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Volume 23 | Number 7551 | 2 RiyalsFriday 8 June 2018 | 23 Ramadan I 1439 www.thepeninsula.qa

RAMADAN TIMING

Todays Iftar: 6:26 pmTomorrow’s Imsak: 03:04 am

Ooredoo first in world to have live 5G home broadband deviceTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Ooredoo announced yesterday that the company has reached another world-first milestone, with the delivery of the first live 5G home broadband devices.

The devices, which are cur-rently being tested on Ooredoo’s 5G network before distribution, will work on both the Ooredoo 4G and 5G network and can achieve speeds of up to 2 Gbps, that’s 20 times the speeds of Ooredoo’s 100Mbps fibre.

With an Ooredoo 5G con-nection via the 5G home broadband device, Ooredoo customers will be able to download movies in seconds, seamlessly stream VR gaming experiences and video call like never before.

The company has announced that currently there

are only a few 5G home broadband devices in the world, however Ooredoo is working to acquire more stock in the very near future. As commercial pro-duction increases alongside the 5G roll-out, Ooredoo will aim to ensure Qatar is the first country to enable this next-generation technology for its customers.

Talking about the milestone, Waleed Al Sayed, Ooredoo’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “Ooredoo is ecstatic to announce that last night, we became the first in the world to have a live

commercial 5G home broadband device. This is another amazing world-first milestone for Ooredoo and Qatar and demonstrates that we are on track to offering 5G mega speeds for everyone in the very near future. I look forward to seeing how this technology will benefit all sectors in Qatar, from busi-nesses, to education and beyond.”

Since the announcement of the first live 5G network in May 2018, Ooredoo has begun an intense 5G network roll-out plan across Qatar, with the aim to update 100 network stations to 5G, in the 3.5GHz spectrum band, within the next three months.

The current live 5G sites, which include West Bay and Katara, have demonstrated an impressive speed of 2.51 Gbps with an extremely high throughput and low latency. Thanks to these results, Ooredoo is working to find 5G compatible devices from across the world to test them on the network, including next-generation Internet of Things applications such as smart cars, VR, AR and drones.

Above: Ooredoo CEO Waleed Al Sayed. LEFT: Ooredoo Group Chief Technolgy Officer Ahmad Abdulaziz Al Neama with the new 5G devices.

Charities from Qatar to raise QR60m to help SomaliansTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatari charity organisa-tions joined hands to raise over QR60m to support people fighting for survival in Somalia due to humanitarian crises caused by famine which has affected nearly half of the popu-lation of the country.

A joint campaign to support Somalia will be launched in Qatar on Sunday by four Qatari human-itarian organisations including Qatar Red Crescent Society, Qatar Charity, Silatech and Education Above All Foundation under the supervision of Regulatory Authority for Charitable Activities

and supported by Qatar Fund for Development.

The campaign aims to raise more than QR60m to meet the humanitarian and development needs of the Somali people and provide water, health, education and economic empowerment services, as well as humanitarian intervention in flood-affected areas to provide shelter, food and medical supplies, QNA reported.

The money will be spent on drilling and rehabilitation of wells and water systems, estab-lishment of income generation projects, support to the agricul-tural sector, creating educational

opportunities, building and ren-ovation of schools and health centers, treatment of patients, distribution of food baskets, establishment of social centers, and road development.

Somalia is suffering from acute crises, perhaps the most serious of which is the famine that threatens 6.2 million people, nearly half of the pop-ulation, because of water shortages, according to sta-tistics from international organizations and United Nations institutions.

There are up to 2.5 million displaced persons, and more than 400,000 who need urgent

medical assistance, these sta-tistics indicated. Somalia has low enrollment rates in edu-cation, where the rate of enrollment in primary and sec-ondary schools 30 percent and 26 percent respectively.

Speaking at the press con-ference, representatives of the Qatari humanitarian organiza-tions stressed that this campaign is a reflection of the spirit of sol-idarity between the Qatari and Somali peoples and the official and popular stance of the State of Qatar in support of Somalia in all circumstances and in response to the humanitarian situation in this brotherly

country, as a result of recurrent drought and unstable situations due to conflicts.

Qatar Charity’s Executive Director of International Devel-opment Department Mohamed Ali Al Ghamdi said that this joint campaign is a religious, humanitarian and moral duty for brotherly Somalia, asking people of Qatar to support the campaign to meet part of the humanitarian needs of the Somali people in the areas of water, health, education, food, shelter and other relief and development projects.

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Siege used as a tool of political pressure against citizens and residents: NHRC officialTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) Secretary- General Maryam bint Abdullah Al Attiyah reaffirmed that the unjust siege of Qatar is a flagrant violation of the basic human rights of citizens and residents as well as citizens of the GCC states, noting that it constitutes a blatant attack on all values and principles enshrined in international human rights conventions.

Speaking during the cer-emony that NHRC organised on Wednesday to mark one year of the siege, Al Attiyah said that the countries that imposed the siege have used a serious precedent in terms of punitive measures against citizens and residents of Qatar as a tool for political pressure and management of political differences, which amounts to collective pun-ishment affecting individuals and properties.

“We committed ourselves at NHRC since the beginning of the siege crisis to carry out our humanitarian and legal duty, to strive to lift this unjust siege and address its negative, dangerous and frightening consequences and effects on human rights conditions, lift the injustice of tens of thousands of victims, and redress and compensate those affected,” Al Attiyah said.

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Panel discusses bill on non-Qatari ownership of propertiesDOHA: The Advisory Council’s Legal and Legislative Affairs Committee held yesterday a meeting as part of the council’s 46th regular session under the chairmanship of its rapporteur Nasser bin Rashid Saria Al Kaabi.

During the meeting, the committee discussed a draft law on the regulation of non-Qataris’ ownership of prop-erties and benefiting from them and decided to continue to review the draft law in its next meeting and submit its recommendations to the Advisory Council.

Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani yesterday received a message from Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir, on ways to strengthen close cooperation between the two countries and current regional and international developments. The message was conveyed by Sudanese Foreign Minister, Dr Dardari Mohammed Ahmed, during a meeting with the Amir at Al Bahr Palace.

MME and ExxonMobil boost cooperation in environmental researchSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) and ExxonMobil Qatar have joined hands to boost further their coop-eration in the field of research and environmental science. The oper-ation will help assess the health of various species originated in Qatar and to protect the rich marine and coastal diversity of the country.

“Our teams have been actively working together to protect hab-itats and species for years now.

With the support of ExxonMobil Research Qatar, we are collecting scientific data that can be used to help assess the overall health of various species that are indig-enous to Qatar, and allows us to understand what needs to be done to ensure their longevity,” said Minister of Municipality and Envi-ronment, H E Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi while speaking with media persons on the sidelines of an MoU signing ceremony .

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The Minister of Municipality and Environment, H E Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi (second left), and President and General Manager of ExxonMobil Qatar, Alistair Routledge, with the signed MoU, at the Qatar Science and Technology Park in Doha, yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT / THE PENINSULA

The devices, which are currently being tested on Ooredoo’s 5G network before distribution, will work on both the Ooredoo 4G and 5G network and can achieve speeds of up to 2 Gbps, that is 20 times the speed of Ooredoo’s 100Mbps fibre.

02 FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018HOME

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, met with the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden to the State of Qatar, Ewa Polano; the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Bahia Tahzib-Lie; the Ambassador of the Republic of Bulgaria, Metin Kazak; and senior advisor to the EU, Alexis Konstantopoulos. During the meeting, they discussed a number of regional issues, in addition to a number of topics of common interest

Al Muraikhi reviews regional issues with envoys

Four cafes operating without licence finedTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The surprise inspection campaign carried out by the Ministry of Economy and Commerce, which covered 216 businesses in the shopping tent in the Mehairja area, has resulted in registering violations against four cafes that operated without a license outside the tent.

These intensive campaigns come within the framework of the initiatives of the Ministry of economy and Commerce, launched on the occasion of Ramadan as the ministry has been intensifying the inspection cam-paigns before and during Ramadan as part of its keenness to regulate and monitor the markets and commercial activ-ities in the country and com-pliance with the laws and regu-lations governing the practice of commercial activities in order to protect consumers rights.

The Ministry has urged all traders and shop owners to abide by the rules and regulations of practicing commercial activities and invited them to familiarize themselves with the laws and reg-ulations governing the conduct of commercial activities by vis-iting the website of the Ministry of Economy and Commerce www.mec.gov.qa so as not to be

subject to legal liability and violation.

The Ministry also urged all citizens and residents to report

any violations or irregularities related to registration and com-mercial licenses through its com-munication channels.

A Ministry official conducting the inspection.

Galfar takes environmental awareness to next generationTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: In line with its strong commitment to sustainable practices, Galfar Al Misnad, one of Qatar’s leading construction firms, launched a month-long Environment Awareness Campaign on the occasion of World Environment Day, with a tree planting ceremony along with an insightful environ-mental awareness session at the Shantiniketan Indian School today.

More than 120 students from the 6th and 7th classes of the school attended the interactive session, where the Galfar Al Misnad team educated them on the common responsibility of every individual, including children, to reduce the impact of modern development on the natural environment through simple practices.

Highlighting the United Nations’ chosen theme for the year, “Beat Plastic Pollution – if you can’t reuse it, refuse it,” Gal-far’s HSE Manager, Venkatesan Kulandaivelu, started the session with a presentation on the perils of plastic waste that is increasingly harming every living thing on the Earth.

To illustrate the level of damage caused by plastic, he also showed a short video, which awakened the children’s awareness of the extent of the issue, with scenes of plastic waste found inside stomachs of fish. “As a construction company, we are involved in the development of many areas in Qatar, including stadiums, the Metro, oil and gas, schools, and so much more. However, we always to try to make sure that

we employ sustainable practices to lessen the impact on our natural environment ,” Kulandaivelu explained. He asked the children to also attempt to do the same in their own actions.

The students were also given a chance to share with their col-leagues, methods that they already employed at home to avoid creating plastic pollution. Ideas suggested included, car-rying plastic bags to the super-market to avoid using new bags; reusing glass jars as an alter-native to plastic containers in the kitchen; drinking filtered water that is stored in reusable glass or aluminium bottles; and using old plastic bags to line waste baskets rather than using trash bags.

The Galfar Al Misnad team then led the students and school staff in planting five different fruit trees at the school. There was also a drawing competition

with the theme “My Planet,” in which 30 children participated. Subhash Nair, the Principal of Shantiniketan Indian School said such programs teach the children to be generous, gener-ative, and encourages them to take care of the environment.

The programme ended with four older students giving pres-entations on the topic. The per-tinence of learning from such awareness sessions was aptly articulated by one of the pre-senters, Shaurya Bisht, when he said: “If we betray nature, we betray us. If we save nature, we save us.”

This is the fifth year that Galfar Al Misnad is collaborating with Shantiniketan Indian School on World Environment Day. The saplings planted in the first year, are now small trees in front of the school, proving that every small step contributes in creating a green and healthier environment.

The participants at the Environment Awareness Campaign on the occasion of World Environment Day.

MEC registers 1,958 new companies in MayTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Economy and Commerce has registered 1,958 new companies in May, said the Ministry in its business process report released yesterday.

According to the report, the number of new major business records reached 1,461, while the number of new sub-registries reached 497 records.

Limited liability companies accounted for 62 percent of the major business registers, while the category of single owner limited liability companies in second place with 27 percent, and the individual institution came in third place with 10 percent. In May, construction companies topped the list of the most registered activities, with 361 registrations followed by building material trading com-panies with 175 registrations, 149 registrations for services and 148 for restaurants, cafeterias and ice cream shops.

According to the report, the number of commercial licenses issued, modified or renewed during May was 8,283 and the number of licenses issued by the ministry reached 1,620, while 946 licenses were amended, and 5,717 licenses were renewed.

The number of companies closed during last May was 271 companies, and the proportion of closed companies of new companies was 13.8 percent.

Contractors led the list with 53 percent, building material companies followed by 21 percent, public goods trading came third with 10 percent, fol-lowed by electronic appliances and accessories, restaurants,

cafeterias and ice cream shops at 8 percent.

The number of transactions carried out in branches of the ministry during the month of May was 32,200 transactions.

In the field of intellectual property rights, the report pointed out that the number of new patent applications last May reached 44 applications, and 179 patent applications have been renewed. The number of new patent applications in May was 44, where 260 applications were renewed, 23 trademark appli-cations were registered during the same month, and 24 were issued in the field of copyright and related rights.

In May, construction companies topped the list of the most registered activities, with 361 registrations followed by building material trading companies with 175 registrations, 149 registrations for services and 148 for restaurants, cafeterias and ice cream shops.

Charities from Qatar to raise QR60m to help SomaliansCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

He pointed to the deteriorating situ-ation of various sectors of education and health services in Somalia and poor infra-structure and lack of food and medicine, as well as the problems of displacement as a result of disasters, floods and con-flicts, adding that reports of international organizations reveal the difficulty of the humanitarian situation in this country, which is trying to recover.

Executive Director of Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) Youssef Abdullah Al Sada said that recent floods have dis-placed nearly 700,000 people to double the suffering of this Somali people, stressing that this humanitarian campaign aims to alleviate their suffering.

He explained that the QRCS will work through this campaign in various areas of Somalia in the sectors of health care, food security, water, sanitation, education and emergency relief intervention.

He said that QRCS, which has been operating in Somalia since 2000, had implemented a number of projects over the past years which were benefited by

nearly 900,000 people directly, and about 4.5 million people indirectly.

CEO of Silatech, Sabah Al Haidous said the humanitarian situation in Somalia requires the cooperation of humanitarian organisation, and the support of all sectors as well as the donations from the people of Qatar to alleviate the suffering of Somalis through this campaign, which seeks to extend relief assistance to those affected by drought, famine and poverty in Somali regions.

She added that Silatech’s participation in the campaign is a continuation of its hard work in combating poverty and youth unemployment, which are one of the most urgent problems in Somalia. “We are trying to invest the energies of young people in the development of this country and to protect this enormous human wealth from falling prey to extremist groups,” she said.

She said that Silatech, which has been operating in Somalia since 2012, had helped providing 33,400 jobs for young men and women in Somalia by facilitating the access of young entrepreneurs to

finance and labor markets and training them to contribute to the development of promising sectors in that country.

Mohammed Jassim Al Naama, from the department of resources development of the Education Above All Foundation, said that this campaign aims to support the local community in Somalia, which faces great challenges that affected greatly the indicators of sustainable economic development, services and others.

“We seek to empower these groups to become active in this society, contribute to the process of development, and achieve stability,” he said.

The representative of the department of resource development of the Education Above All Foundation said that the foun-dation will use its capacity and network of international relations and partnerships to serve the cause of education in Somalia, which records the lowest enrollment rate

of children in primary education in the world, noting that UNICEF statistics indicate that 4.4 million Somali children are not enrolled in education.

He noted that in 2014, the foundation and UNICEF started the “Formal Edu-cation for Out Of School Children in Somalia” project, providing primary edu-cation for approximately 64,000 children aged 6-4 years, building, qualifying and furnishing 800 classrooms, providing school supplies to 308 schools to enhance the quality of education as well as organ-izing training programs, capacity devel-opment and others.

People of Qatar, individuals, institu-tions and companies have been urgede to support this campaign to help the affected people in Somalia and to stand by them to promote development and achieve security and stability.

On 27th of Ramadan, Qatari human-itarian institutions will launch live radio and TV broadcasting seeking donations for the campaign along with their cam-paigns across different media channels and social networking platforms.

The officials from local charity organisations addressing the press conference.

03FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018 HOME

Kazakhstan Embassy hosts IftarTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Qatar hosted a traditional Iftar on Wednesday at Rotana Hotel.

As Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Qatar, Askar Shokybayev, mentioned and welcomed in his speech, the event was joined by the representatives of the Government, social organisations and private business people of the State of Qatar as well as in Doha accredited heads of diplomatic missions.

The Ambassador also underscored that always a lot of friends of Kazakhstan in Qatar have big interest on Kazakh events in Doha.

Taking this opportunity, in the eve of the celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the new capital the city of Astana, which will take place on July 6 this year, the Embassy of Kaza-khstan in Doha presented to the kind attention of the guests some videos and informed them how Astana established and developed as the new centre of the country.

Both states have very flourishing ties in all spheres of bilateral and multilateral cooperation, supporting each other on the international arena. Recently in May 2018, a number of Qatari high level del-egations of political, economic and

cultural spheres visited Kazakhstan and the cooperation is growing very well.

All the invited participants of the mentioned event expressed to Kaza-khstan’s leadership and nation their well wishes to the coming anniversary of Astana and delivered greetings to each other in honour to the holy month of Ramadan as well as all the best congrat-ulations for the future with a blessed Eid Al Fitr in the end of Ramadan.

The Ambassador of Kazakhstan, Askar Shokybayev, addressing the guests.

QFA organises Suhoor for Indian community representativesTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Football Asso-ciation (QFA), invited all the Indian organisations, companies, associations, and representative of various schools, to have Suhoor at La Cigale Hotel. QFA Director Khalid Al Kuwari welcomed the guests and distributed certificate of appreciation to representatives of various Indian organisations.

The event was attended by representatives from Indian companies, Indian associations, and various Indian schools, and thanked them for their support throughout the season to QFA on various occasion and specially for the Amir Cup final played at Khalifa Stadium on May 19, which was a grand success, and Indian Community sup-ported the QFA, in a very positive way and work together hand in hand to ensure the best possible arrangements for all the spectators coming to stadium and leaving the stadium after the game, including the logistic arrangements, said a release.

Lot of manpower and logistic was required to guide the people to their respective gates and seats and other

arrangements and that was success-fully delivered by working with QFA officials and Indian and Nepali com-munity volunteers.

Khalid Al Kuwari extended his sincere thanks and appreciation for that and requested similar support for future QFA events, next event is on 1st August at Al Saad Stadium.

On behalf of Indian Sports Centre and expatriate community in Doha, M S Bukhari (ISC-Chairman Corporate and Business Development) expressed

his views of the entire Indian community.

“We consider Doha our second home and our solidarity with Qatar government and QFA will always be there,” he said.

He promised QFA that Indian com-munity and Nepali community will make sure that at any time the coop-eration requested by QFA, will be ful-filled in a big way, Indian and Nepali community leaders sitting in the room applauded it.

The dignitaries at the function.

The Minister of Municipality and Environment, H E Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi, and President and General Manager of ExxonMobil Qatar, Alistair Routledge, witnessing the MoU signing yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT / THE PENINSULA

MME, ExxonMobil boost cooperation in environmental researchCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

“Our relationship with Exx-onMobil has furthered the general impact on a number of our projects at the Ministry, and we are pleased to be entering another phase of our strong part-nership,” the Minister added.

A Memorandum of Under-standing (MoU) was signed yes-terday by Assistant Undersec-retary of Environment Affairs at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment, Eng. Ahmed Mohammad Al Sada, and Research Director at ExxonMobil Research Qatar (EMRQ), Dr. Mohamad Yacoub Al Sulaiti.

The signing ceremony was witnessed by H E Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi, President and General Manager for Exxon-Mobil Qatar, Alistair Routledge and representatives from the Ministry and ExxonMobil Qatar. The cer-emony was held at EMRQ offices at the Qatar Science and Tech-nology Park (QSTP).

“We are pleased to build on our longstanding relationship with the Ministry of Municipality and Environment with this MoU signing,” said Routledge. “Exxon-Mobil is committed to responsibly support the sustainable devel-opment, and the work we do at EMRQ supports this commitment. By sharing knowledge with our partners in Qatar, we aim to con-tribute to programs that are important to the country and its people.” Following the ceremony, the Minister toured EMRQ’s labo-ratories and training facilities and spoke to its staff of geologists, engineers and environmental sci-entists. EMRQ, which is an affiliate of ExxonMobil Qatar, has worked

closely with the Ministry of Munic-ipality and Environment since its establishment. Over the years, ExxonMobil’s technical con-sultants have collaborated with several of the administrative units at the ministry, providing advice and support for various projects and workshops.

Eng. Ahmed Mohammad Al Sada said the Ministry aims to protect the environment in Qatar, diversify its resources and pre-serve its in order to achieve sus-tainable development. He said that the Ministry also aims to protect the longevity of living and non-living natural resources, fisheries and ensuring the quality of the environment and health through increased environmental awareness. He added EMRQ and the companies affiliated with it in the country, contribute to sup-porting research that promotes sciences and technology through a number of projects in the areas of environmental management, water reuse, liquefied natural gas (LNG) safety and coastal geology.

Speaking at the signing cer-emony, Dr Al Sulaiti said EMRQ works hard to achieve a wide range of communication objec-tives at the level of society and the industry, noting that the centre supports sustainable development in Qatar in order to build a chal-lenging society and prepare a gen-eration of Qataris with the skills to compete at all levels to achieve these goals.

The programs of ExxonMobil Research Qatar also covers several areas such as risk management and preparedness for emergency management, environmental management, education and pro-

fessional development.Al Sulaiti stressed that the

partnerships such as those between EMRQ and the Ministry of Municipality and Environment provides an opportunity for sci-entists and researchers at the research centre to conduct advanced research in the areas of environmental management, reuse of water and safety in the LNG sector and surface geology.

Dr. Al Sulaiti pointed out that the study of the basic environ-mental survey is a model for coop-eration between the work teams of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment and ExxonMobil Research Qatar. He expressed his delight to present the study to the Ministry, stressing his confidence that it will be a fruitful beginning

of future efforts to protect the rich marine and coastal diversity of Qatar. He pointed out that a team of marine environment experts studied the area north of Ras Laffan Industrial City and south of Al Ruwais to provide compre-hensive and accurate basic envi-ronmental information. This area was chosen for study because its impact on coastal development is minimal besides being a clean marine area devoid of any indus-trial activity and with a rich bio-logical diversity. The study pro-vides information on the current environmental characteristics of the region, helps identify and pre-dicts future environmental impacts, and contains recommen-dations for effective measures to enhance the protection of the

region and valuable marine life.EMRQ and the ministry

assumed their first collaborative efforts in 2010. The two partners have conducted a number of joint assessments, including an assessment of sensitive habitats such as corals and seagrasses; a water quality assessment for dif-ferent regions around the State of Qatar; and an aquifer characteri-zation study, to understand fun-damental controls on aquifer quality. They also collaborated on the Khor Al Adaid project, an inte-grated sedimentlogical and ocea-nographic study, and EMRQ has provided consultancy and assistance with Qatar’s Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan project. Since 2014, MME has sup-ported a project between EMRQ

and Texas A and M at Galveston (TAMUG), to further environ-mental research and marine mammal initiatives and address the preservation of dugongs - large, long-living herbivorous marine mammals found in Qatar’s coastal waters.

In 2010, EMRQ concluded a comprehensive ecological baseline study of northeastern Qatar with Qatar University’s Environmental Studies Center. The study focused on an ecologically rich and bio-logically productive area along a 35 km stretch of the Qatar Marine Zone (QMZ). A team of experi-enced marine ecologists studied the area to provide adequate and accurate ecological baseline infor-mation. Thanks to the study, sci-entists involved in the work now have a better understanding of this coastal and marine zones existing ecological characteristics, and can identify and predict potential eco-logical impacts.

EMRQ was set up at QSTP in 2009 to conduct research in areas of common interest to the State of Qatar and ExxonMobil, including environmental management, water reuse, LNG safety and coastal geology. ExxonMobil, the largest publicly traded interna-tional oil and gas company, uses technology and innovation to help meet the world’s growing energy needs. It holds an industry-leading inventory of resources, is the largest refiner and marketer of petroleum products, and its chemical company is one of the largest in the world. The term Exx-onMobil is used for convenience and may include Exxon Mobil Cor-poration or any affiliates it directly or indirectly stewards.

Siege used as a tool of political pressure against citizens and residents: NHRC officialCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) Secretary- General Maryam bint Abdullah Al Attiyah noted that NHRC has already made significant progress in this regard and has the determination to con-tinue its legal moves and move forward at the international and regional levels in cooperation with all international mechanisms, bodies and organizations. QNA reported.

She thanked all human rights organ-izations that cooperated with the com-mittee in this area, notably the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office of Special Procedures of the United Nations, the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights and international

human rights non-governmental organ-izations, in order to show the suffering of victims through responsible profes-sional work in addressing all the phases of the crisis, and through its reports that reflected the serious humanitarian situ-ation of the siege victims, which resulted in an international public opinion that sides with the suffering of the victims and those affected by the inhuman siege.

Al Attiyah said that NHRC believes that the cause in this crisis is the issue of human rights, which cannot be compro-mised, is not subject to settlements, and does not end with the end of the political crisis but extends until the rights return to their people. “hence, it was our duty to work together to expose the violations caused by the crisis”.

Al Attiyah explained that despite all the challenges that resulted from this crisis, it has created beautiful stories of national solidarity and solidarity, and successes at the social and economic levels. It also created a strong opportunity to promote human rights in the State of Qatar by joining more international con-ventions and enacting national legislation.

Despite all the challenges that resulted from the crisis, the NHRC sec-retary general said, it has created beau-tiful stories of national and popular sol-idarity, and successes at the social and economic levels. It also created a strong opportunity to promote human rights in the State of Qatar by joining more inter-national conventions and enacting

national legislations, she added.Al Attiyah stressed that MHRC will

continue with resolve and will not stop until the unjust siege is lifted and the victims are compensated.

For her part, Dr. Wafaa Al Yazidi, a Qatari mother and divorcee of a Bahraini national who is one of the siege victims, said that the siege era represents a crisis and a family break from the outside and steadfastness, and dignity from the inside for each member of her family, which represents just one of thousands of cases that had their share of the violations and multidimensional effects insistently left behind by the siege countries.

Dr. Al Yazidi added that this is reflected in the attempt by these coun-tries to target the nucleus of the Gulf

society and undermine Islamic law and the content of international, Arab and Gulf covenants as well as the blatant dis-regard for the ties of kinship and unity of fate that bring all Gulf peoples together.

In turn, Mohammed Al Kuwari, one of the success stories during the siege and a Qatari entrepreneur, highlighted his experiment during the siege, especially in the food sector in terms of food and medicine manufacturing with products and services that compete with interna-tional companies in quality and price.

Al Kuwari said that the year of siege has been the best in terms of achieve-ments, expressing pride in what the Qatari industries accomplished in meeting the needs of the local market in a climate of rule of law and equality.

04 FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Jordan PM withdraws tax bill after angry protestsAFP

AMMAN: Jordan’s new prime minister yesterday announced a controversial IMF-backed income tax bill will be with-drawn, after it sparked a week of angry protests in the kingdom.

Crowds have taken to the streets to demand the gov-ernment drop the unpopular reforms, in some of the biggest economic protests to hit Jordan over the past five years.

Doctors, lawyers and teachers staged a strike across the country on Wednesday as discontent over high unem-ployment, poverty and price rises bubbled over.

New Premier Omar Al Razzaz, appointed by King Abdullah II after his predecessor quit over the protests on Monday, announced after talks with legislators that an “agreement had been struck” to withdraw the bill. He said the

legislation would be sent back by parliament to the gov-ernment once a new cabinet is formed, with that process expected to take several days.

Razzaz was ordered by the king to carry out a “compre-hensive review” of the tax pro-posals after the country was rattled by days of protests.

“As unions, we’ve done our duty,” said the head of Jordan’s trade unions council, Ali Al Abous, after a meeting with Razzaz. “The meeting was very

positive and we felt a change in attitude,” he said. “(Razzaz) promised us... that there won’t be anymore decisions that fall on us like parachutes.”

Jordan has blamed its eco-nomic woes on instability wracking the region and the burden of hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees without adequate international support. The tax bill was the latest in a series of austerity measures to cut national debt since Amman secured a $723m loan from the IMF in 2016.

The controversial legis-lation that has sparked much of the ire would have raised taxes on employees by at least five percent and on companies by between 20 and 40 percent.

Although a majority of dep-uties said they would vote against it, protesters still staged repeated night-time demonstra-tions after breaking the Ramadan fast to demand the bill be withdrawn altogether.

The authorities scrambled to defuse the public discontent, but the call by the king to review the tax bill and resignation of prime minister Hani Mulki failed to stem the protests.

Scuffles took place on Wednesday between police forces, mobilised in large numbers, and some 2,000 dem-onstrators who tried to repel them in the capital Amman.

Demonstrators waved Jor-danian flags or carried placards reading “I’m afraid for my future”, while others held up loaves of flatbread with “cor-ruption = hunger” written on them.

Jordan’s designated new Prime Minister Omar Al Razzaz meets with Union leaders in Amman, Jordan, yesterday.

Palestinians gather to stage a protest after Razan Ashraf Najjar, 21, a female paramedic was shot dead by Israeli forces while healing wounded demonstrators during ‘Great March of Return’ protests, in Nablus, West Bank, yesterday.

Israel worried scrapped Argentina match to herald more boycottsAFP

JERUSALEM: Israel cried foul yesterday after Argentina cancelled a football match with the Jewish state, worried that a strengthening cultural boycott could affect its hosting of the 2019 Eurovision song contest.

The World Cup warm-up match, planned for tomorrow in Jerusalem, was called off on Tuesday after a campaign by the Palestinians, with Israeli news-papers pointing fingers at Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev, who was behind the game’s relocation from the northern Israeli city of Haifa to the divided holy city.

An opinion piece in the left-wing Haaretz newspaper said Regev had scored an “own goal” after “imposing politics on sports”, and the centrist Yediot Aharonot featured a sick nine-year-old boy who broke out in tears when he learned he would not be accom-panying Barcelona superstar Lionel Messi onto the pitch.

Politicians were quick to seize on the cancellation, with opposition leader Isaac Herzog telling public radio it was “a failure with Regev’s name on it”.

The Argentine Football Association said that with the World Cup beginning on June 14, the squad needed to “focus on what is really important”.

The Palestinians said the Argentinians pulled out of the match after they realised Israel was using its presence in Jeru-salem for political gain.

Regev rejected the notion that moving the match brought about its cancellation, saying Messi and his family received threats over the game.

Unconfirmed reports in Israeli media spoke of a possible rescheduling of the game —again in Jerusalem — but offi-cials feared the high-profile cancellation would cause long-term damage to the Jewish state’s international standing.

Rotem Kamer, head of the Israel Football Association, said Argentina cancelled the match because of pressure from Pal-estinians and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement — which leads a global campaign against Israel,

targeting the country’s economy, art scene and sports.

“It’s inconceivable that teams won’t come here in official capacities,” Kamer told public radio. “This is a red flag and we’ll have to see how it develops.” Prime Minister Ben-jamin Netanyahu, quoted by Israeli media accompanying him on a visit to London, said he was concerned “there could be pressure to cancel other events in other fields as well”.

Israel sees the BDS movement as a strategic threat and accuses it of anti-Semitism — a claim activists firmly deny, calling it an attempt to discredit them. Several politically active musicians have called off shows in Israel in the past few years, including Lauryn Hill and Elvis Costello, with New Zealand singer Lorde pulling out of a Tel Aviv show in December.

Zimbabwe oppn vows new currency pegged to randAFP

HARARE: Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader Nelson Chamisa vowed yesterday to revive the country’s moribund economy and to introduce a new currency pegged to the South African rand if he gets elected next month.

Zimbabwe’s economy has been on a downturn for more than a decade suf-fering low growth, high unemployment and a severe liquidity crisis that has seen people queue for hours to withdraw limited cash.

“By 2023 we want a double digit

economic growth and a $100bn economy by 2029,” Chamisa told supporters in the capital Harare as he launched the oppo-sition’s manifesto for the July 30 election.

The Movement for Democratic Change Alliance pledged to introduce a new cur-rency aligned to the South African rand. It said its government would join the rand monetary union - a grouping of southern African countries that use the rand as their currency.

Becoming a member of the union “will allow Zimbabwe to issue a new Zimba-bwean dollar that will be pegged to the rand,” it said in the manifesto.

Zimbabwe trashed its fiat currency in 2009 after it was ravaged by hyper-inflation which had peaked at around 500 billion percent, rendering it unusable.

It then adopted a slew of foreign cur-rencies, including the US dollar and the South African rand, but the dollar was more popular.

A few years later US bank notes had started to run short, forcing the gov-ernment to introduce a token currency - the bond notes - parallel to the dollar but widely distrusted. Chamisa, 40, is squaring off against Emmerson Mnangagwa, 75, who succeeded veteran ruler Robert

Mugabe following a brief military take over last year.

The election will be the first without Mugabe who had ruled the country since independence from Britain in 1980.

Previous elections in Zimbabwe have been marred by electoral fraud, intimi-dation and violence, including the killing of scores of opposition supporters in 2008. Mnangagwa has pledged to hold free and fair elections as he seeks to mend international relations, but he has also been accused of involvement in Zanu-PF’s past record of election violence.

No survivors as wreckage of small plane found in KenyaAP

NAIROBI: There are no survivors in the crash of a small plane carrying 10 people that disappeared on Tuesday and was found in pieces high on a Kenyan mountainside, an official said yesterday.

“Information from teams reaching the crash site is that there are no survivors,” said Charles Wako, chairman of the domestic airline Fly-SAX.

The wreckage was spotted southwest of the Aberdare

mountain range nearly two days after contact was lost during the flight from the western town of Kitale to the capital, Nairobi.

Pieces of the plane were seen in dense forest about 11,900 feet (3,627 meters) above sea level near a 400-meter cliff, said Transport Ministry Principal Secretary Paul Mwangi Maringa. The location had made it difficult for rescuers to spot the plane due to cloud cover.

Military personnel on foot and emergency services were on their way to the crash site, Maringa said.

“It will be quite a difficult climb” considering the cliff, Capt. Gilbert Kibe with the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority told reporters. An inves-tigation was under way into the cause of the crash. President Uhuru Kenyatta offered condo-lences to the families of those lost. The plane had been carrying two pilots and eight passengers. Officials said on Wednesday the search efforts were focusing on the mountain range in central Kenya where a mobile phone signal from the plane had been located.

A security personnel carries an electric equipment from a single turboprop Cessna Caravan plane, operated by local firm FlySax, that crashed in a forested cliff in the Aberdare Range, in central Kenya, yesterday.

Mozambique must tackle armed group who hacked 37, Amnesty saysBLOOMBERG

MAPUTO: Mozambique’s authorities must take imme-diate action to halt militants who’ve killed at least 37 people in the southern African nation’s gas-rich north in the past two weeks, Amnesty International said.

The latest deadly attack in Cabo Delgado province occurred Wednesday night, when the militants raided a village, hacking 10 residents to death and burning houses, the London-based rights organization said in a statement. Though known as al-Shabaab among the local population, the militants have no known link to the Somali Islamist group of the same name, Amnesty said.

Mozambique’s north has been roiled by a wave of vio-lence that began in October in Mocimboa da Praia, about 80 kilometers (49.7 miles) south of where energy com-panies including Eni SpA and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. plan to develop gas projects worth nearly $30 billion. Authorities blamed an initial attack on Islamist extremists but haven’t said if subsequent raids were linked.

Read more about the attacks in northern Mozambique

“The Mozambican authorities must take imme-diate and effective action to end the killings including by reinforcing security measures to protect the lives of villagers in the region, and carrying out investigations into all the recent attacks with the aim of bringing suspected perpe-trators to account,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty’s regional director for Southern Africa.

17 pro-Assad fighters dead in IS attackBEIRUT: Islamic State (IS) group militants killed at least 17 pro-regime fighters including six soldiers in surprise attacks in southern Syria, a monitor said. Nine militants also lost their lives in the assaults in the desert of the southern province of Sweida, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

They were the first attacks of their kind in the area, where no IS presence had been noted in more than a year, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said. The 17 pro-regime combattants killed also included nine Iranians and fighters belonging to pro-Iran Shia militias, as well as two unidentified fighters, he said. IS has ramped up its attacks against pro-regime forces since its fighters last month left their last stronghold near Damascus under an evac-uation deal with the regime.

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military says it has dropped leaflets across the Gaza Strip, warning residents to stay far from the Israeli border during a mass protest planned today.

Military officials are expecting a large turnout, raising the likelihood of bloodshed. Over 115 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire during near-weekly demonstrations fueled in large part by an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade. Israel has come under heavy international criticism for its use of live fire against unarmed protesters.

Israel threatens Gazans with leaflets

Jordan has blamed its economic woes on instability wracking the region and the burden of hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees without adequate international support.

05FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018 ISLAM

The last ten nights of RamadanSALMAN AL OADAH

The last ten nights of Ramadan are very special. Sometimes there are only nine nights, whenever the

month of Ramadan lasts for only 29 days.

Nevertheless, they are still tradi-tionally referred to as “the last ten nights”. The last ten nights of Ramadan are very special. These are the nights that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) would spend in constant worship. Among these nights is Laylat Al Qadr (the Night of Power) — a night more blessed than a thousand months.

The Prophet used to single these nights out for worship and the per-formance of good deeds.

He would exert himself in worship during these ten nights more than any other nights of the year.

The Peophet’s (PBUH) wife Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) tells us: “During the last ten nights of Ramadan, the Prophet (peace be upon him) would tighten his waist belt and spend the night in worship. He would also wake up his family.” (Al Bukhari) Aisha also says: “I had never known Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) to read the entire Quran in a single night, or to spend the whole night in prayer up until the morning, or to spend a whole month in fasting – except in Ramadan.” (Nasai’ & Ibn Majah) When we say that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) spent the whole night in worship, we should qualify it. This is because he would spend some time eating dinner, par-taking of his pre-dawn meal, and other similar activities.

However, he would spend most of the night in worship.

Waking Up The Family Aisha informs us that the Prophet

used to wake up his family during the last ten nights of Ramadan. Indeed, he used to wake up his wives for prayer throughout the year, but that was so that they could pray for a small fraction of the night.

We know this, because Umm Salamah, the Prophet’s wife, relates that the Prophet woke her up one night and said: “Glory be to Allah. What has been sent down of trials during this night? What has been sent down of treasures, so that the denizens of the bedchambers will be awakened? O Lord! To be clothed in this world by naked in the Hereafter.” (Bukhari) During the last ten nights of Ramadan, Prophet Muhammad would wake up his wives to pray for a much longer portion of the night than during the rest of the year.

Exerting In Worship Aisha tells us: “The Prophet would

exert himself in worship during the last

ten nights more than at any other time of the year.” (Muslim) The great jurist, Al Shafi’i, declares: “It is Sunnah for one to exert greater efforts in worship during the last ten nights of Ramadan.” When Aisha tells us that Prophet Muhammad would “tighten his waist belt”, she is speaking figuratively. The phrase means to set about to devote oneself fully and wholeheartedly to the task at hand. One of the greatest distinctions of these ten special nights is that one of them is Laylat Al Qadr. This is the greatest night of the year – better than a thousand months. This means that a Muslim can earn more rewards on the Night of Power than he would if – excluding this special night – he were to worship his Lord for eightyfour years straight. This is one of the immense favors that God has bestowed upon the Muslim community.

Imam Ibrahim Al Nakhai says: “Good works performed on this night are better than those performed consistently for a thousand months.” Abu Hurayrah relates that the Prophet (PBUH) said: “Whoever spends Laylat Al Qadr in prayer, believing in Allah and seeking His reward, will be forgiven all of his past sins.” (Bukhari & Muslim) “Believing in Allah”, in this hadith, means not only to believe in God, but to believe in the reward that we are promised for observing prayer on this night.

Laylat Al Qadr (the Night of Power) is on one of the odd nights. Aisha relates that Prophet Muhammad said: “Seek out Laylat al-Qadr in the odd nights during the last ten nights of Ramadan.” (Bukhari & Muslim) It is most likely one of the last seven odd nights. Ibn Umar relates that Prophet Muhammad said: “Look for it in the last ten nights. If one of you falls weak or unable to do so, then he should at least try on the seven remaining nights.” (Muslim) The most likely can-didate for Laylat Al Qadr is the 27th night of Ramadan. This is indicated by the statement of Ubayy ibn Ka’b: “I swear by Allah that I know which night it is. It is the night in which Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) ordered us to observe in prayer. It is the night on the eve of the 27th of Ramadan. Its sign is that the sun will rise in the morning of that day white without exuding any rays.” (Muslim) A Muslim should seek out this special night by spending the last ten nights of Ramadan engaged in various acts of worship.

These include reciting the remem-brances of God, reading the Quran, and begging God’s forgiveness.

It is best for us to strive hard on all ten nights, because the Prophet (PBUH) said: “The way we “look for” Laylat Al Qadr is by engaging in extra worship.” When the Prophet (PBUH) said: “Look for it in the last ten nights” he did not

mean that we should literally “look for” signs and indications that distinguish Laylat al-Qadr from other nights.

The things that distinguish this night from other nights are part of the Unseen.

God says: Surely We revealed it on a blessed night. Surely We ever wish to warn (against evil) – On this night, every wise matter is made distinct.

(Dukhan 44: 3-4) God says in the Quran: Laylat Al Qadr is better than a thousand months. The angels and the Spirit descend therein, by the permission of their Lord, with every decree.

(This night is) peace, until the rising of the dawn. (Al Qadr 97: 3-5) These are the ways in which Laylat Al Qadr is special. They are not things that we can see with our eyes. No one after the Prophet can see the angels.

I’tikaf Observing a retreat in the mosque

is of the best things we can do during the last ten nights of Ramadan. Aisha tells us: “The Prophet (peace be upon him) used to observe a retreat in the mosque during the last ten nights of Ramadan up until he died. His wives continued to observe this practice after his death.” (Bukhari & Muslim) The practice of i`tikaf is a strongly recom-mended act. It is defined as remaining in retreat in the mosque for the express purpose of worship. The purpose of

doing so is to devote one’s heart exclu-sively to God. The person engaging in i`tikaf keeps this intention close to mind and seeks God’s blessings. He should not forget the reason why he is observing this retreat. A person observing i’tikaf does not leave the mosque except for what is absolutely necessary.

While in the mosque, he should busy himself with the remembrance of God. He should make sure to offer the remembrances of the morning and evening and the prescribed remem-brances for the five daily prayers. He should perform all of the Sunnah prayers. He should read as much of the Quran as he can. He should spend less time eating and sleeping as little as pos-sible. He should avoid unnecessary talk. However, he should engage in advising his fellow Muslims and in enjoining them to truth and to patience.

Generosity It is encouraged for us to be extra

generous during the last ten nights of Ramadan, without being extravagant or ostentatious in our giving. Ibn Abbas relates that: “Allah’s Messenger (PBUH) was the most generous of all people in doing good, and he was at his most gen-erous during the month of Ramadan. Gabriel used to meet with him every year throughout the month of Ramadan, so the Prophet could recite the Quran to him. Whenever Gabriel met with him, he became more generous than a beneficial breeze.” (Bukhari & Muslim) Al Nawawi states: “Generosity and open-handedness are strongly encouraged in Ramadan, especially during the last ten nights.

By doing so, we emulate the example of Allah’s Messenger (PBUH) as well as of our Pious Predecessors. Also, this month is noble, and good works carried out in this month are more blessed than they are at any other time.

Also, during this month, people are preoccupied with fasting and worship, and this distracts them from their live-lihood, so they might need some assistance during this time.”

www.onislam.net

Almighty Allah says in the Holy Quran: “Laylat Al Qadr is better than a thousand months. The angels and the Spirit descend therein, by the permission of their Lord, with every decree. (This night is) peace, until the rising of the dawn.” (97: 3-5)

Tahajjud Prayer is part of the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and

blessings be upon him), which Muslims are preferred to follow all the time.

In his famous work, Fiqh As-Sunnah, Sheikh Sayyid Sabiq elaborates on the subject as follows: Ordering His Mes-senger to perform Tahajjud, Allah Almighty says: And during a part of the night, pray Tahajjud beyond what is incumbent on you; maybe your Lord will raise you to a position of great glory. (Al Israa’ 17:79) This order, although it was spe-cifically directed to the Prophet, also refers to all Muslims, since the Prophet is a perfect example and guide for us in all matters.

Moreover, performing Tahajjud Prayers regularly qual-ifies one as one of the righteous and makes one earn Allah’s bounty and mercy. In praising those who perform the late night Prayers, Allah says what means: And they who pass the night prostrating themselves before their Lord and standing. (Al Furqan 25:64)

Next to these Quranic verses, there also exist a number of hadiths that reinforce the

importance of Tahajjud. Abdullah ibn Salam reported: “When the Prophet (PBUH) came to Madinah, the people gathered around him and I was one of them. I looked at his face and understood that it was not the face of a liar. The first words I heard him say were: ‘O people, spread the salutations, feed the people, keep the ties of kinship, and pray during the night while the others sleep, and you will enter Paradise in peace.’” (Tir-midhi.) Salman Al Farsi quoted the Prophet (PBUH) as saying: “Observe the night Prayer; it was the practice of the righteous before you and it brings you closer to your Lord and it is penance for evil deeds and erases the sins and repels disease from the body.” (Tabarani)

Etiquette Of Prayer The following acts are rec-

ommended for one who wishes to perform the Tahajjud Prayer: Upon going to sleep, one should make the intention to perform the Prayers.

Abu Ad-Darda’ quoted the Prophet (PBUH) as saying: “Whoever goes to his bed with the intention of getting up and praying during the night, but,

being overcome by sleep, fails to do that, he will have recorded for him what he has intended, and his sleep will be reckoned as a charity (an act of mercy) for him from his Lord.” (Annasa’i and Ibn Majah) On waking up, it is recommended that one wipes the face, use a toothbrush, and look to the sky and make the supplication which has been reported from the Prophet (PBUH).

Abu Hudhaifa reported: “Whenever the Prophet intended to go to bed, he would recite: With Your name, O Allah, I die and I live. And when he woke up from his sleep, he would say: All the Praises are for Allah Who has made us alive after He made us die (sleep) and unto Him is the Resurrection.” (Bukhari) One should begin with two quick rak`ahs and then one may pray whatever one wishes after that. `A’ishah said: “When the Prophet prayed during the late-night, he would begin his Prayers with two quick rak`ahs.” (Muslim)

It is recommended that one wakes up one’s family, for Abu Hurairah quoted the Prophet (PBUH) as saying: “May Allah bless the man who gets up during the night to pray and

wakes up his wife and who, if she refuses to get up, sprinkles water on her face. And may Allah bless the woman who gets up during the night to pray and wakes up her husband and who, if he refuses, sprinkles water on his face.” (Ahmad) The Prophet (PBUH) also said:

“If a man wakes his wife and prays during the night or they pray two rak`ahs together, they will be recorded among those (men and women) who (con-stantly) make remembrance of Allah.” (Abu Dawud) If one gets sleepy while performing Tahajjud, one should sleep. This is based on the hadith narrated by `A’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her), who quoted Allah’s Messenger as saying: “When one of you gets up during the night for Prayer and his Quranic recital gets mixed up to the extent that he does not know what he says, he should lie down.” (Muslim)

Recommended Time Tahajjud may be performed

in the early part of the night, the middle part of the night, or the latter part of the night, but after the obligatory `Isha’ Prayer (night Prayer).

While describing the

Prophet’s way of performing Prayer, Anas (may Allah be pleased with him) said: “If we wanted to see him praying during the night, we could see him praying.

If we wanted to see him sleeping during the night, we could see him sleeping. And sometimes he would fast for so many days that we thought he would not leave fasting throughout that month. And sometimes he would not fast (for so many days) that we thought he would not fast during that month.” (Bukhari, Ahmad and Nasa’i.) Commenting on this subject, Ibn Hajar says: “There was no specific time in which the Prophet (PBUH) would perform his late night Prayer; but he used to do whatever was easiest for him.”

Best Time It is best to delay this Prayer

to the last third portion of the night. Abu Hurairah (may Allah be pleased with him) quoted the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) as saying: “Our Lord descends to the lowest heaven during the last third of the night, inquiring: ‘Who will call on Me so that I may respond to him? Who is

asking something of Me so I may give it to him? Who is asking for My forgiveness so I may forgive him?’” (Al Bukhari) Amr ibn Absah (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that he heard the Prophet (PBUH) saying: “The closest that a slave comes to his Lord is during the middle of the latter portion of the night. If you can be among those who remember Allah the Exalted One at that time, then do so.” (Tirmidhi)

THE NUMBER OF RAKAHS Tahajjud Prayer does not entail a specific number of rak`ahs that must be performed, nor is there any maximum limit that may be performed. It would be fulfilled even if one prayed just one rakah of Witr after `Isha’.

There are narrations, which prove that the Prophet (PBUH) performed 10 rakats for the tahajud prayer. However, the Prophet’s normal habit was that he would perform 8 rakats, hence, it is preferable to perform 8. Similarly to pray 2 or 4 rakats is also allowed. (Fatawa Darul Uloom p.304 v.4)

If you are going to delay your witr salah until the last portion of the night you can perform the 8 or 10 rakats fol-lowed by the witr.

The right way to perform tahajjud

06 FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018ASIA

Pranab reminds RSS of India’s ‘soul of pluralism’IANS

NAGPUR: Speaking at its head-quarters, former President Pranab Mukherjee yesterday did some plain-speaking on nation-alism and patriotism to RSS cadre telling them that India’s multiple faiths and cultures made it tolerant and that the soul of the nation resided in its pluralism and secularism.

Calling for a dialogue to balance competing interests and reconcile them, he made it clear that hatred dilutes nationalism and intolerance will dilute national identity. “Divergent stands in public discourse have to be recognised.”

Sharing “some truths that I have internalised during my 50 year long public life” as a parlia-mentarian and administrator, he said the soul of India resided in “pluralism and tolerance”.

“This plurality of our society has come through assimilation of ideas over centuries. Secu-larism and inclusion are a matter of faith for us. It is our composite culture which makes us into one nation,” he said, addressing the

third year annual training camp at the RSS headquarters here even as his acceptance of the invitation to the event came in for strong criticism from Con-gress leaders and Left parties.

Invoking the vision of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel, Mukherhjee said India’s nationhood was not one lan-guage, one religion or one enemy.

“It’s the perennial one

universalism of 1.3 billion people who use more than 122 lan-guages, 1,600 dialects in their every day lives, practice seven major religions, belong to three major ethnic groups... live under one system, one flag and one identity of being ‘Bharatiya’ and have no enemies. That is what makes India a diverse and united nation,” he said, speaking in English and peppering his speech with some words and phrases from his mother tongue Bengali.

‘It looks like new’: Mumbai slums get colourful makeoverAFP

MUMBAI: Mumbai’s slums are getting a colourful makeover thanks to an organisation that aims to change how people perceive deprived areas in India’s financial capital.

Volunteers have transformed some 12,000 homes across four different areas in the city of 20 million people into a bright visual spectacle. Artists have also created several elaborate murals as part of the initiative by non-profit group Chal Rang De, which means “Let’s Go Paint”.

“We wanted to change the way people look at slums in Mumbai, in India,” the organisa-tion’s co-founder Dedeepya Reddy said. “When you say ‘slums’ all you think about are the negative things, the dirtiness.

That becomes a reflection of the people who stay here but it’s not the case. “They are really amazing people, they are very happy individuals, and we wanted their locality to be a reflection of who they are.”

Around 40 percent of Mum-bai’s population live in slums, according to various estimates. The settlements are typically cramped and structures are often dilapidated and lack access to proper toilets.

Chal Rang De was born last year when Reddy had the idea to paint the outside of homes in the gloomy hilltop slum village of Asalpha in the north of the city.

Some 750 volunteers answered a call on social media to help brighten up the area by painting homes in a rainbow of colours. Some in the city now

even refer to the area as Mum-bai’s “Positano”, after the Italian town which has buildings with equally vibrant facades.

The group then turned their attentions to three neighbouring settlements in the northern suburb of Khar. Almost 3,000 volunteers turned up over two weekends last month.

The 31-year-old says resi-dents are initially sceptical when she approaches them with the idea but are quickly convinced.

“There are now lots of colours in our area. It looks like something new and is like a gift for us,” 30-year-old Sanjay Naresh Gaikar said.

Chal Rang De has teamed up with a waterproofing company to lay special material that will prevent leakages for up to five years.A view of houses painted in bright colours at a fishing area in Mumbai.

Bangladesh body count mounts in drug warREUTERS

DHAKA/MUMBAI: The death toll in a Bangladeshi “zero tolerance” crackdown on drugs has risen to 140, with about 18,000 people arrested, the government said yesterday, as a group of activists urged the United Nations to step in to stop the bloodshed.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina approved the anti-nar-cotics campaign in early May to tackle the spread of metham-phetamines but the killings have raised fears among rights groups of a bloody Philippine-style cam-paign to wipe out drugs. “In a

manner reminiscent of the Phil-ippines drug war, Bangladeshi police justified these killings as supposedly happening during ‘gunfights’ with rival gangs or law enforcement officers acting in self-defence during anti-drug operations,” the International Drug Policy Consortium said.

“Evidence worldwide have shown that such a violent and abusive approach has not managed to curb the illicit drug market, but it can be used as a political tool to win political elec-tions and target unwanted oppo-sition,” said the consortium of nearly 200 non-governmental organisations.

Facebook blacklists hardline Buddhist group in MyanmarAFP

YANGON: Facebook has black-listed a group of Myanmar Buddhist hardliners including monks notorious for bilious hate speech against Rohingya Muslims, the company said yesterday, as it scrambles to show it is tackling inflammatory content.

The social media company plays an outsized role in a country that has only recently come online and boasts 18 million accounts among the pop-ulation of around 50 million people.

UN investigators have said that Facebook has morphed into a “beast” in the country and that hate speech and incitement to violence against the Rohingya are rampant on the site.

Some 700,000 Rohingya have fled a violent army crackdown in Myanmar to Bang-ladesh since August last year -- after years of increasingly violent and angry discourse against the minority, much of it playing out on Facebook.

In response, Facebook this week has undertaken its highest-profile visit yet to Myanmar.

It banned the Buddhist

nationalist movement Ma Ba Tha from its platform, as well as a pair of prominent monks known for stoking hatred towards the Rohingya.

“They are not allowed a presence on Facebook, and we will remove any accounts and content which support, praise or represent these individuals or organisations,” said Content Policy Manager David Caragliano.

Extremist monks Par-maukkha and Thuseitta join their fellow firebrand clergyman Wirathu on the blacklist, after he was banned in January.

Monsoon showers delay flight servicesAircraft queue up on the tarmac due to monsoon showers delay at Mumbai airport, yesterday.

Congress gets Mani back into UDF foldIANS

NEW DELHI/THIRUVANAN-THAPURAM: After hectic political parleys between Congress leader from Kerala and the high command, including party President Rahul Gandhi, it was decided to hand over a Rajya Sabha seat to former ally Kerala Congress-Mani (KC-M), paving the way for its return into the UDF fold.

Of the three seats to which elections are to be held later this month, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) is able to win just one seat and was likely to renominate Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson P J Kurien, but this is now unlikely with the decision.

Addressing reporters soon after the over an hour long meeting with Gandhi, former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said this is just a one-time adjustment.

The general consensus in the UDF is strengthening of the alliance and that’s the need of the hour and to do that, “we all felt that KC-M should get a seat. As a special case, this time the Rajya Sabha seat will be given to them”, he said.

“In return, the Congress will get a Rajya Sabha seat when it falls vacant after four years... This out of turn allotment need be seen only as a special case.”

Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala, who also took part in the discussions, said the KC-M was part of the UDF for 43 years and due to certain issues they decided to opt out about two years back, but in Delhi, they always remained part of the UPA alliance.

“Even after leaving the UDF, they gave their support to the UDF in three by-elections in Kerala that took place in the past nearly two years. Tejashwi meets

Rahul for ‘grand alliance’NEW DELHI: After a major boost for a united opposition in the Lok Sabha and Assembly bypolls last month, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav met Congress President Rahul Gandhi and discussed forging of a “grand alliance” ahead of the 2019 general elections to defeat the BJP.

Tejashwi said that he along with other opposition leaders are committed to take the nation out of a climate of fear generated by the “right-wing authoritarian regime”.

“We are here not to form governments but to transform the lives of the downtrodden against the wishes of the current right-wing authori-tarian regime,” Yadav tweeted.

BJP chief meets SAD leadership for 2019 plansCHANDIGARH: BJP Pres-ident Amit Shah met leaders of alliance partner Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) here and discussed the strategy for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Shah, who arrived here on Thursday afternoon, drove straight to the government apartment of five-time former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal in Sector 4 here, and held a closed-door meeting with top Akali Dal leadership.

Apart from Parkash Singh Badal, 90, Shah met Badal’s son and party President Sukhbir Singh Badal whose wife Harsimrat Kaur Badal is the Union Minister for Food Processing in the Narendra Modi government.

Leaders of the SAD and BJP’s Punjab unit were present at the meeting.

India, US, Japan, Australia reiterate call for free, prosperous Indo-PacificIANS

NEW DELHI: The quad comprising India, the US, Japan and Australia met in Singapore and reit-erated their call for a free and prosperous Indo-Pacific and to promote a rules-based order in the region. According to an External Affairs Ministry statement here, foreign ministry officials of the four countries met on the sidelines of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Senior Offi-cials Meeting in the southeast Asian city state.

It said the four nations considered ways to pursue shared objectives in the areas of

connectivity and development, regional security, including counter-terrorism and non-prolifer-ation, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and maritime cooperation.

According to the statement, the meeting of the quad that was revived on the sidelines of the Asean Summit in the Philippines in November last year, the participants reaffirmed their support for a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region. “They also confirmed their common com-mitment, based on shared values and principles, to promote a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific,” the statement said.

Pranab has shown mirror of truth to RSS: CongressNEW DELHI: Hours after Congress leaders had slammed former President Pranab Mukherjee for attending an RSS event, the party yesterday praised him for showing “mirror of truth” to the Sangh by reminding it of India’s pluralism, tolerance, secularism and inclusiveness as an article of faith and soul of the country. The party also said Mukherjee reminded the Prime Minister Narendra Modi of his ‘Rajdharma’ and that “Indian nationalism is constitutional patriotism”. Congress spokes-person Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a statement that “He particularly highlighted the imperative need of freeing the public discourse from all forms of violence - physical and verbal, besides putting compassion, harmony and non-violence as the centre stage of our public life,” he added.

07FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018 ASIA

Pakistan reviews draft action plan against terror financingINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: Amid increasing global pressure to move deci-sively against proscribed organ-isations, Pakistan yesterday reviewed its new draft action plan for submission to global bodies working on curbing money laundering and terror financing.

The action plan was reviewed just two days before the filing of comments to the observations raised by the Asia Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering. The APG and the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) recommendations to curb money laundering and terror-financing were first discussed in

a federal cabinet meeting. The proposed action plan was then reviewed in a meeting chaired by Finance Minister Dr Shamshad Akhtar.

Pakistan is required to submit an action plan for review by the FATF in its plenary meeting, scheduled to take place in France from June 24 to June 29. Pakistan risks being placed on the blacklist of countries that financially aid terrorism if its action plan is rejected by the task force. “The caretaker gov-ernment will do whatever is required to make sure that Pakistan is not blacklisted,” said Barrister Ali Zafar, the caretaker federal minister for information and law.

“I am confident that Paki-stan’s existing legal regime is compliant with global anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terror financing (CTF) regimes,” he added.

Zafar said the Finance Min-istry will require some more time for finalisation of the plan and then it will make a final presen-tation before the federal cabinet. He said the caretaker gov-ernment will try to find solutions to all issues while remaining within the limits of the Constitution.

Caretaker Minister for Finance Dr Shamshad Akhtar chaired a meeting to review dif-ferent FATF related issues, according to a terse statement

issued by the ministry. In Feb-ruary, the FATF had decided to place Pakistan on its greylist of countries that do not do enough to financially curb terrorism.

Sources said the new plan revolves around four key areas of concerns, expressed by the APG on Money Laundering and the FATF. The FATF wanted Pakistan to implement 27 rec-ommendations to show progress in these four areas.

These areas are related to improving supervisions of the AML and the CTF, curbing the illicit cross-border movement of currency through Chaman and Torkham, improving prosecution in AML and CTF cases, and ensuring enforcement of United

Nations Security Council resolutions.

Zafar said improving prose-cution and investigation in money laundering and terrorism financing cases is in the interest of Pakistan. Pakistan had sub-mitted its action plan with the APG that met in Bangkok last month but the body expressed its dissat-isfaction on progress on the issues of actions against proscribed organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF). There is also pressure on Pakistan to take action against the Haqqani Network, but Pakistan’s position has remained that the Haqqani Network is based in Afghanistan.

Maryam secures forms to contest from Lahore

INTERNEWS

LAHORE: PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz Sharif yesterday obtained nomination papers to contest her first ever election on the National Assembly seats NA-125, a stronghold of the party, and NA-127 in Lahore.

Through her representative, Nawaz secured the nomination forms from the office of the dis-trict returning officer. Before the latest delimitation conducted by the Election Commission of Pakistan, NA-125 was NA-120, which the PML-N has never lost even during a dictatorship.

In the 2013 general elections, ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif was elected to the assembly from NA-120 defeating

Dr Yasmin Rashid of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf with a consid-erable margin.

After the disqualification of Sharif in Panama Papers case by the Supreme Court, his ailing wife Kalsoom Nawaz was elected as MNA from the same constituency in last year’s much-hyped by-election.

Meanwhile, 439 candidates obtained nomination papers for

various National Assembly con-stituencies of Lahore.

Former National Assembly speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, former adviser to prime minister Haroon Akhtar, Syeda Imtiaz Fatima, Matloob Ahmad Saffi were among 40 candidates who obtained nomination forms for NA-133. Faiza Malik of PPP and 13 other candidates secured the nomination papers for NA-135.

As many as 650 candidates secured nomination papers for 30 seats of Punjab Assembly. Bilal Yasin, Rana Mubashir, Rana Mashhood, Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman, Rana Sohail and Maqsood Alam were among the prominent names. The district returning officer would display the initial list of candidates on June 8, the last day for sub-mission of nomination papers.

Abdullah keen on contesting pollsREUTERS

LONDON: Abdullah Abdullah, the political leader who twice backed down from election disputes that plunged Afghan-istan into crisis, said yesterday he had not ruled out standing again next year, and might agree to share power with his opponent.

Abdullah narrowly lost presidential elections in 2009 and 2014 that he disputed as fraudulent. Both times, standoffs after the vote para-lyzed the country for months and threatened to unravel a political system backed by thousands of U.S. troops.

He now serves under his most recent opponent, Pres-ident Ashraf Ghani, as “chief executive” of a unity gov-ernment in an ad hoc, US-bro-k e r e d p o w e r - s h a r i n g arrangement that ended the second electoral impasse four years ago.

Abdullah is the heir to the powerful political faction once known as the Northern Alliance,

a multi-ethnic coalition of guer-rilla movements that fought against the Taliban and allied with the United States after the September 11 attacks.

Afghanistan’s Chief Executive, Abdullah Abdullah, leaves the Foreign Office in London, yesterday.

China looks to bolster militancy fight at summitBEIJING: China will seek to bolster the fight against extremism at a regional security summit this weekend with some of its closest diplo-matic allies, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Jointly led by Russia and China, the Shanghai Cooper-ation Organisation (SCO) was launched in 2001 to combat radical Islam and other security concerns in their own countries and across Central Asia. It added two new members, India and Pakistan, last year and Iran has been knocking at the door. Tehran is currently an observer rather than a full member of a bloc that also includes four ex-Soviet Central Asian republics. “One of the pressing tasks facing the SCO is to continue fighting against militants of the Islamic State who, following the extremist group’s defeat in Syria and Iraq, have returned to their native countries, some of which are SCO members or observers,” China’s official Xinhua news agency said.

Kabul announces ceasefire with Taliban for EidAFP

K A B U L : A f g h a n i s t a n announced an apparently unilateral ceasefire with the Taliban for Eid, though opera-tions against other groups including Islamic State will continue.

The week-long ceasefire, which was backed by the US and would bring some welcome relief to war-weary civilians, will last “from the 27th of Ramadan until the fifth day of Eid Al Fitr”, President Ashraf Ghani tweeted from an official account, indicating it could run from June 12-19. It was not immediately clear if the Taliban would agree to the ceasefire, the first during Eid since the US invasion in 2001.

“We are checking with our officials regarding the ceasefire announcement,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

The surprise declaration comes on the heels of a fatwa issued by Afghanistan’s top clerics branding suicide attacks “haram”, or forbidden, and after the Pentagon announced that senior Taliban officials had been negotiating with Afghan authorities on a possible ceasefire.

Nearly 17 years after they were toppled from power, the

Taliban are resurgent, with Afghan forces — who have taken the lead in the conflict since Nato combat troops pulled out in 2014 — struggling to contain them, while civilians pay a disproportionate price in the fighting.

“(T)he Afghan government directs all the security and defence forces of the country... to stop all the attacks on the Taliban, but the operation will continue against Daesh (Islamic State), Al-Qaeda and other international terrorist net-works,” Ghani said in an official statement.

Ghani added that more details about the ceasefire will be revealed during a “massive gathering” next week but did not elaborate further.

Deputy interior affairs min-ister General Akhtar Mohammad Ebrahimi said that if security forces are attacked during the ceasefire period, “your security and defence forces will respond”.

Trump says ‘all ready’ for Kim summit as he hosts AbeAFP

WASHINGTON: Five days before meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, US Pres-ident Donald Trump said yesterday the unprecedented summit was “all ready to go,” as he welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the White House.

Trump and Abe were to hold a joint press conference at the White House at about 2pm (1800 GMT), before heading to Canada for what promises to be a tense Group of Seven summit clouded by the US leader’s aggressive trade policies.

But before tackling the thorny trade issue, Trump expressed unbridled optimism about his June 12 tete-a-tete with Kim in Singapore.

“The summit is all ready to go,” Trump said, with Abe at his side. “It’s going to be much more than a photo op.” Since the first inkling that a Trump-Kim summit could be on the cards, Japan has repeatedly insisted that Washington be mindful not to let its guard down with the nuclear-armed regime in Pyongyang. And by coming to Washington to see Trump for the second time in less than two months, Abe wants to be sure to get his point across to the US president, amid the intense dip-lomatic flurry over the future of the Korean peninsula.

Before leaving Tokyo, the Japanese leader emphasized that during his lightning visit to Washington, he hoped to

“closely coordinate and agree” with Trump on an approach to the North Korea issue. He clearly outlined what would need to happen for the summit to be a success: tangible progress on curbing the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as well as answers about Japanese nationals kidnapped by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s. Above all, Trump seems

most enthused by the notion of being the first sitting US leader to hold direct talks with a scion of the ruling Kim dynasty.

The intensifying diplomacy on North Korea has so far left Abe as the odd man out: Trump is preparing to meet Kim, while Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in have each already seen the North’s leader twice.

US President Donald Trump welcomes Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the White House in Washington DC, yesterday.

Philippine police arrest nearly 500 in alleged online fraudMANILA: Philippine police arrested nearly 500 people, including eight Israeli nationals, who they say were involved in an online investment fraud that victimised people overseas, including Australia and South Africa, police said yesterday.

In one of the Philippines’ biggest anti-cybercrime busts in years, police chief Oscar Albayalde said 474 Filipino employees and the Israelis were taken into custody fol-lowing the raid on three buildings in Clark Freeport, a former US Air Force base north of Manila, where the alleged online fraud was committed.

The suspects lured victims into investing in foreign stocks in a pur-portedly flourishing London-based company then took their money through an online app after obtaining their bank account and credit card details, said Chief Super-intendent Marni Marcos, who heads the national police Anti-Cybercrime Group.

It was not immediately clear if the Taliban would agree to the ceasefire, the first during Eid since the US invasion in 2001.

Before the latest delimitation conducted by the Election Commission of Pakistan, NA-125 was NA-120, which the PML-N has never lost even during a dictatorship.

LEFT: Maryam Nawaz Sharif looks on during party’s workers convention in Islamabad. RIGHT: Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), waves to supporters after submitting nomination papers for the 2018 general elections, at the district City Court in Karachi, yesterday.

Ministers signed off on a plan to beef up the alliance’s ability to mobilise forces quickly in the event of a crisis, as concern about the threat from Russia shows no sign of abating.

08 FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018EUROPE

Nato chief hails German defence spending boostAFP

BRUSSELS: Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg yesterday hailed German plans to increase defence spending by 80 percent by 2024 as “a step in the right direction” amid US demands for Europe to pay its way.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly lashed European allies for failing to meet a com-mitment to spend two percent of GDP on defence by 2024, with economic powerhouse Germany coming in for par-ticular criticism.

Germany’s announcement that it is increasing its defence budget looks to have brought some relief in a row that threatens to dominate a summit of Nato leaders next month. “I welcome the fact that Germany has stopped the cuts... and also (has) plans to increase defence spending by 80 percent over a decade,” Stoltenberg said as he arrived for a gathering of all 29 Nato defence ministers in Brussels.

“This is steps in the right direction, I welcome them and it is part of a pattern we now see across Europe and Canada, where allies are spending more.” As an increasingly bitter trans-atlantic trade spat hung over the meeting, Stoltenberg announced

that European Nato members and Canada are on course to increase their defence spending by 3.82 percent this year -- the fourth consecutive annual rise.

Over the last four years, Europe and Canada have spent an extra $87.3bn on defence, according to Nato figures. Chan-cellor Angela Merkel indicated on Wednesday that German defence spending would rise to 1.5 percent of GDP by 2025. While still short of the magic two percent, this would still represent an 80 percent hike over a decade.

In the short term, Berlin plans to boost its military budget by €3bn to €41.5bn ($49bn) next year. Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon echoed Stoltenberg’s welcome, saying the US was “encouraged by Germany’s effort”.

It marks a softening in tone from the tough message brought

by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to a meeting of Nato foreign minsters in April.

Then the ex-CIA chief said bluntly that Germany was not doing enough to meet the target it had signed up to at the Wales summit in 2014. Currently the US accounts for nearly 72 percent of all defence spending in Nato and only three European countries hit the two percent GDP target — Britain, Greece and Estonia.

Allliance officials are hopeful that four more will join the list by the July 11-12 summit — most likely Poland, Romania, Latvia and Lithuania. German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said Berlin “fully supports the two percent target”.

“The Bundeswehr (German army) is growing again, it is being modernised,” she said as she arrived for the meeting. “Next year we will already be at 1.3 percent (of GDP).”

Tuesday’s talks came with Washington and Europe at logger-heads over a series of major inter-national issues, from punishing new US tariffs on steel and alu-minium to Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord.

Stoltenberg has admitted there are “serious differences” within the alliance but insisted

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg (second left), US Defence Minister James Mattis (second right), Estonian Defence Minister Juri Luik (right), and Defence Minister of Denmark, Claus Hjort Frederiksen (left) attend a Defence Ministers Council meeting at the Nato headquarters in Brussels yesterday.

all its members remain com-mitted to collective defence.

Away from the funding question, ministers yesterday signed off on a plan to beef up the alliance’s ability to mobilise forces quickly in the event of a crisis, as concern about the

threat from Russia shows no sign of abating.

Under the US-led “four 30s” plan, by 2020 Nato will have 30 battalions, 30 air squadrons and 30 warships ready to be used within 30 days to back up existing rapid response forces.

Ministers also approved two new Nato command centres — one to protect Atlantic shipping lanes, based in Norfolk, Virginia, and another to coordinate troop movements around Europe, located in the southern German city of Ulm.

Radicalised Stockholm truck attacker jailed for lifeAFP

STOCKHOLM: A Swedish court yesterday sentenced a radicalised Uzbek asylum seeker to life in prison for terrorism after he mowed down pedestrians with a stolen truck in central Stockholm last year, killing five people.

The assault, which mirrored other truck attacks in 2016 that left scores dead in France, Germany and the UK, occurred as Sweden grappled with the aftermath of having taken in more migrants per capita than any other country in Europe.

Arrested hours after the April 7, 2017 attack, Rakhmat Akilov, 40, who swore allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group on the

eve of his assault, told the court during his trial that IS members had given him the green light on encrypted chat sites to carry out a suicide attack in the Swedish capital. However, the jihadist organisation never claimed responsibility for the assault.

The Stockholm district court convicted Akilov of “terrorist crimes” for five murders and 119 attempted murders in one of Stockholm’s busiest shopping streets. Three Swedes, including a girl who would have turned 12 yesterday, as well as a 41-year-old British man and a 31-year-old Belgian woman were killed. Ten more were injured.

During his almost three-month trial, Akilov, who confessed

almost immediately to the attack, expressed no remorse.

His gaze often remained empty, even when photographs and footage of the bloody attack were projected onto a large screen in the courtroom.

“He acted with the direct intention to kill as many people as possible,” the court said in its verdict, adding Akilov would be expelled after serving the life term, which averages 16 years in Sweden.

After swerving wildly to hit as many people as possible, Akilov’s rampage ended when the truck smashed into the facade of a large department store.

An explosive device — made up of five gas canisters and nails

— did not explode as planned and caused fire damage only to the truck. Akilov fled the scene, running into a nearby metro station, and was arrested several hours later after being identified by public transport video sur-veillance images and eyewitness reports.

Investigators found text mes-sages on Akilov’s cell phone with contacts identified only by pseu-donyms, and whom Akilov said were high-ranking members of IS or the “Islamic caliphate” declared in parts of Iraq and Syria.

While the text messages indi-cated Akilov consulted with his contacts on how to carry out his attack, prosecutors have insisted that he acted alone.

He told the court his motive was to pressure “Sweden to end its participation in the fight against the caliphate, to stop sending its soldiers to war zones.”

Sweden, a non-Nato member, has around 70 military personnel based mainly in northern Iraq to provide training as part of the US-led coalition against IS.

The court said Akilov “intended to force Sweden to stop participating in the global coalition against IS”.

Prosecutors claim Akilov’s intention was also to “spread fear among the population”. He told the court he had planned to die as a martyr and did not expect to survive the attack.

Mendola passCars drive up to Mendola pass (1.362-metre) near Eppan near Bozen in South Tyrol, Italy, yesterday.

Ukraine gives nod to anti-corruption courtAFP

KIEV: Ukrainian lawmakers yesterday approved key legis-lation to create a long-awaited anti-corruption court while also voting to dismiss the country’s finance minister, a respected reformer backed by the West.

A total of 254 lawmakers in the 450-seat parliament sup-ported a motion submitted by Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to sack Oleksandr Danylyuk. The 42-year-old anti-corruption campaigner ruffled many feathers as he sought to clean up the former Soviet country’s fiscal and customs services.

He is supported by global donors including the IMF and his dismissal is expected to raise concern among Ukraine’s lenders and foreign govern-ments. In another crucial devel-opment expected to be received more favourably by the West, the parliament approved in the second and final reading a draft law to create an anti-corruption court -- a key IMF condition for it to distribute more aid to Ukraine.

President Petro Poroshenko hailed the move as a “victory for Ukraine” after 315 law-makers supported the legis-lation, with just 25 voting against. “I believe this is a his-toric day,” Poroshenko said. “Today we have completed the formation of anti-corruption

infrastructure,” he added on Twitter. Ukraine’s Western allies have long called on Kiev to reform the country’s klepto-cratic system and create an independent court to handle corruption cases.

The State Department said this week the legislation should satisfy the IMF which has long insisted that international experts should have veto power in the appointment of Ukrainian judges to root out corruption and speed up economic growth.

“The establishment of a gen-uinely independent anti-cor-ruption court is the most important, immediate step the government can take to meet those demands and roll back cor-ruption that continues to threaten Ukraine’s national security, pros-perity, and democratic devel-opment,” Washington said.

Poroshenko said the legis-lation adopted Thursday was in line with Western recom-mendations and Ukrainian law.

Poroshenko initially balked at the idea of creating an inde-pendent anti-corruption court, saying in 2017 that such insti-tutions existed in “Kenya, Uganda, Malaysia and Croatia” but not in western Europe or the United States.

The IMF and the World Bank have in the past criticised Ukraine’s draft legislation for the anti-corruption court, saying it was not in line with Western requirements.

Action needed to prevent new Balkans migrant crisisREUTERS

SARAJEVO: Countries along a new Balkan migrant route pledged yesterday to work together to prevent a repetition of the 2015 influx that brought more than a million refugees into Europe from North Africa and the Middle East.

Security and police officials from the region met in Bosnia to discuss their response to growing traffic along a new smuggling route from Greece through Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia to Croatia and western Europe.

More than 5,500 refugees and migrants from Asia and North Africa have entered Bosnia this year using the route. The Balkan country was spared the migrant wave of 2015, but it now finds itself struggling to accommodate thousands of people who are trying to reach wealthier EU countries.

The situation is still under control, but it requires stronger cooperation among police agencies in all countries, said Bostjan Sefic, the state secretary in Slovenia’s interior ministry. A key target should be people

traffickers, of whom 80 percent come from the region, Sefic said.

The officials concluded that each country should register migrants to keep the track of their movement. All bilateral agreements, including those on re-admission, must be strictly respected and illegal migrants returned to their countries of origin, they said.

Sefic said that illegal migra-tions must be stopped at the external borders of the European Union, which will provide tech-nical and financial help to the affected countries.

“We call on the action now, we need immediately to implement these measures to respond to the challenge,” he told reporters.

Franz Lang, the head of Aus-tria’s Federal Criminal Police Office, said EU countries had dis-cussed setting up “portal centres” in countries outside the EU, where requests for asylum would be processed.

“Egypt and Ukraine had been mentioned as potential countries,” Lang said, adding he was not informed about the latest proposals.

PM of UK gathers ministers as Davis resignation rumours swirl

AFP

LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May gathered her ministers yesterday amid swirling rumours that Brexit secretary David Davis could quit over her plans to avoid a hard Irish border.

Davis, the public face of the Brexit negotiations, is said to be furious about a fall-back position in which Britain would stay aligned to the EU’s customs union after leaving the bloc. The proposals, which would kick in only if no other solution were found to avoid customs checks between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland, are due to be published this week.

But they have sparked a major row between May and the eurosceptics in her cabinet, led by Davis but also including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. They are said to be concerned about the lack of an end date, and are pushing for a provision stating that Britain can withdraw unilaterally from its alignment with the EU -- something Brussels is unlikely to accept.

Davis is scheduled to make a statement to parliament at some point on Thursday, while the cabinet sub-committee charged with taking key deci-sions on Brexit is meeting at lunchtime. Downing Street sources initially said the com-mittee was not going to talk about the so-called backstop, implying it was already agreed in principle.

The phone-in was Putin’s first since being re-elected to a historic fourth Kremlin term in March, and comes just a week before Russia is set to host the World Cup.

09FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018 EUROPE

Putin takes aim at West in marathon phone-inAFP

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin yesterday lashed out at US trade tariffs and Western sanc-tions against oligarchs during an annual televised phone-in that also saw him address the concerns of ordinary Russians.

The event, which this year lasted almost five hours, allows Russians to submit questions on any theme and has in the past seen the president talk on topics as varied as his love life, Crimea and the state of provincial roads.

The phone-in was Putin’s first since being re-elected to a historic fourth Kremlin term in March, and comes just a week before Russia is set to host the World Cup. “Overall, we are moving completely in the right direction. We are on track for durable growth in the economy,” he said in opening remarks to two moderators introducing questions from the public.

“There are, of course, a number of problems to address,” he said of an economy that con-tinues to stall after a crash in 2014 following sanctions intro-duced by the West over the annexation of Crimea.

He also slammed the “per-secution” of Russian business people abroad after billionaire industrialist Oleg Deripaska was targeted in US sanctions and Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich faced delays to his British visa application.

Putin also compared the trade tariffs announced by Pres-ident Donald Trump on US allies to Western sanctions against Russia. “This is the imposition of sanctions, expressed in a dif-ferent way,” he said, adding that he had warned other Western nations years ago they would

suffer from US dominance.The Q&A yesterday was

more subdued than usual, with no studio audience. The only uncomfortable questions were projected onto screens on either side of Putin rather than put to him directly.

On the international front, Putin also took the opportunity to say that Russia would remain in Syria for as long as it was ben-eficial to Moscow. “Our military is there to ensure Russia’s interests in an important region of the world,” he said.

The President added the continued presence of Russian troops in the country would provide “invaluable experience” in the testing of new Russian weapons. He meanwhile boasted Russia’s new hypersonic inter-continental missile would enter service next year and guarantee Moscow maintains military parity with Washington.

State television ran a breathless countdown to the session, updating the number of questions submitted — some two million as the programme began. In contrast to previous phone-ins, this year Putin called on ministers and regional leaders to stand by, ready to go live on air to discuss practical issues with callers.

“They will be sitting by the television with bated breath... with a phone in one hand and a

sedative in their pocket,” the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid joked. A governor was called on to engage with a group of resi-dents from a town in the Vladimir region, near Moscow, who were complaining about the state of their local health services.

Putin has in the past stepped in fairy godmother-like to solve problems that might otherwise be thought beneath him and this year was no exception. Yes-terday, he promised Russian cit-izenship to a Ukrainian woman seriously injured by an explosive device in Syria and who lost an arm and leg.

Irina Barakat said she was wounded in 2016 while living in the city of Aleppo with her Syrian husband and children and was evacuated by Russian forces. Lacking a Russian passport, Barakat said she cannot bring into the country her husband and three children, who are still living in Syria and whom she has not seen in two years.

“It falls within the remit of the Russian president to grant citizenship, you’ll get it,” he told her, after saying she would ask the defence ministry to bring her relatives to Russia.

Putin also touched on the subject of the World Cup, saying that stadiums built for the event could not be allowed to turn into “markets” as sports facilities did in the turbulent 1990s.

While the questions moder-ators selected for the president were relatively softball, others briefly flashed on the screen expressed dissatisfaction at his 18-year rule. “Will there ever be a stable rouble?” one asked, while another questioned if Rus-sians themselves would be seeing a part of the country’s vast wealth anytime soon.

Spain swears in mostly-female govtAFP

MADRID: King Felipe VI yesterday swore in Spain’s new pro-EU government, with women holding the majority of ministerial posts.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez named 11 women to top posts including defence and economy in a cabinet with six male ministers.

That makes it the European government with the highest ratio of female cabinet min-isters, ahead of Sweden’s, which has 12 women and 11 men.

But Sanchez’s adminis-tration risks not lasting until the end of the current mandate in 2020, however, given the frag-mented state of Spain’s political parties. His Socialist Party holds just 84 seats in the 350-seat con-gress, the smallest parliamentary presence of any Spanish gov-ernment since the return to democracy in the 1970s.

Sanchez, 46, ousted con-servative veteran Mariano Rajoy

as prime minister last Friday in a parliamentary no-confidence vote. The vote was sparked by corruption convictions against former officials from Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP), which had governed for six years.

At yesterday’s ceremony, the ministers broke with tradition by taking their oaths on the con-stitution rather than the Bible. They followed the example set by Sanchez, who became the first Spanish prime minister to forego religious symbols during his own swearing-in on Saturday.

The first minister to take the oath was veteran Socialist Carmen Calvo, a former culture minister, who became deputy prime minister and will also be in charge of equality.

Equality is a priority for Sanchez’s government in a country where women staged an unprecedented strike to defend their rights in March.

Calvo said her government would work to “build the greatest equality, that between

men and women”. The first measure the Socialists will propose to congress concerns gender violence training for judicial officials, the head of the party’s parliamentary group, Adriana Lastra, told reporters.

With its parliamentary minority, the government will rely on the votes of far-left party Podemos as well as Basque and Catalan nationalist lawmakers who supported his confidence motion.

Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias wished the new gov-ernment “good luck”, adding during a TV interview that trying to govern with such a small minority “would probably be an ordeal” for Sanchez.

Podemos is pushing for greater social spending -- a del-icate issue given the European Union’s demands on budgetary discipline.

Sanchez has said the “main priority” will be to respect Madrid’s deficit reduction com-mitments to the EU.

Lactalis defends handling of baby milk crisisREUTERS

PARIS: The contamination of baby milk with salmonella at a Lactalis factory in France last year was an accident and the dairy group took the necessary steps to prevent more babies falling ill, the company’s CEO told lawmakers in a rare public appearance.

Lactalis, the world’s largest dairy group, recalled millions of tins of baby milk in France and around the world, and halted production at its Craon plant in northwest France after dozens of babies fell ill last year due to drinking salmonella-contami-nated milk. The scandal, which deepened when errors in the

massive product recall left some potentially contaminated baby milk on shop shelves, fuelled criticism of poor communication by Lactalis, which is privately held by the Besnier family.

In a sometimes tense exchange with members of a parliamentary committee inves-tigating the contamination, softly spoken Chief Executive Emmanuel Besnier apologised for the distress caused to fam-ilies but defended his group’s safety record.

“Regarding the handling of the crisis, I think at each stage we took the necessary measures to ensure that no baby would fall ill in relation to our products,” Besnier, said yesterday to the

committee of lawmakers from France’s National Assembly.

Lactalis reiterated previous comments that tests of its products had not shown any sal-monella prior to the recall and that the contamination was linked to work in the factory that released bacteria hidden in the structure of the building.

“It was an accident, no one is responsible for this at the factory,” Besnier, 47, who appeared alongside four other senior Lactalis managers, said.

The cases of babies falling sick were all before the start of the product recall on December 2, 2017, which Lactalis triggered as soon as it was informed by the authorities of a link to its Craon

factory, he said. “It is not the con-tamination that is on a large scale, it is the product recall,” he said.

The CEO’s comments irri-tated several lawmakers who said the group failed to explain fully the events and had under-stated the seriousness of the crisis. “When you feed many of the world’s children it is your duty to communicate,” Gregory Besson-Moreau, the parlia-mentary committee’s rapporteur, said after the hearing.

“You can’t change a culture of secrecy within a few weeks. I hope they are going to try harder.” The parliamentary committee is due to publish a report in July.

A separate judicial inquiry is

also continuing into the salmo-nella outbreak. Lactalis said last week it was testing production again at its Craon plant with a view to restarting output.

The group has permanently closed the production line linked to the salmonella out-break. It has also said it will now use two external testing firms for products made at Craon, after tests by its existing partner failed to detect last year’s contamination.

In February, Besnier said Lactalis could have been pro-ducing salmonella-tainted baby milk at Craon since 2005. The crisis was likely to cost the company hundreds of millions of euros, he said.

French MPs back ban on cellphone use in schoolsAFP

PARIS: French lawmakers yesterday approved a ban on the use of mobile phones in public schools, one of President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign pledges which critics say will do little to end classroom disruptions or cyberbullying.

While schools in many countries have rules limiting mobile phone use France is one of the first nations to introduce a total ban, covering primary and junior high schools.

Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer called it “a law for the 21st century, a law for addressing the digital revo-lution.” “It’s a signal to French society of the stakes for our society,” he said in parliament. “Being open to technologies of the future doesn’t mean we

have to accept all their uses.” The bill has tapped into anxiety among many parents over the amount of time their children spend glued to their smart-phone screens and the rising incidence of online bullying.

It was approved by members of the lower house National Assembly in a show of hands. But opposition groups have dis-missed it as “useless”, pointing out that a 2010 law already forbids phone use during classtime and that roughly half of the country’s junior high schools already outlaw their use.

Nearly nine out of 10 French students aged 12 to 17 owns a mobile phone, according to a 2016 survey. The new law being proposed would require them to keep their phones in backpacks or oth-erwise out of sight.

Sweden offers young asylum seekers a second chanceAFP

STOCKHOLM: Sweden’s parliament passed a bill yesterday giving thousands of young asylum seekers a second chance to stay until they complete high school, after the overwhelmed migration agency failed to process their applications before they became adults.

The decision will allow thousands of asylum seekers who were minors when they arrived in Sweden to re-apply for temporary residency.

Asylum rules are more favourable for minors. Because asylum applications can take more than a year on average to process in Sweden, which has taken in more migrants per capita than any other country in Europe, some applicants turn 18 by the time their appli-cation is considered.

“We need to take political responsibility. (Asylum seekers) should not be affected because the Swedish authorities haven’t managed to process their application on time,” Maria Ferm, a lawmaker for the Greens, told TT news agency.

Passed with 166 votes against 134 with 48 absten-tions, the bill was backed by the minority Social Democrats and Greens government and the Centre party while widely opposed by the conservative Moderates and the far-right Sweden Democrats.

The move exposed a rift within the centre-right Alliance before the Sep-tember 9 general election in which security and immi-gration are the two main themes.

The new Spanish government’s ministers pose with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and King Felipe VI (centre) after taking oath of office at La Zarzuela Palace in Madrid yesterday.

Heavy rain in FrankfurtPeople cross a street during heavy rain in Frankfurt, Germany, yesterday.

When President Trump received Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Washington in the White House in April, the US president praised his guest for Doha’s cooperation in cracking down on funding of terrorism.

10 FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018VIEWS

One year of Gulf crisis has made Qatar strong

As the Gulf crisis marks its one year anniversary, settlement seems as distant as ever. Both sides seem to have come to

terms with the new reality. While the crisis had certainly been

brewing for years, the timing of its outbreak was surprising to many, first and foremost, to Qatar. Only two days after Qatari Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani had returned from Riyadh, where he had partici-pated in the summit with President Donald Trump, Saudi and Emirati media outlets broke news of state-ments attributed to the Qatari sov-ereign in which he had presumably taken the side of Iran.

Following the sudden media offensive, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt announced severing of diplo-matic ties with Qatar, in addition to shutting down of their airspace to Qatari flights. Riyadh announced closure of the Salwa/Abu-Samra border crossing, Qatar’s only land outlet.

While foreign ministers of the four states later denied it, Amir of Kuwait H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, during his press conference with President Donald Trump at the

White House, said months later that in the early days of the crisis, mediators suc-ceeded in con-vincing the Saudi-led coa-lition not to pursue the “mil-itary option.”

Whether Saudi Arabia and its allies intended to invade Qatar or not remains debatable. What is certain is that the four coun-tries had designed a blitz-krieg style offensive, with or

without a military component. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt were probably hoping that a surprise offensive would throw Qatar off balance and force it to offer conces-sions, 13 of them, as outlined by a list that the four countries put out.

Doha was indeed caught off guard, and was forced to turn to its other friends, mainly Turkey, Oman and Kuwait, in an attempt to salvage its lines of imports. The Qatari Central Bank had to act quickly to absorb the financial shock, and reached into the nation’s deep-pocketed sovereign

fund to liquidate hard currency and keep the country’s economic machine oiled.

The two sides then engaged in dip-lomatic battle that was fought in every capital around the world.

The US, Kuwait, and, to an extent, Turkey sprung to mediation. The Saudi-led coalition put out 13 demands that they said would con-stitute the only way out for Doha. The 13 demands could be summarised into four, including Qatar 1) severing all ties with Iran, 2) closing a Turkish mil-itary base on its territory, 3) shutting down Al Jazeera satellite TV and cutting funds to other media outlets and 4) classifying the Muslim Broth-erhood as a terrorist group and repat-riating any of the group’s rank and file who are citizens of any of the four countries, alongside cracking down on all funds from Qatar to Islamist groups around the region.

Qatar counter-argued that both the UAE and Egypt enjoyed diplomatic ties with Iran, which made it odd for nations with ties to Tehran to ask other countries to cut such ties. Qatar also argued that the remaining Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, namely Kuwait and Oman, also had ties with Iran.

Shutting down Al Jazeera and other Qatari-funded media outlets was a point that mediators, including Kuwait and Washington, rephrased. Mediating capitals believed that no government should have the power of shutting media in other countries, or else, if Al Jazeera was shutdown, then what will hold back the Saudi-led coa-lition from demanding the shutdown of other media outlets across the region.

Instead, Kuwait suggested that

both sides put an end to the mutual media offensive campaigns that gov-ernment-funded media outlets were running.

When President Trump received Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Washington in the White House in April, the US president praised his guest for Doha’s cooper-ation in cracking down on funding of terrorism.

Finally, on the Turkish base in Qatar, Doha argued that the issue was a sovereign Qatari decision, and that no country should be able to dictate anything on the foreign ties of other countries.

Throughout the year, mediators have tried hard to end the Gulf rift. The closest the mediation efforts got to set-tlement was when President Trump spoke to the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. After the call, Doha reached out to Riyadh, and Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani spoke to Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. The call seemed to have been cordial, and both sides put out a statement in which they said that their leaders left it to their aids to settle things and organise a meeting.

After the Trump call, Washington and Kuwait renewed their mediation efforts, and Kuwait managed to con-vince all parties to attend a GCC summit it hosted. As the region held its breath, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Manama sent their foreign ministers, instead of their crown princes, to par-ticipate in the summit, thus aborting another effort at reconciliation.

For the Saudi-led coalition, the effort against Qatar has yet to bear fruit. For Qatar, the siege has made the country stronger.

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Without accountability, Rohingya repatriation is trap

A UK-based rights group called a repatriation agreement for

Rohingya refugees that Myanmar signed with the UN “a potential trap” which lacked accountability on part of the state.

In a statement released on Thursday, Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN) said the lack of accountability would encourage the perpetrators to commit crimes again.

On May 31, the Myanmar government signed an agreement with the UN Development Pro-gramme (UNDP) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), allowing them to get involved in the much-delayed repatriation process. The group recalled

the previous UN-coordi-nated repatriations fol-lowing mass exoduses from military crackdowns in 1978, 1991 and 1992.

“Witnesses to these repatriations still speak of gross human rights abuses that have continued and worsened over the years.”

Myanmar said last month that it has verified 1,101 in a list of over 8,000 Rohingya refugees, who are willing to return to Rakhine state. The list was sent by the Bangladeshi gov-ernment. BHRN Executive Director Kyaw Win pointed to many concerns that need to be addressed.

“Based on past experi-ences, lack of accountability encouraged the perpe-trators to commit crimes again, whereas the popu-lation who experienced the atrocities need concrete

assurance of safety, which is not the case here,” he said.

Win said returning the victims of such “a genocidal campaign” without proper mechanisms to assure their safe return “is not only irre-sponsible but would be unethical of the interna-tional community to support as well”.

The group said in order to be successful, any plan moving forward now must contain such mechanisms to provide the safety of 120,000 returnees who have been trapped in open air prisons for the past six years, otherwise the mil-itary would consider itself “to be acting with impunity”.

It also called on the UN and its relevant agencies “to have a plan of consequence for the Burmese

Government if they fail their obligations to this memo-randum or if any other human rights violations continue”.

Since August 25, 2017, more than 750,000 ref-ugees, mostly children, and women have fled Myanmar and crossed into Bang-ladesh after Myanmar forces launched a crackdown on the minority Muslim community, according to Amnesty International.

At least 9,400 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine from August 25 to September 24 last year, according to Doctors Without Borders.

In a report published recently, the humanitarian group said the deaths of 71.7 percent or 6,700 Rohingya were caused by violence. They include 730 children below the age of 5.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

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

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

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Culturally upbeat

The unjust siege has transformed the life in Qatar in many ways - most of them positive. A year has gone by after the announcement of the illegal blockade

by the four countries. After the initial shock, Qatar, as a country and society, fought back and came out stronger in all aspects of life.

Much has been achieved in terms of food self-suffi-ciency, finding alternative markets, kick start industrial production, finding new logistic routes and so on.

These were on expected lines as Qatar has robust pol-icies and processes in place to help beat these kind of unexpected situations.

But, what has been a pleasant surprise is the way people reacted and responded against the blockade cul-turally through art and music.

What kicked off the deluge of activities in the cultural sphere was the iconic Tamim Al Majd portrait of the Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani by the artist Ahmed Al Maadheed. This simple, but powerful, portrait galva-nized the entire population of Qatar and they came

together to showcase their support and love for the lead-ership and country.

This iconic image spurred thousands of other artworks by citizens and residents alike and gave a momentum to the art scene is Qatar. Many exhi-bitions of blockade-inspired art were held in various parts of the country like the one by Ghada Al Khater at the fire station, which was well appreciated.

It’s not only paintings and photographs, even theatre scene in Qatar got a boost with many plays talking about the blockade was staged and some of them like, “Shally Yseer” (roughly translates to What is Happening), became very popular with the public.

The Qatari play, a comic take on the blockade against Qatar, received unprece-dented public response in the country, especially among the Qatari citizens and they were performing it in front of sold

out audience for months, which is not that common in Qatar theatre scene.

Then there is music. The blockade has given a new voice to Qatari musicians and they have come out tops with new albums and compositions. And unlike the music from the siege countries, which is filled with hatred and vicious lyrics, the songs by Qatari musicians are more matured and talk about the love for their country and this has won them many hearts.

It’s very heartening to see such a vibrant cultural response and this spark will surely spur many more to express them through art.

SIBEL UGURLU

The blockade has given a new voice to Qatari musicians and they have come out tops with new albums and compositions. And unlike the music from the siege countries, which is filled with hatred and vicious lyrics, the songs by Qatari musicians are more matured.

For Morales and Hernandez, moving their embassies to Jerusalem is not only a show of “goodwill” towards Trump, but an attempt to shift attention away from domestic troubles. It also shows a resurgence of servile subordination to US interests — something most Latin American governments had managed to overcome in the 2000s.

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Brexit is back with EU summit creeping upand decisions pending

Why did Latin America stop standing up for Palestine?

FLAVIA KRAUSE-JACKSON BLOOMBERG

CECILIA BAEZA AL JAZEERA

Brexit is back as lawmakers return from their recess. Prime Minister Theresa May has some important decisions

to make on what kind of future customs relationship she will formally pitch to the European Union ahead of a key summit at the end of the month.

There is a sense that she really can’t delay things much longer but then again procrastination has become an art form in May’s gov-ernment with many a deadline

pushed back. Here is a roundup of where we stand.

There were two options, and now there might be three

May and her so-called Brexit war cabinet — comprised of 11 top min-isters — have been deadlocked for a month over what kind of proposal to put forward to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. The impasse is unresolved, with the pro-EU ministers favoring one option and Brexit cheer-leaders preferring another -- neither will fly with Brussels.

A third option was floated last week, via pro-Brexit tabloid The Sun, and it doesn’t appear to have caught on. It has Brexit Secretary David Davis drawing up a 10 mile-wide buffer zone the length of Northern Ireland’s 310-mile border with Ireland. Dubbed “Max Fac 2,” it seems to draw inspi-ration from Liechtenstein, which enjoys a system of dual oversight. That will run afoul of the Northern Irish party propping up May. In fact, Arlene Foster, the leader of the Dem-ocratic Unionist Party, was quick to put that brain wave to rest.

“For us, our only red line is that we are not treated any differently to the rest of the United Kingdom, that there are no trade barriers put up between Northern Ireland and our biggest market which, of course, is Great Britain,” she told Sky News.

“We will judge all of the proposi-tions that are brought forward, we will judge it against that red line and she’s very much aware of that, and I have confidence that she knows that she cannot bring forward anything that will breach that red line or we simply will not be able to support them,” she said.

So where does that leave us? Waiting for what is known as a “White Paper” a policy document that promises to set out the government’s Brexit position in precise detail when it is published ahead of June’s key EU summit.

The Sunday Times reported that civil servants have put together a study that effectively prepares for the end of days should the UK and the EU fail to seal a deal. There were three scenarios: mild, severe and one called Armageddon. It warns of food, med-icine and fuel shortages and how in the second-worst scenario “the port of Dover will collapse on day one.”

“I don’t recognise any bit of that at all and as home secretary, as anyone would expect, am deeply involved in no-deal preparations,” said Sajid Javid, the newest member of May’s Cabinet and who sides with the pro-Brexit camp. “Those outcomes I don’t think any of them would come to pass.”

May’s government has to a large extent been about maintaining that delicate balance of pro- and anti-Brexit voices given that Europe repre-sents the fault line running through her Conservative Party over several generations. That balance has been threatened by the exit of three pro-EU Cabinet ministers — Damian Green, Amber Rudd and Justine Greening — in the past six months.

Yet just because they have moved to the so-called backbenches does not mean they are not willing to make themselves heard. The trio met with

May last week and made the case to stay as close to the customs union as possible, even if that entails giving it a different name.

As Rudd put it to the Sunday Times: “That’s where the vast majority of the party is. We just haven’t been as shouty. We wanted to tell the prime minister what lots of MPs are telling us: sensible Brexit please.”

The Tories Who Could Force May to Keep Britain Closer to Europe

Green, once May’s deputy and an old friend from her Oxford University days, wrote in the Daily Mail, that he, Rudd and Greening wanted “to assure the prime minister that, far from being isolated in her search for a pragmatic, workable solution, she does in fact have widespread support from her party.’ That may surprise readers accustomed to the clamor from arch-Brexiteers and die-hard Remainers alike on the Tory benches. But it is time for those two camps to face reality.”

All is not well among the ToriesIt’s been almost two years since

the country voted to leave the EU. The clock is ticking down to Brexit day — March 29, 2019 — when the UK tech-nically calls it a day. But in truth the Tories are as divided as ever on what to do, with speculation on who might replace May failing to abate.

In the latest twist, a hedge-fund manager who backed the Leave cam-paign has publicly weighed in and told the Observer newspaper that Michael Gove, not May, is best equipped to see Brexit through.

Gove, a key player in the 2016 ref-erendum, was fired as justice minister by May when she became prime min-ister only to be brought back into gov-ernment as environment secretary when she botched the 2017 election.

“What is true is that you have a whole lot of people who didn’t want this to happen who are in charge of it happening... I would go to Gove,” Crispin Odey, a Conservative Party donor and founder of Odey Asset Management, told the newspaper. “She can’t make a decision. So there is no leadership.”

While most of the world rejected US President Donald Trump’s decision to move the United

States embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, some Latin American leaders have supported it enthusiasti-cally. This may come as a surprise to many; after all the region has been vocal about its support for the Pales-tinian cause. All Latin American states, except for Colombia and Mexico, recognised the state of Pal-estine between 2008 and 2013.

But political realities in the region have changed. Paraguay recently became the third country to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, following in the footsteps of the US and Guatemala.

Honduras may be next; last month, its Congress passed a reso-lution urging its foreign ministry to carry out the move. And in December 2017, Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right presidential candidate leading in Bra-zil’s most recent polls, stated that if elected he would follow Trump’s con-troversial decision.

Such developments signal a wor-risome shift in support for the Pales-tinian cause and demonstrate a broader regional trend towards regressive politics.

Many observers are pointing to the fact that Latin America and Israel

have ties that date back to 1948. Gua-temala pioneered these relations with its immediate recognition of the Israeli state, and more than half of Latin American countries opened embassies in Jerusalem in the years that followed. Yet though Latin America was rather friendly towards Israel until 1967, afterward, relations changed.

For instance, in 1980, Israel’s adoption of a law proclaiming Jeru-salem its “indivisible and eternal capital” led to a UN Security Council resolution calling on countries to move their embassies to Tel Aviv.

Nine Latin American states — Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela — immedi-ately respected the demand. The Dominican Republic and Guatemala delayed until 1982 but ultimately implemented the resolution.

More recently, in 2014, as the Israeli offensive against Gaza’s popu-lation escalated and the international community stayed silent, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru issued strong statements of condemnation and recalled their ambassadors for consultation.

Regional support for relocating embassies to Jerusalem is linked to an alarming takeover of power by right-wing forces in the region and their

need for US approval. The right-wing governments of Guatemala and Hon-duras are facing serious political crises, for example, and desperately need Washington’s support.

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales has been mired in a series of corruption and money laundering scandals since 2016, and is still under pressure to submit his resignation. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez’s recent re-election in November 2017 was plagued by wide-spread allegations of electoral fraud and corruption, as well as violence against protesters.

For Morales and Hernandez, moving their embassies to Jerusalem is not only a show of “goodwill” towards Trump, but an attempt to shift attention away from domestic troubles. It also shows a resurgence of servile subordination to US interests - something most Latin American gov-ernments had managed to overcome in the 2000s.

The two leaders also have per-sonal connections to Israel. Morales is an evangelical Christian, as are 40 percent of Guatemalans, and as such he is a staunch Zionist. Hernandez, on the other hand, is a graduate of an outreach programme administered by the Agency for International Devel-opment Cooperation under the Israeli foreign ministry.

Paraguay’s President, Horacio Cartes — a billionaire who has also been accused of money laundering and drug smuggling — also has close ties with Israel. He is known to have close relations with Israeli Prime Min-ister Benjamin Netanyahu. One of Cartes’ campaign advisers in 2013, Ari Harow, also served as Netanyahu’s chief of staff.

Further, these three leaders came to power with the support of right-wing parties that have long-standing ties with the Israeli military industry. Israel sold weapons to and main-tained excellent relations with the Paraguayan tyrant Alfredo Stroessner, a military general who ruled from 1954 to 1989. Cartes, the leader of the right-wing Colorado Party, which served as the political power base of the Stroessner dictatorship, has revived these military connections.

Similar ties were established in

May’s government has to a large extent been about maintaining that delicate balance of pro- and anti-Brexit voices given that Europe represents the fault line running through her Conservative Party over several generations. That balance has been threatened by the exit of three pro-EU Cabinet ministers — Damian Green, Amber Rudd and Justine Greening — in the past six months.

the late 1970s between the Guate-malan regime and Israel. A few years later, when General Efrain Rios Montt staged a coup, it was reportedthat 300 Israeli military advisers aided him. Officers who participated in the Guatemalan civil war side by side with Montt, who was later convicted of gen-ocide against indigenous commu-nities, are now part of Morales’ party. Therefore, it is hardly sur-prising that the Guatemalan pres-ident chose to go to Israel for his first official trip abroad.

Honduras, too, received signif-icant military support from Israel during the 1980s, when the CIA-backed Contra uprising swept through the country. In 2016 it signed a new arms export deal with Israel, one of the largest in Latin America in recent years. Hern-andez called it a historic deal that would strengthen the country’s security forces, unlike anything that came before it.

Admittedly, democracy is receding in Latin America even in countries governed by left-wing parties, such as in Nicaragua and Venezuela. But there is something especially worrisome about this new generation of right-wing leaders in Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay and elsewhere. They are reversing gains achieved by the civil society on indigenous and minority rights and re-introducing toxic racist rhetoric and policies - not that different from the Israeli ones.

Israel’s financial and military support for these right-wing powers spells nothing good for the people of Latin America.

The writer is an Al Shabaka policy analyst and a lecturer at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

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13FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018 CLASSIFIEDS / AMERICAS

Peru congress suspends Fujimori but leaves him alive politicallyAFP

LIMA: Peru’s congress suspended lawmaker Kenji Fujimori (pictured) late on Wednesday over corruption allegations but lacked a quorum to dismiss him as part of a fight with his sister for control of their father’s political dynasty.

After 11 hours of debate in a special plenary session, 61 lawmakers voted to suspend the youngest son of former president Alberto Fujimori.

But many lawmakers then walked out and the speaker of the chamber, Luis Galarreta, sus-pended the session citing a lack of quorum — 67 lawmakers — before it could vote on a motion to dismiss Fujimori altogether as sought by the party of his sister and rival, Keiko Fujimori.

“I say this to my sister: ‘here, you have my head,’” Kenji Fujimori said after the vote. “We are victims of a parliamentary dictatorship.” Fujimori, 38, is accused of attempting to buy votes to keep disgraced former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski from being impeached. Kuczynski ended up resigning, in March.

With Fujimori now out of congress and under investigation, the vote Wednesday night shapes

Iftar time at Lafayette ParkA man distributes date-palms during an Iftar dinner at Lafayette Park, in front of the White House, in Washington DC, during the Holy month of Ramadan.

up as a win, albeit a costly one, for his sister in their battle for control of their father Alberto’s political legacy. But the younger Fujimori is not disqualified from politics altogether and he and his sister could even square off against each other in presidential voting in 2021.

After the vote to suspend him, half of the law-makers in the chamber walked out, leaving only supporters of his sister. That meant there was no quorum to vote on sacking Fujimori altogether. “If anyone believes that my political life ends here, they are totally wrong, because this is just a beginning,” Fujimori said before the vote, shedding a few tears.

Many see Kenji, who polled more votes than any other candidate in Peru’s last two legislative elec-tions, as likely to run against his sister for the pres-idency in 2021. The drive to ban Fujimori from pol-itics was in fact aimed at keeping him out of that presidential race, analyst Fernando Tuesta said.

Corruption-tainted Kuczynski survived an impeachment vote in Congress last December thanks to the abstentions of Kenji Fujimori and his supporters, who broke ranks with his sister’s Fuerza Popular (Popular Force) party.

In what was seen as a blatant quid pro quo, Alberto Fujimori was pardoned by Kuczynski just days later and released from prison, where he was serving a 25-year term for human rights abuses com-mitted during his decade in power (1990-2000). The 79-year-old Kuczynski finally stepped down in March on the eve of a second impeachment vote.

Two congressional allies of Kenji, Bienvenido Ramirez and Guillermo Bocangel, were accused of the same charges and were also suspended Wednesday night. Since leaving prison in December, the ailing Fujimori has been unable to mend fences between his children.

With timing worthy of a TV soap opera, Peruvian media reported Wednesday than the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which sits in Costa Rica, was to announce a verdict within hours on an appeal against his pardon. Keiko, 43, had opposed seeking a pardon for her father, saying that he was innocent and should be released without government mediation. Her critics say the real reason was that, once liberated, her father would threaten her control of the party that has come to define what Peruvians call Fujimorism.

Kate Spade was under treatment for depression, anxiety: HusbandAFP

NEW YORK: Designer Kate Spade, who committed suicide in New York this week, had been treated for depression and anxiety for five years, her husband said late on Wednesday.

“She was actively seeking help for depression and anxiety over the last five years, seeing a doctor on a regular basis and taking medication for both depression and anxiety,” her husband Andy Spade said in a statement carried by The New York Times.

It was a blunt rebuke to claims by the designer’s sister that Kate Spade needed mental health care but refused treatment over concerns about potentially hurting the light-hearted brand.

The death of the 55-year-old star designer, whose body was

found Wednesday in her Park Avenue apartment, “was not unexpected by me,” Spade’s older sister Reta Saffo told The Kansas City Star from her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Spade — a Missouri native who first worked as a journalist, including a stint as accessories editor at Mademoiselle mag-azine — launched her Kate Spade fashion label in 1993 with her husband Andy and the help of outside investors.

Her cheerful use of bright colors and prints proved a hit with career women. Over a decade ago, she sold the business and later launched a luxury line Frances Valentine.

Celebrity news website TMZ cited police sources as saying Spade had fallen into depression in recent weeks after her husband left her and was

seeking divorce. Andy Spade said that the couple had been living apart but in the same neighborhood, caring for their 13-year-old daughter Bea.

“Our daughter was our pri-ority. We were not legally sepa-rated, and never even discussed divorce. We were best friends trying to work through our problems in the best way we knew how. We were together for 35 years. We loved each other very much and simply needed a break,” Andy Spade added.

“There was no substance or alcohol abuse. There were no business problems. We loved creating our businesses together. We were co-parenting our beautiful daughter,” he stressed.

“My daughter and I are dev-astated by her loss, and can’t even begin to fathom life without her.”

Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said that the company recently “found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts.”

14 FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018AMERICAS

FB admits privacy settings ‘bug’ hits14 million usersAFP

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook acknowledged yesterday that a software glitch that changed the settings of some 14 million users, potentially making some posts public even if they were intended to be private.

The news marked the latest in a series of privacy embar-rassments for the world’s biggest social network, which has faced a firestorm over the hijacking of personal data on tens of millions of users and more recently for disclosures on data-sharing deals with smartphone makers.

Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said that the company recently “found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts.”

Facebook said this affected users posting between May 18 and May 27 as it was imple-menting a new way to share some items such as photos.

That left the default or sug-gested method of sharing as public instead of only for spe-cific users or friends. Facebook said it corrected the problem on May 22 but was unable to change all the posts, so is now notifying affected users.

“Starting today we are letting everyone affected know and asking them to review any posts they made during that time,” Egan said.

“To be clear, this bug did not impact anything people had posted before — and they could

still choose their audience just as they always have. We’d like to apologize for this mistake.”

Facebook confirmed earlier this week that China-based Huawei — which has been banned by the US military and is a lightning rod for cyberes-pionage concerns — was among device makers authorized to see user data in agreements that had been in place for years.

Facebook has claimed the agreements with some 60 device makers dating from a decade ago were designed to help the social media giant get more services into the mobile ecosystem.

Nonetheless, lawmakers expressed outrage that Chinese firms were given access to user data at a time when officials were trying to block their access to the US market over national security concerns.

The revelations come weeks after Chief Executive Mark Zuck-erberg was grilled in Congress about the hijacking of personal data on some 87 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica, a consultancy working on Donald Trump’s 2016 presi-dential campaign.

Progressive Conservative (PC) leader Doug Ford votes in Toronto, Ontario, yesterday.

Ontario votes as populist Doug Ford leads in opinion pollsREUTERS

TORONTO: Ontario voters were casting ballots yesterday in an election all but certain to end 15 years of Liberal rule in Canada’s most populous province, with Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party leading in opinion polls.

The contest in the province that is Canada’s economic engine and home to Toronto, the country’s largest city, has been reduced to a fight between Ford and the left-learning New Dem-ocratic Party, after Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne, premier since 2013, dropped to a distant third in the polls.

With about a third of Can-ada’s population of 36 million, Ontario is home to much of the country’s financial and manu-facturing sectors. It has one of the largest sub-sovereign debts

in the world, at nearly C$350bn ($272bn) in March.

A final Ipsos opinion poll released on Wednesday had the PC party with 39 percent of the vote, the NDP with 36 percent and the Liberals with 19 percent, with a margin of error of 3.1 per-centage points.

Ipsos said Ford’s PC party would likely win power with a majority of seats in the prov-ince’s legislature. Ontario forbids the publication of new polls on election day, until voting has wrapped up.

Wynne’s party may drop below the eight seats needed to be recognized as an official party in the province’s legis-lature, said Barry Kay, a pro-fessor at Wilfrid Laurier Uni-versity, part of a team running seat projections.

“There’s nothing that is safe,” he said. “I think they will

be lucky to get four, and I’m starting to think that four may be generous.”

Polling stations opened at 9am and close across the province at 9pm (0100 GMT today). There were media reports of problems with tabu-lating machines or registration cards at a handful of polls. Elec-tions Ontario, which also has the option of counting ballots by hand, extended voting at three polls, citing “unavoidable delays or interruptions.”

Ford, 53, is the brother of the late mayor of Toronto Rob Ford, who made international news in 2013 when he admitted to smoking crack cocaine.

The New Democrats, led since 2009 by Andrea Horwath, 55, surged ahead of Wynne’s Liberals in polls in early May, winning strategic voters hoping to block a Ford government.

Newborn survives seven hours buried aliveAFP

SAO Paulo: A newborn indig-enous baby girl in Brazil survived seven hours of being buried alive by her family, prosecutors said yesterday, following her rescue.

A nurse alerted authorities on finding out that the girl had been buried shortly after her birth Tuesday in the Xingu National Park in Mato Grosso state, which is home to many of Brazil’s tribal peoples.

Police released a video showing officers digging sand out of a shallow hole at night, then pulling out the naked baby, umbilical cord still attached. The baby’s great-grandmother, a member of the Kamayura tribe, was detained, state prosecutor Paulo Roberto do Prado said.

Despite spending seven hours underground, “the infor-mation we have is that the child is doing well,” do Prado said. The baby was brought to Cuiaba and placed in a neo-natal intensive care unit.

Investigators interviewed the family in the territory near the town of Canarana. An anthropologist, psychol-ogist and representatives of Funai — the government body in charge of indigenous affairs — took part. They wanted to clarify if there were “anthro-pological issues” in the case linked to indigenous customs, do Prado said.

The family told police the baby fell on its head after her mother gave birth in the bathroom. However, the author-ities suspected a cover-up. “Since the father refuses to rec-ognize the child and the mother is only 15, there are suspicions that they had tried to kill the newborn,” state police said.

More US staffers evacuated from China over mystery illnessAFP

WASHINGTON: The US State Department has evacuated more staff from China over fears they may have been hit by a myste-rious illness that has struck other colleagues in the Asian country and Cuba.

The department said on Wednesday that “a number of individuals” were sent to the United States for further evalu-ation following initial medical screenings. A medical team was sent to the southern city of Guangzhou after an American employee who had experienced strange sounds was diagnosed

with brain trauma last month, reviving fears that US rival has developed some kind of acoustic or microwave device.

US officials have said that the employee’s symptoms were con-sistent with the ailments that US diplomats experienced in Cuba last year. After the first incident in Guangzhou, medical tests were offered to US government employees and family members who requested them, the State Department said. “The medical screenings are ongoing for any personnel who have noted con-cerning symptoms or wanted baseline screening,” State Department spokeswoman

Heather Nauert said.“US medical professionals will

continue to conduct full evalua-tions to determine the cause of the reported symptoms and whether the findings are consistent with those noted in previously affected government personnel or possibly completely unrelated.”

Last year, 24 US diplomats and their family members in Cuba fell victim to mysterious “attacks” that left them with injuries resembling brain trauma. Ten Canadian dip-lomats and their relatives also suf-fered a strange illness.

Washington has said in the past that Cuban authorities must take responsibility for the safety

of US diplomats on their soil, but the Havana government denies any knowledge of an attack.

The US has set up a task force to oversee the response to the mystery ailments among dip-lomats in China and Cuba. The State Department has warned that US diplomats should alert their mission’s medical staff “if they note new onset of symptoms that may have begun in association with experiencing unidentified auditory sensations.”

“Reported symptoms have included dizziness, headaches, tinnitus, fatigue, cognitive issues, visual problems, ear complaints and hearing loss, and difficulty

sleeping,” the statement said.The cases come at a sensitive

time in relations between the United States and China, with the two nations mired in negotia-tions aimed at prevening a trade war and exchanging heated rhetoric over Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea.

The Chinese foreign ministry said that its investigation into the first case has not yielded any clues as to the cause of the incident. “As for the latest incident, my under-standing is that the US side hasn’t had any formal communication with the Chinese side about it,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.

Use of armed drones rising under TrumpAFP

WASHINGTON: America’s use of armed drones is increasing under President Donald Trump just as oversight of the lethal technology appears to be dwin-dling, a study released yesterday found.

The report by the nonpar-tisan Stimson Center think tank looks back at Trump’s drone actions during his first year in office, when he moved quickly to loosen some of the con-straints put in place by his pred-ecessor Barack Obama.

Trump has given battlefield commanders greater leeway to authorize drone strikes without first seeking approval from the White House or Washington security officials.

The Pentagon says this gives commanders better ability to make real-time decisions and insists the looser restric-tions have not lowered the threshold at which it is pre-pared to execute a drone strike

that could risk civilian deaths.The Stimson report found

that Trump is on pace to dramat-ically intensify America’s use of lethal drones, which already had seen a rapid increase under Obama. For instance, in the eight years from 2009-2016, Obama authorized more than 550 strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, as well as other countries where the United States was not tech-nically at war.

“ P r e s i d e n t T r u m p reportedly authorized at least 80 strikes in his first year in office in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and is on pace to surpass the strike tempo of both of his predecessors, which perhaps signals a greater will-ingness to use lethal force,” the Stimson study states.

The study also notes that the CIA reportedly wants to expand its power to conduct covert drone strikes in war zones such as Afghanistan, where such actions are usually led by the military.

Man sentenced to death in USAFP

LOS ANGELES: A US man was sentenced to death yesterday for the torture killing of his girl-friend’s eight-year-old son, who was beaten, starved and forced to sleep in a closet until his death in 2013.

The boy’s mother, Pearl Sinthia Fernandez, was sen-tenced to life in prison for her role in the death of her son, Gabriel. In sentencing Fern-andez and her boyfriend Isauro Aguirre, Los Angeles Superior Court judge George Lomeli described their actions as “nothing short of evil”.

The pair were arrested in 2013 after paramedics were called to a home in Palmdale, northeast of downtown Los Angeles, and found Gabriel unconscious and with a broken skull as well as broken ribs and BB pellets lodged in his groin. He died two days later.

Illegal border crossings rise in MayAFP

WASHINGTON: More than 50,000 people were arrested on the US-Mexico border for the third month in a row in May, indicating the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” crackdown has failed to stem illegal immigration, official data showed.

Despite President Donald Trump’s order in early May to begin arresting all illegal border crossers and separate children from their parents, arrests at the border were up 160 percent over a year earlier and slightly higher from April.

The data showed that families and unaccompanied children continued to flood the border from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where persistent violence has encouraged many to seek asylum in the United States.

The numbers indicate a high level of people success-fully sneaking into the country, though it was not clear if they also point to more successful interdictions after an expansion of frontier policing with the addition of National Guard troops beginning in April.

“We are seeing family units try to illegally cross our borders at staggering rates,” said Department of H o m e l a n d S e c u r i t y spokesman Tyler Houlton. “These numbers show that while the Trump adminis-tration is restoring the rule of law, it will take a sus-tained effort and continuous commitment of resources over many months to disrupt cartels, smugglers, and nefarious actors,” he said.

Volcano woesBrian Rivera, who lost 13 members of his family during the eruption of the Fuego volcano, holds his sister’s guitar near debris of his home at San Miguel Los Lotes in Escuintla, Guatemala, yesterday.

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Friday 8 June 2018

PAGE | 16PAGE | 16US, China reach

$1.4bn ZTE deal

House of Fraser to shut 31 stores

Trump trade war threat sets up G7 summit clashAFP

OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron put Donald Trump on notice yesterday that they would not be intimidated at the upcoming G7 summit, as a trade war between Washington and its allies looms.

Past summits of the Group of Seven powers — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — have often been marred by anti-glo-balist demonstrations in the host city. But as the leaders of the world’s richest democracies set off for Quebec on the eve of their annual meeting, the greatest threat to the liberal world order was due to be inside the fence.

Trump comes to this week’s G7 summit touting an America First agenda that hits US allies with stiff tariffs and threatens multilateral free trade deals. His stance will receive such a hostile reception from the other leaders that some observers have sug-gested renaming the G7 summit the G6+1 — and Macron said they should not hesitate to reach agreements without Trump.

While both Macron and Trudeau have forged cordial relationships with Trump, they made it clear they would stand tall — especially in the face of US duties on steel and aluminum

imports from Canada, Europe, Japan and Mexico.

“The G7 is an opportunity for us to get together and have frank, open discussions among nations who have long been allies and friends,” Macron told reporters, with Trudeau at his side. “There will be subjects on which the (US) president is not totally in sync with the others — I’m thinking of course of climate change and trade,” the French leader said.

“Our common goal is to try to find a text that can be signed by everyone,” he explained, but added that “the desire to sign a common G7 declaration must not outweigh the need to be mindful of the content”.

“We Europeans and the Jap-anese are not ready to give up everything to get” Trump’s sig-nature, he said, adding that would be a “mistake.” But Trump is not going to bend.

“Getting ready to go to the G-7 in Canada to fight for our country on Trade (we have the worst trade deals ever made),” he tweeted yesterday.

Leaders like Trudeau and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel admit it will be difficult to even agree on a joint commu-nique at the two-day meeting.

Merkel said on Wednesday that there would be “no com-promise for its own sake” and that dropping the statement “may be the more honest way”.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (right) and French President Emmanuel Macron shake hands during a joint press conference at the Parliament in Ottawa, yesterday.

“We know certainly that there will be frank and some-times difficult discussions around the G7 table, particularly with the US president on tariffs,” the Canadian premier told reporters.

Canada’s Trade Minister Francois Philippe Champagne was blunter, declaring: “What we are seeing is that the world

economic order is under pressure, under attack.”

Top White House economics advisor Larry Kudlow, in line with the long-standing expert consensus in the G7 industri-alized democracies, opposed tariffs before joining Trump’s team, but now says he agrees that the trade status quo hurts

America. “Until we can have reciprocal relationships, we will not have free trade, and we will not have fair trade,” Kudlow said.

Europe does not come to Quebec from a position of strength. Britain’s Theresa May is mired in endless Brexit nego-tiations and Italian premier Giuseppe Conte only formally

took power on Wednesday.The G7’s only Asian member,

Japan, has close relations with the White House, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s support for Trump’s North Korean outreach has not seen his country spared the tariffs.

The G7 developed in part because the world’s rich powers — despite their supposed Cold War victory — became frustrated in working through the broader mul-tilateral system with lesser rivals. The globalized economy that they helped build had winners and losers, of course, but until Trump’s election, the United States was seen as the system’s uncontested leader and a major beneficiary.

But now, according to Lau-rence Nardon of the French Institute for International Rela-tions (IFRI), one of the main actors on the international stage is no longer following the same script.

“It completely calls into question the international system,” she said. “This G7 summit is a new act in the drama. So far, the six are standing strong, but Trump has not finished.” Since coming to office in January 2017, Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal and the TPP Pacific free trade deal.

The summit begins today in La Malbaie, in Charlevoix, north of Quebec, and ends tomorrow, when Trump flies on to Singapore.

QFMA develops procedures for splitting shares’ nominal value of QSE listed firmsQNA

DOHA: The Qatar Financial Markets Authority (QFMA) announced that regarding the split of the shares’ nominal value of listed companies on the Qatar Stock Exchange to become one riyal per share, it is working in developing the procedures and the appro-priate mechanisms to regulate the process. This step comes as a part of performing the QFMA’s regulatory and supervisory role over the capital market in the State.

Through this step, the QFMA seeks to increase the prospects for investment in the financial market, expand the shareholders base, attract more small investors, give more choice opportunities for all participants dealing in the QSE, and increase the liquidity and turnover ratio of shares listed on the market. The QFMA is exerting more efforts to achieve its mission that aims to regulate and develop the capital market in line with the QFMA’s Strategic Plan, which is in harmony with the Financial Sector Plan in the State.

Turkey hikes interest rate again; lira ralliesAFP

ANKARA: The Turkish central bank yesterday hiked interest rates for the second time in two weeks, prompting the lira to rally strongly with elections on the horizon.

The 125 basis point (bps) headline interest rate hike comes after the bank raised its emergency rate by 300 bps on May 23. Yesterday, the bank said it would raise the one-week repo rate to 17.75 percent from 16.5 percent, after a monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting.

The hike was higher than the market consensus of 50 bps. The one-week repo rate has been the bank’s policy rate since June 1, after a long-awaited overhaul of its interest rates.

The lira surged after the bank’s announcement at 1100 GMT, gaining 1.5 percent against the dollar to reach 4.47 at 1330 GMT, after record lows last month. Before the bank’s move, the lira was at 4.58 against the greenback. Since January, the lira has lost over 18 percent against the dollar and over six

percent in the past month.The hikes come despite

repeated calls for lower interest rates to stimulate growth by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has called interest rates the “mother and father of all evil”. Turkey’s economy grew by 7.4 percent in 2017.

Erdogan also spooked investors last month after he sig-nalled he wanted to take greater control over monetary and economy policy if he wins the June 24 elections.

But Inan Demir at Nomura International said in a note that the bank’s recent moves including the hikes went “some way to

helping the (central bank) rebuild its credibility” after investor con-cerns over monetary policy.

The hike is the bank’s third such move since April 25 when the bank raised one of its then main interest rates by 75 basis points. Markets hoped for a rise after the inflation rate jumped in May from 10.85 percent to 12.15 percent from the same period last year.

“The move is a tentative sign that the central bank may be shifting its focus away from simply shoring up the lira and towards tackling inflation,” Jason Tuvey, senior emerging markets economist, said.

Gokce Celik, chief economist at Istanbul-based QNB Fin-ansbank, said in a note that pro-jections suggested annual inflation would increase further this month “and hover close to 14 percent” through the third quarter.

The bank said in a statement that the “tight stance” in mon-etary policy would be main-tained until the “inflation outlook displays significant improvement”. “If needed, further monetary tightening will

be delivered,” the bank added.Deputy Prime Minister

Mehmet Simsek (pictured) said on Twitter that inflation and Turkey’s widening current account deficit would start to fall in the second half of the year.

“We are increasing the resistance of our economy against shocks with structural reforms,” Simsek added.

But Tuvey said despite the comments, “we think that it’s too early to say that there has been a fundamental shift in policy-makers commitment to bringing down inflation”. Turks will vote in parliamentary and presi-dential elections on June 24 in a surprisingly tight contest, with Erdogan seeking a second mandate as president.

Tuvey warned that if Erdogan was re-elected, he may decide to renew calls for lower interest rates and fulfil his pledge to take greater control over monetary policy. “However, that would probably lead to a fresh sharp sell-off in the lira and, ironically, put pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates further,” he said.

US weekly jobless claims dropREUTERS

WASHINGTON: The number of Americans filing for unem-ployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week, pointing to a further tightening in labor market conditions. The robust labor market and firming inflation have cemented expectations the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates next week. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits decreased 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 222,000 for the week ended June 2, the Labor Department said yesterday. Claims data for the prior week was revised to show 2,000 more applications received than previ-ously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 225,000 in the latest week.

16 FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018BUSINESS

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MarketWatch

BREAK TIME

US, China reach $1.4bn ZTE dealAFP

WASHINGTON: Washington and Beijing have reached a deal to ease sanctions that brought Chinese smartphone maker ZTE to the brink of collapse, the US Commerce Department announced yesterday.

The deal could be a harbinger of progress in separate and fraught trade talks between the world’s two largest economies although Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (pictured) yesterday reiterated a denial that there was any connection between the two.

The ZTE settlement comes days after Beijing reportedly offered to ramp up purchases of American goods to help cut the yawning trade imbalance with the United States — moving part-way towards meeting a major demand of US President Donald Trump.

US lawmakers yesterday renewed vocal objections to lifting the sanctions, saying the company posed an “espionage risk” to the US in addition to having violated its sanctions on Iran and North Korea.

Ross told CNBC yesterday the deal was tough and would keep ZTE on a short leash. “This is a pretty strict settlement. The strictest and largest settlement fine that has ever been brought by the Commerce Department against any violator of export controls.” In April, Washington banned the sale of crucial US components to the company after finding it had repeatedly lied and failed to take action against workers responsible for

the sanctions violations.The company was fined

$1.2bn last year. But under the deal announced yesterday, ZTE will pay an additional $1bn penalty and put another $400m in escrow to cover possible future violations.

ZTE will also be required to change its entire board of directors and hire outside legal compliance specialists who will report to the Commerce Department for 10 years. In return, Washington will strike the company from a sanctions list.

Lawmakers of both major parties threatened to take con-gressional action that could block or alter the deal, calling ZTE a threat to US national security. “There is absolutely no good reason that ZTE should get a second chance and this decision marks a 180-degree turn away from the president’s promise to be tough on China. It’s up to Congress now to act to reverse the deal,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Dem-

ocrat, said in a statement.The news comes as Trump

presses ahead with plans to impose as much as $50bn in tariffs on Chinese imports to punish Beijing for its alleged theft of American technology and know-how.

Washington and Beijing have pursued a halting series of trade talks, with Trump demanding a $200bn reduction in its trade deficit with China.

Ross told CNBC the ZTE deal was an enforcement matter that was unrelated to the trade talks, which he has led.

“It happens that I have been involved with the other negoti-ations with China. But that’s quite separate and apart from enforcement,” he said.

China last weekend reportedly offered to buy an additional $70bn in US goods to cut the trade deficit, moving toward meeting one of Trump’s central demands on trade.

William Reinsch, a trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the ZTE offer suggested Beijing could have concessions to Trump on trade but it remained unclear whether these were of equal value.

Beijing’s reported offer to buy $70bn in goods was “peanuts” compared to the $200bn cut in the US trade deficit with China that Trump demanded, Reinsch said.

“It’s hard to believe there’s no linkage but Ross clearly left Beijing without anything last weekend,” he said. “I think there’s another shoe to drop.”

House of Fraser to shut 31 storesAFP

LONDON: House of Fraser, the Chinese-owned department store chain, is shutting more than half its shops across Britain and Ireland, risking the loss of 6,000 jobs, it said yesterday.

In a sign of more gloom for Britain’s retailers struggling to compete with online titans such as Amazon, budget chain Poundworld is separately seeking a rescue plan to safe-guard more than 5,000 jobs, according to a source.

House of Fraser said it would close 31 of its 59 stores in the UK and Ireland, as British retailers are suffering also from weak household spending amid Brexit uncertainty. Chinese conglomerate Sanpower had bought majority 89-percent holding in House of Fraser in a deal worth £480m in 2014.

Yesterday’s announcement is aimed at securing the sale of a 51-percent stake to China’s C.banner International Holdings, which already owns London toy retailer Hamleys.

“The retail industry is undergoing fundamental change and House of Fraser urgently needs to adapt to this

fast-changing landscape in order to give it a future and allow it to thrive,” House of Fraser Chairman Frank Slevin (pictured) said in a statement.

A spokesman confirmed the figure of 6,000 potential job losses, adding that this would comprise both company employees and concession staff.

Stores scheduled for closure include the retailer’s flagship shop on London’s Oxford Street, as well as its store in the capi-tal’s City finance district. “Our legacy store estate has created an unsustainable cost base, which without restructuring, presents an existential threat to the business,” Slevin said.

The group, whose history dates back to 1849, plans also to relocate its London head office to a new location to slash costs. Affected stores are expected to remain open until early 2019.

German industrial orders disappoint again in AprilAFP

FRANKFURT: Industrial orders fell for German firms for the fourth month in a row in April, official data showed yesterday, confounding analysts’ hopes for a recovery.

New contracts dropped 2.5 percent month-on-month, adjusting for price, seasonal and calendar effects, federal statistics authority Destatis said. The result disappointed analysts’ forecasts of a 0.7 percent increase compared with May. Orders from Ger-many’s neighbours in the eurozone fell the most sharply, losing 9.9 percent, while new domestic contracts also fell 4.8 percent.

One bright spot was orders from further afield, with demand from the rest of the world increasing 5.4 percent. Industrial orders are an indicator of future eco-nomic activity, closely watched by observers of Europe’s largest economy.

After German growth halved between January and March compared with the previous three months, to 0.3 percent, analysts argued the slowdown was likely a blip that would be corrected in future quarters.

But “it will get harder and harder to explain these monthly drops with one-offs like the weather or the timing of vacation,” ING Diba bank analyst Carsten Brzeski commented.

Surveys of confidence among investors and business leaders have also fallen from the euphoric levels seen late last year.

VILLAGGIO & CITY CENTERCROSSWORD NOVO Pearl Qatar

MALL

Note: Programme is subject to change without prior notice.

LANDMARK

ROXY

AL KHOR

ASIAN TOWN

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Action) 12:00noon, 12:30, 12:45, 2:45, 3:00, 3:15, 3:30, 5:30, 6:00, 6:15, 8:15, 8:45, 9:00, 11:20, 11:40, 11:45pm & 12:00midnight Kaala (2D/Tamil) 12:00noon, 3:30, 7:00 & 10:30pm Last Rampage: The Escape of Gary Tison 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00, 10:00pm & 12:00midnight Sid & Aya (2D/Tagalog) 12:15noon, 4:45 & 9:00pm Veere Di Wedding (2D/Hindi) 2:15, 6:45 & 11:00pm Solo: Star Wars Story (2D/Action) 12:00noon, 2:45, 5:30, 8:15 & 11:00pm Avengers: Infinity War (2D/Action) 12:00noon, 5:00 & 10:00pm Armed Response (2D/Action) 3:00 & 8:00pm Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (3D/IMAX /Action) 2:00, 5:00, 8:00 & 11:00pm

Kaala (2D/Tamil) 2:30, 8:00, 8:15 & 11:15pm Kaala (2D/Telugu) 2:15 & 11:30pm E. Ma. Yau (2D/Malayalam) 3:00pm Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 11:00pm Sid & Aya: Not A Love Story (2D/Tagalog) 8:00pm Last Rampage: The Escape of Gary Tison (2D/Drama) 9:45pm

ROYAL PLAZA

Kaala (2D/Tamil) 2:15, 8:00 & 11:15pm E. Ma. Yau (2D/Malayalam) 3:00pm Kaala (2D/Hindi) 8:15pmJurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 9:00 & 11:15pm Kaala (2D/Telugu) 2:30 & 11:00pm

Kaala (2D/Tamil) 2:15 & 11:00pm Kaala (2D/Hindi) 2:15 & 8:00pmKaala (2D/Telugu) 2:30 & 11:00pm Sid & Aya: Not A Love Story (2D/Tagalog) 8:00pm Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 8:30 & 11:00pm Last Rampage: The Escape of Gary Tison (2D/Drama) 9:45pm E. Ma. Yau (2D/Malayalam) 11:30pm

Kaala (Tamil) 1:00, 2:00, 7:30, 10:00 & 10:30pmKaala (Telugu) 2:30 & 7:00pmKaala (Hindi) 4:00 & 7:30pmE. Ma. Yau (2D/Malayalam) 1:30, 8:00, 10:15 & 10:30pm

Kaala (Tamil) 10:45am, 2:00, 8:15 & 11:30pmE. Ma. Yau (2D/Malayalam) 12:30 & 8:45pmKaala (Telugu) 10:30am & 7:45pmKaala (Hindi) 1:30 & 11:00pmJurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 3:00 & 11:15pm

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 12:30, 3:10, 5:50, 8:30 & 11:10pm Kaala 12:30, 3:45, 5:00, 7:00, 8:15, 10:15 & 11:30pmKaala (Hindi) 4:15pm Kaala (Telugu) 1:00, 7:30 & 10:45pm Stolen Princess 12:30 & 2:45pm

The true story of the infamous prison break, of Gary Tison and Randy Greenwalt, from the Arizona State prison in Florence, AZ, in the summer of 1978.

FLIK Mirqab

LAST RAMPAGE

Avengers: Infinity War 10:00pmE.Ma.Yu 2:40, 3:20, 8:00 & 10:35pmIncredible Story of The Giant Pear 2:35 & 5:15pm Jurassic World 3D 4:05, 6:40, 9:20pm & 12:00midnight Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom 2:30, 5:00, 7:35, 8:55, 10:15 & 11:30pm Kaala 2:55, 4:50, 6:20, 7:40, 9:45 & 11:00pm Masha And The Bear 4:20pm Show Dogs 3:10, 6:05 & 7:00pm Sid & Aya: Not Love Story 2:50, 5:55 & 8:00pm Solo: A Star Wars Story 5:00 & 11:05pm

The 2017 World Athlete

of the Year, Barshim

clears a height of 2.36

metres to win an exciting

duel against Russian

neutral athlete Danil

Lysenko.

SPORTFriday 8 June 2018

PAGE | 18 PAGE | 19Neymar to play

in warm-up against Austria

Al Sadd set for busy pre-season training

Halep, Stephens set up French Open finalAP

PARIS: Simona Halep emphati-cally ended the impressive French Open run of 2016 champion Garbine Muguruza with a 6-1, 6-4 victory in the semi-finals yesterday.

Halep’s fourth chance to win her first Grand Slam title will come against reigning US Open champion Sloane Stephens, who beat a mistake-prone Madison Keys 6-4, 6-4 in the first all-American semifinal at Roland Garros since 2002.

Halep assured herself of retaining the No. 1 ranking and reached her third final in Paris. She lost both of the previous ones in three sets, to Maria Sharapova (2014) and to Jelena Ostapenko (2017).

“I will try my best,” Halep told the crowd at Court Phillipe Chatrier, “and hopefully I will be better than last year.”

The Romanian also came up one victory shy of a major cham-pionship at the Australian Open in January, beaten there by Caroline Wozniacki.

That means tomorrow’s final at the French Open will be Halep’s third title match in the past five Grand Slam tournaments.

“I’m happy,” she said, “that I can have another chance.”

The 10th-seeded Stephens had never made it past the fourth round in Paris until now. After sitting out nearly a year because of an injured right foot that needed surgery in January 2017, she has soared up the rankings and now made it to her second major final in the past ninth months.

“Another great opportunity on Saturday, and I’m really looking forward to it,” said Stephens, whose late father, John, was the 1988 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year with the New England Patriots.

She improved to 3-0 against her longtime pal and Fed Cup teammate Keys, including their US Open final last September.

Like Halep, Stephens is an incredibly talented defensive

player, and she kept stretching points until Keys would err. In all, Keys made 41 unforced errors, 30 more than Stephens.

Muguruza, a two-time major champion, entered the semifinals having not lost a set in the tour-nament. She also was coming off a lopsided victory in the quarter-finals a day earlier, over-whelming five-time major champion Maria Sharapova 6-2, 6-1.

But it took Muguruza quite a while to get going against Halep,

who managed to keep sending ball after ball back over the net.

Backed by fans who loudly chanted her first name between games, Halep went ahead 3-0 in only 15 minutes with the help of only one winner. Of her first 14 points, 13 arrived via errors by Muguruza - nine unforced, four forced.

It was 5-0 by the time Muguruza eventually claimed a game.

The second set was more of a test for Halep, who was ahead

by a set and 3-0 before falling apart against Ostapenko a year ago.

Muguruza’s last stand came at 4-all in the second set, a 13-minute game in which she held three break points. But she failed to convert any of those, and Halep held there, before breaking at love to end it.

In two rain-interrupted men’s quarter-finals that were sus-pended on Wednesday evening, No. 1 Rafael Nadal completed a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 comeback over

11th-seeded Diego Schwartzman, and No. 5 Juan Martin del Potro defeated No. 3 Marin Cilic 7-6 (5), 5-7, 6-3, 7-5.

Nadal reached his 11th French Open semi-final as he bids for a record-extending 11th title at the clay-court major. Del Potro got back to the semi-finals in Paris for the first time since 2009.

They will play each other today, when the other men’s semi-final is No. 7 Dominic Thiem of Austria against 72nd-ranked Marco Cecchinato of Italy.

Simona Halep moves

into the final by beating

2016 champion Garbine

Muguruza.

Nadal reaches his 11th

French Open semi-final.

He bids for a record-

extending 11th title at

the clay-court major.

Abderrahman Samba

erases the 32-year old

meet record held by

American legend Danny

Harris with a brilliant run,

clocking a time of 47.60

seconds in the men’s 400

metres hurdles.

Both Qatari stars are

unbeaten in this season’s

IAAF Diamond League.

FRENCH OPEN RESULTS

MEN

QUARTER-FINALS

Rafael Nadal (ESP x1) bt Diego Schwartzman (ARG x11) 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2Juan Martin Del Potro (ARG x5) bt Marin Cilic (CRO x3) 7-6 (7/5), 5-7, 6-3, 7-5WOMEN

SEMI-FINALS

Simona Halep (ROM x1) bt Garbine Muguruza (ESP x3) 6-1, 6-4Sloane Stephens (USA x10) bt Madison Keys (USA x13) 6-4, 6-4MIXED DOUBLES

FINAL

Latisha Chan/Ivan Dodig (TAI/CRO x2) bt Gabriela Dabrowski/Mate Pavic (CAN/CRO x1) 6-1, 6-7 (5/7), 10-8

Sloane Stephens of the US returns the ball to compatriot Madison Keys during their women’s singles semi-final match of French Open in Paris, yesterday.

Samba, Barshim dazzle Oslo crowd CHINTHANA WASALA THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar’s Abderrahman Samba yesterday made a bril-liant comeback in the home stretch to outshine home hero and world champion Karsten Warholm to win the 400m with a meet record at the IAAF Diamond League in Oslo.

Also yesterday, reigning world high jump champion Mutaz Essa Barshim main-tained his unbeaten Diamond League record this season, winning his pet event, clearing 2.36 metres.

At the Bislett Stadion, Samba erased the 32-year old meet record held by American legend Danny Harris with a brilliant run, clocking a time of 47.60 seconds in the men’s 400 metres hurdles.

The event saw a host of top rated competitors, including Rio Olympics finalist Yasmani Copello of Turkey and Kerron Clement, the reigning Olympic champion. However, all eyes were on the home hero Warholm and Samba who is in brilliant form this season, having the world leading time under his name.

Samba was trailing at the third position until halfway mark, with Warholm leading the pack. But Samba eased past Warholm in the final 100 metres to disappoint the home crowd, completing a record breaking performance once again.

“I cannot say I was con-fident coming into the last hurdle to win, but I have better endurance in last meters. I’m enjoying life and hoping to continue to run fast next time in Stockholm,” Samba said.

“And you can be sure I can run faster, maybe even close to 47 seconds. And Samba dance, I need to learn that more,” Samba added. It was his third win the Diamond League this season.

Yasmani finished third (48.54 secs.) behind Warholm who clocked a time of 48.22 secs.

USA’s Timothy Lamont ‘TJ’ Holmes and Clement finished fourth and fifth respectively.

The men’s high jump field saw eight of the top athletes in contest, but ell eyes were on the exciting duel between the 2017 World Athlete of the Year, Barshim and Russia’s Danil Lysenko who won the silver medal at the IAAF Worlds last year.

Only Barshim and Lysenko made it beyond the 2.30 mark as Majd Eddin Ghazal, Marco Fasinotti and Donald Thomas all failed to clear the height.

Lysenko cleared the 2.30m mark with ease before Barshim succeeded in his second attempt. Both of them made it past the 2.33m mark, a new seasonal best for Lysenko.

The Russian neutral athlete failed in all his attempts at the height of 2.36 but the Qatari star kept on moving higher.

After clearing 2.36 metres in his first attempt, he decided to go for the record height of 2.40 meters but failed on all three of his attempts.

Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim

competes during the men’s high

jump at the Oslo IAAF Diamond

League 2018 at Bislett Stadium in Oslo, Norway

yesterday.

Qatar’s Abderrahman Samba (right), Norway’s Karsten Warholm (left) and USA’s Kerron Clement compete in the men’s 400m hurdles event during the Oslo IAAF Diamond League meet yesterday.

18 FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018SPORT

Science and the World Cup Germany on top of FIFA rankingsAFP

PARIS: Defending champions Germany will have the psychological advantage of going to the Russian World Cup finals sitting atop the FIFA rankings.

The Germans are in good shape heading to Russia after their talismanic goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, a key player in their 2014 victory, returned to action after a long absence through injury.

Neymar’s on-form five-time World Cup winners Brazil are second, multi-tal-ented Belgium are third, C r i s t i a n o R o n a l d o ’ s European champions Por-tugal fourth and Lionel Messi’s Argentina are fifth. According to reports Germany and Brazil joint World Cup favourites at odds of five to one followed by Spain, France and Argentina.

World Cup host nation Russia meanwhile slide to 70th position after a seven-game winless streak. They kick off the tournament against Saudi Arabia on June 14.

STANDINGS: 1. Germany2. Brazil3. Belgium4. Portugal5. Argentina6. Switzerland7. France8. Poland (+2)9. Chile 10. Spain (-2)11. Peru =12. Denmark, England (+1) 14. Uruguay (+3)15. Mexico16. Colombia17. Netherlands (+2)18. Wales (+3)19. Italy (+1)20. Croatia (-2)

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A statue of Zabivaka, the official mascot for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, is seen on Manezhnaya Square in downtown Moscow yesterday.

Adidas Telstar 18, the

official ball for the

Russia 2018 World

Cup, experiences more

“drag” or resistance as

it flies through the air,

the researchers found.

The studies suggest that

players in red jerseys

are viewed as more

dominant and skilled --

both by themselves and

by opponents who may

be more anxious and

perform less well as a

result.

One study has found

that white kits are the

most visible on a green

football field, and could

“increase the amount

of completed successful

passes”.

AFP

PARIS: Football fans won’t be alone when they sit glued to their TV sets for the 2018 World Cup.

Scientists, too, will follow every move of the players and ball, probing all facets of the beautiful game for insights into disciplines as divergent as aer-odynamics, psychology and the human physique.

With just about every World Cup, there seems to be grum-bling about the ball, which Adidas has designed for the four-yearly FIFA tournament since 1970.

Already, this year’s offering, Telstar 18, has been criticised by some goalkeepers for being too flighty and hard to grip.

But scientists say the new sphere is actually quite stable -- certainly more so than Jab-ulani, the much-denigrated official ball for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

The Telstar 18 is a nostalgic nod to Adidas’ first-ever World Cup ball, the Telstar, used in Mexico for the 1970 World Cup.

That was the first black-and white sphere made for a World Cup -- designed for better vis-ibility on monochrome TV screens -- and sported the mix of pentagonal and hexagonal panels that has become synon-ymous with soccer balls.

The latest offering is white, black and grey, with gold lettering.

Eric Goff, a physics pro-fessor at the University of Lynchburg in Virginia, was part of a team that analysed the ball using wind-tunnel experiments and surface measurements.

Compared to the Brazuca, its predecessor used in Brazil in 2014, the Telstar 18 experiences more “drag” or resistance as it flies through the air, the researchers found.

This means it will travel shorter distances -- about eight to ten percent less than Brazuca -- when kicked at high impact speeds of more than 90 kilo-metres (56 miles) per hour, Goff said.

“That could be bad for strikers who kick from a great distance and must therefore kick the ball very hard,” he explained.

But potentially good news for goalies, as it means balls kicked at high speed “will reach the goal a little slower than Brazuca did in 2014.”

A winning formula requires not only the best players, coaches, and a good combi-nation of skill and luck. A team’s kit, research has shown, can give it an edge.

Particularly if it’s red.Iain Greenlees, a sports

psychologist with the

University of Chichester in England, has co-authored research papers concluding that both penalty takers and goal-keepers benefit from being decked out in ruby regalia.

The studies suggest that players in red jerseys are viewed as more dominant and skilled -- both by themselves and by opponents who may be more anxious and perform less well as a result.

One theory, Greenlees said, is that humans have evolved to associate red with danger, being the colour of blood, or with aggression -- think of a face reddened in anger.

And then there is the hypothesis that red is more visible and draws an opponent’s attention, breaking their focus.

There is certainly anecdotal evidence for scarlet success.

The English football team,

which traditionally plays home games in white, won its only World Cup title in its red “away” kit at Wembley Stadium in 1966 against white-shirted West Germany.

Some of the country’s top football clubs -- Liverpool and Manchester United for example -- play in red.

But this does not explain the phenomenon that is Brazil -- holder of the most World Cup titles with its iconic yellow jersey.

And the defending cham-pions, Germany, wear white.

One study found that white kits are the most visible on a green football field, and could “increase the amount of com-pleted successful passes”.

Green, however, could boost a team’s defence, being harder for opponents to see against a green background.

Greenlees points out that the overall impact of any colour would be small.

“A good team wearing white/blue/green should still outperform an average team wearing red,” he said.

But if teams are equally matched in other departments, jersey shade may just tip the scales.

Pele had it. Messi has it. So does Ronaldo and Neymar.

The flamboyance, that element of skilful surprise that can change a match from one second to the next and fires up the fans.

The over-the-head bicycle kick made famous by Pele, no-look or dummy passes, the “elastico” dribble that makes a defender believe the ball is coming right at them only for it to be pulled back... these are tricks designed not only to entertain the hoards.

“High creativity” is, in fact, a good predictor for victory, said a study in the Journal of Sports Sciences in April.

Researchers analysed all 311 goals scored during open play in 153 matches in the 2010 and 2014 World Cups and the 2016 UEFA Euro.

They looked specifically at the eight actions before each goal, and rated them from zero to 10 for creativity, described as a combination of “sur-prising, original and flexible” ball use.

High creativity in the last two actions before the shot on goal “proved to be the best pre-dictor for game success,” they found.

The study found that highly creative moves were rare during matches -- fewer than one in 10. But almost half of goals scored included one or more highly creative actions.

Brazil’s Neymar and his team-mates in action during a training session at the Tottenham Hotspur Training Ground in London yesterday.

Panama team hotel gets raided during Oslo matchAFP

OSLO: At around the time that World Cup minnows Panama were playing Norway this week, thieves were busy rifling their Oslo hotel rooms, police told yesterday.

The Panamanian

football federation tweeted: “Three #Pan-amayor hotel rooms were robbed in Oslo, Norway. Norwegian police are at the scene looking for clues.”

Police say objects worth around €53,000 euros ($62,000) were

taken from three rooms in a downtown Oslo hotel.

Police spokeswoman Aslaug Rohne said that the robbery probably took place at the same time as Panama were being beaten by Norway on Wednesday in a match that ended 1-0.

Neymar to play in warm-up against Austria; Fred injuredAP

LONDON: While Neymar seems to be finishing his injury recovery and is set to play in Brazil’s last pre-World Cup friendly at Austria on Sunday, midfielder Fred left Thurs-day’s training in pain after a tackle.

Brazil coach Tite put Neymar in his main formation during training in London and removed midfielder Fern-andinho from the starting line-up.

Last Sunday, Neymar joined the team during the break against Croatia. He scored the first goal of the game after dribbling past two opponents and was more active than coach Tite expected at this stage of his recovery.

Neymar is returning from a foot injury that kept him out for three months.

Tite also kept winger Willian in the team, which suggests he will use midfielder Philippe Coutinho in a more central position in Vienna.

Midfielder Fred, who is also one of Tite’s options for Fernandinho’s spot, was forced out of the training after a tackle by Casemiro affected his right ankle.

The newly signed Manchester United player tried to remain on the pitch but couldn’t. He was treated with ice on the sidelines.

“It is too early to say, we have to see how he develops in the next 24 hours,” Brazilian football con-federation physician Rodrigo Lasmar said of Fred’s con-dition. “He started working out right after. Tomorrow we will know whether he will have to be further examined or not.”

Brazil players have praised the intense training ses-sions but critics say Tite’s hard-line approach could affect the future of his players in the World Cup.

Midfielder Renato Augusto has been sidelined since last week due to pain in his right knee.

Lasmar said Augusto could play on Sunday depending on how his recovery continues this week.

Brazil has until a day before its World Cup opener against Switzerland on June 17 to replace injured players in its 23-man squad.

Brazil’s two-week training camp in London ends on Friday, when the team travels to Austria for the friendly.

19FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018 SPORT

A file photo of Al Sadd’s training session.

Al Sadd set for busy pre-season trainingFAWAD HUSSAIN THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Seeking a return to trophy winning form, Al Sadd’s team management led by head coach Jesualdo Ferreira has planned a busy training schedule for ‘The Wolves’.

The pre-season training for QNB Stars League (QSL) giants includes a training camp in Austria and several friendly games.

Al Sadd, led by Xavi Her-nandez (pictured), were the only club which gave treble-winning Al Duhail a realistic threat to their campaign last season.

‘The Wolves’ finished second in the QSL behind Al Duhail, and also played the final of Qatar Cup which they lost to the same opposition.

They won the season-opening Sheikh Jassim Cup after defeating Al Duhail.

Al Sadd have secured new contracts for both Ferreira and Xavi reposing confidence on the duo as they aim to topple their coun-terparts the next season.

Al Sadd announced a two-year con-tract extension with Barcelona legend Xavi last week and on Tuesday they renewed Ferreira’s contract f o r

another season. ‘The Wolves’, who will

meet Iranian club Esteghlal in the first leg of the AFC Cham-pions League quarter-final in Tehran on August 27, will

begin preparations for the new season from July 1 in Doha.

During the training at home venue, Xavi’s side will work on physical and technical training

before the coaches choose the final

pre-season squad. The squad will then travel

to Austria training camp which will be held from July 12 to 28. The camp will be held in Bad Haring, an Austrian town that is situated close to the German border. The team will stay at the Hotel Das Sieben for the duration of the camp.

This will be Al Sadd’s second visit to Bad Haring, after training at the same venue last season.

The town, which is known for its mountains and health tourism, is just 45 kms away from Munich.

During the camp, the team will play three friendlies to prepare for the new season. The matches are set to be played on the July 19, 23 and 27. The new QSL season will begin on August 2.

ytopple their coun-terparts the nextseason.

Al Sadd announced a two-year con-tract extension with Barcelona legend Xavi last week and onTuesday they renewed Ferreira’s contract f o r

g p pthe new seasonfrom July 1 inDoha.

During thetraining at homevenue, Xavi’s sidewill work onphysical andtechnical training

before the coacheschoose the final

Ricciardo could yet escape Canadian GP grid penaltyREUTERS

MONTREAL: Daniel Ricciardo could yet escape a Canadian Grand Prix grid penalty despite Red Bull technical head Adrian Newey saying earlier in the week that he would have one.

The Australian told reporters yes-terday that while the MGU-K unit used at the previous race in Monaco had been destroyed, the team hoped one from earlier in the season remained useable.

The MGU-K recovers the energy generated while braking and forms part of the Renault power unit.

Drivers are allowed only two for the whole season before incurring a 10-place penalty, and the Monaco MGU-K was already Ricciardo’s second.

“We’re hoping that what we start with tomorrow will run all weekend and if that’s the case, then no pen-alties,” said Ricciardo, who has two free practice sessions today.

“I guess there was a little bit of miscommunication (earlier in the week). I would much rather take the penalties elsewhere,” he added.

“We’ve got good momentum right now and it’s a circuit where it’s tricky to overtake so you don’t want to be starting 10th or 15th, or somewhere down there. We’ll try and survive this weekend.” Ricciardo won in Monaco, despite completing almost two thirds of the race with no MGU-K, and is third in the championship.

The Australian took the first grand prix win of his career in Mon-treal in 2014 and was third last year.

Newey had said that Ricciardo would “definitely be taking some penalties in Montreal.”

NBA: Durant scores 43 as Warriors secure 3-0 leadREUTERS

CLEVELAND: Kevin Durant scored 43 points, and the Golden State Warriors overcame a slow start on Wednesday night to defeat the Cavaliers 110-102 in Game 3 of the NBA Finals.

Golden State, trying to win the Larry O’Brien Trophy for the third time in four years, leads the best-of-seven series, 3-0. Game 4 is tonight in Cleveland.

Neither team led by more than three points in the fourth quarter until Stephen Curry drained a 3-pointer with 2:38 remaining for a 101-97 War-riors edge.

LeBron James then made a three of his own to make it a one-point game before Andre Iguodala, making his return after missing the pre-vious six games due to a bone bruise in his left knee, con-verted a dunk to increase the lead to 103-100.

Durant then buried a 3-pointer from 33 feet out with 49.8 seconds remaining to essentially ice the game.

Rodney Hood, who sat out three games before playing four minutes of garbage time in Game 2 of the Finals, came off the bench to score 15 points for the Cavaliers.

Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue after practice Tuesday

said getting off to a fast start would be critical. He also wanted his team to be more physical than they were in the two games played on Golden State’s floor to start the series.

The Cavs led 14-4 with 7:57 left in the first quarter, a complete flip from Game 2 when the Warriors jumped to a 15-6 lead with 8:12 left in the first quarter.

The Cavaliers never recovered, even though more than 44 minutes remained.

The difference on Wednesday was the Warriors chipped away at the Cava-liers’ lead and tied the score 26-26 on a pull-up jumper by Kevin Durant with 32.6 seconds left in the opening quarter. The Cavaliers

regained control in the second quarter by dominating the glass and playing smoth-ering defense on Curry.

Curry scored 33 points and was 9-of-17 on 3-point attempts in Golden State’s 122-103 victory in Game 2.

He had just two points in the first half of Game 3 and was 0-for-5 on 3-point attempts when the Warriors went to the locker room at halftime trailing 58-52. Curry finished with 11 points.

As they’ve done throughout the playoffs, the Warriors surged in the third quarter, outscoring the Cav-aliers 31-23 to take an 83-81 lead into the fourth quarter. Durant scored 10 points in the third quarter.

Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant (foreground) in action in game three of the 2018 NBA Finals on Wednesday.

Kohli named Indian Cricketer-of-the-YearAFP

NEW DELHI: Virat Kohli won India’s Cricketer-of-the-Year award for the fifth time yesterday for outstanding performances over the past two seasons.

Kohli became India’s captain in 2015 and led his team back to number one place in the Test rankings the following year.

The 29-year-old, who was also named International Cricket Council player of the year in January, amassed 1,332 runs in 13 Tests in 2016-2017.

He also averaged 84.22 for his 1,516 runs in 27 one-day internationals.

In six Tests in 2017-18, the star batsman has scored 896 runs at an average of 89.6.

Kohli will receive the pres-tigious Polly Umrigar award,

named after a former India captain, and a $45,000 prize at a Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) function in Ban-galore on June 12.

He previously won the award in 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The prize is not granted in every calendar year, due to scheduling issues, and is deter-mined on previous seasons’ performances.

Known as “King Kohli” in his home country, the player was recently ranked the highest paid cricketer in the world, at 83rd in the Forbes’ list of big earning athletes.

It estimated his annual earnings at $24m.

In line with his status as a national hero, a wax effigy of Kohli was unveiled on Wednesday at the Madame Tus-sauds museum in New Delhi.

In this file photo taken on June 6, 2018, an Indian visitor takes a selfie with the newly-unveiled wax statue of Indian cricketer Virat Kohli at the Madame Tussauds Delhi in New Delhi.

Tendulkar’s son picked for India Under-19 teamAFP

NEW DELHI: Arjun Tendulkar (pictured), son of Indian batting great Sachin Tendulkar, was yesterday named in an Under-19 squad for two four-day matches in Sri Lanka.

Arjun, 18, was picked as part of a 15-member squad by the country’s junior selection com-mittee, according to a press release by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

An all-rounder who bowls and bats left-handed, Arjun has been playing junior cricket for Mumbai.

Standing at over six feet, the left-arm quick bowler has claimed 18 wickets from five domestic matches at the U-19

level including a five-wicket haul.

He came under the inter-national spotlight when he bowled in the nets in the lead-up to the Lord’s Test between England and South Africa in 2017.

Arjun was however over-looked for the five one-dayers which the juniors will play during the July 11-August 11 tour after the four-day games.

T20: Afghanistan inflict whitewash on BangladeshAFP

DEHRADUN: Spin sensation Rashid Khan bowled an excellent last over to help Afghanistan eke out a thrilling one-run win over Bangladesh and complete a series whitewash in the third Twenty20 international yesterday.

Chasing 146 for victory, Bangladesh required nine in the 20th over but Khan held his nerve to restrict Bang-ladesh to 144-6 in the north Indian city of Dehradun.

The Asghar Stanikzai-led Afghanistan, who await their Test debut against India on June 14 in Bangalore, tri-umphed 3-0 after winning the first two games comprehensively.

Mushfiqur Rahim, who

hit 46, and Mahmudullah Riyad, who made 45, put together a gritty 84-run fifth-wicket partnership to give Bangladesh hope of a conso-lation win.

The 19-year-old Khan, who topped the bowling chart with eight wickets and the man of the series award, returned figures of 1-24.

Earlier, Afghanistan batsman Samiullah Shenwari made an unbeaten 33 to lift his side to 145-6 after they elected to bat first.

Afghanistan were in trouble at 101-4 in the 15th over against a disciplined Bangladesh bowling attack but Shenwari’s 28-ball knock gave them a winning total.

Left-arm spinner Nazmul Islam and paceman Abu Jayed claimed two wickets each.

20 FRIDAY 8 JUNE 2018MORNING BREAK

FAJRSHOROOK

03. 14 AM

04. 43 AM

11. 33 AM

02. 56 PM

06. 26 PM

07. 56 PM

ZUHRASR

MAGHRIBISHA

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 13:45 LOW TIDE 07:15 – 16:45

Hot daytime with blowing dust to dust at

places.

WEATHER TODAY

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum 33oC 45oC

Giraffe’s day outGiraffes look on from their enclosure as a newly born giraffe calf with its mother is separated from others at the Alipore Zoological Garden, in Kolkata, India, yesterday.

Pakistanis enchanted by 11-year-old motivational coachAFP

PESHAWAR: Several hundred Pakistani university students sit enraptured as Hammad Safi lectures them on the merits of bettering their diction by watching Barack Obama speeches on YouTube.

The elegantly dressed motivational speaker is something of an internet sen-sation in Pakistan and regularly draws large crowds. But it’s not just because of his infectious enthusiasm and engaging smile. It’s also because he’s only 11 years old.

Safi speaks into his wireless micro-phone, his hand gestures practised and his confidence unwavering before the attention of his elders at the University of Spoken English (USECS) in the north-western city of Peshawar.

The pint-sized motivational coach is already an online star with his own YouTube channel and 145,000 sub-scribers. Some videos have been viewed millions of times. Some of his advice may sound hackneyed: “every second is a challenge,” he says in one video. “Failure is the basis of success.” But his audiences don’t seem to mind.

Bilal Khan, a political science student twice Safi’s age who came to listen to his speech, said the boy wonder had had a profound effect on him.

“A few months ago I was really dis-appointed with life... I was (thinking) about suicide, because there are no jobs

and no success in life,” he said. “Then I saw a movie of Hammad Safi. I thought, if an 11-year-old child can do anything, why can’t I?” Online comments also shower him with praise.

“People love him because he’s just talking, he’s a hit every time,” says Samiullah Waqil, one of his former English teachers. Safi’s youth and pre-cociousness seem to form part of the enchantment.

But he is also seen as presenting a positive image of Pakistan, one that res-onates powerfully with his listeners.

Discussing Allama Iqbal, a renowned poet widely regarded as having inspired the movement to create Pakistan, Safi says: “If he had not been there, I or anyone else would surely be cleaning the toilet in the house of an Englishman.”

At USECS, the faculty see him as a

“nanha professor”, or little teacher; a protege who could go on to great things one day — though what, exactly, they are looking for from him remains undefined.

Safi was studying at a traditional school but also taking English classes at USECS, where he was quickly noticed for his “phenomenal self-confidence”, says director Ammer Sohail.

Shortly afterwards, he left his school to be full-time at USECS, continuing his English studies and embarking on his motivational career. The university, made up largely of working-class students, now has Safi offer motivational lectures each week, in addition to his growing internet fanbase.

His “job”, says Sohail, is to encourage the poorer students, “to give them hope, so that they break their glass ceiling” in a country with glaring education ine-quality, where more than 40 percent of the population is illiterate, according to UN data.

“We want it to spread this education awareness to the whole country,” he says emphatically. Safi’s father, a wealthy 48-year-old businessman from Peshawar named Abdul Rehman Khan, agrees.

“He is not on ordinary child,” he explains. “People have seen something in him. I have myself seen abilities in him. That’s why I have appointed special teachers for him. I want him to become a special leader. “I’m very proud... For

his abilities, for his intelligence, he is God-gifted.” Safi repeats the sentiment, though sometimes he gives the impression of doing so by rote.

“I am an inspiration, not only for Pakistan, but for the world. I inspire the entire universe,” he says, without blinking. He sometimes studies “10 to 12 hours in a row,” according to his professors. In his simple room, photos showing him in the company of the Chinese ambassador in Islamabad and the politician Imran Khan hang over his bed.

Posters of cartoon heroes or sportsmen are absent, toys are few. “Batman and Superman are fake heroes, but those are true,” he says, pointing to the portraits of Allama Iqbal, Bill Gates and Albert Einstein adorning his walls.

“Where’s the child in him? He’s gone, because he thinks above his age,” worries Bakht Zaman, a professor at Peshawar University, who attended a lecture later shared widely on YouTube.

“This talented child is a good moti-vational coach” but “he lacks intellectual depth,” he notes. “He can become what they want to do with him, but it will take time.” Hassan Amir Shah, the vice chan-cellor of the public university of Lahore, where Safi has also lectured, hopes for his part that all the attention “will not drive him crazy”.

“He still has a long way to go, many books to read,” he says . “We will only be able to judge him in 20 years, when he is an adult.”

In this picture taken on April 3, 2018, 11-year-old Pakistani motivational coach Hammad Safi lectures students at a languages academy in Peshawar. Elegantly dressed, his gestures confident, Hammad Safi speaks into a wireless microphone before an enraptured audience in Pakistan.

Strangers break bread at Ramadan tent in London parkREUTERS

LONDON: As dusk falls, shoes come off and hundreds of hungry diners sit cross-legged in a London park to break bread. It is iftar: The traditional sundown dinner that follows 19 hours of fasting in London.

One of the sacred pillars of Islam, Ramadan calls on Muslims to abstain from all food, drink and even sipping water during the month’s daylight hours. So dinner takes on a special sig-nificance at the “open iftar” staged each year in a central London park.

Held in Bloomsbury, an elegant London district known for its garden squares and literary past, the “open iftar” is laid on for 30 nights by a small community group — The Ramadan Tent Project, which invites all comers to join them and eat for free.

The project began in 2013 when Omar Salha, then a postgraduate student, decided to set up a “home from home” for international students living in the city. It has far surpassed Salha’s first vision. At least 300 hungry Londoners gathered in the park on Tuesday evening, from suited execu-tives to the homeless, as strangers sat side-by-side on the ground.

In its infancy, the dinner drew just a handful of students who sat on news-papers and shared a jumbled picnic on the grass. Now, up to 400 people gather each night under a large marquee, with lighting and a sound system, served by a slick operation of 90 volunteers.

Its founder said the project was a way to celebrate diversity and offer Londoners an escape from urban life. “It’s very easy to get sucked into the ‘us and them’ narrative,” Salha said.

“The ‘open iftar’ experience is about turning strangers into friends, breaking down barriers... and doing it through the act of sharing a meal.” Once the sun set, a volunteer performed a live call to prayer as parched men and women happily broke their fast.

Diners ate grilled chicken, rice, stuffed peppers and sticky baklava — all shared with strangers from any and no faiths. “’Open iftar’ in the heart of London provides a means for people to stop, take a moment, come together and connect,” Tabetha Bhatti, an organiser at the Ramadan Tent Project, said.

It was the first time for faster Wahil Gouraya. “In a big city like London, it can be easy to be isolated,” said the 18-year-old student. “This gives people an opportunity to go out and meet people that they might not usually meet.” It was the third visit for Umayair

Ullah, who said the meal mattered more when misconceptions about Islam were so rife.

“Islam has definitely been misrep-resented in the media so I think what ‘open iftar’ is doing is really important,” he said. “It’s like reclaiming the nar-rative... it makes me really happy.” PR professional Laura Bannister came with her Arabic class, while television anchor Jon Snow praised the spirit of communality in the bustle of a big city.

“I pay tribute to your generosity, which is what after all we celebrate at an iftar, and what we then try to practise after Ramadan,” he told the group. The open dinner idea, which began in London, has spread to other venues, with similar events taking place in three other British cities as well as Toronto and Portland in north America, Istanbul in Turkey and Zambia’s second city of Ndola.

Signal sending chip wins prize for new technology to protect womenREUTERS

NEW YORK: A tiny computer chip that sends emer-gency alerts in areas without cellular phone service has won a global competition for technologies to help protect women and girls from violence, a California-based foundation said.

The winning device is so small it is built into a watch and records audio when it is activated, said XPRIZE, which designs competitions to spur techno-logical innovation with a social impact.

Globally, one out of every three women and girls experiences physical abuse, the United Nations esti-mates. The figure is twice as high in some countries.

“With so many advances in innovation and tech-nology today, it was unacceptable to us that we didn’t have a solution to help curb this sexual assault pan-demic,” said Anu Jain, founder of the Women’s Safety XPRIZE, in a statement.

Ending violence against women and girls is one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by U.N. member nations to be achieved by 2030. “Safety is a fundamental human right and shouldn’t be considered a luxury for women. It is the foundation in achieving gender equality,” said Jain.

A tiny button on the winning device, made by Leaf Wearables of New Delhi, India, inconspicuously triggers an emergency alert with location details to a network of responders within 90 seconds. It costs less than $40. The competition rules specified that the device could cost no more than that, in order to make it affordable to those who need it most.

The winning designers get $1m, and the award was announced late on Wednesday at UN head-quarters in New York. The first round of competition had 85 teams, including app developers, technology researchers, schools and startups.

One team of finalists developed a device that could “detect a user’s panic, fear and stress” by monitoring speech and physiological changes. Finalists also included a device “camouflaged as a fashion accessory” that could send hands-free alerts. Another drew on global positioning services, cellular data and Bluetooth to connect women to emergency services.

‘Ocean’s 8’: A crime tale for the #MeToo ageAFP

NEW YORK: They’re eight women, poised to take over from the men for an “Ocean’s” reboot full of glitz and glamor — a particularly #MeToo affair that does away with the saga’s traditional masculinity. “Ocean’s 8” is to be released today, more than 10 years after “Ocean’s 13”.

But to freshen up the latest instalment, Warner Bros bid farewell to Danny -- killed in 2018 in unknown circumstances -- and replaced him with his

sister Debbie (Sandra Bullock), who, like her brother at the beginning of the saga, has just been released from prison.

Meanwhile, there’s another change of scenery. Rather than casinos, Debbie’s focus is one of the most extravagant events in New York’s calendar: the Met Gala. It’s at this party -- organized by Vogue editor Anna Wintour -- that Debbie wants to get her hands on a $150m Cartier necklace.

In preparation, she’s gathered an expert team -- all

women, of course, echoing the likes of “Set It Off” (1996). But “Ocean’s 8” does away with tes-tosterone, darkness and dra-matic tension -- elements syn-onymous with the crime genre and prominent in the first three “Ocean’s” films.

There are no guns, bombs or physical violence. No enemy opposition, such as Terry Ben-edict (Andy Garcia) in the first three films, either. Once that’s all stripped away, all that remains is planning the heist and its precise execution.