SL eye win as India play without Jadeja

SPORT | 19Brexit will have

long-term economic damage

BUSINESS | 11

Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar successfully clears a height of 2.31 metres during the qualifying round of the men’s high jump competition at the IAAF World Championships at the London Stadium in London yesterday. The gravity-defying Qatari star breezed through yesterday’s qualification with greatest of ease. The men’s high jump final will be held tomorrow. → See also page 16

Qatar’s Mutaz Barshim in final

Volume 22 | Number 7251 | 2 RiyalsSaturday 12 August 2017 | 20 Dhul-Qa’Da 1438 www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

3rd Best News Website in the Middle East

Currently there are 242 nationalities who are eligible to apply for tourist visa online. Hospitality establishments and tourism offices holding a valid licence with Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) are able to fully complete their guests’ tourist visa applications online via a newly activated feature on www.qatarvisaservice.com.

Raynald C Rivera The Peninsula

Recent steps taken by Qatar to facilitate tourist visas includ-ing the granting of visa-free entry to

Qatar to some 80 nationalities is seen as a boon to the coun-try’s booming hotel industry.

Advancements in tourist visa policies coupled with hotels’ venture into fresh pre-viously unexplored markets are expected to give the hospital-ity sector its much needed shot in the arm.

Hotels across the country welcomed last Wednesday’s announcement with delight as it came just a month after the move to expand e-visa services which enables registered hotels and tourism establishments to make applications fully online for passengers of all airlines.

Currently there are 242 nationalities who are eligible to apply for tourist visa online. Hospitality establishments and tourism offices holding a valid

licence with Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) are able to fully complete their guests’ tourist visa applications online via a newly activated feature on www.qatarvisaservice.com.

“The introduction of e-visa services will enable us to become open to new markets. These new markets are sup-ported through the vast network of Qatar Airways, Dis-cover Qatar and Visit Qatar, as well as the extensive network of Global Sales Offices of hotel brands such as Minor Hotels Group,” Thomas Fehlbier, Gen-eral Manager at Banana Island Resort Doha by Anantara, told The Peninsula.

Saeid Heidari, General Manager at Sheraton Grand Doha Resort & Convention Hotel, said QTA’s policy to expand e-visa services is an effective way to maximise tour-ism by attracting more visitors to the country.

He said the new policies like visa on arrival for around 72 nationalities and visa-free entry will encourage more people to

Washington

Reuters

President Donald Trump is sending his son-in-law Jared Kushner and nego-

tiator Jason Greenblatt to the Middle East soon to meet regional leaders and discuss a “path to substantive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks,” a White House official said yesterday.

Deputy national security adviser Dina Powell will also be on the trip, which will include meetings with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the official said.

“While the regional talks will play an important role, the pres-ident reaffirms that peace between Israelis and Palestini-ans can only be negotiated directly between the two par-ties and that the United States will continue working closely with the parties to make progress towards that goal,” the official said.

Kushner, who serves as a senior adviser to his father-in-law, was charged with helping to broker a deal between Israe-lis and Palestinians after Trump took office.

The president went to Saudi Arabia and Israel during his first post-inauguration trip abroad and has expressed a

personal commitment to reaching a deal that has eluded his Republican and Democratic predecessors.

The timing of the trip was pegged to the recent “resto-ration of calm and the stabilised situation in Jerusa-lem” after a spate of violence last month sparked by Isra-el’s installation of metal detectors at entry points to the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Trump directed that the talks focus on a pathway to peace talks, fighting “extrem-ism,” easing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and identifying economic steps that can be taken to ensure security and sta-bility, the official said.

New tourist visa

policies buoy

hotel industry

Trump sending two envoys for Middle East peace talks

Mohammed Osman The Peninsula

International human rights organisa-tions are expressing their concerns over the restrictions imposed on

Qatar’s nationals and expatriates willing to perform the annual Haj pilgrimage.

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med Monitor) yesterday urged the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) to raise the issue of restrictions being faced by Qatari

pilgrims intend to perform Haj in Saudi Arabia.

Euro-Med Monitor in its letter said that it would like to draw IARF attention to the recent measures taken by Saudi Arabia against Qatari pilgrims wishing to perform Haj, Islam’s fifth pillar.

The organisation notes that due to current “political crisis in the Gulf and the blockade imposed on Qatar by its three Gulf neighbours and Egypt, Qatari pilgrims are facing restrictions which might affect their ability to perform this religious duty”.

Moreover, Euro-Med Monitor for Human Rights appealed IARF “to make sure that Saudi Arabia is not using Islam to achieve political gains, at the expense of the religious freedom of the people of Qatar”.

The Haj days are nearing which is going to take place by the end of this month while many Qatari nationals and expatriates will not be able perform the rituals.

The Saudi authority has not officially banned Qataris from performing the Haj

but prevented companies from making the necessary arrangements for Qatari pilgrims by not allowing companies to secure accommodation and transporta-tion within Saudi Arabia.

Other restrictions related to the air, land and sea blockade have prevented local companies from taking care of the necessary needs of Qatari Pilgrims in the holy lands during the Haj period making it a major logistic obstacle to perform the rites.

→ Continued on page 2

European rights body questions curbs on Qatari Haj pilgrims

visit Qatar. “This will give a huge push to our business and to the Qatari economy in general. This is a clear example of how QTA has enhanced Qatar’s tourism

opportunities, and contributed to the wider national economy,” said Heidari, adding since the decision to expand e-visa serv-ices, there had been a noticeable

increase in demand which they expect to continue to grow in the coming months.

→ Continued on page 2

242Nationalitiesare eligible

TOURISTVISA ONLINE

QNA

THE STATE of Qatar has strongly condemned the car ramming attack in the north of Paris and resulted in the injury of a number of sol-diers. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated its solidarity with the French Republic in all actions taken to maintain its security and stability. The statement expressed Qatar’s wishes for speedy recovery for injured victims.

The State of Qatar also strongly condemned the sui-cide bombing on a mosque in central Mogadishu, which killed one soldier. The For-eign Ministry reiterated Qatar’s firm stance on reject-ing violence and terrorism, regardless of motives or rea-sons. The statement stressed Qatar’s total rejection to target places of worship and intimi-date civilians and expressed sincere condolences to the Somali government and the family of the victim.

International Youth Day todayQATAR marks today the International Youth Day, which is celebrated on August 12 every year, and is held this year under the theme “Youth Building Peace” to recognise youths’ contribution to pre-venting conflicts as well as integration, social justice and sustainable peace.

→See also page 2

Qatar condemns attacks in Paris and Mogadishu

Uhuru Kenyatta wins second termNAIROBI: President Uhuru Kenyatta was declared the winner yesterday of Kenya’s hard-fought presidential elec-tion, but opposition candidate Raila Odinga alleged the vot-ing was rigged.

→See also page 3

02 SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017HOME

Secretary-General of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry Christian Masset with the Ambassador of the State of Qatar, Dr Khalid bin Rashid Al Mansouri, in Paris, yesterday. The meeting discussed bilateral relations and means of boosting and developing them, as well as the developments in the region, especially the siege, and its repercussions at the regional and international levels.

French official meets Qatar’s envoy

The Peninsula

The State of Qatar marks today the International Youth Day, which is cel-

ebrated on August 12 of every year, and is held this year under the theme “Youth Building Peace” to recognise youths’ contribution to preventing con-flicts as well as integration, social justice and sustainable peace.

Qatar’s youth participate in the celebration with global youth on this occasion, which constitutes an important motive for youth to employ a promis-ing future vision to tackle challenges, have achievements in all fields and rise with the human society. In this regard, Qatar has been working to empower and enable youths to provide full contribution to the society, development and peace so as to achieve human sustain-able development. Qatar has also been encouraging youths

to innovate and pioneer because they are the future, hope and basis of a human soci-ety where everyone lives in safety and happiness.

In addition, Qatar motivates youths to participate in making decisions and activate their role in achieving human develop-ment as well as bridging the gap between them and officials by widening the scope of dialogue and the spaces of mutual understanding.

Since the adoption of Secu-rity Council Resolution 2250 in 2015 on youth, peace, and secu-rity, which aims to enhance the participation of youth in these two fields, there has been a growing admission that youth are active elements in prevent-ing the eruption of conflicts and preserving peace. Security Council Resolution 2282 in 2016 highlighted the significant role of youths in preventing the out-break of conflicts and settling them.

Qatar marks International Youth Day today

The Peninsula

The Ministry of Munici-pality and Urban Planning yesterday

conducted an inspection at the streets 42, 47 and 53 in Industrial Area with an inten-tion to catch street vendors if found violating norms.

A number of security forces including Rescue Police (Al Fazaa) and Internal Security Force (Lekhwiya) also took part in the campaign in coordination with the com-petent authority at the ministry.

Some 38 tonnes of rem-nants of different materials left behind, said the Ministry in a statement yesterday.

The ministry has also assured that it will continue its regular campaigns to crackdown on the illegal practices of vendors and keep the streets where these prac-tices are prevailing clean.

The Ministry did not report the number of offend-ers caught or properties seized.

Ministry holds inspection at Industrial Area

Raynald C Rivera The Peninsula

The Philippine Embassy marked ‘National Lan-guage Month’ by launching

an art exhibition yesterday showcasing 29 artworks by Fil-ipino artists and students.

The pieces, which are on dis-play at the embassy until the end of this month, depict national symbols and famous objects, people, places and events rem-iniscent of unique Filipino culture.

The exhibition is a visual feast with an assortment of art-works from colourful Panagbenga Festival of Baguio to the portrait of Apo Whang-Od-the last Kalinga traditional tattoo artist to the breathtaking Manila Bay to a unique coffee painting of the Philippine eagle.

“In celebration of National Language Month with the theme “Filipino: Language of Change”, we gladly bring you an exhibi-tion of artworks featuring creations by Filipinos in Qatar. They are here to share their remarkable talent in visual arts through pieces that symbolize our country,” said Philippine

Ambassador Alan L Timbayan, following the opening ceremony of the show. “This exhibition is aimed at valuing our national language through activities that showcase deep appreciation of Filipino culture and identity.”

Speaking to local media, Vice Consul Kristine F Bautista, Head of Cultural, Community and Pub-lic Information Section, stressed the embassy’s desire to help pro-mote Filipino artists in Qatar through the cultural cooperation agreement between the two countries. “Through this agree-ment, we hope that we will have the chance to showcase the tal-ents of Filipino artists in the future in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Cultural Village Foun-dation-Katara,” said Bautista.

The exhibition features 11 stunning pieces by members of Alliance of Filipino Artists in Qatar (AFAQ) as and 18 artworks by students of Philippine School Doha and Philippine Interna-tional School-Qatar.

“This exhibition was organ-ized not only to promote awareness and instill patriotism among our students through their artworks but also provide

an avenue for the artists to dis-play their talents and be known. We hope that to put up another show in the future in a venue where more people can see them their works,” added Bautista. A highlight of the exhibition are works by recently established

AFAQ which is composed of art-ists adept in various mediums such as photography, visual arts, sculpture, graphic design.

“Our aim is to develop the talent and skill of art enthusiasts in their respective mediums. There are many Filipinos here

who have penchant for art and we want to encourage them to be better. We also want to con-duct art trainings for young aspiring artists,” said AFAQ Pres-ident Renante Lonzame. The exhibition runs until August 31 at the Philippine Embassy.

Unique Filipino culture on display

Philippine Ambassador Alan L Timbayan (centre) along with Consul General Roussel R Reyes (left), Vice-Consul Kristine F Bautista (right) and members of Alliance of Filipino Artists in Qatar, cuts a ribbon to formally open the art exhibition yesterday at Philippine Embassy. Pic: Baher Amin / The Peninsula

The Peninsula

More than 100,000 horse-r a c i n g d e v o t e e s attended the prestigious

2017 Qatar Goodwood Festival during the course of the five-day event, helping maintain its rep-utation as one of the major sporting highlights of the ‘Brit-ish Summer Season’.

Despite some wet weather, a sell-out crowd of more than 25,000 race-goers watched on the last day as top jockeys and their horses competed in one of the highlights of the UK’s flat racing season.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said: “Qatar Airways’ partnership with the Qatar Racing and Equestrian Club has proved another win-ning combination for The Qatar Goodwood Festival, crowning a successful season for race-goers and horses alike.

“The UK is a very important market for us, so our association with The Qatar Goodwood Fes-tival is always an excellent

opportunity to engage with our premium customers and show-case Qatar Airways’ five-star products and services including our First Class seat, available on our A380 service between Doha and Heathrow.”

Nasser Sherida Al Kaabi, General Manager of Qatar Rac-ing and Equestrian Club, said: “The success of The Qatar Good-wood Festival is always helped enormously by the partnership of Qatar Airways, which helps raise the profile of this magnif-icent event. We look forward to extending our partnership with Qatar Airways to ensure the air-line becomes a firm fixture in the years to come.”

Adam Waterworth, the Goodwood Estate Sports Man-aging Director, said: “The partnership between Qatar Air-ways and the Qatar Racing and Equestrian Club makes The Qatar Goodwood Festival a firm-favourite with race-goers. And despite some inclement weather the sun came out on the last day and the meeting finished on a

real high.” The world-class field included two Qatari front-run-ners which took part in the Qatar Sussex Stakes, where a £1m pot of prize money was on hand for the lucky winners.

World-famous jockey Frankie Dettori was riding Al Jazi, which was the winner of the L’Ormarins Queens Plate Oak Tree Stakes. Al Jazi is owned by Al Shaqab and trained by Fran-cois Rohaut.

Meanwhile, Tayf was the winner of the Qatar Interna-tional Stakes. Tayf is owned by

Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalifa Al Thani trained by Alban de Mieulle and ridden by jockey Olivier Peslier.

It was also a photo-finish at the Qatar Airways competition to find the best hat worn on Ladies’ Day. Leading style influ-encer Hermione Olivia chose an off-white hat adorned with lil-ies for its elegant simplicity, and its lucky owner won of a pair of return Business Class tickets from the UK to Doha, plus five-star hotel accommodation provided by the Qatar Racing.

100,000 horse racers attend Goodwood Fest

A view of the crowd at the festival venue.

Continued from page 2Sharad Rattan, Executive

Assistant Manager at Sharq Vil-lage & Spa a Ritz Carlton Hotel, expressed the same view, say-ing, “The recent initiative by Qatar Tourism Authority reduces the procedures for hotel and tourism establishments, strengthening the overall hos-pitality industry, encouraging local and foreign investment in the tourism sector and ensures consistency in the prominent level of quality and standards throughout the country.”

“The digitisation of the visa

application process makes it faster by eliminating the time needed for personal visits to immigration offices. On the other hand, the fact that the hotel staff can do this for one or ten guests at a time makes it much more efficient. This not only further streamlines the process of welcoming tourist guests but can also contribute to a better customer experience during their earliest encounter with the hotel,” stressed Nawaf Ali Al Obaidly, General Manager at Sealine Beach Resort.

Al Obaidly added: “In a

broader sense, the move further facilitates visitors’ access to the country – which is critical for achieving growth in the tourism industry, as it brings more con-venience to individual tourists since the e-visa platform is linked to all airline booking plat-forms and, finally, it also indirectly helps our national economy grow.”

In September last year, and in partnership with Qatar Air-ways, QTA signed an agreement with VFS Global to create an online platform for processing visa applications. The platform

was formally launched in June and last month, e-visa services was expanded to accept appli-cations from travellers to Qatar aboard all airlines, as well as tourism and hospitality estab-lishments in Qatar.

This week’s announcement to allow citizens of 80 countries visa-free entry was a landmark move, making Qatar the most open country in the region. Cit-izens of those 80 countries wishing to visit Qatar will no longer need to apply or pay for a visa; instead, a multi-entry waiver will be issued.

Visa move boosts tourism sector

Continued from page 1According to Euro-Med

Monitor, Saudi authorities have allowed Qatari pilgrims to only enter Saudi through two airports, and further, they must travel via Doha. “This will prove to be extremely challenging for those who do not live in Doha, like those who work or study abroad.” Further, Saudi Arabia identified individuals that they

will deny access regardless of the manner in which they travel, the human rights watchdog says.

In response to such concerns raised by Qatar and other inter-national organisations, Adel Al Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, accused Qatar recently “of politicising the issue and demanding the “internationali-sation of the Haj”. His claim was strongly rejected by Qatari

officials including Qatari Foreign Minister, H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in an interview with Al Jazeera that “Qatar never politicised the issue of Haj.”

He added that “it was Saudi Arabia which is trying to politi-cise the Haj pilgrimage amid the Gulf crisis” and there is no sug-gestion made by any Qatari official to internationalising the

Haj issue. Normally most of the pilgrims heading to Makkah to perform Haj sign a contract with Haj operators (companies) in their country; which in turn arrange with Saudi companies to takes care of accommodation, food and transport during Haj.

It has been reported that many Haj operating companies in Qatar became victims of the restriction measures of Saudi.

Haj pilgrims concerned over Saudi’s response

03SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Yemeni children playing with snow pellets following heavy rain fall accompanied by hail in the capital Sana’a, yesterday.

Enjoying the snow

Beirut

Reuters

Fighters from Saraya Ahl Al Sham, a Syrian rebel group, will start today to pull out of an enclave in Lebanon on

the border with Syria along with some civilians, a senior Lebanese security official said.

About 300 fighters, along with their families and some other civilians who wish to return to Syria, will be escorted to the border by security forces, General Abbas Ibrahim, head of the General Security agency,

said. Ibrahim said a group of civilians who wished to go to the government-held Assal Al Ward district near the border would go there. The fighters, along with their family members, would go to a location that had been agreed upon, he said.

Ibrahim did not name the place. But a military media unit run by Hezbollah — which is closely allied to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad — reported that the fighters and their families would go to the rebel-held town of Al Ruhaiba in the Eastern Qalamoun district.

The military media unit run

by Hezbollah said around 3,000 refugees would leave Lebanon alongside the militants and be transferred to Al Ruhaiba.

The group’s departure fol-lows that of the Nusra Front,

which quit its enclave on the bor-der early this month for rebel-held Idlib, in northwest Syria, after its defeat in a Hez-bollah offensive.

During that evacuation and others of rebel groups inside Syria to insurgent-held areas, the Syrian government has allowed them to travel under protection in buses and carry small arms. This time, civilians will be allowed to travel in their own cars, Ibrahim said.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shi’ite group that has been a close ally of Assad during Syria’s six-year civil war, fighting mostly

Sunni rebels seeking to oust him.The pull-out by Saraya Ahl

Al Sham will leave an Islamic State pocket in the same area as the only remaining militant stronghold on the border. A Leb-anese army offensive against Islamic State is expected to start soon. The movement of rebel and militant factions across Syria’s border with Lebanon repre-sented the biggest military spillover of its civil war into its tiny neighbour.

The factions took positions in the hills that straddle the bor-der around the northeastern Lebanese town of Arsal, home to

tens of thousands of Syrian ref-ugees. More than 1 million Syrians have sought shelter in Lebanon during the war.

Last week, Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said that while the Lebanese army would lead the offensive against Islamic State inside Leb-anon, his group and the Syrian army would simultaneously attack it on the Syrian side of the border.

A Lebanese military source later said that this would not entail any direct military coor-dination between the Lebanese and Syrian armies.

Syrian rebels to pull out of Lebanon border enclave

Geneva/Gaza

Reuters

A political crisis in Gaza is depriving two million people of electricity, vital

medical care and clean water in sweltering summer tempera-tures, the United Nations human rights office said yesterday.

It appealed to Israel, the State of Palestinian and Hamas authorities in Gaza to resolve their conflicts.

“We are deeply concerned about the steady deterioration in the humanitarian conditions and the protection of human rights in Gaza,” UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdas-ani told a news briefing in Geneva. “Israel, the State of Pal-estine and the authorities in Gaza are not meeting their obli-gations to promote and protect the rights of the residents of Gaza,” she said.

Gaza has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007 after Hamas forces seized control of the territory following a brief civil war with security forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Western-backed Palestinian president based in the West Bank. Egypt, at odds with Hamas, also maintains a blockade.

Hoping to pressure Hamas to relinquish control of Gaza, Abbas, who leads the rival Fatah faction that holds sway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has cut payments to Israel for the electricity it supplies to Gaza.

Shamdasani said that at the

height of summer, with soaring temperatures, electricity has often been provided for less than four hours a day, and never more than six since April.

“This has a grave impact on the provision of essential health, water and sanitation services,” she added. Families buy only enough supplies for each day as they cannot store goods in refrigerators, especially meat and dairy products.

Hospital officials complain of acute shortages of medica-tions. The Gaza health ministry says about 40 percent of

essential medicines have run out, especially for patients with cancer, cystic fibrosis and kid-ney failure.

Hamas authorities in Gaza blame the Palestinian Author-ity for the misery while Abbas blames the Islamist group’s refusal to end its control of Gaza.

“Fatah does not accept and will not let the Palestinian National Authority become an ATM to finance this coup which destroys the possibility of estab-lishing an independent Palestinian state,” said a Fatah statement issued on Thursday.

South Sudan releases 30 political prisonersNAIROBI: South Sudan has released at least 30 political prison-ers since President Salva Kiir declared an amnesty in May to facilitate national dialogue and douse a four-year civil war, a sen-ior security official said. Jalban Obaj, director of legal affairs at the Internal Security Bureau told SSBC state television late on Thursday that the prisoners had been set free at different times since the dec-laration of the amnesty. Nearly all the ex-detainees, including Justin Wanawila Bilal, a religious cleric, had been accused of supporting opposition leader and former vice president Riek Machar.

“The release of the political detainees came as a gesture of good will,” Ateny Wek Ateny, Kiir’s spokesman, said. He said the freeing of the detainees without any precondition also demon-strated that Kiir was determined to resolve the country’s conflict.

36 dead in Egypt train collisionCAIRO: At least 36 people were killed as two trains col-lided yesterday outside the Mediterranean city of Alex-andria, in one of the deadliest in a string of such accidents in Egypt, the health ministry said. The crash also injured 123 people, the ministry said in a statement.

Footage on the state broadcaster showed one train had partly keeled over in the crash, and medics were seen moving the dead and injured to ambulances.

Transport ministry offi-cials, quoted on state television, said the crash was probably caused by a mal-function in one train that brought it to a halt on the rails. The other train then crashed into it.

Nairobi

AP

Kenya’s opposition says it has asked for access to the election commission’s

servers and will accept the results even if they show Presi-dent Uhuru Kenyatta won Tuesday’s election. James Orengo with the opposition coalition says it wants to look at activity the day of the vote and the next day to confirm whether alleged hacking took place.

Opposition candidate Raila Odinga claims the commission database was hacked and results manipulated in favour of Presi-dent Uhuru Kenyatta. The commission says a hacking attempt failed. Orengo says “we are prepared to accept the results of what is contained in those servers.” Another opposition leader, Musalia Mudavadi, claims they have found a fictitious poll-ing center where 1,000 people supposedly voted.

Kenyans yesterday awaited the official results of Tuesday’s disputed election as hundreds of riot police patrolled the capital, while the opposition requested

access to the election commis-sion’s servers to confirm whether alleged hacking took place.

The election commission has rejected claims by opposition leader Raila Odinga that its data-base was hacked and results manipulated, and that an unof-ficial tally confirms him as the winner. Provisional results show

President Uhuru Kenyatta with a wide lead over the 72-year-old Odinga, who may be facing his last chance at the presidency after three previous unsuccess-ful attempts. The vote counting and verification has been repeat-edly delayed, increasing tension in the East African economic power, though the commission

by law has until Tuesday to announce the results. At least three people have been shot and killed during clashes between police and opposition support-ers this week.

“We plead for patience as we work through this process,” commission CEO Ezra Chiloba said yesterday. The election

commission says there was a hacking attempt but it failed.

International election observers say they have seen no signs of interference with the vote. Election officials have been painstakingly trying to confirm their provisional results with checks of documents from poll-ing stations nationwide.

Meanwhile, the government urged citizens to return to work, saying the country was safe.

Opposition supporters burned tires and blocked roads in the Nairobi slum of Kibera and in Kisumu, a city in the south-west where Odinga has strong support. Odinga, a former prime minister, lost the 2007 election that was followed by violence fueled by ethnic tensions that killed more than 1,000 people. He also lost the 2013 vote to Ken-yatta and took allegations of vote-tampering to the Supreme Court, which rejected his case.

US ambassador Robert F Godec said the work of election officials should not be disrupted and any disputes should be dealt with through legal channels. “No Kenyan should die because of an election,” Godec said.

Kenyan opposition wants access to vote servers

UN urges end to Gaza crisisin punishing summer heat

Hamas armed wing tables plan for breaking Gaza deadlockGaza City

Anatolia

The Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, proposed a fresh initiative aimed at breaking the political deadlock over the Gaza Strip’s dire humanitarian situa-

tion, a source within the group has said. The source, who preferred anonymity due to the issue’s sen-

sitivity, said the four-point plan was aimed at “allowing a political and security vacuum in Gaza that could lead to any outcome, including a possible military confrontation with the Israeli occupation”.

“Civilian police in Gaza would continue to provide their usual services, while certain local institutions would continue to meet the needs of citizens,” he said Under the plan, the Qassam Bri-gades — along with the military wings of other Palestinian factions — would be entrusted with ensuring the coastal enclave’s security from external threats, the source explained. Gaza’s Hamas-run security services, he added, would be charged solely with running Gaza’s civil affairs.

The source provided no further details in regards to the plan, which has reportedly been submitted to the Palestinian politi-cal leadership in Ramallah.

The military media unit run by Hezbollah said around 3,000 refugees would leave Lebanon alongside the militants and be transferred to Al Ruhaiba.

Iran accuses Trump of ‘bad faith’ on nuclear dealTEHRAN: Iran hit back yes-terday at Donald Trump’s warnings on Tehran’s ballis-tic missiles programme, accusing the US president of showing “bad faith” over the 2015 nuclear accord.

“POTUS (president of the United States) always wanted to kill” the deal, Foreign Min-ister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted. “To avoid isolation, he’s trying to blame it on Iran.”

He charged that Trump was showing “bad faith on top of US violating the letter & spirit” of the deal.

On Thursday, the presi-dent accused Iran of not “living up to the spirit” of the deal it struck with major powers including Washing-ton, reiterating that he viewed it as a “horrible agreement”.

Supporters of the opposition candidate Raila Odinga stage protest against the election results in the slum neighbourhood of Nairobi, Kenya, yesterday.

04 SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017ASIA

President Ram Nath Kovind (left) administers the oath of the new Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu during a swearing-in ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, yesterday.

Vice-President sworn-in

New Delhi

Reuters

India’s military has increased operational readiness along the east-ern Indian border with China, sources said, as

neither side shows any sign of backing off from a face-off in a remote Himalayan region near their disputed frontier.

Indian and Chinese troops have been embroiled in the seven-week confrontation on the Doklam plateau, claimed by both China and India’s tiny ally, Bhutan.

The sources, who were briefed on the deployment, said they did not expect the tensions, involving about 300 soldiers on each side standing a few hundred feet apart, to escalate into a conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours, who fought a brief but bloody border war in 1962.

But the military alert level had been raised as a matter of caution, two sources in New Delhi and in the eastern state of Sikkim told Reuters on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The crisis began in June when a Chinese construction crew was found to be trying to extend a road in the Doklam region that both China and the mountainous nation of Bhutan claim as theirs.

India, which has special ties with Bhutan, sent its troops

to stop the construction, ignit-ing anger in Beijing which said New Delhi had no business to intervene, and demanded a unilateral troop withdrawal.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, though, has dug in its heels and said that the Chinese road activity in the region near the borders of India, Bhutan and China was a threat to the security of its own northeast region.

“The army has moved to a state that is called ‘no war, no peace’,” one of the sources said. Under the order issued to all troop formations in the eastern command a week ago, soldiers are supposed take up positions that are earmarked for them in the event of a war, the source said during a con-versation. The move comes as diplomatic efforts to break the stalemate failed to make head-way, other sources with close ties to the Modi government said earlier in the week to reporters.

Kathmandu

IANS

The Doklam standoff between India and China was very much on the table

when Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met her Bhutanese counterpart Damcho Dorji here yesterday, with the lat-ter expressing hope that the situation is resolved peacefully.

The two ministers met on the margins of the Bimstec Ministe-rial Meeting here.

Their meeting focused mainly on the standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in Doklam in the Sikkim sector since mid-June, that has led to sharp escalation in diplomatic tensions between Beijing and New Delhi. Doklam lies in the trijunction between India, China and Bhutan.

Sushma Swaraj and Damcho

Dorji stated their respective posi-tions as well as reiterating the stances on the face off, accord-ing to diplomatic sources.

“We hope the current stand-off in Doklam will be sorted out peacefully,” said Dorji after the meeting, and added that “both sides should be satisfied with the outcome”. The meeting comes as the Government of Bhutan on Thursday refuted Chinese For-eign Ministry claims that Thimphu had told Beijing that the trilateral junction in Doklam is not Bhutanese territory. Top Chi-nese diplomat Wang Wenli had claimed that Bhutan had con-veyed to Beijing through diplomatic channels that the area of the standoff is not its territory. Indian officials in Kathmandu were unwilling to disclose much about the Sushma Swaraj-Dorji meeting.

New Delhi

AP

Dozens of Tibetan exiles yesterday held a rally in New Delhi in support of

India in the ongoing border standoff with Chinese forces over disputed territory high in the Himalayas.

The Tibetan Youth Congress members waved Indian and Tibetan flags and demanded that China leave Tibet.

“’The border of China where they stand, it belongs to Tibet-ans. This is why we are standing with India,” said Tashi Dhondup, the group’s spokesman, adding that China was “illegally occu-pying” the area.

The standoff began in June after Indian troops confronted Chinese forces working on a road over the Doklam Plateau that is also claimed by India’s ally Bhutan.

Military alert

level raised on

China border

Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj (right) and Bhutanese Foreign Minister Damcho Dorji talk during a bilateral meeting in Kathmandu, yesterday.

Sushma meets Bhutan counterpart

Tibetan exilesshow support

Members of the Tibetan Youth Congress shout slogans during a protest march in New Delhi.

New Delhi

IANS

The Supreme Court yes-terday said it would start hearing appeals in

Ram Mandir-Babri Masjid case from December 5 and that no adjournments will be allowed

A three-member bench of Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Abdul Naseer asked contest-ing parties to translate into English, within 12 weeks, the exhibits of the documents on which they will likely rely upon since these were in eight different languages.

New Delhi

AFP

India’s top hunter yester-day led a shoot-to-kill pursuit of an elephant

whose murderous rampage through villages has left 15 people dead.

The government has turned to sharpshooter Nawab Shafat Ali Khan ahead of World Elephant Day on Saturday to hunt the animal who crushed four victims in the eastern state of Bihar in March before crossing into neighbouring Jharkhand and killing 11 more.

Jharkhand’s chief forest and wildlife conservator LR Singh said the decision to kill the animal was made after a team failed to tranquilise and capture the elephant during a week-long mission.

New Delhi

IANS

Amid speculation about AIADMK’s merger, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister E Pal-

aniswami met Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday and discussed the situation in the state while the rival faction led by O Panneerselvam approached

the Election Commission to can-cel the appointment of VK Sasikala as General Secretary of the party.

Palanisamy did not reveal to the media full details of his dis-cussions with Modi but expressed confidence that his government would defeat any no-confidence motion in the Assembly. “We won the confidence motion once

and again defeated the no-con-fidence motion brought by the DMK against the Assembly Speaker by one more vote. If (DMK leader M.K.) Stalin brings a no-confidence motion again, we will win with more votes,” he said. He also said the description of “420” (the IPC section refer-ring to cheating) would fit T.T.V. Dinakaran -- who was on

Thursday sacked as the Deputy General Secretary -- more.

Meanwhile, the faction headed by former Chief Minis-ter Panneerselvam moved the Election Commission seeking a declaration that Sasikala’s appointment as General Secre-tary and her subsequent appointment of Dinakaran as Deputy General Secretary was

“null and void”. Faction leader Manoj Pandian said they filed an affidavit in the Commission. They also appended the resolu-tion of the rival AIADMK faction of Palaniswamy, declaring as unlawful the appointment of Dinakaran. Lok Sabha Speker M Thambidurai said it was for the Election Commission to give its verdict on the issue of Sasikala.

New Delhi

IANS

Parliament’s nearly month-long Monsoon Session ended yesterday, with the

two houses recording a dip in productivity compared with the last session.

The session began on July 17, the day voting to elect the 14th President of India was held. During the session, voting to elect the 13th Vice-President was also held on August 8.

During the session, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also saw itself becoming the single largest party in the Rajya Sabha after a fresh round of elections to the upper house.

Unlike previous sessions, the upper house recorded a higher productivity compared with the lower house, where the BJP along with its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners, enjoys a majority.

According to the data pro-vided by the secretariats of the two houses, the Lok Sabha’s productivity was 77.94 per cent, significantly down from 114 per cent during the Budget Session.

The Rajya Sabha’s productivity was marginally higher com-pared with the lower house at 79.95 per cent. In the Budget Session, the upper house clocked around 93 per cent productivity.

Productivity is the ratio between the scheduled number of hours and the number of hours the house actually worked.

Parliamentary Affairs Min-ister Ananth Kumar said that the government was happy with the session’s outcome.

“It has been a successful session in terms of legislative business conducted and wide participation of all political par-ties in discussions on various issues of national importance,” Kumar said at the press confer-ence he addressed with Ministers of State for Parlia-mentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and S.S. Ahluwalia.

Ahluwalia said the dip in productivity in percentage terms did not affect legislative business done by the two houses, as the Lok Sabha passed 14 bills and the Rajya Sabha nine bills.

New Delhi

IANS

Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday gave his “100 percent” assurance

that the coalition agenda will stay in Jammu and Kashmir, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said, hinting at the continuation of the state’s special status.

Mehbooba Mutfi met Modi

in the backdrop of a raging debate over the continuity of articles 370 and 35(A) of the Constitution that give Jammu and Kashmuir, its special status. “The basis of agenda of our alli-ance is that the status quo on Article 370 is to be maintained and none of us will go against it. The response of the Prime Min-ister is positive. Modi gave 100 percent assurance to the agenda

of alliance,” she told reporters after her 15-minute meeting with Modi. Mehbooba Mufti said any attempt to fiddle with Arti-cle 35(A) - which empowers state legislators to define per-manent residents and extend voting, jobs and inheritance rights to them - will have a neg-ative impact in the state that has a “peculiar diversity where eve-rything is different”.

Tamil Nadu CM meets Modi; AIADMK faction moves EC

Monsoon Session of Parliament ends

SC to hear Babri Masjid case on December 5

Sharpshooter hunts wild elephant

Modi to stay with J&K coalition agenda

Indian and Chinese troops have been embroiled in the seven-week confrontation on the Doklam plateau, claimed by both China and India’s tiny ally, Bhutan.

05SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017 ASIA

NEWS BYTES

MANILA: The Philippines declared its first ever outbreak of the H5 strain of bird flu yesterday, but said there had been no cases of humans infected.

An immediate cull was ordered for all chicken, ducks and quail within a kilometre of the infected poultry in San Luis town, north of Manila, said Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Pinol.

The health department was meanwhile monitoring the health of farm workers exposed to the infected birds, he added.

“So far we do not have any reported animal to human transmissions,” Pinol told a news conference.

Manila declares bird flu outbreak

US military ‘locked and loaded’: TrumpBeijing

Reuters

US President Donald Trump issued a new threat to North Korea yesterday, saying American

weapons were “locked and loaded” as Pyongyang accused him of driving the Korean Penin-sula to the brink of nuclear war.

Trump kept up the war of words on Twitter shortly after the North Korean state news agency, KCNA, put out a state-ment blaming him for the escalated tensions.

“Trump is driving the situa-tion on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war, mak-ing such outcries as ‘the US will not rule out a war against the DPRK,’” KCNA said.

Trump, who is at his Bedmin-ster, New Jersey, golf resort on a working vacation, described American military readiness in stark terms.

“Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely,” he wrote on Twitter. “Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find

another path!”The US president maintained

pressure on the North a day after saying his earlier threat to unleash “fire and fury” on Pyongyang if it launched an attack may not have been tough enough.

US Defence Secretary James Mattis tempered Trump’s harsh words later on Thursday by tell-ing reporters the United States still preferred a diplomatic

approach to the North Korean threat.

A war would be “cata-strophic,” he said.

Asked if the United States was ready if North Korea com-mitted a hostile act, he said: “We are ready.”

Tension in the region has risen since the reclusive North staged two nuclear bomb tests last year and launched two inter-continental ballistic missile tests in July in defiance of world pow-ers. Trump has said he would not allow Pyongyang to develop a nuclear weapon capable of hit-ting the United States.

As incendiary rhetoric in Pyongyang and Washington flared this week, a Chinese state-run newspaper said yesterday that China should remain neu-tral if North Korea launches an attack that threatens the United States, sounding a warning for Pyongyang over its plans to fire missiles near the US Pacific ter-ritory of Guam.

Asian equity markets sank again yesterday and European stocks looked set for their worst week this year because of the tensions.

“This situation is beginning to develop into this generation’s Cuban Missile crisis moment,” ING’s chief Asia economist, Rob-ert Carnell, said in a research note. “While the US president insists on ramping up the war of words, there is a decreasing chance of any diplomatic solution.”

China, North Korea’s most important ally and trading part-ner, has reiterated calls for calm. Beijing has expressed frustration with both Pyongyang’s repeated nuclear and missile tests and with behaviour from South Korea and the United States, such as military drills, that it sees as increasing tensions.

“China should also make clear that if North Korea launches missiles that threaten US soil first and the US retaliates, China will stay neutral,” the Glo-bal Times, which is widely read but does not represent govern-ment policy, said in an editorial.

“If the US and South Korea carry out strikes and try to over-throw the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so,” it said.

China’s Foreign Ministry repeated a call for all parties to speak and act cautiously and do more to ease the situation, rather

than going down the “old path” of exchanges of shows of force and continually rising tension.

North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency said on Thursday its army would com-plete plans in mid-August to fire four intermediate-range missiles over Japan to land near Guam.

Trump said Kim was not going to get away with his “hor-r i f ic” comments and disrespecting America.

“Let’s see what he does with Guam. He does something in Guam, it will be an event the likes of which nobody’s seen before, what will happen in North Korea,” Trump told reporters in New Jer-sey, without offering specifics.

Sharif’s wife to contest parliament seatLahore

Reuters

The wife of ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will contest a spe-

cial election for the parliamentary seat he was forced to vacate after the Supreme Court disqualified him from holding office, party offi-cials said.

Kulsoom Nawaz Sharif (pic-tured) will be the candidate of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party in the by-election to be held in about 45 days, Sharif adviser Asif Kirmani said.

The announcement comes as Nawaz Sharif leads a “home-coming” caravan to Lahore that has drawn thousands of supporters.

The decision to put forward Sharif’s wife is in keeping with Pakistan’s tradition of dynastic politics and also indicates the former premier will likely remain involved behind the scenes.

Sharif’s ruling party last week elected one of his loyal-ists, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, as prime minister.

Party leaders have suggested Abbasi will hold office until

elections due next year, a reversal of earlier indications that Sharif’s younger brother, Shahbaz, would seek the vacant seat and later take over as premier.

There is also talk in the party ranks that Kulsoom herself could become prime minister once elected to parliament, but a Sharif aide said it was too early to speculate.

Kulsoom, who has never run for office, will be canvassing for votes in Sharif’s political strong-hold inside Lahore’s Walled City, where her husband has never lost.

“We will, God willing, win this seat with a big majority,” Muhammad Safdar, Sharif’s son-in-law who is also a member of parliament, said.

Kulsoom has always stood by her husband throughout a political career that has seen him elected and then ousted as prime minister three times.

In 2000, when army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf removed Sharif in a military coup, Kul-soom led protests in Lahore.

In one of the protests, she locked herself in a car for sev-eral hours, refusing to let police arrest her.

Servicepersons of the Ministry of People's Security gather to express full support for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) government, in Pyongyang.

BEIJING: An angry Beijing warned off a US warship after it sailed near an artificial island in the disputed South China Sea in the latest operation aimed at loosening the Asian giant’s grip on the strategic waterway.

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the actions of the USS John S McCain had violated Chinese and interna-tional law, “seriously” impairing the country’s sovereignty and security.

“China is strongly dissatisfied with this,” Geng said in a statement, adding that Beijing would lodge an official pro-test with Washington.

China protests US ship near island

SEOUL: A top South Korean technology official accused of covering up a notorious stem cell research fraud resigned yesterday, a blow to new President Moon Jae-In.

Park Ki-Young stepped down as the head of a newly-cre-ated science centre, which is responsible for allocating $18bn in government subsidies and budgets for research projects.

“I sincerely apologise for causing such disappointment and controversy,” Park said in a statement.

“I hope my resignation will serve as an opportunity for the country’s science sector to pull together again for development.”

Park had been under heavy pressure to step down after hundreds of South Korean scientists protested her appoint-ment by Moon this week.

Seoul technology official quits

Gunman opens fire in Afghan mosque; 4 deadKabul

AP

AN Afghan official says a gunman loyal to a local war-lord has opened fire inside a mosque in the northern Takhar province, killing four worship-pers and wounding as many as 40 people.

Provincial police chief Gen Faqir Mohammad Jawz-jan says the attacker belongs to a militia loyal to local war-lord Bashir Khan.

He says the warlord alleg-edly had a dispute with the mosque cleric, Maulvi Mafuz, who was the gunman’s target in yesterday’s attack.

Mafuz was not hurt in the assault.

The cause of the dispute wasn’t immediately clear but dozens of warlords who returned to positions of power after the collapse of the Taliban are protected by heavily armed local militias.

Cambodia accuses Laos of border violationPhnom Penh

AP

Cambodia announced yes-terday that its prime minister will make an

urgent visit to Laos as he demanded its government with-draw soldiers he claimed are encroaching on territory in northeastern Cambodia.

Cambodia’s foreign minis-try announced Hun Sen’s today’s trip to Laotian capital after he threatened to use force to expel the Laotian troops if they did not withdraw by August 17.

Hun Sen said yesterday that the problem began in April when about 30 Laotian soldiers entered a no-man’s land on the border to stop Cambodian mil-itary engineers from building a road on what Cambodia main-tains is its territory in Stung Treng province.

Hun Sen said construction work ceased but the Laotian sol-diers remained.

Calls and emails to the Lao sEmbassy in Phnom Penh were not returned yesterday.

Hun Sen said he has ordered his military commanders to be

ready to send combat forces to the disputed area but that at the moment a diplomatic solution remains possible. He urged Cambodians not to be alarmed if they see military forces on the move.

“I appeal to Laotian Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith to withdraw the forces out of Cam-bodia without any conditions, and the latest deadline is Aug. 17,” he said.

“We don’t want to have a dispute with Laos but we also cannot allow the situation remain like this anymore.”

Army vehicles are seen along a street in Phnom Penh, yesterday.

Trump wrote in Twitter: Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!

Rising tension

China’s Foreign Ministry repeated a call for all parties to speak and act cautiously and do more to ease the situation.

Strong quake rocks northern PhilippinesManila

AP

A strong but deep earthquake struck the northern Philippines yesterday afternoon but caused no apparent damage.

Office workers and stu-dents in the capital, Manila, briefly evacuated their build-ings after feeling the moderately strong swaying and shaking.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said no damage was expected because the 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck at a depth of 160km.

Deeper epicenters often cause less damage at the Earth’s surface, though they can be widely felt.

The epicenter was 16km southwest of Batangas prov-ince’s resort town of Nasugbu, which is around 65km southwest of the cap-ital, Manila.

06 SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017EUROPE

Colourful creation

Russian hackers targeted hotels in EuropeFrankfurt

Reuters

A cyber-spying group with suspected links to Russian military intelligence was probably behind a

campaign targeting hotel guests in eight mostly European coun-tries last month, researchers at security firm FireEye said yesterday.

The espionage group, dubbed APT 28, sought to steal password credentials from Western gov-ernment and business travellers using hotel wi-fi networks, in order then to infect their organ-isational networks back home, FireEye said in a report.

The wave of attacks during the first week of July targeted travellers who were staying in

several hotel chains in at least seven countries in Europe and one in the Middle East, it said.

These preliminary findings are the latest to allege that Rus-sia is engaged in far-flung hacking activity aimed at

governments, businesses and election campaigns, including Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful White House bid last year.

Several governments and security research firms have linked APT 28 to the GRU, Rus-sia’s military intelligence directorate. Other researchers have tracked the same pattern of attacks, but stopped short of linking APT 28 to the Russian state.

Moscow vehemently denies the accusations.

Benjamin Read, manager of cyber espionage analysis for US-based FireEye, said the technical exploits and remote chain of command used to mount the attacks all clearly pointed to APT 28, whose vast scope of activi-ties his firm has detailed since 2014.

“We are moderately confi-dent in our assessment,” Read said, adding this was because the technical inquiry was still in its early days. “We just don’t have the smoking gun yet.”

The latest attempts were identified and thwarted in the initial infiltration stage. But sim-ilar methods were used in the autumn of 2016 at hotels in Europe, and managed to breach the computer of a US govern-ment employee, he said.

In the July attacks, FireEye found spear-phishing emails were used to trick hotel employ-ees to download an infected hotel reservation document, which then installed GAMEFISH malware run remotely from internet sites known to be con-trolled by APT 28.

This foothold gave the cyber

spies control over guest wi-fi networks and could help them grab passwords of targeted vic-tims and sniff unencrypted data being transmitted to shared net-work drives in the up-market, business-class hotels of major cities.

“We did not observe any guest credentials being stolen. However there were multiple hotel chains targeted and we don’t know the full extent of the operation,” Read said.

The July attacks took advan-tage of a recently leaked piece of malicious software known as EternalBlue, believed to have been stolen from the US National Security Agency, giving hackers a highly sophisticated way to move silently inside organisa-tions’ networks once they infect even a single machine.

It was also EternalBlue that fuelled the worldwide spread of WannaCry ransomware in May and the NotPetya attack against Ukraine in June, which fanned out globally to hit dozens of major firms.

The 2016 hotel attacks tricked one user with a fake Adobe Flash update and were likely launched by a nearby hacker on the same guest wi-fi network, FireEye said.

APT 28 logged into the guest’s web-based Outlook email account 12 hours later, it said.

“The government employee returned to the United States and the infection spread to their agency when their computer was reconnected to the network,” Read said. He declined to comment on how far the attack reached or whether it caused any damage.

Madrid

AFP

Spain yesterday called in police to help with secu-rity checks at Barcelona’s

busy airport as a strike contin-ues at the peak of the holiday season, causing long queues and safety concerns.

The El Prat airport, Spain’s second busiest after Madrid, has been hit by a partial work stop-page at baggage control since Friday last week, as guards complain about their workload, staffing levels and salaries.

The 360 employees, con-tracted by multinational firm Eulen, have stopped work for four hours on specific days.

But after negotiations with their company and a govern-ment mediator broke down—with workers rejecting an 18 percent salary rise—they

will launch into a full-time strike from Monday.

Public Works Minister Inigo de la Serna said that as a result the government had decided to call in the Guardia Civil police force to help out.

“The Eulen employees are required by law to ensure at least 90-percent service dur-ing their strike, and the police officers will assist them in implementing full-body and luggage checks,” he said yesterday.

“No one can forget the ter-rorism alert level we have,” he said, adding the measures were taken “to avoid any problem of this kind from happening.”

Spain is currently on a level four terror alert out of a maxi-mum of five.

Passenger traffic at El Prat rose by more than 60 percent from 2009 to 2016.

Lithuania court extradites fraud suspect to USVilnius

Reuters

LITHUANIA’S top appeals court yesterday upheld a decision to extradite to the United States a Lithuanian man accused of defrauding Facebook and Google out of more than $100m.

According to a US indict-ment made public in March, Evaldas Rimasauskas is charged with wire fraud and money laundering.

A further charge of iden-tify theft carries a mandatory minimum sentence of two years. The alleged crimes took place in 2013-2015.

Rimasauskas will be handed over to the US within 10 days, the Lithuanian gen-eral prosecutors office said.

He had appealed against an extradition ruling made in July. Rimasauskas allegedly swindled $23m from Google and $99m from Facebook, the Lithuanian court said.

The court said Rimasaus-kas and his accomplices were alleged to have posed as Tai-wanese manufacturer Quanta Computer Inc , an established supplier for Google and Facebook.”

“They then allegedly used email to convince both com-panies to transfer money owed to the manufacturer to accounts controlled by a Latvian company with the same name.”

Slovakian PM cancels meeting on health groundsBratislava

Reuters

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico withdrew on health grounds from an

important meeting yesterday aimed at stabilising his govern-ing coalition, his office said.

It gave no further details on his condition.

The 52-year old, who has

served as prime minister for most of the past decade, under-went heart surgery last year after complaining of chest pains.

The coalition meeting has been called off, said a spokes-woman for the ethnic Hungarian Most-Hid party, the smallest of the three governing parties.

Party leaders were due to discuss the demands of the Slo-vak National Party (SNS), which

sprang a surprise on Monday by pulling out of the coalition agree-ment with Fico’s centre-left Smer and Most-Hid, and calling for a new deal that would give it more influence.

The dispute does not mean an immediate collapse of the government in Slovakia, which is a member of the European Union and the euro zone. But a lack of agreement could

eventually threaten its survival, leading to talks on a new gov-ernment or an early election. The next regular election is due in 2020.

SNS is arguing for the intro-duction of annual bonuses equal to two months’ wages for all employees in the private and public sectors; more government investment to revitalise Slova-kia’s thermal spa resorts; and the

creation of a national airline.Independent economists said

meeting these conditions could endanger Slovakia’s plans to reach a balanced budget by the year 2019.

The opposition says the SNS is trying to divert attention from a row over the distribution of $353m in EU subsidies by the education department, which it controls.

Firefighters gain control against Portugal wildfiresAbrantes

AFP

Firefighters aided by calmer winds were gaining control of wildfires raging across

drought-hit Portugal but warned the fire danger remained high in the coming days.

Some 1,600 firefighters backed by 500 vehicles were battling 11 blazes that were burn-ing out of control in the centre and north of the country, the civil protection agency said on its website.

Another roughly 800 fire-fighters were at the scene of 38 other blazes which had been tamed or were being dampened down, it added.

The fires come after more than 60 people were killed in June, and more than 200 injured, in a giant blaze at Pedrogao Grande in central Portugal that raged for five days.

“Firefighters had brought the biggest blaze which broke out in

a forest near the central town of Abrantes largely under control”, Abrantes mayor Maria do Ceu Albuquerque said.

“There are still two active fronts which are a cause for con-cern. But there is no wind and the conditions are reunited to have a calmer night and tomor-row we can put out this fire,” she said.

Some 800 firefighters backed by 250 vehicles were battling the blaze, which broke out on Wednesday as the return of scorching temperatures put an end to a brief respite from a spate of blazes.

The fire reached an indus-trial park on the outskirts of Abrantes and forced the evacu-ation of four nearby villages as a precaution.

Roughly 50 residents of the villages will spend the night at a military building, Albuquerque said.

Firefighters said low air humidity levels and strong

winds, which frequently changed direction, had complicated their initial efforts against the blaze.

Weather conditions will be “especially favourable for wild-fires” until Sunday, with strong winds and temperatures of up to 39 degrees Celsius forecast, civil protection agency spokeswoman Patricia Gaspar said.

Morocco sent a water-drop-ping plane and neighbouring

Spain sent two to help firefight-ers battle the flames, she added.

Another fire near the north-ern village of Mealhada forced the closure of a 30km stretch of the A1 highway linking Lisbon and Porto, Portugal’s two larg-est cities, for several hours.

The railways linking Lisbon to the southern province of the Algarve was also closed for sev-eral hours because of a blaze

near the city of Grandola.Police said they had arrested

a 61-year-old man who is sus-pected of having started a fire near the central village of Lordelo.

The president of the Portu-guese Firefighters’ League, Jaime Marta Soares, told private tele-vision SIC he believed more than 80 percent of wildfires in Por-tugal had a “criminal origin”.

Italy police nab fireman over arson Rome

AFP

A volunteer fireman has been caught setting fires in northern Italy as the drought-ravaged country struggled yesterday to contain wildfire blazes.

In the Lombardy region, the 28-year-old arsonist was filmed on a security camera setting hedges and rubbish bins alight before returning to base, sounding the alarm and rushing along with the colleagues to put the fire out.

On Monday, 15 firefight-ers were arrested in Sicily on suspicion of having started fires in order to receive bonus payments.

“You cannot link the con-cept of earning a salary and firefighting in a period of eco-nomic crisis such as this,” said Antonio Brizzi, secretary gen-eral of the Conapo fire fighters’ union.

FireEye said in a report that the espionage group, APT 28, sought to steal password credentials from Western government and business travellers using hotel wi-fi networks, in order then to infect their organisational networks back home.

Cyberattack

Barcelona police help with security checks at airport

Firefighters douse flames close to the village of Pucarica, in Abrantes, yesterday.

A floral display including fruits and vegetables is pictured at "Flowertime" event on Brussels' Grand Place, Belgium, yesterday.

07SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017 EUROPE

EU calls for talks as egg scandal hits AsiaBrussels

AFP

The EU yesterday called an emergency meet-ing to stop “blaming and shaming” over the insecticide-

tainted eggs scandal as it emerged for the first time that the crisis had spread to Asia.

Hong Kong, Switzerland and 15 European Union countries have all received eggs contam-inated with the chemical fipronil, which can harm human health, the European Commis-sion said.

With concern going global, the commission said it had now called a meeting of ministers and food safety chiefs from affected EU countries, setting a provisional date of September 26.

“Blaming and shaming will bring us nowhere and I want to stop this,” Vytenis Andriukaitis, the European Commissioner for health and food safety, said.

Andriukaitis urged the Neth-erlands, Belgium and Germany -- the countries at the epicen-tre of the crisis -- to stop trading accusations about who is responsible for the scare.

Dutch Health Minister Edith Schippers, speaking publicly about the matter for the first time, admitted late Thursday

that errors had been made in the government’s handling of the crisis.

Fipronil is commonly used to get rid of fleas, lice and ticks from animals but is banned by the European Union from use in the food industry.

The EU insists there is no threat to human health, but the World Health Organization (WHO) says that when eaten in large quantities it can harm peo-ple’s kidneys, liver and thyroid glands.

Millions of eggs and egg-based products have been pulled

from European supermarkets since August 1 and there are growing questions about who knew what, and when.

European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said that “this is not, let’s be clear, a crisis meeting” and it is being held next month to get “distance to the events”.

Brussels said the 15 EU coun-tries affected were Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, Britain, Austria, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Denmark, along with non-EU Switzerland.

But it also announced that Hong Kong had received some tainted eggs, with the southern Chinese city becoming the first place in Asia known to be affected.

Hong Kong reported finding eggs from The Netherlands con-taminated with fipronil, the commission said, without giv-ing further details.

The EU is seeking to quickly end the egg feud and maintain unity after a string of crises including Brexit, a migration influx and debt in eurozone.

“We need to work together to draw the necessary lessons and move forward instead of losing energy on finger point-ing,” commissioner Andriukaitis said.

Merkel urges EU help to ease refugee crisisBerlin

Anatolia

German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday urged EU member states to do

more to resettle refugees. Speaking at a news confer-

ence in Berlin, Merkel backed a recent proposal by the UN to increase the number of refugees to be resettled in the EU from the earlier pledged figure of 20,000 to 40,000.

“I think that 40,000 is a fig-ure that will certainly not overstretch a continent with over 500 million people,”

Merkel said, adding that the resettlement programme was an important part of their efforts to fight smugglers and manage irregular migration flow.

She made the remarks at a joint press conference with the UN High Commissioner for Ref-ugees Filippo Grandi and International Organization for Migration Director-General Wil-liam Lacy Swing, following their talks on the refugee crisis and irregular migration in the Mediterranean.

The EU member states agreed in July 2015 to resettle around 20,000 refugees from

conflict regions, to ease the bur-den on countries which host hundreds of thousands of refugees.

But in the last two years, only 17,000 refugees were accepted by the EU member states as part of the resettlement plan.

Many of these refugees were Syrians who fled the civil war and sought protection in the neighboring countries -- Leba-non, Jordan and Turkey.

EU member states Hungary and Poland continue their objection to the resettlement plan.

Danish man faces charges after submarine sinksCopenhagen

Reuters

A Danish inventor has been charged with the murder of a Swedish journalist

who police said had been on his submarine before it was wrecked yesterday.

Peter Madsen, 46, was res-cued in a navy operation and taken ashore after the 17-metre homemade submarine sank, police said in a statement.

The police later said Mad-sen had been charged with the murder of female journalist.

The inventor, 46, denied the charges and said he had

dropped the woman off in Copenhagen on Thursday night, according to the police.

The police in Sweden said they had tried without success to contact the woman by phone. Her family had not heard from her.

Madsen, an entrepreneur known as an artist, submarine builder and aerospace engineer, will go before a judge for pre-liminary questioning today.

Police said the submarine was on the seabed in Koge Bay, south of Copenhagen, at a depth of seven metres.

Divers had not been able to enter the vessel.

England jails three cannabis farm operatorsLondon

Reuters

THREE Britons were jailed yesterday for running a huge cannabis farm inside a former Cold War nuclear bunker in an isolated area of southwest England.

The gang used the bun-ker to cultivate more than 4,000 cannabis plants capa-ble of producing $2.6m worth of drugs a year.

The bunker, located in Chilmark near Salisbury, was no longer owned by the Min-istry of Defence but was still intact with its nuclear blast doors in place which made it almost impenetrable, police said.

The farm was thought to have been running since 2013. To keep it operating, the gang bypassed the mains supply and instead siphoned power from a pylon outside, illegally using about 650,000 pounds worth of electricity.

“This was without doubt the largest cannabis factory we have seen here in the county, with almost all of the 20 rooms inside the bunker converted for the wholesale production of cannabis,” said Detective Inspector Simon Pope of Wiltshire Police in a statement .

Chapman likely to form new anti-Brexit partyLondon

AP

Opponents of Britain’s departure from the Euro-pean Union are floating

the idea of setting up a new anti-Brexit political party.

James Chapman, a former top aide to Brexit Secretary David Davis, has become an out-spoken critic of Britain’s looming departure from the 28-nation bloc.

He is calling for a new

centrist political party because both the governing Conserva-tives and main opposition Labour parties say they will go through with the decision to leave.

Chapman said yesterday “there is an enormous gap in the centre now of British politics” that could be filled by an anti-Brexit force. He said that two members of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Cabinet have con-tacted him to express support.

Former Prime Minister Tony

Blair has also called for pro-EU politicians from all parties to unite.

Chapman, a former journal-ist who was chief of staff to Davis until June, tweeted this week that “Brexit is a catastrophe” and called on “sensible” lawmakers to reverse it.

He has suggested the new party should be called the Dem-ocrats. But many politicians say Britons democratically voted to leave the bloc and it would be wrong to override the decision.

Britain is currently negoti-ating its divorce from the EU and is due to leave in March 2019.

Progress has been slow on settling the big early issues, including the status of EU nationals living in the U.K. and the size of the bill Britain must pay to settle its commitments to the bloc.

Meanwhile, UK economic growth is faltering amid uncer-tainty about what the country’s future trading relationship with the EU will be.

Five dead in Germany truck accidentBerlin

AP

Police say a 26-tonne gar-bage truck tipped over on a road in southwestern

Germany, crushing a car and killing five people, including at least four members of the same family.

The German news agency dpa reported yesterday that the truck overturned on a curve in the road in the Baden-Wuert-temberg town of Nagold, about 30km southwest of Stuttgart.

Police say the family of four included two children. A fifth who hasn’t yet been identified also was killed.

Police say the cause of the midday crash hasn’t been deter-mined, but investigators were

looking into whether the truck had a mechanical problem.

Climate change disrupts flood timing in EuropeOslo

Reuters

Climate change has shifted the timing of flooding in European rivers in the past

50 years, causing deluges ear-lier in the northeast and later around parts of the Mediterra-nean, scientists said.

Floods affect more people worldwide than any other nat-ural hazard and UN estimates put the amount of damage they cause at $104bn a year. Predict-ing the timings can help protect people and guide crop plantings,

irrigation and hydropower generation.

“Climate change has impacted flood timing in Europe,” lead author Guenter Bloeschl of the Vienna Univer-sity of Technology said. “But it did so in very different ways in different parts of Europe.”

His international team stud-ied European river data from more than 4,200 measuring sta-tions from 1960-2010 and said the findings, published in the journal Science, were the first to link global warming to floods across a continent.

The clearest evidence was in northeastern Europe, spanning western Russia, the Baltics and Nordic nations, where snows were melting earlier in spring. Peak floods in spring were often more than eight days earlier than in 1960, it said.

“Years with late snow melt have become rare” in the region, co-author Berit Arheimer of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute said.

Elsewhere, the peak autumn season for floods along the Atlantic coast from Portugal to England, when soils get

waterlogged by rain, had become earlier in the past half century.

By contrast, floods came a few days later around much of the North Sea and parts of the Mediterranean such as the Adri-atic coast, because of delays in rains in winter.

It linked some of the changes to shifts in the tracks of Atlantic storms, which many scientists say are influenced by factors includ-ing a thaw of ice in the Arctic.

Sergio Castellari, a flood expert at the European Environ-ment Agency, who was not involved in the research, said the

study of flood timing was a “very promising” approach to detect the influence of climate change.

“Until now, climate studies have often focused on shifts in the severity of floods that are often skewed by factors other than rising temperatures linked to man-made greenhouse gas emissions.”

David Schultz, a professor of meteorology at Manchester Uni-versity cautioned that analysing a 50-year period when “many of the regions show interesting variations across the decades is problematic”.

The European Commission said Hong Kong, Switzerland and 15 EU countries have all received eggs contaminated with the chemical fipronil, which can harm human health.

Blame game

Vytenis Andriukaitis urged the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany to stop trading accusations about who is responsible for the scare.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (centre), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi (right) and Director General of the International Organization for Migration William Lacy Swing, during a press conference at the Chancellery, in Berlin, yesterday.

Submarine owner and inventor Peter Madsen lands in Dragor Harbor, south of Copenhagen, yesterday.

Firefighters gather at a garbage truck which tipped over and landed on a car in Nagold, southern Germany, yesterday.

08 SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017VIEWS

E S T A B L I S H E D I N 1 9 9 6

QUOTE OF THE DAY

When a fight has nearly broken out, the first step away from the dangerous threshold should be taken by the side that is stronger and smarter.

Sergei LavrovRussian Foreign Minister

Kuwait has long played a con-structive role in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) by bringing opposing parties together. It also enjoys strong

relations with both Saudi Arabia and Qatar. So when Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emir-ates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain cut ties to Qatar in early June, Kuwait was seen as an acceptable mediator that can mend the lat-est rift within the GCC.

H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah served for 40 years as foreign minis-ter (1963-2003), and then as Prime Minister before becoming the Emir of Kuwait in 2006. The vast experience he had in these positions and the intensity of his involve-ment in the issues that affect the region as a whole made him the right man for this hard task. So when the crisis erupted, both the Saudi-led bloc and Qatar turned to Al Sabah. But they had very different motiva-tions for doing so.

For Qatar, Kuwait is a trustworthy neighbour that has no vested interest in any kind of internal GCC conflict. Also, Sheikh Al Sabah is praised in Doha as a wise and experienced statesman. Most importantly, Kuwait — as a small country — knows very well from its own experience with Iraq what it is to face aggression from a big and pow-erful neighbour. Thus Doha believes that Kuwait can easily understand and help to solve the current situation between Qatar and Saudi Arabia and its allies.

On the other hand, the Saudi-led bloc has a very different perspective regarding the nature of the role Kuwait can play in this crisis. Although they also seem to be welcoming Kuwaiti mediation, their moti-vation for doing so is to lessen the influence of outside actors in the crisis. They seem to be unwilling to solve the crisis which is posing serious challenges for Kuwait.

Blocking mediation effortsEven though there is a broad regional

and international consensus to support the role of Al Sabah as a mediator in the crisis, Kuwait was unable to be effective and three rounds of mediation didn’t lead to the desired outcomes yet. US President Donald Trump’s toxic influence also played a role in the failure of Kuwait’s efforts; however, the most important reason behind it was the Saudi-led bloc’s refusal to participate in and show any enthusiasm for a meaningful mediation process.

Since the beginning of the crisis, the Saudi-led bloc imposed serious restrictions on the role Kuwait can play in the crisis. By doing so, they wanted to ensure Riyadh’s strong influence over small GCC countries and to force Qatar to comply.

At the very beginning of the crisis, on June 5, Prince Khalid Al Faisal, adviser of the Saudi King Salman, visited Kuwait to deliver a message to its Emir. Kuwait’s state-run news agency KUNA didn’t

GCC crisis: Why is Kuwaiti mediation not working?Dr Ali Bakeer Al Jazeera

disclose the contents of the message; however, one source with knowledge of the situation told me that “The pur-pose was to discourage the Emir [of Kuwait’s mediation efforts]”. The same source said that at that time: “The Emir of Qatar was preparing to deliver a strong speech with retalia-tory measures in response to the measures taken against his country.” But, despite Saudi efforts to discour-age mediation, “Al Sabah called Qatar’s Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and urged him for restraint”.

The Emir of Kuwait was interested in avoiding a vicious cycle of destruc-tive actions and reactions by both sides. And Qatar’s Emir aided his mediatory mission by not delivering the strong speech he had prepared. However, actions of the US President Donald Trump disrupted Qatar and Kuwait’s efforts to de-escalate the situation.

On June 6, a tweet by Trump implying that Qatar is “funding a radi-cal ideology” empowered the Saudi-led bloc, and made Kuwait’s job much harder. Following the US presi-dent’s now infamous tweet, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE escalated their attacks against Qatar. UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, said: “There is nothing to negotiate with Qatar,” thus sabotaging the first round of the Kuwaiti media-tion efforts.

During this first round of efforts, the anti-Qatar quartet also refused to disclose the real causes that triggered the crisis and did not present any proof for the serious allegations they

had raised against Doha. Furthermore, they did not present a list of demands, guar-anteeing the failure of Kuwait’s mediation

efforts.The second round of the Kuwaiti

efforts started over a month later, when the Saudi-led bloc finally pre-pared its list of 13 demands. At this stage, however, the Saudi-led bloc limited the role of Kuwait to a mailman.

Adel Al Jubair, Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, once again made it clear that there would be “no negotiations” with Qatar. Kuwait was only allowed to deliver the list of 13 demands to Doha and receive Qatar’s response in a period of 10 days. These restrictions made any Kuwaiti effort for mediation completely futile.

During this time, the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made visits to the region to help Kuwait in its media-tion efforts, and slight progress was achieved.

According to one Gulf official, “Kuwait asked Doha not to disclose its response on the 13 demands to the public in order to help its efforts in mediation”. The same source told me: “A roadmap and a set of principles were conveyed to the Saudi-led bloc after Doha signed an agreement with US on combating terrorism.”

However, at this point of the proc-ess, a set of agreements made between Gulf countries between 2013 and 2014, known as Riyadh Agree-ments, were leaked to American broadcaster CNN, which has regional headquarters in Abu Dhabi. This leak was widely seen as another attempt to block the joint efforts of Kuwait and the US Secretary to solve the crisis.

Despite the Saudi-led bloc’s reluc-tance to help the mediation efforts, on July 22, the Emir of Qatar H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani showed willingness and readiness for dialogue in his first speech about the crisis. Yet, only a week after his speech, top offi-cials from the Saudi-led bloc met in Bahrain and reasserted that there would be no negotiations with Qatar unless it fulfills the 13 demands.

For Kuwait, this was like going back to square one again.

At this stage, there is still no direct communication between the opposing sides of the GCC conflict. Kuwait is deprived from an effective mediation role and the UAE seems to be content with the idea of a stalemate. Because of all this, Kuwaiti efforts for media-tion remain fruitless.

The bottom line here is that with-out at least neutralising Trump’s negative influence in the crisis and applying pressure on the Saudi-led bloc to participate in meaningful negotiations, Kuwait will likely have no chance to succeed in its mission.

The writer is an Ankara-based political

analyst and researcher. He holds a PhD in

political science and international rela-

tions. His main research interests include

Turkey’s foreign policy, Iran and GCC

countries.

At this stage, there is still no direct communication between the opposing sides of the GCC conflict. Kuwait is deprived from an effective mediation role and the UAE seems to be content with the idea of a stalemate. Because of all this, Kuwaiti efforts for mediation remain fruitless.The bottom line here is that without at least neutralising Trump’s negative influence in the crisis and applying pressure on the Saudi-led bloc to participate in meaningful negotiations, Kuwait will likely have no chance to succeed in its mission.

E S T A B L I S H E D I N 1 9 9 6

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFI

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

msalim@pen.com.qa

Qatar’s decision to relax visa policy for nationals of 242 countries and territories is a bold new initiative to drive the country towards hosting greater numbers of tourists in the future. Three days ago,

Qatar said nationals of 80 countries will get visa-free entry into the country that is preparing to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022. The move was met with wide-ranging applause from all segments of the society in the country and away from Qatar as well.

On Thursday, the Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) announced that the country was ready to grant visa to nationals of 242 countries through its e-visa platform www.qatarvisaservice.com. QTA said the e-service has been expanded to nationals of more countries so that the entire process of making a trip to Qatar is genuinely hassle-free and time-saving. Clearly the move will be a massive boon to the hotel and hospitality industry.

In a nutshell, the new visa policy is a carefully planned move to boost the tourism sector. Doha, the sports hub of the region, has the world’s finest infrastructure to meet the ever increasing number of visitors. The new move will usher in an exciting era of tourism as Qatar prepares for football’s biggest spectacle - the 2022 FIFA World Cup. In 2019, Qatar will host the IAAF’s World Athletics Championships at the Khalifa International Stadium. The track and field gala alone will be

reason to welcome thousands of first-time visitors in 2019.

QTA said the move to allow nationals of 80 countries into Qatar without visa was announced following last year’s decision to facilitate tourists from around the world with aims of attracting greater number of visitors in the coming years. As Qatar Airways keeps adding routes to its already impressive expanding network, the new visa policy perfectly aligns with the country’s aims of going global on its

tourism plans. Qatar Airways currently reaches out to more than 150 business and leisure destinations around the world.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said the new move will make it easier for travellers to dock in Doha and enjoy the sights and sounds of Qatar. In the coming weeks and months, the award-winning airline will add a number of new destinations to its growing network including Dublin, Nice, Skopje, Sarajevo and many more, flying passengers on board its modern fleet of 200 aircraft. Qatar witnessed a 39 percent increase in the number of stopover visitors during the first six months of 2017, compared with the same period last year. The new visa policy will clearly push this figure up in the coming months and years.

Qatar’s bold new move

The new visa policy is a carefully planned move to boost the tourism sector. Doha, the sports hub of the region, has the world’s finest infrastructure to meet the ever increasing number of visitors.

ED ITOR IAL

09SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017 OPINION

the president can’t fire nuclear weapons pre-emp-tively without Congress’s approval.

“This goes to the role which the Congress consti-tutionally should play in the declaration of war,” Markey said on MSNBC on Thursday. “We’ve allowed for the power with regard to conventional war to slip away from us, unfortunately.”

But there’s a lot of gray area to the War Powers Act that gives the president the legal space to launch weapons on his own, nuclear or conventional.

As I explained after Trump unilaterally bombed Syria in April, the War Powers Act allows the presi-dent to take some military action on his own, as long as it’s more of a one-off thing and not long-term.

“The line on when a president needs Congress’s approval is fuzzy, but it’s more of a know-it-when-you-see-it-situation,” said Phillip Carter, a senior fellow with the national security-focused Center for a New American Security think tank. A president’s unilateral power, he said, is “something short of war. It’s the use of force by the president to achieve an immediate end,” he said.”

Technically, nuclear war isn’t different under the law. If Trump wants to start something sus-tained, he will need to get Congress’s buy-in.

But nuclear war is also MUCH different than other wars

The whole reason the president can launch a nuclear strike without Congress’s approval is to let other nuclear war powers know that the United States means business.

It’s a deterrent to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and the like. If they fire nuclear warheads at the United States (North Korea is getting closer to being able to do that sooner than experts had predicted), they know that in a matter of minutes, US nuclear warheads could be soaring over to them.

“...Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2017”

If Congress trims the president’s immediate launch-strike power, it could be very, very, danger-ous for the United States, Hersman said.

“[Nuclear weapons] exist to protect us from catastrophe. Their role in the world is to prevent their use and to deter their use,” Hersman said. “You need the president to be able to react responsibly

World must take Qatar’s side against the blockade

On June 5, 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain declared a full blockade of Qatar by land, sea, and air. They cited Qatar’s alleged support for terror-

ism as justification.Now, 60 days into this blockade, revelations

about the origin of the Qatar crisis provide ample reasons why the world community should no longer remain neutral but stand firmly with Qatar against the actions committed by its neighbors.

During the month of Ramadan, a month when Muslims fast from food and water, neighboring nations blocked off food and water supplies to Qatar, leading to panic. Luckily, Qatar was able to quickly respond to this momentary food shortage.

More painful and perplexing was the “human blockade” that quickly followed: Qatari citizens were expelled from the blockading nations, and citizens of these nations who were living and working in Qatar likewise had to leave Qatar.

These measures are extremely harsh, given how intertwined Qatari society is with the socie-ties in Saudi Arabia and the UAE in terms of the long history of intermarriage and family rela-tions. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman are the six nations that make

up the Gulf Cooperation Council, a federation of states sharing very similar language and customs.

To this day, no evidence has been provided to justify the claims of the blockading nations. In fact, the State Department’s Report on Terrorism for 2016 provides in-depth information on the many ways in which Qatar has denounced and fought terrorism.

On July 11, 2017, Qatar became the first country to act in the spirit of the Riyadh Summit 2017 in signing a memorandum of understanding with the United States further strengthening counterterror-ism efforts.

In addition, Qatar fights terrorism indirectly by empowering youth through education. Qatar’s greatest legacy is its Education City, which houses branch campuses of Cornell, Georgetown, North-western, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Commonwealth, and Texas A&M, and graduates thousands of students from all over the Arab

world every year.Although it is a monarchy, like many other

nations in the Middle East, Qatar surpasses other Gulf monarchies in its efforts to advance society through education, religious tolerance, and wom-en’s rights.

It has thus made tremendous strides in com-merce, education, arts, healthcare, press freedom, diplomacy, climate change mitigation, and sports. Qatar played roles in providing humanitarian aid for various world crises, educating millions of ref-ugee children, and mediating international conflicts.

What’s more, the immediate cause of the blockade — supposed words of praise for Iran from Qatar’s Emir — has been identified as a false-flag provocation. US intelligence sources have concluded that the UAE actually launched a cyberattack on Qatar’s government news agency to plant a fake news article ascribing false state-ments to the Emir. The UAE and Saudi Arabian

President Donald Trump alone knows the codes that can authorize a nuclear attack on North Korea. Lately, it sounds like he hasn’t ruled that out. This

week alone, he’s threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” and “things that will happen to them like they never thought possible,” and Friday morning, he tweeted this:

“Military solutions are now fully in place,locked and loaded,should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!

- Donald J. Trump (@realDon-aldTrump) August 11, 2017”

Congress could wiggle itself into the debate to stop Trump from launching nuclear warheads at North Korea. At least one bill to that effect has been introduced in the Senate.

Except, it might not want to. There are some major downsides to putting in restrictions on the president’s use of nuclear weapons, including that doing so could make it easier for a country to attack the United States.

Let’s start with the basicsThe president cannot declare war

without Congress’s approval, and to many, the use of a nuclear weapon is an act of war. But it isn’t that clear-cut.

“When it comes to Congress’s ability to intervene, it’s exactly the same as it would be for any other situation on proposed use of force,” said Rebecca Hersman, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for countering weapons of mass destruction in the Obama administration and is now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., introduced legisla-tion in January that makes it doubly clear

Can Congress stop Trump from launching a nuclear attack

A poster of Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani with H M Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman; Emir of Kuwait, H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah; and President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the wall of a villa in Al Hilal.

and quickly.” The dividing line here seems to be a preemptive attack. Congress is probably on okay legal ground to chime in before Trump launches something on his own. (He’s left open that possibility by never once specifying what would cause him to pull the trigger on the US’s locked-and-loaded arsenal.)

And Congress seems to understand that.“In the event of a nuclear attack against the United States

it would be different,” Markey said on MSNBC. “ . . . with regard to the use of nuclear weapons where we have not been attacked with nuclear weapons . . . it would just be cata-strophic for the planet, and that’s why I believe we need constraints on the use of nuclear weapons.”

Congress doesn’t have the political will to act right nowMarkey and Lieu are clearly hoping this war of words

between Trump and North Korea will give their bill momen-tum, something it seriously lacks. With Republicans in control of Congress, the bill has sat, gathering dust, since they introduced it in January.

Republican leaders in Congress have been reluctant to confront Trump, except when it comes to Russia. They recently forced Trump to sign a Russia sanctions bill, and some GOP lawmakers have introduced legislation to curb Trump’s power to fire the special counsel investigating possi-ble Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But reinserting themselves in a power that is traditionally centered on the executive branch would be a bold political move, and there’s no evidence they want to.

Also: Why put restrictions on Trump, and no other presi-dent to date?

There’s one more national security dilemma stirred up by putting preemptive protections on the president. If Congress does jump in, it’s worth asking why they are doing it for THIS president. Could it be because they don’t trust him, personally?

At least 61 percent of Americans say they are “uneasy” about Trump’s ability to handle North Korea, according to a new CBS poll. And Trump mentioned in a debate in Septem-ber that he wouldn’t take a preemptive nuclear strike off the table. Still, it’s very troubling to insert politics to tinker with America’s nuclear deterrence system, Hersman warned.

“The day we get in the business of designing our national security policies by personality, in permanent ways, that is a day we really step backward in terms of protecting Ameri-cans and their national security,” she said. So, Congress could stop Trump, if it wants to. But it may not want to.

The author writes about politics for The Fix. She was previously the

one-woman D.C. bureau for the Las Vegas Sun and has reported

from Boston and Taiwan.

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governments then used these false statements as the occasion for launching the blockade.

Despite the flagrant aggres-sions taken against it, Qatar has not retaliated with aggression and continues to request negotiations.

In 1990, when Saddam Hus-sein decided to invade Kuwait, the whole world stood with Kuwait in the face of the aggres-sion against it.

The cyberattack on Qatar and the blockade that followed are similarly unjustified acts of aggression against a country whose only real crime was to be too progressive compared to its parochial neighbors.

This blockade has fractured the Gulf Cooperation Council and caused unnecessary human pain and suffering. All nations in the world should come together to put aggressors in their place and demand immediate lifting of this blockade, so that peace can once again return to the Gulf. After all, the Gulf is the only area of rela-tive stability remaining in the Middle East.

This opinion piece was written

on the 60th day of blockade and

was published in Washington

Examiner.

Noor AlKhori is a Qatari citizen and a

graduate of Weill Cornell Medical

College in Qatar. She completed her

residency training in radiology at

New York Presbyterian Hospital in

New York, and fellowship training at

Stanford hospital in California.

Amber PhillipsThe Washington Post

Noor Ahmed AlKhori

The blockade has fractured the Gulf Cooperation Council and caused unnecessary human pain and suffering. All nations in the world should come together to put aggressors in their place and demand immediate lifting of this blockade, so that peace can once again return to the Gulf. After all, the Gulf is the only area of relative stability remaining in the Middle East.

10 SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017AMERICAS

A destroyed Pemex gas station is seen after the passing of Hurricane Franklin, in Villanueva in Veracruz state, Mexico.

Hurricane aftermath

Assembly faceoff

The United States hit Maduro with sanctions on July 31, the day after the election of loyalist Constituent Assembly that Washington said was “illegitimate” and in service of a “dictator”.

Maduro stated that the assembly held supreme powers over all branches of government, even over his position, and that its work — ostensibly to rewrite the constitution — would return “peace” to the country.

NEWS BYTES

HBO offered $250,000 ‘bug bounty’ to hackers: ReportWASHINGTON: HBO offered a reward of $250,000 in response to a data breach at the television group that pro-duces “Game of Thrones,” according to a report from a leaked memo. The report by Variety on Thursday said HBO offered the payment as a “bug bounty,” which is offered by compa-nies to discover vulnerabilities in their computer networks. The offer apparently failed to satisfy the attackers who have demanded a ransom of millions of dollars and are threaten-ing to release more files from what is claimed to be a massive data breach. HBO, a unit of the media group Time Warner, did not respond to a query about the Variety report. Earlier this week, a video circulating online authored by someone identified only as “Mr. Smith” said the hackers had videos, scripts, personnel files and other sensitive data from the breach. The hackers demanded “six month salary,” which, according to the video, would be more than $6 million. Last week the hacker group leaked one script of “Games of Thrones” and content from other HBO productions. HBO has said it was working with forensic experts and law enforce-ment in response to the attack.

Nine dead in Mexico prison riotMEXICO CITY: Nine inmates were killed as gang members stabbed and bludgeoned their rivals to death in a prison brawl in Mexico, authorities said, the latest deadly violence in the country’s jails. The fight broke out at a prison in Reynosa, a city near the US border in the northeastern state of Tamauli-pas. “Two groups of prisoners were involved in a clash, using weapons such as clubs, stones and shanks,” the state gov-ernment said in a statement. “Nine inmates died and two were wounded.” The riot broke out on visitation day, and guards “focused their efforts on protecting (inmates’) fam-ilies,” it said. State police were sent in to bring the brawl under control, firing shots in the air to break it up. Mexi-co’s overcrowded prisons are plagued by riots, revenge killings and jailbreaks, and powerful gangs often hold de facto control inside. Last month, 28 inmates were hacked to death by their rivals at a prison in Acapulco, a resort town on Mexico’s Pacific coast.

Los Angeles

AFP

A California city has agreed to pay $85,000 (€72,000) to settle a

lawsuit filed by a Muslim woman whose hijab was for-cibly removed by the police.

The Council on Ameri-can-Islamic Relations, (CAIR) which announced the settle-ment on Thursday, had sued the city of Long Beach on behalf of Kirsty Powell, an African-American Muslim, “after police officers forcibly removed her hijab in view of other male officers and doz-ens of inmates.”

Powell, who wears the head covering “as part of her religious beliefs,” was “forced to spend the entire night exposed in custody and described the experience as deeply traumatizing,” the rights group said. Powell was arrested during a traffic stop in May 2015 on outstanding warrants that were since cleared.

Long Beach voted Tues-day to approve the settlement, CAIR said, adding that nearby communities have already adopted policies protecting religious headwear in deten-tion following similar lawsuits.

Now female officers are required to remove the head-scarves of female inmates “when necessary for officer safety,” and away from male officers and inmates, Long Beach assistant city attorney Monte Machit told the Los Angeles Times.

During the arrest officers told Powell that she had to remove her hijab. Powell was denied requests for a female officer to search her, and was denied requests to wear her hijab in custody. “I would never want anyone to go through what I felt from this experience,” Powell said when the suit was filed last year, according to CAIR.

Caracas

AFP

Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro said that he wants a one-to-one talk with US President Donald

Trump, who has slapped him with sanctions, but stood defiant against “imperialist aggression”.

Speaking to a new, all-pow-erful loyalist assembly he saw installed through elections last month, Maduro said he had instructed his foreign minister to set it up “so I have a personal con-versation with Donald Trump.”

He said he had also given orders, “if it can happen,” for a face-to-face to be organized in New York on September 20 when heads of state and government from around the world gather for a UN General Assembly. “If he’s so interested in Venezuela, here I am. Mister Donald Trump, here is my hand,” he said.

But Maduro used substantial parts of his three-hour-plus speech lambasting the “imperi-alist” US for perceived actions against his regime. “We will never cede to foreign powers,” he said. The United States hit Maduro with sanctions on July 31, the day after the election of the loyalist Constituent Assem-bly that Washington said was “illegitimate” and in service of a “dictator.”

It followed up this week with more sanctions against several members of the assembly. The measures freeze any US assets

Maduro seeks direct talks with Trump

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro (centre), his wife Cilia Flores (front Left) and National Constituent Assembly President Delcy Rodriguez (front right), wave as they arrive for a session of the assembly at Palacio Federal Legislativo in Caracas.

of those designated and bar Americans from doing business with them.

Maduro stated that the assembly held supreme powers over all branches of government, even over his position, and that its work — ostensibly to rewrite the constitution — would return “peace” to the country.

But the United States and major Latin American nations say Maduro is using the body as a tool to quash dissent, by clamp-ing down on the opposition and the legislature it controls.

The opposition accused the government Thursday of perse-cution after the supreme court this

week sentenced two of its may-ors to 15 months in prison for not preventing anti-government pro-tests. Both were also barred from holding public office. The verdict brought to 23 the number of mayors targeted by legal action, according to the opposition. “Is this the peace that Maduro is talking about?” said Gerardo Blyde, another mayor who is the target of a legal investigation.

The Constituent Assembly has already sacked the attorney g e n e r a l , a M a d u r o

appointee-turned-critic who opposed its creation as uncon-stitutional. The developments fuelled tensions that have been flaring in Venezuela for the past four months. Nearly 130 people have been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces.

The protests have lost steam in the past week as security forces have stepped up repres-sion and demonstrators have grown discouraged by the oppo-sition’s failure to bring about

change. But hackers have taken up the torch. On Thursday a group calling itself The Binary Guardians claimed responsibil-ity for a massive cyberattack that cut mobile telephone service to seven million users.

The opposition coalition, a grouping of around 30 disparate parties called the Democratic Unity Roundtable, has been struggling with how to keep pressure on Maduro, whom it wants to see ousted through early elections.

$85,000 payout for Muslim woman whose hijab was removed by police

Bedminster

AFP

US President Donald Trump said that the opioid crisis in the United States con-

stitutes a “national emergency” and pledged to step up efforts to fight the epidemic.

“The opioid crisis is an emer-gency,” Trump told reporters at his New Jersey country club, where he is on a two-week

working vacation. “It’s a national emergency. “We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opi-oid crisis,” the president said. “It is a serious problem, the likes of which we have never had.”

Trump’s declaration of a “national emergency” came two days after he held a meeting with top advisers to discuss tackling the drug problem. Trump “has instructed his Administration to

use all appropriate emergency and other authorities to respond to the crisis caused by the opi-oid epidemic,” a statement issued by his office said.

Prescription painkillers and heroin contributed to some 60,000 overdose deaths in the United States in 2016, a 19 percent surge over the previous year, according to an estimate compiled by the New York Times.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions,

whose Department of Justice last week announced a new ‘Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit’, added: “This nation has never seen overdose deaths anywhere close to these numbers, and for each death, many more suffer debilitating addictions.”

An estimated two to three million people are hooked on prescription painkillers or her-oin, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

Champlain

Reuters

Asylum seekers, mainly from Haiti, clambering over a gully from

upstate New York into Canada yesterday were undeterred by the prospect of days in border tents, months of uncertainty and signs of a right-wing back-lash in Quebec.

More than 200 people a day are illegally walking across the border into Quebec to seek asylum, government officials said. Army tents have been erected near the border to house up to 500 people as they undergo security screenings.

Over 4,000 asylum seek-ers have walked into Canada in the first half of this year, with some citing US President Donald Trump’s tougher stance on immigration.

The cars carrying the lat-est asylum seekers begin arriving at dawn in Cham-plain, New York across from the Canadian border. Yester-day, the first groups included two young Haitian men, a family of five from Yemen and a Haitian family with twin infants.

Canada is on track for the highest refugee claims this year in almost a decade. More than 4,300 of the 18,500 peo-ple who filed claims in the first half of 2017 crossed the border illegally.

Bedminster

AFP

President Donald Trump on Thursday thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin

for ordering the US embassy in Moscow to slash its staff — boasting that this would cut payroll costs.

Last month, the Kremlin demanded that Washington reduce its diplomatic footprint

in Russia by 755 employees — both US diplomats and local staff — and close two compounds.

This was seen as marking a historic new low in post-Cold war Russia-US relations but Trump, who has long argued the case for closer ties, said after a meeting with top aides in New Jersey he saw a silver lining in the crisis.

“I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut

down our payroll and, as far as I’m concerned, I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll,” Trump declared.

“There’s no real reason for them to go back. I greatly appre-ciate the fact that we’ve been able to cut our payroll of the United States. We’re going to save a lot of money.”

The United States and Rus-sia are at loggerheads over

Moscow’s armed intervention in Ukraine. Ties were further clouded by Russia’s interference in last year’s US presidential election, which US intelligence agencies say was designed to help Trump get elected.

Trump’s supporters have dismissed this idea but a US spe-cial prosecutor is investigating allegations that members of his campaign colluded with Russian sources.

Opioid crisis declared as national emergency

Trump thanks Putin for expelling US embassy staff

Asylum seekers at Canada border unfazed by tents

BUSINESSBUSINESS

Darron M. Anderson (right), president and chief executive officer of Ranger Energy Services, applauds after ringing the opening bell to celebrate his company’s initial public offering (IPO) at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), yesterday.

Ranger Energy Services celebrates IPO

PAGE | 12PAGE | 12

British Columbia hinders Kinder Morgan pipeline

Indian economy could slow

down: surveyDow & Brent before going to press

Saturday 12 August 2017

Demand growth helps oil market rebalancing: IEA

London

Reuters

Wo r l d o i l demand will grow more t h a n expected this

year, helping to ease a global glut despite rising production from North America and weak Opec compliance with output cuts, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday.

The agency raised its 2017 demand growth forecast to 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) from 1.4 million bpd in its pre-vious monthly report and said it expected demand to expand by a further 1.4 million bpd next year.

“Producers should find encouragement from demand, which is growing year-on-year more strongly than first thought,” said the Paris-based IEA, which advises industrial-ised nations on energy policy.

“There would be more con-fidence that rebalancing is here to stay if some producers party to the output agreements were

not, just as they are gaining the upper hand, showing signs of weakening their resolve,” the IEA said.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is curbing output by about 1.2 million bpd, while Russia and other non-Opec producers are cutting a further 600,000 bpd until March 2018 to help sup-port oil prices.

The IEA said Opec’s com-pliance with the cuts in July had fallen to 75 percent, the lowest since the cuts began in January. It cited weak compliance by Algeria, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. In addition, Opec member Libya, which is currently exempt from the out-put cuts, steeply increased output.

As a result, the overall glo-bal oil supply rose by 520,000 bpd in July to stand 500,000 bpd above year-ago levels.

Adding to the challenges of oil producers to support oil prices is rising non-Opec out-put, which is expected to expand by 0.7 million bpd in 2017 and by 1.4 million bpd in 2018 on strong gains in the United States, which is not par-ticipating in the output caps.

Still, strong global demand growth is helping to clear excess barrels with the IEA reg-istering a decline in stocks in industrialised nations in both June and July.

Stocks remain 219 million barrels above a 5-year average - a level that Opec is targeting with its output cuts. The IEA also revised historic demand data for 2015-2016 for devel-oping countries, cutting it by 0.2-0.4 million bpd.

Amazon looks to new food technology for home deliverySan Francisco Reuters

Amazon.com Inc is explor-ing a technology first developed for the US mil-

itary to produce tasty prepared meals that do not need refriger-ation, as it looks for new ways to muscle into the $700bn US gro-cery business.

The world’s biggest online retailer has discussed selling ready-to-eat dishes such as beef stew and a vegetable frittata as soon as next year, officials at the

startup firm marketing the tech-nology told Reuters. The dishes would be easy to stockpile and ship because they do not require refrigeration and could be offered quite cheaply compared with take-out from a restaurant.

If the cutting-edge food tech-nology comes to fruition, and Amazon implements it on a large scale, it would be a major step forward for the company as it looks to grab hold of more gro-cery customers shifting toward quick and easy meal options at

home. Delivering meals would build on the company’s Amazon-Fresh service, which has been delivering groceries to custom-ers’ homes for a decade. It could also complement Amazon’s planned $13.7bn purchase of Whole Foods Market Inc and Amazon’s checkout-free conven-ience store, which is in the test stage.

The pioneering food-prep tech, known as microwave assisted thermal sterilization, or MATS, was developed by researchers at Washington State

University, and is being brought to market by a venture-backed startup called 915 Labs, based in Denver.

The method involves placing sealed packages of food in pres-surized water and heating them with microwaves for several minutes, according to 915 Labs.

Unlike traditional process-ing methods, where packages are in pressure cookers for up to an hour until both bacteria and nutrients are largely gone, the dishes retain their natural flavor and texture, the company said.

They also can sit on a shelf for a year, which would make them suitable for Amazon’s storage and delivery business model.

“They obviously see that this is a potential disruptor and an ability to get to a private brand uniqueness that they’re looking

for,” said Greg Spragg, a former Wal-Mart Stores Inc executive and now head of a startup working with MATS technology. “They will test these products with their con-sumers, and get a sense of where they would go.”

Amazon declined to comment. Spragg’s company, Solve for Food, plans to acquire a MATS machine from 915 Labs that can make 1,800 packages an hour. The com-pany aims to use the machine at a new food innovation center in northwest Arkansas, near the headquarters of Wal-Mart.

Brexit will have long-term economic damage

London

Boolmberg

Bank of England policy maker Michael Saunders (pictured) said the deci-

sion to leave the European Union will have a long-term effect on the economy, though there’s still an argument to increase interest rates now.

In an interview in the

Evening Standard newspaper, the external Monetary Policy Committee member said Brexit probably means the economy will grow “several percentage points less than it otherwise would do.” He added that it could be a “fairly sizeable” 5 percentage points less over the next 15 years.

“But that’s over a long period of time,” he said in the interview, published yesterday. “Setting monetary policy, we’re not try-ing to determine the outlook for growth over the next 15 years, we’re thinking about the next couple of years and I doubt if those long-run effects of Brexit come through immediately.”

Saunders, who has voted to increase the benchmark rate at each of the previous two meet-ings, said the BOE may have to be a “bit more activist” on tack-ling inflation pressures.

“The test will come going for-ward,” he said. “The amount of

spare capacity is much less now than in the past few years. So it follows from that it would be nor-mal for the response of policy, if growth surprises on the upside, to be a bit more activist than it has been in the past few years.”

Saunders, along with his fel-low dissenter Ian McCafferty, maintained a push for a 25 basis-point increase at the BOE’s August’s meeting, which would reverse the rate cut put in place a year ago. In an interview with The Guardian last month he said that “households should prepare for interest rates to go higher at some point.”

He told the Standard that consumers have cut back spend-ing a bit, but the risk of a major retraction hasn’t so far emerged. He said signs of a sharp slow-down across a range of business surveys might force a rethink, but his “hunch is that growth will be OK and the jobless rate will con-tinue to fall.”

Nuclear nerves wipe $1trn off world stocksLondon

Reuters

The damage inflicted on world stocks this week by the escalating war of

words over North Korea topped $1 trillion yesterday, as investors again took cover in the yen, the Swiss franc, gold and government bonds.

With the tense mood pushing European shares down for a third day and Wall Street set to fall again , global stocks were on course for their worst week since Don-ald Trump won November’s US presidential election.

Now installed in the White House, Trump issued a new warning to Pyongyang yes-terday, tweeting: “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely.”

North Korea had responded to Trump’s previ-ous promise to unleash “fire and fury”, with a threat to land a missile near the US Pacific territory of Guam.

Japanese markets were closed for a holiday but the yen powered on, hitting an eight-week high of 108.91 yen to the dollar, adding to its big-gest weekly gain since May.

The yen tends to benefit during times of geopolitical or financial stress as Japan is the world’s biggest creditor nation and there is an assumption that Japanese investors there will repatri-ate funds should a crisis materialize.

The Swiss franc , the other traditional safety-play among currencies, has benefited too. Two weeks ago it saw its big-gest weakly fall against the euro since the start of 2015. This week has seen its biggest rise since June 2016.

Production cut

IEA raised its 2017 demand growth forecast to 1.5million barrels per day (bpd) from 1.4million bpd in its previous report.

Opec’s compliance with the cuts in July had fallen to 75%, the lowest since the January cuts.

$48.72 $48.72 +0.13+0.13

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FTSE100

Brazilian Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles (right) listens to Planning Minister Dyogo

Oliveira during the announcement of the distribution of the results of the workers’ severance

guarantee fund (FGTS) at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil.

Brazilian workers’ fund

12 SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017BUSINESS

Rise in US consumer prices may delay Fed rate hikeWashington

Reuters

US consumer prices increased slightly in July as rising food costs were offset by falling prices for a

range of other goods, pointing to benign inflation that could make the Federal Reserve cautious about raising interest rates again this year.

The Labour Department said yesterday its Consumer Price Index (CPI) edged up 0.1 percent last month after being unchanged in June. That lifted the year-on-year increase in the CPI to 1.7 percent from 1.6 percent in June

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the CPI rising 0.2 percent in July and climbing 1.8 percent year-on-year.

Stripping out the volatile

food and energy components, consumer prices gained 0.1 per-cent for the fourth straight month. The so-called core CPI rose 1.7 percent in the 12 months through July and has now increased by that margin for three straight months.

The modest gain in consumer prices, coming on the heels of a drop in producer prices in July, could worry Fed officials who have largely viewed the retreat in inflation as temporary.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen told lawmakers last month that “some special factors,” includ-ing prices for mobile phone plans and prescription drugs, were partly responsible for the low

inflation readings. Prices of US government debt rose after yes-terday’s data while the dollar fell against a basket of currencies. US stock index futures initially fell before reversing course to trade higher.

The US central bank has a 2 percent inflation target and tracks a measure that has been stuck at 1.5 percent since May. Inflation remains tame despite the labour market being near full employment, a conundrum for the Fed as it contemplates tight-ening monetary policy further.

The central bank is expected to announce a plan to start reducing its $4.2 trillion portfo-lio of Treasury bonds and

mortgage-backed securities at its policy meeting next month. It is expected to delay its next rate hike until December while it monitors inflation. The Fed has raised borrowing costs twice this year.

Last month, food prices rose 0.2 percent, driven by a surge in the cost of meat, fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables. Food prices were unchanged in June. The cost of food consumed at home increased 0.2 percent after dip-ping 0.1 percent in June.

While gasoline prices were unchanged after tumbling 2.8 percent in June, the cost of elec-tricity increased 0.4 percent.

Rental costs maintained their

upward trend last month. Own-ers’ equivalent rent of primary residence rose 0.3 percent after advancing by the same margin in June.

The cost of mobile phone services fell 0.3 percent last month after decreasing 0.8 per-cent in June.

Prescription drug prices jumped 1.3 percent in July after increasing 1.0 percent in the prior month. Prices for apparel rose 0.3 percent after four straight months of declines.

The cost of new motor vehi-cles fell 0.5 percent, the biggest drop since August 2009 and the sixth consecutive monthly decline.

CPI edges up

Consumer prices increased 0.1% in July lifting the year-on-year increase in the CPI to 1.7%

Food prices rose 0.2% driven by a surge in meat, fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables cost.

British Columbia hinders Kinder Morgan pipelineCalgary

Reuters

British Columbia will not allow Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd to begin work

on public land for its Trans Mountain pipeline expansion until it “meaningfully” consults aboriginal communities, pro-vincial officials said.

The $5.5bn project through British Columbia, which secured federal government approval last year, would almost triple the capacity of the current Trans Mountain pipeline.

The project’s prospect has become more uncertain after a left-leaning government took power in British Columbia in June, although the administra-tion has since softened its rhetoric.

British Columbia Environ-ment Minister George Heyman told reporters in Vancouver it is unlikely that Kinder Morgan can begin work on public land by its September construction target.

British Columbia will also seek to participate in court cases against federal approval of the project, Heyman said.

Kinder Morgan said in a statement it takes the British Columbia government’s com-ments seriously and remains willing to meet with provincial officials. The company, which has scheduled most major work for next year, said Heyman’s announcement will not affect its timeline for Trans Mountain construction.

But shares in Kinder Mor-gan Canada and Houston-based parent Kinder Morgan Inc fell

soon after the minister’s com-ments and ended down 3.7 percent and 1.8 percent respec-tively. The benchmark Toronto share index shed 0.9 percent.

Canadian crude producers say they need the expansion to access new markets and com-mand better prices.

Heyman said the province has not accepted five of Kinder Morgan’s eight plans to mitigate the project’s environmental impact because they do not adequately address aboriginal consultation.

“Until those plans are com-pleted, Kinder Morgan, with the exception of private land ... can-not put shovels in the ground,” the minister said. He did not specify the benchmark for con-sultation, a requirement under Canadian law, to be done “meaningfully.”

University of British Colum-bia law professor Jocelyn Stacey said, given the government’s stance on indigenous issues, it will likely have high standards.

The pipeline begins in Alberta, home to almost all of Canada’s oil production. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said she does not think the British Columbia government will block the project as it no longer says it will “stop” it.

British Columbia’s Green Party, which props up the cur-rent government, said in a statement that to “stop” Trans Mountain was a key condition for its support.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers indus-try group said British Columbia was “not unreasonable” in pro-tecting its interests.

Australian financial chiefs lash poor banking culture amid fresh CBA scandalSydney

Reuters

Two of Australia’s most sen-ior financial officials called into question the integrity

of the country’s top banks yes-terday, saying they risked losing public trust in the wake of unprecedented money-launder-ing and terror financing allegations.

The latest scandal to rock Australia’s highly profitable “Big Four” banks is potentially the worst, with Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) accused by the financial intelligence agency of allowing criminals to launder millions of dollars.

Australia’s biggest mortgage lender has blamed a software coding error and vowed to fight the allegations in court, but yes-terday its problems deepened when the corporate regulator expressed fresh concerns about

CBA’s management and said it was opening a separate investigation.

Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) Chairman Greg Medcraft com-plained that CBA executives had not informed him of the compli-ances problems during a meeting he held with them two days

before they were made public last week.

“This is the largest company in the country and I think Aus-tralians would have expected better,” Medcraft said.

The allegations levelled in court by financial intelligence agency Austrac, accusing CBA of 53,700 breaches of anti-money

laundering and counter-terror-ism laws, threatened to undermine “global trust” in Aus-tralia’s financial sector, he said.

In separate remarks to fed-eral parliament’s economics committee, Reserve Bank of Aus-tralia Governor Philip Lowe described the Austrac allegations as “very serious” and said “some-body has to be accountable”.

“The desire for short-term profit has meant not enough attention is being paid to risk management, trust has been strained, banks know that,” he said. Commonwealth Bank shares fell as much as 1.4 percent to a two-month low of A$79.95 yesterday, in line with a broad sell down in equities. About A$6.6bn has been wiped off CBA’s market capitalisation since last Thursday, when Austrac announced its case.

In a statement yesterday, CBA noted the regulator’s

comments and said it would assist with its inquiries.

Medcraft said ASIC’s separate probe into CBA would focus on the conduct of executives and directors, and whether the bank had complied with disclosure and licensing obligations to “act efficiently, honestly and fairly”.

It would also examine whether CBA had enough con-tingent liabilities, as the Austrac case could expose it to the big-gest fines in Australian corporate history potentially amounting to billions of dollars.

CEO Ian Narev has faced calls from some quarters to resign over the money-launder-ing allegations, the first of their kind against a top Australian bank and the third scandal to engulf CBA under his watch.

Last year it admitted to using unscrupulous practices to cheat people out of life insurance pay-ments, and in 2014 Narev

publicly apologised after CBA advisors were found to have given customers poor financial advice.

Responding to the latest cri-sis, CBA scrapped executive bonuses on Tuesday and estab-lished a board sub-committee to look into the money-laundering claims.

But the case has fuelled calls for a broad judicial inquiry into Australia’s banking system, which could recommend greater regulation or even criminal charges.

Treasurer Scott Morrison said on Thursday that a so-called Royal Commission was not under consideration, although it has the strong backing of the public and the opposition Labor Party.

Foreign governments are also watching the case, as some of the illicit funds were allegedly transferred to accounts in places like Hong Kong.

Fines surge in crackdown on Airbnb owners in ParisParis

AFP

Fines imposed against own-ers renting their Paris apartments out on Airbnb

surged more than tenfold in the first half of 2017 thanks to more rigorous monitoring, city authorities said yesterday.

Thirty-one owners of 128 units were slapped with a total of €615,000 ($723,000) in fines for renting them out for more than the city limit of 120 days per year, city hall official Ian Brossat said.

“These numbers do not reflect an explosion in the number of rental offers but in the effectiveness of the moni-toring” by a team of 25 agents

deployed by the city, Brossat said.

“We are pleased to see that the courts have a heavier hand than before,” he added.

The maximum fine for the offence doubled in November to €50,000.

Paris is one of Airbnb’s top markets, with some 65,000 sites listed. Another 35,000 are avail-able from similar online platforms. The city has slapped limits on the short-term rental of apartments and rooms as they compete with hotels, encourage property speculation and reduce the housing available to residents.

The practice of rentals on Airbnb and rival websites has become so pervasive that some

neighbourhoods have nearly emptied of permanent residents.

“You can’t turn your lodging into a cash machine and your-self into a speculator,” Brossat told French radio France Inter.

Airbnb meanwhile said the fines “are far from being repre-sentative of the Airbnb community in Paris, where the average host rents out their lodgings 33 times per year.”

Airbnb had proposed a solu-tion last year to the city which would have automatically lim-ited rentals to 120 nights per year. France also wants to address a tax situation that allows Airbnb to avoid paying French taxes on rentals in France.

New Delhi

AFP

India’s economy is at risk of slowing down in the current fiscal year, the

government said in a mid-year economic survey yesterday.

In February, the govern-ment had forecast GDP growth of between 6.75 per-cent and 7.5 percent for 2017/18.

But yesterday it warned there were several factors that could hit growth.

“Deflationary tendencies are weighing on an economy yet to gather its full growth momentum and still away from its potential,” Chief Eco-nomic Adviser Arvind Subramanian said in the survey.

India’s growth slowed to 6.1 percent in the fourth quar-ter ending March after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shock move in November to remove nearly 90 percent of the currency from circulation to crack down on tax evad-ers. That was slower than rival China, although the growth figure for the full year was still higher at 7.1 percent.

Experts predict a further slowdown in the economy as businesses adjust to a new national goods and services tax launched last month.

The survey called for a further drop in interest rates currently at 6 percent after a 25 basis points cut last week.

“Sustaining current growth trajectory will require action on more normal driv-ers of growth such as investment and exports and cleaning up of balance sheets to facilitate credit growth,” it said.

Indian economy could slow down: survey

Greg Medcraft, Chairman, ASIC (left) and Philip Lowe, Governer, Reserve Bank of Australia.

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15SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017 BREAK TIME

Yesterday’s answer

SHOWING ATVILLAGGIO & CITY CENTER

HAGA

R TH

E HO

RRIB

LE

ALL IN THE MIND

EXACT, EXAMINE, EXAMPLE, EXCEED, EXCEL, EXCERPT,EXCITED, EXCLAIM, EXCLUDE, EXEMPT, EXERT, EXHALE, EXHIBIT, EXHORT, EXILE, EXOTIC, EXPAND, EXPECT, EXPEL, EXPERT, EXPLAIN, EXPLOIT, EXPLORE, EXPORT, EXPUNGE, EXTEND, EXTENT, EXTINCT, EXTOL, EXTORT, EXTRACT, EXUDE.

08:00 News

08:30 Artscape - Poets of

Protest

09:00 Witness

10:30 Inside Story

11:00 News

11:30 The Listening Post

12:00 News

12:30 Counting the Cost

13:00 NEWSHOUR

14:00 News

14:30 Inside Story

15:00 The Caliph

16:00 NEWSHOUR

17:00 News

17:30 Women Make Change

18:00 Newsgrid

19:00 News

19:30 Latin America

Investigates

20:00 News

20:30 Inside Story

21:00 NEWSHOUR

22:00 News

22:30 The Listening Post

23:00 Al Jazeera World

09:00 How Do They Do

It?

09:40 Blowing Up History

10:30 Strip The City

11:10 Made By

Destruction

11:40 Made By

Destruction

12:00 Running Wild With

Bear Grylls

17:25 Legend Of Croc

Gold

18:50 Made By

Destruction

19:15 Deadliest Catch

20:35 How Do They Do

It?

21:00 Gold Rush

21:50 Edge Of Alaska

22:40 Ice Lake

Rebels

23:30 Cooper's Treasure:

The Hunt For A

Secret Fortune

00:20 Ocean Warriors

01:05 Deadliest Catch

11:00 Untamed & Uncut

12:50 Dog Rescuers

13:45 Catching

Monsters

14:40 Lair Of The Killer

Crocs

15:35 Man-Eating

Super Snake

16:30 Untamed China

With Nigel

Marven

17:25 Untamed & Uncut

19:15 Crime Scene

Wild

20:10 Borneo's Pygmy

Elephants

21:05 The Jeff Corwin

Experience

22:00 China's Last

Elephants

22:55 Saving Africa's

Giants With Yao

Ming

23:50 Untamed & Uncut

00:45 Man-Eating

Super Snake

10:15 Bizaardvark

10:40 Invisible Sister

14:00 Liv And Maddie

14:50 Jessie

15:40 Austin & Ally

16:05 Descendants

Wicked World

17:00 Good Luck

Charlie

17:25 Lemonade Mouth

19:05 Best Friends

Whenever

19:30 Liv And Maddie

19:55 Elena Of Avalor

20:20 Jessie

21:10 Austin & Ally

21:35 Stuck In The

Middle

22:00 Bunk'd

22:25 Miraculous Tales

Of Ladybug And

Cat Noir

22:50 Lolirock

23:10 Sabrina Secrets

Of A Teenage

Witch

Conceptis Sudoku: Conceptis Sudoku is a number-

placing puzzle based on a 9×9 grid. The object is to

place the numbers 1 to 9 in the empty squares so

that each row, each column and each 3×3 box

contains the same number only once.

CROSSWORD

CONCEPTIS SUDOKU

Yesterday's answer

MALL

LANDMARK

ROYAL PLAZA

ASIAN TOWN

NOVO — Pearl

ROXY

47 Meters Down (2D/Drama) 10:00, 11:00am, 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00, 4:10, 6:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00pm & 12:00midnight Wind River (2D/Crime) 10:00am, 12:15, 1:15, 2:30, 4:45, 6:15, 7:00, 9:15, 11:15 & 11:30pmThe Emoji Movie(Animation) 3D 10:00am & 5:20pm 2D 11:50am & 3:30pm Arabic 1:40pmThe Dark Tower (2D/Action) 7:10, 9:00 & 11:00pm Toilet Ek Prem Katha (2D/Hindi) 11:00am, 2:00, 5:00, 8:00 & 11:00pmJab Harry Met Sejal (2D/Hindi) 10:00am, 3:30 & 9:00pm Mamnoun Min El Ektirab (2D/Arabic) 1:00, 6:30pm & 12:00midnightBoyka: Undisputed (2D/Action) 10:00am, 2:00, 6:00 & 10:00pm First Kill (2D/Action) 12:00noon, 4:00, 8:00pm & 12:00midnight Baby Driver (2D/Action) 10:00am, 2:30, 7:00 & 11:30pm Jawab Leteqal (2D/Arabic) 12:15, 4:45 & 9:15pmKidnap (2D/Thriller) 10:00am, 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00, 10:00pm & 12:00midnightDunkirk (2D IMAX/Action) 10:00am, 12:15, 2:30, 4:45, 7:00, 9:15 & 11:30pm

Mamnoun Min El Ektirab (2D/Arabic) 2:00pmToilet Ek Prem Katha (2D/Hindi) 2:00, 7:15 & 11:15pm The Emoji Movie (2D/Animation) 2:30, 4:00 & 5:30pm 47 Meters Down (2D/Drama) 4:00 & 10:00pm Nene Raju (Telugu) 4:30pmJaya Janaki Nayaka (2D/Telugu) 2:00pm Kidnap (2D/Thriller) 5:45 & 9:45pm VelaIilla Pattadhari 2 – VIP 2 (2D/Tamil) 11:30pm Wind River (2D/Crime) 7:00 & 11:15pm Chunkzz (2D/Malayalam) 9:00pm Finally Found Someone (2D/Tagalog) 7:30pm

Nene Raju (Telugu) 2:15pm Huroob Ezterari (2D/Arabic) 2:30pm The Emoji Movie (2D/Animation) 2:30, 4:15 & 5:45pm Toilet Ek Prem Katha (2D/Hindi) 4:30 & 11:00pm Jaya Janaki Nayaka (2D/Telugu) 5:00pm

VelaIilla Pattadhari 2 – VIP 2 (2D/Tamil) 7:15pm Wind River (2D/Crime) 7:15 & 11:30pm Chunkzz (2D/Malayalam) 9:15pmKidnap (2D/Thriller) 7:45 & 9:45pm 47 Meters Down (2D/Drama) 9:30pm Podhuvaga Emmanasu Thangam (2D/Tamil) 11:30pm

Huroob Ezterari (2D/Arabic) 2:00pm The Emoji Movie (2D/Animation) 2:00, 4:30 & 6:00pm VelaIilla Pattadhari 2 – VIP 2 (2D/Tamil) 3:30pm Wind River (2D/Crime) 2:30 & 11:30pm Nene Raju (Telugu) 4:00pmFinally Found Someone (2D/Tagalog) 7:45pm Chunkzz (2D/Malayalam) 9:15pm 47 Meters Down (2D/Drama) 6:00 & 10:00pm Toilet Ek Prem Katha (2D/Hindi) 6:45 & 11:15pm Kidnap (2D/Thriller) 7:30 & 9:30pm Podhuvaga Emmanasu Thangam (2D/Tamil) 11:30pm

Chunkzz (2D/Malayalam) 5:15, 7:45, 8:15 & 10:15pm

Podhuvaga (2D/Tamil) 5:45 & 10:30pm VIP-2 (2D/Tamil) 6:00, 8:45, 9:00 & 11:30pm Toliet Ek Prem Katha 12:30, 6:00pm & 12:00midnight

The Emoji Movie (Animation) 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00. 6:00 & 8:00pm Toilet Ek Prem Katha (Hindi) 12:00noon, 3:00, 8:50 & 11:50pmKidnap (2D/Thriller) 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00 & 10:00pm

VIP 2 9:00 & 11:45pm 47 Meters Down (Drama) 10:00pm & 12:00midnight Lie 12:00noon & 6:00pm Nene Raju (Telugu) 12:00noon, 3:00 & 6:00pm

AL KHORVelailla Pattadi (Tamil) 10:45am, 3:45, 8:45 & 11:30pm Podhuvaga 1:45 & 11:45pm

47 Meters Down (Drama) 11:45am & 7:00pm Jaya Janaki Nay (Telugu) 3:00pm

The Emoji Movie (Animation) 11:00am & 01:00am Kidnap (Thriller)1:30 & 6:30pm

Toilet Ek Prem Katha 5:45 & 11:30pm Chunkzz 4:30 & 9:00pm Nene Raju 8:45pm

Yesterday's answer

SPORT16 SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017

Barshim ready for golden leap

London

Reuters

Mutaz Essa Barshim leapt into tomorrow’s high jump final at the World Athletics Championships in the

manner of a man ready to finally ascend to the very summit of his sport.

The wiry Qatari, who has jumped higher than anyone in his-tory except Cuban world record holder Javier Sotomayor, breezed through yesterday’s qualification, clearing the automatic qualifying height of 2.31 metres with the great-est of ease.

Barshim, whose only global title came at the world indoor champi-onships in 2014, demonstrated why he is a warm favourite to win his first major outdoor crown follow-ing silver and bronze at the last two Olympics.

The 26-year-old, who has an Asian record best of 2.43m, is one of six athletes who cleared 2.31 but the only one to go through the morn-ing without failing on a single jump.

His main danger again looks set to come from Ukraine’s Bohdan

Bondarenko, who beat him to the 2013 title, while Danil Lysenko, competing under a neutral flag fol-lowing the Russian Federation’s ban, also qualified easily after just one failure.

There was delight for the home crowd as Robbie Grabarz confirmed his place in the final amid plenty of cheering by going over 2.31m at the last attempt.

Erik Kynard of the United States, who won the Olympic silver in this arena five years ago, had to pull out injured after one unsuccessful attempt at his opening height of 2.17m.

Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar reacts after

qualifying for the final round of the men’s

high jump competition at the IAAF World Championships in London yesterday.

The gravity defying Qatari star breezed through yesterday’s

qualification, clearing the automatic

qualifying height of 2.31 metres with the

greatest of ease.

MEN’S HIGH JUMP QUALIFICATION

1. Mutaz Essa Barshim (Qatar) 2.31m

2. Bohdan Bondarenko (Ukraine) 2.31m

3. Danil Lysenko (Neutral) 2.31m

4. Mateusz Przybylko (Germany) 2.31m

4. Tihomir Ivanov (Bulgaria) 2.31m

6. Robert Grabarz (Britain) 2.31m

7. Bryan McBride (US) 2.29m

7. Ilya Ivanyuk (Neutral Athlete) 2.29m

7. Majed Aldin Ghazal (Syria) 2.29m

10. Eike Onnen (Germany) 2.29m

10. Edgar Rivera (Mexico) 2.29m

12. Wang Yu (China) 2.29m

IOC snubs Infantino and Coe in new members listBerlin

Reuters

The Presidents of world soccer body FIFA and the international athlet-

ics federation IAAF have not been proposed for appoint-ment to the International Olympic Committee when the IOC session votes in new members in September.

IAAF chief Seb Coe and FIFA’s Gianni Infantino were passed over for a second year running as they battle doping and corruption scandals in their fields. Previous FIFA and IAAF Presidents had seats at the IOC table for decades.

The IOC’s nine proposed new members, named yes-terday, include Luis Mejia Oviedo, head of the Domini-can Republic’s Olympic committee, Khunying Patama Leeswadtrakul, Thai entre-preneur and head of her country’s badminton federa-tion, Ingmar De Vos, International Equestrian Fed-erat ion chief , and Jean-Christophe Rolland, world rowing President.

The IOC gave no reason for the exclusion of Coe and Infantino, who represent two of the biggest federations of the Games.

The IOC also said Sam-sung Chairman Lee Kun-hee would not be up for member-ship re-election at September’s session in Peru at his family’s request due to illness.

Schippers retains world crown in 200m London

AP

Dafne Schippers of the Neth-erlands successfully defended her 200-meter

title at the world championships yesterday, dipping at the line just ahead of Marie-Josee Ta Lou.

Shaunae Miller-Uibo, the 400 Olympic champion, took bronze.

Schippers came out of the bend just ahead of Ta Lou and fin-ished in 20.05 seconds. Ta Lou set an Ivory Coast record of 22.08, while Miller-Uibo crossed in 22.15.

Ta Lou has twice been edged at the line. She settled for silver in the 100 behind Tori Bowie. Schip-pers got bronze in that race.

Earlier, Pawel Fajdek of Poland won his third straight

hammer throw world title.Valeriy Pronkin of Russia, competing as a neutral athlete because of his nation’s doping suspension, took silver ahead of Wojciech Nowicki of Poland.

Fajdek won with a throw of 79.81 meters. Pronkin got silver at 78.16 on his last throw, while Nowicki secured bronze with a throw of 78.03.

Asbel Kiprop stayed on course

for a fourth straight world title in the 1,500 meters, coming from way back with a strong final kick to qualify for tomorrow’s final.

Kiprop finished just behind Kenyan teammate Elijah Manan-goi to go through as automatic qualifiers. In the second semifinal heat, Kenya got a third runner to go through when Timothy Cherui-yot finished second behind Jakub Holusa of the Czech Republic.

Today, Qatar’s Ahmed Budair will compete in the men’s javelin throw final.

Budair, who won the World Champion for Youth last year, dis-played one of his best performances to reach a distance of 83.83, finishing third in Group A in the qualifying round on Thursday.

EPL: Giroud rescues Arsenal in openerLondon

AP

Olivier Giroud completed an exhilarating comeback as Arsenal beat Leicester 4-3

yesterday to ensure Arsene Wenger’s side opened the English Premier League with a victory for only the second time in eight seasons.

Arsenal turned around the league’s first Friday opener in the closing minutes at Emirates Sta-dium. After Aaron Ramsey leveled in the 83rd minute, Giroud sealed the three points within two min-utes on an evening of thrilling attacks gifted by fragile defending.

Arsenal record-signing Alex-andre Lacazette got off to a perfect by scoring inside two minutes of kickoff. But as so often happens in

the opening round, Arsenal imploded as Shinji Okazaki and Jamie Vardy put Leicester in front.

Although Danny Welbeck lev-eled on the stroke of halftime, Vardy restored Leicester’s lead after the break. But Leicester,

which so astonishingly won the league in 2016, couldn’t hold on for its first win at Arsenal since 1973. Instead, Wenger avoided a third successive season-opening loss at the start of his new two-year contract.

Qatari football players in action during their training camp at St. George’s Park in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, United Kingdom yesterday. Al Annabi scored an impressive 2-0 win over English Championship side Leeds United in the first of three friendlies on Wednesday and will play against Nottingham Forest tomorrow. The last warm-up game against Andorra will be played on August 16.

Qatari players train in England

Reese wins fourth long jump world titleLondon

Reuters

American Brittney Reese claimed a fourth world long jump title yesterdaywhile titleholder and Olympic champion Tianna Bartoletta had to be con-

tent with the bronze.Darya Klishina, competing as a neutral athlete after

the Russian federation was banned over state-sponsored doping, took the silver and Serbia’s Ivana Spanovic missed out on a medal, finishing fourth.

Reese, Olympic champion at the same stadium five years ago, won the world title in 2009, 2011 and 2013 before her compatriot Bartoletta took gold in Beijing two years ago.

The 30-year-old Reese secured victory with her third jump of 7.02 metres, beating Klishina by two centime-tres. Bartoletta was out of the medals until she produced a leap of 6.97 metres with her final attempt at the Lon-don Stadium.

Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands winning the women’s 200 metres final at the World Athletics Championships in London yesterday.

Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud celebrates after scoring their

fourth goal against Leicester City in the opening match of English

Premier League Premier League in London yesterday.

The Peninsula

Qatar mounted a pulsating rally and stunned mighty South Korea 3-2 in the opening Group A match of

the FIVB World Championship Qualifi-cations in Ardabil, Iran on Thursday.

Qatar, coached by Italian Massimil-iano Giaccardi, made a few errors in the opening set and then were trailing by two sets down. However, after tweak-ing their tactics and Raimi Wadidie firing on all cylinders, Al Annabi bounced back and went on to complete a stunning

21-25 15-25 25-21 25-18 15-13 victory over four-time Asia champions at the 6000-seat Rezazadeh Stadium.

In another match, China posted a 25-15, 25-21, 22-25, 25-23 victory over Kazakhstan.

Qatar coach Giaccardi was extremely pleased with the stirring tri-umph by his boys.”Bravo...all the guys. After two sets, we adjusted something tactically and it paid off. So happy with the victory today.”

He also added,”We had chances to seal the opening set. We wasted two or

three opportunities and it allowed the Koreans to win the set and go up.

“The loss of the second set was also fall-out of the bad first one. However, all the guys gave their best. Otherwise, you can’t win such matches. We have another tough game on Friday and hope to do our best again,” added the Italian.

Korean coach Kim Hochul said,”We did what we had to but the match was tough.”

The qualifiers are a one-round tour-nament, with the first and second in the

group qualifying for the World Cup finals in Italy and Bulgaria in the summer of 2018.

In the first set, the Chinese took an early 8-5 lead and never let go as they increasingly widened the gap after a monster spike by Jiang Chuan. The Kazakhs, who made seven mistakes, threw caution to the wind as they attempted to claw back into the match but they were simply outclassed as China sealed the first set 25-15.

It was more of the same in the sec-ond set, once again with China

commanding the proceedings. Lozano’s men fought tooth and nail to remain on top. Kazakhstan did their best to nar-row down the gap and they successfully did it, though they lost the set 25-21.

Kazakhstan showed improvement in the third set and made the Chinese battle for each point. However Kaza-khstan grabbed the set at 22. But China entered the court with a different atti-tude and Lozano’s five substitutions helped the team keep pressure on the opponents and finish the fourth set 25-23.

17SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017 SPORT

R TEAM POINTS

1 Brazil 1604

2 Germany 1549

3 Argentina 1399

4 Switzerland 1329

5 Poland 1319

6 PORPortugal 1267

7 Chile 1250

8 Colombia 1208

9 Belgium 1194

10 France 1157

11 Spain 1114

12 Italy 1059

13 England 1051

14 Mexico 1046

15 Peru 1023

16 Croatia 1007

17 Uruguay 995

18 Wales 951

19 Sweden 933

24 Iran 893

44 Japan 696

45 Australia 691

49 Korea Rep. 674

64 Uzbekistan 579

77 China PR 447

78 Qatar 433

LATEST FIFA RANKINGS

Bowling: Qatar ready for Asian indoor challenge The Pneinsula

Mubarak Al Meraikhi, Executive Director of the Qatar Bowling

Federation said that the Qatari bowling team will par-ticipate in the fifth edition of Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games to be staged in Ash-gabat, Turkmenistan next month.

Al Meraikhi added that the Qatari team will include; Jassim Al Meraikhi, Ghanim Bu Jassoum, Al Janahi and Mohammad Al Meraikhi.

The Games will bring together 22 countries to com-pete in 21 sports including; Basketball, Indoor athletics, Bowling, Chess, Track cycling, Cue sports, Eques-trian, Futsal, Ju-jitsu, Kickboxing, Kurash, Muaythai, Sambo, Short course swimming, Taek-wondo, Indoor tennis, Weightlifting , Wrestling, Belt wrestling and Traditional Wrestling.

Qatari women to compete in Arab TT Championship Doha

QNA

Qatar Women’s Sport Committee (QWSC) confirmed that Qatar’s

table tennis national team will participate in the 16th Arab championship, which takes place in Oman from Tuesday.

National team director Nawal Al Dossari leads the Qatari delegation as The Maroon take part in the dif-f e r e n t a g e g r o u p competitions. The team is currently on a training camp in China that started on July 27 and concluded yesterday.

Teams from 15 countries compete in the tournament.

The Qatari team consists of Mariam Ali, Shahd Al Makki, Shouq Saad, Al Anoud Al Saffar, Maha Ali, Aya Magdi, Maha Faramarzi and Kholoud Abdulreda.

The draw will be held on Monday in line with the deci-sion of the technical and organising committees of the tournament.

Winning start for Qatar at FIVB World Championship qualifiers

Mubarak Al Meraikhi

Al Sadd resume training in Doha Doha

QNA

Al Sadd Football Team resumed their training in Doha after return-

ing for the Austrian preseason camp, held from July 20 to August 5.

Al Sadd held training in the absence of international players Saad Al Dosari, Pedro, Ali Asad, Khoukhi Boualem, Hassan Al Haydos, Musab Kheder and Salem Al Hajri, who are currently with the Qatar national team in preparation for the last two rounds in the World Cup qualifiers.

Al Sadd coach Jesualdo Ferreira has been keen on raising the fitness level of the players, especially after they have returned from a break after the external training camp.

Qatar goalkeeper and Al Sadd Club Saud Al Hajri underwent out a successful operation at Aspetar hospi-tal. Al Hajri suffered an injury during Al Sadd friendly match with Turkish side Gaziantep on July 27. The goalkeeper joined Al Sadd this summer after the end of his contract with Al Rayyan.

Meanwhile, Al Rayyan football team was to take on PEC Zwolle yesterday in their third preseason friendly match during their Dutch preparation camp.

Al Rayyan had played two friendly games and the Qatari side won both of them.

Coach Michael Laudrup’s side will return to Doha on Monday.

Teenager Shapovalov stuns Nadal in MontrealMontreal

Reuters

Canadian teenager Denis Shapovalov delighted his home fans when he bat-

tled from a set down to record a stunning upset victory over top seed Rafael Nadal in the third round of the Rogers Cup on Thursday.

The lanky wild card kissed the Montreal court after complet-ing a rousing 3-6, 6-4, 7-6(4) triumph as the 18-year-old became the youngest player to ever reach the quarter-finals of an ATP Masters 1000 event.

The early exit also denied world number two Nadal a chance to take over from the absent Andy Murray at the top of the rankings, a position the Span-iard would have regained for the first time since 2014 had he advanced to the semi-finals.

Shapovalov showed no sign of nerves in their first ever meet-ing, the left-hander playing the more aggressive tennis by utilis-ing his huge forehand on roundhouse swings and fre-quently attacking the net.

The teenager’s quixotic bid looked doomed in the third set tiebreaker when he fell 3-0 behind but the world number 143 refused to buckle and only coughed up one more point in the decider.

As a reward for his unlikely victory, the 2016 Wimbledon jun-ior champion was to face 29-year-old Frenchman Adrian

Mannarino in the quarter-finals on Friday.

Elsewhere, world number three Roger Federer dropped his first set since June but the Swiss recovered to dispatch Spaniard David Ferrer 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 in their last 16 meeting.

Federer was sloppy from the outset on centre court, sending routine forehands wide and pro-viding the underdog Ferrer with early break opportunities in the Montreal encounter.

Ferrer capitalised by winning the opener to end Federer’s streak of 32 consecutive sets won, a record that dates back to his

defeat to Tommy Haas at the Stuttgart Open on June 14.

Frustration boiled over for the Australian Open and Wim-bledon champion in the second set after he misfired with an overhead smash.

Federer, who turned 36 this week, responded by hitting a ball into the stands, earning a repri-mand but no official ball abuse call from the umpire.

The outburst appeared to steady the Swiss, whose serve and overall accuracy improved as the two-hour match progressed.

Ferrer has now lost all of his

17 contests against Federer, who is also vying to take the world number one spot from the injured Murray.

Next up for Federer is a quarter-final against 12th-seeded Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut, who defeated Frenchman Gael Monfils 4-6, 7-6(5), 7-6(2) in a marathon tussle.

In other tournament action, American Jared Donaldson lost to Diego Schwartzman 0-6, 7-5, 7-5, while his countryman Sam Querrey was thrashed 6-4, 6-1 by Kevin Anderson of South Africa.

Denis Shapovalov of Canada hits a return against Rafael Nadal of Spain during the Rogers Cup in Montreal on Thursday. The 18-year-old beat top seed Nadal 3-6, 6-4, 7-6(4).

Pliskova reaches Rogers Cup quarters Toronto

Reuters

World number one Karo-lina Pliskova was dragged into a mighty

battle before being granted a berth in the Rogers Cup quar-ter-finals when Japanese teenager Naomi Osaka retired with an abdominal injury on Thursday.

Czech Pliskova, playing her first tournament with the top ranking, was pushed into a deciding set by qualifier Osaka before the 19-year-old called for the trainer when trailing 6-2, 6-7(4), 1-0 and promptly withdrew.

“She played well, especially in the second set she was fight-ing pretty hard, much better than the first,” said Pliskova.

“I was just trying to stay in the game, the first game of the third set was very tough I didn’t even know she was injured.”

Pliskova, playing her first tournament since a shock sec-ond round defeat at Wimbledon, had shown signs of rust in a rag-ged opening win over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova but looked more like a world number one as she swept four straight games to take the first set

from 50th-ranked Osaka. But the Japanese rallied to match the lanky Czech shot-for-shot in a gripping second set, then dom-inated the tie-break.

During the changeover, Osaka told her coach that she was feeling discomfort and was told to withdraw if the pain per-sisted to avoid the risk of further injury.

Osaka did just that, calling for the trainer after dropping serve to open the third set.

“I think my game today was much better, especially my

serve,” said Pliskova, who clubbed 13 aces. “I didn’t lose my serve in this match today, I’m happy with the way I was serv-ing today.”

Pliskova will need to have her serve firing on all cylinders when she meets sixth seed and former world number one Caro-line Wozniacki in the last eight.

In a battle of former-Rogers Cup champions, a ruthless Woz-niacki showed no mercy by sweeping past her good friend Agnieszka Radwanska 6-3, 6-1 in just 78 minutes.

The only hiccup in an other-wise polished effort against the 10th-seeded Pole came when Wozniacki was up 5-0 in the second and squandered three match points.

But the Dane closed out the match on the next chance with a stinging forehand winner.

Czech Lucie Safarova also made the last eight by outlast-ing Russia’s Ekaterina Makarova 6-3, 6-7(3), 6-2, while France’s Caroline Garcia beat 18-year-old American Catherine Bellis 6-4, 6-2.

Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina broke American Venus Williams six times en route to a near-per-fect 6-2, 6-1 victory.

Svitolina’s 40th win of the year booked her first Rogers Cup quarter-final appearance.

Unseeded American Sloane Stephens upset former world number one Angelique Kerber 6-2, 6-2 on Thursday as she con-tinues her comeback from a year-long absence due to a foot injury.

Stephens will face Czech Lucie Safarova in the quarter-finals.

Fourth seed Garbine Mugu-ruza dispatched Ashleigh Barty of Australia 6-0, 3-6, 6-2 at their centre court meeting.

Karolina Pliskova of Czech Republic

plays a shot against Naomi

Osaka of Japan during the Rogers

Cup at Aviva Centre in Toronto, Canada

yesterday.

18 SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017SPORT

Olesen, Kisner take charge as Spieth stumbles in first round Charlotte

AFP

Denmark’s Thorbjorn Olesen and Ameri-can Kevin Kisner each closed with birdies on Thursday

to share a one-stroke lead at the PGA Championship while Jor-dan Spieth and Rory McIlroy stumbled in quest of golf history.

Olesen sank a 27-foot putt at the par-4 18th while Kisner’s was from 21 feet as both birdied three of the last five holes to fire four-under-par 67s at Quail Hollow in the year’s last major tournament.

“I felt like I was playing really well,” Olesen said.

“Hit my driver well. Got myself in some really good posi-tions. So that was the key, and obviously it was a really nice way to finish with that long putt on 18.”

Kisner, ranked 25th, won his second US PGA title in May at Colonial and grew up two hours from the course. Being familiar with the putting surface paid off with his first lead after any round of a major.

“It was really smooth,” Kis-ner said of his round.

“If I keep it in the fairway, I’ll make birdies so that’s what I’ll try to do. I love these greens. I like the speed. It’s like what I grew up on.”

One stroke adrift were US Open winner Brooks Koepka and fellow Americans Gary Wood-land, Grayson Murray, Chris Stroud and DA Points.

World number two Spieth, who won his third major title at last month’s British Open, strug-gled with his putter in firing a 72, joining McIlroy five strokes adrift.

“I can’t putt any worse than I did today,” Spieth said.

“It was just the putter. Eve-rything else was fine.”

Spieth, who also won the 2015 Masters and US Open, can become only the sixth man to sweep the four current major titles in a career after Jack Nick-laus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Gary Player and Gene Sarazen.

At 24, he would become the youngest on the career Slam list by winning the Wanamaker Tro-phy this week, about six months younger than the mark held by Woods.

Fourth-ranked McIlroy, 28, could become only the third player to win five majors before turning 30, joining Nicklaus and Woods. He has two PGA titles and two US PGA triumphs at Quail Hollow.

“I’m only five behind,” McIl-roy said. “it’s a tough golf course. I shoot something in the 60s tomorrow, move right up there.”

England’s Paul Casey and 10th-ranked American Rickie Fowler, whose first career PGA triumph was at Quail Hollow, were among seven on 69, Fowler thanks to six birdies that helped offset a triple bogey seven at the fifth hole.

World number one Dustin Johnson was in a pack on 70 that included Australia’s Jason Day, Spain’s Jon Rahm and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama. Johnson said

putting was as tough as he has seen all season.

“It was tough to get the ball close to the hole,” he said. “I’m very pleased with that the way the course played.”

Olesen, 27, seeks his first major title. The 78th-ranked Dane took the most recent of four career European Tour vic-tories last year in Turkey.

“I feel more confident with myself and my game than I prob-ably did a few years ago,” he said. “I just have to stay relaxed the next few days.”

Spieth was in the early fea-ture group with Koepka and the year’s other major winner, Spain’s Sergio Garcia, the Mas-ters champion.

“It was a day that should

have been a couple under par and ended one-over,” Spieth said.

“It’s a little disappointing but I brought it back with a couple birdies to at least having a chance going forward.”

Dutchman Joost Luiten aced the 181-yard par-3 fourth hole with a 6-iron, the first hole-in-one at a PGA since South Africa’s Tim Clark in 2013.

Two players withdrew with injuries after poor first rounds, England’s Andrew “Beef” John-ston after a 78 with a shoulder issue and South Korean Kim Si-Woo after shooting 79, citing a sore back. Day, who had four bogeys in the first 12 holes, rallied with two birdies and an eagle in the last five to finish on 70.

“It was a good turnaround,” Day said. “On the greens it’s very hard and very fast. If you don’t get yourself in position it’s hard to make par.”

Rahm, 22, sank 17-foot putts for birdie at the 14th and par-5 15th to reach 3-under, one off the lead, but stumbled back to 70 with bogeys at 16 and the par-3 17th in his PGA Championship debut.

“I’ve been looking forward to playing well in a major for a long time,” Rahm said. “We’ll see what happens.”

Among those in a struggle to make the cut are defending champion Jimmy Walker, 100th-major starters Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els and England’s Jus-tin Rose.

Kevin Kisner of the United States and

caddie Duane Bock line up a putt on the 12th

hole during the second round of the 2017 PGA Championship at Quail

Hollow Club on Thursday in Charlotte, North

Carolina.

McIlroy stumbles late for 72Rory McIlroy suffered a double-bogey at the

driveable par-four 14th, where he found the wa-

ter. The pre-tournament favourite carded one-

over 72.

Mickelson shoots highest career PGA scorePhil Mickelson entered uncharted territory with

an eight-over 79, his highest ever score in 95

rounds at a PGA Championship. His previous

worst score was a 78 at Oak Hill in 2013.

Luiten aces par-three testJoost Luiten of the Netherlands recorded the first

hole-in-one at a PGA Championship since 2013

with a one-bounce ace using a six-iron at the

181-yard, par-three fourth hole.

No more Beef at PGAAndrew ‘Beef’ Johnston pulled out of the cham-

pionship with a shoulder injury after struggling

to a 78. Kim Si-woo also scratched after a 79,

citing a bad back.

Triple bogey leaves Fowler reelingRickie Fowler triple-bogeyed the par-four fifth,

taking two shots to extricate himself from a

fairway bunker and then compounding his prob-

lems by overshooting the green with his fourth

shot. But he roared back to shoot 69.

Olesen, Kisner lead on 67Dane Thorbjorn Olesen and American Kevin Kis-

ner curled in long birdie putts at the par-four

18th and ended the day in the lead on four-under

67.

Spieth struggles on greensJordan Spieth, one leg short of completing the

grand slam of all four majors, struggled with his

putting for most of the day before two late bird-

ies salvage a 72 from what could have been a

nasty wreck.

Quail Hollow claims notable victimsThe long, rain-softened layout with hard, fast

greens took plenty of prisoners. Four-times ma-

jor winner Ernie Els has carded 80, twice Masters

winner Bubba Watson 77 and reigning Masters

champion Sergio Garcia 75.

PGA CHAMPIONSHIP: INAUGURAL DAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

Mourinho reveals Ibrahimovic talks Manchester

AFP

Manchester United are in discussions to re-sign Zlatan Ibrahimovic for

the second half of the season when he recovers from a seri-ous knee injury, manager Jose M o u r i n h o c o n f i r m e d yesterday.

The former Sweden striker was United’s top scorer last sea-son, hitting 28 goals as they won the Europa League, the League Cup and the Community Shield.

However, he is without a club as he recovers from cruci-ate knee ligament damage sustained during the Europa League quarter-final against Anderlecht in April.

Ibrahimovic’s one-year deal at Old Trafford expired in June and was not extended following the injury.

He has trained with the club during his rehabilitation, though, and Mourinho has made clear he still believes the forward can do a job for him.

Ibrahimovic -- who had won

league titles with every club he had played for before joining United on a free transfer from Paris Saint-Germain a year ago -- has made clear that he was disappointed to finish sixth with Mourinho’s team last season.

The United boss is aiming higher this time, and wants the 35-year-old to be a part of that effort.

“Zlatan is injured and needs time to recover,” Mourinho said on Friday.

“He is not ready to play tomorrow, so it is not something that’s urgent. We are not desper-ate to have it (a deal) done or not.

“He wants more football at the highest level so we are hav-ing conversations and discussing the possibility of him staying for the second part of the season.”

United kick off their Premier League campaign at home to West Ham on Sunday, having won six of their seven pre-sea-son friendlies.

The signings of defender Victor Lindelof from Benfica, midfielder Nemanja Matic from Chelsea and striker Romelu Lukaku from Everton have also lifted the mood.

Defeat by Real Madrid in Tuesday’s UEFA Super Cup match in Skopje was a setback, but Mourinho says his team are ready for the new season.

“We have added three play-ers, one defender, one midfielder and one attacking player,” the Portuguese boss explained.

“But we have lost important players to injury too, such as Marcos Rojo, Ashley Young, Luke Shaw, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

“Between the players we have lost and the players we have got, I think we are in a sim-ilar situation but with more experience of working together and a much better pre-season.

“We have the confidence levels of a team who won a European competition. Our lev-els of confidence and knowledge are higher so I am happy to start the season. I think we are ready,” he said.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Morocco to bid for 2026 FIFA World Cup, says federation Rabat

AFP

Morocco’s football federa-tion (FRMF) announced yesterday it had told the

sport’s world governing body FIFA it will bid to host the 2026 World Cup. It would be Moroc-co’s fifth candidacy having come up short already in 1994, 1998, 2006 and 2010.

“Morocco considers itself

capable of organsining a World Cup,” youth and sports minis-ter Rachid Talbi Alami said.

“We have the necessary infrastructure in terms of stadi-ums, transport, hotel capacity and sanitation.”

In April, the United States, Canada and Mexico had already announced a joint North Amer-ican bid to host the tournament.

If successful, Morocco

would become only the second African country to host football’s flagship event following South Africa in 2010. The north Afri-cans have received backing from African Confederation (CAF) President Ahmad Ahmad.

“We are convinced that Morocco could organise this competition just as was done by South Africa in 2010,” said Malagasy Ahmad after he was elected to succeed Cameroon’s

Issa Hayatou as head of the African body. However, FIFA last year accepted that the coun-try had paid bribes to the former head of the North and Central American Confederation in try-ing to win the right to host the 1998 and 2010 tournaments -- something that could prejudice any future bid.

But FIFA president Gianni Infantino has echoed Ahmad’s endorsement, saying that

Morocco has the necessary “infrastructure and organisa-tional capacity” to host the World Cup.

The 2026 tournament will be the first with an expanded 48-team tournament, up from the current 32 qualifiers.

Morocco had won the right to host the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations but pulled out at the 11th hour over concerns related to the Ebola outbreak in western

Africa at the time. But the coun-try has embarked on a professionalisation drive to improve its football infrastruc-ture while increasing it’s candidacies for various tourna-ments in order to improve its chances of landing a much cov-eted World Cup. Morocco has hosted two Club World Cup tournaments, in 2013 and 2014, although that is a vastly smaller and shorter tournament.

Neymar cleared to make PSG debut Paris

Reuters

World-record signing Neymar (pictured) looks set to make his

debut for Paris St Germain tomorrow after the French football federation confirmed it had received the player’s transfer certificate.

The Brazilian, whose 222m euros ($262m) signing from Barcelona doubled the world-record transfer fee, was prevented from playing in PSG’s first Ligue 1 match of the sea-son against Amiens last week because his registration had gone through too late.

PSG travel to En Avant Guingamp tomorrow.

“One thing is clear: we want him to make his debut (on Sun-day),” PSG coach Unai Emery told reporters.

“He’s been good in train-ing. He is ready. We want him to be in the squad and to start. He’s a player we need. I think

he is ready to start the game.”The French football feder-

ation (FFF) confirmed that Neymar was now licensed to play in France.

“The FFF confirms it has received the transfer certificate of Neymar Jr, sent by the RFEF (Spanish football federation),” the FFF said on its Twitter feed yesterday.

PSG opened the season by beating Amiens 2-0 at the Parc des Princes last Saturday. They ended last season as runners-up to Monaco after winning four successive Ligue 1 titles.

19SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017 SPORT

SL eye win as India play without Jadeja Pallekele

AFP

The absence of world number one all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja from India’s team has given Sri

Lanka hope that they can avoid a series whitewash in the third and final Test starting today, home skipper Dinesh Chandi-mal said.

Left-arm spinner Jadeja was banned for one match for dan-gerous play in India’s second Test win that secured the team an unassailable 2-0 lead in the series.

But despite the hosts suffer-ing huge defeats in the first two matches, Chandimal is confident of pulling one back against the world’s top Test side in Pallekele.

“We are two down but still we are a really good team and are hoping to win this game. If we can do that, definitely we can get more confidence and move forward,” Chandimal said yesterday.

“We all know he (Jadeja) is the number one bowler at the moment. It gives us a bit of con-fidence -- bit unfortunate for you (India) guys. As a team we have something up our sleeves,” Chandimal said.

Sri Lanka have suffered a string of injuries to key players in the series. Their bowling mainstay Rangana Herath will miss the third Test with a stiff back. Paceman Nuwan Pradeep, who bowled only 17.4 overs in Colombo before pulling out with a hamstring injury, and all-rounder Asela Gunaratne, are already out.

“India is a really good team, especially in the last two to three years. But every time players of my team are getting injured. We cannot get the combination right,” said Chandimal.

“But we don’t want to give excuses,” added Chandimal,

who was appointed Test skip-per after Angelo Mathews quit following the team’s one-day series loss against Zimbabwe last month.

Fast bowlers Dushmantha Chameera and Lahiru Gamage have been added to Sri Lanka’s squad that has faced mounting flak for their poor showing in recent months.

Chandimal believes two good performances can give a crucial lift to morale.

“It’s a big challenge for the whole team but if one or two youngsters can come out and shine to a level that we can win this game, it’s a great morale booster,” said Chandimal.

“The series is not yet over. As a captain, I don’t like to lose, we are giving out our full effort

but we cannot control the ulti-mate result.”

India skipper Virat Kohli warned his side against compla-cency in the final Test.

Kohli, the only India captain to win two Test series in Sri Lanka, has led his side to eight consecutive series wins since their 2015 triumph in the island nation.

“I personally feel that it’s just a distraction that causes people to be over excited,” said Kohli.

“I think we need to stay in the present and treat every ses-sion with respect to win a Test match, and that’s exactly what we want to follow,” he added.

Kohli admitted that he is “not looking to make drastic changes” to his winning combination.

He virtually confirmed left-arm wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav’s place in the starting line-up in place of Jadeja.

“He has proven himself in Dharamsala which was not such a spin friendly wicket,” said the captain.

“He turned the game around for us so he has ability, which is very rare to find,” Kohli said of the young spinner who made an impressive debut against Aus-tralia in March.

Kohli said that Yadav’s left-arm wrist spin adds “an x-factor” to the team.

“He has a great chance of playing tomorrow and I wish him all the best,” said the Indian captain.

We all know Jadeja is the number one bowler at the moment. It gives us a bit of confidence – bit unfortunate for India: Captain Chandimal

Indian captain Virat Kohli talks to reporters in Pallekele yesterday.

Pay war break may benefit Aussies: Lehmann Sydney

AFP

Darren Lehmann (pictured) promised Australia won’t be under-prepared for

their tour of Bangladesh after a pay dispute left them temporar-ily unemployed – and said the enforced break may have even done them good.

But the coach said he would be sure to put his 14-man squad through their paces at a one-week training camp in tropical Darwin, before they leave for the two-Test tour next Friday.

The camp represents the first formal cricket environment for

Australia’s top internationals since they were booted out of the Champions Trophy in June.

Since then, they were among about 230 players who were technically unemployed for more than a month over a long-running pay dispute, which was finally resolved last week.

But despite having only a week to prepare for their first Test tour of Bangladesh in more than a decade, Lehmann said the disruption was not a concern.

“Until you get there you don’t know, but we’re squeezing enough in this next week, and guys have been doing stuff with their (home) states,” Lehmann

told the official Australian cricket website late on Thursday.

“Even through the MoU (pay negotiations) they were training and preparing as though they were playing.

“So in terms of fitness, they are probably ahead of the game, they’re really strong and fit which is really pleasing.

“Now it’s just getting their skills up to the required level before we leave.”

Lehmann said the break from playing and touring had even benefited some players by refreshing them mentally and physically heading into the Bangladesh tour.

“The break’s been good for some of them, they’ve been at the back of a long summer with a lot of travel in the schedule so some-times a refreshed mindset is really important,” Lehmann said.

“They’ve all come in really excited to get going again.”

Lehmann added: “The Dar-win camp wickets are very similar to what we’ll get in Bang-ladesh -- they’re low and they’re slow, and they will spin.

“In terms of conditions and the heat and humidity that we’ll face when we get there, it’s great preparation especially for those who have come out of winter in the southern states.”

India bid to reinstate Sreesanth fixing ban from Kerala court New Delhi AFP

India’s cricket board will appeal against a court order that lifted fast

bowler Shanthakumaran Sreesanth’s life ban for match-fixing, a senior offi-cial said yesterday.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) does not agree with the Kerala state high court order that acquitted Sreesanth for lack of proof, the official said on condition of anonymity.

“We don’t agree with the order. It definitely needs to be challenged and within a week the appeal would be filed in the Kerala high court.

“We were always clear on this case as the board is firm on its zero tolerance policy on corruption and match-fix-ing,” the official said.

Sreesanth, 34, slammed BCCI’s decision to appeal the verdict and vouched to play again for the country.

“Cmon @bcci this is worst u can do to anyone that too who is proven innocent not just once but again and again... don’t know why u

doing this?” the cricketer tweeted. “@bcci I’m not beg-ging, I’m asking to give my livelihood back. It’s my right. U guys are not above God. I will play again.”

Sreesanth and two other Rajasthan Royals players were banned for life over alleged involvement in bet-ting and spot-fixing following a 2013 scandal in the Indian Premier League.

Sreesanth, Ankit Chavan and Ajit Chandila were arrested along with scores of bookies as part of a probe into allegations that players had under-performed in return for cash.

Criminal charges were later dropped, but the play-ers remained banned for breaching the BCCI’s code of conduct.

On the day of the court ruling Monday, Sreesanth had said he was hoping to get his career back on track and rep-resent India at the next World Cup in 2019.

Sreesanth, who is 13 short of 100 Test wickets, has played 27 Tests and 53 one-day internationals since making his debut in 2005.

In this photograph taken on July 25, 2015, Indian cricketer Shanthakumaran Sreesanth speaks on his mobile as he leaves, following the judge’s pronouncement of the order discharging 36 accused in the IPL-6 spot fixing case, Patiala Court in New Delhi. India’s cricket board will appeal against a court order that lifted the fast bowler’s life ban for match-fixing, a senior BCCI official said yesterday.

Dovizioso tops Austrian GP practice Spielberg, Austria AFP

Italy’s Andrea Dovizioso topped yesterday’s first two free practice sessions

for this weekend’s Austrian MotoGP at Spielberg.

Dovizioso, runner-up in Austria last year behind Ital-ian Andrea Iannone, clocked a fastest lap of 1min 24.46sec at the end of the session.

The 31-year-old finished ahead of Spaniards Maverick Vinales, who clocked 1:24.280 on a Yahama, and Honda’s Dani Pedrosa in 1:24.474.

In the battle for the MotoGP world title, Vinales upped the pressure on Span-ish world championship leader Marc Marquez, who managed just seventh fastest for Honda.

Marquez -- winner in Germany and the Czech Republic in the last two races -- sits top of the standings with a 14-point lead on Vinales.

1. Andrea Dovizioso (ITA/Ducati) 1:24.046,

2. Maverick Vinales (ESP/Yamaha) at

0.234sec, 3. Dani Pedrosa (ESP/Honda)

0.428, 4. Johann Zarco (FRA/Yamaha

Tech3) 0.476, 5. Jorge Lorenzo (ESP/Ducati)

0.570, 6. Hector Barbera (ESP/Ducati Avin-

tia) 0.585, 7. Marc Marquez (ESP/Honda)

0.603, 8. Cal Crutchlow (GBR/LCR Honda)

0.622, 9. Aleix Espargaro (ESP/Aprillia)

0.680, 10. Scott Redding (GBRI/Ducati

Pramac) 0.719

FREE PRACTICE TIMES

McGregor fight won’t go the distance, says Mayweather Las Vegas Reuters

Floyd Mayweather has said he has done his homework on mixed

martial artist Conor McGre-gor and promised their multi-million dollar fight in Las Vegas on August 26 will not go the distance.

Both fighters have now tipped a knockout finish to the hotly-anticipated bout between arguably one of the greatest boxers of all time and the explosive UFC champion.

“Expect excitement. He’s gonna talk trash, I’m gonna talk trash, there’s gonna be a lot of blood, sweat and tears,” Mayweather told reporters at a media conference at his gym in Las Vegas.

Casually dressed in a black T-shirt and shorts, the bluster and profanity of the recent four-city promotional tour undertaken with McGre-gor was replaced by a more sober analysis.

“It’s about doing your homework. It’s not really watching fight tapes, it’s about knowing the person you’re facing across the ring from you.

“You want to know what they like to eat, what they’re doing when they’re not in camp,” said the undefeated 40-year-old.

Mayweather brushed off suggestions that the left-handed McGregor might cause him problems.

“Last time I checked I was undefeated, whether it was orthodox or southpaw. McGregor, he’s gonna come out and keep switching (stances) ... but when you keep switching all you’re doing is burning energy,” he told reporters.

Sri Lankan chief cricket selector Sanath

Jayasuriya (centre) speaks with Sri Lankan cricket team manager

Asanka Gurusinghe (left) and Sri Lankan captain

Dinesh Chandimal at the Pallekele International

Cricket Stadium in Pallekele yesterday.

SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 2017

An endangered North Atlantic right whale which is entangled in heavy plastic fishing link (Green Line-C) off Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Entwined lives

FAJRSHOROOK

03.44 am

05.06 am

ZUHRASR

11.39 am

03.08 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

06.14 pm

07.44 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

20 MORNING BREAK

Alaska

AP

Federal researchers studying crit-ically endangered North Pacific right whales sometimes go years

without finding their subjects. Over the weekend they got lucky.

A research vessel in the Bering Sea photographed two of the animals on Sunday and obtained a biopsy sam-ple from one, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Thursday.

NOAA Fisheries research biolo-gist Jessica Crance was on board the Yushin Maru 2, when the whales were spotted. The ship is part of the Pacific Ocean Whale and Ecosystem Research programme, a collaborative effort

headed by the International Whaling Commission. Using an acoustic recorder, and between sounds of killer whales and walrus, Crance picked up faint calls of a right whale east of Bris-tol Bay, Alaska.

The sounds came from an esti-mated 10 to 32 miles away and the ship headed west, she said in a blog entry. After four and a half hours, despite the presence of minke and humpback whales, and only a few calls from the right whales, the rare animals were spotted.

The two right whales are part of the eastern stock that number just 30 to 50 whales, said Phillip Clapham, head of the cetacean program at NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

A French whaling ship recorded the first kill in 1835 and reported see-ing “millions” of others. That claim was exaggerated but it drew hundreds of other whalers to the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, Clapham said.

Within 14 years, Clapham said, the overharvest of the slow, buoyant ani-mals sent many whalers through the Bering Strait to hunt bowhead whales instead.

A modest comeback of right whales in the 20th Century was derailed when Soviet whalers in the 1960s ignored critically low numbers and illegally killed eastern stock right whales in the Gulf of Alaska, Clapham said.

The right whale sampled Sunday had been seen eight times before,

Clapham said. The last time was a decade ago. A biopsy sample, he said, can positively identify the animal, reveal its gender, indicate whether it’s pregnant and reveal information on diet and reproductive hormones.

Studying North Pacific right whales is complicated by the expense of reaching their habitat in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea.

Critical data remains unknown, including their winter habits and many of their preferred summer feed-ing areas for copepods, a tiny crustacean plankton. “We don’t know what habitats continue to be impor-tant to the species,” Clapham said. The biggest threats to the animals are fish-ing gear entanglements and ship strikes, Clapham said.

Scientists spot rare whale in Bering Sea

Washington

AFP

Scientists have successfully edited the genetic code of piglets to remove dor-

mant viral infections, a breakthrough that could even-tually pave the way for animal-to-human organ transplants.

Their work, documented in the US journal Science, could save lives by reducing organ donor waiting lists that

have risen over the years, thanks to better road safety.

There are some 117,000 people on the US transplant waiting list alone, according to official data, while 22 peo-ple die each day waiting for an organ. Harvard University geneticists George Church and Luhan Yang, together with a team of Danish and Chinese collaborators, placed edited embryonic cells into a chem-ical cocktail that encouraged growth and overcame the

destructive effect inherent in the modification process. They then used a standard cloning technique to insert the edited DNA into egg cells that were placed into a surrogate mother. “Before our study, there was huge scientific uncertainty about whether the pig [produced after this edit-ing] is viable,” Yang said, adding the team had now pro-duced 37 piglets free of the porcine endogenous retrovi-ruses (PERVs).

Manhattan Beach AP

James Cameron has taken time out from crafting the upcoming

four “Avatar” sequels to return to one of his old films, one he says is as up-to-the-minute as ever — “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

Cameron converted the 26-year-old film — in which one robot with arti-ficial intelligence battles another to stop nuclear annihilation — into a 3D format that hits movie theaters August 25. It arrives just as escalating tensions over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions are in the headlines.

“I think the film is as timely as it ever was, prob-ably more so less on the nuclear side and more on the AI side and dealing with our relationship with our own technology,” Cameron said Thursday. “And how we do really stand the possibility of m a k i n g o u r s e l v e s obsolete?”

The 1991 release — a sequel to the 1984 original — starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Edward

Furlong, Linda Hamilton and Robert Patrick. It fol-lowed Sarah Connor and her 10-year-old son John fleeing an advanced shapeshifting Terminator sent back in time to kill them. Schwarzenegger’s less advanced Terminator was also sent back in time to protect the pair.

“I tend to be kind of an apocalyptic kind of guy. I look at all the worst case outcomes,” said Cameron, who said he started writ-ing the film before the Berlin Wall came down and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“I think that it’s we have to be on guard and constantly aware. So whether it’s climate change, or whether it’s the threat of an AI potentially replacing us or rapidly altering our word in a neg-ative outcome for humans or weather it’s nuclear warfare — these are things we need to be constantly vigilant about.” As for any film reboot of the series, Cameron said the idea was being discussed but he wanted to make sure it had “fresh imagery, fresh char-acters” and wasn’t “mired in the past.”

‘Terminator 2’ as ‘timely as it ever was’: Cameron

Jerusalem

AFP

Israeli man Yisrael Kristal (pic-tured), certified last year by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest man, died yester-day aged 113, Israeli media

reported. “Yisrael Kristal... died yes-terday a month before his 114th birthday,” Haaretz daily reported in its online edition.

News site Ynet said he was sur-vived by two children, 9 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren. The World Jewish Congress noted his passing in a brief Twitter statement.

“Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal was the oldest man in the world. Yis-rael passed away today. May his memory be a blessing.”

Kristal, originally from Zarnow in what is now Poland, was born on Sep-tember 15, 1903 -- three months before the Wright brothers’ first successful powered airplane flight.

Guinness World Records recog-nised him as the world’s oldest man in March 2016. In September he cele-brated his Bar Mitzvah after a century-long delay.

Usually marked at 13 for boys and 12 or 13 for girls -- a Bat Mitzvah in that case -- it marks the transition into someone responsible for his or her

actions. Kristal was unable to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah in 1916 because his mother had died three months earlier and his father was a soldier in the Rus-sian army at the time of World War I.

“My father is religious and has prayed every morning for 100 years, but he has never had his Bar Mitzvah,” his daughter Shula Koperstoch told AFP last year.After World War I, Kristal moved to Lodz where he worked in the family confectionary factory, mar-ried and had two children.

But his life was disrupted when the Jewish quarter of the city became a ghetto under Nazi occupation during World War II and Kristal was sent to the infamous Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Around 1.1 million people, most of

them European Jews, perished in the camp between 1940 and 1945 before it was liberated by Soviet forces.

His wife and two children died but Kristal survived, weighing just 37kgs (81 pounds) at the end of the war. He then moved to Israel, where he opened a sweet shop. Guinness World Records’

website said that on receiving his cer-tificate at his home in the northern Israeli city of Haifa last year Kristal offered no explanation for his longev-ity. “I don’t know the secret for long life. I believe that everything is deter-mined from above and we shall never know the reasons why,” he said.

World’s oldest man dies at 113

This file picture show, Marco Frigatti (right), Head of Records for Guinness World Records, presenting Israel Kristal (second right) with his certificate of achievement for Oldest Living man, in the presence of the Kristal’s daughter, son and grandchildren.

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