its internal aff airs. On Monday, former US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the anti-government protests were not an internal

Chinese matter and the United States should off er at least moral support to the demonstrators.

Lam last week withdrew the controversial extradition bill that had triggered the unrest, but the gesture failed to appease many demonstrators.

Anger over the now-shelved bill has rekindled opposition to Beijing that had waned after 2014, when authorities faced down 79 days of pro-democracy protests in the city’s central busi-ness district. Lam called for dia-logue yesterday. “Escalation and continuation of violence cannot solve the issues faced by our so-ciety now,” she said. “It will only deepen the confl ict, contradic-tion, splits, and even hatred in society.”

The protests, beamed live to the world since June, have also prompted some of the city’s powerful tycoons to appeal for calm.

In his fi rst speech mention-ing the unrest, billionaire Li Ka-shing urged political leaders to off er young people an olive branch, calling them “masters of our future”, according to an on-line video of remarks to a small crowd during a monastery visit on Sunday.

Lam said her administration’s actions, including the bill’s for-mal withdrawal, were “not di-rectly to stop these protests and violence”.

“It is really to express my sin-cerity to start a dialogue with the people,” she said.

10 Gulf TimesWednesday, September 11, 2019

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA

S Korean watchdog fi nds no foul play in defection of N Korean waitressesReutersSeoul

An investigation by South Korea’s human rights watchdog found no evi-

dence the country’s spy agency tricked or coerced a dozen North Korean restaurant workers into defecting in 2016, as some have alleged, documents reviewed by Reuters showed yesterday.

Lawyers for some of the women said they would seek to

challenge the fi ndings in court, setting up a potential legal fi ght over a saga that has complicated eff orts to improve relations be-tween the two Koreas.

The group’s defection was one of the largest known cases of its kind, and the South Korean government’s decision to pub-licise it broke with long-held practice that it does not identify defectors on safety and privacy grounds. Since last year the Na-tional Human Rights Commis-sion of Korea has been investi-

gating whether the 12 waitresses had wanted come to the South, after at least three of them said they were pressured by South Korean intelligence agents.

The 12 had worked at a North Korean restaurant in China, and arrived with their restaurant manager in the South via Malay-sia in April 2016. Pyongyang said they were abducted, while Seoul has said the workers defected of their own free will.

The commission has not re-leased the results of its probe,

which included interviews with fi ve waitresses and the manager, as well as government and intel-ligence offi cials. But it shared its fi ndings for the fi rst time with a group of activist lawyers who raised a petition on behalf of some of the women in 2017.

The Unifi cation Ministry, in charge of inter-Korean aff airs, said in a statement that it would take steps to improve defectors’ rights in line with recommen-dations from the commission contained in the report, which

urged the ministry to adhere to its rule of protecting defectors’ identities.

The commission said it could not confi rm that South Korean authorities had coerced the North Koreans into defecting because of inconsistencies in the testimony of the manager, according to the 42-page docu-ment sent to the group on Mon-day and seen by Reuters.

It also cited the disappear-ance of what may have been key evidence, such as e-mails or call

logs of a military intelligence agent who destroyed his mobile phone.

However, the watchdog found the government breached the law and the workers’ rights by publicising their defection.

Lawyers for a Democratic So-ciety, better known as Minbyun, initiated the case after meeting with some of the waitresses and criticised the fi ndings, vowing to take the case to court.

“They jumped to a self-con-tradictory conclusion which was

either deliberate or just incom-petent,” said Jang Kyung-wook, one of the lawyers. The women are seeking a chance to reunite with their families left behind in the North, or at least greater freedom in the South, where they say they live under close watch by the authorities which limits their activities and move-ment.

Cha Seung-ryul, an investiga-tor at the commission, declined to comment on the lawyers’ criticisms.

China warns outside ‘black hands’ in HK

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam attends a news conference in Hong Kong yesterday.

Secondary school students form a human chain against extradition bill in Hong Kong.

A firefigher tackling a bushfire at Canungra in Queensland. Massive bushfires across eastern Australia could be blazing for weeks, authorities warned yesterday as firefighters launched “Herculean” eff orts to save homes from destruction.

Australia bushfireOnly nine people left at Australia’s ‘Pacifi c Guantanamo’AFPPort Moresby

Only a handful of peo-ple remained at a re-mote migrant detention

centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island yesterday, as au-thorities quietly empty a facility often dubbed “Australia’s Guan-tanamo”.

Refugees, police and govern-ment offi cials told AFP a maxi-mum of nine people remained at the facility, which has be-come emblematic of Australia’s controversial policy of turning away women, children and men fl eeing war zones and detaining them in Pacifi c camps.

Successive Australian gov-ernments argued the policy was needed to deter migrants ready to make the dangerous sea voy-age Down Under.

But it has been a political and legal headache for Canberra, prompting tens of millions of dollars of payments in damages and earning the opprobrium of the United Nations.

Papua New Guinea’s Minis-ter for Immigration and Border Protection Petrus Thomas told AFP yesterday that nine mi-grants — mostly refugees — re-mained on Manus, which was opened in 2001.

Five of those had built fami-lies there and one is involved in local legal proceedings, so is un-likely to leave.

“The rest have been fl own to Port Moresby,” he said, referring to the 60-plus asylum seekers that had been there until re-cently. Manus provincial police commander David Yapu told AFP that transfers had occurred on a daily basis since last week, with most asylum seekers head-ed for Port Moresby.

One of those was detainee and award-winning author Be-hrouz Boochani, who told AFP he was transferred there a “few days ago.” Six months ago there were still more than 500 would-be migrants to Australia kept in Papua New Guinea, living in conditions that Amnesty Inter-national described as “tanta-mount to torture.”

Offi cial fi gures are not fre-quently updated, but hundreds are believed to have been reset-tled in the United States under a deal between Australia and then US president Barack Obama. Others were transferred to Aus-tralia for medical treatment or sent to Port Moresby, where they await resettlement.

The Refugee Action Coalition said the transfers off Manus did not spell an end to Australia’s policy of asylum “turnbacks” or resolve the fate of the refugees still stuck in Papua New Guinea.

The non-governmental group accused Canberra and the Pa-pua New Guinea government of “shifting the detention deck-chairs” in an rush to declare Manus closed.

Aussie boy battles to save croc ‘friend’A crocodile living in a creek in northwestern Australia is at the centre of a battle between authorities who want to remove it, and locals who have grown fond of the massive reptile. Off icials in the state of Queensland have set a trap to catch the saltwater croc, who residents have nicknamed Howard, saying he is a danger to humans. One schoolboy is so distraught by the decision he has written a letter to state environment

minister Leeanne Enoch begging her to let the creature stay. “I lived at Bamboo Creek Road for five years and I loved watching Howard sunbake and seeing him from the bridge every afternoon,” wrote 10-year-old Elroy Woods, from the small locality of Miallo. David White, who owns a local crocodile-cruise business, said there had been 300 e-mails sent in support of keeping the four-metre-long animal where it is,

and just one complaint. Even Queensland’s Australia Zoo, run by the widow of late celebrity “crocodile hunter” Steve Irwin, has pitched in. The zoo said in a tweet it was “so proud” of Elroy’s eff orts to protect Howard, adding that predators at the top of the food chain were “the most important in any ecosystem”. However the government has indicated the trap will remain in place, saying the crocodile will not be destroyed when caught.

Canadian warship sails through Taiwan StraitAFPTaipei

A Canadian frigate was passing through the Tai-wan Strait yesterday,

Taiwanese and Canadian au-thorities said, in the latest of a string of such voyages likely to provoke Beijing.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said it was closely monitoring as the Canadian warship sailed through the narrow waterway separating the island and the Chinese mainland in a “freedom of navigation” operation.

China views any passing through the strait as a breach of its sovereignty – while the US and many other nations see the route as international space. “The HMCS Ottawa’s cur-rent deployment is consistent

with past Royal Canadian Navy practice and international law,” Canada’s de facto embassy in Taipei said in a statement.

It added that sailing through the strait is “the most practical route” between South Korea’s Pyeongtaek and the Thai capital Bangkok.

Taiwan has been run as a de facto independent nation for the last seven decades but Bei-jing sees as part of its territory awaiting reunifi cation, by force if necessary.

In June, a Canadian frig-ate and its supporting vessel also sailed through the Taiwan Strait.

Relations between China and Canada have deteriorated since December when police in Van-couver detained Huawei chief fi nancial offi cer Meng Wanzhou on a US arrest warrant. Days af-

ter her arrest, China detained two Canadians – a former dip-lomat and a businessman – and accused them of spying in what is seen as a tit-for-tat move.

China has also blocked Ca-nadian agricultural shipments worth billions of dollars. Tai-wan had called the June voyage a “freedom of navigation” opera-tion, but Canada’s military said the journey was “not related to making any statement”.

Last month, a US military plane fl ew over the Taiwan Strait, just days after one of its navy ships sailed through the waters and the latest arms sale between Taipei and Washing-ton.

Beijing threatened to sanction US fi rms involved in the sale of the fi ghter jets, at a time when relations are already strained by a punitive trade war.

BRITAIN11Gulf Times

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Man spends £30,000fi ghting speeding fi neAFPLondon

A man said he spent tens of thousands of pounds in savings earmarked

for his children’s inherit-ance unsuccessfully fi ghting a speeding fi ne — for £100, the BBC reported yesterday.

Richard Keedwell, 71, from Gloucestershire in western England, was clocked driving 35 miles per hour (56kph) on a 30mph stretch of road in 2016.

He challenged the resulting fi ne, claiming he “could not believe” he had been speed-ing and that he had “no case to answer”.

But his ultimately futile fi ght has taken three years to wind its way through the courts — and cost Keedwell “the best part of £30,000” that he had eventually intended to pass on to his sons.

“I regret the amount of money,” Keedwell was quoted as saying.

He said he felt guilty that his family would miss out on the funds and that the case

had proved “very stressful”.“I very simply wanted jus-

tice,” he said. “I’m sick and tired at the whole system which is steamrolling ordinary peo-ple”. The retired engineer told the broadcaster that around £21,000 had gone on lawyers’ fees, another £7,000 on court costs, plus travel expenses.

He even recruited the help of a video and electronics expert who claimed the speed camera could have been triggered by a fault or another car in an adja-cent lane.

Keedwell pursued the case through four lower court hear-ings and an appeal to a higher court, calling the legal system “seriously fl awed” for requir-ing so many stages.

He was said to be consider-ing whether to continue his le-gal action with another appeal.

Prosecutors blamed a “mul-tiplicity of issues” for the three-year saga.

A prosecution service spokesman told the BBC that issues raised by the defence re-quired additional hearings and expert evidence.

Tourist leaves hospital with £623,000 unpaid billDaily MailLondon

A hospital is chasing £623,000 from a foreign patient who left Brit-

ain without paying their bill for treatment. Citing data protec-tion laws, managers refused to disclose the nationality of the patient or the nature of the care they were given.

The sum, which is owed to Mid Essex Hospitals trust, is believed to be the highest single debt accrued by a health tourist.

Five other foreign nationals left without paying six-fi gure bills to hospitals in 2017-18, according to fi gures obtained by The Sun.

The government has repeat-edly promised tough action on health tourism but many NHS staff are reluctant to charge overseas patients upfront.

The Royal College of Mid-wives called on ministers to drop the fees with some members claiming they were complicit in “racial profi ling”.

The British Medical Associa-tion has been lobbying the gov-

ernment to abandon the charges since June, saying they are racist and a “drop in the ocean”.

Mid Essex Hospitals, which runs three hospitals in Braintree, Maldon and Chelmsford, re-ported a defi cit of around £55mn last year. The £623,000 bill could have paid for 3,000 cataract op-erations, 70 hip replacements and 170 rounds of IVF – all of which are rationed by the health service.

Joyce Robins, of the Patient Concern campaign group, said: “This is big money and we can scarcely aff ord the NHS as it is without paying for all these peo-ple too. I can’t believe there is not a better way of running the system so these bills are not left unpaid.”

Last month the Mail revealed hospitals were collectively chas-ing £150mn in unpaid bills from overseas patients with one trust being owed £28mn. Only those who are classed as ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK, which usu-ally means living here for at least six months and paying taxes, are entitled to free hospital care.

Everyone else should be charged for all hospital proce-dures including scans, drugs and

an overnight stay on a ward.Separate fi gures last year re-

vealed that one anonymous foreign patient had left Central Manchester Hospitals with an unpaid bill of £530,000.

Many of the highest bills are incurred by maternity patients, particularly those who give birth to twins or triplets and require extensive care afterwards.

A BBC documentary in 2018 revealed that a Nigerian left Im-perial College Healthcare in west London with a bill of half a million pounds after giving birth to quad-ruplets. The 43-year-old, known only as Priscilla, had intended to have the babies in the US but had been turned away at the border.

Gill Walton, of the Royal Col-lege of Midwives, said: “We be-lieve that maternity care should be exempt from NHS charging alto-gether to protect and promote ma-ternal and newborn health. This is why the RCM is calling for the charging regime to be suspended until the government can prove this policy is not doing any harm and jeopardising our shared am-bition to make England the safest place in the world to have a baby.”

Johnson urgedto withdrawBoycott’s knighthoodGuardian News and MediaLondon

Boris Johnson is being urged to withdraw Geoff rey Boy-cott’s knighthood over his

conviction for domestic violence and the former England crick-eter’s response to criticism.

Women’s charities and oppo-sition parties made the call after Boycott said he did not “give a toss” about condemnation of his knighthood from a leading do-mestic violence charity.

Responding to Adina Claire, the co-acting chief executive of Women’s Aid, who described his knighthood as “extremely disappointing”, Boycott told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme presenter Martha Kearney: “I don’t give a toss about her, love.” The honour caused controversy because of Boycott’s 1998 con-viction for assault. His then girlfriend, Margaret Moore, was left with bruising to her forehead and black eyes.

A French court fi ned him £5,000 and handed down a three-month suspended jail sentence. He has always denied the charge, maintaining her in-juries were sustained in an acci-dental fall. At his trial, the pub-lic prosecutor Jean-Yves Duval rejected this claim, saying the injuries were “absolutely incom-patible” with an accident.

Claire said: “Celebrating a man who was convicted for assault-ing his partner sends a dangerous message that domestic abuse is not taken seriously as a crime.

“With increasing aware-ness of domestic abuse, and a domestic abuse bill ready to be taken forward by government, it is extremely disappointing that a knighthood has been recom-mended for Geoff rey Boycott, who is a convicted perpetrator of domestic abuse.”

May, who introduced a land-mark domestic abuse bill to par-

liament earlier this year, gave Boycott a knighthood for serv-ices to sport in her resignation honours list.

A spokeswoman from the Woman’s Trust said: “It’s disap-pointing to see Boycott included in May’s honours list, given her vocal support for domestic abuse survivors and the domestic abuse bill.” In an extraordinary ex-change, Kearney asked why Boy-cott had not been given the hon-our sooner, and suggested one reason could be the conviction. The former cricketer proclaimed his innocence and cited the con-viction as a reason for his outspo-ken support for Brexit.

He claimed the presumption of innocence was reversed in the French legal system. In France, as in England and Wales, de-fendants are presumed to be in-nocent until proven guilty.

He said: “Twenty-fi ve years ago, love. In a French court, she (Moore) tried to blackmail me for £1mn. I said no, because in Eng-land if you pay any money at all, we think: ‘Hang on, there must be something there.’ I said: ‘I’m not paying anything’ … I’m not sure I’d actually got a million at the time.

“It’s a court case in France where you’re guilty, which is one of the reasons I (didn’t) vote to remain in Europe – because you’re guilty un-til you’re proved innocent. That’s totally the opposite from Eng-land and it’s very diffi cult to prove you’re innocent in another country and another language.

“Most people in England don’t believe it. I didn’t do it. Move on. It’s a cross I have to bear, right or wrong, good or bad, I have to live with it. And I do, because I’m clear in my mind and I think most people in England are that it’s not true.

“I don’t care a toss about her, love. It was 25 years ago. You want to talk to me about my knight-hood. It’s very nice of you to have me, but I couldn’t give a toss.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson attend a year four history class with pupils during a visit to Pimlico Primary school in London yesterday.

Premier seeks Brexitdeal after battle with MPsAFPLondon

Prime Minister Boris John-son yesterday insisted he was working hard to strike

a divorce deal with the EU, af-ter he suspended parliament following a series of bruising defeats by MPs over his Brexit plan.

The day after meeting Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin, Johnson held talks with his Northern Irish allies in Lon-don — all key players in the race to secure a deal before Britain leaves the European Union on October 31.

Johnson has faced huge op-position in the House of Com-

mons to his threat to leave the bloc without agreeing exit terms with Brussels but law-makers have also rejected his call for an early general election to resolve the impasse.

Before he suspended par-liament early yesterday, MPs rushed through legislation re-quiring Johnson to postpone Brexit by three months if he fails to secure a deal at an EU summit on October 17-18.

“We’re working very hard to get a deal. I think we will get a deal but if absolutely necessary we will come out with no-deal,” Johnson said during a school visit yesterday.

He has previously said he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than delay Brexit.

The Conservative leader took offi ce in July promising to rene-gotiate the exit terms struck by his predecessor, Theresa May, which were rejected three times by MPs.

But the EU has so far refused, and accused London of failing to come up with any viable al-ternatives to the most contro-versial element, the so-called backstop plan to keep open the UK’s border with the Republic of Ireland.

Johnson yesterday met with Arlene Foster, the leader of Northern Ireland’s Democrat-ic Unionist Party, which has propped up his government.

There is speculation that Johnson could be softening his demand to remove the backstop

from the Brexit deal, although Downing Street denies this — and the DUP would likely resist such a move.

It fears that efforts to keep open the land frontier between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic to protect the peace process, could lead to a new sea border between Northern Ireland and the British main-land.

Johnson’s EU envoy, David Frost, is due back in Brussels later this week for talks.

Meanwhile in London, a cross-party group of MPs met to discuss how they might yet get the old Brexit deal through parliament if Johnson failed to secure a new one. Conserva-tive rebel Rory Stewart said:

“There is only one door out of this problem which is through a majority (for a deal) in parlia-ment.”

MPs only returned from their summer holiday last week but rushed through the “no-deal” law before the session closed amid dramatic scenes early yes-terday.

Opposition MPs waved signs reading “Silenced” and hol-lered “Shame on you!” at gov-ernment lawmakers as the for-mal suspension ceremony took place.

Prorogation is normally a routine event every year but Johnson is accused of trying to muzzle lawmakers by doing it for so long — fi ve weeks — and so close to the Brexit deadline.

Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, and wife Sally arrive for a Service of Thanksgiving for the life and work of Paddy Ashdown, former leader of the Liberal Democrats at Westminster Abbey in central London yesterday.

Ashdown remembered

Lack of doctor forces hospice to turn away dying patientsGuardian News and MediaLondon

A hospice has been forced to close its doors to peo-ple wishing to spend their

fi nal days there because it can-not fi nd a doctor to oversee its service.

It is the fi rst time one of the UK’s 220 hospices has had to

turn away those needing end of life care as a result of the short-age of medical staff .

St Mary’s hospice in Ulver-ston, Cumbria, took the deci-sion reluctantly after spending months trying but failing to re-cruit a replacement for its de-parting senior doctor.

Dying patients who would have been admitted to the hospice from mid-October will have to be cared

for elsewhere and some inpatients may even have to be moved.

Terminally ill patients from Ulverston and nearby who re-quire round-the-clock medical attention in a hospice may have to go instead to St John’s hos-pice, 39 miles – and an hour’s drive – away in Lancaster, in north Lancashire.

Val Stangoe, St Mary’s chief executive, said the hospice’s

rural location helped explain its inability to recruit a new doctor and avoid what she hoped was a temporary three-month closure to inpatients.

“People who live rurally have as much right to a good death as peo-ple who are in cities. That is what our purpose is and it is frustrating not to be able to do that.

“At the end of their lives we really want to make sure this bit

goes right, and for us not to be able to have our beds open just feels like a massive failure of the community,” she said.

St Mary’s cares for 1,350 peo-ple a year. About 170 of those be-come inpatients while the others receive care from a “hospice at home” team. The departing doc-tor is the most senior of its three medics who, alongside 23 nurses and two local GPs who help out

at weekends, provide 24/7 care.Stangoe added: “Despite re-

peated eff orts over a number of months, both alone and working in partnership with local health organisations, we have as yet been unable to fi ll specialist doctor va-cancies or fi nd suffi cient cover.

“As a specialist unit there are strict rules about the level of doc-tor who is able to take responsi-bility for our patients. And while

we have some fantastic doctors at the hospice they do not have the required length of experience to take this central role at this time, when our more experienced doc-tor leaves,” she added.

Its eff orts to fi nd a palliative care specialist with at least fi ve years’ experience have drawn a blank despite advertising in the BMJ and on the NHS Jobs and Hospice UK websites.

Corbyn pledgesbiggest everextension ofworkers’ rightsGuardian News and MediaLondon

Jeremy Corbyn has promised to introduce the biggest ever ex-tension to workers’ rights and

create a ministry and government agency should he get into govern-ment.

Announcing his envisaged shake-up of Whitehall depart-ments at the TUC Congress in Brighton, the Labour leader pledged to “put power in the hands of workers” not the “born-to-rule establishment” by establishing a ministry for employment rights and a workers’ protection agency if he secures a Labour majority.

A new secretary of state for em-ployment rights would ensure “the voice of working people will be heard at the Cabinet table, exactly as it should be”, he said.

The workers’ protection agency embedded within the new minis-try would enforce rights, stand-ards and protections. It would also give powers to inspect workplaces and bring prosecutions and civil proceedings on behalf of workers.

Under the plans, all work-ers over 16 would be entitled to a statutory “real living wage” of £10 per hour by 2020, while a new civil enforcement system would be established to ensure gender pay commitments were upheld.

The Labour leader said: “We have witnessed a deliberate, dec-ades-long transfer of power away from working people. The conse-quences are stark for all workers, whether members of a trade union or not. Pay is lower than it was a decade ago in real terms.”

He told delegates too many em-ployers were fl outing existing laws and failing to pay the minimum wage.

“We will put a stop to that. We will create a workers’ protection agency with real teeth, including the power to enter workplaces and bring prosecutions on workers’ behalf,” he said.

Other changes to workers’ rights would include a ban on un-paid internships and zero-hours contracts, he said.

Sectoral collective bargaining would be introduced by establish-ing a councils of worker and em-ployer representatives to negotiate agreements with minimum terms, conditions and standards for the whole of a particular sector.

Corbyn also pledged to repeal the Conservatives’ Trade Union act, which had severely restricted the activity of unions and their ability to organise against bad em-ployers, he said.

Addressing the political turmoil in Westminster which ended on in the early hours of yesterday morn-ing with the proroguing of parlia-ment, Corbyn said he wanted to maintain focus on the real issues aff ecting workers’ lives.

“Today parliament stands empty, shut down by a prime min-ister running away from scrutiny. We mustn’t mistake the drama at Westminster for what real politics is about,” he said.

“What truly matters to people isn’t resignations, defections and late night votes in parliament. What truly matters is the reality of their everyday lives – in their community, on the streets, at their workplace.” In a rallying cry to some of his closest allies before an anticipated general election, Cor-byn predicted the establishment would come after Labour because they were trying to take on those with vested interests in maintain-ing the current imbalance in the UK.

“We’re going after the tax avoiders. We’re going after the bad bosses. We’re going after the dodgy landlords. We’re going af-ter the big polluters destroying our climate. Because we know whose side we’re on,” he concluded be-fore a one-minute standing ova-tion.

In a speech to the TUC yester-day afternoon, fl eshing out the plans in more detail, the shadow business minister, Laura Pidcock, said: “Under Labour, the voice of working people will be heard at the Cabinet table, exactly as it should be.

“Despite working some of the longest hours in Europe, millions of people in this country – one of the richest in the history of the world – cannot aff ord to make ends meet and are living in pov-erty.

“It is sickening that the 14.3mn people currently living in poverty includes 9mn living in families where one or more adults is work-ing.”

Union leaders welcomed Cor-byn’s latest proposals. Dave Prentis, the general secretary at Unison, the UK’s biggest union, said: “It’s become far too easy for unscrupulous bosses to treat their staff unfairly, safe in the knowl-edge their bad behaviour will never be challenged in the courts.”

Mick Whelan, the general secre-tary of Aslef, the train drivers’ un-ion, said: “This is a turning point in industrial relations in Britain. Successive Tory governments have stripped away the rights of work-ing people in a bid to take us back to the 19th century when unscru-pulous mill owners could hire and fi re at will.” About 5mn workers in the UK are represented by union delegates attending the TUC Con-gress.

Call to ban watches fromexam halls to stop cheatingGuardian News and MediaLondon

All watches should be banned from exam halls as more devices become

connected to the Internet, an in-quiry into cheating has found.

The Independent Commission on Examination Malpractice, set up by exam boards to investigate the prevalence of cheating in public exams, warned that invig-ilators increasingly could not tell the diff erence between smart-watches and traditional watches.

Though the body said cheating was rare, it said the increasing “so-phistication of Internet-enabled devices” meant a blanket ban on watches was appropriate. Smart-watches, mobile phones and other Internet-enabled devices are al-ready banned in exam halls.

Sir John Dunford, the com-mission’s chairman, said: “It can look as if it’s a time-telling watch and actually, you press a button and it becomes an e-mail-type

watch. If you don’t ban them all I think you’re giving a very dif-fi cult job to invigilators who are looking round an exam room. So I think the obvious thing to do here is to ban watches.”

The Joint Council for Qualifi ca-tions (JCQ), which commissioned the review, said it would consider whether to ban watches for next summer’s exams, as well as the re-port’s other recommendations.

The report also recommend-ed that exam boards monitor the dark web for the illegal sale of exam papers and said toilet sweeps, to check for hidden notes and phones, should be carried out during exam periods.

It called for more awareness of increasingly sophisticated tech-nologies used to cheat, such as miniature cameras in the bridge of glasses and microphones hid-den under a false nail.

The commission also said exam boards should carry out more research into why there had been sharp rise in schools requesting extra time for pupils

taking exams. There has been a 13% rise in the number of ap-provals for special arrangements during an exam for candidates with special educational needs, disabilities or temporary injuries, and a 27% rise in applications for special considerations to be made following an exam.

The latest fi gures for England show that 2,735 pupils were pe-nalised for cheating last year, marginally fewer than the year before. “In all walks of life, there is a small proportion of dishonest people and the education system is no exception,” said Dunford. “There is a lot more that can be done to prevent malpractice by both staff and candidates.”

Mark Bedlow, the chair of JCQ, said: “The commission’s fi ndings show that the system is robust and that very little malpractice occurs due to the diligence and profes-sionalism of those involved. How-ever, the commission has noted a number of areas for improvement of our systems to further minimise incidents of malpractice.”

Marie Claire UK tocease print publicationGuardian News and MediaLondon

The UK edition of Marie Claire is to cease publica-tion after 31 years as the

monthly women’s title joins a growing list of magazines that have succumbed to the shift to digital reading.

A version of the magazine – which is published by TI Me-dia, the owner of titles including Country Life and Wallpaper – will continue online. The company, formerly known as Time Inc, has entered into consultation with the approximately 35 members of staff aff ected by the closure.

Marcus Rich, the chief execu-tive of TI Media, said: “For more than three decades, Marie Claire UK has led the conversation on the issues that really matter to women, from campaigning for women’s empowerment to cli-mate change, while providing a premium fashion and beauty po-sitioning that refl ects their eve-ryday lives.”

The company, which operates

the UK edition of the magazine through a joint venture with Marie Claire Album, will focus on moving the publication’s website into areas including Marie Claire Edit, a shopping platform that aggregates partners including Farfetch, Net-a-Porter, Selfridg-es, Topshop and Asos.

In June, the fashion retailer Next bought the online premium beauty and well-being retailer Fabled, a joint venture between Marie Claire and Ocado.

“The success of Marie Claire Edit and Fabled by Marie Claire are good examples of how, at TI Media, we can extend our unri-valled content and expertise into the digital space,” Rich said.

“There is enormous poten-tial for us to drive our ongoing transformation through growing our digital business quickly and it will continue to be a key focus for us.”

The closure of the UK print edition does not aff ect Marie Claire in other markets where it continues to be published, such as Australia, Argentina, France and the US.

Daily MailLondon

The family of a desperately ill girl being held ‘against her will’ in hospital has

launched a landmark court battle to get her out.

Five-year-old Tafi da Raqeeb’s parents demanded the Royal Lon-don Hospital be forced to release her so she can travel to an Italian hospital.

UK doctors say her brain injury is so extensive and irreversible, it would be kinder to let her die.

The hospital in east London has applied to the high court for per-mission to switch off Tafi da’s life-support. But, unlike in the similar cases of Charlie Gard and Alfi e Evans, Tafi da’s parents – solicitor Shelina Begum, 39, and construc-tion consultant father Mohamed Raqeeb, 45 – are suing the hospi-tal. Citing EU law, they claim it is unlawfully depriving their daugh-ter of her liberty.

The landmark case could pave the way for other families in simi-lar right-to-life battles. However, the Royal London said if Tafi da’s family succeeds, it would “drive a coach and horses” through medi-cal guidelines.

Its QC Katie Gollop said: “This case is of the utmost importance to the NHS.”

She responded furiously to an allegation by the parents’ QC Dav-id Lock that doctors had planned to switch off life-support without the consent of the parents and without the approval of a court.

Gollop said: “That is the most serious allegation made against an NHS Trust I have ever heard. It is little short of an allegation of a criminal nature.” Lock read out an internal hospital e-mail from July 2 saying: “There is a plan to with-draw care on Friday at 10am.”

Lock said: “My client, Shelina Begum, was repeatedly told this process was going to happen and she had to prepare for it.” Tafi da is being kept alive on an artifi cial ventilator at the Royal London af-ter a blood vessel in her brain burst as she slept on February 9.

Familyfi ghts tofree ‘comagirl’ fromhospital

12 Gulf TimesWednesday, September 11, 2019

BRITAIN

Duchess attends ‘Back to Nature’ festival

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and celebrity chef Mary Berry talk as they attend the ‘Back to Nature’ festival at RHS Garden Wisley, in Wisely, Britain, yesterday.

Teenager’s prison term over schoolgirl’s murder reducedGuardian News and MediaLondon

The teenager convicted of the rape and murder of the six-year-old schoolgirl

Alesha MacPhail has had his 27-year minimum sentence reduced.

Lawyers for Aaron Campbell, who was 16 when he was jailed for killing the child on the Isle of Bute in Scotland, had argued that his sentencing was “excessive and amounted to a miscarriage of jus-

tice”. In a judgment published yesterday, three judges ruled the sentence should be reduced to 24 years on account of the killer’s age at the time of the murder.

The defence QC Brian McCon-nachie, who represented Camp-bell during his trial in February, argued in court in Edinburgh last month that the killing in July last year was “an appalling and hei-nous crime”.

But he said the trial judge, Lord Matthews, had attached too great an importance to two sentencing

reports that were unduly pessimis-tic about Campbell’s capacity for rehabilitation, and thus imposed an excessive “punishment part” of 27 years to his life sentence.

In their judgment, the appeal judges concluded that the extent to which Campbell was likely to present a future risk, the appall-ing nature of the crime and the bleak prospects for change “led the trial judge to make inad-equate allowance for the mitiga-tory eff ect of youth”.

Campbell’s dysfunctional

home background, absence of boundaries and parenting prob-lems, “including a degree of physical and emotional abuse” were noted in the ruling from

Lord Drummond Young, Lord Menzies and Lady Dorrian.

These are all factors that may have adversely impacted on the development of his character, the judges found, “but which may not entirely dictate development of his character in the future”.

“We have concluded that a punishment part of 24 years would be appropriate to refl ect the appellant’s youth,” they add-ed.

“As with all punishment parts, this is not an indication of the

date when the appellant will be released. It specifi es rather the period which must pass before the appellant may even apply for parole.” They added: “As the trial judge had observed … ‘whether (Campbell) will ever be released will be for others to determine but as matters stand a lot of work will have to be done to change (him) before that could be con-sidered – it may even be impos-sible.”

Alesha, from Airdrie in North Lanarkshire, had arrived on the

Isle of Bute a few days earlier for a three-week summer break. After she was reported missing there was a frantic search before a member of the public found Alesha’s body.

During the two-week trial, the jury heard that Campbell had taken Alesha from her bed in a seafront fl at where she was stay-ing with her father and grandpar-ents, using a knife to silence her, and had carried her to the nearby grounds of a disused hotel where he had raped and smothered her.

“As with all punishment parts, this is not an indication of the date when the appellant will be released. It specifi es rather the period which must pass before the appellant may even apply for parole”

Author Margaret Atwood attends the launch of her new novel The Testaments at a bookstore in London yesterday.

Book launch

EUROPE13Gulf Times

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Dog owners and veterinarians in Norway are stumped and concerned by a mystery disease that as of yesterday has killed at least 25 dogs across the country. Around 100 dogs have been diagnosed with symptoms that include general weakness, vomiting and bloody diarrhoea in recent weeks. Authorities are scrambling to track down the cause, and dog owners have been urged to prevent their four-legged companions from coming into close contact with other dogs. Several dog shows and dog-related events have been cancelled. So far, veterinarians have only been able to establish that a healthy animal can quickly succumb, sometimes within 24 hours.

Danish police yesterday evacuated part of Aarhus Airport in western Denmark after a “suspicious item” was found. “After finding a suspicious item, we have for security reasons chosen to shut down most of Aarhus Airport and evacuated people while we investigate further,” police said on Twitter. Police said 140 people were evacuated to a nearby building, while a plane with 70 passengers on board was halted on the runway. Police added that flights to and from the airport would be halted for the time being. Bomb disposal experts have also been summoned. A police spokesman told Danish broadcaster TV2 that police could not estimate how long the closure would be in place.

Greece’s navy was yesterday investigating the loss of weapons at a base on Leros island, off icials said, amid reports that armour-piercing rounds and grenades had gone missing. “A discrepancy has been discovered between projected and actual military equipment at the Leros naval technical installation,” navy spokesman Michail Lambiris said in a statement. “Army and police authorities are investigating,” he said. The discovery was made on Monday during an inventory check, Lambiris said. The navy did not give details but reports said the missing weapons included armour-piercing rounds and grenades.

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven yesterday reshuff led his cabinet, naming a new foreign minister and two other new cabinet members. Ann Linde, 57, was named foreign minister. She succeeds Margot Wallstrom who had served in that position since 2014, but last week announced she was stepping down to spend more time with her family. Linde has until now handled trade issues. Her successor is Anna Hallberg, who leaves a position at state-owned investment group Almi. Eva Nordmark, who for the past eight years has headed the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees that groups 1.4mn members, was named employment minister.

A stunning collection of 735 rugby jerseys and 62 related items from 69 countries will go under the hammer in Toulouse tomorrow. The collection belonged to Bernard Chwartz, a solicitor from the southwestern French region who passed away in 2009. “It’s one of the biggest sales of rugby jerseys and items ever organised in the world,” auctioneer Remy Fournie told AFP, highlighting rarities such as a Cornwall county cap dating from the 1901-2 season and a Wales jersey from 1904. The collection is split into 524 lots and includes the jersey of Christian Carrere, captain of the first France team to win the Grand Slam in the then-Five Nations, in 1968.

Dogs killed by mystery disease in Norway

‘Suspicious item’ forces evacuation at airport

Greek navy finds weapons missing from island base

Swedish PM names new foreign minister

Huge collection of rugby jerseys under the hammer

STUMPED SECURITYCRIME RESHUFFLE MEMORABILIA

EU chief-designate names team for climate, global challengesBy Philip Blenkinsop, Reuters Brussels

The European Union must lead the fi ght against cli-mate change, build ties

with the United States and Africa and face up to a more assertive China, the incoming chief of the EU executive said yesterday.

Ursula von der Leyen gave jobs to her 27-strong team, laying heavy stress on a “Green Deal”, techno-logical threats and opportunities and a need to respond to unease among many Europeans about changes ahead to their way of life.

Her “college” of commission-ers will take offi ce on November 1, assuming they secure approval from the European Parliament — not a given after it only narrowly backed the German in July.

Greens lawmakers have al-ready expressed concern that her commissioners include Hunga-ry’s ex-justice minister, who they say has undermined the rule of law there.

Von der Leyen’s team will suc-ceed that of Jean-Claude Junck-er, who faced the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis, a migration crisis, Britain’s vote to leave the bloc and a more protectionist United States under President Donald Trump.

Juncker dubbed his team the “political” commission.

Von der Leyen said hers would be “geopolitical”, implying that the EU should play a greater role in world aff airs.

Announcing the key roles in her line-up, she said Denmark’s Margrethe Vestager would re-main in charge of competition

policy and Irishman Phil Hogan would take on trade.

Von der Leyen will become the fi rst woman to head the European Commission after promising a platform of a greener, fairer and rule-based Europe.

Her proposed team off ers rough gender balance, a plus point for EU lawmakers, with 13 women and 14 men.

“We will take bold action against climate change, build our partnership with the United States, defi ne our relations with a more self-assertive China and be a reliable neighbour, for example to Africa,” she said.

The European Union would be the “guardian of multilateral-ism”, she said, recognising that some tasks could not be achieved by Europe alone.

The bloc should be a bigger

player in artifi cial intelligence and big data and improve its de-fence against cyber attacks.

Holding the infl uential com-petition portfolio for the past fi ve years, Vestager has fought mo-nopolies and imposed hefty fi nes on tech giants Apple and Alpha-bet unit Google.

Competition is seen as a top job, with Germany and France pressing for the bloc to soften its anti-monopoly rules to help European industrial champions compete with rivals from China and the United States.

Hogan, currently in charge of agriculture, will face a battle to resolve trade tensions with the Trump administration and will be in charge of establishing fu-ture economic relations with Britain after Brexit.

The economic portfolio goes to former Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni at a time when

the continent is struggling with weak growth, a possible reces-

sion in Germany, and battles with Italy over budgetary restraint.

The outgoing commission has long tussled with Italy over fi scal rules in past years.

The appointment of an Italian leftist to monitor Rome’s com-pliance with EU budget rules could be seen as a lenient move.

However, Gentiloni will have to agree budget decisions with former Latvian prime minister Valdis Dombrovskis, who has a reputation as a tough enforcer of fi scal discipline and will be in charge overall of the Commis-sion’s economic aff airs.

In a sign of change from the current executive, the Commis-sion will create a new defence and space arm, under internal markets commissioner Sylvie Goulard, an ally of French Presi-dent Emmanuel Macron.

European Commission’s president-designate Ursula von der Leyen addresses a news conference at the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels yesterday.

Spanish political talks stallReuters Madrid

Spain yesterday stood on the brink of a repeat election after the Socialists and far-

left Unidas Podemos said they had made no progress in a new round of talks aimed at overcom-ing diff erences to strike a govern-ment deal.

Spain’s politics have been in limbo since an inconclusive elec-tion in April, which the Socialists won but without enough seats to govern on their own.

If parliament does not vote in Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez as prime minister by September 23, there will be a new parliamentary election on November 10, though opinion polls show that would be unlikely to bring any more clarity.

“We see no path for reaching an agreement,” Socialist negotiator Adriana Lastra said, urging Po-demos to reconsider its demand that they be made part of a coali-tion government.

The Socialists want Podemos to back them without being in the cabinet, which the latter refuses.

Lastra said the Socialists were willing to hold new talks, but Po-demos said that came with an ul-timatum.

“PSOE (the Socialist Party) is not moving from its idea of hav-ing a one-party government, as if it had a full majority.

If we do not accept that idea they told us there’s not going to be more meetings,” Podemos ne-gotiator Pablo Echenique said. “For us this lead us to elections.”

The two parties have regularly been at odds as the Socialists try to put together a government, but time is now running out, barring a U-turn from one of them.

A repeat election would be the fourth in four years, with Span-ish parties struggling to fi nd ways to govern the country in an era where the decades-old domi-nance of two parties — the So-cialists and conservative People’s Party — has been shattered by new, often populist parties.

A repeat election in Spain would see the Socialists extend their lead and PP win more seats than in April, but without giving either a majority, an opinion poll had indicated on Monday.

Opinion polls have consistent-ly shown that the Socialists and centre-right Ciudadanos would have enough seats to govern the country together but both have repeatedly ruled it out.

Spanish growth has been con-sistently above the European average since it came out from a prolonged slump in 2013, and the economy has so far largely ap-peared unaff ected by the coun-try’s political problems.

Senate backs new Italian government led by ConteBy Ella Ide, AFP Rome

Italy’s new government yesterday won a confi dence vote in the upper house of parliament, the last hurdle

to overcome before the pro-European executive could get down to work.

The coalition of the anti-establish-ment Five Star Movement (M5S) and centre-left Democratic Party (PD), led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, won the support of 169 MPs, while 133 voted against and fi ve abstained.

The government had easily won the same vote in the lower house, where Conte on Monday had presented his programme to applause from support-ers and boos from the opposition.

Yesterday’s debate ahead of the vote was similarly charged, with cries of “traitor!” from the far right.

M5S and the PD agreed to join forces after strongman Matteo Salvini pulled his anti-immigration League party from a coalition with the M5S in Au-gust, toppling the government.

Salvini has accused the M5S and PD, which have long despised each other, of joining forces purely over their dislike for him and their fear of fresh elections.

“You are the minority in this coun-try...You can run for a few months, but you cannot escape (elections) indefi -nitely,” he said. Salvini reached out to M5S supporters in particular who may feel betrayed by the Movement’s alli-ance with the centre left.

Conte did not mention Salvini by name, but slammed the “arrogance” of the man who felled the previous gov-ernment and demanded “full powers” — the exact words used by wartime dic-tator Benito Mussolini.

The most pressing issue facing Rome will be the upcoming 2020 budget, a key test for relations with Brussels.

The prime minister on Monday had called for the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact, which limits budget defi cits to 3% of gross domestic product in member states, to be “improved” and simplifi ed.

The pact was the main bone of con-tention between the European Com-mission and the previous coalition in

heavily indebted Italy, which must sub-mit a balanced budget to Brussels in the coming weeks.

Ratings agency Moody’s said on Monday it expects the new government to be less eurosceptic and have better relations with Brussels and fellow EU member states.

Italy’s former centre-left premier Paolo Gentiloni was yesterday handed the economy portfolio in the incoming European Commission.

The government is also facing calls to ease Salvini’s hardline immigration rules, which ban charity ships that have rescued migrants from entering Italian waters.

Conte yesterday called for “all po-litical parties and citizens to avoid ob-sessively concentrating on the slogans ‘open the ports’, ‘close the ports’.”

The Ocean Viking ship, which is run by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders, is stuck at sea, after appealing in vain for a safe port to dis-embark those it has saved.

The Alan Kurdi, which had been asking to dock for 10 days, was refused permis-

sion by Italy late on Monday, but given the go-ahead to disembark its fi ve migrants in Malta yesterday after a deal with other European countries to take them in.

“The government’s fi rst act is closing the ports to the Alan Kurdi. This is not good enough, not at all,” PD lawmaker Matteo Orfi ni tweeted.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is congratulated after a confidence vote in the Senate in Rome yesterday.

A farmer leads his cows during the 33rd International Livestock Trade Fair (SPACE — Salon international des productions animales) in Bruz, a suburb of Rennes, western France.

Livestock fairRacism and intolerance ‘escalating’ in Finland, says Council of EuropeAFPHelsinki

Racist and abusive language is “commonplace” online in Fin-land and is on the rise in politi-

cal discourse, a report by the Council of Europe warned yesterday.

Although the Nordic nation fre-quently tops international com-parisons regarding happiness, gen-der equality and quality of life, the population has the lowest share of foreign-born residents in western Europe, at 6.6%, and anti-immigrant sentiment is widespread.

The hardline Finns Party, which campaigns on a platform of staunch opposition to asylum, has been the second-largest party in the past two general elections.

“Racist and intolerant hate speech in public discourse is escalating; the main targets are asylum-seekers and Muslims,” the council’s Commis-sion against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) said in the report.

Meanwhile online “expressions of racism and xenophobia containing an-ti-immigrant rhetoric as well as target-

ing persons of African descent and the Jewish community are commonplace, as is abusive language when referring to Roma,” the authors said.

Last year, the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency found that people of African descent in Finland suff ered the highest levels of perceived racial harassment and violence out of 12 member states studied.

Although ECRI welcomed recent measures to try and address the problems, it said that “the responses of the Finnish authorities to these incidents cannot be considered fully adequate”.

Finnish authorities recorded 1,165 hate crimes in 2017, but the report criticised the patchy collection of data which it said prevented accurate year-on-year comparisons. None-theless, it noted that civil society groups have marked an increase in hate incidents since 2015.

Ethnic profi ling by the police ap-pears to still be common practice, despite being outlawed in 2015, ECRI said, and criticised the lack of diver-sity in the police, which it says does not refl ect the make-up of Finland’s population.

14 Gulf TimesWednesday, September 11, 2019

INDIA

Goldman employee held over $5mn theftAgenciesBengaluru

A senior Goldman Sachs executive in India was ar-rested yesterday for alleg-

edly duping the US bank out of millions of dollars to pay off online poker debts in China, police said.

Press reports said that Ashwani Jhunjhunwala, a vice president at the bank’s Bengalu-ru offi ce, swindled approximate-ly Rs380mn ($5.3mn) and wired the money to China.

“The matter came to light during an internal audit done by the fi rm. The money was transferred to banks in China illegally,” Police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao said.

A report in The Newsminute said that the 36-year-old execu-tive accessed computers of his juniors on the pretext of train-ing them and made them log into their systems.

Later, as captured on security cameras, he kept sending them on errands and used their systems to transfer money into a private bank account, reports said.

“The transactions timings tallied with that of the videos which recorded and showed the executive using computers of his associates for committing the fraud,” Rao said.

One of the accounts in which the money was transferred to was found to be a shell company in Hong Kong in which he had invested.

“When confronted with video clip of the crime, the accused tried to wriggle out by saying he was only evaluating his col-leagues performance on their computers,” the police offi cer said.

Goldman said it had fi red the employee.

“We are engaged with the authorities to activate criminal proceedings,” a spokesman said.

India’s ‘Dirty Harry’ drawscurtains on bloody careerAgenciesMumbai

India’s real-life Dirty Harry who made his name by gun-ning down gangsters in the

streets of Mumbai has resigned after a colourful career spanning 35 years, an offi cial said yester-day.

Police offi cer Pradeep Sharma, credited with killing 112 gangsters, applied for voluntary retirement which was accepted, a spokesman for Mumbai Police said.

Sharma, 57, was known as an “encounter specialist,” and was once dreaded by the Mumbai’s underworld.

Between 1997 and 2003, Sharma and his team gunned down more than 600 gangsters, according to local media reports.

Sharma’s career drew compari-sons with the popular Clint East-wood character and also inspired

several Bollywood movies.In an interview in 2005, Shar-

ma said he and his colleagues swooped down backstreets and dark alleys, chasing gangsters and shooting them if they re-fused to surrender.

Nicknamed “The Terminator”, Sharma remained a divisive fi g-ure through his career.

Many hailed him for making Mumbai safer but rights activ-ists accused him of cold-blood-ed murders.

Sharma’s life took a dramatic turn in 2008 when he was sacked on charges of extorting millions of rupees from the crime syndi-cates of Mumbai.

He was however reinstated later after a tribunal rejected the charges. The then Congress-Nationalist Congress govern-ment was reluctant to induct Sharma back, but relented after he threatened to join politics.

Sharma joined the police de-

partment as a sub-inspector, and rose through the ranks quickly because of his great un-derstanding of the Mumbai un-derworld and the functioning of various gangs in Mumbai

He summed up his career in a 2003 Time magazine story where he posed with a machine gun and declared: “Criminals are fi lth...and I’m the cleaner.”

Speculation is rife that Shar-ma is keen on contesting the up-coming Maharashtra assembly elections on a Shiv Sena ticket.

In the past many senior po-lice offi cers resigned and joined politics.

Former Mumbai police com-missioner Satyapal Singh re-signed in 2014 and is now a minister in the Bharatiya Janata Party government.

One more Senior Police In-spector in his age of 60s resigns from services and opts for poli-tics and retirement plan.

No genuine citizen willsuff er underNRC: IraniIANSKolkata

Women and Child De-velopment Minister Smriti Irani yester-

day attacked West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for opposing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and denying people the fruits of central gov-ernment schemes.

She asserted the central gov-ernment was committed to safeguarding the rights of every genuine citizen.

While infi ltrators would face the law, no genuine Indian citi-zen would suff er following the NRC in Assam, Irani said.

“No Indian will be left out, it is our commitment, and we are dedicated towards protecting the rights of all citizens of the country,” Irani said at a press conference on the occasion of the government completing 100 days in its second term.

“At the same time, the illegal infi ltrators will be dealt with as per law,” she said.

The minister said Banerjee’s stand on the NRC betrays her dichotomy on the issue of infi l-trators.

“The Trinamool’s stand be-trays its dichotomy as during her days in the Congress, Banerjee had organised a rally with the slogan ‘no identity card no vote’ in 1993 that led to the death of 13 Congress activists.

“While she is opposing the NRC now, in August 2005, she had thrown papers in the Lok

Sabha after she was not allowed to speak against inclusion of il-legal immigrants in the Bengal voter list.”

Asked about the Trinamool Congress organising street pro-tests on the issue of NRC, Irani said Home minister Amit Shah has already declared in parlia-ment and all public forums that no genuine citizen would be left out.

The NRC is the latest fl ash point between the the Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Ja-nata Party (BJP) in West Bengal.

The state unit of the BJP has been demanding the publication of an NRC similar to the one re-leased in Assam.

West Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh has said on multiple oc-casions that only an NRC can “throw illegal Bangladeshis out”.

Soon after the fi nal list of the Assam NRC was released on August 31, Ghosh reiterated his demand: “We demand that just like Assam, NRC should also be implemented in Bengal.”

Ghosh has also warned that “if the Trinamool government is not willing to bite the bullet, we will implement it and drive out Bangladeshi Muslims from the state after we come to power in 2021.”

The Trinamool perceives it as an attack on the 28% Mus-lim population in West Bengal, which has traditionally voted for the party led by Banerjee.

The Trinamool passed a reso-lution in assembly last Friday criticising the NRC in Assam, in

which more than 19 lakh people were left out.

Banerjee said in the assem-bly that “the Assam Accord was signed during Rajiv Gandhi’s re-gime so that peace and tranquility returned to Assam. This was not acceptable to any other states.”

As BJP raised objections, Ban-erjee turned political, saying: “We will never let the BJP im-plement the National Register of Citizens in West Bengal.”

Twenty-eight percent vote is very signifi cant for the elec-toral success of the Trinamool with West Bengal set to go to the polls in 2021. On Sunday, Trina-mool workers took the issue to the streets. Medium scale rallies and meetings were organised by the ruling party to express its “stiff opposition” to any move aimed at implementing NRC in the state.

And it wasn’t just limited to Kolkata. Districts like Burdwan, Birbhum and Medinipur too witnessed protest rallies by the Trinamool workers against NRC in West Bengal.

Some of the events were also attended by top ministers of the state government with Trina-mool Congress general secretary Partha Chatterjee saying that his party has “vowed not to allow NRC in Bengal”.

This is not the fi rst time that NRC is being discussed in West Bengal. In the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP presi-dent Amit Shah had stated at many rallies that the party would bring an NRC in West Bengal if it came to power.

In this file photo taken on March 14, 2005 police off icer Pradeep Sharma is seen checking his weapon before leaving his house in Mumbai.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks at a meeting organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party to pay homage to former finance minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi yesterday. Modi heaped praises on his friend, calling him an encyclopaedia. The event was attended by Home Minister Amit Shah, party mentor Lal Krishna Advani, top ministers and Jaitley’s family members.

Modi pays tribute to Jaitley

Urmila Matondkar feels betrayed, quits CongressIANSMumbai

Caught in a web of intra-party politicking, Bol-lywood actress Urmila

Matondkar abruptly quit the Congress yesterday, alleging ‘betrayal’ by the party.

“I hereby resign from the In-dian National Congress (INC) as a member and from any post held in the INC. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to work for INC,” Matondkar said in a terse letter to interim Con-gress president Sonia Gandhi dated September 7.

She said the fi rst thoughts of resigning from the party came when - despite her repeated ef-forts - no action was taken after

her explosive letter dated May 16 to former Mumbai Congress president Milind Deora was ‘leaked’ in early July.

“Thereafter, to my utter dismay, the said letter con-taining privileged and confi -dential communication was conveniently leaked to the me-dia, which according to me was an act of blatant betrayal,” Ma-tondkar said.

She claimed that nobody from the party was apologetic for the leak of the nine-page letter, nor was anybody con-cerned for her despite her repeated protests over the is-sue.

In the letter, Matondkar had named certain key people in the party’s local units at the block and ward levels and other in-

fi ghting which reportedly re-sulted in her maiden electoral loss in the Lok Sabha polls ear-lier this year.

On the contrary, she pointed out that the people she had spe-cifi cally mentioned in the letter to Deora for their “shoddy per-formance” in Mumbai Con-gress were rewarded with newer positions, instead of being held accountable for their acts and omissions.

“It is obvious that the key functionaries of Mumbai Con-gress are either unable or not committed to bring about a change and transformation in the organisation for the better-ment of the party,” Matondkar said.

She said her “political and social sensibilities” refused

to allow vested interests in the party to use her as a means “to fight petty in-house poli-tics”, instead of working on a bigger goal for the Mumbai Congress.

“I stand by all my thoughts and ideologies and will con-tinue to work for the people to the best of my capacity with honesty and dignity. I thank all the people who helped and sup-ported me through my journey,” she signed off .

The popular actress joined the Congress on March 27 this year and later unsuccess-fully contested the Lok Sabha elections from Mumbai North against sitting Bharatiya Janata Party MP Gopal Shetty, who won by a staggering 465,000 votes.

Chennai lawyers boycott courts over chief justice’s transferIANSChennai

Lawyers in Chennai yes-terday boycotted courts and tribunals in protest

against the transfer of Madras High Court Chief Justice Vijaya Kamlesh Tahilramani to Megha-laya and demanded revocation of the order.

Tahilramani was transferred by the Supreme Court colle-gium, which declined her appeal to reconsider the decision.

Following that, Tahilramani

sent her resignation to President Ram Nath Kovind. She also sent a copy of her resignation letter to Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi.

The lawyers have sent a letter to Gogoi urging him to recon-sider decision.

They said transfers have be-come a weapon in the hands of the powerful collegium.

The lawyers said such arbi-trary transfers whittle away the independence of the judiciary and confi dence in the judges.

The letter said that transfers have become a weapon in the

hands of the powerful collegium, which is not a creation of legisla-tion but that of the judiciary it-self and there are no checks and balances in matters of adminis-tration of the judiciary.

The lawyers also referred to Justice Khalid, a former judge of the Supreme Court, who once recalled how a transfer can be a more dangerous weapon than dismissal, reminding one of the dark days of Emergency.

“The style of functioning of the collegium leaves one with the impression that the high court is subordinate to the col-

legium. This aff ects the majesty of the high court and erodes the primacy of position given to high courts in the constitutional scheme of things,” the lawyers said.

In the letter, the lawyers have mentioned the observation of a constitution bench of the Su-preme Court, which said: “The power of transfer is a highly dangerous power involving great hardship and, injury to the Judge transferred including a stigma on his reputation in cases where the transfer is not eff ected pur-suant to any policy but the judge

is picked out for transfer on a se-lective basis and to my mind, it makes no diff erence whether the transfer is made by the govern-ment on its own initiative or it is made at the instance of the chief justice of India.”

“These words ring true in the transfer of Chief Justice Vijaya Tahilramani who has uncer-emoniously been transferred from a chartered high court to the high court of Meghalaya which has only three judges in the all India seniority,” the let-ter read.

Tahilramani was the acting

chief justice of the Bombay High Court on two occasions before she was elevated as the chief jus-tice of the Madras High Court on August 4, 2018.

She was due to retire in Sep-tember 2020.

She will be succeeded by Meg-halaya High Court Chief Justice A K Mittal.

“These transfers have raised the eyebrows of many members of the bar who look upon the judiciary as protecting the rule of law,” the lawyers said adding that transferring Tahilramani to one of the smallest high courts

is nothing short of punishment and humiliation.

It is ironical that a person of her seniority is being assigned to the smallest high court and a judge who is junior to her in the Madras High Court is being elevated and transferred as the chief justice.

Tahilramani, meanwhile, has decided to go on leave to protest against the transfer.

She also tendered her resig-nation to President Ram Nath Kovind and sent a copy of it to Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi.

Argentinapollsters nowforecast winfor FernandezReutersBuenos Aires

Argentina’s pollsters, still smarting after failing to predict a landslide defeat

for President Mauricio Macri in an August primary, are sheep-ishly re-emerging with an up-dated election forecast: a huge win for opposition leader Alberto Fernandez.

Fernandez, a moderate Per-onist who until this year was little known outside Argentina, won by a far larger-than-expect-ed 16 points in August, dashing Macri’s hopes of being re-elect-ed at the end of the year.

The shock result rattled Ar-gentina’s debt and currency markets, driving the peso and bonds to record lows as investors worried about the country’s shift back to populist-style policies.

Fernandez is running on a ticket with populist ex-leader Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, a militant populist who com-mands an ardent support base but who also alienated investors and business during her presi-dency from 2007 to 2015.

Pollsters, who had almost uni-versally predicted a close race, are now catching up, forecasting that Fernandez will beat Macri by an even bigger margin in the Oc-tober 27 general vote.

A victory by over 10 points means a run-off second round would not be needed.

Fernandez is expected to win the election in the fi rst round with 51.5% of the vote versus 34.9% for Macri, according to Ricardo Rouvier & Asociados.

Consultancy Trespuntozero gave Fernandez 51.9% against 34% for market-friendly con-servative Macri.

Pollster Clivajes estimated a similar 52.6%-32.5% split.

“What I see is a consolidation

of the outcome” of the primaries, analyst Julio Burdman, whose consultancy Electoral Observa-tory is still completing its polls, said in an interview.

In the primaries, a major poll of the likely election outcome, Fernandez won 47.78% of the votes compared to 31.79% of Macri, leading many to write off Macri’s chances later in the year.

With blank votes counted — as is the case in the general elec-tion — Fernandez would have exceeded 49%. In Argentina, to win the election in the fi rst round and avoid a run-off , the top can-didate must exceed 45% of the vote or more than 40% with a 10-point lead over second place.

Argentina’s recession-hit economy was hit hard after the primaries as investors dashed for the exits, worried about a vacuum of power and Fernan-dez reinstating controls over the economy if he were to take over at the end of the year.

Since then, Macri has been forced to announce plans to de-lay debt repayments and imposed capital controls to protect the peso and stop a drain of the country’s foreign exchange reserves.

The country’s polling fi rms, some of which had given Macri a decent chance of winning re-election, received sharp criticism for failing to predict the result by such a wide margin.

Experts pointed out that a lack of more costly face-to-face sur-veys and reliance on fi xed-line phones meant polls often failed to reach the poorest neighbour-hoods or younger voters.

The lower class and youth are two key backers for Fernandez.

“It is a science that is not ac-curate,” one pollster told Reuters on condition of anonymity, add-ing that the environment had seemed to be improving for the government before the primary vote.

Mexico govt defends budgetplans after forecast concernsReutersMexico City

Mexico’s fi nance minister has defended the 2020 budget proposal, in-

sisting that his tax revenue and spending projections are cred-ible, despite concerns that the underlying forecasts for growth and oil output are overly opti-mistic.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s second budget since winning offi ce last year aims to boost spending on wel-fare programmes, security and state oil company Pemex, while also eschewing new taxes or fuel price hikes.

“We have presented a realistic budget, without underestimat-ing income or expenditures,” Finance Minister Arturo Her-rera told a news conference. “For a very long period, income was underestimated in a more or less systematic way, so that there was always surplus income at the end of the year.”

The administration cautiously freed up more funds for spend-ing, targeting a primary fi scal surplus of 0.7% of gross domes-tic product (GDP). The fi gure was less ambitious than earlier targets, but feasible in the view of economists.

There was less confi dence in Herrera’s forecast that Mexico could achieve growth of 1.5%-

2.5% next year after three con-secutive quarters of economic stagnation through June.

“It’s out of touch with reality,” said Patricia Terrazas, a member of the opposition centre-right National Action Party (PAN) who chairs the fi nance commit-tee in the lower house of Con-gress. “And it’s not in synch with the indicators.”

Credit rating agencies also weighed in on what they de-scribed as rosy forecasts for growth and production from state oil company Pemex.

Moody’s deemed both esti-mates “relatively optimistic” in a brief statement on Monday, and suggested that Pemex may need even more support from

the government.Similarly, Fitch analyst

Charles Seville said the govern-ment’s growth and oil output estimates “may prove over-op-timistic.”

Other experts have steadily pared back their expectations for the economy, and did so again in August.

The median forecast in the central bank’s latest monthly poll of economists projected growth of 1.4% next year after 0.5% in 2019.

Meanwhile, Mexican auto exports suff ered their biggest annual decline in nearly three-and-a-half years in August.

Automotive output is on track for its worst year in a decade.

Lopez Obrador took offi ce in December vowing to reduce chronic inequality and deliver average annual growth of 4%. Forecasts for increased oil pro-duction from the highly indebt-ed Pemex also met with skepti-cism.

The budget estimates Pemex’s year-end 2020 oil output at 1.95mn barrels per day (bpd), up from an estimate of 1.73mn bpd this year, even though the state-oil fi rm’s crude production has fallen for 14 years running.

Falling oil production and prices, as well declining income from taxes as Mexico’s economy struggled to avoid recession, have meant lower tax revenue for the government.

Brazil, Mexico begintalks on free trade dealReutersSao Paulo

Brazil and Mexico have be-gun talks on a free trade deal, a Brazilian offi cial

said, seeking to deepen commer-cial ties between the two largest economies in Latin America as trade tensions threaten to under-mine global growth.

Marcos Troyjo, Brazil’s dep-uty economy minister for for-eign trade, said Brazil had for-mally started free trade talks with Mexico, which recently ratified a new trade pact with the US and Canada to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). Troyjo said that Mexico had tradition-ally focused on trading with its Nafta partners but wanted to diversify.

He believed Brazil would be able to export more agricultural products to Mexico, Latin Amer-ica’s No 2 economy.

“Trade between Brazil and Mexico have always been below

the volumes desired. This was partly because Mexico gave pref-erential treatment to other trade partners, including the US and Canada,” he said at a conference hosted by the Brazil-China Busi-

ness Council in Sao Paulo.“Now the agreement between

Mexico, the US and Canada has changed (things). Brazil has a more immediate interest in in-creasing its exports of agricul-tural commodities to Mexico.”

The talks between Brazil and Mexico represent the latest chapter in Brazil’s eff orts to open up its hidebound economy and trade more with the rest of the world.

Under President Jair Bol-sonaro, Brazil has already begun

talks on a trade treaty with the US and is hoping a hard-won pact between the European Un-ion and the Mercosur bloc of South American countries will be ratifi ed.

However, Brazil’s eff orts to broaden commercial ties also come as the trade war between the US and China has sent jitters through the global economy, ig-niting fears of widespread reces-sions.

Mexican lawmakers have al-ready ratifi ed the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), after leaders from Mexico, the US and Canada agreed on terms in November.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said in August that he expected the US to follow suit this month.

In July, US President Donald Trump said he would pursue a trade agreement with Brazil, suggesting a friendly relation-ship with Bolsonaro could help lower trade barriers between the two biggest economies in the Americas.

Grain transport hitas miners block routeReutersSao Paulo

Small gold miners that have been working on illegal pits in the Amazon rainforest

blocked an important road for grains transportation in Brazil’s Para state, protesting a crack-down by the government, police said.

The miners, mostly habitants of Moraes Almeida, a district in the Itaituba municipality that is at the centre of an environmen-tal crisis due to widespread fi res in the forests surrounding it, blocked the BR-163 federal road.

The road is used by commodi-ties traders to transport soybeans and corn from Mato Grosso farms to a port at the Tapajos river in Para.

“There was a total obstruction on the road at km 411, leading to traffi c congestion in both ways,” said the federal police, answer-ing a request for comment from Reuters.

The police said miners were protesting recent raids from Brazil’s environmental defence teams that led to seizure and de-

struction of equipment found in protected areas inside the for-ests, where mining activity was going on.

According to the police, min-ers are asking the government to stop those raids and halt de-struction of equipment.

They have also asked the gov-ernment to legalise some mining areas in the region that would enable small miners to work.

Corn shipments from the Ta-pajos river port at Itaituba are in full swing, since Mato Grosso recently fi nished harvesting its major crop of the cereal.

Brazil is exporting a record amount of corn this year, after a bumper harvest.

Illegal mining is one of the ac-tivities green groups blame for the destruction of the rainforest.

Illegal logging and some clear-ing for agriculture and livestock are other actions seen as drivers of deforestation.

President Jair Bolsonaro had promised to legalise some areas for small and large-scale mining activities in northern Brazil. His remarks in the past could have boosted illegal mining in the Amazon.

Fuel shortage in Haiti

Motorbike riders wait to get fuel at a gas station in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Water protest

Residents of El Chimbo locality, 7km east of Tegucigalpa, burn tyres blocking the highway heading to the Valle de Angeles and Santa Lucia touristic sites, during a protest against the construction of a housing complex at La Tigra National Park – one of the three main water sources of the capital. The residents demanded the cancellation of the project arguing that it threatens to leave the Honduran capital without drinking water.

New high-voltage electric eels discovered in Amazon basinAFPTokyo

Call it a shock discovery: DNA research has re-vealed two entirely new

species of electric eel in the Amazon basin, including one capable of delivering a record-breaking jolt.

The fi ndings are evidence, re-searchers say, of the incredible diversity in the Amazon rainfor-est — much of it still unknown to science — and illustrate why it is

so important to protect a habitat at risk from deforestation, log-ging and fi res.

“In spite of all human impact on the Amazon rainforest in the last 50 years, we can still discover giant fi shes like the two new spe-cies of electric eels,” said lead researcher C David de Santana, a zoologist working with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

The research “indicates that an enormous amount of spe-cies are waiting to be discovered in the Amazon rainforest, many

of which may harbour cures for diseases or inspire technological innovations,” he told AFP.

The electric eel, in fact a kind of fi sh rather than an eel, inspired the design of the fi rst electric battery.

For centuries, it was believed that a single species existed throughout the region known as Greater Amazonia, encompass-ing parts of countries including Brazil, Suriname and Guyana.

But as part of a project to bet-ter understand electric eels and map wildlife in remote parts of

South America, de Santana and his team decided to test that con-ventional wisdom.

At fi rst glance, they found lit-tle visible diff erence between creatures collected from diff erent parts of the Amazon basin, sug-gesting the fi sh were indeed part of a single species.

But further analysis, including of DNA from 107 samples they collected, upended centuries of assumptions and revealed three diff erent species: the previously known Electrophorus electricus, along with Electrophorus voltai

and Electrophorus varii.And their research also un-

covered another stunning result: E.voltai is capable of delivering a jolt of 860 volts — much more than the 650 volts previously recorded from electric eels — “making it the strongest bioelec-tricity generator known.”

The fi ndings, published yes-terday in the Nature Commu-nications journal, theorise that the three species evolved from a shared ancestor millions of years ago.

The researchers found each of

the three species has a clearly de-fi ned habitat, with E. electricus living in the Guiana Shield region, E.voltai in the Brazilian Shield, a highland further south, and E. varii inhabiting slow-fl owing lowland Amazon basin waters.

And they suggest that the par-ticularly strong electric shock that E.voltai can produce could be an adaptation to life in high-land waters, where conductivity is less eff ective.

Electric eels use their shock tactics for a variety of reasons, including hunting prey, self-de-

fence, and navigation. They generate electricity from

three specialised electric organs that can emit charges of varying strengths for diff erent purposes.

But the discovery of the new species raises the possibility that diff erent types of eels may have evolved diff erent ways of generat-ing electricity, perhaps better suit-ed to their diverse environments.

De Santana hopes to compare the genomes of the three species, searching for clues that could of-fer insights useful to a variety of fi elds.

LATIN AMERICA

Gulf Times Wednesday, September 11, 2019 15

“Trade between Brazil and Mexico have always been below the volumes desired. This was partly because Mexico gave preferential treatment to other trade partners, including the US and Canada”

PAKISTAN

Gulf Times Wednesday, September 11, 201916

Qureshi calls for UN probe into situation in Indian KashmirPakistan’s foreign min-

ister demanded yester-day that the UN launch

an international investigation into the situation in Indian Kashmir, warning of the risk of “genocide” in the region.

“The people of India’s Jammu and Kashmir are ap-prehending the worst,” Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, adding, “I shudder to mention the word genocide here, but I must.”

India imposed a military clampdown on Kashmir from August 5 to prevent unrest as New Delhi revoked the region’s autonomy. Mobile phone net-works and the Internet are still cut off in all but a few pockets.

Kashmir, split between India and Pakistan since 1947, has been the spark for two major wars and countless clashes be-tween the two nuclear-armed arch-rivals.

“For the last six weeks, In-dia has transformed Jammu and Kashmir into the largest prison on this planet,” Qureshi insisted.

“The forlorn, traumatised

towns, mountains, plains and valleys of Jammu and Kash-mir reverberate today with the grim reminders of Rwanda, Sre-brenica, the Rohingya, and the pogrom of Gujarat,” he said.

The minister accused India of having arrested more than 6,000 people without due proc-ess. Many had been “shipped to jails all over India”, he said.

Vijay Thakur Singh, secre-tary (east) at India’s Ministry of External Aff airs, slammed Pakistan’s “false allegations and concocted charges against my country”, telling the Hu-man Rights Council that “this fabricated narrative comes from the epicentre of global terrorism.”

“The temporary preventive measures” introduced by India in Kashmir “were needed to en-sure security in the face of cred-ible threats of cross-border ter-rorism,” she said, insisting that the issue was “entirely internal to India”.

Indian-administered Kash-mir has seen a decades-old armed rebellion – backed by Pakistan, New Delhi says – against Indian rule with tens of thousands, mostly civilians, killed.

Qureshi meanwhile de-

nounced India’s references to “cross-border terrorism” to justify its crackdown as a “red herring to divert inter-national opinion”, and said he feared India might “even attack Pakistan”.

He also insisted that India’s

labelling of the Kashmir situa-tion as an “internal aff air” was “patently false”, pointing out that the matter had been on the UN agenda for seven decades.

The minister urged the coun-cil to heed recommendations by UN rights chief Michelle

Bachelet and her predecessor Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein to launch a so-called international Com-mission of Inquiry (COI) into the Kashmir situation.

A COI is one of the UN’s highest-level probes, gener-ally reserved for major crises

like the Syrian confl ict.The council must “take steps

to bring to justice the perpetra-tors of human rights violations of the innocent Kashmiri peo-ple, and in this context, consti-tute a Commission of Inquiry,” Qureshi said.

“If India has nothing to hide, it should allow unhindered ac-cess to the Commission of In-quiry,” he insisted. Pakistan was willing to provide access to its side of the so-called Line of Control, he added.

Pakistan is expected to present a resolution to the council for consideration by the end of the 42nd session on September 27.

At Monday’s opening of the council session, Bachelet also voiced alarm at the situation in Kashmir.

She had “appealed particu-larly to India to ease the current lockdowns or curfews, to ensure people’s access to basic serv-ices, and that all due process rights are respected for those who have been detained.”

“It is important that the peo-ple of Kashmir are consulted and engaged in any decision-making processes that have an impact on their future,” she added.

AFPGeneva

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi addresses the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva yesterday.

FBR issues 20,000 notices to tax evaders

The Federal Board of Rev-enue (FBR) of Pakistan has started issuing notices

to tax evaders, mainly high net-worth individuals, on the basis of information obtained from the tax profi ling system.

A notice contains all type of undeclared transactions made by a person on their CNIC, sources said. Around 20,000 notices have been issued by the Regional Tax Offi ce (RTO) – II Karachi to high net-worth and high profi le individuals.

The individuals have been identifi ed through tax profi l-ing system that was launched by the FBR on June 20. The FBR fed information of persons who made transactions under Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 and either concealed or did not declare the same to the tax authorities.

The purpose of the tax profi l-ing system was to inform peo-ple about their transactions in various categories, including car purchase, immovable prop-erty transaction, receipt of bank profi t, deductions of cash and non-cash transactions through banking system, fee paid to edu-cational institutions among oth-er transactions made during tax year 2018 and past years.

The FBR asked those persons to fi le their returns for tax year 2018 and in this regard the rev-enue body had even extended the last date for fi ling the returns up to August 9.

However, a large number of individuals failed to avail the of-fer. Hence the notices have been issued under section 114 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 to force such non-compliant per-sons to fi le their returns.

InternewsKarachi

171,000 Haj pilgrims return home

More than 171,000 Paki-stani pilgrims from out of a total of 200,000

have so far returned home after performing the sacred religious obligation of Haj.

A Ministry of Religious Aff airs and Interfaith Harmony spokes-man said in a statement that over 99,000 government and 72,000 private scheme Hujjaj have ar-rived in the country after per-forming Haj.

He said over 67,500 Hujjaj have already reached Madina Munawwara for leaving home after eight days stay there, while 23,000 government scheme Hu-jjaj were still present at Madina Munawwara.

The post-Haj fl ight operation would continue from Jeddah and Madinah airports to 10 Pakistani airports till September 15.

InternewsIslamabad

Pakistani Rangers patrol during a procession on the 10th day of Muharram, which marks the day of Ashura, in Quetta yesterday.

Security for procession CDA set to shift schools from residential areas

The Capital Devel-opment Authority (CDA) in pursuance

of orders of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) is fi nalis-ing a comprehensive policy and mechanism for shifting of schools from residential premises.

Working and homework in this regard has been com-pleted while concerned de-partments and stakeholders are being taken on board to incorporate their suggestions in the shifting mechanism, a spokesman of CDA said.

In this context, authority has scheduled a meeting on the subject matter on Sep-tember 12 at CDA

headquarters.Representatives of Federal

Directorate of Education (FDE), Private Educational School Regulatory Author-ity (PIERA) and other con-cerned formations will at-tend the meeting. In order to shift the educational in-stitutes from the residential premises, a comprehensive and transparent criterion is being devised so that the all educational institutes could be equally accommodated.

Through this mecha-nism it would be ensured that educational plot would not be allotted to any irrel-evant person or irrelevant institute. Furthermore, it would be also ensured that in future no school would be established in residential premises.

Housing societies are be-ing directed to utilise the plots reserved for educa-tional institutes within three months.

If the reserved educa-tional plot in any society has been utilised for any other purpose, the society would provide equal space for es-tablishment of educational institute in lieu of utilised reserved plot. In case of non-compliance, action under the rules will be taken against them.

The FDE being the main stakeholder in the matter is being asked to submit its future requirements and in-dicate the unused land and surrender it accordingly so that it could be reallocated for educational activities.

In this context, FDE will initiate a proposal to devise a mechanism through which a combination of private and government institutes would be encouraged.

InternewsIslamabad

Punjab Police ban use of smartphone on duty

Punjab police have barred on-duty personnel from using smartphones,

making videos and uploading them on social media.

The order follows surfacing of several videos during the last couple of weeks showing policemen torturing suspects in custody or the suspects in critical condition.

But a senior offi cial dispelled the impression that the ban had been imposed on taking mobile phones to the police stations. He said it was meant to stop all kinds of video recordings by on-duty police personnel at sensitive places and buildings to avoid any untoward incident.

Punjab Police Inspector General Arif Nawaz Khan is-sued a circular to all the fi eld police offi cers, including re-gional police offi cers, district police offi cers, city police offi c-ers and divisional SPs to follow it in letter and spirit.

It reads, “The competent authority has observed that the police offi cials are using mobile phones while on duty instead focusing on their assignments at the sensitive places during deployment. Clear instruc-tions in this regard have al-ready been issued to all fi eld formations. Frequent viola-tions of the standard operating procedure have refl ected badly on the performance of the su-pervising offi cers. In future no offi cer below the rank of sta-tion house offi cer (SHO) or in-

charge of a deployed duty will use cell phone while on duty.”

It further stated that it has been strictly forbidden to make a video of police offi cers on duty or upload a video of police offi cers performing their duties in any part of the province.

“Any violation in this regard will entail strict departmen-tal action not only against the delinquent offi cial but also against his supervisory offi cer,” reads the letter.

Inam Ghani, Additional IG (operations Punjab) regretted that some elements were twist-ing facts to defame police force by linking this new offi cial order to recent deaths in custody.

“We have not put any ban on general public to take mobile phones to police stations,” he said,

InternewsLahore

Astronaut hails India on moon missionPakistan’s first female astronaut Namira Salim has congratulated the Indian Space and Research Organisation (Isro) on the Chandrayaan-2 mission and its historic attempt to make a landing on the moon, international media reported.In a statement to the Karachi-based digital science magazine, Scientia, Namira said: “I congratulate India and Isro on its historical attempt to make a successful soft landing of the Vikram lander at the South Pole of the moon.“The Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission is indeed a giant leap for South Asia which not only makes the region but the entire global space industry proud.“Regional developments in the space sector in South Asia are remarkable and no matter which nation leads - in space, all political boundaries dissolve and in space - what unites us, overrides, and divides us on Earth.”Namira is known as the first Pakistani to go to space aboard the Virgin Galactic.Her comments came after communication between Vikram and the orbiter got snapped in a last-minute snag when the lander was just 2.1km away from its designated landing spot on the moon’s South Pole early on Saturday.But on Sunday, the Isro announced that it had found Vikram on the lunar surface. Pictures of the lander were captured by Chandrayaan-2 orbiter which is orbiting the moon. (Internews)

British-Pakistani appointed House of Lords member

British-Pakistani busi-nessman Zameer Choudrey, chief ex-

ecutive, Bestway Group, has been appointed to the House of Lords.

The appointment is in recog-nition of Choudrey’s consider-able contributions to Britain’s domestic and foreign trade as a leading businessman and en-trepreneur, his wide array of philanthropic work both in the UK and abroad, and his role as chairman of the Conservative Friends of Pakistan.

Speaking to Geo News yes-terday, Choudrey said, “It is an immense honour. I am truly humbled to have been appoint-ed to the House of Lords. I have always viewed the UK to be the land of opportunity and I look forward to contributing to the continued advancement of our great country.”

As chief executive of Bestway Group, Choudrey has already

driven tremendous growth in businesses across the UK and Pakistan.

This led to Choudrey being appointed to deputy chair-man of the Pakistan-Britain Trade and Investment Forum and serving as a member of the Confederation of British Industry’s Economic Aff airs Committee in previous years.

He has also regularly been asked to facilitate private gov-ernment visits to both Pakistan and the UK for senior govern-ment offi cials from both coun-tries, including the Mayors of London and the West Mid-lands, and private investors, to discuss how both the UK and Pakistan can look to increase trade and investment.

These strong ties with Paki-stan will mean Choudrey will be looking to utilise his vast experience to build more bi-lateral trade, create more jobs here in the UK and improve for-eign relations between our two countries.

Choudrey comes from hum-ble beginnings having grown

up in a remote village in Paki-stan, before moving to the UK at the age of 12.

His remarkable success over his career led to him being ap-pointed Commander of the Or-der of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2016 New Year’s Honours List for services to industry and philanthropy.

He also sits as a trustee for several national charities, including CrimeStoppers, Grocery Aid and Bestway Foundation, which has do-nated over £30mn to worthy education and healthcare causes. In January 2018, he was appointed as UK Chair of the British-Asian Trust’s Ad-visory Council, by HRH The Prince of Wales.

In his role as chief executive of Bestway Group, Choudrey has overseen growth of the group into one of the UK’s larg-est family-owned businesses, which employs over 27,000 people worldwide. In the UK, Bestway Group currently pro-vides employment for 15,000 people.

InternewsLondon

PHILIPPINES

17Gulf Times Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Draft ruling against Marcos poll protest divides top courtBy Jomar CanlasManila Times

Several Supreme Court (SC) justices were inclined to oppose the draft decision

circulated by Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa dis-missing the poll protest fi led by former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos against Vice President Leonor Robredo, sources told Manila Times yes-terday.

Caguioa’s draft decision, copies of which were sent to Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin and the 13 associate justices on Monday, upheld the proclama-tion of Robredo.

Unimpeachable sources said that Caguioa, the designated ponente of the case, circulat-ed his 54-page draft decision on Monday. The magistrate adopted a rarely used procedure in distributing his ponencia — each set bears a water mark.

Sources, however, clarifi ed that the draft decision is not

fi nal since members of the tri-bunal have yet to deliberate on

Caguioa’s ponencia and later cast their votes whether they

agree or disagree with the rec-ommendation.

The next deliberation was set on October 1.

Until the Supreme Court, sit-ting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), comes out with its fi nal and offi cial ruling, the case remains unresolved, the sources said.

They added that some jus-tices tended to concur with the draft decision, while others said they intend to fi le their objec-tion. Some magistrates also asked for more time to study Caguioa’s ponencia.

Yesterday, Brian Hosaka, head of the high court’s Public Infor-mation Offi ce, said the PET had “concluded and fi nished the re-count and revision of ballots in the three test provinces of Iloilo, Negros Occidental and Cama-rines Sur, involving 5,415 elec-tion precincts.”

Hosaka said the tribunal “has not taken any action yet on the report of Justice Caguioa.”

“The tribunal would like to again remind the parties that they are still subject to the sub-judice rule pursuant to its reso-lution dated Feb. 13, 2018 and March 20, 2018. Hence, they are strictly ordered to refrain from making any public statements to the media with regards to the case,” Hosaka added.

In his protest, Marcos as-sailed the election results in 39,221 clustered precincts. Based on date from the Com-mission on Elections, the 39,221 clustered precincts are com-posed of 132,446 precincts.

Marcos lost to Robredo by only 263,473 votes in 2016. He accused her of “massive elec-toral fraud, anomalies and irregularities” such as pre-shading of ballots, pre-loaded Secure Digital cards, misreading of ballots, malfunctioning vote counting machines and an “ab-normally high” unaccounted votes/undervotes for the posi-tion of vice president.

Patients die as Manila traffi c jams block ambulancesAFP Manila

Gridlock in Manila is cost-ing lives as ambulances stuck in traffi c face se-

vere delays in the race against the clock to reach the city’s hos-pitals, medics warn.

Special lanes for emergency vehicles are not enforced, the infrastructure is outdated, and local drivers are often unwill-ing or unable to make way — a situation experts say is causing patients to die en route.

“You feel empty. It is as if you were not given a chance to do everything in your capacity to help,” ambulance driver and paramedic Joseph Laylo said

“If the traffi c was not that bad it could have saved the patient,” he added, recalling how he lost a patient when congestion tripled the time to hospital.

Even with an encyclopedic knowledge of short cuts or ag-gressive driving such as blast-ing their horns or bumping unyielding vehicles, it is not always enough to arrive in time.

Driver Adriel Aragon is still haunted after losing a critically ill patient when it took 40 min-utes to reach the hospital — the journey should have taken half that time.

“No matter how hard we honk, even if we use our siren, if the vehicles are not moving it doesn’t matter,” he said.

“That’s what happened that time,” Aragon added of the 2014 tragedy.

Five minutes before they reached the hospital the wom-an’s pulse disappeared. She was pronounced dead after they wheeled her into the emergency room.

At peak hours, the main ar-teries of Manila are clogged with idling cars — a 25-kilome-tre end to end drive through the main highway can take as long as three hours.

Home to some 13mn, there is nearly one vehicle registered per person.

The resulting gridlock costs the city $67mn daily in lost pro-ductivity, according to a 2017 Japanese government-funded study.

Neither the government nor ambulance companies keep count of how many patients die in traffi c each year, offi cials said, but emergency medical work-

ers in the city have many horror stories.

Laylo says one patient died inside his ambulance after heavy traffi c on a narrow road added 10 minutes to the journey from the patient’s home to the hospital.

“It was about 5.7 kilometres. Normally it would take us less than fi ve minutes, but it took us 15 minutes that time,” Laylo ex-plained.

“When you’re trying to save a person’s life, that is very slow,” he said, still upset by the 2017 incident.

Images of ambulances stalled in unmoving traffi c jams have sparked outrage on social media in the Philippines.

One of the most notorious examples — which has been viewed over 3.2mn times on-line — was fi lmed by a woman shocked that cars wouldn’t or couldn’t give way to the ambu-lance carrying her mother.

“I was very angry. I was wor-ried too because we couldn’t do anything about the vehicles blocking our lane,” said the woman, Jing Zamora.

The trip took hours, when it

should have taken minutes.Zamora’s mother, who suf-

fered a stroke, survived the trip to the hospital but died there a week later.

A swift medical response is key to recovery, according to the American Stroke Association. Offi cials like Aldo Mayor, public safety chief of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), put at least part of the blame on other road users.

“Some people simply do

not care. It is as if they are the only residents of this world,” said Mayor, whose government agency manages the capital’s chaotic traffi c.

He added that Manila ordi-nances concerning emergency vehicles, including a 2017 regu-lation that reserves one lane for them, are rarely enforced due to personnel constraints.

These problems come as Ma-nila’s population has roughly doubled since 1985 and its in-

frastructure has not kept up.Its limited system of com-

muter rail is augmented by jeep-ney mini-buses and millions of cars. The nation’s thicket of bu-reaucracy and deep rooted cor-ruption have stalled or blocked eff orts to build new roads, bridges and public transit.

President Rodrigo Duterte pledged to unblock the capital’s choking gridlock, but halfway through his term the city’s main thoroughfare, Edsa, remains a

parking lot at rush hour.The sheer number of cars on

the roads is a major factor in whether ambulances can get their patients to hospital quick-ly, said Vernon Sarne, a long-time automotive journalist.

“Even when you want to give way, but the motorway is full, what can we do? The ambulance cannot levitate,” he said.

However Sarne noted that drivers have become cynical, thinking ambulances might be using their lights and sirens just to cut through the traffi c for non-emergencies.

“As a motoring public we are jaded to the fact that everyone is taking advantage of us,” he said, adding some politicians use emergency vehicles escorts to avoid the gridlock.

Yet ambulance operators in Manila hope public shaming on social media, like Zamora’s viral video, can help.

“Because of social media, we found more and more people are giving way, giving (us) the benefi t of the doubt,” Michael Deakin, the head of one of the nation’s largest ambulance companies said.

Former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

This photo taken on August 5, 2019 shows an ambulance negotiating through rush hour traffic along the Edsa highway in Manila.

Death toll from dengue hit 1,021 in eight monthsDPAManila

More than 1,000 people have died from dengue in the Philippines in the

fi rst eight months of the year, the health department said yes-terday.

Nearly 40% of the 1,021 vic-

tims who died from the disease between January 1 and August 24 were children aged fi ve years to nine years old, the Department of Health said.

The death toll was almost double the 622 deaths recorded in the same period last year, it added.

A total of 249,332 den-gue cases were reported from

January to August, compared to 119,224 in the same eight months in 2018, the depart-ment said.

Last month, the Philippines declared a national dengue epidemic amid a surge in the number of cases.

Health Undersecretary Eric Domingo said the epidemic was not yet under control even

though the rate of increase in the number of cases has slowed down since August.

“As long as there is com-munity transmission, we can’t say it’s under control,” he said. “We have to be on guard against dengue until the end of the year.” Domingo stressed that the public cannot be compla-cent in efforts to keep eliminate

breeding sites of mosquitoes, which carry the disease.

“We understand that it could sometimes be tiring,” he said. “Even we would sometimes feel that. But the threat of dengue continues so we have to scale up the effort.”

The increase in dengue cases comes two years after the gov-ernment stopped a mass im-

munisation programme using the vaccine Dengvaxia, manu-factured by French firm Sanofi Pasteur, due to safety concerns.

The Food and Drug Admin-istration (FDA) revoked the registration of the vaccine Dengvaxia in February.

Dengvaxia was given to about 830,000 children in the Philippines in the world’s first

mass vaccination using the new drug from April 2016 to De-cember 2017. The programme was stopped after Sanofi Pas-teur disclosed that a long-term follow-up study showed chil-dren who had not previously been infected by dengue might be at risk of contracting a more dangerous infection if given Dengvaxia.

Palace eyes flying ambulances to overcome clogged roadsMalacanang has proposed the use of flying ambulances to address reports that some patients being transported to hospitals died on the road because of the traff ic jams, Manila Times reported.Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo said hospitals should start tapping helicopters that could airlift patients in extreme cases. He also urged the De-partment of Health to consider having choppers “in relation to public service.”“Perhaps, they should include that in the next budget, where they can ask the help of other agencies that can buy the choppers to be con-verted into an ambulance,” Panelo said.Asked if the government had enough helicop-ters, he said: “Well, we can always utilise the AFP

(Armed Forces of the Philippines) with respect to choppers.” “I think the secretary of Health, as well as the secretary of DND (Department of National Defence) should be co-ordinating with respect to that,” he added. He said reports of patients dying because of clogged roads should prompt senators to grant the president emergency powers to ad-dress traff ic woes. “Even patients are dying because the ambulance carrying them could not reach the hospital on time,” Panelo said during a press conference.“The president will not go down on his knees and plead. They should know what the president needs to solve the problem with respect to this matter,” he added.

Call to dismissoffi cials linked to scamBy Javier J IsmaelManila Times

Senator Christopher Law-rence ‘Bong’ Go has urged Justice Secretary Menardo

Guevarra to relieve all Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) offi cials involved in the processing of Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA).

“Mr Chair, with several proc-esses under the GCTA (went through) I believe that many were involved and used this for corruption. Because of this, I am recommending to Secretary Guevarra, and this was already mentioned by President Duterte, to relieve all BuCor offi cials who are handling the GCTA proc-ess. Those who are next in rank will assume their duties,” Go said during the resumption of the Senate hearing on the GCTA scam.

“We have received reports that some inmates were moved into the New Bilibid Prison Hospital by faking their illness and buy-ing the so-called hospital refer-ral pass from BuCor employees. They pretend to be sick so they could be admitted to the hospi-tal, and then conduct their illegal drug trading there, he added.

“It’s not only the GCTA that is for sale, even the hospital pass is also for sale inside the Bilibid,” the senator said.

Go bared that witness Yolanda Camilon told him last week that Romeo Valdez, a convicted felon, wanted to volunteer information on the corruption inside the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).

“To heed that call, I went to the New Bilibid Prison on Sep-tember 9 and spoke to the inmate myself. Based on my assessment, GCTA is being used by alleged corrupt offi cials from BuCor to give false hope to convicted fel-ons. The GCTA is being used to extort money from unassuming prisoners, with the promise that they will be released through the computation of the GCTA,” Go said.

Duterte fi res offi cial over graft allegations

By Catherine S ValenteManila Times

President Rodrigo Duterte has fi red Pasig River Re-habilitation Commission

(PRRC) Executive Director Jose Antonio Goitia due to allega-tions of corruption, Malacanang announced yesterday.

In a statement, Palace spokes-man Salvador Panelo said the rea-son for the termination of Goitia’s appointment was in line with the president’s “continuing mandate to eradicate graft and corruption.” “The Palace announces the termi-nation of the appointment of Jose Antonio E Goitia as the executive director of the Pasig River Reha-bilitation Commission,” Panelo said.

“The termination is made pur-suant to the president’s continu-ing mandate to eradicate graft and corruption, and to ensure that public offi cials and employees conduct themselves in a manner worthy of public trust,” he added.

By Mica Rosenberg, Kristina Cooke and Reade LevinsonWashington

On the day she was set to see a US immigration judge in San Diego last month, Katia took every precaution.

After waiting two months in Mexico to press her case for US asylum, the 20-year-old student from Nicaragua arrived at the border near Tijuana three hours before the critical hearing was scheduled to start at 7.30am.

But border agents didn’t even escort her into the US port of entry until after 9am, she said, and then she was left stranded there with a group of more than a dozen other migrants who also missed their hearings.

“We kept asking what was going on, but they wouldn’t tell us anything,” said Katia, who asked to be identifi ed by her fi rst name only for fear of jeopardising her immigration case.

Bashir Ghazialam, a lawyer paid for by Katia’s aunt in the United States, convinced the judge to reschedule her case because of the transportation snafu.

Later, staff at the lawyer’s offi ce learned that at least two families in the group were ordered deported for not showing up to court.

Since it started in January, the rollout of one of the most dramatic changes to US immigration policy under the Trump administration has been marked by unpredictability and created chaos in immigration courts, according to dozens of interviews with judges and attorneys, former federal offi cials and migrants.

The programme - known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP) - has forced tens of thousands of people to wait in Mexico for US court dates, swamping the dockets and leading to delays and confusion as judges and staff struggle to handle the infl ux of cases.

In June, a US immigration offi cial told a group of congressional staff ers that the programme had “broken the courts,” according to two participants and contemporaneous notes taken by one of them.

The offi cial said that the court in El Paso at that point was close to running out of space for paper fi les, according to the attendees, who requested anonymity because the meeting was confi dential.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former Department of Homeland Security offi cial under presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush, said the problems are “symptomatic of a system that’s not co-ordinating well.”

“It’s a volume problem, it’s a planning problem, it’s a systems problem and it’s an operational problem on the ground,” said Brown, now a director at the Bipartisan Policy Centre think-tank. “They’re fi guring everything out on the fl y.”

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) estimated that 42,000 migrants had been sent to wait in Mexico through early September.

That agency and the Executive Offi ce for Immigration Review (EOIR),

which runs the nation’s immigration courts, referred questions about the programme’s implementation to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which did not respond to requests for comment.

The disarray is the result of a surge in migrants, most of them Central Americans, at the US southern border, combined with the need for intricate legal and logistical arrangements for MPP proceedings in a limited number of courts - only in San Diego and El Paso, initially.

Rather than being released into the United States to co-ordinate their own transportation and legal appearances, migrants in MPP must come and go across the border strictly under US custody.

Some migrants have turned up in court only to fi nd that their cases are not in the system or that the information on them is wrong, several attorneys told Reuters.

Others, like Katia, have received confl icting instructions.

According to court documents seen by Reuters, Katia’s notice to appear stated that her hearing was at 7.30am, while another paper she received said she should arrive at the border at 9am, well after her hearing was set to start.

She decided to show up at the border before dawn, according to staff in her lawyer’s offi ce.

Still, she wasn’t allowed into the border facility until hours later.

Ultimately she was never bussed to the San Diego court and was told her case was closed - a fate she was able to avoid only after frantically summoning her lawyer, Ghazialam, to the border.

Most migrants in MPP - including the two families who were deported from her group at the port of entry - do not have lawyers.

In open court, judges have raised concerns that migrants in Mexico - often with no permanent address - cannot be properly notifi ed of their hearings.

On many documents, the address listed is simply the city and state in Mexico to which the migrant has been returned.

Lawyers say they fear for the safety of their clients in high-crime border cities.

A Guatemalan father and daughter

were being held by kidnappers in Ciudad Juarez at the time of their US hearings in early July but were ordered deported because they didn’t show up to court, according to court documents fi led by their lawyer, Bridget Cambria, who said she was able to get their case reopened.

Adding to uncertainty surrounding the programme, the legality of MPP is being challenged by migrant advocates.

An appellate court ruled in May that the policy could continue during the legal battle, but if it is found ultimately to be unlawful, the fate of the thousands of migrants waiting in Mexico is unclear.

A hearing on the merits of the case is set for next month.

When the MPP programme was announced on December 20, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said one of its “anticipated benefi ts” would be cutting backlogs in immigration courts.

In the announcement, the agency said sending migrants to wait in Mexico would dissuade “fraudsters” from seeking asylum since they would no longer be released into the United States “where they often disappear” before their hearing dates. But the immediate impact has been to further strain the immigration courts.

A Reuters analysis of immigration court data through August 1 found judges hearing MPP cases in El Paso and San Diego were scheduled for an average of 32 cases per day between January and July this year. One judge was booked for 174 cases in one day.

“These numbers are unrealistic, and they are not sustainable on a long-term basis,” said Ashley Tabaddor, head of the national immigration judge’s union.

To reduce the backlog, DHS estimates the government would need to reassign more than 100 immigration judges from around the country to hear MPP cases via video conferencing systems, according to the attendees of the June meeting with congressional staff .

Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for EOIR, said that the rescheduling was necessary to deal with the substantial volume of recent cases.

All told, the courts are now struggling with more than 930,000 pending cases

of all types, according to EOIR.As of August 1, 39% of the backlog

in the San Diego court and 44% of the backlog in the El Paso court was due to MPP case loads, Reuters analysis of immigration court data showed.

Despite concerns over the system’s capacity, the government is doubling down on the programme.

In a July 26 notifi cation to Congress, DHS said it would shift $155mn from disaster relief to expand facilities for MPP hearings, and would need $4.8mn more for transportation costs.

DHS said that without the funding “MPP court docket backlogs will continue to grow.”

Tent courts are set to open this month in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, and so far more than 4,600 cases have been scheduled there to be heard by 20 judges, according to court data.

In Laredo, 20 to 27 tent courtrooms will provide video conferencing equipment so judges not based at the border can hear cases remotely, said city spokesman Rafael Benavides.

Brownsville’s mayor Trey Mendez said last month that about 60 such courtrooms were likely to be opened, though he had few details.

City manager Noel Bernal told Reuters that communication with the federal government about the plans has been “less than ideal.”

At her next hearing in San Diego in mid-September, Katia hopes to tell a judge how her participation in student demonstrations made her a target of government supporters.

The whole group is seeking asylum because of their support for the protests, according to Katia, her mother Simona, her lawyers, as well as court documents.

Recently, family members said they witnessed a shootout on their corner and Katia’s brother is now waking up with night terrors.

“They are playing games with the needs of desperate people,” said Simona, 46, who like Katia requested the family’s last names be withheld to avoid harming their case.

“It’s soul crushing.” - Reuters

Gulf Times Wednesday, September 11, 2019

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CHAIRMANAbdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing EditorK T Chacko

India needs faster growth to create jobs, fi x income gap

India’s growth slowed to 5% in the three months to June from a year ago, lower than economists predicted and below the average 7%-8% quarterly expansion seen in the past few years.

For almost half a decade, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi headed the fastest-growing major economy in the world. Now, the slowest expansion in six years has put India behind China, Indonesia and a few others in the region.

The slowdown in gross domestic product growth has prompted Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to cut India’s growth projection to 6% for the fi scal year through March 2020, although the government is sticking to its forecast of 7%.

If Modi wants to make his pledge to turn the country into a $5tn economy by 2024, from $2.7tn now, India needs its economy to expand at a 9%-10% pace for a sustained period of time.

But with growth slowing for the past fi ve straight quarters, and no sign of a respite, that’s a setback for eff orts to fi x the extreme income gap.

In a country of 1.3bn people, India’s per capita income is about $2,000 a year - dwarfed by China’s $9,800 and the US’s $62,600. India needs faster growth even to catch up with other Asian countries such as Indonesia, where per capita income is at $3,900, and South Korea’s $31,000.

The US-China trade war, amid growing fears of a US recession, has been hurting India’s exports as well.

The bigger problem, however, is the slide in domestic consumption, which makes up nearly 60% of India’s GDP.

The economy has been shedding jobs, banks have curbed loans and farmers’ incomes have been subdued. The jobless rate jumped to a

45-year high of 6.1% in 2018. There’s more pain to come as the struggling auto sector - which makes up almost half of India’s manufacturing sector - continues to cut jobs.

Car sales in India suff ered their biggest monthly drop on record in August.

The slide in consumer spending and plunge in auto sales mean overall manufacturing, which contributes about a fi fth to the economy, is barely growing, and businesses are curbing investment.

Private sector research suggests India is experiencing jobless growth and failing to create high-quality employment.

India will have the world’s biggest labour force by 2027. The government estimates the country will need an extra 110mn workers across the sectors by 2022 compared with the 105mn who will enter the workforce.

India has a gargantuan task of skilling 400mn workers/jobseekers by 2022.

For sure, the government has taken a number of steps to bolster the economy. It plans to merge weak state-run banks with stronger ones, hoping that can spur lending. Foreign investment rules were eased and tax breaks given on vehicle purchases.

Most of these measures, however, are focused on improving the long-term potential of the economy, rather than providing a short-term boost.

Longer term, India’s policy makers need to learn from mistakes committed in the past. The shallow, short-term economic thinking should give way to a sustainable, futuristic growth vision to create jobs, lift millions of Indians out of poverty and ensure social inclusion.

India’s annual per capita income is just about $2,000 - dwarfed by China’s $9,800 and the US’s $62,600

Trump immigration policy has ‘broken’ border courts

Cuban migrants queue while waiting for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, to cross into the United States to claim asylum, at the Santa Fe border crossing bridge in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Wednesday, September 11, 2019 19

Media bias is OK – if it’s honestBy Nathan RobinsonWashington

Most people distrust the media, and most people are right. It’s healthy to question what you’re

being told – that’s the mark of an intel-ligent and independent populace.

And the media in the United States are, in fact, “biased” in many ways.

Not always towards the left or right, but frequently towards reaffi rming the worldview of an insular establishment, as Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky pointed out years ago in Manufacturing Consent.

It should be obvious that there can’t be such a thing as a neutral journalist. We all have moral instincts and points of view. Those points of view will colour our interpretations of the facts. The best course of action is to acknowledge where we’re coming from. If we show an awareness of our own political leanings, it actually makes us more trustworthy than if we’re in denial about them.

Two recent controversies show how supposedly neutral journalists deny their biases.

The Washington Post’s factchecker gave Bernie Sanders a “mostly false” rating for claiming that there are half a million medical-related bankruptcies a year.

It was quite obvious that Sanders was relying on published research, and the claim was not in fact “mostly false”.

But the Post has a history of these sorts of fact-free “factchecks” – when Sanders claimed that “millions of Americans” work multiple jobs, Glenn Kessler labelled the statement “misleading”, even though it was completely true.

Ryan Grim has compiled a list of the appalling record of the Post’s unfair attacks on claims from the

political left. Whatever this is, it isn’t factchecking.

It’s not just an anti-Sanders bias. President Donald Trump has some legitimate complaints about the press, too.

Because he tells whopping lies all the time, journalists are predisposed to believe the worst about him and his administration.

Recently, a Bloomberg Law reporter accused a Labour Department official of antisemitic Facebook posts. It was obvious the posts were sarcastic, and the reporter’s work was heavily criticised and the coverage amended.

Because of past stories involving administration ties to antisemites, and Trump’s own use of language about Jewish people that would be considered scandalous if it came from Ilhan Omar, the reporter was inclined to think the worst.

But if we automatically assume that Trump is the one in the wrong, we may end up with egg on our faces.

For example, when Trump claimed that millions of non-citizens voted illegally in the 2016 election, the Washington Post called him out in a “factcheck”.

But it turned out the Washington Post itself had published an article making this very same claim. The factcheckers were so sure Trump invented the lie that they didn’t notice they had spread it themselves.

I’m not inclined to defend Trump – I wrote a whole book about him called Anatomy of a Monstrosity that accused him of being one of the worst people in the world.

But I also know that if my feelings about Trump lead to my making factual misstatements about him, his supporters will pounce, and claim that my bias destroys my credibility.

If I state my prejudices up front, people will see me as more honest than

if I pretend to be a mere “fact checker” when I’m clearly an opinion writer.

My personal experience is that conservatives are far more open to left-wing arguments when they come from people who are honest about their politics, and don’t pretend not to have a point of view.

I run a small magazine called Current Aff airs, which operates from an unabashedly left-wing perspective. The letters we get from conservative

readers indicate that many of them fi nd the honesty refreshing, and it makes them more likely to hear us out.

One reason conservatives hate the “mainstream media” is that it pretends to be something it isn’t. Conservatives think the press has a “liberal” bias; I tend to agree with Herman and Chomsky that it would be better described as a “corporate” bias reflecting the elitist centrism that has come to dominate the

Democratic party.But few at MSNBC or CNN would

admit that they’re partisan networks.That’s what they do in Great Britain,

though – the major newspapers are open about having a political leaning. The Guardian, for example, is an explicitly left-leaning paper and everybody knows it.

By contrast, the New York Times is clearly inclined towards Democratic centrism, but it won’t admit it. The

editor of the op-ed page says that they strive for “viewpoint diversity”, but it’s clear that he doesn’t mean it.

After all, they don’t have columnists from the far right, and they don’t have Marxist columnists.

At least Fox News has been honest enough to drop its old “Fair and Balanced” motto.

If your paper is liberal, just embrace it – and then you can fi re “viewpoint diversity” conservatives like Bret Stephens.

Paradoxically, rebuilding trust requires embracing bias. Not embracing untruthfulness, but admitting your politics so that both writer and audience can be critical.

I think the hope for media is in outlets like the Intercept, Jacobin and my own little magazine, because readers like transparency.

(This is also one reason why people respect Bernie Sanders even when they disagree with him: they don’t think he’s trying to appear to be something he isn’t.)

The salesman who tells you what he wants you to buy is more trustworthy than the one who insists he isn’t trying to sell you anything at all.

It’s a perilous time for journalism, and small outlets need all the help we can get in order to survive. Corporate owners are shuttering great outlets all the time, and the only way we’re going to have viable media institutions is through an outpouring of popular support.

Unfortunately, the public doesn’t trust us, and we need to think about how to slowly get people to see journalists as their allies instead of as duplicitous, faux-neutral propagandists.

The fi rst step is to be up front about where we’re coming from and how we see things. We’ve got to acknowledge that everyone is biased, and that it’s OK. – Guardian News and Media

‘Diesel cars emit more air pollution on hot days’

Draghi’s dangerous farewell

Live issues

Guardian News and Media Paris

Emissions from diesel cars – even newer and supposedly cleaner models – increase on hot days, a new study has

found, raising questions over how cities suff ering from air pollution can deal with urban heat islands and the climate crisis.

Research in Paris by The Real Urban Emissions (True) initiative found that diesel car emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) rose by 20% to 30% when temperatures topped 30C – a common event this summer.

Emissions from a range of vehicles were found to be many times higher than those declared by manufacturers in laboratory tests, confi rming earlier fi ndings following the 2015 Dieselgate scandal, in which Volkswagen cars were found to emit 40 times more NOx on the road than during laboratory tests.

Certain pollutants from motorcycles – often considered a cleaner alternative to four-wheeled vehicles – were also found to “greatly exceed” averages for both petrol and diesel cars.

Launching its latest report, True said it used hi-tech remote-sensing equipment to measure emissions from

more than 180,000 vehicles being driven on roads in the French capital during three weeks in summer 2018.

The tests, carried out with the approval of the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, used a beam of light to analyse the exhaust plumes of vehicles as they passed, with automatic number plate recognition linking the measurement to specifi c models.

More than 370,000 such measurements taken in the UK, France and other countries have been compiled into a new rating system by True.

The vehicles were tested on three roads in Paris’s 12th and 13th arrondissements – not the most

central – and most were passenger cars and light commercial vehicles.

The sample also included buses, motorcycles, mopeds and lorries.

The aim, as with a similar study in London the previous year, was to measure the real emissions of vehicles on the road in a range of diff erent driving and traffi c conditions.

The latest fi ndings will come as no surprise to Parisians, who returned to work last week after the long summer holiday.

Car lobbies dismiss residents’ complaints about asthma and allergies as anecdotal evidence and contest city hall’s measures to discourage car use in the city centre.

By Ashoka Mody Princeton

Mario Draghi risks deepen-ing the eurozone’s prob-lems in the fi nal weeks of his eight-year term

as president of the European Central Bank.

He has promised that the ECB will reduce interest rates further to spur the eurozone economy.

But policymakers have room for only modest rate cuts, which will do little to boost growth – and will put potentially intolerable pressure on the eurozone’s fragile banks.

Back in June, Draghi said that the ECB was preparing a new dose of stimulus, including further reductions of its policy interest rate and a renewal of quantitative easing (QE) through purchases of government bonds.

And he continued to call for “a signifi cant degree of monetary stimulus” following the ECB Governing Council’s most recent meeting on July 25.

More recently, Christine Lagarde, who is due to succeed Draghi as ECB president on November 1, said the central bank “has a broad tool kit at its disposal and must stand ready to act.” Likewise, Olli Rehn, governor of Finland’s central bank and a member of the ECB’s Governing Council, called for “substantial and suffi cient” action.

Financial markets thus expect aggressive “big-bang” measures from the ECB at the council’s next meeting on September 12.

The risk now is that the ECB’s measures fall well short of expectations.

Governing Council member Jens Weidmann, the president of Germany’s Bundesbank, says the eurozone does not need monetary stimulus.

The council’s other German member,

Sabine Lautenschläger, recently said that “it is much too early for a huge package.” There is no risk of defl ation, she added, and hence no need for more QE.

Klaas Knot, the president of the Dutch central bank, shares this view.

The ECB is not a normal central bank.It serves a confederation of

countries – a Europe of nation-states – and confl icting interests are embedded in its decision-making. This results in delays and half-measures.

For example, the ECB postponed introducing much-needed QE for two-and-a-half years before fi nally doing so in January 2015.

By then, eurozone infl ation had fallen to about 1%, and, despite the ECB’s massive four-year QE programme, which ran until December 2018, infl ation remains at that low level.

While pursuing QE, the ECB regularly projected that infl ation would rise back to its target of “below, but close to” 2%.

But, because policymakers constantly threatened to end QE, markets inferred that the ECB was not committed to a sustained stimulus.

The euro-dollar exchange rate thus barely moved; in fact, the euro appreciated against a basket of major currencies.

Eurozone infl ation became “de-anchored” from monetary-policy decisions.

The ECB then declared victory and prematurely withdrew QE just as the eurozone economy was slowing down.

The clash of interests among eurozone member states is straightforward.

Until recently, infl ation in Germany had been around 1.5% per year; in France and Italy, it has been closer to 0.6%.

Lautenschläger is right that Germany is nowhere near defl ation, but one more downward shock could push the French and Italian economies there.

The real (infl ation-adjusted) interest rate in Germany is about -1.5%; in Italy, it has been 1-2%.

The “signifi cant and impactful” stimulus that Rehn advocates will require pushing interest rates deep into negative territory in Italy and other southern eurozone members with very slow productivity growth.

Even if pushing interest rates deep into negative territory were technically possible, there are political limits to the scope of further QE.

For starters, the ECB already holds around 25% of the bonds issued by eurozone governments.

Northern eurozone members will be reluctant to buy more Italian government bonds, fearing that they would share the losses if Italy were to default.

The alternative of channelling more cheap ECB credits to banks will, as before, prop up “zombie” Italian and Spanish borrowers struggling to repay their debts.

And, as Germany’s population ages, returns on savings have become a major economic and political issue – giving German policymakers another reason to oppose further reduction of interest rates.

But perhaps the strongest argument against further easing is its likely eff ect on the eurozone’s banks.

When the ECB lowers its policy interest rates, commercial banks need to reduce the rates they charge on their loans, but cutting their deposit rates is much harder.

Hence, banks’ profi ts shrink.And bank profi tability in the

eurozone is already abysmally low because the entire area is overbanked.

The squeeze on profi ts has intensifi ed as eurozone growth has slowed to a crawl, with some countries now close to recession.

Eurozone banks’ market-to-book-value ratios have fallen steadily since early 2018 and now range between 0.4 and 0.6 – well below those of their US peers.

Markets are saying that eurozone banks’ profi tability prospects are very weak, and that their assets may be worth much less than the banks believe.

Thus, even a modest ECB-induced decline in interest rates will cause signifi cant damage to their balance sheets.

And any perception that some governments may need to bail out their country’s banks could tip them into the dreaded “sovereign-bank doom loop.”

The ECB can do little good at this point, but it could cause great harm.

Further monetary stimulus will either amount to less than anticipated or will not be sustained.

Yet, the domino eff ects of a perfunctory and ill-conceived stimulus eff ort could undermine the eurozone’s fi nancial system and public fi nances in far-reaching ways.

Draghi, on his way out, wants to leave with one last triumph.

But in his eagerness to act when the ECB has no good policy options left, he risks tarnishing his legacy. – Project Syndicate

Ashoka Mody, a former mission chief for Germany and Ireland at the International Monetary Fund, is currently Visiting Professor of International Economic Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Aff airs, Princeton University. He is the author of EuroTragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts.

The New York Times is clearly inclined towards Democratic centrism, but it won’t admit it.

WARNINGInshore : Strong wind expected

at some places by afternoon

Offshore : Expected strong wind with high sea

WEATHERInshore : Relatively hot daytime

with slight dust to blowing dust at places at times & some clouds

Offshore : Slight dust with some clouds

WINDInshore : Northwesterly-North-

easterly 08-18/23 KTOffshore : Northwesterly-Norther-

ly 08-18/22 KT Visibility : 4-8/3 KMOffshore : 3-5/7 FT

TODAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

Maximum Temperature : 390c

Minimum Temperature : 320c

Maximum Temperature : 400c

Minimum Temperature : 300c

Maximum Temperature : 400c

Minimum Temperature : 290c

BaghdadKuwait City ManamaMuscat Tehran

AthensBeirut BangkokBerlinCairoCape TownColomboDhakaHong KongIstanbulJakartaKarachiLondonManilaMoscowNew DelhiNew YorkParisSao PauloSeoulSingaporeSydneyTokyo

Weather

today

Sunny

Cloudy

Sunny

P Cloudy

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Max/min

40/23

43/28

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29/18

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tomorrow

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41/23

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38/31

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28/17

Around the region

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today

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Rain

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Fisherman's forecast

Three-day forecast

20 Gulf TimesWednesday, September 11, 2019

QATAR

New Land Rover Defender showcased at Frankfurt Motor Show

The New Land Rover Defender, described as an icon reimagined for the 21st century, has been re-

vealed at the Frankfurt Motor Show on Monday, according to statement issued in Doha by Alfardan Premier Motors.

Across seven decades of pioneering innovation, Land Rovers have earned a unique place in the hearts of explorers, humanitarian agencies and adventur-ous families across the world. Proven in the harshest environments on earth, the new Defender maintains this bloodline.

Beside the peerless luxury and re-fi nement of the Range Rover family and the highly capable and versatile Dis-covery SUVs, new Defender completes the Land Rover dynasty. The instantly recognisable silhouette features sig-nature Defender elements including short front and rear overhangs.

Durable new D7x architecture is engineered to withstand the Extreme Event Test procedure, above and be-yond the normal standard for SUV.

A maximum payload of up to 900kg, static roof load of up to 300kg, dy-namic roof load of 168kg, towing ca-pacity of 3,720kg and wading depth of up to 900mm combine to make new Defender the ultimate 4x4 for overland adventures. Land Rover’s pioneering Terrain Response 2 technology moves the game on again with new Wade pro-gramme and world-fi rst off -road Con-fi gurable Terrain Response allowing experts and novices to optimise trac-tion no matter the conditions.

Electrifi ed powertrains have been introduced to Defender with advanced mild-hybrid and plug-in electric vehi-cle options, as well as powerful and ef-fi cient petrol and diesel engines.

The new Pivi Pro infotainment fea-

turing an intuitive interface while Software-Over-The-Air updates pro-vide the latest software at all times, anywhere in the world.

The functional, durable and fl exible interior is unique with exposed struc-tural elements and a central front jump seat. The new Defender will be avail-able in 90 and 110 body designs, with up to six seats in the 90 and the option of fi ve, six or 5+2 seating in the 110.

The model range comprises Defend-er, First Edition and top of the range Defender X models, as well as stand-ard, S, SE, HSE specifi cation packs.

Land Rover’s new purpose-engi-neered D7x (for extreme) architecture is based on a lightweight aluminium

monocoque construction to create the stiff est body structure Land Rover has ever produced. It is three times stiff er than traditional body-on-frame de-signs, providing perfect foundations for the fully independent air or coil sprung suspension and supports the latest electrifi ed powertrains.

The new Defender has been through more than 62,000 tests for engineer-ing sign-off , while the chassis and body architecture have been engineered to withstand Land Rover’s Extreme Event Test procedure – repeated and sustained impacts, above and beyond the normal standard for SUV and passenger cars. During development testing, prototype models have covered millions of kilo-

metres across some of the harshest en-vironments on earth, ranging from the 50C heat of the desert and sub 40C cold of the Arctic to altitudes of 10,000ft in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

Confi gurable Terrain Response de-buts on new Defender, allowing expe-rienced off -roaders to fi ne-tune indi-vidual vehicle settings to perfectly suit the conditions, while inexperienced drivers can let the system detect the most appropriate vehicle settings for the terrain, using the intelligent Auto function.

The new Defender can negotiate crowded city streets as eff ortlessly as climbing mountains, crossing deserts and withstanding freezing temperatures.The new Land Rover Defender at Frankfurt Motor Show.

A view of the new Land Rover Defender’s interior.

Dreama receives delegation from Turkish organisation

The Orphan Care Centre (Dreama) has received a delegation from OKU-

DER, a Turkish non-governmen-tal and non-profi t organisation.

The delegation included Has-san Chilik, general manager of OKU-DER; Fidodoglu, director of the organisation’s public rela-tions department; and Abdullah Chaweesh from the social welfare department.

They listened to an introduc-tory presentation by Mohamed al-Khanji, director of the social services department at Dreama; Munira al-Baloushi, director of the communication and media offi ce, and Fatima al-Hammadi, head of the internal care depart-ment.

The presentation introduced Dreama’s vision as “a pioneer-ing centre in providing care for orphans and integrating them into the society”. Its strategic ob-jectives include providing a safe

and stable environment for the targeted groups and reducing the number of homeless cases to the lowest possible levels, in addition to building and developing insti-tutional capabilities and commu-nity awareness, Dreama has said in a statement.

Dreama executive director Mariam bint Ali bin Nasser al-Misnad lauded the delegation’s visit and their wish to identify Dreama’s plans in the fi eld of car-ing for orphans. Dreama seeks integrating them into the soci-ety, providing children with care methods and services and ensur-ing their stability in alternative fostering families.

She also praised the Turkish organisation’s role in the fi eld of rescue and education and for providing services for orphans in Turkey. A team from the Dreama communication and media offi ce accompanied the visiting del-egation on a tour of the Dreama

facilities, covering the medical clinic, the activities and academic support villa and a model for the accommodation villa, the kitchen and the tent.

Members of the delegation then expressed their appreciation for the eff orts of Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser and her charitable and distinguished works in the service of humanity.

They lauded the eff orts of Dreama in providing shelter and care for orphans, and the excel-lent services it provides to meet their material, health, psycho-logical, educational and religious needs. They also valued working to enhance the professional and life capacities of orphaned chil-dren according to international standards, in preparation for their integration into society and em-powerment in all fi elds.

The delegation thanked the management of Dreama for the warm welcome accorded to them.

The Turkish delegation with Dreama off icials.

Preparations begin for rainy season

The joint rain emergency committee has started making early preparations

to deal with the upcoming rainy season by holding preparatory meetings chaired by Safar Mu-barak al-Shafi , assistant under-secretary for General Services Aff airs at the Ministry of Munic-ipality and Environment (MME).

The meetings are attended by members of the committee rep-resenting various entities con-cerned in the country.

The committee has discussed the necessary preparations for the rainy season, including the equipment, mechanisms, vehi-cles and work teams needed to deal with any case of rainwater accumulation as well as timely responses to related reports and public requests, accord-ing to a press statement by the MME.

Further, the committee has discussed the locations of rain-

water accumulation ‘hot spots’ in the last season compared to previous years, and the impor-tance of redoubling eff orts this year to provide all the necessary means to ensure the removal of accumulated water as fast as possible.

Besides, the committee talked about the capabilities of each participating entity and devel-opment of a plan for co-opera-tion and co-ordination to guar-

antee quick and timely response to reports that received at the operation room.

The committee will set up a mechanism for rain emergencies, prepare strategic plans to cope with it, co-ordinate and co-op-erate with the relevant authori-ties in this regard, and ensure the readiness of municipalities and competent departments and their readiness to deal with rain emergencies, QNA adds.

The joint rain emergency committee holding a meeting.

Rights expert hails Qatar’s equanimity in Gulf crisisBy Shafeeq AlingalStaff Reporter

The ongoing unjust block-ade has resulted in the denial of human rights

to the people of Qatar, United Nations Independent Expert on Human Rights and Interna-tional Solidarity Obiora C Oka-for said yesterday.

While presenting his pre-liminary fi ndings at the end of his mission to Qatar, he stressed that the Gulf crisis af-fected human rights in Qatar and in the blockading countries themselves, referring to cases of separation between families and the violation of the rights

to education, health, mobil-ity, ownership, reunifi cation and the exercise of freedom of worship, religion and safe family life. He noted that Qa-tari students in the blockading countries were aff ected and the access of Qataris to places of worship was hindered.

“Some Qatari families with relatives in the other Gulf countries were separated from their kith and kin,” he added.

Despite all this, Qatar has “maintained its cohesion dur-ing the crisis and we thank Qatar for that”, he said. Asked about the disappearance of a Qatari man and his son in Saudi Arabia, Okafor said his col-leagues were looking into the

matter. During the visit, Okafor held meetings with a number of senior Qatari government offi cials at the Ministry of For-eign Aff airs (Human Rights Department, Department of International Organisations, Department of International Co-operation), Ministry of In-terior (Human Rights Depart-ment, Search and Follow-Up Department), Ministry of Jus-tice (Department of Agree-ments and Co-operation), Ministry of Municipality and the Environment (Climate Change Department), Minis-try of Education and Higher Education (including the Qatar National Commission for Edu-cation, Culture and Science),

Ministry of Administrative De-velopment, Labour and Social Aff airs, Planning and Statistics Authority and the Regulatory Authority for Charitable Ac-tivities.

He also met representa-tives of Qatar Petroleum, Qa-tar Fund for Development, Silatech, Arab Network for Hu-man Rights Institutions, the National Human Rights Com-mittee and Centre for Confl ict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Gradu-ate Studies. He praised Qatar’s role in resolving confl icts and maintaining peace in various countries and added his visit to Qatar was a productive and fruitful mission.

UN expert lauds Qatar’s rights recordFrom Page 1

“I was also informed about a Red Crescent-managed shelter for abused workers. Also, rep-resentatives of migrant work-ers now sit in bi-annual forums with the Ministry of Adminis-trative Development, Labour and Social Aff airs. I see this as a signifi cant step in the right direction and as a forum where their voices can be heard. Such initiatives are crucial and must be encouraged, and their fre-quency increased,” Okafor said.

He was all praise for the crea-tion of dispute settlement com-mittees comprising a judge and two labour representatives as well as the launch of workers’ committees. These are ways to ensure that workers’ voices are heard, he said, adding that a workers’ fund designed to com-pensate unpaid workers while their claims are processed is in its pilot phase.

He also touched on the eff orts of Education Above All, Teach a Child, Silatech and other initia-tives, which contribute greatly to facilitating the work of the United Nations in the areas of their competence, in addition to the role of the Supreme Com-mittee for Delivery & Legacy in the preparation and organisa-tion of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

Qatar got a special mention

for the support it extended to various countries in the health, education and development sectors, while the Silatech ini-tiative was lauded by Okafor for creating job opportunities across Africa and Asia.

Further, Okafor praised His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Tha-ni’s announcement of Qatar’s pledge to provide quality edu-cation to 1mn girls worldwide by 2021.

“Qatar has created and strengthened the infrastructure needed to promote its interna-tional solidarity agenda. Nu-merous initiatives such as the Qatar Fund for Development and the Generation Amazing programme of the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Leg-acy are good examples of inter-national solidarity in the de-velopment fi eld,” he explained, lauding Qatar’s signifi cant in-vestments in education through international organisations such as Unicef.

“Eff orts to empower youth worldwide, including through Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser’s Silatech initiative, are examples of human rights-based international solidarity,” he said, praising recent eff orts by Qatar to introduce human rights education at diff erent levels of the national curricu-lum.

Okafor also lauded Qatar’s continuing eff orts to bring down the emission of green-house gases and noted that Qa-tar has invested in the extension of a water desalination plant using technology that will im-prove its production effi ciency while reducing the use of gas in production systems.

“Qatar also co-founded the Global Green Growth Institute showing its commitment to the environment. Qatar hosted the 2012 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18) where state parties agreed to extend the Kyoto Protocol, and has participated in the confer-ence each year. In 2016, Qatar signed the Paris Agreement and the country remains engaged in battling the challenge of climate change through co-operation with international agencies,” he said.

Addressing the migration challenge, Okafor appreciated Qatar’s positive role in fi nanc-ing migration processes through the United Nations, or directly supporting and assisting coun-tries in confl ict in Africa or Asia, as well as enacting the political asylum law.

Okafor stressed that Qatar has committed to develop con-tracts and agreements with the International Labour Organisa-tion to support these commit-ments, and enacted many laws

in line with international hu-man rights standards.

He also praised Qatar’s role in achieving world peace and its role as a successful mediator for peace and confl ict resolution in many countries and regions such as Africa and the Middle East, considering this as Qatar’s soli-darity with the world, encour-aging and thanking Qatar for this role, because peace is very important for the fulfi lment of human rights, he added.

During the press conference, Okafor made some remarks about some of what had been achieved saying that they would like to see additional improve-ments, with regard to domes-tic labour in terms of reducing working hours and granting them weekly leave provided by law, providing opportunities for changing jobs, and calling on companies and employers not to require workers to pay fees, as well as increasing the minimum wage for workers to a better lev-el with more litigation facilities, thanking Qatar for setting up programmes to protect workers’ rights.

Okafor’s preliminary fi nd-ings include some recommen-dations. He said the full and detailed report of the visit with recommendations will be sub-mitted to the government and other stakeholders in June 2020. (With inputs from QNA)