$1.5bn qatari emir mourns death of dubai ruler’s son aid ... · al rayyan model city 70pc...

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Subsidised sheep for citizens from today; initiative to cost over QR6m.

Payment delay, design changes reasons for construction rows.

QSL: Lekhwiya open up with triumph; Al Arabi edge Al Khor.

$1.5bn Qatari aid for Syrians since uprisingAl Rayyan model city 70pc completeDOHA: Qatar has given $1.5bn in aid to support displaced Syrians since the beginning of the con-flict in 2011 and is committed to continuing ts support, the coun-try’s Permanent Representative to the UN Office in Geneva Ambassador Faisal bin Abdullah Al Henzab said yesterday.

Speaking in a high level meeting in Geneva to discuss humanitar-ian conditions in Syria, Al Henzab said Syrians are seeking refuge in Europe in large numbers because they feel abandoned by the inter-national community and have lost hope about any improvement in their situation in the near future.

The Qatari government, under the directives of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has strived to ease the difficult humani-tarian conditions that Syrian people are struggling with, said Al Henzab.

The Qatari aid included food, clothes, medicine and shelter among other things. Qatar has also pro-vided assistance to Syrian refugees stranded on European borders.

In a international donors meet-ing in Kuwait in April this year, Qatar announced establishment of a special fund for education of displaced Syrian children.

Most recently, the Emir spon-sored 100 displaced Syrian chil-dren to study at the prestigious Paris Sorbonne University. Syrian expatriates in Qatar are enjoying complete care and the country is keen to provide with all the serv-ices and facilities, he added.

Al Henzab said the main rea-son why thousands of Syrian people

are putting their lives at risk in the sea and on the roads and expos-ing themselves to mistreatment is that there is no indication that their suffering is going to end. In addition to there is a shortage of humanitarian aid, said Al Henzab.

Millions of Syrians are living in besieged areas which is difficult to reach due to deteriorating secu-rity situation and big hindrance to send humanitarian aid. They are forced to choose between life and death rather than changing their lifestyle, said Al Henzab.

He said it is important to inten-sify efforts to provide humanitarian aid. However, the humanitarian work should go hand in hand with efforts to find a political solution to the crisis. More than ever in the past, the UN Security Council has been asked to shoulder its moral, humanitarian and legal responsi-bility to end the bloodshed in Syria, he added and urged donors to ful-fill their pledges as the situation in Syria is expected to deteriorate with the onset of winter.

Meanwhile, the Qatar Charity said it has completed about 70 percent of its QR44m project to build a model city near the Syrian-Turkish border for displaced Syrians. Dubbed Al Rayyan, the project is expected to be com-pleted in November. It comprises 1,000 residential units which can accommodate a total of 7,000 people. It is being implemented in collaboration with two Turkish humanitarian organisations.

THE PENINSULAPicture on page 6

DOHA: Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent yesterday a cable of con-dolences to Vice-President of UAE H H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is also the Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, on the death of Sheikh Rashid bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani and Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani sent similar cables.

Sheikh Rashid suffered a heart attack yesterday morn-ing. Dubai announced a three-day mourning.

In Dubai, H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani conveyed the condolences of H H the Emir and H H the Deputy Emir to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. He also offered condolences to members of Dubai Ruling Family, praying to Allah the Almighty to give them solace and fortitude.

Sheikh Joaan earlier per-formed funeral prayer at Zabeel Mosque along with members of the Ruling Family, ministers, senior officials and dignitaries in the UAE.

Sheikh Rashid was the

Emir mourns death of Dubai Ruler’s son

eldest son of Sheikh Mohammed. Rashid’s brother Sheikh Hamdan

is the Crown Prince of Dubai. UAE flags will be flown at half-mast

during the mourning period.QNA/AGENCIES

H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani with UAE Vice-President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai H H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, in Dubai yesterday.

DOHA: The Ministry of Interior has set up a new office at Hamad International Airport (HIA) for issuance of exit permits, renewal of residence permits and other services.

The office is located at the departures ter-minal close to the luggage weighing counter.

“Many people who are not aware of exit permit issuance and expiry of residence permits can approach the centre to com-plete their procedures within few minutes in order to travel in the scheduled time itself,” a ministry statement quoted Ft Lt Sultan

Abdullah Al Noaimi, officer of the Exit Permits Section at the Airport Immigration Department as saying.

Maj Nasser Jaber Al Maliki, head of the Travel Permits Section at the Airport Passports Department said that three counters have been opened to ensure smooth service to the passengers, in addition to a special counter for the officer in-charge.

He said the office will work 24/7 to provide services like issuance of exit permits, renewal and cancellation of residence permit under

personal sponsorship, payment of fines related to passports and visas etc.

Al Noaimi urged the citizens and residents to utilize Metrash2, MoI web portal or service kiosks available in shopping centres and min-istries as well as service centres in all parts of the state in to complete their transactions with the Ministry of Interior. He said most of the services provided by the Visas and Travel Permits Department can be completed through Metrash2 application and MoI web portal, he added. THE PENINSULA

Office for exit permits, RP renewal at HIA

GAZA: Israel carried out air strikes in the Gaza Strip yes-terday after Palestinian mili-tants there fired rockets into southern Israel. The air strikes targeted two training camps belonging to Hamas, causing no injuries, officials said.

Gaza militants fired at least two rockets into Israel late on Friday, Israeli military said. One struck the border town of Sderot, damaging a bus but causing no injuries. A second was shot down by a missile defence system.

A Palestinian group that sup-ports the Islamic State claimed responsibility for one of the rockets fired at Israel. No-one claimed responsibility for the second rocket attack. The cross-border violence comes as tensions remain high in Jerusalem and the West Bank, where Israeli secu-rity forces and Palestinians have clashed over the past week.

In London, US Secretary of State John Kerry urged calm and called on all sides to exercise restraint amid violence in recent days around Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque. Kerry said he had spo-ken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who had made it clear that “he is com-pletely supportive of the status quo and deeply committed to pre-venting any kind of incident that will incite”. REUTERS

Akhlaghi wins gold at Losail

Mahbubeh Mohabatolla Akhlaghi (centre, top row), winner in the Women’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions at the Qatar Shooting and Archery Association Cup, poses for a picture with officials at Losail Shooting Complex yesterday. Aisha Yousef Al Suwaidi finished second, while Aisha Ibrahim Al Mutawa took the bronze. See also page 27

SANA’A: Aircraft from a Saudi-led coalition attacked Yemen’s interior ministry in the capital, Sana’a, late on Friday and launched several other raids on sites in the heart of the city, residents said.

The air raids by the coalition have intensified in recent weeks as a Gulf Arab ground force and fighters loyal to exiled President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi prepare

a campaign to recapture Sana’a, seized by Houthi fighters in September 2014.

Residents said about 10 air strikes were launched on the min-istry building in the north of the capital, a police camp close to it and a military building.

The health ministry issued an urgent appeal saying it did not have the capacity to treat all those injured as a result of the

strikes on several areas of Sana’a, the official Houthi controlled news agency said yesterday.

Hospitals lack the basic medi-cines necessary for treating the wounded and lack fuel to operate ambulances and hospital equip-ment, a health ministry official was quoted as saying.

The raids also targeted the presidential complex and a party building of former president Ali

Abdullah Saleh which had already been destroyed in 2011, residents said. Air raids also targeted the Fulaihi area of Old Sana’a yes-terday, destroying several houses.

OMAN ENVOY’S HOME HITThe Omani foreign affairs

ministry said the residence of its ambassador in Sana’a was hit by a strike on Friday and denounced the act. “Oman

received with deep regret yester-day’s news targeting the ambas-sador’s home in Sana’a, which is a clear violation of international charters and norms that empha-size the inviolability of diplomatic premises,” the statement said.

It urged the Yemeni parties to put aside their differences with each other to ensure the return of stability and security in Yemen. REUTERS

LONDON: US Secretary of State John Kerry said yeterday that Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad has to go but the tim-ing of his departure should be decided through negotiation.

Speaking after talks with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in London, Kerry called on Russia and Iran to use their influence over Assad to con-vince him to negotiate a political transition.

Kerry said the United States welcomed Russia’s involvement in tackling the Islamic State in Syria but a worsening refugee cri-sis underscored the need to find a compromise that could also lead to political change in the country.

“We need to get to the negotia-tion. That is what we’re looking

for and we hope Russia and Iran, and any other countries with influ-ence, will help to bring about that, because that’s what is preventing this crisis from ending,” said Kerry.

“We’re prepared to negotiate. Is Assad prepared to negotiate, really negotiate? Is Russia pre-pared to bring him to the table?”

Russia’s buildup at Syria’s Latakia airbase has raised the possibility of air combat missions in Syrian airspace. Heavy Russian equipment, including tanks, heli-copters and naval infantry forces, have been moved to Latakia. Russia has also sent fighter jets to Syria, US officials said.

Kerry said of Assad’s removal: “For the last year-and-a-half we have said Assad has to go, but how long and what the modality

is ...that’s a decision that has to be made in the context of the Geneva process and negotiation.”

Kerry added: “It doesn’t have to be on day one or month one ... there is a process by which all the parties have to come together and reach an understanding of how this can best be achieved.”

Kerry said he did not have a spe-cific time frame in mind for Assad to stay. Hammond said Assad could not be part of Syria’s long-term future “but the modality and timing has to be part of a political solution that allows us to move for-ward.” Hammond said the situation in Syria was now more complicated with Russia’s increased military involvement in the country.

REUTERSSee also page 7

Coalition warplanes pound interior ministry in Sana’a

Assad must go, asserts KerryIsraeli aircraft strike Gaza after rocket fire

02 HOMESUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

DOHA: Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s Translation and Interpreting Institute (TII) is accepting submissions for its translation conference to be held in March 2016.

The annual event invites trans-lation and interpreting academics, practitioners and members of the community to examine topics related to an overarching theme, which for the 2016 conference is ‘Politics of Translation: Representations and Power.’

TII is inviting papers examining political translation through many lenses. Thematic areas include, but are not limited to, interpreting in conflict zones, citizen media, brok-ering and mediating, ethics of trans-lation, sound and image of power, manipulation and censorship, gender politics, and translating religions and democracy.

Dr Amal Al Malki, Executive Director, TII, said, “There is a grow-ing interest in the fields of transla-tion and interpreting which play a major role in power relation, build-ing allegiances or sowing discords through manipulation of language.

“We understand that in TII, and work hard on equipping our students and professionals with the ethical framework that enable them to make morally sound decisions. Organising the conference for the seventh con-secutive year has put us on the global stage, and more importantly, enabled us to contribute to the building of local capacity that has a strong global outreach.”

Abstracts of 250 to 300 words may be submitted in Arabic or English — the two languages of the conference — and should include the applicant’s institutional affiliation.

The deadline for abstracts is October 22 and the applicants will be notified by November 22.

Those interested in submitting a proposal to the Conference are encouraged to consult the submission website for details at athttp://www.editorialmanager.com/tii-conference/default.aspx

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TII invites entries for translation conference

DOHA: Ooredoo has launched two new competitions with prizes for customers buying and using Ooredoo Passport Card for the Eid holidays.

With thousands looking to fly out for Eid, Ooredoo has designed the competitions to add excite-ment to customers’ journeys.

People can enter the com-petition when they purchase an Ooredoo Passport Card at Qatar Duty Free (QDF) at the Departure Terminal of Hamad

International Airport (HIA), or via the Ooredoo app.

The first competition, ‘Ooredoo Scratch and Win’, gives custom-ers who buy an Ooredoo Passport Top-Up Card a 100 percent chance of winning a prize.

Customers will be given a bonus scratch card along with the Ooredoo Passport Top-Up Card to ‘Scratch and Win’, with prizes, including discounts from QR10 to QR100 to spend at QDF.

To get a ‘Scratch and Win’

card, customers have to buy an Ooredoo Passport Top-Up Card from QDF outlet at the Departure Terminal of HIA before November 20. Each Ooredoo Passport Card pur-chase will get one ‘Scratch and Win’ card. To make sure custom-ers who prefer to buy Ooredoo Passport Top-Up Cards on the go are rewarded, Ooredoo has launched a competition offer-ing them the chance to win one of 12 brand-new iPhone 6

smartphones when they buy an Ooredoo Passport Card via the Ooredoo app.

To enter the competition, customers have to buy Ooredoo Passport Top-Up Cards via Ooredoo app before December 3, and they will receive an entry into a special prize draw, with the winners announced on December 7. Ooredoo Passport Top-Up Card customers get 100 roaming min-utes for all incoming and out-going calls and 1GB of roaming

mobile data in over 65 countries. Ooredoo Passport also offers

an extra 1GB of roaming mobile data for use in the GCC.

The Ooredoo Passport works on all GCC networks and while roaming in GCC, customers can enjoy 4G speeds in the UAE (Etisalat), Saudi Arabia (Mobily & STC), Bahrain (Batelco), Kuwait (Ooredoo Kuwait) and Oman (Ooredoo Oman, Omantel), at no additional cost.

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Ministry recalls 2014-2015 Chevrolet Malibu modelsDOHA: The Ministry of Economy and Commerce, in collaboration with Chevrolet’s sole distributor in Qatar, Jaidah Automotive, yesterday announced recall of Chevrolet Malibu 2014-2015 models due to defects in the rear RH seat belt buckle.

The recall is within the framework of ongoing coor-dination and follow-up by the ministry to ascertain deal-ers’ commitment to follow up defects and repair them to protect consumers’ rights.

The ministry has affirmed that it will coordinate with Jaidah Automotive to follow up necessary maintenance and repairs and communi-cate with clients to ensure the success of the recall cam-paign and implementation of procedures to fix defects.

It urged consumers to report any irregularities to the Department of Consumer Protection and Commercial Fraud Combat which receives complaints, suggestions and inquiries through its commu-nication channels.

THE PENINSULA

Ooredoo unveils two competitions for Eid Al Adha

DOHA: Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), Qatar’s leading Islamic Bank, has donated QR500,000 in support of traffic aware-ness programmes and efforts undertaken by the Ministry of Interior’s Traffic Department.

QIB Vice-Chairman Abdullatif bin Abdulla Al Mahmoud presented a check to Brigadier Mohammed Saad Al Kharji, Director-General of the department, at QIB Head Office.

Bassel Gamal, CEO, QIB Group, said, “In QIB, we value unique efforts undertaken by the Traffic Department to acquaint citizens and residents with traffic laws and rules and relevant procedures that con-tribute to everybody’s safety and security.

“We are aware of our respon-sibility towards the community and our support for the Traffic Department’s activities is part of QIB’s social responsibility programme under the guid-ance and support of the Board of Directors.

“Support and sponsorship of

such activities is one of our core values at QIB which is a leading national financial institution.

“It is essential for all to realise

the importance of complying with traffic laws to help reduce or prevent road accidents.

“This will contribute to our

collective safety and the pres-ervation of our human and eco-nomic capital in Qatar,” Gamal added. THE PENINSULA

QIB donates QR500,000 to boost traffic awareness

Abdullatif bin Abdulla Al Mahmoud (second left), Vice-Chairman, QIB; Brigadier Mohammed Saad Al Kharji, (centre), Director-General, Traffic Department; Bassel Gamal (second right), CEO, QIB Group, and other officials at the event.



DOHA: The first dental clinic for people with special needs has opened at Al Wakra Hospital (AWH) and patients now do not need a referral to receive care at the clinic.

The first-of-its-kind clinic in the Middle East caters to children and adults with special needs.

The specially designed facility provides a more accessible and accommodating service intended to be less stressful for patients and is an ideal alternative to reg-ular dental clinics.

Dr Abdulhakim Ahmad Al Yafei, Consultant, Paediatric and Special Needs Dentistry, and Head, Dentistry Department, AWH, said the new clinic is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, which meet global standards, and is staffed with a team of three consultants and two specialists.

The clinic provides oral and dental healthcare such as tooth extraction, filling and implants, orthodontics, prosthodontics and treatment of caries and gingivitis.

It has a specially designed door wide enough to allow access to patients with mobility

impairment. It is also equipped with a special lifting apparatus, which can lift an object of up to 400kg, enabling treatment of patients on wheelchairs.

“A full-fledged operation room

has been set up to receive patients once a week for dental care under general anaesthesia.

“The room is utilised for radiol-ogy imaging under general anaes-thesia for patients who experience

difficulty when they undergo radi-ology imaging. The new clinic also allows patients to receive care from physicians of various spe-cialities as may be necessary,” Dr Al Yafei said.

Dr Ohoud Al Kuwari, Dentist, AWH said, “Our hospital is receiving more children with spe-cial needs because we found that about 30 percent of all children seeking dental care were special needs children and we concluded that there was a real need to open a special clinic to these patients.

“The clinic also allows those unable to clean their teeth inde-pendently the chance of having a dental cleaning and treatment procedure, under general anaes-thesia every six months,” he said, adding there are plans to increase dental specialities at the clinic such as periodontics and den-tal nerve treatment required by patients with epilepsy who may need frequent removal of gums and cleaning of dental nerve.

He said the hospital plans to coordinate with schools to ena-ble students with special needs to benefit from specialist dental services. THE PENINSULA

Quality Group International Chairman Shamsudheen Olakara inaugurates Shoe Stori, an exclusive footwear store and brand for men, women and kids, at Quality Mall in Mamoura on Thursday. SALIM MATRAMKOT

Quality Group inaugurates Shoe Stori DOHA: Quality Group International has opened a new brand and show-room ‘Show Stori’ in Qatar. Group Chairman Shamsudheen Olakara opened it at Quality Mall in Mamoura.

The store has an exten-sive range of ‘Shoe Stori’ footwear, ladies bags, fashion accessories, travel bags and accessories. All Shoe Stori items are pro-duced by Quality Group International. Shoe Stori will have three stores in Qatar by this year-end and plans to open 10 within two years. It is also looking at expanding to other GCC and Asian countries.

“We specialise in qual-ity shoes for the family, offering a fantastic range of ladies and men’s shoes. Customers also find an incredible selection of ladies bags, fashion acces-sories, travel bags and accessories,” the manage-ment said in a statement.

THE PENINSULA

First dental clinic for people with special needs opens

Dr Abdulhakim Ahmad Al Yafei, Consultant, Paediatric and Special Needs Dentistry, and Head, Dentistry Department, Al Wakra Hospital, attends to a child patient at the new clinic.

DOHA: About 140,000 peo-ple in West Africa will ben-efit from Qatari supply of sacrificial animals during Eid Al Adha.

The beneficiaries are from countries, including Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea Conakry, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Sheikh Hammad Abdul Ghader, General Manager, Islamic Da’wa Organisation (IDO) office in Qatar, said: “West African countries are

considered among the poorest in the world and their people need help, especially during Eid days.”

IDO will make sure that sacrificial animals reach poor, orphans and refugee families, depending on the experience of its mission which has been in the field for over a quarter of a century. It stressed the need to increase the number of sac-rificial animals due to a high demand because of reasons, including wars and natural dis-asters. THE PENINSULA

Qatar sacrificial animals for 140,000 people in West Africa

DOHA: Hamad International Airport (HIA) has advised pas-sengers to arrive three hours before their flight departs as the airport is expecting increase in passengers flow during the Eid Al Adha holidays.

The airport is expecting a peak in departing passenger traffic from tomorrow and arriving pas-senger traffic from September 27 to 30.

It reminded passengers that

check-in will close 60 minutes prior to departure.

To save time, Qatar Airways and many other airlines operating from HIA offer passengers online check-in.

The general public who are dropping off or collecting passen-gers are advised to use the short-term car park which provides complimentary parking for the first 30 minutes and costs QR5 per hour thereafter.

Passengers also have the option of parking vehicles at the airport’s long-term car park which pro-vides customers with 2,540 spaces and a regular shuttle service to the main terminal every 15-20 minutes.

More information about HIA’s parking facilities can be found on its website.

On the occasion of Eid Al Adha, the terminal will be decorated with traditional-themed displays

which portray Qatar’s pride in its culture and highlight the signifi-cance of the occasion. The air-port will also distribute gifts and Arabic delicacies to passengers and will have activities and photo corners for passengers.

“HIA wishes its passengers and the people of Qatar safe travel and Eid Mubarak,” said Badr Mohammed Al Meer, Chief Operating Officer, HIA.

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HIA urges travellers to arrive early during Eid holidays

DOHA: The Logistics Committee yesterday announced designs for buildings at the Logistic Area Project coming up in the southern part of the country.

Designs will be provided to developers for free so they can use them when needed. Designs are for offices, warehouses, show-rooms and housing for employees and labourers.

These are approved by authori-ties concerned to save develop-ers’ time and efforts and are for 1,000sqm and 2,000sqm plots.

The project spreading over southern Al Wakra, Birkat Al Awamir and Aba Salil will include warehousing facilities for cars, assembly units, cold storages, shops and showrooms, commer-cial offices, labour camps, work-shops, service centres and depots.

The logistics and industrial project is the largest in the south of the country to promote com-petitiveness in the commercial sector and encourage the private sector to participate and contrib-ute to the National Development Strategy in accordance with Qatar National Vision 2030.

Designs can be altered for

smaller or bigger plots but new altered designs will be required to be approved by authorities.

Meanwhile, the Logistic Committee and Economic Zone Company (Manateq) have also signed memorandums of under-standing with International Islamic (Qatar International Islamic Bank) and Barwa Bank for financing the project for 10 years.

THE PENINSULA

Panel announces designs of Logistic Area Project

The Logistic Area Project office

05SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015

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Pakistan Defence Day marked

Over 300 students of Pakistan Education Centre marked the 50th anniversary of Pakistan Defence Day on Wednesday at Arbab Auditorium. Pakistan Ambassador Shahzad Ahmad, Principal PEC, Nargis Raza Otho, Defence Attaché Muhammad Masud Akram and Captain Taimoor, Army Officer, Pakistan embassy were present.

BY SACHIN KUMAR

DOHA: Qatar has ranked fifth in Northern Africa and Western Asia region in Global Innovation Index (GII) released on Thursday by leading business schools and World Intellectual Property Organisation.

In the GCC, Qatar has ranked third. In the category of Northern Africa and Western Asia region, which has 19 countries, Israel has secured top slot, Cyprus is second, Saudi Arabia third and the UAE fourth. In the overall ranking of 141 countries around the world, Qatar has secured 50th rank.

“Many resource-rich econo-mies in the region (Northern Africa and Western Asia) have started to diversify and spur innovation in new sectors. This has allowed for Saudi Arabia (43), the UAE (47) and Qatar

(50) to achieve top GII positions within the region as well,” said the report.

Switzerland, the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and the US are the world’s five most innovative nations, according to the index, and China, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, Jordan, Kenya and Uganda among countries outperforming economic peers.

GII, co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD and WIPO, surveys 141 economies around the world, using 79 indicators to gauge innovative capabilities and measurable results.

Innovation policies occupy a central role in developing and emerging economies, where promoting innovation is cen-tral to development plans and strategies and key to addressing societal problems such as pollu-tion, health issues, poverty and unemployment.

Published annually since 2007, GII is a leading benchmark-ing tool for business executives, policymakers and others seeking insight into the state of innova-tion around the world.

GII 2015 is calculated as the average of two sub-indices. Innovation Input Sub-Index gauges elements of the national economy which embody innovative activities grouped in five pillars — Institutions, Human Capital and Research, Infrastructure, Market Sophistication, and Business Sophistication.

Innovation Output Sub-Index captures evidence of innovation results, divided in two pillars — Knowledge and Technology out-puts and Creative outputs. The index is submitted to an inde-pendent statistical audit by Joint Research Centre of European Commission.

THE PENINSULA

Qatar ranks fifth in innovation index

DOHA: Qatar’s Foods and Livestock Company, Widam, said it will start selling sacri-ficial sheep to Qataris at subsi-dised price from today.

Stocks of subsidised animals will be available at the outlets of the company at Central Market, in Al Khor City, Al Shamal City and Al Mazrouha by the end of third day of Eid Al Adha.

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce took initiative to pro-vide two types of sheep on subsi-dised rate (Syrian at QR1,150 and Jordanian at QR1,050) this year. Beneficiaries can opt for either. Citizens aged 20 or born in 1995 or before can benefit.

The initiative will cost over QR6m based on the difference between actual and subsidised prices, Al Sharq reports, quoting a market source.

The ministry has decided to subsidise 12,500 Syrian and Jordanian sheep this year.

To pick up their subsidised sheep, citizens can go to the desig-nated outlets at slaughter houses in Central Marekt, Al Shamal, Al Khor and Al Mazrouah. They should produce their ID to get coupons and can proceed to ani-mal shelters to choose the sheep. They can hand over their selected sheep to the slaughter house and take it home.

The ministry has asked the company to comply with speci-fications and religious terms and conditions required for scarifying animals, provide suitable shelters for them and not to sell small and low-weighted animals.

The ministry is to launch an inspection drive to ensure the company is complying with rules.

Some citizens demanded that the company make available sub-sidised sheep at its all outlets throughout the country so they can visit the nearest ones.

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Ooredoo was one of the main sponsors of the 69th India Independence Day celebrations at the Diplomatic Club – Royal Tent on Friday.

The day-long event was a col-ourful celebration showcasing and promoting the diverse Indian cul-ture in Qatar and India’s achieve-ments to boost India-Qatar relations.

Sponsorship of the festivities was part of a partnership with Indian Cultural Centre (ICC) in Qatar, as Ooredoo has pledged to participate in all major events organised by the Indian embassy and ICC this year.

As part of sponsorship, the company provided an Ooredoo booth which promoted Hala India Keys offer of the lowest rate of 10 dirhams/min to India at QR0.50/week. To subscribe, Hala custom-ers need to send ‘IND’ to 121.

THE PENINSULA

Ooredoo sponsors Indian Independence Day celebration

Subsidised sheep for citizens from today

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce is to provide Syrian sheep at QR1,150 and Jordanian sheep at QR1,050 this year.



Eid Fiesta prizes distributed

Eid Fiesta 2015 campaign prizes were distributed on September 15 at the main office of Trust Exchange Company WLL. The event was presided over by T V S Ramana Rao, General Manager and Regional Head, MEWANA region, State Bank of India; George Thomas, Group CFO and Adviser to Chairman, Intertec Group; and Rajinder Kumar, General Manager, Trust Exchange. Rao and Thomas distributed prizes and Kumar thanked customers for patronising the company and assured them of the best services.

Smile Hypermarket opens

Grand Mart Group Chairman Sheikh Jassim Thamir Issa Thamir Al Thani (third left), Managing Director Ismail and other guests cut a cake to mark the opening of Smile Hypermarket at Barwa Avenue Dragon Mart yesterday. ABDUL BASIT

DOHA: ExxonMobil Qatar and Qatar University (QU) have signed an agreement for an exclusive three-year sponsor-ship of an academic chair in sci-ence and technology education at the university.

The agreement, a milestone in the long history of collabora-tion between both organisations, was signed by Alistair Routledge, President and General Manager, ExxonMobil Qatar, and Dr Hassan Rashid Al Derham, President, QU, in the presence of faculty members and university administrators at a ceremony at the QU campus.

The ExxonMobil Chair in Science and Technology will work with College of Education to explore methods that pro-vide teachers with an improved

educational experience in the fields of science and technol-ogy, in addition to increasing the numbers and quality of Arabic science and technology teaching and learning resources.

The chair will also collaborate with QU faculty members in encouraging a larger number of students to enter science, tech-nology, engineering and maths (STEM) career pathways, among others.

“We are delighted to begin yet another partnership with QU and build on the excellent relationship we have developed over the years,” Routledge said.

“The chair is a crucial posi-tion that involves strategising and identifying opportunities for development, and we are honoured to support QU in

developing Qatar’s next genera-tion of scientists and engineers. We look forward to seeing positive outcomes of this partnership for ExxonMobil Qatar and QU in line with our joint vision of provid-ing quality education for Qatar’s youth.”

Dr Al Derham said: “This is another initiative in many agree-ments signed with ExxonMobil Qatar in recent days which attests to our long relationship with the organisation that has yielded aca-demic and research opportunities on both sides.

“The chair will bring added value and expertise to our faculty, enriching QU’s interdisciplinary approach to science and technol-ogy and the region’s academic resources in the area. The agree-ment reflects and advances both

institutions’ strategic commit-ment to promote science, tech-nology, engineering and maths among young nationals, as an initiative of critical importance to the country’s development and progress.”

ExxonMobil’s Outlook for Energy predicts that by 2040, the world will need 35 percent more energy than consumed today, which means a corresponding increase in demand for profes-sionals in fields such as the energy sector, which work to meet this demand.

To help address the upturn, ExxonMobil Qatar has made it a priority to reinvigorate students’ interest in science and maths at all ages — the key to building a competitive workforce and ensur-ing students get the education

needed to become the engineers and innovators of tomorrow.

For years, ExxonMobil Qatar has partnered with QU and other local entities to support this mission through projects and programmes

that are driving human potential across the country; supporting research, safety, health and the environment; and helping sustain the country’s thriving society.

THE PENINSULA

QU inks deal to host ExxonMobil Chair

Alistair Routledge (left), President and General Manager, ExxonMobil Qatar, and Dr Hassan Rashid Al Derham, President, QU, sign the agreement.

DOHA: Women can lower risk of some types cancers through human papilloma virus vaccine and screening as treatment works best if any cancer is detected early, says experts.

Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Women’s Hospital is observ-ing Gynaecologic Cancer Awareness Month to raise awareness.

According to Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, five main types of cancer affect a woman’s reproductive organs — cervical, ovarian, uterine, vaginal and vul-var. As a group, they are referred to as gynaecologic cancers. Each cancer is unique, with different signs, symptoms and risk factors (that may increase the chance of getting cancer).

Gynaecologic cancers impact women worldwide, accounting for 19 percent of 5.1 million estimated new cases each year, according to World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Ovarian cancer has been identi-fied as the leading cause of death out of gynaecological cancers, in Europe and the US, and the fifth leading cause of cancer mortality

worldwide. Ovarian cancer causes more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system. But when ovarian cancer is found in its early stages, it can be very treatable.

“Ovarian cancer may cause one or more of these signs and symp-toms: Unusual feeling of fullness, bloating in the area below the stom-ach, pain in the pelvic or abdominal area (the area below the stomach and between the hip bones); back pain; pain during sexual inter-course; abnormal bleeding and a change in bathroom habits such as having to pass urine urgently or very often, constipation, or diar-rhoea,” said Dr Afaf Al Ansari, Senior Consultant, Gynaecological Oncology, Women’s Hospital.

“The incidence of ovarian cancer increases with age, with the average age of diagnosis being 63. Over 70 percent of cases present advanced disease because symptoms are vague and non-specific, such as bloating, abdominal distention and early fullness,” Dr Al Ansari said, adding known risk factors for ovar-ian cancer are having a first child later in life, obesity, a menstrual cycle that started at a young age,

a late menopause, genetic predis-position and certain fertility drugs.

“Ovarian cancer begins in the ovaries. Women have two ovaries, one on each side of the uterus. The ovaries, each about the size of an almond, produce eggs (ova) and hormones estrogen and progester-one,” said Dr Al Ansari.

She said ovarian cancer often goes undetected until it has spread within the pelvis and abdomen. “At this late stage, ovarian cancer is more difficult to treat and can be fatal. Early-stage ovarian can-cer, when the disease is confined to the ovary, is more likely to be treated successfully. Early ovarian cancer often has no signs or symp-toms, and any that exist are often mild, making the disease difficult to detect.

“It is important to pay attention to your body and know what is nor-mal for you. If you think something is different or you detect changes in your body it may be that it is caused by something other than cancer, but the only way to know for sure is to see your doctor or go for check-up every two to three years,” Dr Al Ansari advised.

THE PENINSULA

Housing project for displaced Syrians

Qatar Charity has completed about 70 percent of its QR44m project, Al Rayyan, to build a model city near the Syrian-Turkish border for displaced Syrians. The project, expected to be completed in November, comprises 1,000 residential units which can accommodate 7,000 people.

Focus on gynaecologic cancers

07SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com GULF / MIDDLE EAST

Sheikh Rashid’s funeral

H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, in Dubai yesterday. RIGHT: Sheikh Joaan, and UAE Vice-President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai H H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum at the funeral of Sheikh Rashid bin Mohamed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in Dubai yesterday. Sheikh Rashid, son of Sheikh Mohammed, died of a heart attack yesterday.

Sharif Ismail is Egypt’s new prime ministerCAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi swore in a new government yesterday that included 16 new ministers, a week after the previous admin-istration resigned following a corruption scandal.

Sharif Ismail, who served as petroleum minister in the last cabinet, was sworn in as prime minister in a ceremony shown on state television.

The ministers of foreign affairs, defence, interior, justice and finance have kept their positions in the new cabinet.

Former premier Ibrahim Mahlab’s government resigned on September 12 days after the arrest of agriculture minister Salah Helal as part of a corrup-tion probe. It had also come under growing criticism for delays in economic projects.

A senior government official had told AFP the reshuffle, the first major shake-up since Sisi won elections last year, was meant to “pump new blood” into the government.

Ismail is seen as a veteran tech-nocrat with experience in state-owned oil companies before he joined the cabinet in 2013.

In his first remarks after assuming his post, Ismail struck a note of caution and warned the new government “does not have a magic wand.”

“It will take some time to solve some of the problems,” he was quoted as saying by state television.

The new cabinet consists of 16 new ministers, and sees four ministries axed, the presidency

said in a statement. The state news agency had reported 15 new ministers.

There had been growing calls for Mahlab’s resignation and increasing protests by civil serv-ants over a new law that cen-tralises promotions while taxing bonuses.

Mahlab quit as Egypt prepares to hold long-delayed legislative elections in two phases between October 17 and December 2.

The elections had initially been scheduled for early 2015 but were cancelled by a court on technical grounds. Mahlab, who had headed the Arab Contractors construc-tion firm, had been appointed by interim president Adly Mansour in March 2014, less than a year after the army led by then defence minister Sisi toppled Islamist president Mohamed Mursi.

Mursi’s removal and deten-tion unleashed a deadly crack-down on Islamists that killed hundreds of protesters, and the army has struggled to quash a jihadist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula.

Separately yesterday, Sisi appointed a new state prosecutor, Nabil Sadiq, to replace Hisham Barakat, who was killed in a car bombing in June.

The assassination of Barakat helped fast track tough new anti-terrorism laws.

The government had enjoyed support in the face of militants who have killed hundreds of soldiers, but in recent months had come under fire for cor-ruption and the unpopular civil service law. AFP

16 new faces in govt reshuffle

Egypt floods tunnels

A Palestinian youth shows how to abseil into one of the tunnels on the Gaza side after Egyptian forces flooded smuggling tunnels beneath the border to the Gaza Strip, in Rafah, yesterday.

Lack of clean water causes cholera outbreak near BaghdadBAGHDAD: A suspected chol-era outbreak has killed four people west of Baghdad, where vulnerable displaced popula-tions have been affected by the lack of clean water, health offi-cials said yesterday.

The Health Ministry strongly suspects the deaths, which occurred in the Abu Ghraib area near Baghdad, were the result of a cholera outbreak first reported a week earlier.

“Last week, we announced that there were 12 cases of cholera in Abu Ghraib and Najaf,” Health

Ministry spokesman Rifaq Al Araji said, referring to the holy Shia city south of the capital.

“Since then, other cases have appeared in Abu Ghraib, and the reason is water that is not suit-able for drinking,” he said.

“Some people are drinking directly from the (Euphrates) river and the wells. The river water is polluted because the level is too low,” Araji explained.

“We now have four dead in Abu Ghraib in suspected chol-era cases,” he said, adding that

official laboratory results would be known soon.

He said the minister had vis-ited the hospital in Abu Ghraib, and that more medical staff were dispatched to the area and a cri-sis cell set up to deal with the outbreak.

The latest confirmed cholera outbreak in Iraq killed four people in 2012 in the northern autono-mous region of Kurdistan.

After a short incubation period of two to five days, cholera causes severe diarrhoea, draining the body of its water. AFP

16 killed after torrential rains in south AlgeriaALGIERS: Torrential rains in southern Algeria left 16 people dead, including 13 foreigners, local authorities said yesterday, increasing an earlier death toll.

Four bodies of foreigners of African origin were recovered on Friday about 10 kilometres out-side the town of Tamanrasset, in Algeria’s deep south, the APS news agency quoted them as saying.

Heavy rain on Wednesday and Thursday triggered a flood in the town and caused a power outage.

Firefighters on Thursday col-lected the bodies of 12 people, including nine of African origin and three Algerians, after they were swept away in the flood.

The nationality of the 13 for-eigners of African origin was not reported. AFP

MAKKAH: Two people were injured late on Friday night when part of a moun-tain in Makkah collapsed on their home, state news agency SPA said.

The incident comes after 107 people were killed last week when a crane col-lapsed near Makkah’s Grand Mosque.

Muslim pilgrims are flock-ing to Makkah to attend next week’s Haj. The Civil Defence authority said the landslide caused the ceiling of the four storey building in the Batha Quraish area to collapse, injuring a man and woman. An investigation is still ongo-ing to reveal the cause of the accident, the SPA said.

REUTERS

Landslide in Makkah injures two

Russia sends fighter planes to Syria: USWASHINGTON: Russia has sent fighter jets to Syria, US officials said, raising the stakes in a military buildup that has put Washington on edge and led Friday to the first talks between US and Russian defence chiefs in over a year.

US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, eyeing the possibil-ity of rival US and Russian air operations in Syria’s limited air-space, agreed in a call with his Russian counterpart to explore ways to avoid accidental military interactions.

The coordination necessary to avoid such encounters is known in military parlance as “deconfliction.”

“They agreed to further discuss

mechanisms for deconfliction in Syria and the counter-ISIL campaign,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said after the call, referring to the campaign by the United States and its allies against Islamic State militants.

The former Cold War foes have a common adversary in Islamic State militants in Syria, even as Washington opposes Moscow’s support for Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, seeing him as a driver in the nation’s devastating, four-and-a-half-year civil war.

A senior US defence official, recounting details of the con-versation, said Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu had described Moscow’s activities in Syria as defensive in nature.

Shoigu said Russia’s military moves “were designed to honour commitments made to the Syrian government,” the US official said.

It was unclear, however, what those commitments to Syria are or how Russia’s military buildup was relevant to them.

Russia’s latest deployment has added significant airpower to a buildup that, according to US estimates, also includes helicopter gunships, artillery and as many as 500 Russian naval infantry forces at an airfield near Latakia.

One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said four tactical Russian fighter jets were sent to Syria.

Another US official declined to offer a number but confirmed the

presence of multiple jets.In London, US Secretary of

State John Kerry said the United States was looking to find “com-mon ground” with Russia.

Kerry said it was important to forge a political agreement in Syria and end the hardship of Syrian people.

“Everybody is seized by the urgency. We have been all along but the migration levels and con-tinued destruction, the danger of potential augmentation by any unilateral moves puts a high premium on diplomacy at this moment,” he said.

Still, the White House cau-tioned Moscow against “doubling down on Assad.”

REUTERS

BEIRUT: Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate and its Islamist allies have executed at least 56 regime troops at a military airport they recently seized in the northwest, a monitoring group said yesterday.

Al-Nusra Front and the Islamists shot dead the regime fighters, who were being held as prisoners, “execution-style” inside the Abu Duhur airport, said Rami Abdel Rahman, direc-tor of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

He said the killings in Idlib

province had occurred earlier this week but his monitoring group — which gathers news from sources on the ground — confirmed them yesterday.

Al-Nusra is a leading mem-ber of an alliance of jihadist and Islamist forces called the “Army of Conquest” that overran the Abu Duhur military airport on September 9.

When it overran the airbase, the Army of Conquest killed dozens of regime loyalists and took others captive.

AFP

Al Qaeda kills 56 Syrian soldiers

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BY DEB RIECHMANN

IT’S A done deal, yet opponents of the Iran nuclear agreement won’t go quietly. The 60-day US congressional review period has expired, and last week the State Department outlined its plan to

put in place an accord that aims to pre-vent Iran from acquiring nuclear weap-ons. Congress is poised to start cranking out legislation to reinstate sanctions or shore up what some lawmakers say is an ill-fated pact with a state supporter of terrorism.

Senator Bob Corker, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has begun a series of hearings on the US role and strategy in the Middle

East that will examine the deal’s implications.

“It’s going to take a while. It’s a very substantive issue,” said Corker, who opposed the deal along with all the other Senate Republicans. “It will be a complex piece of legisla-tion.” Confronted by Democratic opposition, Corker said, “Let’s face it. It’s going to be one bite at the apple.”

Republ icans failed when Senate Democrats banded together to block a reso-lution of disap-proval from ever reaching US President Barack

Obama, who had pledged to veto any such measure. On Thursday, the State Department said Obama would start issuing waivers on October 18 so the US is ready to grant sanctions relief if Tehran meets its obligations to curb its nuclear programme.

Iran has to uninstall thousands of centrifuges at its facility at Natanz, its main site for enriching uranium; convert an underground nuclear site at Fordo into a research facility; and redesign its heavy water reactor at Arak so it cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Iran also has to ship its stockpile of enriched uranium abroad, and comply with an International Atomic Energy Agency investigation into its past nuclear weapons work.

It’s not clear how long that will take.If the IAEA finds that Iran has com-

plied with key nuclear commitments, then sanctions imposed by the US, United Nations and Europe on Iran’s energy, financial, shipping, auto and other sectors are to be suspended.

“This so-called ‘Implementation Day’ won’t come for six to 12 months,” said Mark Dubowitz, a sanctions expert and an opponent of the deal with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based policy institute.

One idea being discussed in Congress calls for shoring up oversight of Iran’s compliance. Another measure would reauthorise the Iran Sanctions Act. The law was passed in 1996 to pressure foreign companies not to invest in Iran’s oil and gas industries; it has since been expanded.

Other legislation being weighed would strengthen security for Israel, which Iran has threatened to destroy, and for US allies in the Gulf worried about Iran gaining influence in the Mideast as a result of the deal.

“Although the congressional review period may be over, now the real work begins,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons said in a speech on Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Coons said preventing and deterring Iran from cheating must be a priority and even “marginal cheating and ambig-uous evasions of the deal” must be met with a heavy club.

“Iran must not be left with any doubt that it will feel the pain of

sanctions from the entire global com-munity the moment it violates the agreement,” he said.

He also wants the US to improve Israel’s ability to strike Iranian tar-gets; ensure Israel’s access to ord-nance and aircraft needed to deter an Iranian attack; and provide for the sale of additional F-35 stealth fighter jets, plus more funding for Israel’s array of anti-rocket and missile defence systems.

To further stabilise the region in the wake of the deal, Coons said the US needs to strengthen the Gulf states’ ability to counter threats from Iran.

New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, one of only four Senate Democrats to oppose the deal, wants Congress to renew the Iran Sanctions Act “to ensure that we have an effective snap-back option.”

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he will propose legislation with Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to address some of the deal’s “shortfalls.” Blumenthal and Cardin are Jewish and faced heavy lobbying from their constit-uents. In the end Blumenthal supported the deal; Cardin opposed it.

Blumenthal said the two will offer legislation to provide an effective way to put sanctions back into place if Iran cheats, ensure strict adherence to the agreement, and enhance security assist-ance to Israel, including new joint-train-ing exercises and inviting Israeli pilots to train to fly long-range bombers.

Looming above all this debate is whether the agreement will last when Obama’s successor walks into the Oval Office in 16 months.

Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee have promised to abandon the accord.

Asked if he would authorise a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, Senator Lindsey Graham replied: “If I believed they were trying to break out and get a bomb, absolutely. And here’s the most important thing: They know I would if I had to.” AP

MORE than a dozen attackers, some 30 dead, over two dozen injured — the militant attack on a Pakistan Air

Force camp in Badaber, Peshawar was a highly orchestrated strike with deadly consequences. While the military has rightly emphasised the valour and bravery of the security personnel who helped prevent even more carnage — the kind of weaponry the attackers were armed with, as reported in sections of the media, suggests many more casualties and perhaps a lengthy siege was the ultimate aim yesterday — there are an unavoidable set of questions that have yet again been raised by the

events in Peshawar.To begin with, while the Badaber

area is close to the tribal region and is densely populated, it is also a sensi-tive location where past attacks, includ-ing the ones on planes landing at the Peshawar airport, have been launched from. Surely, for more than a dozen armed militants to disguise themselves as security personnel, travel through the Badaber area and arrive undetected at the entrance to the PAF camp is a security failure of some degree.

Moreover, it has already been claimed that there were intelligence reports of a possible strike in the area — who then was responsible for failing

to tighten security quickly and ade-quately enough? Then, there was the rather astonishing competition between the ISPR and the Taliban spokesper-son, Muhammad Khurasani, to shape the narrative of the attack in real time.

While the ISPR was live tweeting the military’s response to the attack, the banned TTP was seemingly live blog-ging it — repeated messages were received by journalists from Khurasani giving an obviously one-sided though blow-by-blow account of what was allegedly taking place inside the PAF camp. The basic question then, how were the militants able to use uninter-rupted lines of communication to, firstly,

communicate between themselves and, secondly, to communicate with the media?

Even if the command centre was in Afghanistan — though this has yet to be proved — it is troubling that the TTP continues to enjoy such direct and untroubled access to communica-tions. Furthermore, given the number of attackers, there was surely some kind of communication in the run-up to the attack between the perpetrators and the planners. Why was all of that able to take place unhindered? If there is a plausible answer, the technical and physical limitations should be explained to the public. DAWN

Iran N-deal is done, but not the debate in US Congress

We’re prepared to negotiate. Is Assad prepared to negotiate, really negotiate? Is Russia prepared to bring him to the table?

Quote ofthe day

John Kerry US Secretary of State

The other side

Looming above all this debate is whether the agreement will last when Obama’s successor walks into the Oval Office in 16 months.

THE DEEPER involvement of Russia in Syria and the brazen, unjustified support for Bashar Al Assad by Vladimir Putin are becoming clearer by the day. This also comes at a time when the world is starting to

think of finding a solution to the Syrian crisis after an exodus of migrants to Europe. Moscow has been trying to muddy the waters and up the stakes, thus complicating efforts for a solution. The only way to bring peace to Syria is by ousting Assad and Putin’s fervent support for the Syrian dictator makes this task extremely difficult.

Latest reports indicate the Russian military buildup in Syria could consist of combat aircraft that are capable of striking ground targets, providing close air support and intercepting aircraft, and small numbers of main battle tanks and armoured personnel carriers to transport troops to the battlefield. The US calls the Russian buildup in Syria ‘significant and a Washington official said it would represent “the first major expeditionary force deployment” outside the former Soviet space that Moscow has undertaken since the war in Afghanistan.

The Russian presence has complicated peace efforts. The policy of Arab countries and the US has been that Assad must leave office in order to resolve the years-long civil war. There are only two ways of making Assad leave office: the military option by defeating his forces on the ground, or through concerted international pressure. Moscow has made

both difficult. The international community will first have to speak to Russia to stop its intervention, and the chances of Putin wholeheartedly agreeing to any such demand are remote because the Russian leader is on a mission to expand his influence and settle scores with the US and Europe. Any fruitful talks with Assad are possible only if Moscow gives the green talks.

Washington is already in talks with Moscow to find a way out of the impasse. The US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter spoke

with his Russian counterpart on Friday to discuss the issue. Carter and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoygu agreed to “further discuss mechanisms for de-confliction in Syria,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said as the US and its allies continue military operations against ISIS inside Syria.

US Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday said that Assad has to go but the timing of his departure should be decided through negotiations. But Kerry had no idea how this objective could be achieved. “We’re prepared to negotiate. Is Assad prepared to negotiate, really negotiate? Is Russia prepared to bring him to the table and actually find the solution to this violence?” he asked.

The Syrian crisis is getting tangled in several knots. It’s also unfortunate that the world is yet to approach the issue with the seriousness it deserves•

Syrian tangle

The Syrian crisis is getting tangled in several knots. It’s also unfortunate that the world is yet to approach the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

Editorial

08 VIEWS SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


Badaber attack

VIEWS 09SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


It’s good the European far left implodedTsipras is too centre-left for many of his former Syriza allies, who have split from the party to form a new political force, Popular Unity. Tsipras is no longer the European left’s great hope.BY LEONID BERSHIDSKY

If Alexis Tsipras is the loser of Greece’s snap elections today, he will be remem-bered as a terribly unsuc-cessful politician. Tsirpas

will have endured eight painful and humiliating months as prime minister, only to lose to Vangelis Meimarakis, the unexpectedly dynamic stand-in leader of the center-right New Democracy party, which seemed on its last legs as recently as January. Win or lose, however, Tsipras will have achieved something important: a major setback for Europe’s radi-cal left.

The victory of Tsipras’s Syriza party in national elections in January was seen by some com-mentators as the beginning of a leftist resurgence that could sweep Europe. The radical left had been in decline since the late 1980s, demoralised by the end of the communist project in the Soviet Union and its satellites. With the 2008 financial crisis and the anti-capitalist sentiment it bred, the movements revived somewhat: Across Europe, the electoral performance of hard-left parties modestly improved, as University of Edinburgh’s Luke March pointed out in an article earlier this year.

To some, Syriza’s triumph looked like the decisive break-through. If Tsipras managed to roll back austerity in Greece and achieve debt reduction, his allies elsewhere — especially in southern Europe — would be able to ride on his coattails. It was a high-stakes game, however. March wrote, presciently:

On the other hand, if the EU

continues playing hardball and the ‘Grexit’ scenario ensues or Syriza ends up capitulating to EU demands, this risks undermin-ing almost all the achievements Syriza has made to date and rein-forcing the mainstream view of the radical left as an economic pariah. But the radical right may be the chief beneficiary, not least in Greece itself.

That’s what’s happening now.While Tsipras was riding high,

pushing European leaders for a debt restructuring deal and resisting the dictates of interna-tional creditors, his Spanish allies of the Podemos party challenged the ruling centre-right People’s Party in the December national election and displaced the center-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. In Portugal, which has elections in October, there was no comparable force, but Livre, a party founded in 2014 on an anti-austerity, hard-left platform in line with Syriza’s, hoped to make some headway. Then European Union leaders rejected Tsipras’s protest tactics, denied support unless he relented and forced his government to introduce capi-tal controls in July. Greeks were only allowed to withdraw 60 euros ($68) from ATMs.

That experience is probably why Meimarakis has caught up with Tsipras, making Sunday’s election too close to call. The New Democracy leader has branded his rival “the prime minister of the 60-euro limit,” and his electoral promise is “no more experiments.”

It’s probably also why Spanish and Portuguese voters are now highly unlikely to hand big victo-ries to hard-left parties:

Former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and leader of the left-wing Syriza party (centre) speaks to party youth members wing at a cafe in the centre of Athens.

Now, even if Tsipras wins and remains prime minister, he will have to form a coalition with less idealistic political forces. He is too centre-left for many of his former Syriza allies, who have split from the party to form a new politi-cal force, Popular Unity. Tsipras is no longer the European left’s great hope.

Podemos will still do relatively well in the December elections in Spain, but establishment par-ties will continue to control the parliament. The leftist party has tempered its demands, too: it no longer calls for a debt renegotia-tion, figuring correctly that would work no better in Spain than it did in Greece.

Portugal, too, will remain domi-nated by traditional, centrist forces.

Even the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party in the UK looks like a belated echo of this fading hard- left resurgence. Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias has greeted Corbyn as an “ally,” but even Labour sup-porters in the UK are bitterly divided about him. According to a recent YouGov poll, 26 percent of them wouldn’t trust him to run the economy, and just 23 percent would.

As March predicted, the failure of the leftist revival could benefit the opposite flank — the far right. The popular dissatisfaction with

politics as usual remains, as does the demand for simple solutions to complex problems. If the capi-talists are proving hard to beat, the immigrants may provide an easier target.

In Greece, the refugee crisis is helping the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party hold on to the third place it won in the January elec-tion. It’s polling around seven percent but is likely to get more: Supporters of such parties often don’t tell poll-takers the truth about how they intend to vote. Right-wing populists are on the rise in Scandinavia, which has had an especially strong increase in immigration. In Hungary, the popularity of Prime Minister

Viktor Orban and his right-wing Fidesz party was sliding before the country was flooded with ref-ugees from the Middle East. Now, Fidesz is clawing back points.

Angry people who vote for far-right parties may need to be inoculated with the same kind of disillusionment as left-wing sup-porters. Orban’s nasty perform-ance, which includes tear- gassing refugee children and the construc-tion of useless walls along borders, appears to be doing the trick for Germans, mobilising them in sup-port of refugees and dampening the kind of xenophobic sentiment that drove mass anti-immigrant rallies in Dresden a year ago.

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Corbyn wins with old-style activismBY PANKAJ MISHRA

The landslide election of the left-wing politician Jeremy Corbyn as leader of Britain’s

Labour Party last weekend pro-voked an avalanche of bien pen-sant opinion. A simple glance at the headlines in Britain’s right-wing press confirms this: “Red and Buried” (Daily Mail); “Bye, Bye Labour” (Daily Express); “Leader Nightmare” (Sun); “Death of Labour” (Telegraph). David Cameron saw it fit to tweet that Corbyn’s election makes the Labour party “a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family’s security.”

Such hysterical responses to a supposedly unelectable and hope-less politician are interesting in themselves. They should make us ask deeper questions about the political climate in which an apparent throwback to the 1960s like Corbyn-or the 74-year-old Bernie Sanders in the United States — becomes freshly relevant in the political mainstream.

It has certainly been aston-ishing to watch the spontane-ous mass movement-led by the young — that enthroned an old-style leftist like Corbyn. The most obvious explanation of course is that people are fed up with a pro-fessional political class that is too frequently found in bed with big businessmen and financiers.

In this conventional account of rising outsiders and populists, the new media has cleansed public debate of special interests, allow-ing a figure like Donald Trump to speak above the head of powerful television networks that break or make politicians.

But such a broad explanation not only obscures the diversity of political sentiment among the young and the old, rich and poor,

declining middle class and aspiring lower middle-class. It leaves out the genuine appeal of old-fashioned political activism, and a suspicion of both old and new media among a very young generation in Britain and America, whose members con-front a more uncertain economic future than any youthful genera-tion in recent history. They have witnessed, from a sentient age, slick experts and technocrats who made mass participation in demo-cratic politics seem unnecessary. They have grown up with digital media, and its seductive promise of empowering citizens by amplifying their experiences and messages.

Indeed, the victory in 2008 of a rank outsider like Barack Obama showed that the new media could be used effectively to mobilize grassroots supporters and over-come entrenched elites.

It still can, but its limitations have also become clearer to the young. Anyone can now join the chattering class with a Twitter and Facebook account. But this only adds to the general cacoph-ony, a tumult in which the goal of identifying the public good by reasoned debate is replaced by a secondary imperative: to make your voice heard.

At worse, the loudest and more extreme voices hold away. At best, every fact and opinion is smoth-ered in over- interpretation, from all possible positions, by conspir-acy- theorists and self-promoters as well as supposed experts.

This rude uncovering of a veiled reality is what drives the reigning technocrats and their chums in the right-wing press to hysteria. The inexperienced Corbyn may not sur-vive their hostility. But he has inau-gurated what may seem in a few years a momentous transition to a reality-based political community.

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Five myths about classified informationUnder the executive order that governs classification, the 2,000-plus officials who have this authority “may” classify information if its disclosure reasonably could be expected to damage national security.

BY ELIZABETH GOITEIN

The controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail account while she

was secretary of state has centred on whether she used it to send or receive classified messages. This focus obscures the larger ques-tion of whether Clinton’s setup affected the State Department’s compliance with the Freedom of Information Act and legal requirements for federal agen-cies to retain records, as well as myriad other questions about agencies’ information-manage-ment practices. Moreover, much of the commentary has been more confusing than illuminating, because it fundamentally misun-derstands how the classification system works. When a handful of prevalent myths are corrected, it becomes clear that this aspect of the story reveals more about our nation’s dysfunctional system for managing official secrets than it does about Clinton.

1. Information can be “classi-fied,” even if no one has classified it. Many news reports and com-mentators have suggested that “information is classified by [its] nature” (as Sean Davis writes in the Federalist), even if no agency or official has classified it yet. These accounts treat “classified” as a quality rather than an action - one that is inherent, immutable and self-evident. If information is sensitive enough, it’s classified, no matter what.

When it comes to “original classification” — the initial deci-sion to classify information - that portrayal is simply wrong. Under the executive order that governs classification, the 2,000-plus officials who have this author-ity “may” classify information if its disclosure reasonably could be expected to damage national security. The determination of harm is often highly subjective, and even if an official decides that

disclosure would be harmful, he or she is not required to classify.

Information provided by for-eign governments in confidence is different. The executive order cautions that the release of such information is “presumed” to harm national security; agency rules provide that such informa-tion “must be classified.”

An official who transmits that information without classifying it has violated agency rules. But the recipient now possesses information that someone else should have clas-sified - not classified information.

2. It’s easy to figure out whether information has been classified. There is a common refrain that Clinton “should have known” there was classified infor-mation in e-mails she got, even if it wasn’t marked. As commen-tator Andrew McCarthy put it, “Classified information . . . is well known to national security offi-cials to be classified - regardless of whether it is marked as such or even written down.”

The classification rules treat this myth as if it were true. Once information has been classified by an authorised official, anyone who retransmits it must mark it as classified, even if it was not marked when received. This is called “derivative classification,” and it can be performed by any of the 4.5 million individuals who are eligible to access clas-sified information. They rely on

“classification guides” - a kind of index of original classification decisions, mostly kept on secure Web sites - to determine what information has been classified and therefore must be marked.

Derivative classification is intended to be a straightforward, ministerial task. But the system breaks down in practice. The categories of information listed in guides are sometimes so broad or vague that they leave officials to guess whether any given piece of information has been classified.

3. Anything classified is sensitive. Many discussions of Clinton’s e-mail assume that all classified information deserves to be classified, often using the terms “classified” and “sensitive” interchangeably, and that every leak of classified information is dangerous. Officials frequently make blanket statements that “unauthorised disclosure of clas-sified information jeopardizes national security.”

In fact, the classification sys-tem is marked by discretion (intended) on the front end and uncertainty (unintended) on the back end. This lack of clear boundaries opens the door to a huge amount of unnecessary classification.

4. Any mishandling of classified information is illegal.

Some 2016 presidential candi-dates have not hesitated to label the mishandling of classified

information as criminal, with former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee calling Clinton’s actions “beyond outrageously illegal.”

In fact, in a nod to the com-plexities of handling classified information, the law criminalises only violations that are “know-ing,” “negligent” or the like. The law falls short, however, in fail-ing to give express protection to knowing releases of classified information by whistleblowers.

The lack of protection for whistleblowers allows the gov-ernment to graft its own “intent” requirement onto the law through selective prosecution. Those who seek to reveal government mis-conduct are prosecuted.

5. Our classification system protects us from harm.

This myth flows naturally from the assumptions that all classi-fied information is automati-cally and self-evidently sensitive and that any release of classified information would compromise national security. “On hundreds of occasions, Hillary Clinton’s reckless attempt to skirt trans-parency laws put sensitive infor-mation and our national security at risk,” GOP Chairman Reince Preibussaid last month.

Actually, it is our bloated clas-sification system that puts our security at risk. Some classifica-tion is unquestionably necessary to keep the nation safe, but over-classification not only stifles pub-lic discussion and debate, it also discourages people from following the rules. Officials who routinely encounter innocuous information marked “top secret” lose respect for the system. They are more likely to handle information carelessly or even engage in unauthorized disclo-sures, believing that little harm will result. The danger is that the baby could get thrown out with the bath-water: A casual approach to classi-fied information jeopardizes the real secrets buried within the excess.

WP-BLOOMBERG

10 MIDDLE EASTSUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


4,500 migrants rescued off Libya in a dayOne dead as 20 operations pick up Eritreans, Nigerians, Somalis, Libyans, Syrians and West AfricansROME: Twenty rescue opera-tions yesterday picked up over 4,500 people off the Libyan coast, according to the Italian coastguard, which was coor-dinating the response for yet another boat in distress in the Mediterranean.

Among those taking part was Doctors Without Borders ship Bourbon Argos, which told AFP it had rescued over 800 people, who were expected to be brought to safety in Italy along with the rest of those saved.

“We started before first light this morning with our first rescue. We rescued two wooden fishing boats and two rubber dinghies,” said Simon Burroughs, emergency coordinator for search-and-res-cue missions by the medical group — commonly known by its French initials MSF.

Burroughs said those rescued included Eritreans, Nigerians, Somalis, Libyans, Syrians and West Africans.

The 20 operations took place between 30 and 40 nautical miles off the Libyan coast, and saw rescue workers pluck people from eight boats and 12 dinghies. The body of a woman was also recovered.

The mass effort was carried out by an Italian military ship, the MSF’s Bourbon Argos, the MAOS search and rescue Phoenix, a Croatian vessel operating under EU border agency Frontex, two vessels operating within the Eunavfor Med mission — one British, one German — and the Italian coastguard.

The coastguard said another mission was under way to save yet more people who had run into difficulty during the perilous crossing from Libya to the Italian shores.

In videos sent to AFP by MSF, hundreds of people in brightly-coloured clothes could be seen sprawled out on the Argos, a nearly 70-metre-long Luxembourg-flagged ship which typically carries around 700 people.

“It’s quite a big boat, but at the moment every inch of deck space is covered. People are extremely relieved to be off their sinking boats,” Burroughs said.

“We’ve had about a week of bad weather that stopped any kind of rescue operations, but last night and this morning weather changed,” he said, as children were heard crying in the background.

“There are multiple nationali-ties... Thankfully, everyone is in good health,” said MSF spokes-man Sami Al Subaihi, who is seen aboard the ship in the video.

Launched in May, the Argos has been handling large rescue missions due to the growing waves of people seeking refuge in Europe.

“It’s a large operation, but unfortunately it’s becoming quite a typical operation... Our last rescue was over 1,000 people,” Burroughs said.

The Bourbon Argos has a staff of 26 people on board, including medical specialists.

According to Yazan Al Saadi, MSF’s regional communications

officer in Beirut, the three MSF search-and-rescue vessels are equipped to treat migrants for various medical issues.

On Friday, 102 migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean by Libyan authorities, and seven other bodies were recovered. The

Italian coastguard said it coordi-nated the rescue of a total of 1,013 migrants.

Another 124 people were

detained by Libyan coastguard officials Friday as they were pre-paring to cross to Europe.

AFP

Libyan Red Crescent workers in Tripoli port help migrants who were rescued after their boat sank off Libya.

Turkish air strikes kill at least 55 Kurdish militants

Iran’s Rowhani reassures Americans on death chant

ANKARA: Turkish fighter jets carried out a new barrage of cross-border air strikes this week against Kurdish mili-tants in northern Iraq, killing at least 55 rebels, state-run Anatolia news agency reported yesterday.

The strikes by F-16 and F-4 jets targeted caves, houses and camps used by the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Anatolia said, citing unnamed security sources.

“At least 55 to 60 terrorists” were killed in the operation, which

destroyed munitions depots, the report added.

Turkish security forces and the outlawed PKK have traded fire on a near daily basis since a two-year-old ceasefire fell apart in late July with Ankara’s launch of a two-pronged “anti-terror” offensive against Islamic State jihadists in Syria and the jihad-ists’ Kurdish foes.

The bulk of the government’s firepower has been reserved for airstrikes on PKK bases in north-ern Iraq or in Turkey’s predomi-nantly Kurdish southeast, to

which the rebels have responded with a string of bloody attacks on the security forces.

Around 150 soldiers and police have been killed in PKK bombings and shootings since the return to open conflict, compared with around 1,100 in the rebel camp, according to pro-government media.

The PKK does not give figures for its dead, making it impossi-ble to confirm the government’s claims to be inflicting huge losses.

With the tit-for-tat attacks showing no sign of abating in the

run up to November 1 parliamen-tary elections, the government has announced plans to boost a controversial pro-government “Village Guard” militia.

“Following instructions from our Prime Minister (Ahmet Davutoglu) we will advertise for 5,000 ‘village guardians’ in the press,” Interior Minister Selami Altinok was quoted by NTV broadcaster as saying.

Created towards the end of the 1980s to contain the PKK, the militia currently numbers around 70,000 men and women, who draw

a government salary.Human rights groups have

repeatedly called for the force, which has been tainted by alle-gations of violent crime and drug smuggling, to be disbanded.

Of the around 5,000 militia members to have been implicated in wrongdoing, only 900 have faced legal action, according to official figures.

The battle between the state and PKK will take centre stage at an anti-terrorism rally in Istanbul today to be addressed by Erdogan.

AFP

WASHINGTON: Iran’s President Hassan Rowhani has tried to reassure a scepti-cal American public that when crowds in Tehran chant “Death to America!” they don’t mean it personally.

In an interview with the CBS show 60 Minutes to be broad-cast today in the United States,

the Iranian president said the famous Friday ritual is a reaction to previous Washington policy decisions that hurt Iran. In July, US President Barack Obama’s administration signed a deal with Rowhani’s government to release Iran from many of the economic sanctions harming its economy in return for tight controls on its

nuclear programme.But many in the United

States are still convinced that Iran, which is ultimately led not by Rowhani but by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, remains bent on their country’s destruction.

In the fierce domestic American debate over the deal,

opponents have often cited the regular appearance of chant-ing anti-American crowds as evidence of Tehran’s true intentions.

But Rowhani, seen as a moder-ate reformer by the standards of the Islamic republic, attempted to reassure his CBS interviewer Steve Kroft and the wider

audience. “This slogan that is chanted is not a slogan against the American people. Our people respect the American people,” he insisted, in an extract from the interview released Friday.

“The Iranian people are not looking for war with any coun-try,” he said.

AFP

Hollande in Morocco after torture rowTANGIERS, MOROCCO: French President Francois Hollande arrived in Morocco yesterday on an official visit that takes place against a back-drop of controversy over tor-ture lawsuits in Paris against the kingdom’s intelligence chief.

Hollande, accompanied by five ministers and a delegation of business leaders, was met on the tarmac in Tangiers by King Mohammed VI at the start of the two-day visit.

“I want France and Morocco to enter a new phase of partnership,” Hollande said. “We have a com-mon will to act in Africa and also to fight against terrorism, which remains our top priority,” he said after receiving military honours.

He was to hold a series of meet-ings at the palace, attend the signing of a bilateral agreement on the training of imams and inaugurate with the king a serv-ice centre for trains of the future

Tangiers-Casablanca high-speed line.

The first train for the rail link was delivered by the French group Alstom in June.

Human rights groups are concerned Hollande might use the visit to bestow France’s top honour, the Legion d’Honneur, on Abdellatif Hammouchi, the head of Morocco’s domestic intelligence agency. In February, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced that Paris would decorate Hammouchi with the award for his role in the fight against terrorism.

Hollande’s aides, however, have said there is no plan to award the Legion d’Honneur to Hammouchi during the visit. Morocco sus-pended all judicial cooperation with Paris between February 2014 and January 2015 after a French judge summoned Hammouchi over torture complaints filed against him in Paris. AFP

French President Francois Hollande speaks to journalists upon his arrival at Ibn Battouta airport in Boukhalef, 10km south of Tangiers, Morocco, yesterday.

UN nuclear watchdog chief to hold talks in Tehran todayVIENNA: The head of the UN nuclear watchdog was to travel yesterday to Iran for talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme with senior officials, the IAEA said in a statement.

The discussions between International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano and the “high-level” officials will take place today, it said, as a December deadline looms for completion of a long-running investigation into Iran’s past nuclear activities.

The IAEA chief was expected to arrive in Tehran in the early hours of today.

“The visit will focus on... clari-fication of past and present out-standing issues regarding Iran’s nuclear programme,” it said.

The UN atomic watchdog on September 9 said Iran must resolve some “ambiguities” over its past nuclear activities before crippling international sanctions can be lifted.

The IAEA wants to probe alle-gations that at least until 2003, Iran’s nuclear programme had “possible military dimensions” — in other words that it conducted research into making a nuclear weapon.

Iran has said that the allega-tions that it sought to build a bomb — including that it con-ducted relevant explosives tests at the Parchin military base — are groundless and based on faulty intelligence provided by its enemies to a gullible and partial IAEA. AFP

At least 10 killed in Iran flash floodsTEHRAN: At least 10 peo-ple have been killed after flash floods hit several regions of Iran, state television said yesterday.

Six people died on Friday in Pakdasht, a city southeast of Tehran, when they attempted to have a picnic by the side of a river which then burst its banks, it said.

And in Iran’s southern Hormozgan, four people including two children were also killed by flooding on Friday. State televi-sion said they had gathered next to a river to watch the flooding when they were swept away.

AFP

Ire at hospital closure

A banner is held up that reads, “Save our hospital and our employment” as hundreds of people gather to protest against the closing of the L’Aigle hospital in L’Aigle, northwestern France, yesterday.

EUROPE / AMERICAS 11SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


EU countries tussle as migrant crisis deepensEU earmarks €1bn to make refugees stay in TurkeyBELI MANASTIR, Croatia: Thousands of migrants sought their way through a chaotic maze of rumour and proliferat-ing border controls in the west-ern Balkans yesterday.

In the latest chapter in the EU’s escalating refugee crisis, Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia tussled over how to cope with a wave of refugees desperate to reach northern Europe.

The European Union, mean-while, sketched plans to boost aid to encourage Syrians in Turkey to stay put rather than join the exodus.

In a new hurdle aimed at stem-ming the inflow, Hungary said it had completed a 41km barbed-wire barrier along part of its frontier with fellow EU member Croatia.

It “was finished overnight Friday,” defence spokesman Attila Kovacs said in Budapest.

The remaining 330km of the border runs roughly along the Drava river, which is difficult to cross.

The new barrier adds to a barbed-wire fence that Hungary set down along its frontier with Serbia, and backed with laws threatening illegal migrants with jail.

That move sparked fierce con-demnation internationally and forced the migrant flow towards neighbouring Croatia.

Reversing an open-door policy, Croatia on Friday said it was swamped and redirected the migrants back to Hungary.

Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic on Friday said that Zagreb and Budapest had agreed to allow “vulnerable migrants” to cross.

Austrian police said 6,700 peo-ple had arrived on its border from Hungary, and as many as 10,000 were expected by the end of the day.

They were then taken by bus or special train to various reception centres around Austria, police said.

Another branch of the refugee flow has been through Croatia and to Slovenia.

Hundreds of migrants spent the night in the open on the Croatian side of the border at Bregana, state-run HRT televi-sion reported.

At Harmica, several dozen migrants faced off with a cor-don of riot police on the frontier bridge, demanding that Slovenian police let them enter the country.

Late Friday, police used tear gas against several hundred migrants, some with children, who had sought to push through the police line.

The clash happened shortly after Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said the small coun-try might consider creating

“corridors” for refugees want-ing to reach northern Europe if they continue arriving in large numbers.

Slovenian police said on Saturday that 1,287 had arrived as of midnight on Friday, of which 483 were from Afghanistan, 470 from Syria and 126 from Iraq.

With no let-up in the flow of people desperate to find shelter in Europe from war and misery, new figures showed the EU received almost a quarter of a million asy-lum requests in the three months to June.

The International Organisation for Migration (OIM) also said nearly 474,000 people had so far this year braved perilous trips across the Mediterranean to reach Europe.

Italy’s coastguard yesterday said it was coordinating 20 rescue operations in the Mediterranean that had picked up 4,540 people.

The continent’s biggest migra-tory flow since the end of the Second World War has dug a deep rift between western and eastern EU members, with Hungary lead-ing the hardline group.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, is the great magnet for the refugees, many of whom are Syrians. On Friday, Berlin warned it could invoke EU’s majority voting system to force reluctant states to accept quotas of migrants.

Migrants crowd the border crossing between Rigonce in Slovenia and Hamica in Croatia yesterday.

Another worry is over the fate of the Schengen agreement, a pil-lar of the European project that allows borderless travel between member states.

In addition to fences or restrictions on parts of the bor-der between Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia, there are identity checks that Germany, Austria and Slovakia have reimposed on parts of their borders, and Poland and The Netherlands are considering whether to follow suit.

EU interior ministers are to meet again on Tuesday, followed by an emergency summit on

Wednesday. Meanwhile, European Commissioner Johannes Hahn said yesterday the EU was ear-marking aid of “up to one billion euros” ($1.13bn) to encourage Syrian refugees in Turkey to stay there rather than join the outpouring of people heading to Europe.

The money will “help Turkey to deal with this challenge and (give) people (a) perspective to stay in the region in order to return back into their home region, home towns, as soon as this is possible,” Hahn said.

The money will be taken

from funds allocated for Turkey, Hahn said in a visit to a migrant reception centre at Gevegilja, in Macedonia.

Of the more than four mil-lion Syrians who have fled their country, nearly half have sought shelter in Turkey, while more than a million are now living in Lebanon and nearly 630,000 in Jordan.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has said severe underfunding has forced it to halve its food assistance to 1.3 million of the refugees.

AFP

Poll shows little UK support for Corbyn as future premierLONDON: Almost three in four people do not believe that the new leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, looks like a prime minister-in-waiting, according to a poll published in The Independent newspaper yesterday.

The ORB survey of 2,000 peo-ple found only 28 percent agreed with the statement: “Jeremy Corbyn looks like a prime minis-ter-in-waiting,” while 72 percent disagreed.

The survey found Corbyn’s election has made one in five peo-ple who voted for his party at the May general election more likely to vote Conservative next time.

It found 37 percent of Labour voters were less likely to back the party at the next election.

Mexico arrests 13 in connection with Chapo escapeMEXICO CITY: Mexico has arrested 13 more people in connection with the escape of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, including the former director of the high-security prison he escaped from and a government official who over-saw Mexico’s prisons.

A total of 20 officials have now been arrested in connection with Guzman’s escape in July.

Valentin Cardenas, the former director of the Altiplano prison in central Mexico, and Celina Oseguera, former director of Mexico’s federal prisons, were arrested along with 11 prison guards, a person familiar with the arrests said.

AGENCIES

Tsipras in pole position hours ahead of Greek electionATHENS: Greece heads for a cliffhanger election today with radical former premier Alexis Tsipras taking a slight lead in the race against the conserva-tives for the helm of a govern-ment facing tough economic reforms.

Hours before a midnight ban on voter surveys expired on Friday, two polls forecast victory for the youthful Tsipras over conservative party chief Vangelis Meimarakis by margins ranging from 0.7 to 3.0 percentage points.

However, pollsters advise cau-tion with many recalling the 2000 election that was decided by a mere 72,000 votes.

A victory for Syriza would deliver “a key message for

Europe”, Tsipras told his closing rally in Athens on Friday, refer-ring to the refugee crisis and EU economic woes.

“Do we want a Europe of aus-terity or one of solidarity and democracy?” he asked the crowd.

In a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, Tsipras said voters would say “no to this old system of corruption, no to the enshrin-ing of the oligarch establishment.”

With nine parties hoping to enter parliament, whoever wins is unlikely to secure an outright majority and Tsipras’s Syriza party could well need to ally itself with one of the parties he has criticised.

His former finance minis-ter Euclid Tsakalotos yesterday

warned that cooperating with parties “who have built their political power on clientelism” would be difficult.

“I don’t see how we can change public life and combat tax evasion with such alliances,” Tsakalotos told the liberal Kathimerini daily.

In a flurry of interviews this week, Tsipras defended his deci-sion to put the country above his party, saying that had he refused to agree the three-year bailout, Greece would likely have been ejected from the eurozone.

On Friday, he told Antenna TV that he would “tug the rope” in order to secure relief on Greece’s huge national debt from EU cred-itors in the coming months.

Conservat ive l eader

Meimarakis hit back in an interview yesterday, dismissing Tsipras’s seven months in govern-ment as “an experiment that cost (the country) dearly”.

Tsipras won office in January on an anti-austerity ticket but then upset supporters in July with a U-turn cash-for-reforms deal struck with Greece’s international creditors, despite a huge “no” vote in a referendum on the issue.

The left-wing government had earlier also shut banks to avert a deposit run and imposed capital controls that are still felt in the economy. Meimarakis warned voters against re-electing a man who has publicly admitted to opposing the bailout he signed.

“Do you know of any other

prime minister who brokered a deal, brought it to parliament, voted for it and signed it, whilst saying he does not believe in it?” the conservative chief told the weekly To Vima.

“I fear that if Syriza is elected... the country will soon be led to elections again, and this would be disastrous,” said Meimarakis, a 61-year-old former defence minis-ter. Polls open at 0400 GMT today and close exactly 12 hours later.

The first official estimates are expected from the interior min-istry after 1800 GMT.

Greek pollsters however call-ing for caution after polls failed to predict the result of a July ref-erendum on austerity.

AFP

Crews gain ground on California blazesSAN FRANCISCO: Firefighters battling two deadly wildfires in drought-stricken California have gained more ground and some displaced peo-ple were allowed to go home, officials said yesterday, even as the search went on for people reported missing.

Two men and an elderly, disa-bled woman have been killed by the so-called Valley Fire, which has scorched 73,700 acres just north of Napa County’s wine-producing region, according to the Lake County Sheriff ’s Office.

Authorities were still searching for people who had been reported missing, said Lake County Undersheriff Chris Macedo, although he could not provide an exact tally.

Two more people, who authori-ties said defied evacuation orders, lost their lives in the separate Butte Fire, still burning more than a week after it erupted more than 160km to the east in the Sierra Nevada foothills, in California’s Gold Rush country.

Ranking as the most destruc-tive wildfires in California this year, the two conflagrations together have blackened roughly 145,000 acres, laid waste to more than 950 homes, and forced some 23,000 people to evacuate.

Cooler conditions, rain and lighter winds have helped fire-fighters gain additional ground in recent days, though higher

temperatures forecast for com-ing days could pose a challenge, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said.

Containment of the Valley Fire, a measure of how much of its perimeter has been enclosed within buffer lines carved through vegetation by ground crews, was at 45 percent. Several commu-nities forced to flee the massive blaze were allowed to return home starting late Friday, Lake County officials said.

In the Sierra foothills to the east, the Butte Fire was 63 per-cent contained late Friday, Cal Fire said. Fire officials say the two blazes are emblematic of an intense wildfire season that is shaping up as one of the state’s fiercest on record, with much of September and all of October, his-torically the worst two months of the year, still ahead.

Property losses from the Valley Fire — 585 homes and hundreds more buildings — stand as the highest among the thousand of wildfires that have raged across the entire drought-stricken western United States this sum-mer. The Butte Fire alone has destroyed 365 homes.

In addition to the five deaths attributed to the two blazes, four firefighters were hospitalized with burns on Saturday in the first hours after the Valley Fire broke out.

REUTERS

Putin gives go-ahead to Belarus air base planMOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed the establishment of an air base in neighbouring Belarus, the latest move by Moscow to project its military power abroad.

Yesterday’s announcement, which comes at a time of ten-sion with the West over Russian involvement in Ukraine and Syria, may also signal the Kremlin’s interest in keeping unpredictable

Belarus within its geopolitical orbit.

Putin said in a statement he had agreed a government proposal to sign a deal for the military air base and ordered defence and foreign ministry officials to start talks with Belarus. The plan is not expected to face major obstacles.

The idea of setting up an air base in the ex-Soviet republic was revealed by Russian Defence

Minister Sergei Shoigu in 2013, and follows a 2009 agreement under which Russia and Belarus agreed to defend their common external frontier and airspace.

Russian defence officials have said the base would be used to station Su-27 fighters. Russia already has some fighter aircraft in Belarus but this would be the first full-scale base there since Soviet times.

Russia has scaled back its military presence abroad, closing bases in distant Cold War allies such as Cuba and Vietnam.

However, a naval base at Tartus in Syria has recently become the focus of world attention as Russia has boosted its troop presence there in a move seen as bolster-ing its diplomatic influence in the region.

REUTERS

12 ASIA / AFRICASUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


Philippine Festa

A dressed up Filipina walks with large statues at a parade of the ‘Philippine Festa’ in Tokyo, yesterday. Eight-time world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao attended the Philippine community’s festival event in Japan.

TOKYO: Opposition groups yesterday vowed to challenge laws passed overnight that clear Japanese troops to fight abroad for the first time since World War II, saying the changes are a “black stain” on the country’s history.

Japan’s ruling coalition, led by nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, pushed the laws through in the early hours of the morning after days of tortuous debate that at points descended into physical scuffles in parliament.

For the first time in 70 years, the new laws will give the gov-ernment the power to send the military into overseas conflicts to defend allies, even if Japan itself is not under attack.

The nationalist premier argues the laws are necessary to protect against threats from an increas-ingly belligerent China and unsta-ble North Korea, but opponents fear the vague wording could see Japan dragged into far-flung for-eign wars.

Abe has faced bitter opposition over the changes, which have seen his popularity slump, and oppo-sition lawmakers have vowed to do everything in their power to fight them.

“This is not an end,” said

Renho, a senior lawmaker from the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, who goes by one name.

Mizuho Fukushima, a sen-ior lawmaker from the Social Democratic Party, told a crowd of more than ten thousand who gathered outside parliament during the debate: “Abe’s cabinet criminals... Let’s get them out of here.”

Speaking after the vote, Abe said the changes were “necessary in order to protect people’s lives and peaceful way of life”.

“This is designed to prevent wars,” he said.

Abe had been unable to mus-ter support to amend the pacifist constitution and instead opted to “re-interpret” the meaning of self-defence in order to push through the new laws, but the move has sparked a groundswell of opposition not seen for decades in Japan.

A hard-core group of some 300 protesters gathered outside par-liament on Saturday, calling for the legislation to be abolished and vowing never to stop their fight against Abe.

“Our battle will never end. This is just the beginning,” Keisuke Yamamoto, an organiser from

one of the citizen groups that have been leading weeks of rallies, said.

“We will resort to every pos-sible measure, including bringing the case to the courts... We can’t let this movement fizzle out now.”

Behind him, demonstrators carried banners or billboards, which read, “We should not get children killed,” and “Don’t let them wage a war”.

Legal scholars have argued the legislation violate Japan’s pacifist constitution, imposed by the US after World War II, and several groups yesterday said they were preparing to challenge the new laws.

Susumu Murakoshi, chairman of the 36,000-strong national bar association, yesterday criticised the government for going against the will of the people and pledged to see the changes abolished.

The laws have “left a black stain on the history of Japan as a constitutional democracy,” he said in a statement.

National broadcaster NHK reported that respected consti-tutional scholar Setsu Kobayashi, from Keio University, is already planning to muster 1,000 lawyers to file a challenge to the legisla-tion in the Tokyo district court.

AFP

BANGKOK: Hundreds of activists defied a ban on pro-tests and marched in Thailand’s capital yesterday in a rare rally against the hard-line ruling military.

Lines of police stood by as crowds of people chanting “no dictatorship”, some carrying anti-junta banners, marched peace-fully on Bangkok’s Democracy Monument, against the orders of a government widely condemned for using draconian measures to silence detractors.

The protest was to mark the ninth anniversary of a coup against the government of Thaksin Shinawatra that many Thais see as the trigger for an intractable conflict that is show-ing no signs of abating.

The demonstrators attended a forum at Bangkok’s Thammasat University which the government allowed to take place, but permis-sion was denied for their march beyond its walls.

Though the gathering pales in comparison to the mass ral-lies that have plagued Thailand, protests have been rare since the generals overthrew the govern-ment of Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s sister, in a coup in May last year.

The military has been criti-cised by the West for rounding up hundreds of activists, some for demonstration of just a few peo-ple. Many, including journalists and politicians, have been forced to attend “attitude adjustment” sessions at army bases.

“Peoples’ rights have been taken away, too many have

been detained,” said Montra Thongsuksan, a demonstrator carrying a sign saying “return power to the people”.

“I have to show solidarity, against the military. I’m scared, but I’m willing to march to show we won’t give up.”

Thailand has been caught in a dilapidating tug-of-war between supporters of the politically domi-nant Shinawatra family and a roy-alist military backed by a network

of old-money conservatives whose influence is being challenged.

The military will not cede power soon; Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the general who staged the coup said last week an election could take place in July 2017.

The time frame was pushed back about a year after a military-appointed panel on September 6 rejected a draft constitution in a vote many analysts believe the top

brass may have influenced to pro-long its rule. There was no uni-formed military presence at the rally and police, who estimated 400 attended, made no obvious attempt to stop it.

“We are observing, to keep things in order,” the commanding officer, Major General Pongpan Wannapak, said.

“If things get out of hand, we’ll report it to our superiors.”

REUTERS

SEOUL: If North Korea goes ahead with reunions of fami-lies separated by the 1950-53 Korean war it is going to expect rewards from the South in return, perhaps the reopening of a border tourist spot or even tacit acceptance of an expected missile test.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye wants to build con-fidence with the unpredict-able North under her policy of “Trustpolitik”.

But the South is loath to rush back into negotiations as it draws up a strategy for government-level contacts to follow an accord in August that defused the lat-est confrontation between the old rivals. Reunions of families sepa-rated by the war have been held several times since 1985, provid-ing the opportunity for humani-tarian cooperation, and perhaps a first step to building ties, amid poignant scenes of elderly folk meeting long-lost loved ones.

The government of South Korea also wins a popularity boost from the reunions.

For the North, not concerned about opinion polls, the reunions, the last of which took place in February 2014, are more of an inconvenience, but one that can be leveraged.

Cho Min, vice president of the South Korean government-run Korea Institute for National Unification, said the North saw the family meeting planned for next month as a concession to the South.

“The reunions are a hassle for the North. There is cost in look-ing for the people, and to feed them and dress them up,” he said.

North Korea is at least expected to seek the resump-tion of cross-border tours from the South to its Mount Kumgang resort, Cho said. The tours were once a $40m-a-year money spin-ner for the impoverished North.

The North may also expect the South not to raise too much of a fuss if it goes ahead with a widely anticipated missile launch.

This week, the North announced a plan to fire a long-range rocket that it says is for a space programme. It also said it was working to improve its nuclear arsenal.

South Korea has been restrained in its response to the North’s tough talk, an indication it does not want to disrupt the fragile improvement in ties since negotiations ended a tense stand-off last month.

During those talks, the North raised the possibility of resum-ing the tours to the scenic Mount Kumgang, a South Korean official said at the time.

Ties between the two Koreas warmed after their leaders held their first ever summit in 2000 but deteriorated after a conserva-tive president came to power in the South in 2008. Relations went into deep freeze following the 2010 sinking of a South Korean navy ship, with the loss of 46 sailors, which South Korea blamed on the North. REUTERS

LAGOS: Nigeria’s military said last Friday it had rescued 90 people, including women and children, after dislodging Boko Haram Islamists from two vil-lages in the country’s restive northeast.

Acting army spokesman Sani Usman said in a statement that “troops rescued 23 men, 33 women and 34 children from the terror-ists” last Thursday in the villages of Dissa and Balazala, which lie in the vicinity of the town of Gwoza in Borno state.

Gwoza was where Boko Haram declared its so-called caliphate last year before the strategic town was recaptured by government troops in March.

The military said it had reo-pened a primary school in the town which had been shut down because of the insurgency, and pledged to implement security measures to ensure the safety of pupils and teachers.

More than 200 girls abducted from their school in the north-eastern town of Chibok in April of last year are still being held by the Islamists. AFP

ARUSHA: Electoral authori-ties in Tanzania yesterday called on police to investigate fears that some political parties were preparing to train militia groups ahead of next month’s national elections.

The concern has emerged as campaigning heats up prior to the October 25 polls, in which the long-time ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party’s candidate John Magufuli is hop-ing to succeed President Jakaya Kikwete.

But Magufuli, 55, is facing what is seen as the tightest electoral race in the east African nation’s history, with the main opposition parties uniting around ex-prime minister Edward Lowassa, 61, who recently defected from the CCM.

“The Commission has received information that certain politi-cal parties were preparing to give military training to more than 1,500 youth in order to cause trouble during the elections,” Damian Lubuva, the National Election Commission’s president, said in a statement.

“Even if this information only comes from one camp, the Commission requests the police to investigate and take the necessary action,” it added, without naming any particular party.

“No party is allowed to use such a militia. It is against the law.”

The statement also came after one person was killed earlier this month in a clash between CCM supporters and the main opposi-tion Chadema party.

The ruling CCM party has dominated politics since modern Tanzania was formed in 1964, and currently has two-thirds of seats in parliament.

But it has been weakened by internal splits and a string of graft scandals, and recently suf-fered defections of high-profile members — including ex-prime minister Frederick Sumaye and former home affairs minister Lawrence Masha — to the oppo-sition coalition.

Another neighbour, Kenya, was also hit by post-election tribal violence in 2007-2008 which left more than 1,000 dead.

AFP

A demonstrator from the New Democracy Movement (NDM) group wears a mask during the Democracy Monument rally in Bangkok, Thailand, yesterday.

Thais defy ban on protestThe ninth anniversary of coup against Shinawatra govt marked

N Korea could seek concession on resort, missile for reunions

Opponents vow to fight laws expanding Japan’s army role

People hold placards to protest against Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s controversial security bills near the National Diet in Tokyo, yesterday.

Warning in Tanzania over political militia groups

Nigeria military rescues 90 from Islamists

Protesters hold placards against Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s controversial security bills near the National Diet in Tokyo, yesterday.

ASIA / PAKISTAN 13SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


Sacrificial goats

Sacrificial animals on sale at a local livestock market ahead of Eid al-Adha in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, yester-day. Muslims around the world prepare to celebrate Eid al-Adha, which falls on September 24 in Afghanistan.

PESHAWAR: Twenty-two suspects have been detained in connection with a deadly attack on a Pakistan air force base claimed by the Taliban, officials said yesterday.

Pakistani Taliban militants dressed in official uniforms attacked the air force base near the northwestern city of Peshawar last Friday, killing at least 29 people, most of them soldiers, the group's deadliest assault in months following a major military offensive against them. All 14 attackers were also killed, the military said.

"At least 22 suspects includ-ing eight Afghan nationals have been detained from different parts of the city since last Friday after the attack, and are being

thoroughly interrogated," a sen-ior local police official Shakir Bangash said. He said some of the suspects were set free after an initial interrogation while others, including the eight Afghans, are still in custody.

A senior security official said evidence was still being collected from the site of the attack to find more clues about how the incident happened and how the attackers entered the camp.

The insurgents entered the residential compound at the base, attacking a mosque where they killed 16 air force person-nel as they were about to offer dawn prayers. Another seven air force personnel were also killed in a barrack adjacent to mosque.

AFP

Pakistan bombs Taliban hideouts16 suspected militants killed in raidPESHAWAR: Pakistani jets killed 16 suspected militants in bombing raids near the Afghan border yesterday, the day after Taliban militants killed 29 peo-ple in an attack on an air base.

The attack on the base last Friday was the deadliest ever militant attack on a Pakistani military installation and is likely to undermine already rocky ties with Afghanistan.

Hours after the attack, Pakistan’s military spokesman pointedly noted that communi-cations intercepts showed the Pakistani Taliban gunmen were being directed by handlers in

Afghanistan. Yesterday’s air force raids targeted militant bases in the Tirah Valley, which straddles the Afghan border and is a main smuggling route between the two countries, two Pakistani security officials said.

“All those killed in the bomb-ing were Pakistani militants,” said one security official in the north-western city of Peshawar.

Last Friday, 13 gunmen stormed the Badaber air base, about 10km south of Peshawar in an attack a Pakistani Taliban spokesman said was retaliation for bombing raids on their bases along the Afghan border.

22 detained after air base attack

Pakistani soldiers patrol outside Air Force base, a day after it was attacked by militants in Peshawar, yesterday.

Western media welcome: XiBEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping has told Rupert Murdoch that Western media organisations are ‘welcome’ in China, despite the continued blocking of numerous foreign web-sites for their reporting on the country.

“(We) welcome foreign media and correspondents to cover China stories, introducing China's development to the world, and helping the world grasp the opportunities (afforded by) China’s develop-ment,” Xi said last Friday as he met with Murdoch in Beijing, the Xinhua state news agency reported. The News Corp chairman was received at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, known as the symbolic heart of the Chinese Communist Party. Murdoch's visit precedes the Chinese head of state's upcoming visit to Washington, which the tycoon assured Xi would be covered in full, according to Xinhua.

Pistorius parole hearing postponed JOHANNESBURG: South Africa’s parole review board has postponed for two weeks a hearing to decide if Oscar Pistorius can be released early from prison, after being sentenced for kill-ing his girlfriend, a report said yesterday.

The delay was because the board had been unable to finalise all its cases last Friday, when it had been due to meet to decide if Pistorius should be freed on parole or serve a longer period in jail, local tel-evision station ENCA reported. It gave no specific date for another meeting. The Paralympics gold medallist was due to be released on house arrest in August after serving 10 months of a five-year sen-tence, but South Africa's justice minister blocked his release saying procedure had not been followed. He referred the case to the parole review board. The spokesman for South Africa's prisons could not immediately be reached for comment. Pistorius' spokeswoman said she had to seek advise from her client before making a statement.

Kazakhstan probes soldiers’ deathASTANA: Ex-Soviet Kazakhstan said yesterday it was inves-tigating the drowning of four soldiers during an ill-fated mil-itary exercise on the Caspian Sea. Defence minister Imangali Tasmagambetov yesterday visited the Caspian city of Aktau where an amphibious landing exercise went wrong the day before and relieved four regional military officials of their duties.

The country’s military prosecutor has opened an investigation into the incident that saw Bauyrzhan Zholdabay, Asylzhan Makhambetov and Bagytzhan Kalybay and Amir Adylov all drown as a quartet of BTR-80 armoured personnel carriers sank in choppy waters during an attempted amphibious landing. “Initial findings indicate that the incident took place as a result of a poor decision when practising an amphibious landing in the absence of landing equipment,” a state-ment from the defence ministry said.

Three killed in Bangla village clashDHAKA: At least three people were killed and dozens injured in a clash between police and locals protesting the torture of a woman and her son in a Bangladesh village last Friday, a media report said yesterday. “We’ve come to know that three people have died from injuries suffered in the clashes,” Xinhua news agency quoted a senior police official as saying. The clash erupted as a group of villagers blocked the highway in protest against the reported rape of a woman in front of her son. Shahidul Islam, officer-in-charge of Tangail's Kalihati police station, told journal-ists that a group of villagers attacked police, prompting them to open fire. But he claimed no one was killed in police firing.

Eight killed in Nepal bus accidentKATHMANDU: At least eight people were killed and 37 injured when a passenger bus plunged off a mountain highway in Nepal's Ramechhap district last Friday, police said.

The bus veered off the road at Gahirachowk area in Manthali Municipality of the district, 137km from here, police inspector Makhan Yadav told Xinhua news agency. “Preliminary investiga-tion suggests that the driver is solely responsible for the mishap,”the police inspector added. AGENCIES

BAMAKO: Fighters from Mali's former rebel alliance, the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), took con-trol of the northeastern town of Anefis last Friday after loy-alist fighters who seized it last month withdrew, officials said.

“CMA rebels have retaken control of the locality of Anefis yesterday,” a security official in MINUSMA, the UN peacekeep-ing mission the west African country, said. “But without a fight. Several of their vehicles arrived in the city.”

The news was confirmed by Almou Ag Mohamed, a CMA spokesman.

“Anefis is under our control,”he said. “In violation of the cease-fire, militias took the town. Under pressure, they left.”

The Platform coalition of loy-alist fighters seized Anefis in deadly clashes in August that left at least 10 dead. They agreed to pull out, though, and MINUSMA welcomed the completion of their withdrawal tomorrow.

CMA fighters clashed with pro-government militias in north-eastern Mali, with the two sides accusing each other of starting the fighting, breaching a peace deal signed this year. Mali was shaken by a coup in 2012 that cleared the way for Tuareg separatists.

Al-Qaeda-linked militants then overpowered the Tuareg, taking control of the region for nearly 10 months until they were ousted in a military offensive. AFP

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian police have arrested a former ruling party official who has travelled the globe to highlight corruption allegations against Prime Minister Najib Razak, his lawyer said yesterday, accusing the government of seeking to silence the whistleblower.

Khairuddin Abu Hassan was arrested by police last Friday after he was stopped from leav-ing for the United States where he was to meet with FBI officials, his lawyer Matthias Chang said.

He has been charged with plot-ting to “undermine parliamen-tary democracy”, a vague charge that critics have said is open to

government abuse.“They want to stop him trav-

elling and maybe to intimidate him,” Chang said.

Police did not respond to requests for comment. Najib's government has moved to quash further scrutiny of the revelation in July that nearly $700 million was deposited into his personal bank accounts.

The government has called the money “political donations” from Middle Eastern sources but refuses to give more details.

Najib subsequently sacked his attorney general and deputy prime minister and made other personnel moves that appear to

have stalled investigations.Khairuddin, a former division

head in the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), has demanded transparency over the Najib funds as well as at state investment company 1MDB, which Najib launched. Najib and the company are under fire over allegations that perhaps more than a billion dollars went miss-ing from overseas deals involving 1MDB, which is now struggling under massive debts.

With no progress seen in Malaysian investigations, Khairuddin has recently travelled to Switzerland, Britain, France, and Hong Kong to highlight the

case to authorities, Chang said. Various foreign investigations have been launched.

A magistrate yesterday ordered Khairuddin held for a week for investigations, Chang said. The scandals have deeply tarnished Najib, a self-proclaimed reformer. He dismisses them as a conspir-acy to unseat him.

Last month, tens of thousands of protesters paralysed Kuala Lumpur with a two-day demon-stration to demand Najib’s resig-nation and reform of Malaysia's 58-year-old regime whose critics accuse it of repression, corruption and electoral chicanery to stay in power. AFP

TAIPEI: A Taiwan-flagged boat has been caught with an illegal haul of more than 100 shark fins and is being escorted back to a home port, Taiwanese authorities said yesterday.

Five shark carcasses and 110 shark fins were found on the vessel in an "obvious violation of shark finning", Taiwan's Fisheries

Agency said in a statement.The boat was carrying over 10

tons of fish, including yellow fin tuna, an amount "significantly discrepant" to that recorded in the vessel's logbooks, the agency said last Friday. The boat was being escorted back to a home port by a Taiwan patrol vessel for further investigation.

Environmental activist group Greenpeace earlier this month boarded the boatl, accusing her crew of operating illegally near Papua New Guinea.

The group said it found sacks of shark fins from at least 42 shark carcasses though only three had been recorded in the boat's logs.

AFP

Whistle-blower who targeted PM held

Taiwan boat caught with shark fin Mali’s ex-rebels retake control of Anefis: Officials

Police said they picked up around 50 residents living near the base on suspicion of helping the militants organise the attack.

Shafqat Malik, head of the Peshawar bomb squad, said the attackers carried enough fire-power to occupy the base, but that some of their weapons had malfunctioned.

Each man had an assault rifle, two improvised explosive devices, and several rocket propelled gre-nades, but some of the grenades misfired, he said.

“Their mission was occupa-tion of the air base,” he said.

For decades Pakistan nurtured Islamist militants as allies against old rival India, and to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

But it has been fighting some militant factions since after it sided with the United States fol-lowing the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the US cities. Pakistan launched an offensive to dislodge Pakistani Taliban from their northwestern stronghold of North Waziristan in 2014 and there has been fighting in various places, including the Tirah Valley, since then.

For years Pakistan and Afghanistan have traded accu-sations of not doing enough to stamp out insurgents on either side of their long, porous border.

Each country has a separate but allied Taliban insurgency fighting to overthrow the govern-ment and install strict Islamist rule and security cooperation is seen as vital to defeat militancy.

Last month, Afghanistan blamed Pakistan for not doing enough to counter militants who carried out a series of attacks in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

REUTERS

ABUJA: A Nigerian tribunal issued an arrest warrant for the president of the country’s sen-ate Bukola Saraki for refusing to appear before the court over allegations of false declaration of assets.

“This tribunal has called on the defendant to appear before it and stand trial,” tribunal judge Danladi Umar said in his ruling in Abuja.

“In view of the non-appearance of the defendant, this tribunal orders the inspector general of police or the relevant security agencies to produce the defend-ant before this tribunal,” he said, ordering that a “bench warrant be issued against the defendant”.

The Code of Conduct Tribunal is a special court that tries asset declaration offences.

As Senate president, Saraki is the third-highest ranking person in Nigeria, after the president and vice president.

The case is seen as a litmus test for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) government of President Muhammadu Buhari who came to power in May on anti-graft ticket. Buhari and his deputy Yemi Osibajo this month publicly declared their assets and other public figures, including lawmakers, are expected to fol-low suit.

Under Nigerian law, it is man-datory for the president, the vice-president, state governors and their deputies to declare their assets when they take office and before stepping down. Other political appointees typically also declare their assets, but it is not mandatory for them. AFP

Arrest warrant for Nigerian leader Bukola

14 ASIA / INDIASUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


Fighting spirit

Rape protest

Delhi Police yesterday organised a blood donation camp at Adarsh Nagar Police station, West Delhi since dengue cases are on the rise in the capital. The blood camp which was organised in association with Lions Blood Bank also witnessed the participation of Resident Welfare Association members from Adarsh Nagar area, West Delhi.

AAP activists yesterday took out a protest march and burnt an effigy of Gurgaon’s BJP legislator Umesh Aggarwal, demanding his arrest and resignation after a Delhi court framed rape charges against him. Sandeep Luthra and Rekha Rani were other accused in the rape case of a woman from Tilak Nagar in January.

KOLKATA: While the declas-sified West Bengal government files may not provide “conclu-sive” proof of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose being alive after 1945, researchers asserted that the documents reflect that even the Indian government post Independence did not buy the “Taiwan plane crash” theory.

The nearly 13,000 pages of “secret’ information that were made public last Friday reveal the extensive surveillance carried out on Netaji’s family members, par-ticularly his elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose and nephews Sisir Kumar and Amiya Nath.

There are at least eight files on Sarat Bose alone, and two files on the nephews, giving details about how sleuths tracked their each and every movement.

From intercepting letters to and from their Kolkata resi-dence to maintaining records of the meetings they attended and speeches made, the Bose family were constantly under the scan-ner particularly in the immediate post independence era.

Researchers and some Bose family members believe that the snooping was a result of the Indian government not buying the plane crash theory and believing that Netaji was still alive.

“There are more than a dozen instances of reports claim-ing Netaji to be dead before the August 18, 1945 plane crash. In fact in 1942, it was reported that he died in a plane crash,” researcher and author Jayanta Chowdhury said.

“So it is quite natural for the authorities, be it the British or the Indian, not to buy the Taihoku plane crash theory,” said Chowdhury, who deposed before the Justice M K Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry which in 2006 concluded that Bose did not

die in the alleged air crash of 1945.Corroborating Chowdhury’s

claims is a document dated July 17, 1942 addressed to the home department, government of India, stating that “a newspaper Hindusthan Standard alone of all newspapers of Bengal which appeared definitely to discredit the news of Bose death in a plane crash”.

Chandrachur Ghose, founder member of ‘Mission Netaji, an organisation spearheading the declassification campaign, also opined that snooping on the Bose family was testament of the Indian government believing Netaji to be alive after 1945.

“The Justice Mukherjee Commission has already estab-lished that Netaji did not die in the plane crash.

These classified files which reveal the extensive snooping only concretise the fact that the Nehru government too believed Netaji was alive,” Ghose said. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also talked about inferences of Netaji being alive after 1945.

“There are mentions here about Netaji after 1945 which indicate that he might have been alive,” Banerjee.

Among the documents debunk-ing the plane crash theory is a report published in Blitz Bombay on March 26, 1949 which stated, “Plane Crash Theory Unconfirmed”.

“It is not known whether the news of living Bose is based upon positive evidence of his whereabouts suspected to be in Red China or Soviet Russia or upon what is described as the negative evidence of the failure of the best brains to the Anglo American Security Services to dig up slightest evidence in confirma-tion of the story of Bose’s death in a plane crash and subsequen in Tokyo.”

One file also refers to a secret document by the office of Deputy Commissioner of Police, Special Branch Calcutta from January 1949 stating that Sarat Chandra Bose believed Netaji was some-where in China.

IANS

SURAT: Apprehending a potential law and order situ-ation, Surat Police detained Patidars leader Hardik Patel and at least 50 of his supporters when they attempted to launch an ‘Ekta Rally’ here yesterday morning, officials said.

The rally, which the police claimed as ‘unauthorised’, was to press for the caste-based reser-vations for the Patel community spearheaded by Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS).

PAAS convenor Hardik Patel, 22, and at least 50 others were detained at Mangad Chowk and whisked off in waiting police vans to the police headquarters.

Undeterred by the deten-tions, the Patels defied the police and took out another rally from Hirabagh locality from where PAAS co-convenor Nikhil Patel was also detained.

Shortly after the detention,

Hardik Patel said police were harassing them as they wanted to take out a peaceful rally, and accused the Gujarat government of “harassing everybody”.

“The Gujarat government is provoking violence though ours is a peaceful agitation. We request the people of the state for sup-port. We are not against any com-munity, but just fighting to get reservations for our community,” Patel said.

PAAS termed the detentions as “illegal and bulldozing of democ-racy by the Gujarat government” which was acting at the centre’s behest.

Yesterday ‘Ekta Rally’ was thrown a challenge by the oppos-ing OBC Ekta Manch, which threatened to take out a ‘Pratikar Rally’ protesting against the res-ervations sought by the Patidars.

However, the city administra-tion declined permission to OBC

Ekta Manch to hold its rally.Gujarat went into a state of

high alert following the PAAS officials’ detentions.

Meanwhile, hours after Patidar community leader Hardik Patel was detained in Gujarat yester-day, his Patel Nav Nirman Sena demanded his release by the evening or warned of a nationwide “jail bharo” agitation.

“If Hardik Patel is not released by government (Gujarat) then we will start massive jail bharo ando-lan across the country. Narendra Modi government and the state government will be responsible for it,” Patel Nav Nirman Sena’s national secretary Akhilesh Katiyar said here.

He requested Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel to “release Hardik Patel immedi-ately and give us permission for the peaceful march and accept our reservation demand.” IANS

PATNA: Taking pot shots at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his poll promises, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi yesterday called him a Feku (bluff).

Addressing his first election rally in Bihar’s West Champaran district, Gandhi targeted Modi over his various promises made during the 2014 Lok Sabha elec-tion campaign but which remain unfulfilled till date.

“He had promised 2lakh jobs, promised `15lakh in each of your accounts, to control inflation. One year of Modi government has gone. Did it happen? Has anyone got `15lakh? Has the inflation been controlled? Has anyone got employment?... Fektha hai (bluff-ing),” the Congress vice president said without taking Modi’s name.

Loosely translated, the Hindi word Feku means someone who

bluffs. On employment, Gandhi said during the Lok Sabha cam-paign Modi had promised to revive sugar mills in Champaran, but nothing had been done in this direction.

“Modi has never met poor people, workers and labourers. He has no time for them. Modi only meets people wearing costly suits,” he said while people of Bihar to be wary of Modi and his “suited-booted friends” who may take away their land in the name of development.

Gandhi warned the crowd at the rally that the uprooted lan-dless people would find no shel-ter in big cities as they would be treated as outsiders and would be driven away from there too.

Referring to Bihari migrants being attacked in other states for being outsiders, Gandhi said: “If the BJP government comes here,

people will come here in suit-boot and demand your land. Then you would go to other states, you would be asked to go back as you don’t speak their language so you would be beaten up.”

He said if the BJP comes to power in Patna, the suited-booted friends of the prime minister from New Delhi and Gujarat will come to grab the land of the peo-ple of Bihar.

Comparing the suited-booted culture of the Modi dispensation with the simple living of Mahatma Gandhi, he said, “Gandhi ji gave up the comforts of his life to serve the people.”

He said while Congressmen want to mix with people, Modi and his friends were averse to the common man.

Gandhi said the prime min-ister has distanced himself from the poor people and “they

(government) want to keep their suit clean, we want to embrace ‘dhoti’”.

“If you want to bring in “roz-gar” (employment), talk to the people who need it, not to those in suits. If you want to clean the country, you have to talk to people engaged for the work. The gov-ernment only makes false prom-ises,” Gandhi said.

The Congress leader said, “We will create jobs in Bihar; we will give a credit of `4lakh to Bihar youth for education. If our gov-ernment is formed here, we will create employment opportunities in Bihar.”

He said Modi claimed that he sold tea during his childhood, “but I doubt whether it is true”, add-ing that Modi started off as a tea seller, but his clothes changed from simple to better, from kur-tas to costly suits. IANS

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has urged External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to help eight Keralites stranded in two African countries return home at the earliest.

Chandy said he has written to Swaraj seeking her intervention to see the matter is taken up at the diplomatic level. Four men are presently in jail in Togo while four nurses are in Congo who wish to return to India.

Chandy who arrived in Delhi yesterday is likely to call on Swaraj regarding the two cases, his office said. The four Keralites in Togo are in jail since July 2013. They reached the African country in June 2013 after being offered a new job in a shipping company by a Keralite. Nileena, wife of Nithin Babu who is currently in Togo jail said that things are bad there.

IANS

Court summons for Congress legislatorsTHIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A court here yesterday issued summons to four Congress lawmakers on a complaint by two women opposition legislators alleging the ruling party members had molested them on the floor of the assembly on March 13 when the 2015-16 budget was presented.

The Congress legislators asked to appear before the chief judicial magistrate court here on April 20, 2016 are Dominic Presentation, K Sivadasan Nair, A T George and M A Waheed.

Jameela Prakasham and K K Lathika, in their petition, said that they had approached the court after no action came on their com-plaints to assembly Speaker N Sakthan and Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. The two were among five women legislators of the Left Democratic Front, who were in the forefront of the protest in the house on March 13 against state Finance Minister K M Mani pre-senting the budget since he was an accused in the bar scam case.

The Congress-led United Democratic Front had however asserted that they would go ahead since it was a constitutional obligation.

Drug trafficker held in DelhiNEW DELHI: A 43-year-old drug trafficker has been arrested here and eight kg charas, with a value of `40lakh in the interna-tional market, seized from his possession, Delhi Police said yes-terday. Acting on a tip-off, police arrested Amit Bhatnagar from an area near Civil Lines last Thursday. The accused, who originally hails from Delhi’s Rajouri Garden, is now settled in Nepal, Joint Commissioner of Police Ravindra Yadav said, adding that a first information report was registered against him. He said Bhatnagar initially started selling auto spare parts in Nepal, where he met drug peddler Beer Bahadur and got into drug trafficking.

Offer to Baruah in national interest: CMGUWAHATI: Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi yesterday said his offer that the government might consider it on humanitarian grounds if ULFA leader Paresh Baruah wanted to visit his ailing mother was in keeping with national interest.

The chief minister was reacting to a reported statement by union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju that Gogoi’s offer was “undermining national interests”. “I know my national interests and I just gave an option to facilitate an ailing mother’s reunion with her son, by keeping national interest on the top,” Gogoi said in a state-ment. “I have all along been fighting the anti-national forces and I have succeeded to a great extent in containing these forces. National interest all along has been a priority and utmost importance to me, I don’t want anybody’s advice on it,” he added.

Wife, lover held for man’s murderGHAZIABAD: The murder of a Delhi-based businessman has been solved with the arrest of his wife and her lover, who is also her dead husband’s cousin, police said yesterday.

Mannu Walia, 40, a real estate developer, was shot dead by motor-cycle-borne assailants last Wednesday while he was travelling to Haridwar in his luxury Audi car along with his wife Shalini, 38, and his cousin Vipul, 36.

Last Thursday, the victim’s younger brother Alok Singh filed an FIR with the Ghaziabad Police saying that Shalini and Vipul were behind the murder. The incident took place in Raj Nagar Extension area. The motive of the murder was an illicit relationship between Shalini and Vipul and also to grab Mannu Walia’s properties in Delhi and other towns, police said. IANS

Spying on Bose family proof Netaji was aliveIndia did not buy ‘Taiwan plane crash’ theory: Experts

NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal yesterday congratulated West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for making files public on freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

“This is unbelievable. I con-gratulate Mamta di for bringing it out in public domain,” Kejriwal tweeted. Sixty four documents on the disappearance of Bose with the West Bengal govern-ment were made public last Friday.

The files contain letters sup-porting the theory that he was

alive after 1945 and that his family was snooped upon.

“There are certain letters where many have said that he was alive after 1945,” Banerjee has said.

On August 22, 1945, Tokyo Radio announced the “death” of Bose in an air crash in Formosa (now Taiwan) on August 18, 1945, en route to Japan. But the crash theory has been rejected by scores of his followers and admirers and claims of the rev-olutionary leader resurfacing continue to intrigue and divide Indians over the years. IANS

Kejriwal congratulates Mamata

Gujarat’s poster boy Patel detained

Rahul takes potshot at PM’s poll pledge

Help jailed Togo Keralites return: CM to Sushma

15FEATURES SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


Mercure Hotel will be celebrating Eid Al Adha with a special Arabic & Oriental A La Carte menu from September 23 to 26 at their La Brasserie Restaurant for lunch. A wide choice of dishes including Hrira Soup, Hot Mezzah, Seafood Salad, Oriental Salad, Couscous Royal, Lamb Ouzi, Fish Tajine, Dawood Bacha, Kunafa and Baklava will be available. Prices rage from QR25 to QR55 for main courses.

VLCC has launched an all-new slimming programme for men and women.

This unlimited and guaranteed weight loss programme comes under the umbrella of a unique VLCC weight loss campaign enti-tled, ‘I’ve lost it’. The programme, guided by professionals, includes customised treatments and diet plans, and assures loss of extra kilos easily as it encompasses unlimited weight loss sessions until the guaranteed weight loss is reached.

‘‘VLCC is a brand synonymous with health and beauty, and enjoys the trust and faith of millions of satisfied customers worldwide. ‘I’ve lost it’, a guaranteed weight-loss campaign endowed with unlimited weight-loss sessions, is emerging as one of our signature programmes. We firmly believe that this programme will further

enhance the reach of VLCC slim-ming programmes, and more and more people would say ‘I’ve lost it with VLCC’. The number of dis-eases linked to modern lifestyle is on the rise, and it is welcome that more and more people are aware of the significance of maintaining a balanced diet and body weight,’’ says Vandana Luthra, (pictured) founder of VLCC Group.

Modern lifestyle (regardless of the age and culture), accord-ing to VLCC, has made wellness an accepted concept and desire among people, the world over, and obesity is a major public health threat than any other epidemic known to mankind.

The new slimming treatment, made up of proper diet, exercise and lifestyle management, will not only create a condition of good physical and mental health, but also help one maintain a desirable

degree of weight. Secondly, the VLCC Weight

Loss Guarantee also offers diets based on DNA, VLCC actually creates a diet for individuals based on the genetic profile.

All this is done under the experienced guidance of qualified professionals – from slimming counsellors to dieticians.

THE PENINSULA

Dunes by Al Nahda, is set in the golden sands of Wadi Al Abiyad, 45 minute drive away from Al Nahda Resort and Spa.

This is the closest desert resort to downtown Muscat and the United Arab Emirates, allowing guests to enjoy the desert at their doorstep.

“Our resort promises an exhilarat-ing experience that our guests are bound to keep reminiscing about. We have ensured that our restaurants, in-house facilities as well as guided outdoor activities are up to international LVX standards,” said Niti Ajit Karsandas Hamlai, Managing Director of Al Nahda Hotels and Resorts, the parent company

of Dunes by Al Nahda. “This resort will definitely be a prime tourist destination, but it also serves as a great getaway for residents of the country too.”

Dotted with well-spaced villas and suites, Dunes by Al Nahda features 50 ultra luxury tents each with full individ-ual bathrooms, separate seating area and individually controlled air-conditioning. This exclusive luxury getaway devotes itself to wellness. The special Hot Sand treatment, a spa experience carried for-ward from ancient Egypt, is their sig-nature therapy. Guests can choose to be greeted with a wellness-consultant to assist them in picking from a range of invigorating spa therapies. Dunes, by Al Nahda also has a range of activities

for the more adventurous souls. Hosting a variety of extreme sports

like dune bashing, quad biking, sand surf-ing, camel riding, bicycle riding and kite flying, this resort makes sure to com-pletely enthral the adrenalin seekers. For those wanting to simply flex those muscles in some outdoor sports, the venue has a 09 hole on-site bunker golf course, the sole of its kind in Oman. The location atop the sand dune, offers an unrivalled view over the surrounding with undulating sand dunes, desert and mountains in the distance. The property also has a dedicated Children’s play area. The Fleur Restaurant serves a range of culinary delights from across the globe.

For meetings and special event needs,

Dunes by Al Nahda also features a 160 metre square banquet hall for up to 250pax.

Dunes by Al Nahda is also a member of Preferred LVX, a division of Preferred Hotels& Resort. THE PENINSULA

Dunes, by Al Nahda: Luxury on top of the dunes

Dunes by Al Nahda officials at the soft launch function.

The reception area

VLCC offers guaranteed weight loss programme

Special menu at Mercure Hotel for Eid

For the Fall/Winter 2015 season Naturalizer introduces its Back to Work collection which has been inspired by the modern woman. This collection incorpo-rates contemporary trends, fine detailing

and comfort. “Our designs are based on the princi-ples of quality, innovation through our technologies and timeless styles that cater to a modern woman. A woman knowledgeable about fashion, but insists on comfort and versatility. Naturalizer designed a line focused on two major stories for this season, covering everything from everyday looks through classic tailoring. Ladies can now remove your band-ages, because Naturalizer will delight your feet with style and comfort,” says the company.

Nu Bohemia This features an outdoor, fairytale feel, which

blends artisan with historical handcrafted looks. It embraces the wilderness through minimal mate-rial mixing and heavy lug soles. Art nouveau prints and 1970’s dandy styling are integral parts of this Bohemian look. The palette focuses on opulent mid-tones and darks that are enhanced by red coloura-tions and golden metallic.

Luxe Casuals An organic minimal theme with an empha-

sis on comfort, simplicity and soft movement.

Ready-to-wear transforms and refigures materials into soft molded looks such as quilting. Effortless and cozy menswear styling eludes to the continuation of the “boy meets girl” looks. Square toes, straight heels, plated hardware and oversized buckles can be seen throughout this trend. An overwhelmingly quiet and peaceful color palette – tonal greys, pow-der blues and dusty pinks are a head to toe color statement while winter white emerges.

These features provide the woman with her all day comfort, delivering flexibility, lightness, balance, cushioning and breathability. The Naturalizer intro-duces a new extension to its N5 comfort system

– N5 Contour. These styles will include an inno-vative contour insole and footbed, superior dual-density cushioning and a lux suede sock with Agion. Enhancing comfort experience, N5 Contour features styles that redistribute weight and pressure, include superior arch and heel support with a consistent fit.

THE PENINSULA

Naturalizer introduces back to work collection

Bollywood Actress Sonam Kapoor (pictured) wants young girls to move ahead from those things that are not working best for them and

says that this holds true for shampoos too. Sonam, who has joined hands with beauty brand L’Oréal Paris Advanced haircare’s campaign ‘Change your Shampoo, Change your Hair’, wants to advise all young girls that “it’s not only about relationships but correct things that work for you”.

‘Change your Shampoo, Change your Hair’ is L’Oréal Paris’s new style mantra for the season and has been backed by its three ambassadors: Sonam Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Katrina Kaif. “Honestly the reason why I decided to do this cam-paign because I loved the idea of finding the correct fit for you and trying to find things that works best for you,” Sonam about her involvement with the campaign.

“I wanted to give advise to all the young girls out there that its not only about relationships but correct things that work for you. We have a ten-dency of getting stuck to something that we know rather than finding something that actually makes us feel good. And the same thing goes for sham-poos,” she added. The campaign was unveiled with Sonam’s bold and sassy take on break-ups and bad relationships.

Speaking on this one-of-a-kind video, Sonam said: “I strongly feel that with any relationship, with peo-ple or for that matter, your shampoo, there is no point holding on if it doesn’t make you happy.

“The message is simple. It’s time Indian women stop compromising and living with bad hair days.”

IANS

Sonam Kapoor’s sound advice for young girls

BREAK16 SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


FajrShorook

ZuhrAsr

MaghribIsha

04.05 am05.21 am

11.27 am02.54 pm

05.34 pm07.04 pm

Minimum: 29o C Maximum: 39o C09:30 - 20:15 02:15 - 16:00HIGH TIDE

Hazy to misty at places at first be-comes hot during the day with some clouds and humid with hazy by night.

LOW TIDE

Prayer Timings

Weather

Seismic alert! Apps warn Mexicans of quakes

issued a false alarm.At the time, the app was still

connected to CIRES, which Cantu blames for the error. But the civil association says it was SkyAlert’s own doing.

Cantu said the risk of failure for SkyAlert is very small as the signal uses speedy data networks instead of phone lines. The city government failed at its own app experiment.

For CIRES’s Director General, Juan Manuel Espinosa Aranda, old-school radio signals are more reliable. The veteran engineer showed a screen that monitors lit-tle green dots across the coast rep-resenting the sensors — fenced-in areas with two antennas and a box containing the technology.

From a three-story house in Mexico City topped by an antenna, CIRES’s servers await the dreaded warning, which is automatically relayed to alarm systems via radio signals.

AFP

MEXICO CITY: A power-ful earthquake strikes off the Pacific coast of Mexico. Within seconds, radio transmissions, megaphones and smartphone apps blare warnings to the capi-tal’s 20 million people before the ground shakes.

After the loud “seismic alert!” alarm, Mexico City residents have as much as a minute to flee their homes, offices and schools before buildings start to sway.

But such technology was not available on September 19, 1985, when a massive 8.1-magnitude coastal quake rocked the metrop-olis, crushing buildings and killing thousands.

It can take more than a minute for the seismic waves to reach the capital hundreds of kilome-tres away. But once they arrive, buildings start moving back and forth because the soil below — a former lake bed — is soft.

When the country marks the 30th anniversary of the tragedy, the early-warning systems will be switched on during a national drill.

For two decades, a civil associa-tion known by its initials CIRES has provided the city with a sys-tem that automatically interrupts radio broadcasts and triggers alarms inside buildings thanks to some 100 sensors placed along the western coast.

For the first time this year, the

alarm will sound on 8,200 street megaphones.

The surge of smartphone tech-nology now gives Chilangos, as the capital’s residents are known, the ability to receive warnings in the palm of their hands with apps such as SkyAlert and Alerta Sismica DF.

Within two seconds that a quake hits, SkyAlert’s sen-sors send a broadband signal to phones, triggering a loud sound with a voice that repeats “seismic alert” and a message indicating the temblor’s intensity.

Launched in 2013, the app has three million users. “This type of system carries great respon-sibility,” SkyAlert’s 29-year-old founder, Alejandro Cantu, said.

“Every morning I wake up and think I go to work with a commit-ment to my country and my people,” said Cantu, whose company also sells devices for homes and offices that receive alerts via satellite.

SkyAlert split from the CIRES system last year after Cantu trav-elled to Japan and brought back the Asian country’s sensor tech-nology for his app.

In May, the company charged users 59 pesos ($3.5) a year to personalise their alerts, gaining 30,000 paid customers so far.

While SkyAlert quickly became a popular application, it jolted its customers in July 2014 when it

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Price: QR2

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BedayaCenter signs MoU with QFCRA

Business | 19

Payment delay, design changes reasons for construction rowsDispute value hits $76.7m in 2014 in Mena regionBY SATISH KANADY

DOHA: Delayed payment and repeated changes in original designs are the two major reasons for the disputes in Qatar’s construction sector and across the region. The settlement value of the disputes in the region is equal to 20 to 30 percent of the combined contract value, according to an expert.

Delay in payment will often leads to hold-ing up a project for long, which will ultimately upset the project cost and schedule. Payment delay is a long term problem for any project, Peter Murphy (pictured), Associate Director, Quantum Global Solutions told The Peninsula.

Speaking on the sidelines of American Chamber of Commerce in Qatar’s (AmCham) ‘Distinguished Speaker Series”, Peter said: “Delayed payment is a serious issue every-where, not only in Qatar. Back-to-back pay-ment is key for meeting project schedules”. Design changing is another key reason for the growing number of disputes in the construc-tion sector. “Yes, it is the prerogative of the client to step in at any point of time in the project development and make suggestions. Because he is paying for it. But the client must remember that the extra cost of the ‘re-designing’ will trickle down to every aspect of

the project, ranging from time to cost”, he said.

Disputes relating to major construction projects rose almost 88 percent last year to reach $76.7m in value. It was the highest value increase in construction disputes since 2011. The construction dispute values touched $112.5m in 2011 as a result of a number of high value claims that were initi-ated for projects undertaken in 2008 and 2009, according to a report by built asset design and consultancy firm Arcadis. Top reasons for construction disputes in the Middle East were failure in properly administering the contract, poorly drafted or incomplete and unsubstantiated claims and a biased manager or an engineer.

Sharing his view on the challenges and development in the Qatar’s construction mar-ket, Ahmad Jassim Al Jolo, Chairman, The Qatar Society of Engineer recently said he believed the greatest challenge to Qatar’s mas-sive infrastructure programme was coordina-tion amongst various stakeholders despite the efforts of the Central Planning Office.

There is a perception that this region’s con-struction market is difficult to participate in.

However, serious technical issues should be considered minimal as all infrastructure and construc-tion programmes always face some problems during the project life cycle. There has been a con-certed effort by some government departments to reduce problems faced by contractors and consult-ant with some of the standard government forms of contract; these are now being reviewed and revised to improve the contract-ing environment in the country

and ultimately help reduce contractor claims.Jolo said prompt payments act model from

Ireland is a good example of legislation that could help the country’s various government departments reduce the period of payment to contractors. Experienced contractors in Qatar, however, appear to understand how to correctly calim payments from government, and thereby experience less delays with their payments than those who submit incorrect documentation to support their interim pay-ment applications. In its latest financial stabil-ity report, Qatar Central Bank (QCB) noted the payment defaults by the contractors and real estate companies are giving worries to the banks. THE PENINSULA

Hamad Port to hike handling capacityDOHA: Hamad Port would increase its handling capacity to 6mTEUS by 2020. The first phase of the mega project, which is involved installing more pre-cast blocks, is due to open at the end of 2016. This was revealed at the just-concluded MEED’s 4th annual Qatar Transport Forum.

At the Forum, experts said Qatar is moving ahead with more than $40bn worth of planned transport projects. These include expansion of Hamad Port, the Doha Metro and long-dis-tance passenger and freight network, and the expressway programme.

One of the highlights of the Qatar Transport Forum was the pub-lic unveiling of plans for the esti-mated $8bn expansion of Hamad International Airport (HIA). NDIA Steering Committee Project Director Peter Daley, outlined the procure-ment timeline along with descrip-tions of the project scope, which includes an expansion of the main terminal building and concourse D and E.

Also revealed for the first time were plans for two additional con-tainer terminals at Hamad Port that would increase the QR27bn ($7.3bn) project’s handling capacity to 6 mil-lion TEUs.

Qatar Rail’s Chief of Service Delivery Andrew Tailor updated the Forum on Qatar’s $20bn-plus integrated transport plan. A world record 21 tunnel boring machines are being used on the Doha Metro project, which so far has completed almost 50 kilometres of tunnels. A total of 26,000 workers are working on the project, equating to more than 78 million man hours worked as of end of August.

Work on the Lusail tram scheme is even more advanced, with four of the five at grade stations completed, while the tender for the first phase design and build of the long-distance freight and rail network will be issued to contractors early next year.

On the roads side,Nasser al-Kuwari, Manager of Highway Projects department at Ashghal, pre-sented an overview of the QR40bn ($10.8bn) expressway programme. The massive project, which involves 1,000km of new or upgraded roads, 240 major interchanges and 360 bridges, has already seen 43 major contracts awarded.

A total of 15 contracts are either in the market or are being prepared, while a further 23 are in the plan-ning stage.

THE PENINSULA

BUSINESS18SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


Qatargas EMS unit gets global accreditationDepartment first in Mideast to achieve recognitionDOHA: The Fire & Rescue Emergency Management Services (EMS) Department of Qatargas has been awarded the distinguished “Accredited Agency” status by the US-based Centre for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE) after suc-cessfully meeting the rigor-ous criteria set by the CPSE’s Accreditation Commission in the areas of continuous quality improvement and enhancement of service delivery.

With this, Qatargas EMS became the first CPSE accred-ited department in the Middle East region and it joined a line-up of 218 such accredited agencies around the world. CPSE provides the only accreditation programme for Fire & Rescue Emergency Management Service organisa-tions in the world.

Representatives of the EMS

Department, led by EMS & Security Manager Hassan Jassim Abu Khamis, have received the accreditation certificate at an award ceremony recently organ-ised by CPSE in Atlanta, USA following a face-to-face hearing session with the Commission members. It was the culmination of a four-year long documenta-tion and assessment exercise that involved a rigorous process to determine risk and safety needs, evaluate current performance of the department, and establish a method for achieving continuous improvement.

The accreditation process was demanding and challenging for Qatargas EMS Department as an industrial based organisa-tion with multiple sites spread across Ras Laffan Industrial area. This feat has demonstrated the Department’s commitment to

providing high-quality services to Qatargas. The department has been able to use the accreditation process as a proactive mechanism to plan for the future of Qatargas Emergency Management Services and identify areas where it can improve on the quality of services it provides.

Qatargas, as a company, bene-fited from the accreditation proc-ess as well. Under the continuous improvement model used in seek-ing accreditation, the company is required to maintain an active strategic planning programme as well as a comprehensive assess-ment of the overall level of risk. This “risk assessment” helped the company make an informed decision on the level of service desired.

The CPSE Accreditation Commission is governed by an 11-member council representing

Officials with the accreditation.

a cross-section of the fire service industry, including fire depart-ments, city and county man-agement, code councils, the US Department of Defence, and

the International Association of Firefighters.

CPSE is a non-profit organisa-tion that serves as the governing body for organisations offering

accreditation, education, and credentialing services to agencies and fire service industry profes-sionals. THE PENINSULA

Lulu bags top Indian tourism awardDELHI: The President of India Pranab Mukherjee gave away the National Tourism Awards for the year 2013-14 at a func-tion held at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi.

Lulu International Travel & Tourism, a division of Lulu Group bagged the best Overseas Tour Operator from West Asia & Africa region. Abhilash Valiyavalappil, Commercial Manager of Lulu Group along with Biju Nair, Sales & Marketing Manager LuluInternational Travels received the award from the President of India in the presence of Dr Mahesh Sharma, Minister of State for Tourism & Culture.

The Ministry of Tourism annu-ally presents tourism awards to various segments of the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. These awards are being given to State Governments/Union Territories, classified hotels, heritage hotels, approved travel agents, tour operators and tourist transport operators, individuals and other private organisations in

President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, presenting the Best Overseas Tour Operator Award from West Asia & Africa Region to Abhilash Valiyavalappil, Commercial Manager of Lulu Group and Biju Nair, Sales & Marketing Manager, LuluInternational Travels, at a function in New Delhi.

recognition of their performance in their respective fields.

Commenting on this, Yusuff Ali MA, Managing Director of Lulu Group said, “We are honoured to

have won this prestigious award from the Government of India. This will give us further encour-agement to boost the potential of Indian tourism in the Middle

East and Africa. Tourism sector is very important for the future growth of India as it is one of the top foreign exchange generator”.

THE PENINSULA

TPQ’s Qanat Quartier townhouse auction overDOHA: United Development Company (UDC), the master developer of The Pearl-Qatar (TPQ), yesterday announced that its first limited auction offering of nine Qanat Quartier townhouses has successfully concluded.

Through the envelope bidding method, UDC had auctioned some of the finest and most luxurious townhouses in the Venice-like community of Qanat Quartier. By the set September 13 dead-line, the company had received and subsequently processed bids for the nine units in accordance to the auction’s set rules and regulations.

In what was considered to be a very competitive process with a set minimum opening price of QR25,000 ($6,865) per square metre, a number of bids exceeded this amount, consequently setting a new benchmark for future sale rates at TPQ, where further real estate investment opportunities are expected to be offered in the fourth quarter this year in what is expected to impact UDC’s outlook and further its growth for the

current financial year and beyond.Townhouses in Qanat Quartier

are offered in two or three bed-room units covering 350 sqm and above. Offering views over the picturesque water canals, all units also feature parking areas, as well as direct access to the beach. Residents can enjoy the stunning architecture, privileged lifestyle on the water and water taxis linking Qanat Quartier with other areas in The Pearl-Qatar. Residents can also enjoy a wide variety of retail options, including restaurants, cafes, gift shops, art galleries, small fashion boutiques, food markets, resorts, recreation facilities and specialised gyms.

A Venice-like community, Qanat Quartier is one of the most popular and attractive precincts in TPQ, quickly becoming a highly sought after address in the Gulf region.

Its unique Venetian-inspired architecture, with brightly colored houses, canal ways, bridges and seaside facades, render it a unique and attractive residential destination.

THE PENINSULA

Volkswagen could face $18bn penaltiesWASHINGTON/DETROIT: Volkswagen AG faces penalties up to $18bn after being accused of designing software for diesel cars that deceives regulators measuring toxic emissions, the US Environmental Protection Agency said.

“Put simply, these cars con-tained software that turns off emissions controls when driv-ing normally and turns them on when the car is undergoing an emissions test,” Cynthia Giles, an enforcement officer at the EPA, told reporters in a teleconference.

Volkswagen can face civil pen-alties of $37,500 for each vehicle not in compliance with federal clean air rules. There are 482,000 four-cylinder VW and Audi die-sel cars sold since 2008 involved in the allegations. If each car involved is found to be in non-compliance, the penalty could be $18bn, an EPA official confirmed on the teleconference.

A US Volkswagen spokesman said the company “is cooperat-ing with the investigation; we are unable to comment further at this time.”

The feature in question, which the EPA called a “defeat device,” masks the true emissions only during testing and therefore when the cars are on the road they emit as much as 40 times the level of pollutants allowed under clean air rules meant to ensure public health is protected, Giles said.

The EPA accused Volkswagen of using software in four-cylinder Volkswagen and Audi diesel cars

A Volkswagen Passat is offered for sale at a dealership in Chicago, Illinois.

from model years 2009 to 2015 made to circumvent emissions testing of certain air pollutants.

The cars are not facing recall at this time, the EPA said. VW did not indicate on Friday how it will address the issue.

The EPA has the authority to order VW to recall the vehicles. However, that process could take up to a year, depending on the

complexity of the issue, an EPA official said.

The diesel-powered vehicles involved from the 2009 to 2015 model years are the VW Jetta, VW Beetle, VW Golf and the Audi A3, as well as the VW Passat from model years 2014 and 2015.

VW in North America has heavily marketed its vehicles as being “clean diesel.”

In a television commercial that has aired frequently this year in the United States, VW says it is the “No. 1 diesel car brand in America,” brags its cars are “clean diesel” and asks viewers, “Isn’t it time for German engineering?”

Since 2009, diesel vehicles have made up approximately 15 per-cent of VW and Audi US sales. REUTERS

US auto workers get first raise in a decadeDETROIT: US auto workers won their first raise in a decade in a deal with Fiat Chrysler’s US subsidiary that will be used as a template for talks with General Motors and Ford, their union said.

The United Auto Workers union succeeded at clawing back some of the major concessions made in order to help the Detroit Three carmakers survive the 2008 financial crisis.

But while the wage gains are significant, the UAW was not able to fully close a much-maligned pay gap between newer hires and those with seniority.

It was also unable to stop FCA US from shifting some US pro-duction to Mexico, but union offi-cials said they do not expect to see any jobs lost because demand for the vehicles that will remain in the United States is so strong.

“Once the membership looks at it, I think they’ll ratify it. They’ll see it’s a fair and balanced agree-ment,” UAW president Dennis Williams told reporters.

The UAW contracts cover 142,000 workers at the Detroit Three, of which nearly 40,000 work for FCA.

The union has traditionally negotiated similar contracts with all three major US carmakers in order to prevent their employ-ers from suffering competitive disadvantages.

But Williams has indicated he

may seek richer deals from GM and Ford because they are on bet-ter financial footing than FCA.

Fiat Chrysler chief Sergio Marchionne called the tentative agreement a “transformational deal” in a letter to employees.

“It guarantees that our workers will share equitably in the success we are able to generate working together while ensuring that our company will be able to remain competitive,” he said.

“This new contract represents a major step forward in ena-bling greater and more direct involvement of our workers in the achievement of the strategic objectives of FCA and recognizes the central role that you all play in building our common future.”

The union’s executive council voted to endorse the contract on Friday. Ratification votes are expected to begin next week at plants across the country.

Workers with seniority who currently earn between $28 and $33 an hour will get three per-cent raises in the first and third year of the contract and lump sum payments in the second and fourth years of the contract.

Those on the ‘second-tier’ who were hired after 2007 will see their hourly wages increase from the current rate of $16 to $21 up to $22 to $25 over the course of the four-year contract.

Everyone will get a $3,000 sign-ing bonus. AFP

19BUSINESS SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


Kenyan growth high but so are the risks, says QNB reportDOHA: Kenya is now the third largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) after Nigeria and South Africa with nominal GDP of $66bn expected in 2015, says QNB in its weekly report. The economy is dependent on agri-culture, which accounts for 30 percent of GDP and 40 percent of exports. (Kenya is the world’s leading exporter of black tea).

Real GDP growth is currently relatively high, expected to be 5.5 percent in 2015 driven by invest-ment in infrastructure and high population growth. Kenya’s long-term fundamentals are under-pinned by positive demographics. The 44m population is grow-ing quickly (2.7 percent a year) and urbanising, leading to ris-ing wealth, an expanding middle class, strong growth in the sup-ply of labour and rapidly growing demand for consumer services.

Kenya is also expected to start producing and exporting oil from 2021, which would provide a fur-ther impetus to growth. However, in the short term Kenya’s weak fis-cal and external positions leave it exposed to the risk of capital flight, the QNB report said.

From 1990 to 2003, Kenya’s real GDP growth was weak, aver-aging 2.2 percent as a result of protectionist policies, economic mismanagement, patchy reforms and corruption. However, after Kenya’s first truly free and fair elections in 2002, the economy turned around as a number of reforms were implemented, includ-ing deregulation, anti-corruption laws and an overhaul of the public finances, leading to an improved business environment. As a result, private and public investment rose sharply, including from foreign investors (foreign direct invest-ment rose from $21m in 2005 to $514m in 2013), and GDP growth picked up to an estimated aver-age of5.1 percent in 2004-14. In 2014, Kenya issued a $2bn sov-ereign bond (SSA’s largest ever debt issue), which was four times oversubscribed.

To further encourage invest-ment and develop the economy, a number of major projects are being implemented. However, Kenya is exposed to risks of capital flight. The current account deficit is expected to be 7.7 percent of GDP in 2015 and international reserves are low (around four months of import cover). The fiscal deficit is expected to be 7.6 percent of GDP in 2015 and public debt is high and rising (50 percent of GDP in 2015 compared with 48.6 percent in 2014).

In summary, Kenya has a lot of positives: strong investment; high population growth; and a backstop of $1bn to $2bn of additional oil revenue expected to come online in 2021. As a result, many forecasters expect growth of over 6 percent over the long term. However, in the meantime, there is a real risk of a balance of payments crisis that could seriously upset growth in the short term. THE PENINSULA

QFC sets up new Employment Standards OfficeDOHA: The Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) has announced the establishment of an inde-pendent Employment Standards Office (ESO).

The ESO, which previously operated under the Legal depart-ment, is the new statutory com-pliance office for businesses registered under the QFC.

The office has been estab-lished with the aim to protect both employers and employees through robust regulations, codes and procedures.

Its objectives include enforc-ing compliance with regula-tions, ensuring fair treatment of employers and employees, encouraging communication between its members, facili-tating dispute resolution and developing a productive QFC work force.

Yousuf Al Jaida, Chief Executive Officer, QFC, said: “The ESO is an important part of the QFC’s foun-dations. By establishing it as an

independent entity, we are further ensuring that all QFC employ-ees and licensed firms work in a transparent environment where they are treated fairly and are encouraged to resolve disputes amicably.”

He added: “I am confident that the QFC business community will greatly benefit from the services offered by the ESO and will con-tinue to positively contribute to the growth of Qatar’s economy.”

In addition to the role of administrating and enforcing Employment Regulations and Employment Code at the QFC, the ESO also works closely with the Ministry of Labour to pro-vide relevant information related to employees working under the QFC.

Simultaneously, the ESO gath-ers information about Qataris who work at the QFC in view of identifying trends in the Qatari labour market.

THE PENINSULAYousuf Al Jaida, Chief Executive Officer, QFC, speaking at a function.

DOHA: The BedayaCenter for Entrepreneurship and Career Development (BedayaCenter), a joint initiative by Qatar Development Bank (QDB) and Silatech, has signed an MoU with Qatar Financial Centre Regulatory Authority (QFCRA) to promote cooperation and an affiliation between the two organisations. Together, they will work to raise awareness of the importance of Qatar’s financial sector and the careers to be found there, develop spe-cific career development for the sector, and help to unlock the potential of Qatari youth.

The MoU aims to establish a framework for moving forward with a productive collaboration on career development events and activities. Under the MoU, Bedaya will facilitate one-to-one advisory sessions with QFC Regulatory Authority for those who use Bedaya’s career guidance tools and will also participate in par-ents’ awareness sessions hosted by Bedaya.

In addition, the Regulatory Authority will consult on the preparation of the career videos that Bedaya produces highlight-ing the finance sector, and will also collaborate with Bedaya on its work exploration programs by hosting two students per year in different divisions of the organisa-tion. Bedaya’s Initiative for Qatari graduates, called Graduation Program, and also calls upon the Regulatory Authority to deliver financial technical training for 25 graduates on a yearly basis.

The Regulatory Authority aims to support the efforts of Bedaya and build its profile, encouraging career development and planning by tapping into their established

networks in Doha. They will also promote Bedaya initiatives to encourage aspiring members of Doha’s financial community, primarily secondary school and university students, to hone their personal and professional skills.

“Our strategic partnership with QFCRA is highly impor-tant in nurturing financial talent in the country while reflect-ing the organizations’ commit-ment to support both the Qatar National Development Strategy 2011-2016 and the Qatar National Vision 2030. The agreement with QFCRA comes in line with our strategy to develop careers in the field of financial services as finan-cial services would continue to be an important pillar of Qatar’s eco-nomic development,” said Raed Al Emadi, Vice Chairman of Bedaya.

“Our ultimate goal is to build a legacy of financial regulators for the State of Qatar. In part-nership with Bedaya Center for Entrepreneurship and Career Development, we will work jointly on mutual strategies for Qatarisation by promoting awareness of financial services regulation and careers in this field to secondary school and university students and their parents,” said, Otello Sturino, Managing Director, Corporate Communications.

Bedaya will provide career guidance tools to all future poten-tial Regulatory Authority talents, up to 15 per year and conduct one-to-one advisory sessions with Regulatory Authority staff and affiliates who have completed Bedaya assessments.

Bedaya will also secure intern-ships and encourage job shad-owing participants to explore the work environment of the

Regulatory Authority and con-duct secondary school visits with Regulatory Authority staff members. Bedaya will involve the Regulatory Authority in its new initiative for supporting Qatari graduates and cover the cost of any other agreed joint programs such as virtual career video, which is part of the career videos series, with the Regulatory Authority’s nominated talents.

Reem Al Suwaidi, General Manager of Bedaya, said: ‘’Bedaya is looking forward to this new collaboration with the QFC Regulatory Authority to pro-vide career guidance tools and advice to the Authority’s talents as well as encourage secondary schools visits to experience how the Regulatory Authority works. We are delighted that our work exploration programs will see the Regulatory Authority hosting two students in different divisions of the organisation each year. Our Bedaya Initiative for Qatari grad-uates will also gain Regulatory Authority support through their delivery of financial technical training. The MoU has all the hallmarks of a very productive partnership to promote career development in the financial regulation sector.’’

Al Masar, or The Path, is a custom Regulatory Authority program designed to take fresh graduates, as well as Qataris who are more established in their careers, through five stages of professional growth and develop-ment in the core business roles of the Regulatory Authority. Each of these stages is carefully charted and brought to life with profes-sional training, coaching and staff mentoring.

The core business roles of the

BedayaCenter signs MoU with QFCRA

Officials at the MoU signing ceremony.

Plans to raise awareness of financial sector, careers

Regulatory Authority are in the fields of authorisation, supervision, policy and legislative counsel. The Authority team has extensive expe-rience working in financial centers from London to Dubai to Hong Kong to Sydney, among others. These financial experts will play a major role in Al Masar career development at the Regulatory Authority by mentoring fresh

graduates, interns, and Qataris at entry-level through “established expert” phases and beyond.

The collaboration will enhance the programme by providing career development tools and advice to graduates and budding professionals to help them make the right choices at every stage for a successful future career path. THE PENINSULA

France to push on with reforms after Moody’s downgradePARIS: France’s finance minis-ter reaffirmed the country’s com-mitment to economic reforms after ratings agency Moody’s cut French bond ratings by a notch to Aa2, citing continued weakness in the country’s medium-term growth outlook. The French gov-ernment on Wednesday stuck to “cautious” growth and deficit tar-gets two weeks before the release of its 2016 budget, saying it was right to ask EU partners for a delay in bringing down borrowing last year as an economic recovery was taking hold.

However, Moody’s said it decided to downgrade France’s government bond rating because it expects French economic growth to remain low over the medium term, likely weighing on “any material reversal” in France’s debt burden.

“The current economic recov-ery in France has already proven to be significantly slower — and

Moody’s believes that it will remain so — compared with the recover-ies observed over the past few dec-ades,” Moody’s said, placing a stable outlook on France’s new rating.

President Francois Hollande has said that the country will not be able to cut its public deficit to within European Union targets as soon as planned because of weak growth and low inflation, cast-ing doubt on the country’s reform drive. France left its main targets untouched on Wednesday. The public deficit is set to fall from 3.8 percent of gross domestic product in 2015 to 3.3 percent next year, before falling below the European Union-mandated threshold of 3 percent in 2017.

The government also stuck to previous growth forecasts of 1 percent in 2015 and 1.5 percent next year, in line with the consen-sus of international organisations. Inflation will reach 0.1 percent this

year, before picking up to 1.0 per-cent in 2016.

In a statement responding to the downgrade on Friday, Finance Minister Michel Sapin said recent economic and budgetary data showed the government’s capacity to revive the economy and vowed to press ahead with reforms.

“The government remains firmly committed to continuing and increasing its reform policies aimed at upholding potential growth and employment in the French economy,” he said in a statement. Moody’s said it saw France’s poten-tial annual growth rate at about 1.5 percent over the medium term.

France would continue to be plagued with a high rate of struc-tural unemployment, relatively weak corporate profit margins, and a loss of global export market share due to rigidities in its labour and product markets, the ratings agency said. REUTERS

French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron addressing a meet in Paris on Friday.

BUSINESS20SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


iOS 9 update glitch hits some devicesApple customers report crashesSAN FRANCISCO/SYDNEY: A significant number of Apple Inc customers are reporting their mobile devices have crashed after attempting to upload the new iOS 9 operating system, the latest in a line of launch glitches for the tech giant.

Twitter and other social media were awash with disgruntled cus-tomers reporting two distinct faults, with one appearing to be linked specifically to older models of Apple iPhones and iPads.

“It is beyond inconvenient to not be able to use your phone for a day,” said student Pip Cordi as staff in the Apple store in central Sydney looked at her phone on Friday. “I have a lot of apps that I use for school — things like lan-guage apps and dictionaries and that’s all really important for my studies.”

Another iPhone user, Zorry Coates, said she had spent three hours in the Apple store and had been left with the option of either returning her phone to factory settings — losing any non-backed-up data — or waiting until Apple technicians announced an update.

“They said they were aware of the problem and their engineers were working on it 24/7, but they couldn’t tell me when — or how — I would get a solution,” Zorry said. “I’m very annoyed because it’s wasted half my day. They pride themselves on being a company that’s flawless.”

Apple’s headquarters in San Francisco did not respond to a request for comment. An Apple spokesman in Sydney said the company had no comment.

Despite any troubles, signifi-cant numbers of iOS users had upgraded; more than 16 percent, according to Mixpanel, a San Francisco, California-based ana-lytics company, as of 2300 GMT on Thursday.

Charlie Brown, a technol-ogy expert at Sydney-based Cybershack, said any number of dissatisfied customers was sig-nificant in the social media era, particularly following the troubled rollout of iOS 8. Apple released several further updates to iOS8, but some of the bugs were never fully fixed.

“The risk to Apple in terms of having dissatisfied customers is that as their customer base grows, so will the number of those dis-satisfied customers,” said Brown.

One group of users reported that iOS 9 upgrade would fail after several minutes, requiring them to start the process over. Many posted screen shots of the error message they received: “Software Update Failed”.

That problem was likely caused by servers that were overloaded when too many people tried to download the upgrade simultane-ously, tech analysts said. “It’s like the Black Friday thing,” said Bob O’Donnell of Technalysis Research,

Customers look at an Apple iPhone 6 at an Apple reseller shop in Bangkok, Thailand, on Friday.

referring to the major US shop-ping sale day after Thanksgiving. “Some websites get creamed on the traffic on Black Friday.”

Other users, many of them with older devices, reported their devices seizing up on a “swipe to upgrade” page. The latest upgrade had been deemed by Apple as “friendly” to the older devices after the iOS 8 problems. “Apple

were saying the downloading mechanism doesn’t take as much space to download,” said Sydney-based Graham McKay, an IT sup-port specialist. McKay and Brown said they always advised clients to wait several days before download-ing any new upgrades from Apple, Google Inc or Microsoft Corp to make sure any glitches had been found and ironed out.

Metering the upgrade, or allow-ing users to upgrade in waves rather than all at once, would have been a smarter approach, O’Donnell said. “It’s a lot about setting expectations,” he said.

Apple did this week delay the release of watch OS 2, its updated operating system for the Apple Watch after it discovered a bug in development. REUTERS

Apple explores road rules for self-driving carsSAN FRANCISCO: The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said that it met with Apple to discuss rules of the road regarding testing self-driving cars. “The Apple meeting was to review DMV’s autonomous vehicle regula-tions,” a department spokesper-son said in an email response to an inquiry. “DMV often meets with various companies regard-ing DMV operations.”

Apple has not commented on rumours that it is working on a self-driving car, and the California-based technology colos-sus did not respond to a request to contribute to this story.

The DMV’s responsibilities include developing regulations for safe operation of self-driving vehicles. To that end, members of the department meet with com-panies to better understand the technology.

Google and several major car makers have been pursuing autonomous vehicle technology.

Google has been testing self-driving cars in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Toyota early this month announced plans to invest $50m into building arti-ficial intelligence into cars, an indication it could be joining the race to develop driverless vehicles. The joint research with Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will take place over the next five years, Toyota said. AFP

Economy strong enough for higher rates: LackerWASHINGTON: Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker (pictured) yes-terday said he dissented at a Fed policy meeting because he thought the economy was now strong enough to warrant higher interest rates.

Fed policymakers on Thursday voted to keep the Fed’s target interest rate at between zero and a quarter point.

“Such exceptionally low real interest rates are unlikely to be appropriate for an economy with persistently strong consumption growth and tightening labor mar-kets,” Lacker said in a statement.

He was the lone dissenter among the 10 Fed officials who voted at the meeting. Lacker said the Fed’s target should rise by a quarter point.

Lacker has a history of dissent in Fed policy meetings. In 2012, he voted against eight straight policy decisions by the central bank. At the time he was urging the Fed to wind down asset purchases that were aimed at stimulating the economy. Regarding Thursday’s

decision at the Fed, Lacker said a rebound in consumer spending and “tightening labor markets” meant the economy no longer needed zero interest rates.

He said keeping interest rates at their current level devi-ated from the way the Fed has responded to the economy in the past, which was dangerous because public understanding of the Fed’s behavior was “an essen-tial foundation for the monetary stability we currently enjoy.”

“Such departures are risky and raise the likelihood of adverse out-comes,” Lacker said. REUTERS

Rate blink shows green light for bond buyersNEW YORK: The US Federal Reserve’s decision not to raise interest rates on Thursday is giving investors a green light to buy bonds on the view that the central bank won’t move for some time.

Some of the biggest bond firms won bets that short-to-medium dated US Treasuries and invest-ment-grade corporate bonds would gain if the Fed backed away from its already lukewarm stance to hike interest rates by year-end.

Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager with $4.7 trillion in assets under management, said: “I had thought that investment-grade credit had very limited value for the past few years, but some of these spread levels are very attractive right now.”

He said he is buying invest-ment-grade corporate credit, particularly in the industrial sec-tor, which is generating increased supply. With risk premiums on investment-grade corporate bonds — the difference between yields on those bonds and comparable government debt — hovering near their highest in three-and-a-half

years, Rieder and other top bond managers expect that spread to narrow in a low-rate and low-inflation climate, enhancing their overall returns. European bonds are also worth a look, Rieder said.

The Fed’s wary global view due to troubles in China and emerg-ing markets might cause the European Central Bank to step up its stimulus in a bid to protect the eurozone economy, strategists said. Some, such as Doubleline Capital’s Jeffrey Gundlach, have been buying US Treasuries, favouring five-year notes, say-ing “There is not enough global growth to go around and the Fed realises it.”

Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen (pictured) said at a press con-ference following a two-day pol-icy meeting: “Developments that we saw in financial markets in August, in part, reflected concerns that there was downside risk to Chinese economic performance and perhaps concerns about the deftness in which policy makers were addressing those concerns.”

Other bond managers includ-ing John Bellows at Pasadena, California-based Western Asset Management, which has $453bn in assets, said he anticipates big-ger profits by owning more longer-dated Treasuries, rather than shorter-dated issues, given the tame inflation environment and the likelihood the Fed will eventu-ally raise short-term rates, even if it doesn’t happen this year.

Heading into the Fed meeting, short-dated bond yields rose as some investors anticipated a rate increase. The two-year note’s yield climbed to 81 basis points, highest in four-and-a-half years. Investors put $1.1bn into Treasuries funds in the week ended September 16, the sixth consecutive week of inflows, according to Lipper.

Some of the biggest bond firms

that anticipated the Fed to leave policy rates near zero on Thursday scored gains, beating rivals who bet on the central bank to raise rates for the first time in nearly a decade.

Dan Ivascyn, Group CIO of bond giant Pimco, told Reuters on Friday that the Newport Beach, Calif.-firm added U.S. Treasuries in various maturities ahead of the Federal Reserve decision this week. That positioning helped its flagship Pimco Total Return Fund, one of the world’s larg-est bond funds, post a one-week return ended September 17 of 0.26 percent, surpassing 92 percent of their peers.

Barclays’ US Aggregate bond index, which is the most widely followed US bond market bench-mark, racked up a 0.49 percent gain on Thursday, its biggest one-day rise since early July.

On the same day, the two-year Treasury note yield fell 11 basis points, the steepest one-day decline since December 2010. US investment-grade corporate bonds gained 0.65 percent, its biggest single-day rise since early July, according to an index compiled by Barclays. REUTERS

Dividend payers get a break from US Fed decisionNEW YORK: The Federal Reserve’s decision not to hike interest rates may have brought renewed volatility and a stock market selloff, but it also carved out breathing room for a couple of sectors: dividend payers and housing stocks.

With 10-year Treasuries now yielding around 2.14 percent, the 2.2 percent dividend yield of the overall S&P 500 should appeal to income-hungry investors who are convinced interest rates will stay low for a while.

Some sectors’ yields are much higher. Telecommunication serv-ices companies are yielding 5.35 percent, for example.

Utilities and real estate invest-ment trusts (REITs) have gained ground since the Fed announced its decision. The S&P utility index, though down slightly on Friday, was the best-performing sector since the Fed announcement.

“We could be in a lower-for-longer environment, and ... some of the stocks that have yield components, whether it’s REITs or utilities and other dividend stocks that have sold off, maybe those will eventually find a footing

here and get some flow,” said Stephen Gutch, senior portfolio manager at Federated Investors in Rochester, New York. “They’re fairly valued for a higher-rate environment, so I think they’re attractive right now.”

Since they compete with bonds, big dividend-paying stocks have benefited in recent years from the ultra-low interest rate environ-ment, with the S&P utility index registering a 24.3 percent gain in 2014, the best of any S&P sector.

But this year, utilities have retreated as Treasury yields rose on the prospect of a Fed rate hike. With the Fed now holding off, the sector may fall back into favor.

“When I look at utilities that are yielding in the 4-percent range, I think they’re priced for what I’d call a normal 10-year Treasury yield — call it 4 or 5 percent — because with utili-ties you’re still going to get some earnings growth,” said Josh Peters, director of equity income strategy at Morningstar. “I’d have a similar take on REITs.”

Although dividend payers pro-vide a certain measure of protec-tion in volatile markets, they are

by no means sheltered from the market’s ups and downs. Volatility most likely will stick around, ana-lysts say, as investors reassess the prospects for interest rates and global economic growth.

“We believe we have moved from a market where one should simply buy the dips, to one in which one ought to also sell ral-lies,” Peter Cecchini, chief market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York, wrote in a research note.

Another area of the market that could benefit from the low-for-longer rate environment is the housing sector, with pros-pects of continuing low rates helping mortgage seekers. As the jobs market and income growth improve, demand for housing should rise as well, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said on Thursday.

Housing shares have outper-formed the broader market this year, with the PHLX housing index up 10.9 percent, compared with the S&P 500’s decline of 4.5 percent. Next week, reports on existing and new home sales could move stocks like Lennar or PulteGroup. REUTERS

Traders work on the floor of the NYSE on Friday in New York City.

Greece’s paper trail eventually leads to reform

BY JUSTIN FOX

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina wasn’t the greatest chief executive officer in corporate history. That much we can all agree on. Assessments of her 5 1/2 years in charge of tech giant Hewlett-Packard are everywhere

these days, most of them negative. Fiorina herself offered a less-than-convincing defence in last Wednesday night’s debate — yes, the company’s revenue doubled during her tenure, as she said, but that was mainly because she made a gigantic and controversial acquisition.

That $19bn purchase of computer maker Compaq was the signa-ture move of Fiorina’s time at HP. It occasioned a revolt led by HP director Walter Hewlett, son of company co-founder Bill Hewlett. It brought criticism from Wall Street and sniping from rivals. Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems called it“a slowmotion collision of two garbage trucks.” Michael Dell of Dell Computer said it was the “dumbest deal of the decade,” a doomed attempt to “copy IBM.”

Fiorina was trying to copy IBM, or at least give HP the scale and breadth to compete successfully for corporate clients against Big Blue. Before the Compaq deal (announced in 2001, completed in 2002), she made a run at PricewaterhouseCoopers’ consulting business, only to blanch at the $18bn price tag. After the deal she got HP into information-technology services in a big way, run-ning IT departments at Procter & Gamble and hundreds of other companies.

How did it all work out? Opinions vary. Bloomberg Politics pub-lished a “Rashomon Roundtable” on the Compaq deal in May that nicely displays the wide range. But there is one simple, undisput-able measure -- how did HP’s total return to shareholders compare with Sun, Dell and IBM, probably its most important competitors, in the years that followed Fiorina’s appointment as CEO in 1999?

When the board pushed Fiorina out on Feb. 10, 2005, things weren’t looking so great. HP’s stock, as was the case at almost every tech company, was still below its 1999 levels. Among the four rivals, only Sun had done worse. My then-colleague at Fortune magazine, Carol Loomis, had just written a cover story titled “Why Carly’s Big Bet Is Failing.”

Then, not longer after Fiorina left, the bet started paying off. Part of the initial rise in HP’s stock price was probably relief that the contentious Fiorina era was over. And much of the company’s stock market success during the next five years can be attrib-uted to Mark Hurd, the relentless cost-cutter who took over as CEO about a month after Fiorina left. But Hurd was for the most part executing the strategy that Fiorina had laid out. Her plan to make HP a credible competitor for IBM worked far better than the strategies of McNealy and Dell and enabled HP to modestly outpace IBM as well. Fairly assigning credit between Fiorina and Hurd here is impossible, but it seems clear that (a) Fiorina didn’t leave behind a basket case of a company and (b) the Fiorina-Hurd era was -- again, by the metric of total shareholder return -- a relative success.

Not long after my chart stops, though, everything began to fall apart. In August 2010, HP’s board pushed out Hurd (now co- CEO of Oracle) after an investigation of a sexual harassment claim absolved him of the sexual harassment but found irregularities in his expense accounts. The board put Leo Apotheker, the former co-CEO of German software maker SAP, in charge and he set about shocking investors and employees with a series of abrupt decisions that culminated in the $11bn acquisition of British search-software firm Autonomy. Apotheker was fired less than 11 months after he assumed control, the company’s stock price fell almost 50 per-cent during his tenure and within a year after his departure HP had written down almost all of Autonomy’s value and accused its executives of perpetrating a gigantic accounting fraud(they beg to differ). Now that’s a failed CEO.

Ever since, current CEO Meg Whitman has been trying to clean up the mess, with limited success. Now she’s splitting HP into a provider of services and servers to large enterprises, which she will keep running, and a printer and personal-computer maker. That isn’t really a repudiation of Fiorina’s strategy, which was all about selling to enterprises, and even if it were the fact that a company changes direction in 2015 doesn’t mean its CEO was wrong to set that direction in 2001. It does seem fair to say that the Fiorina-Hurd emphasis on consolidation and efficiency moved HP even farther away from the inventiveness and innovation of its early days. As former director Tom Perkins put it in a full-page New York Times ad last month, of having an “ineffective and dysfunctional” board that made life hard for its CEOs.

So, no, Carly Fiorina was not the greatest CEO in corporate history. But she certainly wasn’t the worst, either.

BLOOMBERG

Carly Fiorina’s HP record in one chart: Not good or bad

21 BUSINESS VIEWS SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


BY MEGAN MCARDLE

Every place is full of met-aphors that beckon the unwary foreign journal-ist. America’s huge cars

are a metaphor for our people: brash, rich, more than a little heedless of our effect on the rest of the world. Before Britain got rich again, the dilapidated build-ings were a metaphor for the decline of empire. French baked goods were a metaphor for every-thing liberal Americans imagined was better there.

Athens right now is full of such metaphors, except that it’s hard to know what makes for a good symbol, and what you’re taking too far.

Last Thursday in Kolonaki Square, I came across a pile of cushions and clothes inside a lit-tle park area roofed over with vines, suggesting that someone was sleeping there. Metaphor, random pile of discarded junk, or signs that Athens, just like my hometown of Washington, has homeless people who sleep on the streets?

Near the upscale hotel where I am staying, there is an old cafe, closed, its brick patio empty of chairs, the torn fringes of its awn-ing flapping gently in the breeze. Metaphor? Or is it just another closed restaurant, like dozens I could find within a few miles of my own house?

There is one metaphor here that I’m willing to interpret: the receipt. And that’s because it’s not just a metaphor. It’s also the tool the government is trying to use to close its tax gap.

I was last in Greece in 2006, during the twilight years of the boom that peaked during the Athens Olympics. Back then, Greece was notable to Americans for its lack of receipts. This is convenient for the shoppers, who don’t have to hunt around for somewhere to toss yet another piece of unwanted paper. But it was also convenient for vendors who wanted to underpay the tax authorities.

The inability of the Greek government to collect the taxes it is owed is one of the recur-ring themes of coverage of the

financial crisis. This problem is sometimes exaggerated, but eve-ryone agrees that it’s very real. And since the burden of struc-tural adjustment is falling on fis-cal reforms — rather than, say, firing unproductive members of the vast government workforce — that’s a big problem.

Widespread evasion narrows the tax base, forcing the govern-ment to set higher rates. If the evasion were spread evenly across all sectors of the economy, then these two things would roughly cancel out. Unfortunately, it’s not. Some sorts of taxes are easier to evade than others. Employment taxes are hard to evade, while self-employed professionals like doctors and lawyers have found it relatively easy to shelter most of their incomes. As a result, the cost of employing a new staff worker is quite high (especially since those workers are incredibly difficult to fire). The value-added tax here is now 23 percent, close to the EU maximum rate. (Thank God for that maximum, joked one journal-ist I met; otherwise, who knows how high they’d have raised it.)

That’s making up for taxes that aren’t collected elsewhere.

The good news is that Greece has at least made progress on col-lecting sales tax. They’re hardly at the level that our Internal Revenue Service would accept, but most of the places I’ve gone have automatically given me a receipt, printed out by a cash reg-ister. The taxi drivers mostly offer printed receipts. One did ask me how much he should make it out for. I’m told that on the islands, collection is less sure. But here in Athens, they are slowly but surely improving their collection apparatus.

Greece is attempting to do in the space of a few years what other economies did over the course of decades. Most people think of a cash register primarily as a way to add up the value of the sale, but in fact, that is the least of its functions. Its most attrac-tive feature to the merchants who adopted them back in the late 19th century was that they made it harder for clerks to steal. (That’s why old registers made a noise every time the cash drawer

opened; that prevented employ-ees from stealthily recording sales and then pocketing the money, or alternatively, giving goods to their friends without being paid.) Over time, of course, revenue authori-ties realised that cash register tickers were also a good way to ensure that employers gave the state its due.

The Greek government has gotten very, very serious about receipts, to the extent of saying that people who are refused one do not have to pay. This hasn’t gone entirely smoothly. One raid on an Athens nightclub turned up an elaborate fake receipt system. But most people I’ve talked to agree it’s improving.

However, they’re also worried that the successive rounds of tax hikes threaten to undo this frail progress. The higher the tax rates go, the more tempting it is to evade the law. The more people evade, the higher the rates have to go — always, always, hit-ting hardest the sectors that are easiest for the government to see.

And this itself is something of a metaphor for the struggles that

Greece is having. Corruption, tax evasion and all the other prob-lems that are cited as contrib-uting to the crisis are not some sort of unique Greek sickness that superior countries some-how avoided. It took centuries to build the modern state, to tamp down on corruption and cronyism and generate the administrative capacity to do things like collect taxes and make sure government employees regularly showed up to do their jobs.

The paper trail is at least the first step. The risk is that the burden of adjustment will fall too hard on the sectors where it is easiest to generate a paper trail, stunting recovery and mak-ing future reforms even harder. The shift toward credit cards and electronic payments will help (at least, unless it’s retarded by.

Ultimately, the government still needs to build a lot more admin-istrative capacity, to ensure the tax burden is spread more evenly across sectors. It took us a long time to do that. They’re not going to manage it overnight either.

BLOOMBERG


At 20, don’t waste your financial asset – time BY MICHELLE SINGLETARY

People are always trying to find the secret to financial success. But I’d like to address, in particular, the young

folks who ask me how to get rich. If you’re young, you have something we older folks don’t have as much of — time. It’s an advantage you shouldn’t waste.

Start saving in your 20s, and you’ll have time for your money to grow. You’ll have time to enjoy the fruits of compound inter-est. You’ll have time to weather stock-market volatility. The earlier you start saving, the less you’ll have to save over time. Benjamin Franklin told us to “remember that time is money.” And Shirley Temple Black, look-ing back on her life as a child star, said, “Wasted time means wasted money means trouble.”

Yet polls on retirement sav-ing continue to prove another expression, “Youth is wasted on the young.” It seems that young adults aren’t listening. Or, as one new survey found, they may be listening but so overbur-dened with debt that they feel

they can’t afford to save. The nonprofit Investor Protection Institute did a poll of more than 1,000 millennials and not sur-prisingly found that 49 percent had student loans — including 13 percent with $50,000 or more in college debt.

But it is this next statistic that is especially troubling: 34 percent said that debt is delaying their ability to start saving for retirement or that they haven’t been able to save as much as they had hoped. Don Blandin, chief executive of the IPI, said the survey results should rein-force advice often given to young adults to save as early as possible.

“I know we sound like a bro-ken record, playing this message over and over again,” Blandin said in an interview. Then he thought of the audience and said: “No, wait, guess that would be we sound like a damaged vinyl that is back in style. But what we want to do is help them learn that it’s so important to start early.” Blandin offered this per-sonal testimony about the ben-efit of time:

On his second professional job, way back in 1972, he managed

to save about $20,000 over five years. Under the company retire-ment plan, his employer contrib-uted an additional $25,000 to his plan. He eventually left that job but let the money grow, with no additional contributions, in a diversified portfolio of mutual funds. By 2000, 28 years later, it had grown to $750,000. He’s now 67 and preaching the gospel of saving early.

Just recently, a column posted on Elite Daily, a news and entertainment site writ-ten by and for millennials, went viral. The headline was, “If You Have Savings in Your 20s, You’re Doing Something Wrong.”

“When did our 20s start to feel like our 40s?” says the writer, Lauren Martin. “I’ve recently figured it out: This pressure, this third-party stress, is ingrained within us. It’s this looming doom our parents carved into our unconscious, only to come out anytime we make an impulse purchase or have to spend the night without Netflix.”

Martin continues: “They want us to save because it provides us with a safety net, but that’s exactly why we shouldn’t. Their need for us to have a safety net

is just a giant metaphor for the difference between our parents’ generation and ours. When you live your life around your retirement fund, you may as well retire now. You can’t make a mark on the world if you’re too cheap to live in it.”

I wanted to ask Martin whether she was being serious or the column was satire, but I couldn’t reach her. I do hope it was the latter because the advice is seriously reckless.

“When you care about your 401(k), your life is just ‘k,’” Martin wrote. “When you’re 40, you’re not going to look back on your 20s and be grateful for the few thousand you saved. You’re going to be full of regret.”

In announcing the results of the IPI survey, Blandin said: “These are the years that will make the difference between comfortable and lean golden years. Saving and investing for your retirement should not be viewed as optional.”

We aren’t saying not to have fun. But if you use the time you have wisely, you can create great wealth and security and never be a burden to others.

WASHINGTON POST

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Baby Blues By Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman

C O O DSR S RW

Yesterday’s answer

Yesterday’s answer

How to play Hyper Sudoku:A Hyper Sudoku Puzzle is solved by filling the numbers from 1 to 9 into the blank cells. A Hyper Sudoku has unlike Sudoku 13 regions (four regions overlap with the nine standard regions). In all regions the numbers from 1 to 9 can appear only once. Otherwise, a Hyper Sudoku is solved like a normal Sudoku.

How to play Kakuro:The kakuro grid, unlike in sudoku, can be of any size. It has rows and columns, and dark cells like in a crossword. And, just like in a crossword, some of the dark cells will contain numbers. Some cells will contain two numbers.However, in a crossword the numbers reference clues. In a kakuro, the numbers are all you get! They denote the total of the digits in the row or column referenced by the number.

Within each collection of cells - called a run - any of the numbers 1 to 9 may be used but, like sudoku, each number may only be used once.

HYPER

ACROSS

1 Mauna ___ (Hawaii landmark)

4 Barbed comments

8 Shade of blue

14 Bedridden, maybe

15 Grander than grand

16 Thorny tree

17 Like express mail vis-à-vis regular mail

19 Freedom fighters, e.g.

20 “Ed Wood” actor

22 “Cómo ___?”

23 Primary supporter

27 Tex-Mex dish

31 Electronics giant

32 Big name in knives

34 Was in on

35 Typewriter part

40 Who “said knock you out,” in an LL Cool J hit

41 Some tablets

42 Karen of “Little House on the Prairie”

45 Toadies

50 Squandered, as youth

52 Swamp menace, for short

53 Expert on swings

57 59-Down, e.g.

60 Part of PG

61 Big story from a journalist

62 New Jersey’s ___ Center

63 Before, to Byron

64 Super ___ (summer toy)

65 Greek goddess seen on many trophies

66 Longtime Nascar sponsor

DOWN

1 Fate

2 City in a 1960 Marty Robbins chart-topper

3 “Someone may have accessed your account” and others

4 Sci-fi knight

5 Neat as ___

6 Jessica of “The Illusionist”

7 “Butt out!”

8 What spin classes provide, informally

9 Large quantities

10 Russian grandmother

11 Team’s best pitcher

12 Rap’s ___ Wayne

13 Classroom aides, for short

18 Division politique

21 Quick learner

24 Sound of a fork on a wineglass

25 Busy as ___

26 Veer off course

28 10, for 1973 Oscar winner Tatum O’Neal

29 Hollywood honcho: Abbr.

30 Like the Dead Sea Scrolls

33 Deplete

35 ___-mutuel betting

36 You love, to Livy

37 Obsolescent bank item

38 Cereal box info

39 MSN, for one

40 Las Vegas’s ___ Grand

43 Like people in Yukon Territory

44 Athletic recognition

46 Brand of mouse poison

47 Speechifies

48 Racing vehicle

49 Lug (around)

51 Easy two-pointer

54 “Inglourious Basterds” figure

55 Understand, slangily

56 Turn over (to)

57 Follower of hi or lo

58 Prefix with skeleton

59 Vacation destination

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE

B E T A S A P S S H A P EO V E N B R E A C O B R AR I S K T A K E R H O B O SE C L A I R L I F E R A F TS T A A R M U M A

T R O U B L E A H E A DA L O H A N E A L L I EL I M E S I R S S W A N KA M A A C R E N O L T ES O R R Y C H A R L I E

E E N S I P A C TC L U E M E I N B E T T O RA I S L E B O A R D G A M EP R E E N A T R A I R A NS A R D I R E F S F I S T

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21

22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39

40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52

53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60

61 62 63

64 65 66

TV LISTINGS

12:20 I Love Violetta12:30 Phineas And Ferb12:45 H2O: Just Add Water14:00 H2O: Just Add Water14:30 Descendants16:20 Phineas And Ferb16:35 Austin & Ally17:00 Gravity Falls17:25 Girl Meets World17:50 Dog With A Blog18:15 Jessie18:40 Mako Mermaids19:05 Austin & Ally19:30 Descendants21:20 Phineas And Ferb21:35 Wizards Of Waverly

Place22:00 Binny And The

Ghost22:25 Sabrina: Secrets Of

A Teenage Witch22:50 Sabrina: Secrets Of

A Teenage Witch23:10 Wolfblood

11:00 The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

13:30 2 Broke Girls15:30 New Girl17:00 Late Night With Seth

Meyers18:00 The Simpsons19:00 Marry Me19:30 Marry Me20:00 Last Man On Earth20:30 Two And A Half Men21:00 New Girl21:30 The Nightly Show

With Larry Wilmore22:00 Comedians22:30 Man Seeking

Woman23:00 Comedy Central

Stand-Up00:30 New Girl01:00 The Nightly Show

With Larry Wilmore

13:00 Ellen DeGeneres Show

14:00 Drop Dead Diva15:00 Once Upon A

Time16:00 Emmerdale16:30 Coronation

Street18:00 Drop Dead Diva19:00 C.S.I.20:00 Switched At

Birth21:00 Scandal22:00 How To Get

Away With Murder

00:00 American Horror Story: Freak Show

13:00 Shark Wranglers

14:00 Duck Dynasty15:00 American

Pickers16:00 Storage Wars17:00 Storage Wars:

Texas18:30 Storage Wars:

New York19:00 Storage Wars19:30 Pawn Stars20:00 American

Pickers21:00 The Curse Of

Oak Island22:00 Mountain Men23:00 Swamp People

13:00 The Signal15:00 Tinker Bell

And The Pirate Fairy

17:00 Dawn Rider19:00 RoboCop21:00 Dragonheart

3: The Sorcerer’s Curse-PG15

23:00 Escape Plan01:00 Baggage

Claim03:00 Dawn Rider

13:00 Dog Whisperer15:00 Money Meltdown16:00 Wicked Tuna17:00 Taiwan: Island Of

Fish18:00 Ultimate Survival

Alaska19:00 Dead End

Express20:00 Wicked Tuna21:40 Ultimate Survival

Alaska22:30 Dead End

Express23:20 Money Meltdown

10:00 Problem Child 2

12:00 The Rocker

14:00 Captain Ron

16:00 Moms’ Night Out

18:00 Zoolander

20:00 The Love Punch

22:00 Malavita

00:00 Captain Ron

02:00 Zoolander

04:00 Moms’ Night Out

13:00 Worms14:30 Blackie And

Kanuto16:00 Dinosaur Island18:00 Moomins And

The Comet Chase

20:00 True Story Of Puss’n Boots

22:00 Blackie And Kanuto

23:30 Dinosaur Island01:00 Minuscule: Valley

Of The Lost Ants

TEL: 444933989 444517001SHOWING AT VILLAGGIO & CITY CENTER

13:05 Auction Kings13:30 Auction Hunters13:55 Baggage Battles14:20 Ice Cold Gold15:10 World’s Top 516:00 Misfit Garage16:50 Crash Course17:15 How Do They Do It?17:40 Incredible

Engineering Blunders: Fixed

18:30 For The Love Of Cars

19:20 Outback Truckers20:10 Auction Hunters20:35 Baggage Battles21:00 Incredible

Engineering Blunders: Fixed

21:50 For The Love Of Cars

22:40 Patrick Dempsey: Racing Le Mans

23:30 Amish Mafia01:10 Incredible

Engineering

08:00 News08:30 People & Power09:00 Al Jazeera

Correspondent 10:00 News10:30 Inside Story11:30 Talk To Al Jazeera 12:00 News12:30 TechKnow13:00 NEWSHOUR14:00 News14:30 Inside Story15:00 Al Jazeera World16:00 NEWSHOUR17:00 News17:30 The Listening Post18:00 NEWSHOUR19:00 News19:30 101 East 20:00 News20:30 Inside Story21:00 NEWSHOUR22:00 News22:30 Talk To Al Jazeera 23:00 Orphans of the

Sahara

EASY SUDOKU

Easy Sudoku Puzzles: Place a digit from 1 to 9 in each empty cell so every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains all the digits 1 to 9.


BREAK TIME22SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


NOVO

MALL

LANDMARK

ROYAL PLAZA

SCREEN 1 Moomins Of The Riviera (2D/Comedy) 3:00 & 4:30pm

Maze Runner:the Scorch Trials (2D/Action) 6:00, 8:30 & 11:00pm

SCREEN 2 Hara Maznouka (2D/ Arabic) 2:30pm

The Dead Lands (2D/Action) 4:30pm Everest (2D/Drama) 6:30 & 8:45pm

Maya (2D/Tamil) 11:00pm

SCREEN 3 Everest (2D/Drama) 2:45pm

The Blood Lands (2D/Horror) 5:00pm Hara Maznoukas (2D/Arabic) 6:30pm

Katti Batti (2D/Hindi) 8:15pm Utopiayile Rajavu (2D/Malayalam) 10:45pm

SCREEN 1 Hara Maznouka (2D/ Arabic) 3:00pm The Dead Lands (2D/Action) 4:45pm Everest (2D/Drama) 6:45 9:00 11:15pm

SCREEN 2 Moomins Of The Riviera (2D/Comedy) 2:30 & 4:00pm

Maze Runner:the Scorch Trials (2D/Action) 5:30 8:00 & 10:30pm

SCREEN 3 The Blood Lands (2D/Horror) 2:30pm Katti Batti (2D/Hindi) 4:00pm

Hara Maznoukas (2D/Arabic) 6:30pm Utopiayile Rajavu (2D/Malayalam) 8:15pm

Maya (2D/Tamil) 10:45pm

SCREEN 1 The Blood Lands (2D/Horror) 3:00pmHara Maznouka (2D/ Arabic) 4:30pm Maze Runner:the Scorch Trials (2D/Action) 6:30 & 11:15pm Everest (2D/Drama) 9:00pmSCREEN 2 Moomins Of The Riviera (2D/Comedy) 2:45 & 4:15pm Everest (2D/Drama) 6:00 & 11;00pm Maze Runner:the Scorch Trials (2D/Action) 8:30pm SCREEN 3 The Dead Lands (2D/Action) 2:30pm Katti Batti (2D/Hindi) 4:30 & 11:00pm Hara Maznouka (2D/ Arabic) 7:00pm The Dead Lands (2D/Action) 9:00pm

ASIAN TOWNUtopiayile Rajavu (Malayalam) 2:15 5:00 6:45 7:45 9:30 & 10:30pmDouble Barrel (Malayalam) 4:00pmKhatti Bhatti (Hindi) 4:30, 7:15 & 10:00pmMaya (Tamil) 7:15 &10:00pm Thani Oruvan (Tamil) 4:15pm

SCREEN 1 Everest (2D/Adventure) 10:00am, 12:20, 2:40, 5:00, 7:20, 9:40 & 11:55pmSCREEN 2 Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2D/Action) 1:30, 7:00pm & 12:15am Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (3D/Action) 11:00am, 4:15 & 9:40pmSCREEN 3 Absolutely Anything (2D/Comedy) 11:30am, 3:30, 7:30 & 11:30pm Zero Tolerance (2D/Action) 1:30, 5:30 & 9:30pm SCREEN 4 Mission Impossible Rogue Nation (2D/Action) 10:45am, 5:30pm & 12:00midnightThe Blood Lands (2D/Horror) 1:15 & 8:00pm South Paw (2D/Action) 3:00 & 9:35pm SCREEN 5 The Dead Lands (2D/Action) 12:30, 5:00 & 9:30pm No Escape (2D/Action) 10:15am, 2:45, 7:15 & 11:45pmSCREEN 6 Moomins On The Riviera (2D/Animation) 10:00, 11:50am, 1:45 & 3:40pmHara Maznouka (2D/Arabic) 5:40, 7:40, 9:40 & 11:40pmSCREEN 7 American Ultra (2D/Action) 10:30am, 12:45, 3:00, 5:00, 7:15, 9:30 & 11:55pmSCREEN 8 The Transporter Refueled (2D/Action) 10:00am, 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00, 10:00 & 11:55pmSCREEN 9 Everest (IMAX 3D/Adventure) 10:30am, 12:50, 3:10, 5:30, 7:50, 10:10pm & 12:30am SCREEN 10 Everest (2D/Adventure) 11:15am, 4:20 & 9:30pm Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2D/Action) 1:40, 6:50pm & 12:00midnight

23SPORT SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


Day grabs five-shot lead at BMW Championship Spieth on joint fourth after a card of 66 in second round

Jason Day of Australia

plays his shot from the 12th tee during the Second Round

of the BMW Championship

at Conway Farms Golf

Club on Friday in Lake Forest,

Illinois.

CHICAGO: Jason Day rolled in a 43-foot eagle putt at the 18th hole on Friday to equal the low-est 36-hole total in PGA Tour history and seize a five-shot lead in the BMW Championship.

The red-hot Aussie, who fin-ished off a first-round 61 on Friday morning, signed for an eight-under par 63 for the sec-ond round at Conway Farms for an 18-under total of 124.

That put him five in front of US tour rookie Daniel Berger, who carded a 64, and Brendon Todd, who posted a 63 for 129.

“I don’t know how else to explain the way I’ve been playing,” Days said. “I feel very free, like there’s no stress. There’s obvi-ously stress, but I’m enjoying it.”

Day also had a leg up on world number two Jordan Spieth and number one Rory McIlroy, who could see the currently third-ranked Australian leap-frog to the top of the world rankings with a victory on Sunday.

Spieth, who played alongside Day in the first two rounds, fired a second-round 66 for a share of fourth on 132, alongside fellow American Kevin Na, who also carded a 66.

McIlroy fired a 65 to head a group sharing ninth on 133.

Day, whose four victories this season include his first major title at the PGA Championship last month, had seven birdies and one bogey to go with his eagle in the second round.

His 124 matched the record 36-hole total set by Pat Perez in

2009 and equaled by David Toms in 2011.

But Day said he wouldn’t be thinking about that as he headed into the weekend.

“It’s over now,” he said. “I’ve got to look ahead to tomorrow’s round now.”

Spieth, who also eagled the final hole to stay within striking distance, said Day had been so impressive in the two rounds they played together that it would have been worth the price of a ticket to watch.

“I feel like I should be paying to watch this event,” he said.

Their day started when they

returned to their final first-round hole, the par-four ninth, where Day needed to hole his second shot to shoot 59.

His 45-yard pitch shot from

rain-soaked rough didn’t make it and he settled for a par that still gave him a career-best round of 61.

“It sounds like everyone is dis-appointed,” Day said. “I’m like, jeez.”

While Day, 27, is chasing the world number one ranking, he already tops the standings in the US PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup -- the playoff race that will be capped by next week’s Tour Championship where a $10m bonus will be on offer to the series winner.

He opened the playoffs by win-ning the Barclays on August 30.

AFP

ScoresCHICAGO: Leading second-round scores on Friday in the $8.25m BMW Championship (USA unless noted, par-71):

124 Jason Day (AUS) 61-63

129 Daniel Berger 65-64, Brendon Todd 66-63

131 Kevin Na 65-66, Jordan Spieth 65-66

132 Justin Thomas 65-67, George McNeill 67-65, Scott Piercy 67-65

Second back surgery to sideline Woods until 2016 LOS ANGELES: Golf super-star Tiger Woods said on Friday he will be sidelined until 2016 after a second back surgery, but confidently predicted he would make a full recovery.

In an article posted on his website, the 14-time major cham-pion revealed he had surgery on Wednesday in Utah.

The microdiscectomy was simi-lar to the procedure he underwent on March 31, 2014, Woods said.

“This is certainly disappoint-ing, but I’m a fighter,” Woods said. “I’ve been told I can make a full recovery, and I have no doubt that I will.”

In the meantime, Woods said he would have to withdraw from the USPGA Tour’s Frys.com Open in October, as well as the two-man America’s Golf Cup in Mexico City and his own unoffi-cial Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas in December.

“I’d like to send my regrets to Frys and all those associated with the America’s Golf Cup,” Woods said. “Those were two events I was really looking forward to playing.

“I was ready to start the 2015-16 PGA TOUR season at Frys, and I was excited to join my good

friend Matt (Kuchar) in Mexico City.”

Woods said he would attend the Hero World Challenge that ben-efits his charitable foundation, but won’t be able to play.

“I look forward to being there to support my event,” he said.

Former world number one Woods struggled through a miser-able 2015 campaign that included missed cuts at three straight major championships – the US Open, British Open and PGA Championship.

He posted his worst rounds as a pro – an 82 at the Phoenix Open and an 85 at the Memorial, even taking a break from competition early in the year to try to sort out his game.

Things were looking up last month when Woods was in con-tention for his first US PGA Tour win since 2013 at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he even-tually finished tied for 10th and missed the US tour’s season-end-ing playoff series.

According to his website, Woods had experienced occa-sional discomfort in his back and hip area for several weeks, includ-ing at the Wyndham. AFP

Tiger Woods reacts during the second round of the Wyndham

Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, in this August

2015 file photo.

Lithuania overcome Serbia to reach Euro final and Olympics

Serbia’s Ognjen Kuzmic (left) in action against

Lithuania’s Jonas Valanciunas during their European

Championship semi-final match

at the Pierre Mauroy Stadium

in Lille, France on Friday.

LILLE, France: Lithuania set up a mouth-watering European Championship showdown with Spain and sealed an Olympic berth after beating Serbia 67-64 in a captivating semi-final on Friday.

The Lithuanians and Spaniards, who clash today, have clinched automatic spots at next year’s Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Serbia, France, Italy, Greece and the Czech Republic will enter an intercontinental qualifying tournament next July for an extra three places at the 2016 Olympics.

Lithuania’s ironclad defence stifled the tournament’s highest-scoring team, who had averaged 88 points per game, reducing Serbia to six three-point goals from 28 attempts.

Toronto Raptors centre Jonas Valanciunas dominated the low post, scoring 11 of his 15 points in the first half as Lithuania forced the Serbians out of their paint.

Forward Mindaugas Kuzminskas was the Baltic nation’s trump card with 13 points and nine rebounds and playmaker Mantas Kalnietis chipped in with

12 and nine assists. The Serbians, driven by Milos Teodosic, reached the semis with an unbeaten 7-0 record but the Lithuanians gave the versatile playmaker

preciously little room to oper-ate. Power forward Nemanja Bjelica, signed by the Minnesota Timberwolves during the current NBA break, also faltered against

aggressive half-court pressure by Lithuania. Teodosic finished as the game’s top scorer with 16 points and Bjelica added 10 but the Lithuanians cut off the supply routes to Serbia’s key players in a nerve-jangling finish.

Cool free-throw shooting allowed the Lithuanians, who nailed 15 of 18 shots from the foul line, to keep nosing ahead and their vociferous fans were elated after the Serbians missed a last-gasp effort from the halfway line.

The final will offer a clash of contrasting styles in Lille’s soccer stadium, which has been adapted for the 24-nation tournament with Spain’s 80-75 semi-final win over France on Thursday set-ting a new indoor crowd record of 27,000.

A balanced Lithuanian team will face the tournament’s top scorer Pau Gasol, who steered the Spaniards past holders and hosts France with a staggering 40 points and 11 rebounds.

France and Serbia will meet in the bronze-medal match on Sunday before the finalists take centre stage. REUTERS

Duda, Murphy lead Mets over New York YankeesNEW YORK: Lucas Duda, Daniel Murphy and Juan Uribe all homered as the New York Mets beat the New York Yankees on Friday.

The Yankees (80-66) fell 4-1/2 games behind Toronto in the American League East as Duda and Murphy hit solo homers in the second and sixth innings respec-tively while Uribe hit a pinch-hit two-run homer in the seventh.

Duda, Murphy and third base-man David Wright, the three longest-tenured members of the lineup, went a combined 6-for-11.

The rest of the Mets went 2-for-21.

Yankees right-hander Masahiro Tanaka, staked to a 1-0 lead on a first-inning sacrifice fly by left fielder Chris Young, retired the first four batters he faced on just 10 pitches before Duda hit a

mammoth homer off the second deck in right field.

It was the first homer in 67 at-bats for Duda, who was on the disabled list from Aug. 22 through September 7 due to lower back stiffness. He finished 2-for-4.

“I’m just happy to contribute and get the win,” Duda said.

“The big-gest thing right now, especially in September, is winning. If you went 0-for-4, 4-for-4, what-ever it is, put it aside. It’s time to win ballgames,” he added.

The Mets (84-63), who have already clinched their first win-ning season since 2008, maintained

their eight-game NL East lead over the Washington Nationals.

Despite the loss, the Yankees still lead the AL wild card race.

“We need to win games -- that’s the bottom line,” manager Joe Girardi said. AGENCIES

Baseball ResultsChicago Cubs 8 St Louis 3

Washington 5 Miami 4

Toronto 6 Boston 1

Detroit 5 Kansas City 4

NY Mets 5 NY Yankees 1

Tampa Bay 8 Baltimore 6

Cleveland 12 C White Sox 1

Atlanta 2 Philadelphia 1

Seattle 3 Texas 1

Oakland 4 Houston 3

Cincinnati 5 Milwaukee 3

Colorado 7 San Diego 4

LA Dodgers 6 Pittsburgh 2

Arizona 2 San Francisco 0

New study stokes brain injury fears in NFL players LOS ANGELES: A new study of deceased NFL players found 96 percent of those tested suf-fered from brain disease, it was reported on Friday, fuelling fresh fears about the health risks in America’s most popular sport.

The survey for PBS television’s Frontline programme found that out of 91 NFL players tested, 87 showed signs of the degenerative disease known as chronic trau-matic encephalopathy (CTE).

The study was carried out by researchers for the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University.

A wider sample of players from all levels of American football,

who played either in high school, college, semi-professionally or professionally, found CTE in the brain tissue of 131 out of 165, or 79 percent.

CTE is widely thought to be caused by repetitive trauma to the head and can lead to condi-tions such as nausea, memory loss and dementia.

The report cautioned that the results came with certain caveats, most notably the fact that CTE could only be definitively tested for posthumously.

Most of the brains studied were from players who had donated their brains for testing because they suspected they were suffer-ing from CTE.

Nevertheless, Ann McKee, the director and chief of neuropa-thology at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, said the results were consistent with previous research indicating a link between football and brain injury.

“People think that we’re blow-ing this out of proportion, that this is a very rare disease and that we’re sensationalizing it,” McKee said.

“My response is that where I sit, this is a very real disease. We have had no problem identifying it in hundreds of players.”

A spokesman for the NFL said the league was “dedicated to making football safer and

continue to take steps to protect players, including rule changes, advanced sideline technology, and expanded medical resources.” The NFL had donated $1m to Boston’s brain bank in 2010. The league has also taken steps aimed at reducing head injuries, with concussions falling by 35 percent since 2012.

In April the NFL agreed to settle a lawsuit and pay $765m to about 5,000 former players over health claims. However some players have already made headlines this year by choosing to walk away from multi-million-dollar contracts citing health concerns.

The issue is also likely to come

into the spotlight again with a Hollywood movie – “Concussion” – in the works starring Will Smith. The film is about forensic pathologist, Dr. Bennet Omalu, one of the first to diagnose degen-erative brain disease in former NFL players.

Meanwhile, Cleveland Browns head coach Mike Pettine announced on Friday that Johnny Manziel will start at quarterback in Sunday’s home opener against the Tennessee Titans and rookie Marcus Mariota.

Starter Josh McCown suffered a concussion in the season-open-ing 31-10 loss to the New York Jets and remains in the NFL’s concussion protocol. McCown

was injured last Sunday when he went airborne trying to vault over the goal line on a third-and-goal scramble from the 14-yard line. Manziel, who will get the third start of his NFL career, practiced with the first team this week.

Manziel will face off against Mariota, who stunned the entire NFL with four touchdown passes to four different receivers in a Week 1 rout of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 42-14.

The Week 2 game will high-light another matchup of former Heisman Trophy win-ners, this time between Mariota and Manziel, who is seeking his first NFL win as a starter. AGENCIES

SPORT24SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


Vettel stuns Hamilton to snatch Singapore GP poleMercedes’ streak of 23 poles ends; Red Bull joins Ferrari on front rowSINGAPORE: Mercedes’ 15-month domination of Formula One qualifying came to a shuddering halt yesterday when Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel snatched pole position for the Singapore Grand Prix.

Mercedes had started at the front of the grid in each of the last 23 grands prix, dating back to the middle of last year, and needed just one more to equal the all-time record, set by the Williams team in the early 1990s.

But the Silver Arrows pair-ing of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were unable to keep pace with the Ferrari and Red Bull teams, who staged their own high-speed battle for pole.

Vettel came out on top, giving Ferrari their first pole position since 2012 with a masterful lap around the floodlit Singaporean track.

The German, a three-time win-ner in Singapore when he was with his previous team Red Bull, continued his love affair with the tricky street circuit by setting the fastest qualifying time of one minute 43.885 seconds.

Vettel’s pole position was the 46th of his career. His last was in 2013, when he was with Red Bull.

The 28-year-old was more than half a second clear of Australia’s Daniel Ricciardo, who booked his spot on the front row for Red Bull with the second best time.

Finland’s Kimi Raikkonen was third quickest for Ferrari and Russia’s Daniil Kvyat fourth for Red Bull.

Hamilton, who had started

from pole in 11 of the previous 12 races this season, could only manage fifth spot, with Rosberg starting alongside him in sixth.

“Our problem this weekend is tyres, they are not giving us a lot of grip and we slide around a lot,” Hamilton said.

“We try to understand why our tyres are bad. We have the quick-est car but cannot utilise it with the tyres.”

Dripping with sweat on a hot and humid night in the Southeast Asian state, Vettel climbed from his cockpit and celebrated like he had won the race.

“I know it’s only Saturday and the main job is coming tomorrow but I had to enjoy the moment

when I heard that we’d made it,” Vettel said.

“It was looking pretty good, right from the off -- and from this morning. The car was fantastic to drive, it got better through qualifying and I think we did the maximum today.

“I’m surprised by the margin but I think it just came together. I really had a near-perfect lap at the end.”

Mercedes have been virtually unbeatable for the past two sea-sons but the advantage they have with their superior engines is largely negated on slower, tighter circuits such as Singapore, which has 23 turns.

Held at night against the

backdrop of the city’s skyscrapers, Singapore provides one of motor racing’s great spectacles on and off the track and is a test of skill and patience for the drivers.

With sparks flying off the back of his car, Vettel dominated the hour-long qualifying session.

He was third after the first stage using soft tyres but accel-erated to the top in the second and third phases after switching to super softs.

Ricciardo, who won three races last year when he and Vettel were team mates but has managed just one podium finish this season, made one last, futile attempt to grab pole when he went out on a second set of super-soft tyres

but was happy to end with second.“It’s nice to be back up here.

And the front-row as well, it’s been a while,” he said.

“It’s a bit of a coincidence, Seb and I, and hopefully we can have a good race tomorrow.

“It’s a surprise to not see a Mercedes up here. I thought they were playing a few card games yesterday, but they seem to be struggling here.” REUTERS

Singapore Grand Prix Starting grid from the Formula One Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay Street Circuit today

1. Sebastian Vettel (Germany) Ferrari

2. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia) RedBull - Renault

3. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland) Ferrari

4. Daniil Kvyat (Russia) RedBull - Renault

5. Lewis Hamilton (Britain) Mercedes

6. Nico Rosberg (Germany) Mercedes

7. Valtteri Bottas (Finland) Williams-Mercedes

8. Max Verstappen (Netherlands) Toro Rosso - Renault

9. Felipe Massa (Brazil) Williams-Mercedes

10. Romain Grosjean (France) Lotus - Mercedes

11. Nico Huelkenberg (Germany) Force India - Mercedes

12. Fernando Alonso (Spain) McLaren

13. Sergio Perez (Mexico) Force India - Mercedes

14. Carlos Sainz Jr (Spain) Toro Rosso - Renault

15. Jenson Button (Britain) McLaren

16. Felipe Nasr (Brazil) Sauber - Ferrari

17. Marcus Ericsson (Sweden) Sauber - Ferrari

18. Pastor Maldonado (Venezuela) Lotus - Mercedes

19. Will Stevens (Britain) Marussia - Ferrari

20. Alexander Rossi (US) Marussia - Ferrari

German Formula One driver

Sebastian Vettel of Scuderia

Ferrari reacts after taking pole position during

qualifying ahead of the Singapore

Formula One Grand Prix night

race in Singapore, yesterday. The

Singapore Formula One

Grand Prix night race will take place today.

Tight fight expected for world team time trial title

Jayaram makes his first World Superseries final

No health issues from Rio test, says FINAPARIS: Marathon swimmers taking part in a 2016 Olympics test event in Rio’s notoriously polluted off-shore waters suf-fered no serious health prob-lems, the sport’s governing body said yesterday.

Fifty competitors from Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan and Netherlands took part in the test at Rio’s iconic Copacabana beach on August 22 and 23.

“Up to date, 26 days after the conclusion of the event, there is no notice of any subsequent health issue on the athletes that competed in Rio,” said a FINA statement.

“Consequently, the waters of the Copacabana beach were safe during the organisation of the marathon swimming test event.”

The claims by FINA came just a day after Brazilian media reported that the swimming body had written to Rio mayor Eduardo Paes to express their concerns over the water quality at Copacabana as well as other watersport venues for the 2016 Games.

On Friday, FINA said they will continue to monitor the situation ahead of the Olympics which run from August 5-21 next year.

“The FINA Sports Medicine Committee, in co-ordina-tion with the IOC, Rio 2016 Organising Committee and INEA (Brazilian State Institute for the Environment), will continue conducting tests and monitor-ing the quality of the waters in Copacabana beach, in accordance with International Standards,” added the statement.

Earlier this month, the presi-dent of the Rio Olympics organis-ing committee vowed to address concerns about water pollution at a sailing venue. Two competitors had to be hospitalised following a recent test regatta at Rio’s pic-turesque Guanabara Bay, while other events have been disrupted by floating debris such as rubbish and dead animals.

In August, German sailor Erik Heil revealed that he had to undergo an operation on a seri-ous skin infection after compet-ing in the Olympic test regatta at Guanabara.

“I have never in my life had a leg infection,” he wrote in a Sailing Team Germany blog. “I assume that I got it from the test regatta.”

Meanwhile, a South African parole board has delayed by two weeks a review of whether Paralympian star Oscar Pistorius’ should be released early from a prison sentence for killing his girlfriend.

“The parole review board met on Friday, and they could not deal with all the matters at hand, including the case of Oscar Pistorius. They will meet again in two weeks’ time to look at his matter,” said Manelisi Wolela, spokesman for the Department of Correctional Services.

“The board had a series of other matters and could not get to his matter. There is nothing more than that to the delay,” said Wolela. AGENCIES

SEOUL: India’s Ajay Jayaram continued his sensational run at the $600,000 Korea Open here yesterday, making his first World Superseries badmin-ton final and setting himself up against defending champion Chen Long of China for the men’s singles title.

Jayaram, an underdog from the very first round where he upset Denmark’s Viktor Axelsen, downed Taipei’s Chou Tien Chen 21-19, 21-15 to advance to the final today.

Host South Korea assured themselves of the men’s dou-bles gold medal and advanced to today’s two other finals. Powerhouse China lost both men’s doubles and women’s doubles but stayed in the hunt for three other titles.

Jayaram, world No.30, who had shown skill and tenacity in taking down opponents ranked higher than himself, continued with his

careful style, keeping a tight rein on the shuttle, displaying judi-cious shots that found the lines and depriving the opponent of a brief lead with a net game.

“I think it’s a matter of con-fidence; it’s a culmination of all the hard work I’ve put in over the years,” said Jayaram, who needed six months off last year due to a shoulder injury.

“I executed my strategy well. Recovering from the injury obvi-ously made me tougher. It will be hard against Chen Long... I will think about what to do, maybe have a word with (teammate) Kashyap as well, since he has beaten him twice.”

Earlier, Chen won a comfort-able 21-9, 21-13 win over Japan’s Kento Momota.

In men’s doubles match, home pair Kim Gi-Jung and Kim Sa-Rang upset Zhang Nan/Fu Haifeng of China, 12-21, 21-18, 21-17, to book a final

against compatriots Lee Yong-Dae and Yoo Yeon-Seong, who edged Denmark’s Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen in a 100-minute thriller, 23-25, 22-20, 21-17.

For the women’s singles title, South Korea’s Sung Ji-Hyun will clash with China’s Wang Yihan on Sunday.

The South Korean female pair of Chang Ye-Na/Lee So-Hee will vie with Indonesia’ Greysia Polii/Nitya Krishinda Maheswari for the women’s doubles title.

Sung defeated Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi in a women’s singles semifinal, 21-15, 15-21, 21-18.

Sung’s opponent will be defend-ing champion Wang Yihan, who beat compatriot Wang Shixian 21-12, 21-19.

The mixed doubles final will feature Indonesia’s Tontowi Ahmad/Liliyana Natsir against familiar foes Zhang Nan/Zhao Yunlei of China. AFP

Ajay Jayaram of India hits Ajay Jayaram of India hits a return against Chou a return against Chou Tien Chen of Taiwan dur-Tien Chen of Taiwan dur-ing their men’s singles ing their men’s singles semi-final match at the semi-final match at the Korea Open Superseries Korea Open Superseries badminton tournament in badminton tournament in Seoul yesterday.Seoul yesterday.

RICHMOND, United States: Defending champion BMC Racing, powered by Australian Rohan Dennis, enter today’s team time trial at the World Road Cycling Championships with confidence, but two top rivals hunger to dethrone them.

Etixx Quick Step, sparked by three-time individual world time trial champion Tony Martin of Germany, and ORICA GreenEdge, runner-up the past two years, fig-ure to lead the challenge of BMC over 38.8km (24.1 miles) on the first day of racing over the streets of Richmond.

“I’m confident,” BMC Racing coach Marco Pinotti said.

“We’ve won the last three time trials we were in, but two of those were by less than one second. We need to keep our minds on the

ball. “To win one time is hard. To repeat is harder. We need to be conscious of that.”

BMC beat ORICA by a record 31.84 seconds last year and five of their six riders are back, including Dennis, Swiss Silvan Dillier and Italians Daniel Oss and Manuel Quinziato with American Taylor Phinney a newcomer seeking a crown on home soil.

Moving up after back-to-back runner-up spots is ORICA GreenEdge’s mission, but sport director Matt White expects little difference among the top finishers.

“We are aiming at winning, but you will be able to throw a blan-ket over the teams which make the podium,” White said. “There are at least three teams that have the ability to win. It’ll be a great

battle in an event that really does epitomise teamwork.”

Aussies Michael Hepburn and Luke Durbridge, Canada’s Svein Tuft and Dutchman Jens Mouris were each on the past two runner-up squads while the Aussies were joined by country-man Michael Matthews and New Zealand’s Sam Bewley, the other two GreenEdge riders Sunday, in a success to open this year’s Giro d’Italia.

“It has been a good build up and we are happy with where we are coming into the event,” White said. “The course is fast. It’s not a technical course and we are happy with the team we’ve prepared.”

Etixx Quick Step, the 2012 and 2013 winners, slid to third last year but Martin, Belgian vet-eran Tom Boonen and reigning

world road race champion Michal Kwiatkowski of Poland provide a formidable lineup that tested two weeks early on a Belgian airfield, Quick Step sport director Tom Steels said.

“We collected some important data,” he said. “It was also good to

work on the slipstream and the combination of the riders. It’s also good for the riders to get focused on this event. It was like a first step in preparation.”

With flat speed sections and late climbs, every detail will be critical, Steels said. AFP

A team BMC Switzerland technician cleans a bike on the eve of the 2015 UCI Road World Championships in downtown Richmond, Virginia, USA, yesterday.



Galfar Al Misnad clinch Twenty20 title in Doha

Galfar Al Misnad’s players celebrate after winning the Twenty20 Super League 2015 title at the Doha Cricket Stadium on Friday. Former Pakistan’s star pacer Shoaib Akhtar who attended the final is also seen in the picture along with Qatar Cricket Association (QCA) officials. PICTURE BY: ABDUL BASIT

Aussies to ‘bore’ their way to victory in subcontinent MELBOURNE: Australia must stifle their attacking instincts in the subcontinent and “bore” batsmen into giv-ing up their wickets, captain Steven Smith has said.

Smith will lead a rebuilding Australia team into a two-Test series against Bangladesh next month after a disappointing 3-2 Ashes loss in England.

Australia swept Bangladesh 2-0 in their last tour in 2006 but have always struggled on the subcontinent’s flat wickets, which nullify pace bowling.

Though Smith led Australia against India in three Tests at home, he will captain the side on tour for the first time.

“I think that’s something I’m going to have to adapt to with my captaincy,” Smith told local media in Sydney.

“In Australia you can be a lit-tle bit more attacking.

“In places on the subconti-nent you’ve got to find ways to get batsmen out, you might have to bore them out.

“For me it’s about being adapt-able wherever we play.

Australia have elected to rest

fast men Mitchell Johnson and Josh Hazlewood from the tour, leaving workhorse Peter Siddle and left-armer Mitchell Starc to lead the attack.

One-Test tyro Pat Cummins will bid with uncapped Tasmania bowler Andrew Fekete to be the third seamer, though Smith has left the door ajar to play two spinners in the Tests in Chittagong and Dhaka.

Unused for most of the Ashes, Siddle underlined his quality with six wickets in Australia’s consolation win in the fifth test at The Oval and will be impor-tant for Smith’s hopes of a maiden series win away.

“A big part of my game, espe-cially in Australian conditions, has been reverse swing,” Siddle told reporters.

“That does benefit me a lot over there, and what I normally do is what I’ll do over there,” he said.

“Be patient, build pressure and bowl in the right areas.

“And I think my experience, not in Bangladesh, but in those conditions, will help,” he added. REUTERS

Sexton inspires Ireland to Canada thrashing at CupIreland ease to 50-7 victory in their first game, earn a bonus point CARDIFF, UK: Jonny Sexton scored a try, three conversions and a penalty as Six Nations champions Ireland routed Canada 50-7 to open their World Cup campaign.

In severe warning to Pool D rivals France and Italy, Ireland were superior to Canada in every facet of the game after a tight opening quarter of an hour.

They notched up four first-half tries – and a bonus point in the pool standings – through Sean O’Brien, Iain Henderson, Sexton and David Kearney, three con-verted by Sexton.

Three more tries through Sean Cronin, David Kearney and Jared Payne to complete the demolition in the second half.

“We handled the ball really well and played some really good rugby,” said captain Paul O’Connell playing down Ireland’s superiority.

He said the win had helped Ireland get over their World Cup “nerves.”

The first try came when Canada captain Jamie Cudmore had been yellow carded for a ruck infringement, and left the Canucks with too big a mountain to climb at 29-0 down at half-time at Cardiff ’s Millennium Stadium.

The bonus point could be key in a pool whose winners will likely avoid champions New Zealand in the quarter-finals.

Sexton was key to everything Ireland did, playing deep in the pocket and opting to use a back-row forward as a midfield loop-around target to unleash the dangerous looking Irish backs in a series of well-oiled moves.

While complacency was not quite put to one side in the second-half, O’Connell was yellow carded and Canada knuckled down in defence before Sean Cronin crossed for Ireland’s fifth, DTH Van Der Merwe scored a consola-tion try before Rob Kearney and Jared Payne wrapped things up.

Canada had the first chance to get the scoreboard ticking after No 8 Jamie Heaslip failed to roll away from a ruck in the eighth minute but Gordon McRorie’s long-range effort fell short and wide.

When the North Americans strayed offside as their defence desperately rallied to hold firm, Sexton was left with a straight-forward pot at the posts to hand Ireland the early advantage.

Man-of-the-match Sexton spurned a second penalty minutes later to play the ball quickly, with Canada rattled. From the ensuing action, Cudmore was sin binned for playing the ball on the ground,

Ireland kicked for corner touch and a well-worked driv-ing line-out saw Sean O’Brien cross for a try, Sexton kicking the extras.

With Cudmore still off the pitch, Ireland turned the screw at the scrum, Heaslip broke and Henderson crashed over for a close-range try also converted by Sexton.

The fly-half showed a clean pair of heels after a neat inside O’Brien pass to outpace the cover for a third try, unable to convert from the touchline.

Coach Joe Schmidt had warned that Ireland needed to convert any creative chances they had, and winger Dave Kearney duly made sure of a crucial bonus point when he finished off another well-worked backs move, Sexton nail-ing his third conversion.

Canada thought they might have had a try of their own when Van Der Merwe crossed in the corner on the stroke of half-time, but Nathan Hirayama’s tap-on was ruled to have gone forward.

O ’ C o n n e l l received a yellow card for a blatant offside two min-utes into the sec-ond period, but the well-organised Irish defence had no problems repel-

ling wave after wave of Canadian attack.

Ian Madigan came on for Sexton on 55 minutes, a harried Canada pinned back deep in their own half but withstanding the Irish pressure.

The breakthrough finally came when replacement hooker Cronin crashed over after another effec-tive driving line-out, Madigan kicking the conversion.

Almost immediately, Canada hit back with an intercept con-solation try through Van Der Merwe, Hirayama knocking over the extras.

Ireland had the last word when first Rob Kearney sprinted in after a turnover saw Keith Earls sacamper up the left wing and feed inside, and then Payne was on hand after Madigan split the tiring defence. AFP

Gorgodze drives Georgia to upset win over Tonga GLOUCESTER: Inspired by captain Mamuka Gorgodze, Georgia withstood a desperate second-half surge by Tonga to secure a surprise 17-10 win over the Pacific Islanders in their Rugby World Cup Pool C opener yesterday.

Gorgodze, the number eight nicknamed Gorgodzilla for his bulk, was named man of the match after leading by example in a tense and bone-crunching encounter.

“This was the best victory in our history,” he told reporters after Georgia’s delighted players had sealed only their third ever World Cup win and wrapped themselves in the red and white national flag.

Gorgodze had set the founda-tions by driving through a melee of defenders to touch down right under the posts for the first try which, after a tense wait for con-firmation by the television match official, took Georgia into a 10-3 lead at the interval.

In the second half, a long, swerving run by veteran full-back Merab Kvirikashvili, play-ing in his fourth World Cup, set up the move that allowed flanker Giorgi Tkhilaishvili to score in the corner.

With Kvirikashvili slotting the difficult conversion, redeeming himself after two missed penal-ties, Georgia appeared to have taken an unassailable lead at 17-3, and enjoyed by far the noisiest

support from the crowd of 14,200.But Tonga dominated the final

quarter and were unlucky not to score when centre Siale Piutau, running on to a clever grubber kick from flyhalf Kurt Morath, just failed to control the ball and touch down.

After running into wall upon wall of Georgian tackles, the Pacific Islanders got their reward when they managed to get the ball out wide for winger Fetu’u Vainikolo to score in the corner and Morath to convert. But they could not break through for the second try that might have lev-elled the scores. In a stop-start game, it was Tonga who strung together many of the most attrac-tive passing sequences, but their efforts to move the ball out wide were thwarted by inaccurate passing and handling errors.

Morath opened the scoring for Tonga with a penalty and Georgia’s Kvirikashvili pulled his side level before converting Gorgodze’s try to put Georgia seven points clear at the break.

In a group likely to be domi-nated by New Zealand and Argentina, Georgia now look well placed to meet their declared objective by taking third place, which would qualify them auto-matically for the next tournament in Japan in 2019.

Georgia next face the Pumas of Argentina at the same venue on Friday, while Tonga play Namibia on September 29. REUTERS

Georgia’s Mamuka

Gorgodze celebrates with fans at

the end of the Pool C match against Tonga at the Rugby World Cup in Gloucester,

England, yesterday.

World Cup Results

Pool C: Tonga 10 Georgia 17

Pool D: Ireland 50 Canada 7

Pool B: Japan 34 South Africa 32

Ireland’s Jonathan

Sexton kicks a conversion

during the match

against Canada

in Pool D match at

the Rugby World Cup in Cardiff,

Wales, yesterday.

Japan’s Ayumu Goromaru before a conversional penalty during the Pool B Rugby World Cup match against South Africa in Brighton, England, yesterday.

Japan snatch shock victory against SA LONDON: Japan pulled off per-haps the biggest upset in Rugby World Cup history yesterday, defeating two-time World Cup champions South Africa 34-32 in a ferocious encounter at Brighton Community Stadium.

Replacement Karne Hesketh raced in at the corner in the 84th minute to snatch victory from a pulsating contest in the Pool B opener.

Ferocious tacking from Japan kept them within two points of the Springboks at halftime after driving mauls brought tries for South Africa’s Francois Louw and Bismarck du Plessis, with Michael Leitch touching down for Japan.

The reliable boot of fullback Ayumu Goromaru nudged Japan in front early in the second half, but that was quickly cancelled out by a try from South African lock Lood De Jager.

Both sides exchanged a series of penalties before Springboks snatched another try as replace-ment Adriaan Strauss burst through the defence. But then Japan found space out wide, send-ing Goromaru in at the corner; his conversion levelling the scores.

Another Springbok penalty looked like breaking Japanese hearts before Hesketh grabbed the winner in overtime.

Meanwhile, Tonga coach Mana Otai said his team’s failure to compete at scrums and lineouts were central to their 17-10 Rugby World Cup defeat by Georgia in their Pool C opener yesterday.

The Pacific Islanders were out-muscled by a physical Georgian side at Gloucester’s Kingsholm stadium and Otai said: “It was a little bit difficult to get any momentum going given our set pieces didn’t work for us. From our lineouts, which we launch a lot of play out of, it didn’t come our way. We got exposed on our scrummaging too.” AGENCIES

SPORT26SUNDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2015


Holroyd begins Qatar Challenge defence on a winning note Canadian De Vido finishes second, newcomer Spence dazzles to come third at LosailDOHA: Defending champion Mark Holroyd began his new season of the Qatar Challenge on a winning note at Losail International Circuit.

In the opening round of the 2015-16 season, Holroyd domi-nated the race from the start to the finish, clinching the top place at the end of the fifteen lap.

Holroyd, who got the pole posi-tion earlier in the practice, took the lead during all the race and gave no change to the other driv-ers to overtake him. The British driver Holroyd crossed the check-ered flag ahead of Peter De Vido, who came second.

“The race was fantastic for me, we put a lot of effort all over the summer, fortunately my spon-sors came back to me to repeat the season. Now we are having 15 laps, it is more difficult compared to last year, it is more like an endurance race now for me. Very happy with the result, everything went well, which is always nice when you prepare for something so hard” said the winner of the race, Holroyd.

The runner-up of last season, Canadian driver Peter De Vido, enjoyed the race and hopes to have a nice battle with Holdroyd all through the season and fight for the championship.

“It was a very good race today, very challenging because of the heat, but as usual very good fair driving, what I believe is the best championship in the Middle East. Thanks to my sponsor Quanto Bello Qatar and the rest of the drivers for supporting this cham-pionship so on” De Vido said after the race.

The third position in the podium went to newcomer driver from Australia, Adam Spence, who was so excited at the podium that couldn’t believe it.

“This is my first race in Qatar, I am so excited for this podium, I was ecstatic just to make it to the start line and ecstatic to be here in the podium, and I am so happy for this. I have been racing here at Losail before but this extremely heat is something I haven’t expe-rienced before, I want to thank to all the people that support me and really looking forward the coming round” Adam said during the vic-tory ceremony.

A total of thirteen cars took part in the opening round of this championship.

Mohamed Saad Al Morraikhi, Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation (QMMF) General Secretary, presented the trophies to the winners at the podium ceremony.

Earlier, the official photo of the season was taking at the grid with all the drivers.

The next round for Qatar Challenge will be on November 6.

THE PENINSULA

Herbie-inspired Rossi catches Formula 1 bugSINGAPORE: Alexander Rossi said he was hoping to secure a permanent seat in Formula One after becoming the sport’s first American driver in eight years at the Singapore Grand Prix.

Rossi, who chose racing number 53 for his car in honour of the “Herbie” films, has just five grands prix to make his case after being drafted in by British back-markers Manor.

The 23-year-old debutant escaped a high-speed colli-sion with the barriers in first free practice before outpacing Manor team-mate Will Stevens in the second session late on Friday.

“I’ve got five races to show what I’m capable of,” Rossi said at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, describing a permanent seat as his “ultimate goal”.

“It’s a difficult situation con-sidering we’re a bit off the pace of the other cars, so it’s not about beating the other cars, it’s about showing what I can do against my team.”

Rossi only found out on Tuesday that he would replace Roberto Merhi for five of the year’s last seven races, and was rushed out to Singapore on the next available flight.

He will skip Russia and the season-ending race in Abu Dhabi to return to the GP2 champion-ship, where he is second in the standings.

F1 hasn’t had an American competitor since Toro Rosso’s Scott Speed in 1997, and it was a tough start for Rossi when he knocked both right wheels askew in his first run-out.

But he recovered ably to time quicker than Stevens in the sec-ond session, avoiding bottom place by finishing 19th out of the 20 cars.

“At the end of the day it’s just something that happens,” Rossi said of his crash. “But all in all I got in the car and I was quite comfortable, and my pace com-pared to my team-mate was fine.”

The Californian has already made an impression with his homage to Herbie, the self-driving VW Beetle star of comedy films including “The Love Bug” and “Herbie Goes Bananas”.

“Actually my original (race number) choice, 16, was taken as a Red Bull reserve number so I thought I’d go to an American icon,” he said. “Growing up I watched it a lot.”

AFP

Drivers taking part in the opening round of the Qatar Challenge pose for a picture, along with Mohamed Saad Al Morraikhi, Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation (QMMF) General Secretary, at Losail International Circuit. A total of thirteen cars took part in the opening round of the championship.

Cudlin and Abdulaziz take pole at Qatar Superbike ChampionshipDOHA: Five-time champion Alex Cudlin clinched the pole position in the Superbike cate-gory as the new season of Qatar Superbike Championship kicked off on Friday under the flood-lights of the Losail International Circuit with the participation of a total of 48 riders.

For this year, riders are com-peting in two categories, 22 rid-ers taking part in the Superbike and 26 riders in the Supersport category.

In the Supersport category, the superpole went to Saudi Arabian rider Abulaziz bin Ladin’s way, with a Kawasaki ZX6R. Even he didn’t make a good lap time in the qualifying session, 2:08.588.

Bin Ladin is happy to start

from the front. “The qualifying session was a bit difficult because we didn’t have too much practice time, but I am happy for the pole position, but we have to improve still the lap timing as we still off pace than we were last year,” he said after the qualifying session.

The second classified is the Qatari rider Fahid Al Sowaidi with a lap time of 2:09.805.

Also riding in the Supersport category, the Serbian rider Manca Katrasnik got the best time in the women category , getting the seventh overall result.

“I am really happy with the result, I didn’t imagine I will go so fast, because in the last season my last race was not very good,

so I didn’t expect this good times also with the problems we had this afternoon, but at the end all was right. I hope that tomorrow for the race my lap timing will be better and make a good result. Let the season start,” said Manca after the session.

In the Superbike category, Cudlin, got the Superpole.

“It is good to start the season on pole, the bike was good, we haven’t changed anything from the last season and all we did was to change the oil and here we are…in this temperature, I feel confi-dent in the start, I think I can do 5/10 fast laps but for sure Mishal will be there as he is always is and some others, but we’ll see next, but so far, I am very happy for the

pole on the start of the season,” Cudlin said.

Nina Prinz will start from sec-ond place on the grid.

“It was great, in the first qualify-ing we had some problems in the fuel pump and a little bit with the elec-tronic and I was not so happy about the first qualifying , and I thought we could have some problem in the Superpole but the bike was fine and I think I can go faster tomorrow in the race, but I am very happy with the second position and ready for the race,” Nina said.

The runner-up of the last sea-son, Mishal Al Naimi will start in the third place on the grid , as he had some problems with the radiator of his bike.

THE PENINSULA

Alex Cudlin competing

in the open-ing round of

the Superbike category of the Qatar Superbike Championship at the Losail International

Circuit on Friday night. RIGHT: Mark Holroyd

celebrates his win in the

opening round of the Qatar Challenge.

Britain, Argentina edge closer to Davis Cup finalPARIS: Andy and Jamie Murray edged Great Britain closer to a first Davis Cup final in 37 years on Saturday while Argentina were within sight of their fourth final spot since 2006.

The Murray brothers thrilled their home Glasgow crowd by defeating Australia’s Lleyton Hewitt and Sam Groth 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-7 (6/8), 6-4 in a gruelling four-hour rubber. Victory gave the home side a 2-1 lead and it means Andy Murray can now clinch the tie for Great Britain in Sunday’s first reverse singles as they attempt to win the competi-tion for the first time since 1936.

The 28-year-old will secure a final showdown against either Belgium or Argentina in November if he defeats scheduled opponent Bernard Tomic.

If he loses, British world number 300 Dan Evans is due to face teenager Thanasi Kokkinakis in what would be the decisive

second reverse singles. “It was an incredible match and we had to come back from the disappoint-ment of losing the fourth set,” two-time Grand Slam winner Andy said.

“We stuck together like broth-ers should and managed to come up with enough good returns. It was as emotionally draining as much as it was physically.”

Australia, 28-times winners of the tournament, had been look-ing to reach their first final since 2003.

“Davis Cup doubles over five sets can sometimes only rely on one or two points,” said Hewitt, who is featuring in his final Davis Cup campaign.

“Doubles is always crucial but there is still two matches to go and we have to come up with the best plan to win those matches and give ourselves an opportunity to go through to the final.”

Argentina are also dreaming of a return to the Davis Cup final

after finishing runners-up in 1981, 2006, 2008 and 2011. Carlos Berlocq and Leonardo Mayer edged Steve Darcis and Ruben Bemelmans 6-2, 7-6 (7/2), 5-7, 7-6 (7/5) to take the South Americans into a 2-1 lead over Belgium ahead of today’s reverse singles in Brussels. Belgium’s world number 15 David Goffin will face Mayer first-up today with Darcis scheduled to face Federico Delbonis in what could be the deciding rubber.

Argentina took yesterday’s clash on a second match point after a Darcis return went long.

In the World Group play-offs, where the eight winners will play in the elite section next year, all the ties remained undecided going into the final day.

Thiemo de Bakker and Matwe Middelkoop stunned Roger Federer and Marco Chiudinelli 7-6 (9/7), 4-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 to keep the Netherlands in the tie against Switzerland in Geneva after they lost both of Friday’s opening

singles. “I think we played very well for four sets,” said world number two Federer.

“They had a good tiebreaker and a good 10 minutes at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth and they deserved vic-tory in the end. Indoor doubles is brutal.”

The Czech Republic, who were back-to-back champions in 2012 and 2013, opened a 2-1 lead over India in New Delhi after Adam Pavlasek and Radek Stepanek defeated favourites Rohan Bopanna and Leander Paes 7-5, 6-2, 6-2.

The United States, the record 32-time champions, took a 2-1 lead over Uzbekistan in Tashkent with Steve Johnson and Sam Querrey easing past Farrukh Dustov and Denis Istomin 6-3, 6-2, 6-2.

Colombia, Germany, Croatia, Italy and Poland were also in the driving seat in their play-offs.

AFP

Argentina’s Leonardo

Mayer (left) and Carlos Berlocq (right) celebrate

after winning their Davis Cup semi-

final double match against

Belgium’s Steve Darcis and Ruben Bemelmans

at Forest National arena

in Brussels, Belgium,

yesterday.



Mahbubeh Mohabatolla

Akhlaghi, takes aim during her 50m Rifle 3 Positions event of the Qatar Shooting

and Archery Association Cup

at Losail Shooting Complex yesterday. Akhlaghi won gold

in the event. RIGHT: The podium winners from Qatar Shooting

and Archery Association Cup.

Akhlaghi clinches gold at LosailQatar shooting and Archery Association Cup: Toaima tops in Men’s 10m rifle eventDOHA: Mahbubeh Mohabatolla Akhlaghi made a winning return to Women’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions at the Qatar Shooting and Archery Association Cup at Losail Shooting Complex here yesterday.

Akhlaghi, who took a break away from the Women’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions for the last four years to concentrate on other shooting events, clinched the top place set-ting aside the challenge of Aisha Yousef Al Suwaidi and Aisha Ibrahim Al Mutawa.

“I had some health issues that is the reason I took a break from 50m Rifle 3 Positions, but I was taking part in the other shoot-ing events,” said Akhlaghi, who took gold in the same event in the Cairo 2007 Arab Games.

Akhlaghi said her excellent performance will keep her in the right frame ahead of the upcom-ing Asian Championships in Kuwait which will serve as one of the qualifying tournaments for the 2016 Olympics Games in Rio de Janeiro.

“The next big event for us and a big challenge is to the bag the Olympic quota at the Asian Championships,” said a delighted Akhlaghi, who trailed the other two podium winners in the

qualifying rounds but covered lot of ground to triumph in the final rounds.

On Friday, Bahia Al Hamad won the gold medal in the Women’s 50m Rifle.

Al Hamad sparkled in all attempts to secure a gold medal, ahead of Mahbouba Akhlaqi who clinched the silver medal while the bronze medal went to Aisha Al Motawa.

In girls’ 50m Rifle event, Noora Al Mohannadi grabbed the gold medal as Shahad Darwish took the silver and the bronze went to Aisha Al Suwaidi.

In the Men’s 10m rifle event

Moving Target, Mohammed Abo Toaima won the gold medal, Mohammed Subhi finished in the second place and Hassan Al Rabae clinched the bronze medal.

Mohammed Taher, Head of the Organizing Committee and Ibrahim Al Mohannadi, Championship Director handed over the medals to the podium winners. THE PENINSULA

Mohammed Abo Toaima (centre), winner in the Men’s 10m Rifle Moving Target event, poses on the platform along with second place finisher Mohammed Subhi and Hassan Al Rabae, who clinched the bronze medal. RIGHT: The podium winners pose with officials of Qatar Shooting and Archery Association during the victory ceremony.

Cavani equaliser keeps PSG on topPARIS: Edinson Cavani came off the bench to save Paris Saint-Germain’s blushes and maintain their Ligue 1 unbeaten run as the champions retained top spot with a 1-1 draw at plucky Reims yesterday.

The result means PSG will fin-ish the weekend top of Ligue 1 on 14 points ahead of Rennes, who drew with Lille on Friday, on 13 while Caen are third on 12 after a 2-1 win over Montpellier.

All eyes, however, will be on Marseille on Sunday night as they host Lyon in the pick of the weekend games.

At Reims, the two goals came within a minute of each other as home defender Jordan Saibatcheu took advantage of some hapless defending to give his side an 83rd minute lead, which would have been enough to carry his side level with the Parisians at the top.

But PSG responded in style as Argentine playmaker Javier Pastore played a peach of a through-ball and Cavani rushed into the area to clip a slick shot past goalkeeper Kossi Agassa.

It was his fifth league strike of the season.

“It would have been an injus-tice if we had lost this match, but we’re disappointed with the result,” said PSG coach Laurent Blanc.

“Because we should also have scored more goals. We just were not nasty enough, in the good sense of the word.”

A badly misfiring Zlatan Ibrahimovic had missed a sitter on 62 minutes, fluffing a straightfor-ward header with Agassa sat on the floor and the goal entirely at his mercy, the Swede inexplicably

nodding an easy chance wide. “I thought I played alright, but

I have to admit I really did miss a very easy chance indeed,” the giant Swedish striker admitted.

That was the moment Blanc went for broke and brought on Angel Di Maria, Cavani and Blaise Matuidi, who had been left on the bench after the midweek 2-0 win over Malmo in the Champions League.

Ezequiel Lavezzi almost forced a breakthrough on 17 minutes after chipping Agassa, only to see his shot agonisingly cleared off the line by a back-tracking defender.

And a bullet-header from Marquinos, partnering captain Thiago Silva in central defence, was stopped thanks to lightning reflexes on the hour by Agassa, a 37-year-old from Togo.

Reims had gone into the game third in Ligue 1 and almost took a first-half lead when Nicolas de Preville hit the post on 40 min-utes with PSG stopper Kevin Trapp rooted to his line.

On Friday, Rennes temporarily moved level on points with PSG after a 1-1 home draw against ten-man Lille, who had their Nigerian goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama sent off.

Promoted Corsican minnows Gazelec Ajaccio scored their first ever Ligue 1 goal in a 2-1 defeat at Guingamp. Senegal-born Kader Mangane was the man on target after 36 minutes of their sixth top-flight game, but his side remain rooted to the bottom of the table. Elsewhere Nice got a 3-1 win at Bastia and Angers beat fellow Ligue 1 new boys Troyes 1-0. AFP

Real Madrid edge past GranadaMADRID: A solitary goal from Karim Benzema spared Real Madrid’s blushes as the Spanish giants moved to the top of La Liga with a nervy 1-0 win over Granada yesterday.

Real had scored 15 times in their previous three matches, but they were grateful to some poor Granada finishing and controver-sial calls by the officials to claim all three points.

Benzema grabbed the only goal of the game nine minutes into the second-half with a cushioned header from Isco’s fine cross.

Victory moves Madrid a point ahead of Barcelona at the top of the table with the Catalans not in action until Sunday when they host Levante.

“We knew before the game it could be a difficult game, against

a good team that counter-attacks well, and that was how it was,” said Madrid boss Rafael Benitez.

“We lost possession that allowed them to counter-attack and we didn’t take our chances which complicated the game.

“I know we have to win and play well, but when the game doesn’t go as you wish, to win and get the three points is very important.”

The scene appeared to be set at a sunny Bernabeu for Ronaldo to surpass Raul to become Madrid’s all-time top goalscorer.

There was even a special intro-duction for the World Player of the Year as his mascot for the day was Zaid Mohsen, the seven-year-old Syrian refugee made famous when he and his father were tripped by a Hungarian camerawoman.

However, the script wasn’t fol-lowed once the action got under-way as Granada passed up a host of chances to spring a massive surprise.

Marcelo was forced into a clearance off the Real goal-line early on before Isaac Success fluffed his first of a number of opportunities when he failed to hit the target when unmarked at the back post.

Ronaldo’s first opening came 18 minutes in, but Andres Fernandez stood up well to block his effort before Benzema failed to turn the rebound home.

Youssef El-Arabi did have the ball in the net for Granada moments later, but was wrongly ruled to have been offside.

Fernandez made further good saves from Luka Modric, Ronaldo

and Lucas Vazquez to keep Rafael Benitez’s men at bay.

Yet, Success had two more great chances to put Granada in front just before and after the break as he was denied by a brave save from Keylor Navas before chipping the ball well over with his second effort.

The Andalusians were even-tually made to pay for their prof ligacy when Isco’s perfect cross picked out Benzema for a simple header to open the scoring.

El-Arabi should still have given Granada a share of the points, but he too couldn’t find a way past Navas at the end of a fine individ-ual run as the Costa Rica inter-national stretched his unbeaten streak to start the season to five games. AFP

Real Madrid’s French striker Karim Benzema (left) cel-

ebrates with his team-mates Pepe (centre) and Toni

Kroos after scoring a goal during the Spanish Primera Division match againstGranada CF at Santiago

Bernabeu Stadium in Madrid, Spain,

yesterday.

Sunday 20 September 20156 Dhul-Hijja 1436

Volume 20Number 6559

Price: QR2

[email protected] | [email protected] Editorial: 44557741 | Advertising: 44557837 / 44557780www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

Sport | 23 Sport | 25

Day seizes 5-shot lead at BMW contest

Japan snatch win over SA at rugby Worlds

SportLekhwiya open up with triumphQSL: Defending champions fight back to beat Qatar SC 3-1, Al Arabi edge Al Khor 1-0DOHA: Football giants Lekhwiya opened their title-defence at the Qatar Stars League (QSL) with an emphatic 3-1 win over Qatar SC, thanks to a brace by experienced mid-fielder Youssef Msakani at the Lekhwiya Stadium, yesterday.

The defending champions who returned to QSL after suffer-ing defeat against Saudi Arabia’s Al Hilal in the AFC Champions League quarter-finals, got first half scare when Mohammaed Omar Saeed took Qatar SC by scoring a goal in the 30th minute.

However, after ten minutes of attacking football, Lekhwiya managed to pull a leveller through Msakani.

The second half saw some good display of attacking football from both sides but it was Lekhwiya who earned the timely lead, with seasoned Slovakian Vadimir Weiss giving the breakthrough in the 81st minute.

Msakani took advantage of vul-nerable Qatar SC’s defense in the injury time, scoring the last gasp goal seal his brace and a 3-1 vic-tory for the defending champions.

Meanwhile, Al Arabi registered their second win of the season as they defeated Al Khor 1-0 at the Grand Hamad Stadium.

Striker Yousef Ahmed scored the only goal of the match to secure three valuable points for Arabi.

The spotlight certainly is on Arabi this season since bringing

in Gianfranco Zola as head coach and so far the Italian has man-aged to get the best out of his side with two wins from two games.

During the pre-match press conferences, the Italian reiter-ated that resurrecting Arabi and getting them back to where they belong is his primary objective. But he also requested patience

to be afforded to him because the revival won’t happen overnight.

The performance against Khor will help Arabi fans believe in his philosophy that much more as the Dream Team looked more com-posed and worked as a team for large parts of the game.

There was just one goal and that came early in the match – in

the 24th minute. Midfielder Ali Jasemi sent a lob down the flank on the right for Yousef Ahmed.

Al Khor defender Lee Yong couldn’t clear the ball and Yousef ran around him to slot the ball past the onrushing keeper.

It wasn’t the most powerful of shots as Yousef didn’t con-nect properly. The ball seemed

to take an age to bobble over the line and defender Naif al Buriki attempted a last ditch clearance but the ball had already crossed the line.

Possession was almost even with Arabi edging it slightly and created more chances. Tonight’s Zola’s mend deserved the victory after putting a hard shirt.

There will be tougher chal-lenges ahead and Zola might worry with his team’s low number of goals.

Khor, on the other hand, have now lost both of their games.

They have been defeated by opponents who could be rated as stronger than them.

THE PENINSULA

Chelsea sink nine-man Arsenal, West Ham stun leaders City

Manchester City’s Yaya

Toure reacts during the

English Premier League match

against West Ham United at the Etihad Stadium in

Manchester, yesterday.

EPL Results Aston Villa 0 West Bromwich 1 (Berahino 39); Bournemouth 2 (Wilson 4, Ritchie

9) Sunderland 0; Chelsea 2 (Zouma 53, Hazard 90) Arsenal 0; Manchester City 1 (De

Bruyne 45) West Ham 2 (Moses 6, Sakho 31); Newcastle 1 (Janmaat 62) Watford 2 (Ighalo 10, 28); Stoke 2 (Bojan 13, Walters 20) Leicester 2 (Mahrez 51-pen, Vardy 69);

Swansea 0 Everton 0

Playing Today

Liverpool vs Norwich (1500 GMT), Southampton vs Manchester United (1500 GMT), Tottenham vs Crystal Palace (1230

GMT)

LONDON: Kurt Zouma and Eden Hazard gave Chelsea a controversial 2-0 win over nine-man Arsenal yesterday while leaders Manchester City crashed to a shock 2-1 defeat against West Ham.

The acrimonious relation-ship between Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho and Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger seeped through to both teams at Stamford Bridge in a tetchy London derby featuring even more flashpoints than usual.

And at Eastlands, Kevin de Bruyne’s first goal for City wasn’t enough to salvage their 100 per-cent start against the Hammers, who have defeated Arsenal, Liverpool and Manuel Pellegrini’s side in their first three away games this season.

City fell behind in the sixth minute when on-loan Chelsea winger Victor Moses fired home from 20 yards for the first league goal conceded by Pellegrini’s club this term.

Senegal forward Diafra Sakho

netted the visitors’ second from close-range in the 31st minute.

Belgium midfielder De Bruyne, a £55m ($85m) signing from Wolfsburg last month, marked his first City start with a clinical finish in first half stoppage-time.

But a brilliant Adrian save from Nicolas Otamendi’s header ended the hosts’ winning run at five matches and lifted West Ham into second place.

At Stamford Bridge, Wenger was furious Mike Dean opted not to send off Diego Costa following a clash with Laurent Koscielny and the referee further infuriated the Frenchman when he dismissed

Gabriel for kicking Costa and then showed Santi Cazorla a red card in the second half.

Chelsea striker Costa was booked for shoving over Koscielny after whacking the Arsenal defender in the face moments earlier.

Gunners defender Gabriel remonstrated with Costa and was booked for his complaints.

But the Brazilian couldn’t keep his emotions under control and in first-half stoppage-time he aimed a sly kick at Costa right in front of the referee, who immediately brandished a red card.

Chelsea made their numerical

advantage count in the 53rd minute when French defender Zouma was left unmarked to head in a Cesc Fabregas free-kick.

Cazorla was sent off in the 79th minute when the Spanish mid-fielder caught Fabregas with an ugly lunging tackle.

Belgium midfielder Hazard guaranteed the champions’ sec-ond league victory of the season in the 90th minute when his strike deflected off Calum Chambers to leave the Gunners without a league success against the Blues since 2011.

Odion Ighalo kept Newcastle in the relegation zone as the Nigerian forward’s double inspired Watford’s 2-1 win at St James’ Park.

Ighalo gave Watford a 10th minute lead with a low strike and he increased their advantage with his fourth goal in six matches in the 28th minute.

Newcastle ended a nearly 500-minute goal drought when Dutch defender Daryl Janmaat netted in the 62nd minute, but McClaren’s team were unable to avoid their third consecutive loss.

Ten-man Sunderland slipped to the bottom of the table after a 2-0 defeat at Bournemouth.

Leicester staged another impressive fightback to maintain their unbeaten record with a 2-2 draw at Stoke.

Everton’s Kevin Mirallas was sent off for a foul on Modou Barrow in the final moments of his side’s 0-0 draw at Swansea.

In today’s matches, Van Gaal’s Manchester United travel to Southampton, Tottenham host Crystal Palace and Liverpool take on Norwich. AFP

Coman opens account as Bayern Munich go top BERLIN: Bayern Munich’s French teenager Kingsley Coman scored his first Bundesliga goal in their 3-0 vic-tory over promoted Darmstadt 98 on Saturday as the German champions went three points clear at the top of the table with their fifth straight win.

The 19-year-old Coman, who joined on a two-year loan deal from Juventus this season, drilled in from a perfect Sebastian Rode cutback for a 2-0 lead as Bayern rested several players after their 3-0 Champions League win at Olympiakos this week and ahead of a big midweek Bundesliga game against VfL Wolfsburg.

Earlier, a scintillating run by winger Douglas Costa drew three players to the Brazilian who laid it off for Arturo Vidal to drill home off the post for his own first goal for the Bavarians in the 20th minute.

Rode netted Bayern’s third goal on the rebound after his first effort bounced off the post following another through ball from Costa to make sure of Darmstadt’s first loss this season.

The Bavarians, who saw Javier Martinez make his first appear-ance of the season, are on a

maximum 15 points from their opening five games, three ahead of Borussia Dortmund, who host Bayer Leverkusen on Sunday.

VfL Wolfsburg edged past Hertha Berlin 2-0, but left it late with two goals from substitute Bas Dost in the 76th and 88th minutes securing a deserved victory.

The Wolves, who also beat CSKA Moscow in midweek to make a winning start in the Champions League, are in third place on 11 points.

Fellow Champions League club Borussia Moenchengladbach slumped to a 1-0 defeat at Cologne for their fifth straight defeat.

Gladbach, who finished third last season, have yet to earn a point this season, and are lan-guishing in last place after their worst ever Bundesliga start.

Promoted Ingolstadt snatched a last-gasp 1-0 win at Werder Bremen with a stoppage-time penalty to move up to fifth on 10 and become the first league new-comer to win their first three away games.

Hamburg drew 0-0 against Eintracht Frankfurt but moved up to tenth on seven points. REUTERS

Munich’s Kingsley Coman celebrates

his goal during the Bundesliga match against SV Darmstadt

98 in Darmstadt, Germany, yesterday.

Lekhwiya’s players celebrate their goal against Qatar SC during their Qatar Stars League (QSL) match at Lekhwiya Stadium in Doha, yesterday. RIGHT: Lekhwiya and Qatar SC players vie for the ball possession during the match.

$1.5bn qatari emir mourns death of dubai ruler’s son aid ... · al rayyan model city 70pc...

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