In brief

BUSINESS | Page 1

GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978FRIDAY Vol. XXXX No. 11277

August 16, 2019Dhul-Hijja 15, 1440 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

QATAR | Page 16

Indian community celebrates 73rd Independence Day

China to counter latest US tariff s as Trump vows deal on America terms

QATAR | Diplomacy

Amir holds phonetalk with PutinHis Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani yesterday held a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They reviewed strategic bilateral relations and means to enhance them in all fields. The Amir and the Russian president expressed their satisfaction with the strong level of bilateral co-operation, particularly in the commerce and economy fields. The Amir invited Putin to visit Qatar. The Russian leader congratulated the Amir on the advent of Eid al-Adha and invited him to participate in the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2020. The Amir welcomed the invitation. The Amir and Putin also discussed the latest regional developments.

QATAR | Offi cial

Amir greets Indianpresident on I-DayHis Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani yesterday sent cables of congratulations to Indian President Ram Nath Kovind on the occasion of the anniversary of his country’s Independence Day. HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani also sent a similar cable to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the occasion.

QATAR | Cables

Amir sends greetingsto S Korean presidentHis Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani yesterday sent cables of congratulations to South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the occasion of his country’s National Day. HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani also sent a cable of congratulations to South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon on the occasion.

AMERICA | Weather

July 2019 hottest month on record July 2019 temperatures were the hottest ever recorded globally, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said yesterday. Page 5

Israel bars visitby two US congresswomen

Israel said yesterday it will bar a planned visit by two US congress-women who have supported a boy-

cott of the country over its treatment of the Palestinians, a decision strongly encouraged by President Donald Trump.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the highly unusual move against Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib neces-sary, charging that their “sole purpose is to harm Israel and increase incite-ment against it”.

US politicians called on Israel to re-consider, while senior Palestinian of-fi cial Hanan Ashrawi labelled it “an outrageous act of hostility against the American people and their representa-tives”. Omar said it was a “chilling” decision and an “insult to democratic values.” To Page 3

This combination of pictures shows Ilhan (L) and Rashida during a press conference, at the US Capitol.

Gibraltardecides tofree Iran’soil tankerReutersLondon/ Gibraltar

Britain’s Mediterranean territory Gibraltar yesterday decided to free a seized Iranian oil tanker,

but did not immediately indicate when or if the ship would set sail after the United States launched a new, last-minute legal bid to hold it.

The Grace 1 was seized by British Royal Marine commandos in dark-ness off the coast of the territory at the western mouth of the Mediterranean on July 4 on suspicion of violating Eu-ropean Union sanctions by taking oil to Syria, a close ally of Iran.

Two weeks later, Iran seized a Brit-ish-fl agged tanker in the Strait of Hor-muz leading into the Gulf.

The two tankers have become pawns in the standoff between Iran and the West, their fate tangled up in the diplo-matic diff erences between the EU’s big powers and the United States.

Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picar-do decided to lift the detention order after formal written assurances from Te-hran that the ship would not discharge its 2.1mn barrels of oil in Syria.

“In light of the assurances we have received, there are no longer any rea-sonable grounds for the continued legal detention of the Grace 1 in order to en-sure compliance with the EU Sanctions Regulation,” Picardo said.

However, Gibraltar officials did not make clear whether the US legal bid would mean the ship would have to be detained further or, if so, for how long.

“Separately, the United States De-partment of Justice has requested that

a new legal procedure for the detention of the vessel should be commenced,” Picardo said.

“That is a matter for our independ-ent Mutual Legal Assistance authori-ties who will make an objective, legal determination of that request for sepa-rate proceedings.”

Iran said the ship would sail shortly and Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif characterised the US bid to pre-vent it from leaving as “piracy”.

“America desperately tried to block t he release of the tanker at the last minute, but faced a miserable defeat,” Iran’s ambassador to Britain, Hamid Baeidinejad, said on Twitter.

“All preparations are done for the tanker to sail into open waters, and the vessel will soon leave Gibraltar.”

The tanker remains anchored, though its prow has moved around by at least 180 degrees.

Earlier, a small vessel approached the Grace 1, which lowered a step lad-der that at least two persons used it to reach the ship deck where they shook hands with people already on board.

Jalil Eslami, deputy head of Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organisation, told the semi-offi cial Mehr news agency the Grace 1 would head to “Mediterranean ports”, citing “an announcement by the owner of the tanker”.

Britain’s Foreign Offi ce said Iran must abide by its pledge that the ship would not sail for Syria.

There was “no comparison or link-age between Iran’s unacceptable and illegal seizure of, and attacks on, com-mercial shipping vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the enforcement of EU Syria sanctions by the Government of Gibraltar,” it added in a statement.

US seeks to detain ship, UK says Tehran must abide by assurances

Space tourism moves a step closer to reality

This undated Virgin Galatic and Spaceship Company handout photo obtained on Wednesday shows Virgin Galactic’s Spaceflight System as it prepares for flight at Spaceport America in the desert near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Space tourism moved a step closer to reality yesterday as Virgin Galactic unveiled its new Mission Control at the spaceport and the schedule for final test flights before taking paying customers into the final frontier.

S Indian stars rock Qatar audience at awards eventBy Shafeeq Alingal Staff Reporter

Glamour and glitter marked the fi rst day of the eighth annual Pantaloons South Indian Inter-

national Movie Awards (SIIMA) at the Lusail Sports Arena yesterday, as a gal-axy of stars descended on Doha to be a part of the two-day mega show.

Yesterday saw the celebration of Telu-gu and Kannada cinema, as awards were given away in various categories and stars enthralled the crowd with some scintil-lating performances on stage.

Among those present on the occa-sion were superstar Chiranjeevi and a host of other famous personalities from

the Telugu and Kannada fi lm indus-tries, including actors, singers, direc-tors, writers, music directors, produc-ers and technicians.

They included Keerthy Suresh, Vijay Deverakonda, Yash, Shriya Saran, Raai Laxmi, Ashish Gandhi, Dhananjaya, Nidhhi Agerwal, Anasuya, Andrea Jer-emiah, Sundeep Kishan, Shanvi Srivat-sava, Ananya Bhat, Vijay Raghavendra, Sharmila Mandre, Anupama, Malvika Sharma, Hebah Patel, Rajasree Pon-nappa, Radhika Sarathkumar and Devi Sri Prasad.

Also present was noted trade ana-lyst Taran Adarsh. A number of dig-nitaries were also in attendance yes-terday, including Indian ambassador P Kumaran.To Page 16

Superstar Chiranjeevi with Indian ambassador P Kumaran and others at the SIIMA 2019 ceremony at Lusail Sports Arena yesterday. PICTURES: Jayan Orma

GDI signs joint venture agreement with Seadrill

Gulf Drilling International (GDI), a wholly owned sub-sidiary of Gulf International

Services (GIS), has executed a joint venture agreement with Seadrill Limited to service the Qatar Petro-leum North Field Expansion drilling programme.

The joint venture, which will be established by Qatar Financial Centre under a 50:50 ownership structure, will be named “GulfDrill”.

GIS is one of the largest service groups in Qatar, with interests in a broad cross-section of industries, ranging from insurance, re-insur-ance, onshore and off shore drilling, accommodation barge, helicopter transportation, and catering services.

The joint venture is formed to support the execution of the drilling contracts which have been awarded to GDI, a release issued by GIS yes-terday said.

GDI has no required capital con-tribution to the joint venture. GDI will be subcontracted by the joint venture to mobilise and manage the rigs to meet the requirements of the drilling contracts. The joint venture will source rigs directly from Seadrill, and any additional rigs required will be sourced from an unrelated third-party shipyard.

The fi rm terms of the well-based contracts will commence in 2020 with initial terms concluding in 2023 and 2024 and an estimated total con-tract value (including mobilisation income) of

QR 2.39bn. The contracts include single well-based options which could add up to an estimated 13.7 cumulative years of term and an ad-ditional contract value of QR 2.55bn. The options could be exercised only if the contractual stipulations are realised prior to the end of the fi rm contracts period. If the options are exercised by the customer at a later date, GIS will announce the award of the options accordingly.

William Ceppi, GDI’s Chief Execu-tive Offi cer, stated: “We are pleased with the continued collaboration with our joint venture partner. We look forward to working closely with all stakeholders on this signifi cant project and we remain honoured to be entrusted to continue our safe and effi cient operations for Qatar Petro-leum.”

The joint venture comes in line with GIS’s strategy to capture new business opportunities that would potentially help increase revenues and ultimately maximise shareholder value.

Anupama Gowda with the award for Best Debut Actor Female (Kannada).

Payal Rajput with the award for Best Debut Actor Female (Telugu). Courtesy of SIIMA Facebook page

2 Gulf TimesFriday, August 16, 2019

QATAR

Eid al-Adha festivities conclude at KataraQNADoha

The Cultural Village Foun-dation’s Eid al-Adha festivities concluded on

Wednesday.The festivities were held dur-

ing the Eid holidays during which hundreds of families en-joyed an exciting day full of fun and joy with plenty of entertain-ment facilities dedicated for the children to enjoy.

Director of Public Relations Department, Katara, Salem Mabkhout al-Marri said the Katara’s Eid al-Adha festivities were successful in attracting large numbers of citizens, resi-dents and visitors from outside Qatar who enjoyed the beautiful performances in an exceptional atmosphere of entertainment and real fun.

Katara was keen on making the excitement of Eid al-Adha a better experience by blending fun with knowledge as the cul-tural village is full of art and cul-tural activities.

A fascinating fi reworks show was featured to mark the end of the Eid festivities in Katara.

A musical show was per-formed by the Police Training Institute. The Qatari national anthem was performed at the event.

Meanwhile, the Al Thuraya Planetarium screened 3d fi lms – The Space dawn age fi lm, The perfect little planet and The As-tronaut.

A musical show was performed by the Police Training Institute.

Fireworks light up the sky above Katara. Families enjoyed an exciting day full of fun and joy.

Children receiving gifts on the occasion.

The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has announced a minor diversion on Mesaieed Road from tomorrow until August 23. During the diversion, which will be implemented in co-ordination with the General Directorate of Traff ic, the service road below Hamad Port Interchange towards Al Wakrah will be closed for the completion of bridge works, Ashghal has said in a statement. Motorists can use the right turn to reach their destinations.

Minor diversion on Mesaieed Road

Bangladesh embassy marksNational Mourning DayThe Bangladesh embassy

in Doha yesterday ob-served the 44th anniver-

sary of the martyrdom of Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and National Mourning Day with due solemnity.

On the occasion, the na-tional flag was hoisted at half-mast to commemorate the martyrdom of Bangabandhu and his family members, who were killed on August 15, 1975, the embassy said in a state-ment.

The occasion was marked by recitation of the holy Qur’an, and a fl oral wreath was also laid at a portrait of Bangabandhu on behalf of the embassy, the Bangladesh school and diff er-ent political and community organisations in Qatar to pay tribute to the Father of the Na-tion for his great contribution to the independence of Bang-ladesh.

Messages delivered on the day by the president, prime minister, foreign minister and state minister for foreign aff airs of Bangladesh were read out be-fore the gathering.

In his remarks, ambassador Ashud Ahmed paid homage to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman whose “heroic leader-ship ushered the Bengali nation to its long-cherished dream of independence”, the statement noted.

He applauded the lead-ership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who has “uplifted Bangladesh as a role model of development in the comity of nations”.

The envoy reaffi rmed his commitment to render maxi-mum services to the people in line with the government’s ef-forts to turn Bangladesh into ‘Golden Bengal’.

He also took the opportunity to call upon all members of the Bangladeshi community in Qa-tar to abide by the law and up-hold the image of Bangladesh in Qatar.

A documentary titled Our Bangabandhu was screened to highlight the life and work of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

A Milad and special prayer was held “to seek eternal sal-vation of all martyrs and the peace and prosperity of Bang-ladesh”.

A large number of peo-ple representing different professions, political and community organisations in Qatar participated in the ob-servance of National Mourn-ing Day.

Ambassador Ashud Ahmed delivering a speech on the occasion.

Hoisting of the national flag at half-mast.

The gathering at the National Mourning Day event.

Poor visibility, strong winds during day, humid by night

Strong winds are expected in some places by this af-ternoon, the Qatar Met de-

partment has said.This will follow a likely spell

of poor visibility in parts of the country in the early hours of the day, according to the weather re-port.

In its detailed forecast, the department has said misty to foggy conditions are expected in some places by early this morn-ing, followed by a hot day with slight dust in some areas as well as clouds.

Humid conditions will prevail by night, the report adds.

The wind speed will be less than 5 knots at first, later turning northwesterly-north-easterly with a speed of 10-20 knots. It is likely to reach a high of 24 knots in some places by the afternoon.

Visibility, meanwhile, may drop to 2km or less in some areas by early this morning.

On the other hand, it will be misty in some off shore areas in the early hours of the day, fol-lowed by fi ne conditions.

The maximum temperature is expected to be 41C today in Wakrah, Mesaieed and Abu Samra, 40C in Doha, 39C in Al Khor, 38C in Dukhan and 36C in Ruwais.

Yesterday, a maximum of 44C was recorded in Sheehaniya, Ka-rana, Turayna and Jumayliyah, followed by 43C in Abu Hamour, Batna and Ghuwairiyah, 41C in Doha (airport area), the Qatar University area and Mesaieed, and 40C in Abu Samra and the Hamad International Airport area.

An entertainment show at Souq Waqif, held as part of the Eid al-Adha celebrations.

Spectacular show at Souq Waqif

REGION/ARAB WORLD3Gulf Times

Friday, August 16, 2019

Hezbollah members start their motorcycles in the Lebanese village of Aitaroun yesterday, during a parade marking the 13th anniversary of the end of the 2006 war with Israel.

Anniversary ride

Libya capital fl ights suspended after deadly rocket fi reAFPTripoli

Flights at the Libyan capi-tal’s sole functioning air-port were suspended yes-

terday after deadly overnight rocket fi re, a spokesman for the country’s unity government said. Wednesday night’s rocket

fi re “killed a guard and wounded several security agents tasked with protecting the airport,” said Moustafa al-Mejii, spokesman for the Tripoli-based Govern-ment of National Accord (GNA).

He blamed the attack on “the militias of (Khalifa) Haftar” whose forces launched an of-fensive on the Libyan capital in April. Arrivals and departures at

Mitiga airport were suspended as a result, Mejii said. Located east of Tripoli, Mitiga is a former mil-itary airbase that has been used by civilian traffi c since Tripoli international airport suff ered severe damage during fi ghting in 2014.

Mitiga is in a zone under the control of forces loyal to the GNA and has often been targeted,

leading to repeated suspensions of fl ights. United Nations en-voy Ghassan Salame, in a report to the UN Security Council last month, urged “authorities in Tripoli to cease using the (Mitiga) airport for military purposes and for the attacking forces to halt immediately their targeting of it.” The GNA protested at what it said were “untruths” in the en-

voy’s report. Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) has encountered fi erce resistance from pro-government forces in the battle for Tripoli.

A stalemate on the ground in the capital’s southern outskirts has led to a greater reliance on air strikes by both sides.

The fi ghting since April has killed 1,093 people and wounded

5,752 others, according to the World Health Organisation.

More than 120,000 people have been displaced. The LNA said yesterday its air force car-ried out a strike against an air-field in Zuwara, a town west of Tripoli, and destroyed two hangars allegedly used to house drones. “The runway and termi-nals were spared” at the airfi eld,

which is not open to commercial fl ights, LNA spokesman General Ahmed al-Mesmari wrote on Fa-cebook.

The GNA, however, posted pictures of a huge crater and de-bris on the tarmac.

Libya has been mired in chaos since a Nato-backed uprising that toppled and killed dictator Muamar Gaddafi in 2011.

Sudan opposition set to nominate economist Abdalla Hamdok as PMReutersKhartoum

Sudan’s main opposition alli-ance will nominate Abdalla Hamdok, an economist

who has served in international institutions, to be prime minister in the country’s transitional gov-ernment, opposition sources said yesterday.

The nomination is the fi rst step towards the creation of a transi-tional government that will pre-pare for free elections after the overthrow of veteran autocratic president Omar al-Bashir in April following months of unrest.

The development came after protracted negotiations between the Transitional Military Council (TMC), which has ruled Sudan since April, and the opposition alliance known as the Forces of

Freedom and Change (FFC). A planned new sovereign council, comprising fi ve members each from the two sides plus a civilian agreed by both, will name the new premier based on the nomination by the FFC, according to a con-stitutional declaration agreed on earlier this month.

The sovereign council will be formed on Sunday, according to the agreed schedule, after which the Transitional Military Council will be dissolved, with the prime minister to be appointed on Tues-day next week.

Hamdok, long rumoured as the FFC nominee, was last working as Deputy Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and has held positions at the International Labor Organisa-tion and the African Development Bank.

He served as an offi cial in Su-

dan’s Ministry of Finance in the 1980s, before the military coup that put Bashir in power.

Sudanese economist Amin Hassan Sayed Ahmed said Hamdok had good connections in the African Union and Unit-ed Nations and might help get Sudan removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, which has impeded Khartoum’s access to IMF and World Bank funding.

“I think he knows how to get in through the system, much more than anyone else who tried be-fore,” said Sayed Ahmed.

“We wish Dr Abdalla Hamdok success in one of the hardest pe-riods in the history of our country and people, a period that the rev-olutionary Sudanese people are looking forward to and observing with hopefulness,” the Sudanese Professionals Association, the

group that spearheaded the pro-test movement and is part of the FFC, said in a statement.

The opposition alliance will also nominate former judge and human rights activist Mohamed Alhafi z Mahmoud as public pros-ecutor, opposition sources said, and Abdelqadir Mohamed Ahmed as head of the judiciary. Their appointment would also be con-fi rmed by the sovereign council after its formation.

The FFC and Transitional Mili-tary Council are expected to put fi nal signatures on the constitu-tional declaration tomorrow at a ceremony in Khartoum with for-eign dignitaries attending.

Some caution that it is still too early to tell how events will unfold in the lengthy, three-year, three-month transition period agreed to prepare for elections after three decades of rule under Bashir.

Israeli security forces gather at the site of shooting at one of the entrances of the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem yesterday.

One Palestinian youth shot deadAFPJerusalem

Two Palestinian youths were shot by Israeli po-lice offi cers in Jerusa-

lem’s Old City yesterday leav-ing one of them dead, offi cials said. Israeli police said an of-

fi cer was moderately wounded. The Palestinian health min-

istry said one was killed, while Israel’s Shaare Tzedek hospital said the second was left in criti-cal condition.

Another person in the area was injured in the leg, police said, without providing further details. Tensions ran high in

Jerusalem’s Old City this week after overlapping Jewish and Muslim holidays led to clashes at a fl ashpoint holy site.

The clashes on Sunday be-tween Israeli police and Pal-estinian worshippers at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, wounded dozens of Palestin-ians.

Iraqi PM tightens airspace permissions after attackDPA Baghdad

All military planes will need authorisation from Iraqi Prime Minister Ab-

del Abdel-Mahdi to fl y in Iraqi airspace, a statement said yes-terday, days after an explosion took place at a weapons depot in Baghdad.

Iraqi or non-Iraqi recon-naissance fl ights, fi ghter jets, helicopters and drones must get permission from Abdel-Mahdi – who is also the Commander of the Armed Forces, the Iraqi army’s Joint Operations Com-

mand said. All parties “must comply with this directive and any air traffi c violation will be considered hostile and will be handled by our air defences im-mediately,” it added.

On Monday, at least one ci-vilian was killed when a weap-ons depot blew up at al-Saqr camp, which is run by militia Hashd Shaabi, in south-west Baghdad.

The cause of the explosion is still unclear, though some re-ports said it was due to a strike targeting the depot. Hashd Shaabi, or the Popular Mobi-lisation Forces, have played a major role in the US-backed

campaign that routed radical IS militants in Iraq in 2017.

Abdel-Mahdi also ordered a comprehensive investigation into the explosion, with results expected within one week.

He urged fi nalising plans to move all camps and depots af-fi liated with “the Interior and Defence Ministries as well as the Hashd Shaabi and other factions that took part in the fi ght against IS to outside the cities.”

In December 2017, Iraq de-clared victory over IS, having recaptured the large swathes of territory taken by the extrem-ists in 2014 and 2015.

Syrian rebels launch attack after government advancesReutersBeirut

A rebel group will send re-inforcements to the front lines of the last major

rebel enclave in northern Syria to oppose a government off en-sive, it said yesterday.

Over the past week, the Syr-ian army has advanced towards the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib in a pincer movement that could encircle the southern part of the rebel enclave.

The British-based Syr-ian Observatory for Human Rights said that the rebels had launched a counter-attack on the eastern pincer at the village of Sukeik, and that dozens had been killed in the fi ghting.

The National Army and Na-tional Liberation Front, have joined forces to oppose the of-fensive. The National Army will send more of its fi ghters to the front lines to oppose the gov-

ernment units, its spokesman said.

“It was decided to start sending troops from the Na-tional Army starting tomor-row,” spokesman Major Youssef Hamoud said.

While the National Libera-tion Front normally operates in Idlib, the National Army’s strongholds are located in an area north of Aleppo. The most powerful group in Idlib is wide-ly seen to be Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Colonel Mustafa Bakour, a commander in the Jaish al-Izza rebel faction, which is also ac-tive in the confl ict area, told Reuters that rebel forces had advanced against government forces in the east of the prov-ince.

On Wednesday, rebel fi ght-ers shot down a Syrian mili-tary Sukhoi 22 jet near Khan Sheikhoun, a town that was hit by a sarin poison gas attack in 2017. Eight years of war in Syria

have killed hundreds of thou-sands of people and driven half the pre-war population of 22mn from their homes, including more than 6mn as refugees to neighbouring countries.

The United Nations and aid agencies have warned of a new humanitarian catastrophe in northwest Syria, as hundreds of thousands of people have fl ed their homes since the govern-ment’s off ensive began in late April.

On Wednesday a US agency which supports health facilities in opposition-held areas of Syr-ia said government air strikes had targeted an ambulance centre, killing a paramedic, an ambulance driver and a rescue worker who was trying to free them from the rubble.

Mark Cutts, a UN offi cial working on Syria, condemned the strike in a statement, saying it “highlights again the horror of what’s going on in Idlib and northern Hama”.

Israel bars visit by two US congresswomenFrom Page 1

Omar and Tlaib, who is of Palestinian origin, were ex-pected to arrive in Israel at the weekend for a visit that would have taken them to the Pales-tinian territories.

Israeli offi cials said they would consider a separate hu-manitarian request from Tlaib to visit family members in the occupied West Bank, a trip for which she would have to pass through Israel.

Israel announced its decision shortly after Trump called on the country to bar the Demo-cratic congresswomen who are among his sharpest critics.

“It would show great weak-ness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar

and Rep. Tlaib to visit,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

He continued with typical bombast: “They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds. Minnesota and Michigan will have a hard time putting them back in office. They are a dis-grace!”

Tlaib is from Michigan and Omar from Minnesota.

Netanyahu alleged the itin-erary of the congresswom-en showed they intended to strengthen the boycott move-ment against Israel.

“As a vibrant and free de-mocracy, Israel is open to any critic and criticism, with one exception,” Netanyahu said.

“Israel’s law prohibits the entry of people who call and act to boycott Israel, as is the case with other democracies that prevent the entry of people whom they see as harming the country.”

In 2017, Israel passed a law banning entry to foreigners who support boycotting the country.

The law was passed in re-sponse to a movement to boy-cott Israel.

Israel sees the movement as a strategic threat and accuses it of anti-Semitism — a claim activ-ists deny.

Both Omar and Tlaib have been critical of Israel’s occupa-tion of the West Bank and treat-ment of Palestinians. — AFP

Iran’s top diplomat to start Nordic tour next weekIran’s foreign minister is due to visit several Nordic capitals next week, the foreign ministries of Finland, Sweden and Denmark said yesterday.Mohamed Javad Zarif’s first stop - on Monday - is Helsinki, where he is scheduled to meet with Finnish Presi-dent Sauli Niinisto, Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, and the minister for development co-operation and foreign trade Ville Skinnari. Finland currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. Tensions in the Gulf were expected to be at the centre of talks in the Nordic capitals, as well as bilateral relations, international and regional issues. Zarif continues to Swe-den on Tuesday for a two-day visit, including talks with Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom. The Iranian top diplomat’s last stop on Thursday is Oslo, where he is due to meet with Prime Minister Erna Solberg among others.

AFRICA

Gulf Times Friday, August 16, 20194

Zimbabwe rights activists abducted and beaten ahead of protestsBy MacDonald Dzirutwe, Reuters Harare

Six Zimbabwean political activists were abducted from their homes at night and beaten by armed men this week,

a coalition of rights groups said yesterday, ahead of planned street demonstrations by the main opposition party.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which disputes Emmer-son Mnangagwa’s presidential election win last year, has called today’s protest against the government’s handling of the economy, which is facing its worst crisis in a decade.

The MDC has said the demonstrations will be peaceful, but police have said they believe the protest will turn violent.

The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Fo-rum, a coalition of rights groups, said it sus-pected state security agents were behind the abductions and beatings of the rights activ-ists accused of planning the protests.

“The developments so far point to a real risk that the people of Zimbabwe’s funda-mental freedoms are once again in danger and this must be stopped before it gets out of control,” Jestina Mukoko, who chairs the forum, told reporters.

“Sadly, these developments remind us of the atrocities committed earlier this year in January,” she said, referring to a military crackdown on violent protests that led to the death of more than a dozen people.

Mnangagwa’s government said while po-lice were investigating the abductions, it be-lieved a “third force” comprising supporters of former leader Robert Mugabe were behind them.

Nick Mangwana, secretary at the informa-tion ministry, said in a statement that three abductions had been reported to police.

Mangwana pointed a fi nger at disgruntled former members of Mugabe’s government, saying they were determined to soil Mnan-gagwa’s reputation through “various acts of malice and criminality to cause both local and international outrage”.

The US embassy in Harare said in a state-ment it was concerned by the torture alle-gations and urged protesters to be peaceful. It said political dialogue and political and economic reforms were the answer to Zim-babwe’s problems.

Authorities are jittery following violence that rocked the country in January, when protests against a sharp fuel price rise re-sulted in looting of shops.

When the army was deployed, some pro-testers were shot and rights groups said doz-ens of activists were seized from their homes in night raids and badly beaten by security agents.

Police spokesman Paul Nyathi said law en-forcement offi cers had recovered stones and catapults stashed in central Harare, that he said were part of evidence that showed that Friday’s demonstrations would be violent.

He said he was not aware of the abduc-tions.

Since Wednesday, the police have in-creased patrols in Harare ahead of the MDC protests, which the party said would be rolled out in other cities next week.

Soaring infl ation is eroding wages and pensions, bringing back memories of hyper-infl ation a decade ago.

Shortages of hard currency, fuel, electric-ity and bread have added to public anger at Mnangagwa’s government.

Hopes that the economy would quickly recover and political rights would be ex-panded after Mugabe was removed in a coup in 2017 have turned to despair amid the eco-nomic hardship.

Macron recalls role of African troops in WWIIDPASaint-Raphael

French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday used the 75th anniversary of the landing

of allied troops in south-east France to call for the renaming of streets and monuments in the honour of

African fi ghters in the French Army during World War II.

France carries a part of Africa within itself, Macron said yesterday at the ceremonial act in the southern coastal city of Saint-Raphael.

“The life of these African heroes must be part of our lives as free citizens,” he said, calling on French mayors to name important public

locations after African fi ghters.The landing operation on the

southern French coast began on Au-gust 15, 1944.

While the military operation in the Provence region is less known than the so-called D-Day landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944,

the Provence operation led to the liberation of southern France from

occupying Nazi Germany.Macon mentioned at the celebra-

tion, for example, snipers from Mo-rocco, Tunisia and Algeria who took part in the operation.

Guinean President Alpha Conde and Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara as well as former French president Nicolas Sarkozy also par-ticipated in the memorial event.

Guinean President Alpha Conde, French President Emmanuel Macron and Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara take part in a ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the Allied landings in Provence during World War II, in Saint-Raphael yesterday.

Nigeria’s divisive tradition of facial markings fadesBy Joel Olatunde Agoi, AFPIbadan, Nigeria

When six-year-old Naziru Abdulwahab was ab-ducted from northern

Nigeria, his kidnapper transported him across the country and tried to sell him — but the potential buyer backed out.

What saved the boy from the child-smuggling rings, police said, was the traditional facial scarrings on his cheeks that he had been marked with at birth.

Fearing they would make him too recognisable, the would-be pur-chaser refused to buy him.

After suspicions were then raised by local residents, the traffi cker was arrested and the child rescued.

The incident in June shone a spot-light on the practice of tribal mark-ings that has been fading since the 1980s in the fast-changing country of nearly 200mn people.

Traditional practitioners, known lo-cally as oloola, said it showed the bene-fi ts of the practice that critics have long argued is unsafe and child abuse.

“Our taste for foreign things has robbed us of our customs,” Mashopa Adekunle, an oloola in the south-western city of Ibadan, told AFP.

“Nobody wants to put tribal marks on his child anymore. People see the practice as archaic, fetish and unhygienic.”

The incisions have traditionally been performed in an array of styles by diff erent ethnic groups in Nigeria.

The scarring is done — both to boys and girls — by burning or cut-

ting of the skin during childhood.From the Yoruba in the southwest,

to Igbo in the east and Hausa in the north, the marks serve diff erent purposes: identifi cation, healing, spiritual protection, beautifi cation.

Prominent fi gures, including ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, have tribal marks on their cheeks.

“In the days of inter-communal wars, tribal marks helped to identify fi ghters. You would know who were your friends and enemies in the bat-tlefi eld,” said Adekunle.

He agreed that the traditional practitioners needed to move with the times if they wanted to remain relevant — pointing to the growing numbers of Nigerian youths em-bracing western-style tattoos.

“The oloola have to do more to convince their critics that their tools are safe for use,” he said.

Opponents have pushed for a country-wide ban on facial mark-ings. In 2017, the Nigerian Senate debated a bill for the “prohibition of facial mutilation” that would have introduced punishments for those who perform it and protection for those at risk.

Proponents of the move argued that the “barbaric” practice left people disfi gured for life and put them at risk of contracting HIV.

The proposed legislation is cur-rently bogged down in parliamen-tary procedure.

The practice of facial markings has been waning for around 40 years, said the Oloola Descend-ant Association in Ibadan, whose members barely carry out one case a month now, compared to about 10 in the 1980s.

Sefi u Yusuf, the association’s

head, insisted that there was still a role for traditional methods, as he showed AFP his metal instruments wrapped in white handkerchiefs at his dark clinic.

He inherited his position from his father. He dismissed criticism that his practices were unsafe.

“It’s a smear campaign by NGOs and people in government to...put us out of business,” he said.

For another Ibadan-based oloola, Babatunde Hamzat, the dying out of the tradition has had serious conse-quences for Nigerian society.

He said its loss had contributed to the high levels of crime in the coun-try.

“In the time of our fathers, a child with tribal marks would not want to commit any crime for fear of being identifi ed,” he said.

“But nowadays, people commit crimes with levity since there is nothing to identify them with.”

Trader Dauda Lawal, 60, proudly sports the facial marks his parents gave him as a child and says he was happy to do the same to his off -spring.

“Being the fi rst son, my parents gave me tribal marks. Though the practice is dying, I still made sure my fi rst son got it to preserve the family identity,” he said.

Lawal claimed his wife married him because of the facial marks he bears.

But he is not sure if his son will follow suit.

“I will be happy if he does a simi-lar thing to his own son because it’s part of our culture that should not be allowed to die,” he said.

A woman bearing tribal marks on her cheeks poses in Lagos.

Tanzania fuel tanker blast toll hits 85

The death toll from a weekend fuel tanker explosion in eastern Tanzania rose to 85 yesterday, a regional offi cial

said. The tanker burst into fl ames on Satur-day as crowds gathered to siphon petrol from the vehicle in Morogoro, about 200km west of the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

Government offi cials initially reported at least 60 deaths. “The offi cial death toll now stands at 85...there are 17 accident victims with burn injuries admitted here at the re-gional hospital who are in stable condition,”

Morogoro regional commissioner Stephen Kebwe told Reuters by phone.

More than 20 other survivors are receiving medical attention at the country’s biggest referral hospital in Dar es Salaam, the com-missioner said.

Offi cials said some relatives had to use DNA tests to identify bodies burned beyond recognition.

On Sunday the prime minister called for an offi cial inquiry into the response of gov-ernment agencies to the disaster.

SA hits offi cial with second punitive costs orderReutersJohannesburg

A South Africa court yesterday awarded a second punitive costs order against the coun-

try’s top anti-corruption offi cial, Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwe-bane, after fi nding an investigation conducted by her offi ce showed “gross negligence”.

Pretoria High Court Judge Ronel Tolmay ordered the Public Protec-tor’s offi ce to pay 85% of the costs of the Democratic Alliance and the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac).

Both had challenged a report con-ducted by Mkhwebane’s offi ce into an allegedly corrupt farm deal in-volving ruling party offi cials.

The court also ruled that Mkhwe-

bane should personally pay 7.5% of the legal fees incurred by both parties.

Oupa Segwale, a spokesman for the Public Protector, said yesterday that Mkhwebane would appeal the judgment as the ruling on personal costs will instil fear in the anti-cor-ruption offi ce and prevent it from conducting investigations without fear or favour.

“She believes she has done this investigation in good faith. She does not just litigate haphazardly, she thinks long and hard about it,” Seg-wale said.

The decision nonetheless height-ens scrutiny of Mkhwebane, an offi -cial who has been accused by Presi-dent Cyril Ramaphosa of abusing her offi ce after she said he was in-volved in serious misconduct linked to donations to his campaign for leadership of the ruling party.

In July, the Constitutional Court ordered Mkhwebane personally to pay legal fees, estimated at 900,000 rand ($59,000), after a report her offi ce published in 2017 demanded the man-date of the Reserve Bank, the coun-try’s central bank, be changed. A lower court said that report was fl awed and had been published in “bad faith”.

The judge said yesterday that Mkhwebane had failed to investigate numerous irregularities properly and objectively by not interview-ing victims and provincial politi-cians implicated in the Estina mat-ter, among the best known cases of “state capture” in South Africa.

Estina refers to a government project set up in 2013 to help land-less black farmers.

The project was eventually found to have been defrauded of about 230mn rand ($15mn) by powerful

political and business interests.“The failures and dereliction of

duty of the Public Protector in the Estina matter are manifold. They speak to her failure to execute her duties in terms of the constitution and the Public Protector Act,” Judge Tolmay said.

“Her conduct during the entire investigation constitutes gross neg-ligence. She failed completely to ex-ecute her constitutional duties,” said the judge.

Prosecutors in the Estina case have said the public money invested in the dairy project was siphoned off , some of it into accounts linked to the Gupta business family and high-ranking members of the African Na-tional Congress.

The Guptas deny any wrongdo-ing, their lawyer Rudi Krause said earlier this year.

AMERICAS5Gulf Times

Friday, August 16, 2019

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ac-cepted a watchdog’s re-

port that he breached ethics rules by trying to infl uence a corporate legal case but refused to apolo-gise, saying that he had been try-ing to defend jobs.

Independent ethics commis-sioner Mario Dion said Trudeau and his team attempted last year to undermine a decision by fed-eral prosecutors that construc-tion company SNC-Lavalin Group Incorporated should face a corruption trial.

Dion’s scathing 58-page as-sessment could hurt Trudeau’s chances of retaining power in a general election in October.

“I fully accept this report ...

I take full responsibility. The buck stops with the prime min-ister,” said Trudeau, adding that he nevertheless disagreed with some of Dion’s conclusions.

The scandal over SNC-Lava-lin, which erupted in early Feb-ruary, battered Trudeau’s image as a youthful progressive at the helm of a government that had vowed to be open and transpar-ent.

He is the fi rst Canadian prime minister found to have broken federal ethics rules.

The fi rm, a major employer in the politically important prov-ince of Quebec, wanted to take advantage of a 2018 law allow-ing it to escape with a fi ne rather than be prosecuted for bribing offi cials in Libya.

Trudeau has admitted he tried last year to persuade then-justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould

to reconsider the prosecutor’s decision to press ahead with a trial.

“What we did over the past year wasn’t good enough. But at the same time I can’t apologise for standing up for Canadian jobs,” he told a televised news conference in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

The aff air marked the low point of Trudeau’s almost four-year tenure and prompted the resignation of two high-profi le female cabinet ministers, his closest personal aide Gerry Butts, and the head of the federal bu-reaucracy.

The case proved politically harmful and Trudeau’s Liber-als trailed the offi cial opposition Conservatives for several months in opinion polls ahead of the election.

Recent surveys, however,

showed the centre-left Liberals edging in front of their right-leaning rivals.

Dion found Trudeau had con-travened confl ict of interest rules forbidding public offi ce holders from trying to improperly further another person’s private inter-ests.

“Because SNC-Lavalin over-whelmingly stood to benefi t from Ms Wilson-Raybould’s interven-tion, I have no doubt that the result of Mr Trudeau’s infl uence would have furthered SNC-Lav-alin’s interests. The actions that sought to further these interests were improper,” he said.

Wilson-Raybould refused to overrule the prosecutor’s deci-sion, and was demoted in a cabi-net shuffl e in January.

She resigned the next month.She later told legislators that

she had been subjected to inap-

propriate pressure over SNC-Lavalin and was particularly crit-ical of the role played by Butts, who has rejoined Trudeau’s team to focus on the election.

“The report confi rms criti-cal facts, consistent with what I shared with all Canadians, and affi rms the position I have taken from the outset,” Wilson-Raybould said in a statement on Wednesday. “There were multi-ple attempts to improperly infl u-ence my decision.”

Trudeau sidestepped ques-tions as to whether he would fi re Butts and other senior aides.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer described Trudeau’s be-haviour as “unforgivable” and said a police investigation was warranted.

“He has stated so many false-hoods that no one can believe anything he says,” Scheer told a

televised news conference in Re-gina, Saskatchewan.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said it was examining the matter carefully and would take appropriate action as required.

The report marks the second time Trudeau has fallen afoul of

confl ict of interest rules.In December 2017, then-eth-

ics commissioner Mary Dawson said Trudeau acted wrongly by accepting a vacation on the Aga Khan’s private island.

On that occasion, Trudeau apologised.

Canada’s Trudeau accepts he breached ethics rulesReutersOttawa

Trudeau: What we did over the past year wasn’t good enough. But at the same time I can’t apologise for standing up for Canadian jobs.

A gunman who Phila-delphia police say shot six city offi cers late on

Wednesday afternoon surren-dered around midnight, ending a dramatic stand-off that had two offi cers trapped for several hours inside a house with the suspect after a shootout erupted at 4.30pm.

Earlier, Police Commissioner Richard Ross confi rmed that the offi cers and several people they had handcuff ed during the tense stand-off had been safely ex-tracted from the property in the 3700 block of North 15th Street in the Tioga section of North Philadelphia.

Police sources identifi ed the suspected gunman as Maurice Hill, 36 – a Philadelphia man with a lengthy history of gun convictions and of resisting at-tempts to bring him to justice.

Several minutes before he ex-ited, police fi red tear gas into the property, making a series of booming sounds.

Hill fi nally came out to a sea of cops shouting: “Hands up! Hands up! Get down! Get down!”

At an earlier news confer-ence outside the hospital, where some of the injured offi cers were

taken, Ross said he had person-ally tried to talk to the shooter in an eff ort to negotiate a sur-render.

He said the man had picked up the phone but had not verbally responded.

“He can end this peacefully now,” said Ross, who was wear-ing a ballistic vest.

Shortly before 9.25pm, the two remaining offi cers in the building were able to escape.

“Update: 2 PPD Offi cers who were in house with shooter have been safely evacuated by PPD SWAT. Suspect is still armed and inside house. Continue to avoid the area,” a police spokesperson tweeted at 9.36pm.

The stand-off with the gun-man continued.

At a news conference just before 10pm, Ross praised the bravery of the Philadelphia Po-lice Department (PPD) offi cers who responded to the scene of the gunfi re and called the work of the SWAT team that got the offi cers out of the house “abso-lutely remarkable”.

“It is nothing short of remark-able in such a confi ned space, that we didn’t have more of a tragedy that we did,” the com-missioner said.

He said that the offi cers serv-ing the arrest warrant were met with gunfi re almost immedi-ately.

“It’s nothing short of a mira-cle that we don’t have multiple offi cers killed today,” Ross said as he stood in the rain outside Temple University Hospital.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Ken-ney, at his side, called for stricter gun control measures.

“If the state and federal gov-

ernment don’t want to stand up to the NRA (National Rifl e Association), then let us police ourselves,” he said. “Our offi cers deserve to be protected.”

The White House and Penn-sylvania Governor Tom Wolf had been briefed earlier on the un-folding situation.

Narcotics offi cers were at-tempting to serve an arrest war-rant at the house when shots were fi red.

Two Narcotics Strike Force bicycle offi cers were pinned down on the second fl oor with three other people who were handcuff ed, police said.

The offi cers did not say they were hurt, but they were at risk of getting shot because the sus-pect on the fi rst fl oor was fi ring into the ceiling.

None of the injuries sus-tained by the six offi cers was life-threatening, they said, and within hours, all were released from two hospitals.

Other offi cers sustained inju-ries not related to gunfi re.

Three offi cers were taken to Temple University Hospital, and three were treated at Einstein Medical Centre.

“Fortunately, everybody’s go-ing to be OK,” Ross said at the evening news conference.

Earlier, police said a suspect inside the house was livestream-ing on Facebook.

Police had been attempting to communicate with the gunman through a loudspeaker as resi-dents were being evacuated from nearby streets.

A daycare centre near the shooting scene was under lock-down until around 7.10pm when police said they were escorting

58 children and adults from the location.

Police offi cers carried babies and mothers comforted shaken children as the day care was evacuated.

“We had to stay calm and collected and get the children calm,” one staff er said.

Police set up two city buses to hold children whose parents hadn’t yet arrived to pick them up.

Other parents rushed fran-tically down the block, asking after their children at the bus doors.

“I’m just happy I got my daughter,” said Shere Calhoun, smoothing her eight-year-old’s hair. “I didn’t want her to be a victim.”

“Calm down, calm down,” an offi cer called to another parent running down the block. “The kids are safe.”

Earlier in the day, Temple Uni-versity issued a lockdown for its nearby health and science cam-pus, which includes the hospital.

“Lockdown is in eff ect on Health Sciences Centre Cam-pus. Seek shelter. Secure doors. Be silent. Be still. Police are re-sponding,” Temple advised staff and students.

It was lifted after 7pm.Temple advised people to

continue to avoid the area around the incident.

Gunman injures six cops in Philadelphia stand-off DPAPhiladelphia

A resident reaches out from her front door as a police off icer is reflected while responding to an ‘active shooter’ situation in Philadelphia.

Trump urged to shift wall money to gun measuresReutersWashington

Two senior Senate Demo-crats have asked President Donald Trump to with-

draw his $5bn request for border wall funding and use the money on initiatives to combat gun vio-lence in the aftermath of back-to-back mass shootings in Texas and Ohio.

In a letter, Senate Democrat-ic leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Patrick Leahy informed Trump that he does not have enough support in Congress for his wall funding request to be in-cluded in the federal budget for fi scal year 2020, which begins on October 1.

“Instead, we urge you to sup-port spending funds you have requested for the border wall, on other pressing needs such as proven initiatives that will ad-dress the threats of gun violence and white supremacist extrem-ism in America,” wrote Schumer and Leahy, who is the top Demo-crat on the Senate Appropria-tions Committee that oversees government outlays.

The request, which was ex-pected, surfaced as Democrats in the Senate and House of Repre-sentatives are trying to pressure Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to call the Senate back early from its August re-cess and allow votes on universal background check legislation that passed the House in Febru-ary.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday that public pressure should force McCon-nell to bring the House legisla-tion up for a vote and said her chamber would soon move for-ward with new gun measures in-cluding a ban on high-capacity gun magazines.

The Democratic push on gun control follows mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that killed 31 people and propelled the wide availability of guns in the United States back to the forefront of political debate.

Trump has called for congres-sional action on guns but has sent mixed messages on the kind of legislation he would sign.

He has appeared at times to endorse expanded background checks but has also shifted his focus to mental illness, violent video games and “red fl ag” in-centives for states to deny guns to people deemed a danger to themselves and others.

McConnell has declined to call the Senate back early and instead has instructed the chairs of three Senate committees to work on legislation that can be debated when lawmakers return from their recess on September 9.

Trump: has sent mixed messages.

A federal appeals court said foreign-born students may sue the US govern-

ment over claims it wrongfully cancelled their visas, follow-ing a sting where it set up a fake university to entrap corrupt visa brokers.

The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia revived a proposed class action on be-half of more than 500 students who said they were deprived of due process when the govern-ment revoked their lawful im-migration status after ensnaring them in the sting.

Writing for a three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Theodore McKee also faulted the govern-ment’s “fl ip-fl op” over whether

the students, including many from China and India, who thought they had “enrolled” at the fi ctitious University of Northern New Jersey were in-nocent victims, or participants in the fraud.

Spokespeople for the US De-partment of Justice had no im-mediate comment.

The government in 2013 cre-ated the University of Northern New Jersey, supposedly located in the town of Cranford, to catch brokers of fraudulent student visas, even creating a website and social media accounts for the school that looked real.

It said that brokers recruited more than 1,000 students to en-rol, typically charged thousands of dollars for visas so they could stay, and sometimes arranged illegally for work visas.

Twenty-one arrests were an-

nounced when the university “closed” in April 2016.

The Department of Home-land Security then revoked the visas of many aff ected students, citing their “fraudulent enrol-ment”, prompting the lawsuit to restore their legal status.

In October 2017, US District Judge Jose Linares in Newark, New Jersey, dismissed the law-suit, saying that it was fi led too soon because US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had yet to act on the students’ reinstatement applications.

McKee, however, said visa revocations were “fi nal” or-ders that could be challenged in court, even if students had other means to fi ght removal, and criticised the government’s shifting views on whether the students were victims or con-spirators.

“It would be a cruel irony in-deed if we were to allow the gov-ernment’s own fl ip-fl op on that characterisation to deprive us of the ability to review the disput-ed governmental action,” Mc-Kee wrote. “The fl ip-fl op un-derscores the need for judicial review of a decision that would otherwise escape review by any court or agency.”

Ira Kurzban, a lawyer for the students, welcomed the deci-sion, calling it the “fi rst salvo” in eff orts to stop the ICE from “trying to entrap students”.

McKee said it may still prove a “formidable challenge” to cer-tify a class action because of dif-ferences among students.

The case is Fang et al v Direc-tor, US Immigration & Customs Enforcement et al, 3rd US Cir-cuit Court of Appeals, No 17-3318.

Students caught in visa sting at fake university may sue US, court rulesReutersNew York

‘July was the hottest month on record for planet’

July 2019 temperatures were the hottest ever recorded globally, the

US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said

yesterday, confirming earlier observations by the European Union.

“Much of the planet sweltered in unprecedented heat in July, as tem-

peratures soared to new heights in the hottest month ever recorded.

The record warmth also shrank Arctic and Antarctic sea ice to historic

lows,” the agency said.

According to the NOAA, the average global temperature in July was

0.95° Celsius (1.71° Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average of

15.8C (60.4F), making it the hottest July in its records, which go back

to 1880.

The previous hottest month on record was July 2016.

“Nine of the 10 hottest Julys have occurred since 2005-with the last

five years ranking as the five hottest,” the NOAA said.

Alaska had its hottest July since it began keeping records in 2005,

several countries in Europe saw new temperature records, and it was

also the hottest month ever across Africa as a whole.

Average Arctic sea ice meanwhile set a record low for July, running

19.8% below average, and surpassing the previous historic low of

July 2012 according to an analysis by the National Snow and Ice Data

Centre using data from the NOAA and the National Aeronautics and

Space Administration (Nasa).

Average Antarctic sea ice was 4.3% below the 1981-2010 average,

making it the smallest for July in the 41-year record.

‘Hollywood Ripper’ found guiltyA man dubbed the “Hollywood Ripper” was found guilty yesterday of the murders of two women, including a student who was due to go out with actor Ashton Kutcher the night of her death.Michael Gargiulo, 43, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder by a Los Angeles jury who deliberated for four days before reaching their verdict.Prosecutor Dan Akemon had told jurors that Gargiulo targeted the women in “frenzied knife attacks”, referring to him as a “stone-cold serial killer who preys on women”.Gargiulo’s lawyers said there was no evidence he was at the scene of the two murders, and indicated that his dissociative identity disorder could have caused him to go into a “fugue” state during a separate attack on a third woman who survived.The trial will move next week to a second phase to assess if Gargiulo was sane at the time of the killings, before sentencing then takes place.He is also awaiting a separate trial for the earlier 1993 killing of a third woman in the state of Illinois.Gargiulo was arrested in Santa Monica in 2008 following an attack on another woman who survived being stabbed eight times in her home. He was also found guilty of attempted murder for that case.

Former Colorado gover-nor John Hickenlooper dropped out of the race

for the Democratic party’s 2020 presidential nomination yester-

day, the second victim of poor polling in a hugely crowded race.

The centrist 67-year-old had pitched his experience leading a state with a sizeable Republican minority, warning Democrats against straying too far leftward in the fi ght to dethrone Presi-dent Donald Trump next year.

But he failed to make a mark nationally after two televised debates in June and July.

He could not bring his poll-ing support above 1%, and was struggling to meet the new do-nor and polling thresholds to qualify for the next Democratic debate, in September.

“This morning, I’m announc-ing that I’m no longer running for president,” he said via Twit-ter and video messages.

Hickenlooper was the second to drop out of the race, follow-ing congressman Eric Swall-well who dropped out early last month.

Second Democrat quits White House raceAFPWashington

6 Gulf TimesFriday, August 16, 2019

ASIA

Political activists and supporters of Awami League lay a wreath at the memorial of the Bangladesh’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in Dhaka, yesterday. Bangladesh’s Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s founding father, was killed along with many of his family members in a military coup on August 15, 1975 by a group of disgruntled army off icers.

In memoriam

Teen’s death due to starvation, no sign of foul play: autopsy reportAFPSeremban, Malaysia

A Franco-Irish teen who disappeared from a Ma-laysian resort likely

starved and died of internal bleeding after about a week in the jungle, with no immediate sign of foul play, police said yes-terday.

There was no indication that 15-year-old Nora Quoirin, who had learning diffi culties, was abducted or sexually assaulted, they said, announcing the re-sults of an autopsy. But the law-yer of her family, who believe she may have been abducted, said it was too early to rule out a crimi-nal element in the case.

Her unclothed body was dis-covered Tuesday in a ravine in dense jungle following a 10-day hunt involving hundreds of peo-

ple, helicopters and sniff er dogs. She went missing from the Du-sun Resort, not far from Kuala Lumpur, on August 4, a day after checking in for a holiday with her London-based family.

Speaking after the post-mortem examination, Negeri Sembilan state police chief Mo-hamad Mat Yusop told report-ers the teen suff ered “bleeding in her intestines due to not eat-ing” as well as “extreme stress”. The schoolgirl is believed to have died two to three days before her body was found, he said.

“For the time being, there is no suspicion of foul play,” he said.

There were “some scratches on her body” after days in the rainforest, but nothing suspi-cious, he said.

“The parents can claim her body.” Police had classifi ed her disappearance as a missing

persons case. But the family’s French lawyer, Charles Morel, told AFP that “at this stage for the family, it is premature to rule out a criminal element. “We need to wait to fi nd out all the results from the autopsy to know more.”

Her body was airlifted by heli-copter out of the ravine – about 2.5km from the resort – and transported to hospital in Ser-emban town where her relatives identifi ed it.

Medics conducted a long au-topsy Wednesday, starting in the morning and only fi nishing late at night, as a media pack waited outside the hospital for news. In a statement released by The Lucie Blackman Trust, a charity that supports relatives of British people missing overseas, her rel-atives said she was the “heart” of the family.

“She is the truest, most pre-

cious girl and we love her infi -nitely. The cruelty of her being taken away is unbearable. Our hearts are broken. “We will al-ways love our Nora.”

While insisting it was a miss-ing persons case, police vowed to investigate every angle. They questioned witnesses and in-vestigated witness accounts of a truck heard early on the morning the girl disappeared.

A group of volunteers who were part of the search and res-cue team found the body after being tipped off by a member of the public. It was discovered in the offi cial search zone, in an area that the team had previ-ously covered.

On Monday, the fam-ily had off ered a 50,000 ringgit ($11,900) reward, donated by a Belfast business, for information that could lead to her return.

The fi ve-hectare resort where

the teenager disappeared is next to a patch of thick jungle and in the foothills of a mountain range. Her family had said it was extremely unlikely the reserved

youngster would have wandered off on her own. She had a con-dition known as holoprosen-cephaly, where the brain fails to develop normally. She had lim-

ited verbal communication and could only write a few words. She attended a school for young people with learning and com-munication diffi culties.

14 dead in rebel attack on Myanmar military townAFPPyin Oo Lwin, Myanmar

At least 14 people have been killed in ongoing fi ghting yesterday be-

tween Myanmar’s military and rebels who mounted a series of attacks, including an unprece-dented strike on an army acad-emy, apparently in retaliation for massive drug seizures.

Ethnic armed rebel groups have for decades fought against the military — and often be-tween themselves — for land and resources in Myanmar’s east.

Experts say the area is now the world’s largest meth-pro-ducing region, funding the complex web of confl icts. Yes-terday’s brazen assault targeted Pyin Oo Lwin, a tourist town near Mandalay, that is also home to barracks teeming with soldiers receiving training. An AFP reporter at a police post, the site of one of the attacks, counted the bodies of seven soldiers and four policemen.

Military spokesman Briga-dier General Zaw Min Tun told AFP three more people, two

soldiers and one civilian, had been killed and that fi ghting was “still ongoing”.

This brings the death toll to at least 14. One of the fi ve attacks targeted the town’s Defence Service Technology Academy, where military engineers are trained, the fi rst-ever time the training centre has been hit.

The military said rebels had fi red 107mm rockets at the academy from a nearby hill-side. Images from local media showing burned out cars and damaged buildings showered in debris.

The Taaung National Libera-tion Army (TNLA) claimed the attacks, saying they had acted in retaliation.

“The military launched of-fensives in our area so we are fi ghting to defend ourselves,” TNLA spokesman Major Mai Aik Kyaw said.

He also confi rmed the at-tacks were co-ordinated with the Myanmar National Demo-cratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and Arakan Army (AA).

The AA is currently fi ght-ing the military, or Tatmadaw, in confl ict-scarred western Rakhine state, but is in a tight

alliance with the other rebel groups. “We assume they car-ried out the attacks because the Tatmadaw seized tonnes of drugs a few weeks ago,” military spokesman Zaw Min Tun said.

In July, narcotics police were met with heavy artillery fi re when they launched a ma-jor drugs crackdown in Kutkai township in neighbouring Shan state.

Huge stockpiles of chemicals as well as millions of dollars worth of ice, the highly addic-tive crystalised form of meth, were seized in a single raid.

The “Golden Triangle” — a lawless wedge of land in-tersecting China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos — has long served as a base for opium and heroin production. A unilateral ceasefi re in Shan state declared by the military in December is offi cially due to fi nish in two weeks, even though clashes with armed groups have con-tinued.

China’s plans to invest in major infrastructure projects have added another dimension to the confl ict with groups vy-ing for control of increasingly valuable territory.

Nora Quoirin

Malaysia to interrogate Indian preacher for racial remarksReutersKuala Lumpur

Malaysian authorities will summon Indian Islamic preacher Zakir Naik for

questioning after he allegedly made racially sensitive remarks in the multi-ethnic nation, the government said yesterday.

The move comes after sev-eral ministers demanded Naik’s expulsion on Wednesday after he said Hindus in Malaysia had “100 times more rights” than the Muslim minority in India.

Naik, who has lived in Malay-

sia for about three years and faces charges of money laundering and hate speech in India, has come under fi re for comments alleg-edly pitting the country’s ethnic and religious minorities against the ethnic Malay majority, who are predominantly Muslim.

Police will question Naik and several other individuals and groups for making “racial-ly-tinged statements” and for spreading false news that has af-fected public sensitivities, Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said.

“I would like to remind all par-ties, including non-citizens, that enforcement agencies under my

ministry will not think twice to take legal action against anyone who attempts to threaten public harmony and peace,” Muhyid-din said in a statement. Asked for comment, a representative for Naik told Reuters he would fi rst need to study the minister’s statement.

Race and religion are sensitive issues in Malaysia, where Malay Muslims make up about 60% of a population of 32mn. The rest are mostly ethnic Chinese and Indians, most of whom are Hin-dus. Naik, who has repeatedly denied the charges against him in India, has said his detractors

were quoting him out of context to malign him. State news agen-cy Bernama quoted Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Moha-mad as saying this week that Naik cannot be sent back to India be-cause of fears for his safety.

“If any (other) country wants to have him, they are welcome,” Mahathir added. India banned Naik’s Islamic Research Founda-tion in late 2016, accusing him of encouraging and aiding its fol-lowers to “promote or attempt to promote feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between diff er-ent religious communities and groups”.

Seven killed in Bangladesh road crash

At least seven people were killed when a bus carrying holidaymakers slammed into a roadside tree in eastern Bangladesh yesterday, police said.Five people died at the scene, in Lemua of Feni district on the Dhaka-Chattagram highway, nearly 150km south-east of Dhaka, off icer Shahjahan Khan

said, adding that the bus had veered off the road.Two others died at a nearby health facility, said Abu Taher Patwari, a medical off icer at Feni General Hospital. Ten critically wounded passengers have been moved to Dhaka Medical College Hospital for improved medical care, he added. More than 60

people from Dhaka’s Mirpur neighbourhood had rented two buses to travel to the south-eastern beach town of Cox’s Bazar as Muslims celebrate the Eid al-Adha holiday, Khan said. One of the two buses crashed on the way while the other reached its destination, the off icer said. An investigation has been

launched to determine the cause of the crash. Bangladesh has a high rate of road fatalities, due to lax implementation of laws and the poor condition of roads. According to the Bangladesh Passenger Welfare Association, a civic group, more than 7,000 people were killed in more than 5,500 road crashes in 2018.

A damaged truck is seen near a drug control checkpoint in Naung Cho, Shan State after it was attacked by ethnic rebel groups.

Philippines alarmed by Chinese warships in its watersThe Philippine government yesterday expressed concern over the passage of Chinese warships in the country’s waters without prior co-ordination, saying it was not “an act of friendship.” Five Chinese warships have been spotted passing through a strait in the southern Philippines in separate incidents since July, the military

said. “We express concern with that kind of incident because they (China) keep on saying that we’re friends,” presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said. “I don’t think that this is an act of friendship.” “We will call their attention,” he added, noting he would raise the matter when he meets with China’s ambassador to Manila for dinner “one of

these days.” Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is scheduled to visit China later this month, and plans to discuss the need for a code of conduct in the disputed South China Sea when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping. But Panelo said it would be up to Duterte whether he brings up the unco-ordinated passage of the Chinese warships.

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA7Gulf Times

Friday, August 16, 2019

Powerful Japan storm slams into southern Hiroshima, snarls holiday travelAFPTokyo

A powerful tropical storm lashed Japan yesterday, bringing strong winds and

torrential rain that claimed at least one life, prompted warnings of landslides and fl ooding, and sparked evacuation advisories and travel chaos at a peak holiday pe-

riod. Severe Tropical Storm Krosa — one notch below a typhoon — slammed into the southern Hiro-shima region, packing wind gusts of up to 126km per hour.

Dramatic television footage showed violent winds uprooting trees, snapping lampposts and spinning pods on a Ferris wheel. Meanwhile, high waves smashed into a breakwater, engulfi ng a 10m lighthouse, while swollen rivers

broke their banks and swamped nearby roads. Authorities issued a voluntary evacuation advisory to around 430,000 people in the storm’s path although few ap-peared to have heeded the warn-ing.

A 82-year-old man was con-fi rmed dead after he fell in the sea in Hiroshima while trying to moor his boat, a local govern-ment spokesman said. Public

broadcaster NHK and local au-thorities said at least 34 people sustained injuries, including a man in his 50s, who broke his leg. “We still have intermittent down-pours,” said Takayoshi Sugimoto, a disaster management offi cial in the southwestern province of Tokushima.

“We will remain vigilant as more rain is expected in the after-noon,” he told AFP. The national

disaster management agency said a party of 18 people, including children, were stranded during a barbeque in a valley when a river rose rapidly on Wednesday. They were rescued yesterday morning.

Krosa also sparked travel cha-os as people battled to return to major cities following the Obon holiday. More than 800 domes-tic fl ights were cancelled to and from cities in western Japan and

bullet train services were either scrapped or sharply reduced.

Ferries connecting the south-ern Shikoku island and other parts of Japan were also cancelled as high waves lashed the coast. The storm, located some 600km from Tokyo, brought strong winds and downpours to the capital. Several ceremonies commemorating the end of World War II were can-celled in western Japan due to bad

weather. Krosa weakened signifi -cantly from earlier in the week as it stalled in the Pacifi c Ocean but it boasts an unusually large eye, meaning it is likely to dump rain over a wide area.

It was moving north at 35km per hour and the rain is still ex-pected to last for an extended pe-riod. The storm crossed Japan’s mainland and hit the Sea of Japan last night.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison talking with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu. Australia’s Scott Morrison arrived at a meeting of Pacific island leaders in Tuvalu with Canberra’s regional leadership in question amid intense scrutiny of his government’s climate change policies.

Tuvalu meeting

Japan’s new emperor speaks of ‘deep remorse’ over warAFPTokyo

Japan’s new emperor spoke yesterday of “deep remorse” over the country’s wartime

past in his fi rst speech to com-memorate the end of World War II since his enthronement in May.

Emperor Naruhito’s com-ments were being monitored in Tokyo and throughout Asia for any change in tone, but he closely echoed the language employed by his father Akihito.

“Looking back on the long peaceful years after the war, re-fl ecting on our past, and bear-ing in mind the feeling of deep remorse, I earnestly hope that the devastation of war will never be repeated,” said the 59-year-old Naruhito. “During the 74 years since the end of the war, the peace and prosperity of our country today has been built through the tireless eff orts of the people.

“Yet when I think of their past full of suff ering, I am truly overcome with deep emotion,” Naruhito told the solemn cer-emony in central Tokyo which also featured a minute’s silence for the war dead.

Meanwhile, conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shied away from visiting a controver-sial shrine that commemorates war dead, including convicted war criminals, that has become a fl ashpoint with Japan’s neigh-bours, especially China and South Korea.

This year’s ceremonies came as Tokyo and South Korea — one of the countries that suff ered most from Japan’s wartime mili-tary atrocities — are embroiled in a war of words over trade and history.

The foreign ministry in Seoul voiced “deep concern” at the of-ferings to Yasukuni, which it said “glorifi es Japan’s past colonial plunder and war of invasion and enshrines war criminals.” “The government urges Japan’s po-litical leaders to show humble refl ection over historical issues,” said the ministry.

Meanwhile, Abe sent an aide and a cash off ering to Yasukuni Shrine but continued his policy, that has been in place for several years, of not visiting.

The nationalist premier last visited the shrine in Decem-ber 2013 to mark his fi rst year in power, sparking fury in Beijing and Seoul and earning a rare dip-

lomatic rebuke from close ally the United States. He has since stayed away as the leaders of both China and Japan attempt to maintain their improving but delicate relations, with Chinese President Xi Jinping expected to visit Japan next year during spring cherry blossom season.

Yasukuni honours 2.5mn war dead, mostly Japanese, who per-ished in the country’s wars since the late 19th century. It also en-shrines senior military and po-litical fi gures convicted of war crimes by an international tribu-nal after World War II.

This makes it a magnet for criticism from countries that suff ered from Japan’s colonial-ism and aggression in the fi rst half of the 20th century. There were no reports of members of Abe’s cabinet visiting the shrine although dozens of parliament members made their annual pil-grimage.

Abe also stuck closely to the script in his speech, off ering “heartfelt respect and gratitude” to Japan’s war dead and vowing to “never again repeat the dev-astation of war.” “This pledge has never changed and will never change” in the new era under Emperor Naruhito, Abe vowed.

Japan’s Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako attend the annual memorial ceremony to remember those lost at war, yesterday, in Tokyo as the country marks the 74th anniversary of its surrender in World War II.

Moon off ers olive branch to JapanAFPSeoul

South Korean President Moon Jae-in struck a con-ciliatory tone towards Ja-

pan yesterday, off ering to “join hands” if Tokyo chooses dialogue as relations between the two countries dip to fresh lows.

Seoul and Tokyo — both of them democracies and market economies — are mired in long-running disputes over Japan’s use of forced labour in the fi rst half of the 20th century.

The two neighbours have been embroiled in a tit-for-tat trade war that saw them remove each other from their lists of trusted trading partners this month, raising concerns over global sup-ply chains. That came after To-kyo imposed restrictions on ex-ports crucial to tech giants such as Samsung last month, follow-ing a series of South Korean court rulings ordering Japanese fi rms to pay for wartime labour.

But Moon sought to dial down the temperature yesterday, say-ing Seoul was willing to work with Tokyo to secure “fair trade and co-operation” in the region. “If Japan chooses the path of dia-logue and co-operation, we will gladly join hands,” Moon said in a speech to mark the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan’s 1910-45 rule.

Dressed in a pale grey-blue hanbok, the traditional Korean attire, Moon – who earlier this month vowed South Korea will “never be defeated again by Ja-pan” – insisted that Seoul has “not dwelt on the past”.

“Refl ecting on the past does not mean clinging to the past but overcoming what happened and moving toward the future,” said Moon.

“We hope that Japan will play a leading role together in facilitat-ing peace and prosperity in East

Asia while it contemplates a past that brought misfortune to its neighbouring countries.”

Tokyo maintains that all issues of wartime compensation were settled under the 1965 treaty that re-established diplomatic

ties, including a package of about $800mn in grants and cheap loans for the former colony. The dispute has raised concerns over the potential implications on the security co-operation between the two US allies in the face of a

series of North Korean missile tests in recent weeks.

Pyongyang and Washington are engaged in a long-running diplomatic process over the North’s nuclear and missile pro-grammes that has seen three un-precedented encounters between their leaders in the space of a year although little progress has been made on denuclearisation.

Moon sought to play down North Korea’s recent tests — fol-lowing the example of US Presi-dent Donald Trump — as he as-sured Seoul had “even stronger” defence capabilities and was working to prevent an escalation of tensions.

But, he added: “The ultimate goal that these actions serve is dialogue, not confrontation.” Moon pledged yesterday that he will “solidify the foundation” with the goal of “achieving peace and unifi cation by 2045”, al-though his single fi ve-year term presidency ends in 2022.

One analyst dismissed Moon’s mention of a unifi ed Korea. “His outlook is overly rosy and it will be diffi cult to create a consensus around it,” said Shin Beom-chul, an analyst at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, describing the claim as “meaningless”.

Pyongyang has recently re-buff ed Seoul, saying nuclear talks will be “strictly” between the North and the US and refusing to hold separate dialogue with the South. The dovish South Korean president has long favoured dia-logue with Pyongyang, dangling cross-border business projects as incentives. Moon said economic co-operation with the North will provide a one-stop solution to “problems we currently face, such as low growth, low birth rate and an ageing society”.

But proposed projects are cur-rently blocked because of inter-national sanctions imposed on the North over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

South Korean protesters hold a placard showing a picture of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during an anti-Japanese rally marking the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule, in central Seoul yesterday.

Apology issued over NZ mosque accused’s ‘hateful’ letterOff icials in New Zealand apolo-gised yesterday after the alleged Christchurch mosque gunman was allowed to send a letter from prison espousing “hateful” views that a supporter then shared online. Australian Brenton Tarrant is in a maximum-security jail in Auckland awaiting trial for the murder of 51 Muslim worshippers on March 15 in the worst mass shooting in modern New Zealand history. Yet despite the government vowing to deny Tarrant a platform to disseminate hate speech, corrections off icials

revealed he had been allowed to send mail from his prison cell. One of the letters from the self-avowed white supremacist, addressed to a Russian man named Alan, was posted to the website 4Chan. Hand-written in block letters, the six-page note discusses a trip Tarrant made to Russia in 2015, his admiration for British fascist Oswald Mosley and his belief “there is a great conflict on the horizon”. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has vowed never to mention Tarrant by name, was furious the letter had bypassed

the correction department’s vetting system. “Corrections themselves have acknowledged the failing here ... this individual should not be able to share his hateful message from behind prison doors,” she told reporters in Tuvalu, where she is attending a regional summit. Corrections Department chief executive Christine Stevenson said the letter should never have been sent. “I would like to apologise for the distress that this has caused to those impacted by the tragic events of 15 March,” she said.

More protests likely in Hong Kong over weekend

ReutersHong Kong

Hong Kong braced yester-day for more mass dem-onstrations through the

weekend, as China again warned against foreign interference in the city’s escalating crisis and as mainland paramilitary forces conducted exercises just across the border.

Western governments, in-cluding the United States, have stepped up calls for restraint, following ugly and chaotic scenes at the city’s airport this week, which forced the cancel-lation of nearly 1,000 fl ights and saw protesters set upon two men they suspected of being govern-ment sympathisers.

The airport, one of the world’s busiest, was returning to nor-mal but under tight security af-ter thousands of protesters had jammed its halls on Monday and Tuesday nights, part of a protest movement Beijing has likened to terrorism.

Across a bridge linking Hong Kong’s rural hinterland with the booming mainland city of Shen-zhen, hundreds of members of the paramilitary People’s Armed Police conducted exercises at a sports complex in what was widely seen as a warning to pro-testers in Hong Kong.

The police could be seen car-rying out crowd-control exer-cises, and more than 100 dark-painted paramilitary vehicles fi lled the stadium’s parking lots.

Chinese state media had fi rst re-ported on the exercises on Mon-day, prompting US concerns they could be used to break up the protests.

However, several western and Asian diplomats in Hong Kong told Reuters Beijing has little ap-petite for putting the PAP or the People’s Liberation Army onto Hong Kong’s streets.

Ten weeks of increasingly vio-lent confrontations between po-lice and protesters have plunged Hong Kong into its worst crisis since it reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997, and police tactics have been toughening.

The protests represent the biggest populist challenge for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012 and show no immediate signs of abating. Late on Wednesday night, police and protesters faced off again on the streets of the fi -nancial hub, with riot offi cers quickly fi ring tear gas.

Seventeen people were arrest-ed on Wednesday, bringing the total detained since June to 748, police told a news conference, adding that police stations have been surrounded and attacked 76 times during the crisis.

US President Donald Trump tied a US-China trade deal to

Beijing resolving the unrest “hu-manely”, and suggested he was willing to meet Xi to discuss the crisis. “I have ZERO doubt that if President Xi (Jinping) wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem, he can do it. Personal meeting?” Trump said on Twitter.

The US State Department said it was deeply concerned over re-ports that Chinese police forces were gathering near the border with Hong Kong and urged the city’s government to respect freedom of speech.

It also issued a travel advisory urging US citizens to exercise caution in Hong Kong. China has frequently warned against what it regards as outside interfer-ence in an internal issue. Other foreign governments urged calm. France called on city offi cials to renew talks with activists, while Canada said China should han-dle the protests with tact.

The Civil Human Rights Front, which organised million-strong marches in June, has scheduled another protest for Sunday. The protesters have fi ve demands, in-cluding the complete withdrawal of a now-suspended extradi-tion bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent for trial in mainland Chinese courts.

Opposition to the extradition bill has developed into wider concerns about the erosion of freedoms guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” formula put in place after Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule in 1997.

It was not yet clear whether the airport clashes had eroded the broad support the move-ment has so far attracted in Hong Kong, despite adding to the city’s faltering economy. The protests could push Hong Kong into a recession, research fi rm Capital Economics said, and risked “an even worse outcome if a further escalation triggers capital fl ight”. Hong Kong’s property market, one of the world’s most expen-sive, would be hit hard in that scenario, it added.

Financial Secretary Paul Chan unveiled a series of measures worth HK$19.1bn ($2.44bn) yesterday to tackle economic headwinds, but he said it was not related to political pressure from the protests. Business and citizens’ groups have been post-ing full-page newspaper adver-tisements that denounce the violence and back Hong Kong’s government.

The head of Macau casino op-erator Galaxy Entertainment, Lui Che-woo, urged talks to restore harmony. The protests have af-fected the neighbouring Chinese territory of Macau, with some visitors avoiding the world’s big-gest gambling hub amid trans-port disruptions and safety con-cerns.

The protests represent the biggest populist challenge for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012 and show no immediate signs of abating

BRITAIN/IRELAND

Gulf Times Friday, August 16, 20198

A second UK police off icer was exposed to a Soviet-era nerve agent used in last year’s attack on a former Russian spy in the English city Salisbury, British detectives said yesterday. Former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia fell into comas after coming into contact with a banned chemical called Novichok in March 2018. Detectives from Britain’s Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) network said “traces of the nerve agent” were found in blood samples taken from a second police off icer who showed signs of exposure at the time. It said the dose was “very small” and the off icer, who has requested anonymity, “continues to receive support” from the Salisbury police.

A 99-year-old Irishman competing at the World Tango Championships in Argentina has received an ovation for his performance from aficionados at the Buenos Aires venue. “Tango brings me a lot of happiness,” James McManus told local newspapers through an interpreter. “Dancing is very important socially.” Tango fans in McManus’ native Ireland raised money for his transatlantic trip. The fit nonagenarian said he only took up tango in 2002. Dressed in a white jacket, black trousers and tie, he danced in the first qualifying round with an Argentine partner, Lucia Seva. The couple won the biggest round of applause from the knowledgeable audience at the Usina del Arte venue.

British and French campaigners have warned about the dangers of migrant Channel crossings after a woman attempting the journey went missing after falling into the sea last week. If confirmed, the woman’s death would be the first casualty in what is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Lisa Doyle, director of advocacy at Britain’s Refugee Council, called for “more safe and regular routes of travel” for migrants. British rescuers launched a search last Friday after reports that three people with life jackets had fallen into the sea from a boat carrying migrants across the Channel. Two of the missing migrants were found but a woman remained unaccounted for.

A pro-Brexit protester who blocked Britain’s rail link to continental Europe, disrupting up to 22,000 passengers, has been jailed for a year, British police said yesterday. Terry Maher, 44, climbed on top of a tunnel above the railway line outside London’s St Pancras terminal on March 29, the day Britain was originally due to leave the European Union. The disruption is estimated to have cost more than £1mn ($1.2mn). Maher, who lives near St Pancras station, was found guilty of malicious obstruction of the railway and was sentenced to one year in jail at Blackfriars Crown Court in London, the British Transport Police said.

Sixth form students celebrate their A-Level results at Stoke Newington School in London yesterday.

Second off icer exposed to Novichok nerve agent

Irishman, 99, tangos at world championship

Migrant missing after falling into Channel

Brexit protester jailed for halting international trains

INVESTIGATION MAKING HIM HAPPYDANGEROUS WATERS DISRUPTION EDUCATION

Aircraft ferrying US troops catches fi re at Shannon

ReutersDublin

A plane that regularly carries US troops through Ireland’s Shannon Airport caught fi re yesterday shortly before it was due to

take off , forcing a fi ve-hour suspension of fl ights at Shannon and cancellation of some trips.

Shannon Airport temporarily suspended op-erations at 0537 GMT after the incident involving an Omni Air International Boeing 767-300 due to depart for the Middle East.

All 145 passengers and 14 crew disembarked after emergency services were called.

Air traffi c controllers noticed a fi re and smoke coming from the aircraft as it taxied along the runway after having to abort its take-off for technical reasons, according to Niall Maloney, operations director at Shannon Airport.

“The problem with an aborted take-off is you can probably get things like hot brakes and when the aircraft went around again to come back on the apron, a fl ame was spotted,” Maloney told Irish national broadcaster RTE.

Omni Air International is a civilian airline that says it transports US and foreign military troops and military family members around the world.

In a Twitter post, Omni Air said it was partici-pating in an investigation of the incident after the aircraft “rejected take-off ” and was safely evacuated. Initial reports indicated no serious injuries to passengers or crew, it added.

Ireland provides landing and refuelling facili-ties to the US military at Shannon, the country’s second busiest airport, particularly for transat-lantic fl ights.

An average of around 300 US troops passed through Shannon Airport each day in the fi rst three months of the year, according to Ireland’s Transport Ministry.

The incident forced the cancellation of 10 fl ights including eight to and from Britain oper-ated by IAG’s Aer Lingus, and an American Air-lines aircraft that was due to arrive from Phila-delphia before it returned to the US city.

The airport reopened just before 1030 GMT.

Rival plans to block no-deal Brexit clashReutersLondon

Opposition parties have launched rival campaigns to topple Prime Minister Boris

Johnson and stop him taking Britain out of the European Union without a deal, illustrating fractures in the anti-Brexit movement that make neither scheme likely to succeed.

Johnson has promised to push through Brexit by October 31, with or without a deal, setting the scene for a showdown in parliament where a majority of lawmakers are opposed to an EU divorce without a transition agreement.

With parliament the main obsta-cle to Johnson’s “do or die” pledge, lawmakers are urgently seeking a way to remove him or change the law to delay Brexit.

Jeremy Corbyn, the veteran social-ist leader of the Labour Party, said lawmakers should support a vote of no confi dence and back him to lead a “strictly time-limited temporary government” that would postpone Brexit and hold an election.

“This government has no mandate for No Deal, and the 2016 EU refer-endum provided no mandate for No Deal,” Corbyn said. “I therefore in-tend to table a vote of no confi dence at the earliest opportunity when we can be confi dent of success.”

A handful of lawmakers from Johnson’s own Conservative Party said they would listen to Corbyn’s proposals.

“A short-term Jeremy Corbyn gov-ernment is less damaging than the gen-erational damage that would be caused by a no-deal Brexit,” Conservative law-maker Guto Bebb told the BBC.

The leader of the Scottish Na-tional Party, Nicola Sturgeon, said her party and its 35 lawmakers would explore any option to stop Brexit in parliament and did not rule out backing Corbyn.

However, his chances of success were crippled by the leader of the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrat party, Jo Swinson, who said Corbyn was not the right fi gurehead for an emer-gency government.

“We are facing a national crisis. We may need an emergency gov-ernment to resolve it but if Jeremy Corbyn truly wants that to succeed, surely even he can see, he cannot lead it,” she said.

Swinson’s rival idea for a senior parliamentarian to lead a national unity government is unlikely to be accepted by Corbyn.

Britain’s electoral law lets another party try to form government within 14 days of a successful no-confi -dence vote, but only if they have a majority in the 650-seat parliament.

Johnson has a working majority in parliament of just one seat, includ-ing several lawmakers who have said they could vote to bring down the government.

However, without the Liberal Democrats’ 14 votes, Corbyn’s plan is unlikely to succeed.

And without the support of Cor-byn and his sizeable circle of com-mitted supporters, any other plan also has little chance.

A spokeswoman for Johnson’s offi ce said the Labour leader was showing contempt for the 2016 ref-erendum. “Jeremy Corbyn believes that the people are the servants and politicians can cancel public votes they don’t like,” she said.

Lawmakers return from their summer break on September 3 for a battle over Brexit that will determine the fortunes of the world’s fi fth-largest economy.

Labour’s business spokeswoman said a challenge in parliament could come days later.

Johnson, who led the 2016 cam-paign to leave the EU, has staked his premiership on getting Britain out by October 31 and accused some lawmakers of “collaborating” with Brussels.

Opponents of a sudden departure without a deal say it would be a dis-aster for what was one of the West’s most stable democracies, shatter-ing supply chains, damaging global growth, and weakening Britain’s standing in the world.

Brexit supporters say while there may be short-term disruption, it would provide a clean break from the struggling bloc and eventually allow the economy to thrive.

The pound, which tumbled in re-cent weeks on the prospect of a tur-bulent exit, was largely unmoved by Corbyn’s and Swinson’s proposals.

Corbyn, a low-key Remain cam-paigner during the 2016 referendum, has been under pressure within his party to step up eff orts to prevent it from happening.

He said he hoped his proposal to lead a caretaker government could “halt the serious threat of No Deal, end the uncertainty and disarray, and allow the public to decide the best way ahead”.

But he is a divisive fi gure and even his own party, which has faced accu-sations of anti-Semitism under his leadership, would struggle to form a majority of his own.

While the political turmoil has led to an unprecedented level of cross-party cooperation, many in John-son’s Conservative Party and others would still fi nd it diffi cult to vote for a Corbyn-led administration.

Conservative lawmaker Alistair Burt, a former foreign offi ce minister who is opposed to a no-deal Brexit, said he could not support the Labour leader.

Leader of the Liberal Democrats Jo Swinson delivers a keynote speech on Brexit in London yesterday. Swinson called on MPs who oppose no-deal to set aside their diff erences and get behind a caretaker leader without long-term ambitions to govern in the event of a vote of no confidence, rejecting the idea that main opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn could united the House to form a temporary government.

Man stabbed outside Home Offi ceDPA London

A man sustained non-life threat-ening injuries in

a stabbing near Britain’s Home Offi ce in London’s government district of Westminster yesterday afternoon, police con-fi rmed.

Ambulance services said they attended to the man at the scene and he was taken to a trauma cen-tre for further treatment.

One man had been taken into custody near the incident, the capital’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

“All my thoughts are with the victim and their family following hor-rifi c unprovoked knife at-tack on Marsham Street,” Home Secretary Priti Patel tweeted.

Britain has witnessed rising knife crime across

the country in the past year.

Yesterday, police also said a murder investiga-tion has been launched into a separate fatal stab-bing of an 18-year-old man in the southern Lon-don borough of Lambeth.

“Knives have no place on our streets. Vio-lence has no place on our streets,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted, add-ing that police were work-ing to “remove weapons and catch off enders and keep all Londoners safe.”

The victim in Westmin-ster was a man in his 60s, police said, adding that his family had been notifi ed.

A 29-year-old man was taken into custody a few blocks away in Smith Square, arrested “on sus-picion of grievous bodily harm” and possession of a tear gas spray.

Police said they were still reviewing the “exact circumstances” and cause

of the incident and “keep-ing an open mind about any possible motive at this early stage.”

Witnesses said the vic-tim entered the Home Offi ce seeking help after the attack, temporar-ily putting the building on lockdown, the Press Association news agency reported.

One witness told the agency the man then ex-ited the ministry escorted by paramedics with “quite a bloodied face and with dressing pressed into his face.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week prom-ised 20,000 more police offi cers on the streets and additional stop-and-search powers in order for police to “come down hard on crime.”

Patel on Wednesday said she would do “every-thing in my power to stop (knife crime) traumatising communities.”

Police off icers inspect items, including a bag and a sheathed knife, at the former parish church of St John’s Smith Square in central London following the arrest of a suspect in connection with a stabbing incident outside the nearby Home Off ice building.

Ryanair expects little impact of planned strikesReutersDublin

Ryanair expects minimal cancellations with aff ected passengers fl ying out at diff erent times if pilots in Britain and Ireland go

ahead with a two-day strike next week, the air-line’s chief people offi cer said yesterday.

Ryanair staff unions in Ireland, Britain, Spain and Portugal have announced plans to strike in the coming weeks, a year after an initial wave of strikes over pay and conditions forced it to cancel hundreds of fl ights and hit its profi ts.

Members of its British pilot union, which the airline said represents half of its pilots there, vot-ed last week to stage a two-day strike from Au-gust 22, when directly employed pilots in Ireland also plan a strike.

Unionised Irish pilots represent less than half of Ryanair’s pilots in its home market.

“Our hope is that we’re going to cover the ma-jority of the operation both in the UK and Ireland, and unless you hear from us, your fl ight is going ahead as normal,” Eddie Wilson told Reuters in a telephone interview, adding that planned ac-tion by Portuguese cabin crew next week would be minor.

“We’ll be protecting as a priority the summer destinations and there may be some cancella-tions on multi-frequency routes between Ire-land, the UK or on UK domestics where people can make free changes, etc. There will not be travel chaos.”

Responding to the British Airline Pilots As-sociation’s call yesterday to meet for mediated talks to resolve the dispute on pay and benefi ts, Wilson said Ryanair was still waiting on the un-ion to reply to a legal letter stating it had to re-engage directly fi rst, as per a deal struck last year.

Mediated talks broke down on Wednesday in Ireland, where a series of one-day strikes last year were quelled when concerns on transfers and promotions when settled.

Wilson said yesterday that subsequent union claims for increases in total earnings of between 57% and 101% for some pilots were “off the wall,” particularly at a time when “the world is falling apart aviation-wise.” Asked if there had been any impact on bookings, Wilson said that talk of strikes could worry some potential customers.

EUROPE9Gulf Times

Friday, August 16, 2019

Six EU nations have agreed to take in some of the 147 migrants stranded on a res-

cue ship near the Italian island of Lampedusa, Rome announced yesterday, amid a war of words between Italy’s interior minister and the premier over policy.

“France, Germany, Romania, Portugal, Spain and Luxembourg have told me that they are ready to welcome the migrants,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in an open letter to Interior Min-ister Matteo Salvini, who has sought to ban the Open Arms rescue vessel from entering Ital-ian waters.

“Once again, my European counterparts are off ering us a helping hand,” Conte wrote, while slamming Salvini for “dis-honest collaboration”.

He criticised what he called Salvini’s “obsessive focus” on an immigration policy reduced to the phrase “closed ports”.

Salvini has taken a hard line against migrants rescued at sea being brought to Italy, which he says bears an unfair burden in the crisis.

Responding to Conte’s an-nouncement, Salvini wrote on Facebook: “It is clear that with-out (my) resolve, the European Union would never have lifted a fi nger, leaving Italy and the Ital-ians on their own like (previous governments) did for years.”

He added: “My obsession is to fi ght every kind of crime, includ-ing clandestine immigration. I am a minister to defend the bor-ders, the security, the honour, the dignity of my country.”

Salvini, head of the anti-immi-gration League party, broke with his coalition partner the Five Star Movement (M5S) last week, hop-ing for a no-confi dence vote that would topple the 14-month-old government.

However, his gamble failed, and his abandoned partner found an unexpected ally in the opposi-tion Democratic Party (PD).

Both the M5S and the PD on Tuesday voted against Salvini despite his last-minute off er to back a plan to slash the number of the country’s lawmakers.

The fate of the scores of mi-grants aboard the Open Arms vessel, operated by Spanish charity Proactiva, found itself at the centre of the political crisis in Rome.

Earlier this month Salvini, who is also deputy prime minis-ter, signed a decree banning the Open Arms from Italian waters, saying that it was needed to pro-tect public order.

However, Proactiva appealed to an administrative court, which on Wednesday suspended the decree.

Salvini then signed a new one blocking the ship, but in a dem-onstration of his diminished power, Italy’s defence minister blocked it yesterday.

Elisabetta Trenta, an M5S par-

ty member with the authority to sign off on Salvini’s decree, an-nounced that she has decided not to do so.

“I took this decision for solid legal reasons, listening to my conscience,” Trenta said in a statement. “We must never for-get that behind the polemics of the past few days, there are chil-dren and young people who suf-fered violence and abuse of all types. Politics must never lose sight of humanity.”

Salvini also retorted to Trenta, saying: “It is thanks to the sup-posed concept of ‘humanity’ that through years of Democratic (PD) government Italy has become Europe’s refugee camp.”

He added: “Humanity would be investing seriously in Africa,

certainly not opening Italian ports.”

Salvini enjoys 36-38% support among the electorate, thanks largely to his hard line against il-legal immigrants.

The mainly African mi-grants aboard Open Arms had been plucked from boats in the Mediterranean this month with weather conditions encouraging more departures from Libya.

Both Italy and Malta have re-fused it permission to dock and

disembark its passengers.Spain had on Tuesday dis-

missed a request from the ship’s captain to take 32 minors off the Open Arms, arguing that he did not have the legal authority to make an asylum request for them.

Another rescue ship, the Ocean Viking, operated by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors with-out Borders (MSF), is also looking for a port to dock with more than 350 migrants on board.

Six EU countries ready to take in some migrants stranded off ItalyAFPRome

The Spanish migrant rescue ship Open Arms is seen close to the Italian shore in Lampedusa.

A Russian pilot was hailed as a hero yesterday for safely landing an Airbus

carrying more than 230 people in a Moscow corn fi eld after a bird strike.

The Ural Airlines A321 fl ying to Crimea hit a fl ock of seagulls shortly after take-off from Mos-cow’s Zhukovsky airport early yesterday, the Rosaviatsia air transport agency said in a state-ment.

Birds were sucked into the engines and the crew decided to immediately land, bringing the plane down in the corn fi eld about a kilometre from the run-way, with the engines off and the landing gear retracted.

The aircraft, carrying 226 passengers and seven crew, was evacuated using infl atable ramps.

The health ministry said 23 people were sent to hospital but there were no serious injuries.

Only one patient, a 69-year-old woman with moderate inju-ries, required further hospitali-sation, it said.

“It all happened in a few sec-onds ... we took off and came back down,” passenger Irina Usacheva told state television channel Rossiya 24.

Passenger Svetlana Babina said that the bird strike could be heard from inside the aircraft, and that the engines started

making “strange noises”.“We have to pay tribute to

the pilot, in the circumstances he landed as softly as possible,” she told the RIA Novosti news agency.

“Everyone is alive! The pilot is a genius,” passenger Olga told tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, saying that applause broke out following the landing.

The pilot, identifi ed as 41-year-old Yekaterinburg na-tive Damir Yusupov, was praised for his quick thinking.

“The crew of the Ural Airlines fl ight showed fantastic skill and cool-headedness,” said Yevgeny Kuyvashev, the governor of Yu-supov’s home region. “He and his team saved 233 lives. They are heroes.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also hailed the “hero pi-lots” who landed the plane.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the transport ministry to prepare state awards for the crew, saying their actions “deserve the highest praise”.

Russian media called the landing a “miracle” and drew comparisons with US pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s 2009 landing of a disabled US Airways airliner in the Hudson River after a bird strike.

Russia’s investigative com-mittee said it had opened a probe into the incident.

The committee posted a video on its website of the plane on its belly in the fi eld of corn, with the evacuation ramps deployed.

Investigators could be seen examining the interior of the cockpit.

The plane had taken off for Simferopol, the main city in Russian-annexed Crimea, a popular summer destination for many Russians.

Zhukovsky, about 40km (25 miles) southeast of Moscow, opened in 2016 as its fourth in-ternational airport.

A Soviet-era test fl ight centre, it hosts the biennial MAKS in-ternational air show.

Experts pointed to a growing problem of birds at illegal dump-

ing sites near Moscow’s airports.“The problem with birds is

enormous,” aviation safety ex-pert Alexander Romanov told RIA Novosti. “It comes from, among other things, landfi lls that are scattered in violation of all regulations.”

Residents of the town of Zhu-kovsky said an illegal landfi ll was located between the airport and the Moscow river and that seagulls gathered there.

City authorities insisted there were no dumps near the airport, saying that the nearest landfi ll was 14km (nine miles) away.

Russia was once notorious for plane accidents but its air traf-fi c safety record has improved in recent years.

The last major accident was nonetheless in May, when a Sukhoi Superjet belonging to national carrier Aerofl ot crash-landed and burst into fl ames at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo air-port, killing 41 people.

The plane, bound for the Arctic city of Murmansk, had turned around after being struck by lightning, bounced on the runway while landing and caught fi re.

Russians hail ‘hero’ pilot after emergency landingAFPMoscow

This still image taken from a drone video footage shows the Ural Airlines Airbus 321 passenger plane following an emergency landing in a field near Zhukovsky International Airport in Moscow Region.

Off icers stand guard near the site of hard landing of the Ural Airlines A321 plane on a corn field.

Moon rising

The full moon rises last night next to the Temple of Poseidon at the Cape of Sounion, some 70km south of Athens.

Greece has deployed nearly 400 fi refi ghters backed by EU fi rebombers to try to

put out a massive wildfi re on the island of Evia burning through a pristine pine forest for a third day.

“We are more optimistic to-day because the winds have died down,” Yiorgos Kostopoulos, civil protection supervisor for Evia, told state TV ERT.

Firefi ghters managed to con-tain the fi re in a ravine near the village of Platana, backed by nearly 100 vehicles, nine heli-copters and 12 planes, includ-ing two from Italy and one from Spain.

“We are doing whatever we can to create additional fi re de-fences near the village,” Ko-stopoulos said as an earth mover dug a trench behind him.

The wildfi re has caused in-estimable damage to the local 550-hectare mountain wildlife sanctuary of Agrilitsa.

It could take another two days to extinguish the fl ames, a fi re department spokesman told Thema radio.

“My shed was burned, there are no more trees for resin col-lection, so apart from my house, I have nothing else,” a local resi-dent told state TV ERT The EU’s Copernicus emergency manage-ment service has calculated that at least 2,300 hectares (nearly 5,700 acres) have been lost to the fi re.

Local community head Dimi-tris Yiannoutsos told web TV Open there was “total destruc-tion” in the forest but admitted that with the fi re still active, of-fi cials were “unable to fully esti-mate the extent of the damage.”

The fi re broke out in the early hours of Tuesday on Greece’s second-largest island, prompt-ing the evacuation of four vil-lages including Platana.

EU Humanitarian Commis-sioner Christos Stylianides on Wednesday called the mobilisa-tion of Greek forces “exemplary” after emergency crews managed to save inhabited areas.

A fi refi ghter suff ered burns on Tuesday after trying to cross the fi re on a motorbike, and at least four cars have been burned, state agency ANA said.

No other injuries or respira-tory problems that required hos-pitalisation have been reported.

Greece has been hit by a spate of wildfi res since the weekend, fanned by gale-force winds and temperatures of 40° Celsius (104° Fahrenheit).

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mit-sotakis, who cancelled his sum-mer vacation and returned to Athens on Tuesday, called for the EU to further bolster fi re assist-ance services.

He paid tribute to the fi re crews coping with an average of 50 forest blazes daily.

Other fi res on Tuesday were contained on the island of Thas-sos, the central region of Viotia, and in the Peloponnese region.

On Monday, a major blaze threatening homes in Peania, an eastern suburb of Athens, was brought under control.

At least two houses were burned and radio broadcast equipment was damaged on nearby Mount Ymittos.

On Sunday, a fi re on the small island of Elafonissos, in the Pelo-ponnese, was brought under control after a two-day battle.

Two more fi res were doused on Saturday in Marathon, close to Mati, the coastal resort where more than 100 people were killed last year in Greece’s worst fi re disaster.

EU water bombers join Greekbattle against massive island fi reAFPAthens

Nuclear testing near city is a crime: ecologistReutersMoscow

An ecologist in northern Russia said yesterday that the state nuclear agency

Rosatom had committed a crime by carrying out a mysterious test last week close to inhabited ar-eas, which caused a spike in ra-diation in his native city.

Rosatom has said that the Au-gust 8 accident occurred during a rocket test involving “isotope power sources” that was car-ried out on a sea platform in the White Sea.

At least fi ve people were killed in the accident.

The defence ministry ini-tially said radiation levels had remained normal, but offi cials in the northern city of Severod-vinsk recorded a brief spike.

Days later, the state weather agency said radiation had risen by up to 16 times.

“To carry out (this test) with-out preparing or warning the local population and not to take into account the ecologi-cal risks – of course it’s a crime,” Alexei Klimov, an ecologist from Severodvinsk, said by phone.

He said the test was carried out when the wind was blowing towards Severodvinsk which, like neighbouring Arkhangelsk, is located on the bay where the test was conducted.

The cities have a combined population of more than half a million.

“Children were strolling on the sea front. No one issued a warning. We should have been warned,” Klimov said, adding that the test should have been done at one of Russia’s remote test sites.

A spokesman for Rosatom de-clined to comment on Klimov’s allegation, but said the test had posed no risk to residents in Severodvinsk or elsewhere.

Klimov said local residents had fi led a complaint to pros-ecutors to look into the circum-stances of the test, and were gathering signatures to demand that such tests are never carried out again.

It remains unclear what Rus-sia was actually testing and some analysts have said there is still not enough information available to make a clear call.

Russia, which has said the missile will have an “unlimited range” and be able to overcome any defences, calls the missile the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel).

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) alliance has designated it the SSC-X-9 Sky-fall.

The pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper, however, disputed any connection with the Bu-revestnik, and said yesterday that the authorities had been testing an advanced booster de-vice.

It said the device featured a liquid propellant rocket engine mounted with “nuclear batter-ies” – military jargon that Izves-tia said was used to describe new isotope sources of power.

Sweden detains man suspected of plotting ‘terrorist crime’Police have detained a man in central Sweden on suspicion of conspiracy to commit “a terrorist crime”, the country’s Prosecution Authority said yesterday.Swedish Radio said the man was from Uzbekistan and the daily Aftonbladet, citing unnamed sources, said police were checking possible links between the suspect and Rakhmat Akilov, an Uzbek militant convicted of killing five people with a stolen truck in Stockholm in 2017.In a statement, the Prosecution Authority said the man was stopped on Wednesday while driving in the city of Ostersund and detained due to probable cause of conspiracy to commit murder.Based on findings from a search of his car, however, the case was turned over to the security

police and re-designated as conspiracy to commit “a terrorist crime”.Akilov, now serving life in prison, said during his trial that he wanted revenge on Sweden for its support in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.A Security Police spokesman declined to comment on the suspect’s nationality with the investigation at a preliminary stage, but said there was no reason to suspect any attacks were imminent.“Had there been any threat or reason to increase vigilance, we would have said so,” the spokesman said. “We are continuing with our preliminary investigation. We are conducting further questioning and reviewing the findings made in connection with the arrest.”

Subdued Independence Daycelebrations in KashmirReutersSrinagar

India tightened security yes-terday in Jammu and Kash-mir, sealing off many roads

with barbed wire in the main city of Srinagar, as government of-fi cials and security forces held an Independence Day parade at-tended by only a few local people.

Streets were empty outside the Sher-i-Kashmir cricket sta-dium, where the event was held, with most residents of the city keeping indoors as a travel and communications blockade in the state entered its 11th day.

A dance troupe of about 50 young men and women in col-ourful traditional attire was called into Srinagar from the state’s other main city of Jam-mu, said Archana Sharma, the group’s leader, adding that she was a television anchor.

“We will perform the cultural

dances of Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir,” said Sharma.

“We will return to Jammu this evening, because communica-tion is a big problem here.”

Similar performances were also held by the cultural units of the police and border security forces. During yesterday’s pa-rade, there were fewer than 500

spectators in the stadium, most of them from the security forces or government offi cials.

The stadium was sealed at least a week in advance for secu-rity reasons. It has a capacity of at least 2,000, a local police offi -cial said. Surveillance helicopters and drones with cameras hovered overhead.

Veteran Bollywood actressVidya Sinha dies aged 71IANSMumbai

Veteran Bollywood actress Vidya Sinha, known for her role in Basu Chatter-

jee’s fi lm Rajnigandha died yes-terday, family sources said.

She was 71 and died at a private hospital in Juhu where she was rushed last Sunday after severe breathing problems.

Since her condition was criti-cal she had been put on a ventila-tor but failed to recover and died around 1pm. Until very recently she was acting in a television se-rial – Kulfi Kumar Bajewala.

But in between, she had been missing from the serial due to her illness but bounced back a few weeks ago.

A major fi gure in Bollywood in the 1970s-1980s, comfort-

ably straddling both commercial and alternate cinema, Sinha was noted for her sad and sombre as well as light and romantic roles with many top actors of the era.

Among her other notable fi lms were: Hawas (1974), Chhoti Si Baat (1975), Mera Jeevana (1976), the crime-thriller Inkaar, Ki-taab (both 1977), Pati, Patni aur Woh and Basu Chatterjee’s Safed Jhooth (both 1978), horror fi lm Saboot (1980), Love Story and as

a gangster in Josh (both 1981) and Salman Khan’s mega-hit Body-guard (2011).

Gracefully sailing into senior roles in fi lms and television, she was seen in serials like Kkavy-anjali (2005), Haar Jeet (2012), Qubool Hai (2012), Isqh Ka Rang Safed (2015), Chandra Nandini (2016) and lately in Kulfi Kumar Bajewala (2018 onwards).

Born in Mumbai on November 15, 1947, to fi lm producer Rana Pratap Singh, she started her professional career as a model and even won the Miss Bombay contest, catching the eye of re-nowned fi lmmaker Basu Chat-terjee, making her mark in the industry though she entered it after marriage.

Though her fi rst fi lm was Raja Kaka (1974), it was Chatterjee’s Rajnigandhaa that year which brought her to fame.

Several lapses in Pehlumurder probe: court

IANSJaipur

A Rajasthan court which acquitted six men accused in the Pehlu Khan mob

lynching case has said there were several serious lapses in the po-lice investigation.

In April 2017, Khan, a 55-year-old native of Harya-na, left his village to purchase cattle. But he was surrounded by a mob of cow vigilantes on the Delhi-Alwar highway who thrashed him with rods and sticks. He died two days later. The case shocked the nation after a video of the attack went viral on social media.

The Alwar court in its fi nal verdict said it was not clear who shot the video as the police failed to seize the mobile phone on which the attack was fi lmed.

The court said even the pic-tures submitted as evidence failed to prove the crime.

It also questioned how Khan knew the names of the accused since he was from Haryana and the accused were from Alwar, Rajasthan. The court said the accused were not identifi ed and the statement of Khan was not recorded according to proper norms.

Meanwhile, the Congress gov-ernment in the state led by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has de-cided to challenge the decision in the high court, a senior offi cial said.

“The government is review-ing the verdict given by the lower court and after studying it thoroughly, we shall appeal in the high court. We have decided to make an urgent appeal in the high court against the verdict,” he said.

AFPLondon

The BBC said yesterday it will expand shortwave radio news coverage in

Kashmir to ease the impact of a communications blackout im-posed by the Indian government.

The British broadcaster’s an-nouncement came after New Delhi scrapped Article 370 of the constitution granting special status to Jammu and Kashmir.

Kashmir has been under lock-down since the day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi an-nounced the change on August 5.

The BBC said the number and length of programmes will grow in a variety of languages spoken in Kashmir.

“Given the shutdown of digital services and phone lines in the region, it’s right for us to try and increase the provision of news on our short wave radio servic-es,” BBC World Service director Jamie Angus said in a statement.

“The provision of independ-ent and trusted news in places of confl ict and tension is one of the core purposes of the World Service.”

The BBC said its News Hindi radio output will be extended by 30 minutes from today.

News Urdu will launch a 15-minute daily programme on Monday.

The World Service added that its English morning broadcasts will end an hour later than usual.

The evening English-language news will start an hour earlier and end at their usual time.

The BBC said India is now its radio service’s largest market – picked up by 50mn people a week.

Short wave transmissions travel thousands of kilome-tres and are able to bounce over mountains that dominate the region.

Meanwhile, several thousand people protested yesterday out-side the Indian embassy in Lon-don against the country’s move to scrap Article 370.

The protesters held up signs reading “Kashmir is bleeding” and waved Kashmiri and Pa-kistani fl ags. Police separated them from a smaller pro-Indian counter-demonstration.

AFP reporters saw police making at least one arrest.

BBC expandsshortwaveradio newscoveragein Kashmir

UN Security Council to discuss Kashmir

The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to hold a rare meeting on Kashmir after India stripped the state of its autonomy, sparking a row with Pakistan, diplomats told AFP yesterday. The meeting will take place behind closed doors today morning, the diplomats said. Poland, which currently holds the council’s rotating presidency, has listed the matter for discussion at 10am

(1400 GMT), the diplomats added. It is extremely rare for the Security Council to discuss Kashmir. The last time there was a full Security Council meeting on the Himalayan region was in 1965. Today’s discussion is not considered a full security meeting but rather referred to as closed door consultations, which are becoming increasingly more common, diplomats said.

Bond of love and affection

Women tie ‘rakhi’ (sacred threads) on the wrists of Border Security Force (BSF) personnel during a ceremony observing the festival of Raksha Bandhan at the India-Pakistan Wagah Border Post about 35kms from Amritsar yesterday. The festival celebrates the relationship between brothers and sisters.

British national Christian Michel, the alleged middleman in the Rs3,600-crore AugustaWestland VVIP chopper deal case, has been interrogated for more than 600 hours by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), according to bail pleas filed by him. “The applicant has undergone almost 600 hours of custodial interrogation by both agencies. As of today, the applicant has spent 375 days in custody including the period which he spent in Dubai jail,” His lawyer Aljo K Joseph told Special CBI Judge Arvind Kumar. The plea also claimed that Michel has made no attempt to pollute or obstruct the judicial process. Michel was extradited to India on December 4, 2018, from the United Arab Emirates.

West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Dilip Ghosh yesterday welcomed the decision of former Kolkata mayor and Trinamool Congress (TMC) legislator Sovan Chatterjee to join the BJP. “His joining will boost the BJP’s chances in the coming civic body elections and put the party in an advantageous position in Bengal,” Ghosh said. “Many TMC leaders and MLAs have contacted us in the past few months. Many of them will soon join us. The BJP’s door is open for those who want to fight TMC’s misrule for the welfare of the people,” he said. Ending months of speculation, Chatterjee and his friend Baisakhi Banerjee joined the BJP in New Delhi on Wednesday. While Chatterjee is an MLA from the Behala, Baisakhi headed the TMC education cell.

Women can travel for free on DTC and cluster buses in Delhi from October 29, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced yesterday. Speaking at an Independence Day event at Chhatrasal Stadium, Kejriwal said: “On the day of Raksha Bandhan, I want to give a gift to our sisters. They can travel for free in all DTC (Delhi Transport Corporation) and cluster buses from October 29.” Kejriwal said women’s security was of utmost importance for his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. He said his government had taken two important decisions: to install CCTV cameras across Delhi and to provide free public transport for women. He said his government did not need the Centre’s permission to provide free travel to women in buses as the government would meet the subsidy.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami yesterday announced the trifurcation of Vellore district and creating two new districts – Ranipet and Tirupattur. He made the announcement after unfurling the national flag to mark the 73rd Independence Day at Fort St George. Besides Vellore’s trifurcation, he also announced an increase in the family pension of freedom fighters to Rs8,000 from Rs7,500. Palaniswami added that a decision has been taken to purchase 7,000 new buses. He said the state government will take steps to implement recycling of water and also desilt reservoirs supplying water to the state capital Chennai. He also said the government was steadfast on following the two-language formula in the state and would oppose any attempts to impose Hindi.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Zahirul Sheikh, a key accused in the 2014 Burdwan bombing case, two days before the Independence Day from Indore, Madhya Pradesh. In order to trap Sheikh, some of the NIA off icials even posed as vegetable sellers in the Kohinoor colony, the area where Sheikh used to live. The NIA was looking for Sheikh for a long time. Sources had informed the police about the whereabouts of Sheikh, who was working as a painter and a labourer in Indore. The NIA team carried out the operation in total secrecy, without even informing the local police. Police sources said Sheikh has been working as a labourer in other cities for the last two years. He is an active member of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

Questioned for over 600hours by ED, CBI: Michel

Sovan’s move will boostBJP in W Bengal: Ghosh

Free bus travel for women in Delhi from Oct 29: Kejriwal

Vellore district to betrifurcated: TN CM

NIA arrests terrorsuspect in Indore

INVESTIGATIONPOLITICS ANNOUNCEMENT POLICYBREAKTHROUGH

10 Gulf TimesFriday, August 16, 2019

INDIA

We can now proudly say ‘onenation, one constitution’: PM

Vidya Sinha

Artists perform during a cultural event in Srinagar.Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers a speech to the nation during a ceremony to celebrate India’s Independence Day at the Red Fort in New Delhi yesterday.

ReutersNew Delhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered an Inde-pendence Day speech yes-

terday that spotlighted a decision to remove the special rights of Jammu and Kashmir among the bold moves of the fi rst 10 weeks of his second term.

Modi talked about his aim to turn India into a $5tn economy within fi ve years, by spurring wealth creation, boosting ex-ports and tourism, and spending Rs100tn ($1.4tn) on infrastruc-ture.

But he did not touch on sag-ging demand that has hit parts of the economy in recent months, especially the auto sector.

Modi said Article 370, which gave a special constitutional sta-tus for Jammu and Kashmir, had encouraged corruption and nep-otism, while creating injustice for women, children and minor-ity communities in India’s only majority-Muslim region.

“Today every Indian can proudly say ‘One Nation, One Constitution’,” Modi, speaking from the ramparts of the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, said of the decision.

Critics of the policy say it will bring a backlash from Kashmiri Muslims, who had valued the previous ban on non-residents buying property in the state, and benefi ted from the reservation of state government jobs for resi-dents.

In a clampdown in the state since the August 5 decision, au-thorities have cut Internet and phone links, restricted move-ment with police roadblocks, and detained more than 500 leaders and activists.

Wearing a fl owing bright saff ron-coloured turban, Modi, who won a landslide election vic-tory in May, also highlighted his government’s ban on triple ta-laq, some Muslim communities’ practice of allowing a husband to instantly divorce his wife.

A major announcement he made was the creation of a new post of chief of defence staff to ensure better co-ordination of the army, navy and air force, along the lines of Western mili-tary forces.

Defence experts have long called for such a post, recom-mended by a government panel in 1999, after India came close to war with Pakistan over Kashmir.

“To further sharpen co-ordi-nation between the forces, I want

to announce a major decision...India will have a chief of defence staff ,” Modi said.

However, he did not address the weakening economy and calls from industry for swift govern-ment measures to spur demand.

India’s growth rate has fallen to 5.8% for the three months ended March 2019, its lowest in 17 quarters, while research group CMIE estimates the jobless rate rose to 7.51% in July from 5.66% a year earlier.

Modi said he would invest Rs3.6tn to improve water infra-structure and pipe clean water to every home.

Standing below a fl uttering Indian fl ag, Modi urged a halt to use of single-use plastics, sug-gesting a phase-out date of Oc-tober 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

During the last fi ve years, Modi’s government has made it much easier to do business in In-dia, he added, vowing to further streamline government proce-dure.

More small vendors should ac-cept digital payments, Modi said, returning to a theme fi rst spot-lighted in 2016, when his govern-ment ordered an overnight ban of high-value banknotes.

LATIN AMERICA11Gulf Times

Friday, August 16, 2019

A Peruvian court ordered the arrest of the indigenous governor of a mineral-rich southern region after sentencing him to six years in prison on Wednesday for leading 2011 deadly protests against a Canadian open-pit silver project. Walter Aduviri, 39, the governor of Puno and an indigenous Aymara leader, was found guilty in absentia by a criminal court of disturbing public order, the off ice of the judiciary said on Twitter. Aduviri did not appear at the trial and ignored a previous judicial order to be held in jail ahead of it. His current whereabouts are unknown, leaving it unclear who has been governing the highland region rich in gold, silver, tin, lithium and uranium.

Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo has reached his first year in off ice with a 69% disapproval rating amid an enduring political crisis and a significant economic slowdown, according to a survey published on Wednesday. Abdo, elected by the conservative Colorado Party in April 2018 with 46% of the vote, avoided an impeachment vote at the start of the month over the signing of an energy pact with Brazil that opposition lawmakers said went against the country’s sovereignty. The survey, published in the Ultima Hora, found that 69.3% of respondents among the 1,200 people polled thought the president’s management was “bad or very bad,” compared with 30.7% who considered it “good or very good.”

A Brazilian court on Wednesday for the first time ordered a criminal trial for a former military off icial accused of dictatorship-era crimes, saying an amnesty law was not applicable in cases of rape or torture. Antonio Waneir Pinheiro de Lima, who was a sergeant during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, is accused of kidnapping, imprisoning and sexually assaulting a historian in the early 1970s. The off ences allegedly took place in the so-called “House of Death” in Petropolis, a city near Rio de Janeiro. An appeals court on Wednesday ruled that rape and torture were crimes against humanity and therefore were not protected by the amnesty.

The retrial of a Salvadoran woman convicted of aggravated homicide after having a stillbirth was scheduled to resume yesterday, off ering a possibility to overturn her 30-year sentence in a country that bans abortion in all circumstances. In February, the Supreme Court had ordered Evelyn Hernandez released and re-tried because the original judge’s decision was based on prejudice and insuff icient evidence. Hernandez, now 21, has served three years of the three-decade sentence that was handed down after prosecutors said she had induced an abortion, despite her account that she was unaware of her pregnancy when she delivered a stillborn son in 2016.

An employee works at a bakery in Buenos Aires.

Indigenous Peru governor faces jail over protest

Paraguay president’s popularity plummets

Criminal trial ordered for Brazil regime-era crimes

Woman faces homicide charge for stillborn son

CONVICTION NUMBERS GAMENO AMNESTY JUSTICE FRESH BREAD

Mexico startup fi ghts air pollution with artifi cial treesBy Yussel Gonzalez, AFPPuebla

Trees are one of the best things we have to clean the Earth’s air, but they have

certain drawbacks: they need time and space to grow.

Enter the BioUrban, an artifi -cial tree that sucks up as much air pollution as 368 real trees.

Designed by a Mexican star-tup, the towering metal structure uses microalgae to clean carbon dioxide and other contaminants from the air, returning pure oxy-gen to the environment.

Measuring 4.2m tall and nearly 3m wide, the device looks some-thing like a cross between a tree and a post-modernist high-rise, with a steel trunk that radiates rising bands of concentric metal.

“What this system does, through technology, is inhale air pollution and use biology to carry

out the natural process (of pho-tosynthesis), just like a tree,” says Jaime Ferrer, a founding partner in BiomiTech, the company be-hind the invention.

Mexicans know a thing or two about air pollution.

Mexico City, a sprawling urban area of more than 20mn people, regularly grinds to a halt under air pollution alerts, triggered by emissions from the capital’s more than 5mn cars, its polluting industries and even the nearby Popocatepetl volcano.

Ferrer says the company’s goal is to help such cities achieve cleaner air in targeted areas — those used by pedestrians, cy-clists or the elderly, for example — when planting large numbers of trees is not an option.

Worldwide, an estimated 7mn people die from exposure to air pollution each year, according to the World Health Organisation.

“We decided our job was to not

just stand by and let people keep dying,” says Ferrer.

Launched in 2016, BiomiTech has so far “planted” three trees: one in the city of Puebla, in cen-tral Mexico, where it is head-quartered; one in Colombia; and one in Panama.

It has a contract for two more in Turkey, and projects in the works to install them in Mexico City and Monterrey, in northern Mexico.

A BioUrban typically costs about $50,000, though the fi nal price varies depending on the site.

The company has mainly sold them to local governments so far, though private donors are pro-viding the funding in Monterrey, an industrial hub that is also no stranger to air pollution.

Each tree weighs about one tonne, and cleans as much air as a hectare of forest — the equivalent of what 2,890 people breathe in a day.

The project is reminiscent of another launched by a German fi rm in 2015, the ‘City Tree’ — a giant, vertical square of moss that also uses photosynthesis to clean the surrounding air.

Ferrer insists the idea of the BioUrban is not to replace real trees, but complement them in areas where planting a forest would not be viable.

“They can be used in high-traffi c areas, transportation terminals, where you can’t just plant a hectare of trees,” he told AFP.

“The system isn’t going to end air pollution in Mexico City. But it can alleviate the problem in high-traffi c areas.”

Maria Jose Negrete, 21, who goes to university near the spot where the fi rst tree was installed, is a fan.

“It uses technology to help the environment. That’s what we need right now,” she said. A view of the BioUrban 2.0 air purification system in Puebla, Mexico.

Norway team in Venezuela to restart dialogueMaduro accuses former Colombian president Uribe of plotting to kill him

Reuters Caracas

A delegation from the Norwegian gov-ernment has come to Venezuela to re-start talks between the government of

President Nicolas Maduro and the opposition that were halted last week after Maduro’s al-lies pulled out, according to four sources and opposition leader Juan Guaido.

Maduro last week said the government would not attend a scheduled round of talks in Barbados to protest the opposition’s support for new US sanctions against his government.

The Norwegian delegation arrived late on Tuesday to speak separately with the op-position and the government to restart the proceedings, which are meant to resolve the country’s political stalemate, two of the sources said.

Neither Venezuela’s Information Minis-try nor the Norwegian Foreign Ministry re-sponded to requests for comment.

“There is no new (meeting) planned, but yes, the representatives of the Kingdom of Norway are here in the country,” Guaido told reporters.

“The regime in previous years used (dia-logue) to stall for time or to generate doubts within the opposition. They will not do so in this case.”

Guaido in January invoked the constitu-tion to assume a rival interim presidency on the grounds that Maduro’s 2018 re-election was fraudulent, and has promised to end an economic crisis that spurred mass migration.

Guaido, who has been recognised by more than 50 countries including the United States as Venezuela’s legitimate president, described the new Washington sanctions as “penalties for those who steal and profi t from misery.”

Maduro calls Guaido a Washington-backed puppet who is seeking to overthrow his gov-ernment.

The Norway-backed talks began in May following a failed uprising against Maduro but have not yet yielded any offi cial results.

Separately, the United Nations launched an appeal on Wednesday calling for $223mn of humanitarian aid for 2.6mn Venezuelans until the end of the year as part of a “scale-up

strategy” launched last October.The appeal includes 98 projects that will be

implemented by more than 60 UN agencies and partners, and covers health, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene, education, food security and protection, the United Na-tions said.

“It seeks to strengthen the capacity of hu-manitarian organisations and further open the operational space in country, thus laying the foundation to widen the response and reach a larger target population in 2020,” the UN Offi ce for the Coordination of Humani-tarian Aff airs said.

Separately on Wednesday, Maduro accused former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe of plotting to assassinate him in cohorts with Colombia’s US ambassador Francisco San-tos, and exiled Venezuelan opposition leader Lester Toledo.

It was not the fi rst time Maduro, a social-ist, accused politicians from neighbouring Colombia of plotting against him, as rela-tions between the two countries deteriorate amid an economic crisis in Venezuela that has prompted more than 1mn migrants to settle in Colombia.

During a state television broadcast on Wednesday evening, Maduro gave a detailed account of how the three plotted the at-tack from “a bunker” in a house belonging to Uribe, a right-wing leader who has been an outspoken critic of Maduro and his pred-ecessor and mentor, the late president Hugo Chavez.

“It is a plan for 32 mercenaries to enter to try to assassinate me and leaders of the revo-lution,” Maduro said. “But we are here, pro-tected by God.”

Colombian Foreign Minister Carlos Holm-es denied the allegation in a post on Twitter, saying the government “rejects the delirious and slanderous accusations by the dictator Maduro against two Colombians who have dedicated their lives to serving democracy.”

A press advisor to Uribe did not respond to a request for comment.

Toledo, who is based in Colombia, has been designated by Guaido as his international co-ordinator for eff orts to bring in humanitarian aid. He could not be reached for comment.

Maduro frequently calls current Colom-bian President Ivan Duque a “lackey” for US interests.

Maduro has accused Colombia and the United States of being behind a drone explo-sion at a military parade last year, which he describes as an assassination attempt.

Chile’s national animal, the Huemul deer, explores its environment after being raised and released in captivity to save the species from extinction, in the Huilo Huilo nature reserve in Temuco, Chile.

Saving a species

UN: Hunger driving migration in drought-hit Central AmericaBy Anastasia Moloney, Reuters Bogota

Poor harvests and prolonged drought are driving rural families in parts of Central

America from their homes to seek better opportunities in their own or neighbouring countries and in the United States, the United Na-tions said on Wednesday.

Five years of recurring droughts have destroyed maize and bean harvests, leaving poor subsistence farmers in the so-called Dry Corri-dor that runs through Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua struggling to feed their families.

A 2018 survey by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) found that 8% of families interviewed in the

Dry Corridor, mostly small-scale farmers, said they plan to migrate because they lack food.

Some 1.4mn people living in the Dry Corridor need food aid, ac-cording to the WFP, which aims to help 700,000 people this year in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

So far 160,000 people have re-ceived support.

Climate change is causing more frequent and severe droughts, as well as torrential and erratic rains, leaving families with little choice but to migrate, the WFP said.

“People fi rst start to lose their income source, they then start to sell their assets, then they start to look for other possibilities,” said Rossella Bottone, the WFP’s moni-toring and evaluation offi cer for

Latin America and the Caribbean.“One of the coping strategies is

fi rst internal migration — so they go to the cities to fi nd income. But when these coping strategies are exhausted, they migrate external-ly,” Bottone told the Thomson Reu-ters Foundation.

WFP research in 2017 found a clear link between food shortages and emigration in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, where destitute families are also driven to migrate because of extreme pov-erty and gang violence.

While many leaving the Dry Cor-ridor are men, more women have been migrating with their children north to the United States over the past year, Bottone said.

Earlier this month, Germany an-nounced it would provide $1.1mn

to the WFP in emergency food aid to support thousands of families in Honduras aff ected by the drought.

“Climate change and its conse-quences have resulted in more and more people now seeing emigra-tion as the only way out,” said Tho-mas Wriessnig, Germany’s ambas-sador in Honduras.

Bottone said it was increasingly vital to help rural communities, where many farm by hand, to cope with climate change.

WFP is working with aff ected communities to improve water ir-rigation systems and reforest areas.

“The climate change is there, but the other side is how people are equipped to cope,” Bottone said.

“When people are better equipped, they can better face the shock.”

PAKISTAN

Gulf Times Friday, August 16, 201912

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa cabinet has approved a bill proposing the formation

of integrated tourism zones (ITZ) across the province, where sever-al crucial laws for the protection of forests, environment, wildlife and rivers will lose eff ect.

Briefi ng reporters after the cabinet’s meeting this week, sen-ior minister Mohamed Atif Khan and spokesman for the govern-ment Ajmal Wazir said that the cabinet had approved the pro-posed KP Tourism Act 2019,

which would be presented in the provincial assembly for consent.

Besides other things, the bill also proposed to dissolve the Tourism Corporation Khyber Pa-khtunkhwa (TCKP) and directo-rate of culture, and form the KP Tourism Authority in their place.

Under the law, employees of these bodies running into hun-dreds will either be placed at a surplus pool at the establishment department, absorbed in other departments or will be part of the new authority as decided by a scrutiny committee.

Section 20 of the proposed law empowers the Provincial Tour-ism Strategy Board to declare

any area in the province as an ITZ through a notifi cation in offi cial gazette.

According to Section 20(2), af-ter an area is declared as an ITZ, at least seven legislations includ-ing the Forest Ordinance 2002, the River Protection Ordinance 2002, the Wildlife and Biodi-versity Protection Act 2015, the Mines and Minerals Act 2017, and the KP Environmental Protection 2014, will have no jurisdiction in the said area.

Sections 20(3) and (4) declared that after the authority issues a notifi cation declaring an area as an ITZ, the said area ceases to be reserved forest or national park.

However, Atif said it is unlikely to cause any harm as even today, the cabinet had power to notify any area as forest or otherwise.

He said no felling of trees would take place in areas de-clared as ITZs, while there would be more plantations to attract tourists.

The minister said all construc-tion works in the area would be carried out in areas without trees.

He said soon after the promul-gation of the law, the government would announce tourism zones.

Atif said that the authority would ensure that no unplanned construction takes place in these zones, and ensure that good sani-

tation conditions exist.He said after the formation of

the tourism authority, investors would deal with a single entity.

The minister said the authority would comprise nine wings.

The cabinet also decided to open 174 government rest houses across the province to the people.

Atif said as the fi rst step, fi ve rest houses located in Nathi-agali were immediately opened to people.

He said people would be able to make online booking for those rest houses – the Chief Minis-ter’s House, Governor’s House, Speaker’s House, Police’s Rest House, and Kanak House.

The minister said that in the second phase, 49 more rest houses would be opened to peo-ple, while the people would get access to the rest totalling 120 afterwards.

He said millions of rupees are being spent annually on that rest houses, which were off -limits to members of the public.

The minister said the gov-ernment was not interested in spending the taxpayers’ money on the upkeep of those places, adding that the rest houses would instead generate revenue for the government.

The minister said once those rest houses are opened to the

public, anyone could stay there after booking rooms.

Wazir said the cabinet also ap-proved a proposal to purchase 52 vehicles for offi cials in merged districts, while approval was also accorded to the reconstituted board of the KP Economic Zones Development Management Company, a feasibility study for Jica-assisted rural roads, amend-ments to the civil procedure code, and payment of compensa-tion to the heirs of Tarbela boat capsizing incident.

The cabinet also passed a reso-lution condemning Indian deci-sion to revoke the Indian-admin-istered Kashmir’s special status.

KP cabinet okays bill for integrated tourism zonesInternewsPeshawar

At least three Pakistani sol-diers were killed in an ex-change of fi re with Indian

troops in Kashmir yesterday, the Pakistani army said, at a time of peak tensions in the disputed border region.

Indian troops fi red artillery across the Line of Control (LoC), a de facto frontier that divides the Himalayan valley into parts controlled by the two countries, the Pakistani army said in a statement.

“In eff orts to divert atten-tion from precarious situation in IOJ&K (Indian-administered Kashmir), Indian Army increas-es fi ring along LOC. 3 Pakistani soldiers embraced shahadat (martyrdom). Pakistan Army responded eff ectively,” the Paki-stani military said in a statement.

It also claimed that “5 Indian soldiers (were) killed, many in-jured, bunkers damaged. Inter-mittent exchange of fi re contin-ues”, without specifying further where the incident took place.

Pakistani troops killed fi ve In-dian soldiers in retaliatory fi re, the army claimed, but media reports quoted army offi cials in New Delhi denying deaths on their side.

An Indian army spokesman told the Press Trust of India late yesterday that the Pakistan claims were “fi ctitious”, adding that the army was on high alert to deal with any “misadventure” by Pakistan.

Indian defence ministry spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Devender Anand accused Pa-kistani troops of “unprovoked mortar shelling and fi ring”.

“The Indian army retaliated befi ttingly,” he told the Indian Express, adding that the fi ring stopped around 5.30pm (1200 GMT) and no casualties were re-ported on the Indian side.

Police in Pakistan-adminis-tered Kashmir said two civilians were also killed in what would be the fi rst clash since New Delhi stripped Indian-administered Kashmir of its special autonomy last week.

A police offi cial, Mirza Arshad Jarral, said that intermittent ex-changes of fi re between the two militaries had been going on since morning.

The Indian decision on Kash-mir and a subsequent security lockdown on the region has trig-gered a fresh wave of tensions between the South Asian rivals, who have fought three wars in the past.

Both Pakistan and India con-trol only parts of Kashmir, but each lays claim to the entire re-gion since the countries gained independence from Britain in 1947.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people angered by the Indian decision to alter the status of Indian-administered Kashmir rallied across Pakistan as Islama-bad called for the Indian Inde-pendence Day yesterday to be observed as a “Black Day”.

The protesters were carrying black fl ags, banners and placards with slogans slamming Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

There were also rallies in ma-jor cities in Pakistan-adminis-tered Kashmir, where members of families divided by the Line of Control marched to condemn

Modi and the end to Kashmir’s special status.

Islamabad has reacted to New Delhi’s move by downgrading diplomatic relations with India, halting bilateral trade and sus-pending all cross-border trans-port links.

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday accused India of planning to attack a part of Kash-mir administered by his country, warning New Delhi of a tit-for-tat reaction.

He vowed that the time had come to teach Delhi a lesson and promised to “fi ght until the end” against any Indian aggression.

The prime minister has likened India’s moves in Kashmir to Nazi Germany, accused them of ethnic cleansing, and appealed to the

international community to take action.

Yesterday supporters of the Hizbul Mujahideen militant group were among more than 1,000 people who marched through Muzaff arabad, capi-tal of Pakistan’s region of Azad Kashmir, holding black fl ags and shouting anti-India slogans.

“As long as India continues its occupation of Kashmir, we will fi ght within the occupied terri-tory, with full force,” Hizbul Mu-jahideen’s deputy commander, Saifullah Khalid, told the crowd. “Until the eviction of the last In-dian soldier, our armed struggle will go on.”

India has banned Hizbul Muja-hideen as a terrorist outfi t, which it has long said Pakistan funds,

along with similar groups.Islamabad denies this, though

it does not ban the group.Newspaper issues carried

black borders and politicians, including Prime Minister Khan, replaced their social media pic-tures with black squares. Flags on government buildings fl ew at half-mast.

Pakistan’s largely symbolic ‘Black Day’ comes amid growing frustration in Islamabad at the lack of international response over the Kashmir dispute.

Pakistan was isolated dip-lomatically and faced “a world in denial” over the situation in Kashmir, Dawn, the country’s most infl uential English-lan-guage newspaper, said in an edi-torial.

The 15-member United Na-tions Security Council could dis-cuss the dispute soon, but Paki-stan says it only has guaranteed support from China, which also claims part of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state.

Permanent security council member Russia said on Wednes-day that it supported India’s stance that the dispute should be resolved through bilateral means, while the United States has called India’s decision an internal mat-ter for New Delhi.

Earlier this year Pakistan and India came close to all-out con-fl ict yet again, after a militant at-tack in Indian-held Kashmir in February was claimed by a group based in Pakistan, igniting tit-for-tat air strikes.

Kashmir exchange of fi re leaves at least fi ve deadDPA/AFP/ReutersIslamabad

People carry black flags during a protest in Karachi to observe ‘Black Day’ over India’s decision to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and other party leaders take part in a rally in Lahore yesterday against India, as the country observes ‘Black Day’ on India’s Independence Day over the recent move to strip Indian-administered Kashmir of its autonomy.

Riot police prevent protesters as they try to reach the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

Right: The Pakistan national flag flies at half-mast over the picture of the founder of Pakistan, Mohamed Ali Jinnah, on the Pakistani side of the Wagah border checkpoint.

Islamabad sees ideal air qualityIslamabad is embracing the healthy vibes during the monsoon season, maintaining ideal ambient air quality with consistent declined pollutants ratio.The pollution level comprising particulate matter of 2.5 microns (PM2.5) has dropped (improved) below the permissible ratio of 35 micrograms (mcg) per cubic metre (mcg/m3), being recorded at 26.77mcg/m3.The 24-hour average recorded ratio of other environmental pollutants has been recorded below permissible limits, with a healthy and ideal ambient quality in the federal capital.The atmospheric pollution increased at times due to high vehicular emissions emitted by large number of automobiles on the roads.According to the daily ambient air quality report of the federal capital by Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (PAK-EPA), the 24-hour average ratio of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) were 13.02mcg/m3 and 5.95mcg/m3 respectively.The respective National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS) for these are 80mcg/m3 and 120mcg/m3.The data was recorded by calibrated air quality monitors fixed at particular positions with proper readings.

Govt HR division admits fl awsInternewsIslamabad

The Establishment Division (ED) – the government’s human resources (HR)

arm – has admitted to failure of its accountability system for civil servants under the Effi cien-cy and Discipline Rules (E&D Rules), and explained the proc-ess of disciplinary proceedings against government offi cials for non-adherence to rules is slow.

In its yearbook for 2017-18, published recently, the ED said the E&D Rules and relevant in-structions are not followed by the Inquiry Offi cers and Author-ised Offi cers (IO/AO), but there is no legal provision available to proceed against such offi cials.

“In a majority of cases, the AO and IO take long time in com-pleting the process. In many cases, AOs and IOs do not follow the due process as indicated to them through the checklist.

“Thus, at time, the reports are sent back to AO to remove and rectify the defi ciencies,” the re-port said.

There are also cases, it says, when new proceedings have to be conducted to remove the in-fi rmities and lacunae in such cases or when the authority does not agree with the recommen-dations of the AO.

Occasionally, it is said, disci-plinary proceedings stand abat-ed against accused offi cers, on their superannuation, because of this inordinate delay.

Another very important and weak link in the process, the yearbook says, is that there is no clause or rule which outlines any action against the AO or IO, where it is observed that they are delaying the inquiry or where it is observed that they have not diligently carried out the proc-ess.

The yearbook mentions revi-sion of the E&D Rules which will incorporate clauses to rectify the anomalies in the relevant rules.

It says that during the year 2017-18, 96 disciplinary cases were initiated against the of-fi cers belonging to the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS), the Police Service of Pakistan (PSP), the Secretariat Group, the Offi ce Management Group (OMG), and other groups and services, controlled by the min-istries and divisions.

Out of these 96 cases, 42 cases were fi nalised or closed.

During the year, only four ma-jor penalties and six minor pen-alties were imposed on offi cers and 23 offi cers were exonerated.

Action on the remaining cases is under process.

THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH13Gulf Times

Friday, August 16, 2019

Examples of good ends

Rulings for mortgage Istikharaah – The Guidance Prayer

Fear of an evil end had broken the hearts of our righteous Salaf (predecessors). Sufyaan Ath-Thawri cried one night

until the morning, and when he was asked whether he cried due to his fear of his sins, he replied: “No, I am more scared of having an evil end.”

Ibn Katheer said: “People who are righteous inwardly and outwardly and whose actions coincide with their words, Allah willing, will not have an evil way to end their lives; and never was this reported about anyone before. It is only those who are evil inwardly and outwardly; those who are daring and indulge in major great sins and who are frequent in committing minor sins. This type of people, who are used to this practice will continue to do so until they die without repenting.”

The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, said: “Verily, deeds are but by the way they end.” [Al-Bukhari]. This is why our right predecessors feared their ends because no one knows how he will end his life and in which state he will depart.

For this reason, Huthayfah was happy to die before the trials about which the Prophet informed them and said: “All perfect praise be to Allah who has hastened my death before these trials”.

One of the signs indicating that the person died while having a good end is dying while performing a righteous deed. Anas narrated that he heard the Prophet saying: “Do not be impressed with someone’s actions (thinking they are righteous) until you see how his end is, because one would be perform-ing a (righteous) deed for a long period of his life, and should he die upon such a deed he would enter Paradise, but he switches to performing evil deeds (before his death). The slave would be performing a (bad) deed for a long pe-riod of his life, and should he die upon such a deed he would enter Hell, but he switches to performing good deeds (before his death) and when Allah Wills good for a slave He uses him before his death.”

The companions asked: “O mes-senger of Allah! How does Allah use him?” He responded: “He enables him to perform a good deed, then ends his life upon it.” [Ahmad]

Huthayfah narrated that the Mes-senger of Allah said: “He who says ‘Laa ilaaha illallah’ (i.e., None is worthy of worship except Allah) seeking the pleasure of Allah, and it being his fi nal statement, will enter Paradise; he who fasts sincerely, seeking the pleasure of Allah, and died whilst in this state, will enter Paradise; he who spends in char-ity, sincerely seeking the pleasure of Allah, and it being the last thing he did before dieing, will enter Paradise.”

Jaabir reported: “I heard the Prophet saying: “Every slave will be resur-

rected in the state upon which he died” [Muslim]. Imaam As-Suyooti said: “This narration refers to the state of obedience or disobedience”. Maalik Ibn Deenaar used to say: “If I can aff ord (physically) not to sleep ever I would not sleep.” He was asked about the reason, to which he said: “I fear that the angel of death would come to me whilst I am sleeping and I would like that he comes whilst I am engaged in a righteous deed”.

An example highlighting one of the best ways to die is for a disbeliever to embrace Islam then immediately die. Anas reported: “A young Jewish boy who was in the service of the Prophet fell ill. The Prophet went to visit him. He sat down by his head and said to him: “Embrace Islam.” The little boy looked at his father who was sitting beside him. He said: ‘Obey Abul-Qaasim (i.e., the Messenger of Allah ).’ So he embraced Islam and the Prophet stepped out saying: “Praise be to Allah Who has saved him from Hell-fi re.” [Al-Bukhari].

Recently Allah guided a man from the Philippines to the light of Islam in the city of Taif in Saudi Arabia, and he was taught some of the merits of Islam. The very next day after embracing Islam he started reciting some chapters of the Qur’an and on the following morning he passed away, after only two days of him becoming a Muslim.

Uttering the testimonies of faith prior to death is a good deed and another example for one’s good end. Mu’aath ibn Jabal narrated that the Prophet said: “He whose fi nal words are ‘Laa ilaaha illallah’ (i.e., ‘None is worthy of worship except Allah’) will enter Paradise.”[Al-Haakim].

‘Abdullah Ibn ‘Amr Ibn al-‘Aas re-ported that when his father was on his deathbed he said: “O Allah! You com-manded me with many commands and I fell short in many of them. O Allah! You forbade me from many matters, but I transgressed. O Allah! None has the right to be worshipped but You” then he continued repeating this until he died.

Many of the Salaf died while pray-ing, which is another example for a good way to end life. ‘Abdullah Ibn Abi As-Sarh supplicated one night after having performed Qiyaam saying: “O Allah! Make my last deed in this life the performance of Fajr prayer.” Then he performed ablution and prayed Fajr and died while concluding his prayer.

Abu Tha’labah used to say: “I hope that Allah will not make me suff er upon death like I see some people do.” Then he started performing Qiyaam and died while in the position of pros-tration. That night his daughter saw in her dream that her father died, so she woke up terrifi ed and went to her mother asking about her father, so she told her that he was praying Qiyaam.

They went to check on him and found him in the position of prostration and when they moved him he fell to his side.

A young man prayed the Fajr prayer with the congregation and sat in the mosque reciting the Qur’an and wait-ing for the sun to rise so that he may pray two Rak’ahs and he did not know that it was the last hour of his life, and died whilst in that state.

A 55- year-old lady was admitted into the emergency room as a result of getting a heart attack which made her heart stop beating completely. When the physicians were trying to make a heart massage with special equipment a very astonishing thing happened, which doctors had never seen before that day … the woman suddenly opened her eyes and spoke calmly saying a few words … she did not com-plain of any pain … she did not scream asking for their assistance … she did not ask for her husband or children … she simply uttered the two testimo-nies of faith … then the heart stopped again. She repeated this three times … then she died … and her face illumi-nated. When her husband was asked about the type of woman she was, he said: “I married her more than 35 years ago, and since then I have never seen her abandon the Witr prayer (i.e. the odd-numbered Rak’ahs after the op-tional night prayer) unless she was sick or during her monthly period”.

Dying while fasting is yet another example exemplifying a good end, like in the case of Asmaa’ bint Abu Bakr and her son ‘Urwah.

Some people die whilst in the state of Ihraam which entitles the person to a great reward, as in the narration about the Companion who died as a result of his animal kicking him whilst in the state of Ihraam (for either Haj or ‘Umrah), the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, said: “Wash him with water and lote-tree (leaves), shroud him in his own garments and do not cover his head, because he will be resurrected on the Day of Resurrection uttering the Talbiyah.”.

There are some people who die whilst reciting the Qur’an, like in the case of ‘Uthmaan Ibn ‘Aff aan¸ who was known to be a person who continu-ously recited the Qur’an day and night. He was martyred whilst reciting the Qur’an in his house.

Once Ibn ‘Abbaas recited the saying of Allah which means: “Is one who is devoutly obedient during periods of the night, prostrating and standing [in prayer], fearing the Hereafter and hop-ing for the mercy of his Lord, [like one who does not]?” [Qur’an 39: 9] then he said: “I swear by Allah! This applies to ‘Uthmaan Ibn ‘Aff aan”.

One of the best examples indicat-ing a good end is being martyred. Al-Miqdaam Ibn Ma’di Karib narrated

The linguistic meaning of the Arabic word ‘rahn’ is “set-tlement”, and “permanence.” The Islamic legal meaning

for rahn is “a security of a debt by something with which the debt can be fulfi lled.” In other words, it means mortgaging an item with monetary value or collateral as security against a debt.

Rahn is permissible as indicated in the Book, the Sunnah and by Ijmaa’ (consensus of scholars). Allah says, “And if you are on a journey and can-not fi nd a scribe, then let there be a rihaan (mortgage) taken.” (2:283)

When the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, died, his armour was mortgaged.

Scholars are in agreement that rahn is permissible while travelling. The majority of scholars have held the opinion that it is also permissible in residence. The following points outline the rulings of mortgage:

1. The wisdom behind rahn’s validity is to preserve the wealth and protect it from loss. Allah also commanded us to document debts in writing. He says, “O you who believe! When you contract a debt for a fi xed period, write it down ... and if you are on a journey and cannot fi nd a scribe, then let there be a rihaan taken.” (2:282-283)

This is a sign of Mercy from Allah where He guides us to do good for ourselves.

2. For rahn to be valid, its amount and nature should be known. The mortgager should have the right to dis-pose of the item, whether he is owner or has permission to dispose of it.

3. It is permissible to mortgage from your money on behalf of someone else’s debt.

4. The mortgaged item should be sellable so that the mortgage can be paid off .

5. The rahn can be conditioned in the contract or after the contract. Allah made the rahn in lieu of writing a debt, as He says, “And if you are on a journey and cannot fi nd a scribe, then let there be a rihaan taken.” (2:283)

6. Rahn is required from the mort-gager only because the right is for

someone else. But it is not required from the mortgagee (the lender) for he can cancel it at any time, because it is his right alone.

7. It is permissible to mortgage one’s share from a partnership. This is because the share can be sold at the time the debt is due and then it will be fulfi lled. It is also permissible to mort-gage something sold for its value. For example, if one buys a car or a house for a deferred price, then one can mortgage it until he pays the price.

8. Neither the mortgager nor the mortgagee can use the mortgaged (col-lateral) item without the permission of the other party. This is to protect both parties’ rights. If the mortgager uses it, then he nullifi es the right of the mortgagee in securing the debt. On the other hand, if the mortgagee uses it, then he is actually using something owned by others.

9. Benefi ting from rahn is permis-sible, but it should be agreed upon between both parties.

10. The growth of the rahn and the benefi t derived from it becomes a rahn added to the original rahn that can also be sold to pay off the debt.

11. All expenses incurred from keeping the rahn is the liability of the mortgager, including storage, guarding the mortgage, etc.

12. If part of the mortage gets de-stroyed, then the remainder becomes rahn for the entire debt.

13. If the mortgager pays off some of the debt, the rahn remains as the entire collateral and none of it can be released until the entire debt is paid.

14. When the payment of the debt is due, the indebted party must repay the debt, just as one must repay a debt that does not have a rahn attached. Allah says, “Let then one who is entrusted discharge his trust (faithfully), and let him have taqwah for Allah, his Lord.” (2:283) and “Let him have taqwah for Allah, his Lord and diminish not any-thing of what he owes.” (2:282)

If the debtor refuses to pay, he will be accused of delay and the judge will then force him to pay. If he continues to refuse, then he should be disciplined by imprisonment or other means until

he repays his debt or the mortgage is sold to pay off the debt.

The judge can also sell the mortgage in the debtor’s place, if the debtor refuses to do so. If there is money left after selling the mortgage and repay-ment of the debt, then the excess is returned to the debtor. If there is a portion of the debt that is not covered by the value of the collateral, then it remains as a liability of the mortgager that must be paid.

15. It is permissible for the lender to use the collateral (mortgaged item) in some cases, such as riding or milk-ing the animal if it was mortgaged, but the lender should spend on it and feed it. This is based on the hadith, “The mortgaged animal can be used for riding, as long as it is fed and the milk of the animal can be drunk ac-cording to what one spends on it. The one who rides the animal or drinks its milk should provide the expenditures.” (Bukhari)

Imam Ibn al-Qayim said: “This hadith, together with the principles of Shari’ah indicate that the mortgaged animal should be treated with respect, and this is Allah’s right. Its owner has the right of ownership. And the animal is in the possession of the mortgagee, but does not milk it, then the milk is wasted. Therefore justice, qiyas, and the welfare of the mortgager, mort-gagee and the animal require that the mortgagee benefi t from the animal in riding and milking it. This is compen-sated for by providing the expenses. By benefi ting from the animal and paying for its expenses, all rights will be fulfi lled.”

Some scholars said: “There are two types of mortgage. One requires provi-sion and the other doesn’t. The fi rst type of mortgage is further divided into two diff erent types. One is the animal which is ridden and milked, and the second is the slave. The latter can-not be used for benefi t by the mort-gagee without the permission of the owner. The second type of rahn that does not require provision includes a house, furniture, etc. The mortgagee cannot benefi t from this type without the permission of the mortgager.”

We are humans, power-less in this sphere of life, knowledgeable only enough to survive.

So why shouldn’t we turn to Allah and seek His perfect help whenever we require it? Allah responds to the call of His servant when he asks for guidance, and we are after all seeking to do something in order to please Him.

Istikharaah means to ask Allah to guide you to the path best for you concerning an aff air with two halal options. In matters that are waajib (obligatory), haraam (forbidden) or makrooh (disliked) there is no need to pray Istikharaah.

Salaat-ul-Istikharaah should only be used for matters that are mubaah (allowed) or in matters that are mustahabb (liked or encouraged), in which there is a decision to be made as to which one should be given priority.

Many wrong notions exist con-cerning istikharaah. Many Muslims will pray, read the du’a, and run to bed expecting to see a dream show-ing them their future wife, what her favourite colour is, and some other weird fantasy. That is not the purpose of this salaat.

The results of an istikharaah can take many forms. Basically, you go by your feelings, whether you now feel more favourable or not. Also, you may notice events have changed, either for or against you. Note that you must follow the results of an istikharaah, because not doing so is tantamount to rejecting Allah’s guidance once you’ve asked for it. Also, you should fi rst clear your mind, not have your mind already decided, and then after-wards follow the results willingly.

It is a Sunnah that, if one must choose between permissible alterna-tives, one may pray two non-oblig-atory rak’at, even if they are of the Sunnah prayers or a prayer for enter-

ing the mosque, and so on, during any time of the day or night, and to recite therein whatever one wishes of the Qur’an after reciting Al-Fatihah. Then one praises Allah and sends salutations to the Prophet and recites the supplication in the Hadith below.

The description of Salaat-ul-Istikharah was narrated by Jaabir ibn ‘Abd-Allah al-Salami (may Allah be pleased with him) who said:

“The Messenger of Allah used to teach his companions to make istikharaah in all things, just as he used to teach them Surahs from the Qur’an. He said: ‘If any one of you is concerned about a decision he has to make, then let him pray two rak’ahs of non-obligatory prayer, then say:

Allaahumma inni astakheeruka bi ‘ilmika wa astaqdiruka bi qudratika wa as’aluka min fadlika, fa innaka taqdiru wa laa aqdir, wa ta’lamu wa laa a’lam, wa anta ‘allaam al-ghuyoob. Allaahumma fa in kunta ta’lamu haadha’l-amra (then the matter should be mentioned by name) khayran li fi ‘aajil amri wa aajilihi (or: fi deeni wa ma’aashi wa ‘aaqi-bati amri) faqdurhu li wa yassirhu li thumma baarik li fi hi. Allaahumma wa in kunta ta’lamu annahu sharrun li fi deeni wa ma’aashi wa ‘aaqibati amri (or: fi ‘aajili amri wa aajilihi) fasrifni ‘anhu [wasrafhu ‘anni] waq-dur li al-khayr haythu kaana thumma radini bihi.

“O Allah, I seek Your guidance [in making a choice] by virtue of Your knowledge, and I seek ability by virtue of Your power, and I ask You of Your great bounty. You have power, I have none. And You know, I know not. You are the Knower of hidden things. O Allah, if in Your knowledge, this matter (then it should be men-tioned by name) is good for me both in this world and in the Hereafter (or: in my religion, my livelihood and my aff airs), then ordain it for me, make it easy for me, and bless it for me. And if

in Your knowledge it is bad for me and for my religion, my livelihood and my aff airs (or: for me both in this world and the next), then turn me away from it, [and turn it away from me], and ordain for me the good wherever it may be and make me pleased with it.”

The Prophet, added that “then the person should mention his need.” [Sahih Bukhari]

Salaat-ul-Istikharaah is just two rak’ats of a non-obligatory prayer, prayed at anytime during the day, with a specifi c du’a at the end. While reciting the du’a, you should be thinking about the situation you want to be advised about with pure inten-tions and from the bottom of your heart. And Allah says that whenever he guides a heart aright it can never be misguided. Afterwards, you should “have a good feeling” about one of your options. Whatever option you feel is best right after you say the dua should be your decision. If you’re still in doubt, you can repeat.

Some people mistakenly wait for a dream to give a clear sign as to what decision to make, but this is not true, and often times it never really hap-pens. In fact, dreams may lead you away from what Allah wants you to do, as Shaytaan might try to deceive you in your dreams.

Salat-ul-Istikharaah is for everybody. It’s a way for all of us to implore Allah for divine guidance and mercy. It is yet another invalu-able resource from Allah to keep us on the straight and narrow Siraat al-Mustaqeem. The Prophet told all Muslims about Istikharaah, not just the scholars. Despite this gift, too many of us take the advice of our friends and parents, or accept the norms of our society and act without ever wondering what Allah wants us to do. We must stop looking to the dunya for guidance. We must begin to consult Allah.

that the Prophet said: “A martyr has six bounties: He will be forgiven with the fi rst drop of his blood that is spilt; He will see his place in Paradise (at the time of death); He will be saved from the ‘Great Horror’ (on the Day of Judgment): A Crown of Dignity will be placed on his head, which contains many corundum, each one being more precious than this life and all that it contains; He will have 72 Women of Paradise; And, he will be allowed to intercede for 70 of his family members (who would have otherwise gone to hell).”[At-Tirmithi]

Shaddaad Ibn al-Haad narrated: “A Bedouin came to the Prophet, sallal-laahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, accepted Islam and said: ‘I wish to migrate (to Madi-nah)’. So the Prophet asked some of his Companions to take care of him. Then after a battle, the Muslims had gained some booty so the Prophet divided it and gave the Bedouin’s share to some of his companions to look after, as the bedouin was still at the rearguard.

When the bedouin returned, they gave him his share, so he asked them: ‘What is this?’ they replied: ‘It is your share from the booty which the Prophet gave us to hold on to for you.’ So the Bedouin took the booty and went to the Prophet and asked: ‘What is this?’ The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, replied: “Your share of the booty.” The bedouin said: “This

is not why I believe in you and follow you; rather, I follow you so that I can get shot by an arrow right here, (and then he pointed to his throat) then die and enter Paradise.” The Prophet, sal-lallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, said: “If you are sincere then Allah will grant you your wish.”

After a short while, fi ghting re-sumed and the bedouin’s body was brought to the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, with an arrow in his throat at exactly the spot where he had pointed to the Prophet. Thereupon The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam, said: “He was sincere so Allah granted him his wish.”

Then using his own garment, the Prophet shrouded the bedouin, prayed the funeral prayer over him and was heard by his companions to say during the prayer: “O Allah! This is Your slave who migrated for Your sake and was killed as a martyr – and I testify to this”. Which testimony could ever be more honourable, sincere and truth-ful than this great one given by the Prophet?

A truck driver named Abu Dujaanah was known in his town to be an evil person who consumed intoxicants. One day, he got in a deadly car ac-cident, but Allah saved him. Allah decreed that two righteous young men see the accident and rush to him whilst he was unconscious and took him with

them and when he woke up they told him to perform Ghusl (ritual bath) which he did, then they instructed him to pray, and after he prayed they said to him: “Allah has rescued you from death and had you died upon the state you were in, it would have been the worse way to die and be resurrected. You should repent to Allah and shun all sins.”

Their words aff ected him deeply, and he shunned his evil company with whom he used to hang around, and started practising. A few months later, he travelled to Bosnia for Jihad, and Allah granted him martyrdom there. His body remained with the enemies thrown in an open fi eld for two and a half months after he was killed, and then a swap of dead bodies happened between the Mujahideen and the Serbs, and when the brothers opened the plastic bag in which he was kept for this long period, they saw his face smiling and an extremely pleasant scent emanating from his body.

These were but some examples of how a good end may be, and we ask Al-lah to bless us and grant us a good way to end our lives.

Article source: http://www.is-lamweb.net/emainpage/

Muslim pilgrims gather around the Ka’aba, Islam’s holiest shrine, at the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Makkah during the annual Haj pilgrimage.

By K Rajendran Idukki

P Divakaran, 65, stood beside the road where his sister and three other family members were killed when a landslide caused

by heavy rains demolished their house almost a year ago.

“Even after 11 months, the mortal remains of my sister have not yet been recovered.

Still I am afraid to hear the sound of rain,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Upputhodu village, in southern India’s Idukki district.

This month, Idukki, in Kerala state, has again been battered by torrential monsoon rains and landslides that killed at least fi ve people and forced about 1,400 to evacuate to shelters, known locally as relief camps.

This year’s danger hit an area, alongside other parts of the ecologically fragile Western Ghats mountains, where local people had yet to recover from the trauma and stress they experienced from the disaster in August 2018.

That was the worst recorded in local history, with 51 deaths and destruction estimated at Rs2.1bn (almost $30mn). But the damage was also refl ected in a jump in the number of people suff ering mental health problems.

In the year to July 2019, the Idukki District Mental Health Programme saw 4,678 patients, up about 25% on the previous year.

“It has been found that the fl ood has caused various mental ailments. Depression and anxiety were mostly prevalent. This is the reason for the rise in the number of patients,” said Amal Abraham, a doctor with the programme.

The tiny, picturesque mountain

village of Upputhodu has again been lashed by severe rains this month, in a place where many still bear the mental scars of the fl ash fl ood a year ago.

Divakaran was diagnosed as suff ering from “adjustment disorder”, a condition that causes feelings of sadness and hopelessness after unexpected disasters.

He has now improved after receiving medication and counselling, said Joe Sunny, a mental health doctor at Thiruvananthapuram Medical College.

Thaghachan, 60, also underwent treatment for psychological problems after the 2018 disaster.

“I am afraid to hear even the noise of an aeroplane fl ying over our village,” he said. “It brings back horrible memories of last year’s disastrous landslide.”

Nine in 10 villagers in Upputhodu who spoke to the Thomson Reuters Foundation over two days in late July appeared to be still haunted by the after-eff ects of what they experienced.

P Geetha, a state-employed social health activist who has been keeping in regular touch with families in Upputhodu, said 42 out of 250 homes in the village were vacant.

“They all migrated due to relentless stress,” she said.

Many have gone to neighbouring districts where they feel safer, she added.

S Pramod was a chronic psychiatric patient who suff ered from depression for more than a decade before the 2018 disaster. “Flood-related stress has aggravated my ailment,” he said.

Full state-level data on those who have sought psychological help could not be obtained because people visiting private hospitals and practitioners are not registered by the government.

But the Kerala State mental

healthcare programme off ered at community health centres saw patient numbers almost double in 2018 to about 25,000, from 14,000 the previous year.

Dr P S Kiran, state nodal offi cer for mental health, said fl ood-related stress was one of the main reasons for the “abysmal rise”. As the fi rst anniversary of the fl ood approached, S

Krishnan, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Thiruvananthapuram Medical College, warned that fl ashbacks could trigger further stress and trauma for the victims.

The Kerala government has announced a second stage of its eff ort to manage mental health problems after disasters, aiming to bring psychosocial support closer to people’s doorsteps.

It has deployed almost 17,650 trained mental health workers across the state and set up a free helpline for counselling.

In Mariyapuram village in Idukki district, help has been at hand since the fl ood.

A year after it was hit by a fl ash fl ood, there are still traces of crumbled hills, boulders strewn on river beds, collapsed houses and faces that show the strain.

Two weeks after the disaster, a team of mental health experts from the Thiruvananthapuram college visited houses all over the village, off ering help to about 1,000 fl ood survivors.

“Scrupulous intervention in relief camps, schools and door-to-door visits helped us to fi nd 50 people suff ering (from) fl ood-related mental disorder,” said Sunny.

Counselling and medicine were provided, said the doctor who was involved in the mission.

Despite struggling with limited fi nancial resources, the Mariyapuram

village council has ensured follow-up measures.

A permanent psychological counsellor was appointed at the family health centre, with children off ered regular sessions in schools.

Dolly Jose, president of the village council, said a new centre was due to be set up to help people recover from mental health problems by enabling them to participate in activities like handicrafts.

After 11 months, Dr Sunny returned to check on his patients.

“Most of the people who were earlier suff ering from fl ood-related mental ailments are today recovered,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

But while environmentalists have praised the initiative, they said it was important to deal with the underlying causes of people’s anxiety.

“Deforestation, rampant mining, encroachment etc have triggered the intensity of the fl oods and landslides,” said V S Vijayan, former chairman of the Kerala State Biodiversity Board.

“Unless and until we ensure faultless environmental protection measures, we won’t be able to root out the real fear.”

Psychological experts are worried that this year’s fl ooding in Kerala will compound anxieties in existing patients and bring a wave of new suff ering — but hope they are better prepared.

Heavy monsoon rains this month have caused 80 landslides in the state, as well as fl ooding.

More than 160 people are dead or missing, nearly 3,000 homes have collapsed and close to 300,000 people were evacuated to safer shelters, according to offi cial data.

“We know the seriousness. Mental health experts are being deployed in relief camps,” said state doctor Kiran. - Thomson Reuters Foundation

Gulf Times Friday, August 16, 2019

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CHAIRMANAbdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing EditorK T Chacko

Trump’s attack on Endangered Species Act must be resisted

Chicago notched a win for an endangered species this summer as Great Lakes piping plovers Monty and Rose nested at Montrose Beach and successfully launched two off spring, with the help of many watchful volunteers and one cancelled music festival. Elsewhere, news was dire for struggling species and their habitats.

July was equal to or warmer than the hottest month ever recorded on planet Earth. Some 11bn tonnes of ice melted off the Greenland ice sheet in a single day. The United Nations biodiversity report recently warned that 1mn species of animals and plants are vulnerable to extinction, some within just decades, because of development, climate change and other causes.

How does the Trump administration, which already has a dismal record on the environment, respond? By clubbing the Endangered Species Act, which has been widely popular with both Democrats and Republicans since it was signed into law by president Richard Nixon in 1973. The act protects more than 1,600 species and is credited with saving iconic wildlife including the bald eagle, grizzly bear and California condor.

Industries including oil and gas, agriculture and ranching resist limits on their activities. This move by David Bernhardt, secretary of the interior and a former

oil industry lobbyist who came under an ethics investigation days after he was confi rmed to the job, puts their interests paramount.

The Trump administration had already slowed the pace of new additions to the protected list. Under the new rules, economic cost can be taken into account when the federal government weighs protecting a struggling species. Conservationists – and Congress, which has specifi cally stipulated that cost not be a factor in deciding whether to protect an animal – want such decisions made on the basis of science alone, the AP reported.

Saving endangered species is vital but not free. The gray wolf should remain protected in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, which now have nearly 4,000 wolves, rather than being subjected to a slaughter that could devastate their revived population. Illinois has a variety of animals and plants on the threatened and endangered list, including birds, bats, mussels and one crustacean (the Illinois cave amphipod, since you asked; picture a white prawn or crayfi sh). Not every protected creature is as iconic as the polar bear. But all life is connected.

Indeed, the move by the Interior Department contrasts starkly with the warning issued by Unesco Director-General Audrey Azoulay along with a biodiversity report in May. “We can no longer continue to destroy the diversity of life. ... We can and must all mobilise, urgently and together, to save our planet and thus humanity.”

Democratic leaders and presidential candidates immediately pounced on Trump for gutting wildlife protections, while states and conservation groups promise to sue.

Putting America’s most vulnerable species in the crosshairs at a time of environmental crisis isn’t a winning position, nor a tenable one.

We can no longer continue to destroy the diversity of life

In fl ood-prone south India, doctors tend mental scars

Volunteers, local residents, fire force off icials and members of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) search for survivors following landslides at Puthumala village in Kerala’s Wayanad district on Wednesday.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Friday, August 16, 2019 15

The IMF’s latest victimsBy Jayati GhoshNew Delhi

The process of selecting the International Monetary Fund’s next managing director must change. In

particular, the tradition of choosing a European for the post – based on an unfair and anachronistic “gentlemen’s agreement” reached with the United States when the institution was established 75 years ago – needs to be discarded. But even more important, the IMF’s longstanding approach to lending should be transformed.

The Fund has a long history of policy mistakes. Yet, as Christine Lagarde’s just-completed tenure showed, it has learned little from them. Consider the case of Argentina. In mid-2018, the IMF agreed to provide the country with a heavily frontloaded three-year loan worth nearly $57bn – the largest in the institution’s history – following a series of reckless decisions by President Mauricio Macri.

One such decision, made soon after he took offi ce in 2015, was to strike a deal with the holdout creditors who were still fi ghting in US courts to be repaid in full, following Argentina’s 2002 debt default and subsequent restructuring. Another was Macri’s subsequent borrowing spree, which caused public debt – mostly denominated in dollars – to swell by more than one-third, to $321bn in 2017.

By last year, Argentina’s fi scal and current-account defi cits exceeded 5% of GDP. In the ensuing economic and fi nancial crisis, public debt ballooned to nearly 90% of GDP, capital fl ight caused the peso’s value to collapse, and infl ation soared. So, under pressure from US President Donald Trump (who had business ties with Macri), the IMF stepped in – with Lagarde’s active support.

The loan may have been unprecedented in size, but it had all the familiar characteristics of past IMF financing programmes. In exchange for the cash, Argentina was to implement massive budget cuts, in order to balance its primary budget in 2019 and significantly reduce its external deficit. Argentina complied – and the economy steadily deteriorated.

Today, infl ation is running at over 55%, the poverty rate has surpassed 30%, and output and employment are shrinking. Argentina is nowhere near the IMF’s targets for investment and GDP growth, which have already been revised twice. More downward revisions are undoubtedly coming.

The IMF has been here before. In 1998, when East Asia was in the throes of financial crisis, the Fund had to sign no less than five Memorandums of Understanding with Thailand, precisely because fulfilling all of the austerity requirements the Fund had imposed on it meant missing its macroeconomic targets.

Yet, far from learning from its mishandling of the 1990s Asian fi nancial crisis, the IMF made the same mistakes in Europe after the 2008 global fi nancial crisis sent the eurozone into a tailspin. In particular, instead of allowing Greece to default on its massive debts to private creditors, the IMF – together with the European Central Bank and the European Commission – lent it the money. The accompanying austerity conditions made repayment of those debts – now held by offi cial creditors – impossible. Greece continues to struggle to this day.

In 2013, the IMF produced a report acknowledging that it had “underestimated” the eff ects austerity would have on Greece’s economy. It seemed like a promising portent. Yet, a mere fi ve years later, the Fund’s

apparent realisation was not refl ected in its deal with Argentina. Nor is it refl ected in a more recent fi nancing deal with another Latin American country.

In March, the IMF approved a $4.2 billion, three-year loan for Ecuador, as part of a plan to reduce public debt and reform the economy. In exchange, the Fund is predictably demanding rapid fiscal consolidation, through cuts to wages and public-sector jobs, hikes in energy prices, new charges for government services, and higher indirect taxes. As Mark Weisbrot and Andrés Arauz note in a report for

the Center for Economic and Policy Research, these steps will likely lead to an immediate drop in GDP and cause the current recession to persist for the four years of the program.

Yet the IMF has somehow convinced itself that growth will decline only mildly in 2019, before recovering in 2020, as a huge boost in private-sector confi dence – naturally brought about by fi scal restraint and privatisation – leads to a surge in inward foreign investment. According to the Fund’s logic, even if employment and consumption are falling, and the economy is in recession, net capital outfl ows of 1.9% of GDP will turn into

net private capital infl ows of 4.9% of GDP in 2020.

As usual, the folly of this logic will become apparent in due course. (A fl oundering economy, it should be clear, is not attractive to private capital.) In the meantime, the people of Ecuador will suff er greatly, owing to rising unemployment, declining living standards, widening inequality, and greater poverty.

The IMF’s bizarre belief in “expansionary austerity” would be laughable if it were not so damaging. How can the IMF justify an approach with such a poor track record? One explanation could be a lack of

accountability that permeates the institution’s bureaucracy, right up to the very top. If that’s the case, boosting accountability should be the next IMF managing director’s fi rst order of business – that, and aligning the Fund’s lending approach with economic realities. – Project Syndicate

Jayati Ghosh is Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, Executive Secretary of International Development Economics Associates, and a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation.

‘Intensive BP management’ may preserve brain health

Scientists fi nd micro plastic in Arctic ice

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Numerous large, cohort studies have linked midlife hypertension to mild cognitive impairment and

dementia later on, Medical News Today reported.

Some of these studies found a higher risk of lesions in the brain’s white matter in older age among people with high blood pressure in their 50s.

The white matter of the brain consists of bundles of axons, which are the thin elongations of neurons.

White matter is “white” due to myelin the protective substance that covers the axons.

Unlike gray matter, white matter continues to evolve in our adulthood and midlife.

Previous studies have tied abnormalities in the brain’s myelin, such as the thinning of this layer, with a range of neurological conditions, including Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

White matter lesions, which appear on an MRI scanner, refl ect such myelin disruptions.

White matter lesions can also indicate high water content, higher glial cell sensitivity to injury, porous brain blood vessels, or ministrokes.

New research explores the connection between midlife hypertension and white matter lesions, which may lead to cognitive impairment later in life.

Specifi cally, a team of researchers asked themselves if intensive blood pressure treatment correlates with a

limited “progression of small vessel ischemic disease, as refl ected by cerebral white matter lesion volume.”

Dr Nick Bryan from the Department of Diagnostic Medicine at the University of Texas at Austin, is the corresponding author of the new paper.

Dr Bryan and team examined the brain scans of 449 participants and found that intensive control of blood pressure in their 50s did, indeed, corresponded with a lower likelihood of white matter lesions later on.

The fi ndings of the research now appear in JAMA.

Reuters London

Tiny pieces of plastic have been found in ice cores drilled in the Arctic by a US-led team of scientists,

underscoring the threat the growing form of pollution now poses to marine life in even the remotest waters on the planet.

The researchers used a helicopter to land on ice fl oes and retrieve the samples during an 18-day icebreaker expedition through the Northwest Passage, the hazardous route linking the Pacifi c and Atlantic Oceans.

“We had spent weeks looking out at what looks so much like pristine white sea ice fl oating out on the ocean,” said Jacob Strock, a graduate student researcher at the University of Rhode Island, who conducted an initial onboard analysis of the cores.

“When we look at it up close and we see that it’s all very, very visibly contaminated when you look at it with the right tools — it felt a little bit like a punch in the gut,” Strock told Reuters by telephone.

Strock and his colleagues found the material trapped in ice taken from Lancaster Sound, an isolated stretch of water in the Canadian Arctic, which they had assumed might be relatively sheltered from drifting plastic pollution The team drew 18 ice cores of up to two metres in length from four locations, and saw visible plastic beads and fi laments of various shapes and sizes.

The scientists said the fi ndings reinforce the observation that micro plastic pollution appears to concentrate in ice relative to seawater.

“The plastic just jumped out in both its abundance and its scale,” said Brice Loose, an oceanographer at the

University of Rhode Island and chief scientist of the expedition, known as the Northwest Passage Project.

The scientists’ dismay is reminiscent of the consternation felt by explorers who found plastic waste in the Pacifi c Ocean’s Marianas Trench, the deepest place on Earth, during submarine dives earlier this year.

The Northwest Passage Project is primarily focused on investigating the impact of manmade climate change on the Arctic, whose role as the planet’s

cooling system is being compromised by the rapid vanishing of summer sea ice.

But the plastic fragments — known as micro plastic — also served to highlight how the waste problem has reached epidemic proportions.

The United Nations estimates that 100mn tonnes of plastic have been dumped in the oceans to date.

The researchers said the ice they sampled appeared to be at least a year old and had probably drifted into Lancaster Sound from more central

regions of the Arctic.The team plans to subject the plastic

they retrieved to further analysis to support a broader research eff ort to understand the damage plastic is doing to fi sh, seabirds and large ocean mammals such as whales.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation in the United States, the expedition in the Swedish icebreaker The Oden ran from July 18 to Aug. 4 and covered some 2,000 nautical miles.

The International Monetary Fund has a long history of policy mistakes.

A researcher picks up ice cores drilled from the Arctic as part of an 18-day icebreaker expedition taking place in July and August 2019 in the Northwest Passage, in a still image taken from a handout video obtained by Reuters on August 14, 2019.

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QATAR

Gulf Times Friday, August 16, 201916

Indians celebrate Independence Day

By Shafeeq Alingal Staff Reporter

The 73rd Independence Day of India was celebrated yesterday at a ceremony marked by pa-

triotic fervour and attended by a large number of community members at the Indian Cultural Centre (ICC) in Doha.

Indian ambassador P Kumaran hoisted the Indian fl ag on the occa-sion to the accompaniment of the na-tional anthem, which was followed by a speech and presentation of patriotic songs.

The event was attended by a large number of Indian expatriates, includ-ing representatives of various social and cultural organisations, communi-ty leaders from diff erent Indian states and students from various Indian schools.

After the Tricolour was raised, a special function was held at the ICC’s Ashoka Hall, which was packed with community members.

Independence Day functions were also held at diff erent Indian schools in Qatar.

Addressing the gathering at the ICC, ambassador Kumaran greeted the gathering and commemorated the sacrifi ces and achievements of free-dom fi ghters and soldiers.

He hailed their eff orts to move the country forward and said India was

racing towards becoming a socially and economically developed country.

The envoy read out excerpts of the Independence Day speech by Indian President Ram Nath Kovind in Hindi and English.

“This is a happy and emotional day for all the children of Mother India, whether living at home or abroad. We remember with gratitude the count-less freedom fi ghters and revolution-aries who struggled, strived and made heroic sacrifi ces to win us our freedom

from colonial rule,” the president said in his message.

“Earlier this summer, the people of India participated in the 17th general election, the largest democratic exer-cise in human history.

For this, I must congratulate our voters,” the message continued. “I am confi dent that the recent changes made in Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh would be of immense benefi t to those regions.”

The ambassador cut a cake to cel-

ebrate the occasion with community members and students.

Students from MES Indian School, Birla Public School and Bhavan’s Pub-lic School and members of various community organisations sang patri-otic songs.

ICC president A P Manikandan wel-comed the gathering. Rajesh Kamble, counsellor at the Indian embassy; Captain Kapil Kaushik, defence atta-che at the embassy; and Anjan Gan-guly, ICC member, were also present.Ambassador P Kumaran hoisting the Indian national flag at the ICC yesterday.

PICTURES: Jayan Orma

P Kumaran cutting the ceremonial cake along with children.

Schoolchildren presenting a patriotic song.A glimpse from the cultural show at the ICC.

South Indian stars rock Qatar audience at awards presentationFrom Page 1

The second and conclud-ing day of the show will focus on Malayalam and Tamil cin-ema, with superstar Mohanlal scheduled to attend.

Artistes from Telugu and Kannada fi lm industries were honoured during yesterday’s event in various categories.

These included awards for best actor, actress, director, music director, lyricist, cin-ematographer, producer, debut actor, debut actress and debut director.

According to the organisers, the show is being attended by some 600 artistes over the two days, including 200 leading ce-lebrities.

At the time of going to press, awards had been given out for categories such as Best Debut Actor Female (Kan-nada) - Anupama Gowda for Aa Karaala Ratri; Best Debut Actor Female (Telugu) - Payal Rajput for RX 100; Best Music Director (Telugu) - Devi Sri

Prasad for Rangasthalam; Best Playback Singer Female (Kan-nada) - Ananya Bhat for Hold On from Tagaru; Best Playback Singer Female (Telugu) - M M Manasi for Rangamma Man-gamma from Rangasthalam; Best Playback Singer Male (Telugu) - Anurag Kulkarni for Pilla Ra from RX 100; Best Lyr-ics Writer (Kannada) - Chetan Kumar for Yennammi Yennam-mi from Ayogya; Best Lyrics Writer (Telugu) - Chandra Bose for Yentha Sakkagunave from Rangasthalam; Best Cinema-tographer (Kannada) - Bhuvan Gowda for KGF:Chapter 1; and Best Cinematographer (Telu-gu) - Ratnavelu for Rangastha-lam, according to updates posted on the offi cial Facebook page of SIIMA.

The event partners are Qatar National Tourism Council, the Ministry of Culture and Sports, Qatar Airways, Teyseer Mo-tors, W Doha, Doha Bank, Al Mana Leasing, Gulf Car, Royal Regis, Talabat, Rayyan Water and 98.6 Radio Malayalam.

Shanvi Srivastava performs during yesterday’s SIIMA ceremony at Lusail Sports Arena. PICTURE: Jayan Orma

Anurag Kulkarni receiving the award for Playback Singer Male (Telugu). PICTURE: Jayan OrmaAnanya Bhat, winner of the Best Playback Singer Female (Kannada) award. (Courtesy of SIIMA Facebook page)

Chiranjeevi shares a lighter moment with Keerthy Suresh. (Courtesy of SIIMA Facebook page)