Qatar eye gymnastics growth as top FIG event beckons

G20 financial leaders row back on free

trade pledge

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

Chelsea's Gary Cahill celebrates scoring their second goal with teammates during their English Premier League match against Stoke City at the Bet365 Stadium in Stoke-on-Trent, yesterday. Chelsea won 2-1. → See also page 27

Chelsea beat Stoke City

BUSINESS | 21 SPORT | 28

Volume 22 | Number 7105 | 2 RiyalsSunday 19 March 2017 | 20 Jumada II 1438

MEDINA CENTRALEMEDIINANA C CENENTRTRALESpecial Lease Offer

4409 5155

The Peninsula

As Ooredoo continues to push for a leading data experience in Qatar for its

customers, the telecom opera-tor yesterday launched an innovative range of new ‘End-less Internet Packs’ that offer complete full bill protection and minimised prices.

With the new service, once the allowance of full speed internet is consumed, custom-ers can have unlimited internet at a reduced speed at no addi-tional cost until the users’ next month’s allowance begins and full-speed usage is renewed.

The new Endless Internet Packs come with new features that allow Ooredoo customers to enjoy never-ending internet with no additional charges or surprise bills at the end of the

month. Instead, Endless Inter-net Pack subscribers will now have a never ending Internet access at all times, enjoying high-speed connection as long as their selected data allowance lasts.

To ensure that customers who need to be connected to Ooredoo’s super-fast speeds at all times are catered to, the com-pany has also announced the launch of daily and weekly speed boosters, as well as the option to simply use Data Recharge cards to regain a nor-mal high speed connection.

“Our customers are increas-ingly looking to be online full-time, and want to enjoy the maximum potential of their dig-ital lifestyles. We have reviewed our post-paid Data Packs and deployed innovative new tech-nology to enable customers to

keep surfing the web without being surprised by out-of-bun-dle charges at the end of the month. This is a major step for-ward in enhancing our customers’ data experience, and another important boost for our users,” said Waleed Al Sayed, Chief Executive Officer, Ooredoo.

Customers can choose from one of eight Endless Internet Packs ranging from 250 MB as an add-on for just QR 20, to the unlimited pack for QR 500. Other denominations include 6GB, 10GB, 14GB, 20GB, 30GB and 45GB packs to be used on top of Shahry Smart subscrip-tions, or as a separate Internet SIM for tablet and laptop use.

To register for the new End-less Internet Packs, customers can check the Ooredoo App, call 111, or visit any Ooredoo Shop.

Traffic on the new stretch of Al Rayyan Road Upgrade project in Doha yesterday. Pics: Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula

Private sector education revenue rises

The Peninsula

Total revenues of the private education sector in Qatar increased from QR2bn in 2011 to

QR5.8bn in 2015 while the size of the workforce in private and public education sectors almost doubled during the same period, shows data released by the Ministry of Economy and Commerce yesterday.

The Ministry’s analytical report on economic contribu-tion of the education sector highlighted the remarkable economic boom which Qatar has witnessed in recent years, coupled with steady demo-graphic growth, necessitating the expansion of the education sector’s capacity to meet grow-ing demand for education services.

The report noted that the number of schools has

witnessed significant growth between 2010 and 2014, with the establishment of 243 new schools. The Ministry projected demand for school education to continue to grow over the next five years.

Kindergartens accounted for two-thirds of the newly established institutions, fol-lowed by primary schools at 18%. Preparatory and second-ary schools accounted for 7% and 9%, respectively, of newly established schools.

The increase in the number of schools was driven by a 36% increase in the number of stu-dents, from 197,000 in 2010 to 268,000 in 2015.

Private schools enrolled 84% of new students through-out the different education stages and accounted for 80% of newly established schools between 2010 and 2015, which highlights the increasing role of the private sector in the edu-cation sector.

The report showed an 83.7% increase in the number of university students across Qatar from 15,300 in 2010 to 28,100 in 2014. Public univer-sities hosted 88.9% of new students.

Education sector employed 50,600 people in 2015, up from 26,900 in 2011, a twofold increase that surpasses the overall increase in employ-ment across Qatar, which stood at 53.9% during the same period.

In 2015, the education sec-tor employed 2.6% of Qatar’s work force, compared to 2.1% in 2011.

→ Continued on page 3

Sanaullah Ataullah The Peninsula

Traffic congestion on Al Qalaa Street and in com-mercial areas of Al Shafi

Street in Al Rayyan will be dras-tically reduced with the opening of an all new improved stretch of Al Rayyan Road yesterday.

The first phase of Al Rayyan Road Upgrade project, which is expected to cut travel time by up to 30 percent, was opened to traffic yesterday, two months ahead of the scheduled date. The project is worth QR 1.2bn.

The first phase of Al Rayyan Road Upgrade project extends for approximately 2.9km from west of Khalid bin Abdullah Al Attiyah Roundabout (New Al Rayyan Roundabout) to east of Bani Hajer Roundabout. It includes the construction of

four lanes in each direction separated by a median, around 2km of side roads, and around 5.8km of service roads.

The project also includes the construction of three inter-changes, namely the interchange between Al Shafi

Street and Al Rayyan Road, and interchange between Al Qalaa Street and Al Rayyan Road. Those interchanges include two underpasses that provide a con-tinuous traffic movement along Al Rayyan Road.

→ Continued on page 2

The Peninsula

Qatar’s eight projects, with a combined esti-mated value of $1.2bn,

have won national honours in the 2017 MEED Quality Awards for Projects.

The awards not only rec-ognise the construction element of project delivery but also consider the value and quality of a project throughout its entire life cycle, from the design con-cept through to engineering and construction and its wider contribution to soci-ety and the environment.

The eight winning projects from Qatar are ASTAD’s Northwestern Uni-versity in Qatar Project (Education Project of the Year); Al Malki Trading & Contracting’s Dukhan Tunnel Project (Small Project of the Year); Galfar Al Misnad Engi-neering & Contracting WLL’s EPIC for Route survey, Design, Construction, Instal-lation and Hookup of Oil, Gaslift flowline, PWI spur lines in Dukhan field Project (Oil and Gas Project of the Year) and Six Construct’s Qatar Gabbro Terminal (Bulk Material Handling System)Project (Logistics Project of the Year).

The Public Works Author-ity, Ashghal, had three national winners— the Doha North Sewage Treatment Works Project (Award for Sustainability and Water Project of the Year), Salwa Road Project (Road, Bridge, Tunnel Project of the Year) and Medical City Fit Out Project (Healthcare Project of the Year). MEED Quality Awards for Projects pro-gramme is in its seventh year.

First phase of Al Rayyan Road Upgrade project opens

Ooredoo launches Endless Internet Packs to ensure smaller bills

Employees doubled

Total revenues of the private education sector in Qatar increased from QR2bn in 2011 to QR5.8bn in 2015 while the size of the workforce in private and public education sectors almost doubled.

Kindergartens accounted for two-thirds of the newly established institutions.

H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti, Minister of Transport and Communications, H E Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi, Minister of Municipality and Environment, and other officials at the opening of the project.

Eight projects in Qatar win MEED Quality Awards

02 SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017HOME

The Peninsula

The official visit of Pal-estinian President Mahmoud Abbas to Qatar and his planned meeting with Emir

H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani come in the context of exploring new ways to bring peace and stability to Middle East. Abbas arrived in Doha yesterday.

In remarks to Qatar News Agency (QNA), politicians and diplomats highlighted the impor-tance of the visit and its timing ahead of the Arab summit in the Jordanian capital Amman on March 23-29, stressing the importance of taking the oppor-tunity of the new US administration to activate the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives.

The Secretary-General of the Palestinian Liberation Organi-zation (PLO) Saeb Erekat told QNA that the President Abbas's visit to Qatar comes at a very important time ahead of the Arab summit, as part of the coordina-tion and consultations between the Qatari and Palestinian lead-erships on issues of common concern, particularly the Pales-tinian cause, in light of the continued Israeli abusive prac-tices and imposing a fait

accompli policy.Besides discussing bilateral

relations, the visit is expected to address a number of issues such as strengthening prospects for peace, stability and security.

Erekat noted the importance of appointing Jason Greenblatt as US Envoy to the Middle East Peace Process, who met with the Palestinian president in order to build confidence between the Israeli and Palestinian sides and as a prelude to any future solu-tions in an encouraging atmosphere.

The PLO Secretary-General stressed that the meeting between the Qatari and Pales-tinian leadership is consistent with Palestinian positions, i n c l u d i n g t h e A r a b

peace initiative, holding to the two-state solution on basis of 1967 borders, the importance of a just solution to the issues of ref-ugees, the release of prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons, the implementation of interna-tional laws regarding the necessity to stop settlement activity, the right of the Palestin-ian people to an independent state with its capital in East Jeru-salem and the importance of halting Israel's arbitrary practices of executions, ethnic cleansing, displacement, settlement and Judaization, confiscation of rights and collective punishment.

Erekat pointed to the impor-tance of taking the opportunity of the new US administration and put pressure on Israel which tries to destroy the two-state solution by pursuing arbitrary practices.

He said that peace cannot be achieved under occupation, add-ing peace can only be realised through the independence of Palestine on the borders of 1967 state with its capital in East Jeru-salem, according to the relevant international legitimacy resolutions.

For his part, Palestinian ambassador to Qatar Munir Ghannam said in remarks to QNA that the Palestinian President's official visit to Qatar comes in the context of the ongoing

consultation and coordination between the Qatari and the Pal-estinian leaderships.

He pointed that the coordi-nation between the two leaderships is continuous posi-tive approach that reflects

consensus about the Arab, regional and international issues.

He pointed to the importance of the visit time, in light of the developments in the region and the escalation of the Israeli impe-rialism in the occupied

territories.The Palestinian Cause has

topped the priorities of the Qatari leadership, which spared no effort for assisting the Palestin-ian people, he added.

Mahmoud Abbas in Doha to discuss peace prospects

Important visit

Politicians and diplomats highlight the importance of the visit and its timing ahead of the Arab summit in Jordan.

Palestine President to discuss a number of issues such as strengthening prospects for peace.

Project includes construction of pedestrian and cycle lanes

Continued from page 1It also includes traffic signals

on the ground level to facilitate the flow of vehicles to and from Al Rayyan Road from the sur-rounding areas, especially the residential areas on Al Qalaa Street and the commercial areas on Al Shafi Street, which will reduce the congestion in inter-nal roads and reduce dependence on them.

The interchange between Al Rayyan Road and Al Wajba Street, which is a signalised intersection, is also being devel-oped as part of the project and will be completed soon. The project also includes the con-struction of pedestrian and cyclist paths.

The inaugural ceremony was attended by H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti, Minister of Transport and Communications, HE Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi, Minister of Municipal-ity and Environment, Dr. Eng. Saad bin Ahmed Al Muhannadi, President of Ashghal, and a number of senior officials. Details about the project were given by officials of the Public Works Authority (Ashghal) in a ceremony held at the headquar-ters of Al Rayaan Municipality yesterday.

Ministers and attendees were briefed through a presentation on the project’s implementation phases, in addition to having a

visit to the project site, particu-larly to the underpasses of Al Qalaa and Al Shafi interchanges which were opened to traffic yesterday.

“The road is completed with all standards, even with regards to infrastructure,” said Al Sulaiti.

“It includes dedicated tun-nels to avoid the need to disrupt the road in order to implement maintenance works as in the previous roads. The road is modern and will bring a smooth traffic flow until completion of the remaining part. Works are continuing at a faster pace to finish the rest of the project phases.”

The rest of the project will be

completed during the coming months. Once completed, the roads will provide a smooth traf-fic movement from Doha to Dukhan, serving public and sup-porting commercial services in the area. The full positive impact will clearly appear after comple-tion of the main Al Rayyan – Dukhan Corridor in 2018, after which more than half the travel time will be shortened.

Al Rayyan – Dukhan Corri-dor is a vital artery with many advantages that will serve all areas along the road, from Doha to Dukhan, through Al Rayyan, Al Wajba, Al Sheehaniya, and the entire Western and Northern areas.

“Accelerating the implemen-tation will contribute to enhancing the traffic movement and satisfying the ambition of residents as there are complaints about the amounts of traffic con-gestion, and with some projects causing disruption of some streets. Today’s opening is a evi-dence that projects are being delivered according to the scheduled dates, with some projects opening even before their deadlines,” said Al Rumaihi.

“The part which opened today will help reduce traffic congestion in the surrounding areas like Al Rayyan, Muaither, Al Shafi, and Bani Hajar, espe-cially in Al Rayyan Municipality

which is one of the largest municipalities in Qatar in terms of population.”

The project included a broader scope of infrastructure works that included construc-tion of service tunnels, around 5 km of storm water drainage net-works, treated sewage effluent (TSE) and sewage networks, and installation of street lighting poles.

Over 187,400 cubic metres of concrete were used in the project, in addition to 21,000 ton of reinforcement steel and 100,000 ton of asphalt. The project was implemented by the joint venture of “Boom Contruc-tion” and “Six Construct”.

Strong winds expected today: MetThe Peninsula

The Meteorology Depart-ment has urged residents to avoid going

to the sea today due to expected strong windy con-ditions. The bureau has advised people to remain vig-ilant amid sudden weather changes and follow the latest updates and warnings.

Today, the weather will be hazy at first, with blowing dust with chances of scattered rain accompanied by thunder at places at times. The wind speed would be less than 4 knot at first, becoming 07 to 18 knots later. However, the gusts could go up to 26 knots at places at times, dropping visibility to less than three kilometres.

The maximum tempera-ture in Doha would be 28 degrees Celsius, while the minimum would be 20 degrees Celsius. However, Abu Samrah would have the highest temperature today at 36 degrees Celsius, while minimum temperature would be 19 degrees Celsius.

Messaieed and Al Wakrah would have temperatures between 26 and 19 degrees Celsius, while Al Khor would have temperatures between 26 and 18 degrees Celsius, Ruwais 25 and 20 degrees Celsius and Dukhan between 26 and 19 degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, tomorrow, the length of day and night will be equal, marking the beginning of spring season in all the regions, including Qatar, located in the North-ern hemisphere. According to the Meteorology department, this marks the onset of sud-den weather changes locally called Al Sarayat, which will continue until mid May.

The spring period in Qatar is characterised by continu-ous weather fluctuations with warm fronts followed by cold fronts. The period is also known to have quick cloud formations and sudden thun-derstorms during evening, accompanied by heavy rains and strong wind.

President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, and his accompanying delegation were welcomed at Hamad International Airport by Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, and the Palestinian Ambassador to Qatar Munir Ghannam.

Sanaullah AtaullahThe Peninsula

Many new commercial streets in different areas of the country

will be announced this year, Minister of Municipality and Environment H E Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi said yesterday.

"There will be many streets measuring about 26 km in total to be announced this year. As per

the plan, the commercial streets will be opened in every area, not only some specific places," said the Minister.

The Minister was speaking to the media on the sidelines of a ceremony held by the Public Works Authority (Ashghal) to announce the opening of the first phase of Al Rayyan Road Upgrade project yesterday.

“Al Rayyan Road will con-nect Dukhan Road going through Bani Hajar to Mesaila to Sport

Roundabout,” said Yousef Al Emadi, Head of Road Mainte-nance Department.

“Unlike February 22 Road, this road does not have big inter-sections and signals. Al Rayyan Road has been designed keep-ing in mind the traffic and urban development of the next 10 to 15 years”, said Al Emadi.

Ashghal gives priorities to safety and quality of the project and all the projects underwent tight scrutiny like tests of asphalt

and concrete, he added. Other projects within Al

Rayyan –Dukhan Corrdior are: Dukhan Highway central which extends for approximately 18 km from Al Wajba Interchange to East of Al Shihaniya, Dukhan Highway East which extends for approximately 12.6 km from west of Al Wajba Interchange to East of the Tilted Interchange and along Al Gharrafa Road from south of Al Rayyan Road to north of Thani bin Jassim

Street, Phase 2 of Al Rayyan Road Upgrade, which extends for approximately 9.5 km from west of the Olympic Rounda-bout (Sports Roundabout) to west of Khalid bin Abdulla Roundabout, as well as Al Shee-haniya –Leatooriya – Lijmiliya Road which extends for 31 km from Dukhan Highway through the Camel Race Track in Al Sheehaniya City, to Leatooriya. The project will be completed in 2017.

More commercial streets to be announced this year

Officials at the inauguration of the improved stretch of Al Rayyan Road yesterday. Pic: Salim Matramkot / The Peninsula

03SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017 HOME

Mohammed Osman The Peninsula

Under the patronage of H E Dr Moham-med Abdul Wahid Al Hammadi, Minister of Education &

Higher Education, the first Edu-cation Exchange (EDEX) Conference will take place on May 9 - 10 at the Westin Doha Hotel and Spa.

The conference will be organised by EdEX Qatar in part-nership with the Ministry of Education & Higher Education and Qatar Chamber of Com-merce & Industry (QC).

QC’s support for this confer-ence comes as part of its commitment to encourage the private sector’s educational activities, and this event will bring the latest innovative solu-tions that make education in Qatar more competitive, said Mohammed Ahmed Al Obaidali, a QC member of the Board.

Issues related to curriculum, skills, employment, occupational efficiency, science and technol-ogy, business and digital skills will be discussed during the con-ference and support the state efforts towards knowledge econ-omy, Al Obaidali noted.

Al Obaidali said during a press conference held at the QC on Thursday to announce the

date and logo of the conference that the State of Qatar pays much attention to the education and that is why is has allocated QR20.6bn for education in its 2017 budget, which is 10.4 % of the total budget of 2017. The QC has established an education committee to encourage the pri-vate sector investment in education sector, he added.

Obaidali noted that QC places great importance to edu-cation and believes that this event will attract leading inter-national companies and investment from the private sector.

Hassan Al Mohammadi, Director of Public Relations at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, said the min-istry in partnership with the

Qatar Chamber hopes to drive investment across all levels of education in Qatar – from nurs-ery up to higher education and vocational education and onward to technology, online, distance and blended learning models.

The Ministry has a policy not to limit the private sector invest-ment in basic education and it has a plan of encouraging the private sector to open new uni-versities, Al Mohammadi told The Peninsula when asked why the private sector investment is lim-ited to basic education levels.

“Qatar is one of the Gulf region’s fastest growing educa-tion sectors with the construction of up to 12 new schools each year by 2022, each with a capacity of 1,500 to 2,000 students per school,” said Ryan O’Donnell, Event Director for EdEx Qatar and education, investment and technology event, organised by Informa Tharawat company.

O’Donnell added that “fund-ing allocations for the education sector in Qatar have increased from $6.7bn in 2013-2014 to a record total of $7.2bn in 2015 and the Qatari Government contin-ues to place the improvement of the national education system at the top of its agenda”.

The conference aims to equip education leaders in Qatar with strategies and solutions they

need to make education system in Qatar compete in a global knowledge economy, O’Donnell said, adding bringing education leaders and investors and regu-lating bodies together will help overcome the challenges they face by uniting the entire educa-tion market.

By combining cutting-edge content with tailored engage-ment programmes, attendees benefit from on-point

programmes that provide the content and information required to expand businesses, as well as a vibrant collaboration space and a dedicated meeting service to cement new business relationships.

The event combines an exhi-bition with seminar streams focussing on EdTech, K-12 and Higher Education and a full 2-day Education Investment Conference where attendees will

gain cutting edge insight, fresh ideas and bold strategies from regional and international leaders

Additionally, conference del-egates will also learn how to attract investment, structure deals, identify opportunities, develop scale and expand their businesses with expert advice from veterans of the private and PPP education markets globally.

First Education Exchange Conference in MayNew strategies

Conference will be organised by EdEX Qatar in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Qatar Chamber.

The conference aims to give education leaders in Qatar with strategies and solutions they need.

Education sector employs 12% of Qatari workforceContinued fom page 1

As of 2015, the education sector employed 12% of the Qatari workforce, making it the second largest employer of Qataris after the civil and mili-tary government agencies.

The report said the nominal

output of the education sector rose by an annual average of 12.1% over the past five years (2011-2015). The average increase in the education sec-tor’s output surpassed nominal GDP growth, thus raising the contribution of the sector to

nominal GDP growth from 1.1% in 2011 to 1.8% in 2015.

The Ministry also high-lighted the promising outlook in the education and higher edu-cation sector, calling for an increase in investment in pri-vate educational institutions.

from left: Hassan Al Mohamedi, Director of Public Relations at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education; Mohammed Ahmed Al Obaidali, Board Member of Qatar Chamber; and Ryan O' Donnell, Exhibition Director - EdEx Qatar, during the press conference at Qatar Chamber.Pic: Abdul Basit / The Peninsula

The Peninsula

The Ministry of Munic-i p a l i t y a n d Environment (MME) yesterday announced the implementation of

a number of necessary meas-ures to include a new group of coral reefs, 'Fasht RasGas' under Qatar's protected Natural Reserve.

The Ministry said this step aims at ensuring the project's success and the conservation of the marine ecosystems and marine biodiversity in Qatar.

The project, being imple-mented in cooperation and coordination with the Ministry's Environmental Assessment Department and RasGas Com-pany, embodies the State of

Qatar's keenness to enrich and protect a healthy marine envi-ronment in line with the fourth pillar of Qatar's National Vision (QNV) 2030, which calls for environmental management and protection aimed at ensur-ing harmony and consistency with the economic and social development, the MME added.

The ongoing cooperation between the two sides is part of the environmental assessment for the RasGas' projects, which confirm its commitment to pro-tect marine biodiversity through two programmes of Coral Reefs Transfer carried out by the com-pany in collaboration with the Ministry, the MME said, adding that RasGas has transferred at least 1,693 natural coral reefs in 2012 and about 1,100 in 2014.

The RasGas project of Coral Reefs Transfer implements a semi-annual follow-up and monitoring programme during the first five years, including a follow-up for the adaptation of coral reefs with synthetic sub-strates such as limestone artificial rocks as well as a com-prehensive health assessment of coral reefs following their transfer.

MME pointed out that "Ras-G a s " p r o v i d e s t h e Environmental Assessment Department with a semi-annual report on coral reefs' health in order to follow up their charac-teristics, including coral growth using three-dimensional imag-ing techniques along with monitoring the status of new corals and rates of growth.

Fasht RasGas coral reefs nowprotected natural reserve

QNA

The State of Qatar, repre-sented by the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic

Affairs, will take part in the first edition of Tripoli International Competition of Holy Quran, which will kick off today in the Lebanese Republic.

Abdullah Hamad Salem Abu Shareedah will represent the State of Qatar in the "memori-sation and Tajweed recitation of the Quran" section.

Abu Shareeda won advanced positions in several international competitions over the past years, including the first place in both Khartoum International Holy

Quran Award and King Abdulaziz International Competition. He also achieved the second place in Algeria International Award, and third place in Malaysia Interna-tional Quran Contest.

Thirty contestants from thirty countries from around the world will participate in Tripoli contest.

Qatar to participate in Tripoli Quran contest

The Fasht RasGas coral reefs.

04 SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017HOME

Practical approach

Speaking about plans on expanding and introducing new programs at VCUQatar, Dr Akel said, “We are looking for ways to not just have programs that are attracted but looking for programs that have lasting effect and how knowledge can be implemented into practice.

The Peninsula

The Embassy of Bangladesh in Doha, Qatar observed the 97th birth anniversary

of Father of the Nation of Bang-ladesh Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman & National Children’s Day yesterday.

The embassy organised various programmes at its premises to mark the occasion.

Children of expatriate Bangladeshi nationals partici-pated in a discussion on the life of the Father of the Nation. The messages from President, Prime Minister, Foreign Minis-ter and State Minister for Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh were read out. During the dis-cussion, children highlighted the contr ibut ion of

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the national life of Bangladesh. In his speech

Bangladesh’s Ambassador to Qatar, Ashud Ahmed recalled the great role played by Bang-abandhu in Bangladesh’s emergence as an independent country. He dwelt on how Bangabanhu became a world leader. He thanked the Bang-ladeshi expatriates in Qatar for their hard labour and contribu-tion to nation building towards fulfilling the dream of Banga-bandhu. As a part of the day’s programme, drawing compe-tition was also organized by the embassy.

At the end of the art com-pletion, Ashud Ahmed and his spouse distributed the certifi-cates and prizes to the children.

Fazeena Saleem The Peninsula

The diverse range of Vir-ginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCUQatar) alumni have made an signifi-

cant impact in the local design industry. Alumni are pursuing successful careers within all sec-tors in Qatar and around the world as well as many have gone on to establish their own busi-nesses, said Dr Akel I. Kahera (pictured), Dean, VCUQatar.

The campus approaching its 20th year in Qatar has around 600 alumni represent-ing 33 nationalities, who are employed at a wide range of companies.

“If you look around Doha they (alumni) are almost in every sector. In every business you will find one of our gradu-ates. Qatar National Bank, Lusail City Project, Qatar

Airways, Qatar Museums are a few to name and the list goes on and on. We have found a way to penetrate the VCUQatar name and the brand in all sectors."

"The contribution we bring to the field of design and has made an impact in Qatar and

beyond,” Dr Akel told The Peninsula.

VCUQatar offers Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in fashion, graphic, interior design and painting and printmaking and seven Master of Fine Arts degrees in design.

Speaking about plans on

expanding and introducing new programs at VCUQatar, Dr Akel said, “Yes, new programs are always in discussion. We are looking for ways to not just have programs that are attracted but looking for programs that have lasting effect and how the knowledge can be implemented into practice. For example we are thinking of fashion merchandis-ing, product design and others that nature.”

At present VCUQatar has 363 students and they represent a diverse range of nationalities with students coming from more than 40 different countries. Among them 95 percent are female, 61 percent Qatari, 40 stu-dents have cross registered at different campuses within the Education City. It has a student faculty ratio of 1:5.

Also VCUQatar is the only campus within Education City to have two female Qatari faculty, and them being VCU graduates

makes it unique. “We have 95 percent female students and we do have 33 male students. If you look around the graduating class more than 50 percent of them achieve higher honours……“We live in a world where we need to have diversity, infusion and equity. We are trying to cultivate a place where students feel safe to study and work. They are fully fledged individuals we are try-ing to empower them to make a difference in the world,” said Dr Akel.

Since its opening VCUQatar has majority of female students and Dr Akel says that the trend is due to more girls choose to study art and design than their male counterparts.

VCUQatar is the Qatar cam-pus of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Richmond, Virginia. It was established in 1998 through a partnership with Qatar Foundation.

The Peninsula

The General Directorate of Civil Defence marked graduation of

two sessions of firefighters and rescue.

Sixty three participants from civil defence and Armed Forces joined the sessions.

The event was held at Officers Club at Civil Defence and attended by Brig Hamad Othman Al Dohaimi, Assist-ant Director General of GDCD along with directors of the department.

Al Dohaimi on the occa-sion honoured the top graduates and awarded

them with certificates. He emphasised the

importance of training to increase the skills of fire fighters and rescue workers in dealing with emergency situations and fire accidents.

The training was held for 12 weeks, where the fire fighters received practical and theoretical lessons and different programmes in fire control, rescue first aid and Fires chemicals.

The department organ-ises training for the graduates regularly with a view to enhance their skills. The young graduates have been benefitting from it.

The Peninsula

TO offer safety specifications and control traffic jams and traffic diversions, two guide-lines will be applied soon in the future projects.

The two manuals are Qatar Roads design and Traf-fic Control, and will be implemented by the Ministry of Transportation.

All the new projects will be implemented according to the standards of the manuals, said speakers in a symposium organised by the Traffic department at Darb El Saai on the sidelines of the GCC Traf-fic Week.

The symposium is organ-ised under the title “Infrastructure and its role in the traffic jam”.

Due to unprecedented economic growth, the work continues 24 hours at all con-struction projects except in residential areas.

“The two manuals are updated to include everything according to the development requirements. The old stand-ards do not anymore meet with economic boom that Qatar is witnessing”, said Rashid Taleb Al Nabet, Assist-ant Undersecretary at the Ministry of Transport and Communications while addressing the symposium.

The Qatar Traffic Control Manual (QTCM) includes guidelines and principles that dictate the design and appli-cation of traffic control devices.

The participants stressed on the efforts made by traffic department especially with ongoing infrastructure projects and the department role which contribute to curb traffic jam and all other prob-lem in this regard.

VCUQ alumni make mark for themselves

Bangladesh Ambassador, Ashud Ahmed speaking at a function held to mark 97th birth anniversary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman & National Children’s Day.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's anniversary observed

Firefighters feted on graduation

Brig Hamad Othman Al Dohaimi, Assistant Director General of GDCD honoring one of the top graduates with certificate at the graduation ceremony held in Doha.

Two traffic guideliness to be applied soon

05SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017 HOME

The Peninsula

Parents should spread traf-fic awareness among children. This will in the

long run will help have safer roads, according to experts.

“We educate our children on the proper values and ethics, likewise, we must also teach them about traffic values that they will help protect both their life and that of the others on the roads,”, said Aisha Jassim Al Kuwari, Chairperson, of Qatar Voluntary Centre (QVC).

She was talking at a

symposium organised by Traffic Department under the title “role of woman in spreading traffic awareness”. The participants stressed importance of women’s role in creating traffic awareness, and the need to support women to face challenges they face due to traffic accidents.

“The role of women in spreading traffic awareness is very important and it is more than the role of man due to her role in the family. The role of women and their contribution in creating a traffic sense among children must be supported in

order to achieve traffic safety,” Al Kuwari said

“We should first educate our children on how to sit in the car and what they should do first when they get into a car. We should also caution them against the effects of reckless driving,” Al Kuwari added.

She said “to reduce road accidents we must increase traf-fic awareness and traffic sense among the people. Family is considered as the first school for children, so the family members should show them how to respect traffic rules.”

Parents must spread traffic awareness among kids: Experts

For her side Dr Hanan Fayad said that “the woman is the one who is responsible of spreading

awareness especially during the first seven years of child. This is when a persons basic personality

is formed.” She also called for establishing women association to spread traffic awareness.

Speakers at the symposium on traffic awareness.

Mohammed Osman The Peninsula

The 6th Annual Conference on the Social Sciences and Humanities which opened

yesterday at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies discusses two themes: “Ethics in Arab-Islamic Civilization” and “Arab Youth: Migration and the Future”.

The organising committee received 350 research proposals under the above themes of the conference and approved 150 pro-posal but finally received 100 research papers of which the com-mittee selected 58 papers, said Mohammed Jaml Barout, Associ-ate Researcher - Head of Research Department at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS ) in his opening speech.

The wide range of approaches to this broad theme, recognising the values and morals of previous eras have been shaken, and that their importance goes beyond

academic interest to take in entire societies.

ACRPS is committed to tex-tured researches on social sciences and humanitarian which is impor-tant for the renaissance of Arab people, Barout said adding at the end of the event winners will be honoured.

ACRPS is organising the annual conference since 2011 cre-ating a platform for scholars to explore ethical questions encom-passing this fifteen century-old civilization from broadest possi-ble vantage point, taking in also interrelationship with Persian, Hellenic and Indian worlds and their own value systems.

Around 400 researchers have taken part in this annual event over the past years and including this conference said Barout.

There are 60 papers to be dis-cussed over three days in ten parallel sessions each of which include several papers in addition to four lectures two of them have

been presented in the opening ses-sion by Fahami Jada’an and

George Zenati about ethics in Arab- Islamic civilisation and the

remaining two lectures will focus on migration of Arab youth on the

second day of the conference. The first session was devoted

to Islamic ethics and modernity questions exploring how the con-temporary Western societies have impacted ethical values of Arab world, going beyond merely academic and technical.

The parallel session on migra-tion and gender focused on Arab girls migration shedding lights on some countries like Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Iraq. Research-ers highlighted how the fragility of Arab social protections, as well as cost to both individual and collec-tive psychological wellbeing due to internal turbulence in Arab coun-tries and a lack of opportunities, have all incentivized outward migration for the Arab youth.

Although migration poses risk to lives in perilous sea voyages, it has become a ready solution to life’s difficult problems for hun-dreds of thousands of young Arabs said some the papers presented in the session.

Migration and ethics in focus at regional conference

Officials at the inaugural session of The Sixth Annual Conference on Human and Social Science at Doha Institute yesterday. Pic: Abdul Basit / The Peninsula

06 SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017HOME

Skill enhancement

The training helps develop essential skills such as project and risk management for exhibitions, sales management, exhibition marketing, strategic management and sustainability in the exhibition industry.

The Peninsula

Over 20 business events profession-als have completed first part of a five-month programme

that will see them certified by the Union of International Fairs (UFI). The Event Management Degree (EMD) training pro-gramme comes as part of QTA’s efforts to empower local exhibi-tions professionals and enhance Qatar’s Business Events compet-itiveness, and is being delivered in collaboration with Exhibition, Convention and Event Manage-ment Company (ECE).

Commenting on training programme, Ahmed Al Obaidli, Director of Exhibitions at QTA, said, “Qatar has made great strides in building state-of-the-art infrastructure needed to host large-scale events. This programme forms part of our efforts to give members of the sector tools they need to attract and deliver global business events in Qatar.”

The five-month programme was first launched by UFI —the leading global exhibition’s association — in 2007 with the aim of raising quality standards in the exhibition industry, and

has since been delivered 15 times at different locations in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The training helps develop essential skills such as project and risk management for exhibitions, sales manage-ment, exhibition marketing, strategic management and sus-tainability in the exhibition industry.

Al Obaidli added, “Pro-grammes such as UFI-EMD offer comprehensive means for linking all aspects of business together. We are proud to see participants join us from the region, reinforcing Qatar’s position as region’s Business Events knowledge hub.”

Layal Thabit, Exhibition Department Head at Qatar

Chamber, remarked that her participation in training pro-gramme reflects Qatar Chamber’s keenness on empowering its people to excel at what they do. “Qatar Cham-ber holds numerous exhibitions locally, regionally and interna-tionally which makes this training programme highly rel-evant and key to ensuring we are kept abreast of interna-tional best practices. This training has significantly helped me in developing my approach towards organising and managing exhibitions.

Ammar B Anabtawi, CEO of Final Vision, added, “The pro-gramme is helping me to enhance my sector expertise and exchange knowledge with my peers from from the local market and abroad. The new techniques and methodologies I learn will undoubtedly be car-ried with me to my business and I look forward to sharing them with my team.”

QTA and stakeholders have been stepping up the efforts to establish a solid business events sub-sector equipped with up-to-date facilities and smart

infrastructure, managed by the most efficient management systems and supported by the private sector’s active participation.

Qatar’s business events sec-tor boasts growing events management services, exhibi-tion capacity of 70,000 square metres, including world-class venues such as QNCC and the Doha Exhibition and Conven-tion Center (DECC), an expanded transport network, as well as exceptional accessibility via Qatar Airways’ reach to 150 des-tinations worldwide.

The Peninsula

NOTED scholar and Islamic and US constitutional law expert Asifa Quraishi-Landes will host a special session on women’s empowerment and rights under Sharia law, at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q), on March 22.

Quraishi-Landes currently serves as assistant professor of law at the University of Wis-consin-Madison, where she teaches courses in Islamic law and US constitutional law.

Her session, “How not to talk about Muslim Feminism,” is the first of a series of inter-disciplinary lectures, that are part of NU-Q’s newly-intro-duced Middle East Studies minor.

The minor at NU-Q pro-vides students with a critical understanding of the region’s cultures, histories, societies, politics, intellec-tual contributions, and mediated representations. It also addresses global issues essential for under-standing the region, such as decolonisation, orientalism, and gender or religious revivals.

Quraishi-Landes will dis-cuss why notion of feminism is so often associated with the West, and why this becomes problematic, particularly in the perception of Muslim women who are working for women’s rights from an Islamic perspective.

She will also focus on ways that Shari’a law is mis-presented and misused, and will address the reasons it is important to understand what women’s rights advo-cacy from a Shari’a-minded perspective could look like.

Quraishi-Landes writes on comparative legal theory and Islamic law, and women in Islamic law. Some of her recent publications include The Sharia Problem with Shari’a Legislation, and What if Shari’a Weren’t the Enemy: Re-Thinking International Women’s Rights Activism and Islamic Law.

The Peninsula

Nominations are invited for the fourth annual STEM Educator of the Year

award competition for Qatar’s top teacher in Math and Science, announced Texas A&M Univer-sity at Qatar and Maersk Oil Qatar who sponsor the contest.

The STEM Educator of the Year award is part of Dhia: Engi-neering Leaders program, a partnership between Texas A&M at Qatar and Maersk Oil Qatar that supports development of Qatar’s knowledge-based econ-omy through outreach programs designed to inspire young peo-ple in Qatar to take up science, technology, engineering and

math (STEM) in school and uni-versity. STEM education in primary, preparatory and sec-ondary schools is central to these efforts, and the STEM Educator of the Year award recognises outstanding educators whose work contributes to exceptional STEM education in Qatar.

The STEM Educator of the Year award commends the com-mitment of teachers and positive impact they have on young peo-ple in Qatar. The initiative encourages educators to instruct students in innovative ways and represents direct efforts to sup-port Qatar’s human and social development, which will drive country’s economic and environ-mental development through

engineers and scientists.Eligible candidates for the

award are teachers of STEM dis-ciplines in independent, private and international primary, pre-paratory and high schools in Qatar. Nominees must have been employed by their nominating school for at least one full aca-demic year and be currently employed by nominating school. Nominations are due on April 1 at www.stem.qa.

The 2016 STEM Educator of the Year was Hessa Al-Sham-mari, a biology teacher at Roda Bint Mohammed Secondary School for Girls. Al-Shammari, who is first Qatari to be named STEM Educator of the Year, was described by her colleagues as

The Peninsula

The cultures, beliefs, pol-itics, and citizens of countries bordering the

Indian Ocean will be on the agenda at an upcoming event at Georgetown University in Qatar. The University’s annual faculty conference will bring together multidisciplinary scholars from around the world to discuss this year’s theme, The Liberal State and its Alternatives in the Indian Ocean.

The conference will be held on March 20-21 at GU-Q’s Education City campus, and focuses on the dynamics of continuity and change in the region.

“The Indian Ocean world presents a fascinating mix of cultures, religions, states, and political systems. It is the fast-est growing and most unpredictable region on the earth. What happens along the oceanic shores will generate wide-ranging impacts on the global economic and political situation in the 21st century,” said Dr Harry Verhoeven, Assistant Professor at GU-Q and one of the organizers of the event. “This conference aims to explore the forms of and

challengers to the modern state that exist in the region, in order to increase our understanding of how these differ from stand-ard ideas of liberal governance which have historically been promoted by the west.”

Dr Anatol_Lieven is one of the panelest and coorganiser of the conference.

The conference is made possible by a Conference and Workshop Sponsorship Pro-gram award (CWSP 11-C-1019-16029) from Qatar National Research Fund, a member of Qatar Foundation.

Through discussions on issues such as political power, state-building, globalisation, migration, urbanisation, and ethnicity, the conference aims

to foster a greater understand-ing of the states, movements, and people of the Indian Ocean world.

In addition to GU-Q’s respected faculty, participants involved in the event hail from a diverse mix of international and local institutions, includ-ing Oxford University, University of Cambridge, King’s College London, Stan-ford University, the University of Singapore, Qatar University, and Hamad Bin Khalifa University.

The conference is open to the public and there is no attendance fee. More informa-tion can be obtained from the website: https://qatar.sfs.geor-getown.edu/LiberalState.

QNA

THE sixth annual conference on social sciences and humanities kicked off in Doha yesterday with participation of nearly 60 research-ers from various scientific and research institutions.

The three-day conference is organised by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.

This year’s edition will focus on two main themes: “Ethics in Arab-Islamic Civilization” and “Arab Youth: Migration and the Future”.

The first theme of 2017 meeting will be presented through a series of panels and take a broad approach to study a number of present-day soci-eties which are rooted in Arab-Islamic civilization.

The second set of parallel ses-sions will explore how the fragility of Arab social protections, as well as the cost to both individual and collective psychological wellbeing due to internal turbulence in Arab countries and a lack of opportuni-ties, have all incentivised outward migration for the Arab youth.

Papers in this second parallel theme examine the phenomenon of the migration of Arab youth as an ongoing crisis, taking in closely questions such as the brain drain, return migration, academic migra-tion, the labor migration of women, and others.

QTA & UFI to offer Event Management Degree

Participants attending a session on event management.

US scholar to address feminism under Islamic Law

Nominations sought for STEM Educator of the Year contest

Students busy conducting a science experiment.

an ambitious and proven prob-lem solver who works well under pressure, and an ener-getic and enthusiastic teacher committed to her profession.

She was particularly praised for her use of

technology in the classroom, which Al-Shammari said helps to motivate her students and increase the effectiveness of her teaching, making biology a more appealing and enjoya-ble subject to learn.

Georgetown faculty meet to explore Indian Ocean world

Dr Harry Verhoeven Dr Anatol_Lieven

Conference on social sciences & humanities begins

07SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017 GULF / MIDDLE EAST

Riyadh

QNA

GCC Secretary-General Dr Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zay-ani welcomed the US administration’s hard stance in support for the efforts of the Kingdom of Bahrain in the fight against extremist terror-ist organisations, in face of the terrorist acts intended to harm its security and stability.

In a statement yesterday, the GCC chief said the US State Department’s decision to place two Bahrainis on the terrorist list affirmed the US administration’s support for the efforts exerted by the Kingdom of Bahrain to com-bat extremist terrorist organisations that seek to destabilise the security and stability of the Kingdom and terrorise its people.

Al Zayani praised the efforts made by Bahraini gov-ernment in face of the plots and campaigns against the Kingdom, stressing the US State Department’s decision reflects insistence of the US administration to combat all terrorist organisations, and its keenness to restore security and stability to the region.

He strongly condemned the missile attack carried out by Houthi and Saleh militias on one of the mosques in Sir-wah District in Yemeni province of Marib on Friday, killing and wounding scores of innocent worshipers. He described the attack as heinous terrorist crime incompatible with the principles of Islam and international laws.

Strategic victory

The Iraqi forces were 800 metres from the mosque, where the Islamic State group proclaimed its “caliphate” in 2014, said Captain Firas Al Zuwaidi, spokesman for the interior ministry’s elite Rapid Response Force.

Mosul

AFP

Elite Iraqi forces battled house by house in the Old City of Mosul yes-terday, inching towards the mosque

where the Islamic State (IS) group proclaimed its “caliphate” in 2014, a spokesman said.

Commanders said that progress in the densely popu-lated warren of alleyways was slow but that government forces had made new gains from IS in the heart of their last major urban bastion in Iraq.

“Our forces are 800 metres from the mosque,” said Captain Firas Al Zuwaidi, spokesman for the interior ministry’s elite Rapid Response Force.

He was referring to Al Nuri Mosque, where IS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi declared the cross-border “caliphate” span-ning jihadist-controlled territory in Iraq and Syria in his sole pub-lic appearance in July 2014.

“We are encountering difficul-ties—bad weather and streets too narrow for our military vehicles which cannot enter,” Zuwaidi said.

“The fighting is street by street, house by house,” he said, as the sound of mortar fire rang out from the heart of Iraq’s sec-ond city.

The battle for the Old City was always expected to be the toughest of the campaign to retake Mosul from IS, further complicated by the presence of hundreds of thousands of civil-ians believed to have stayed on under jihadist rule.

Iraqi forces launched the huge operation last October, retaking the east of the city in January before setting their sights on the smaller but more

densely populated west.The Tigris River divides the

two parts of Mosul. The Old City lies at the heart of the west bank.

The Rapid Response Force is being backed up by the federal

police who have made steady gains in recent days.

They have now taken the Al-Arbiaa market and a grain silo overlooking the Old City, federal police commander Lieutenant

General Raed Shakir Jawdat said yesterday.

That came after Jawdat announced the capture of the Al-Basha Mosque and the Bab al-Saray market on Friday.

Iraqi forces make new gains in Mosul

An Iraqi policeman carries his comrade during clashes with Islamic State militants, at Mosul train station in Mosul, yesterday.

Istanbul

AFP

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday said he expected parliament

to approve restoring capital pun-ishment after the April 16 referendum on expanding its powers, a move that could end Ankara’s bid to join the EU.

Turkey completely abolished the death penalty in 2004 as part of its efforts to join the EU, which makes its removal a non-nego-tiable pre-condition for membership.

“The families of the martyrs, the heroes (of the failed July 15 coup) don’t need to worry. I believe, God willing, that after the April 16 vote parliament will do necessary concerning your demands for cap-ital punishment,” Erdogan said in a televised rally in Canakkale.

To become law, the bill would still need to be signed by the head of state. But Erdogan said he would sign it immediately. “When it comes to me I will approve it without hesitation,” he said.

EU officials have repeatedly warned Turkey that restoring capital punishment would spell the end of its over half century bid to join the bloc.

But Turkish ministers and

Erdogan have said they need to respond to popular demand for restoration of capital punishment to deal with the ringleaders of the July 15 coup bid.

Erdogan, whose announce-ment was greeted by loud cheers, said he did not care what Europe thought about such a move.

“What Hans and George say is not important for me,” he said,

using two common European names. “What the people say, what the law says, that’s what is important for us,” he added.

Erdogan has repeatedly warned the EU of the possibility Turkey could restore capital pun-ishment. But this is first time he has directly called on parliament to approve it after the referendum on constitutional change.

Tehran

AFP

Iranian MPs have criticised the arrests of journalists and social media organisers

ahead of presidential election in May, with one directly accusing the elite Revolutionary Guards in a letter published yesterday.

The arrests in recent days are alleged to have targeted unnamed people who run channels on popular messag-ing site Telegram supporting reformists and moderate gov-ernment of President Hassan Rowhani. Two prominent jour-nalists—Ehsan Mazandarani and Morad Saghafi—have also been detained.

Mahmoud Sadeghi, a reformist MP, wrote an open letter to Revolutionary Guards

commander Mohammad-Ali Jafari, calling on the organisa-tion to stay out of politics.

“Some incidents in recent days, including the simultane-ous arrests of managers of Telegram channels with close associations to reformists and supporters of the government, which has apparently been done by the intelligence arm of the Sepah (Revolutionary Guards), has raised a wave of concern in society,” Sadeghi wrote in the letter published by the ILNA news agency.

Several other MPs have also criticised the arrests in open letters this week.

MP Ali Motahari threatened to seek the impeachment of the intelligence minister if he did not provide details of the arrests.

Riyadh

AFP

A YEMENI rebel missile was intercepted over Saudi Ara-bia, a Saudi-led coalition said, as the death toll from a rebel attack on a Yemeni army camp rose to 32.

The rebels’ Saba news agency said the missile was aimed at offices of Saudi oil giant Aramco in the town of Jizan. The coalition, which has been fighting the rebels in support of government

forces for the past two years, said the missile was inter-cepted without casualties or damage.

The Yemeni army said toll from Friday’s rebel rocket attack on its camp in Marib province, had risen to 32 and 81 wounded. Military sources said the rebels hit Kofel camp in Sarwah district with a Katyusha-type multiple rocket launcher and hit a mosque crowded with sol-diers for the main weekly prayers.

US support to Bahrain’s anti-terrorism efforts hailed

Saudi intercepts Yemen rebel missileErdogan expects parliament to restore capital punishment

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (centre), accompanied by Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim (left) and Chief of Staff, General Hulusi Akar, attends a ceremony marking the 102nd anniversary of Battle of Canakkale, also known as the Gallipoli Campaign, at Turkish memorial in Canakkale, Turkey, yesterday.

Washington

QNA

SAUDI Deputy Crown Prince, Second Deputy Premier and Min-ister of Defence Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz met with US Secretary of Defence James Mattis and a number of senior US administration officials the head-quarters of the Pentagon in Washington DC.

Talks during the meeting dealt with bilateral relations and areas of strategic cooperation between the two countries and means of promoting them.

The meeting also discussed latest developments in the Mid-dle East and the world as well as efforts being exerted especially with regard to fight against ter-rorism along with a number of issues of common interest.

Iran MP slams Guards for social media arrests

Saudi Deputy Crown Prince meets Mattis

08 SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017HOME

09SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Families and rebels begin leaving Homs

Homs

Reuters

Rebels and their fam-ilies began leaving their last bastion in the Syrian city of Homs yesterday,

state media and a Reuters wit-ness said, under a Russian-backed deal with the

government expected to be among the largest evacuations of its kind.

The agreement underlines Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s upper hand in the war, as more rebel fighters opt to leave areas they have defended for years in deals that amount to negotiated withdrawals to other parts of the country.

Buses drove out of the Al Waer district in Homs, which was an early centre of the pop-ular uprising against Assad.

Between 10,000 and 15,000 rebels and civilians would evac-uate in batches over the coming weeks under the deal, accord-ing to opposition activists in Al Waer and a war monitor.

Homs governor Talal Barazi said that he expected 1,500 people, including at least 400 fighters, to depart yesterday for rebel-held areas northeast of Aleppo, and that most of Al Waer’s residents would stay.

Peace distant in Central African Republic as militia clashes increaseBangui

AFP

With a spike in militia killings, a deepening humanitarian cri-sis and the army still in

shambles, the Central African Repub-lic's bid for peace and stability remains elusive.

A three-year civil war that erupted

in 2013 between Muslim and Christian militias left thousands of people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands of others, disrupting farming, transport and public services in one of the world's poorest nations.

The nation breathed a sigh of relief in March 2016 when President Faustin-Archange Touadera took office, with a mandate to lead the country through its

transition to peace. But Central Africa's war wounds have proved hard to heal, with swathes of the country still facing unrest. Since November, violence has raged in the central Ouaka region, leav-ing hundreds dead and many more injured.

Last week, 11 people were gunned down in their village in Ouaka near the provincial capital Bambari, according

to local authorities and the UN peace-keeping mission in Central Africa, MINUSCA.

A local official, speaking on condi-tion of anonymity, blamed the Union for Peace in Central Africa (UPC), say-ing that armed attackers from the group "invaded the village, shooting at residents".

MINUSCA spokesman Herve

Verhoosel said, however, that it was unclear whether the UPC or a rival fac-tion — the Popular Front for the Renaissance of the Central African Republic (FPRC) — was to blame.

Both the UPC and the FPRC are fac-tions of the ex-Seleka, the mainly Muslim rebel coalition that seized power from ex-president Francois Bozize in March 2013, sparking civil war.

Opposition fighters and families getting into a bus in Al Waer neighbourhood in the central city of Homs, yesterday.

“The preparations and the reality on the ground indicate that things will go well,” Barazi said.

The Syrian government has described such deals as a “work-able model” that brings the country closer to peace after six years of conflict. But the opposi-tion decries them as a tactic of forcibly displacing people who oppose Assad after years of bom-bardment and siege.

Along with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), Russian and Syrian forces were overseeing the evacuation, which would take about six weeks, Barazi said.

“We are optimistic that the full exit of armed (fighters) from this district will pave the way for other reconciliations and settle-ments,” Barazi added.

“There is ongoing communi-cation with” other rebel-held areas north of Homs city to reach similar deals, including the towns of Al Rastan and Talbiseh, he said.

The government has increas-ingly tried to press besieged rebel areas to surrender and accept what it calls reconciliation agree-ments. In an interview with Chinese TV station Phoenix last week, Assad said deals brokered

locally with rebels were “the real political solutions”. He added that he had not expected anything from Geneva, where UN-led peace talks ended this month with no breakthrough.

Broadcasting live from the Al Waer departure area, Syrian state television spoke to a Russian colonel, who said via an inter-preter that security would soon return to the district.

“This agreement was reached only under the patronage of the Russian side ... and it will be implemented with Russian guar-antees,” he said.

Saudi King wraps up Asia tour Dubai

Reuters

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Sal-man bin Abdulaziz Al

Saud of Saudi Arabia, who was on an official tour in Asia, has left China to head back to his country, the state news agency SPA reported yesterday.

King Salman, who has overseen the launch of an ambitious economic reform plan since his accession two years ago, was on a month-long tour of Asia that took him to Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and China.

The visits to countries that are some of world's biggest importers of Saudi oil aim to promote investment oppor-tunities in the country, including the sale of a stake in national oil company Saudi Aramco.

Asia also figures in the country's plans for military cooperation, with Malaysia and Indonesia listed as mem-bers of a Saudi-led Islamic Military Alliance formed just over a year ago.

Syria deal

Between 10,000 and 15,000 rebels and civilians would evacuate in batches over the coming weeks.

The Syrian government has described such deals as a “workable model”.

Donald Trump’s second travel ban barring the entry of travellers from six Muslim-majority countriestoo has run into legal trouble. On Thursday, US District Judge Theodore Chuang in

Maryland issued an emergency halt to Trump’s March 6 executive order. He left in place the section of the order that barred the entry of refugees to the United States for four months. In a more serious setback, another federal judge in Hawaii struck down both sections of the ban in a broader court ruling. Some other courts, where the ban is being challenged, have put the proceedings on hold temporarily to avoid duplicate rulings and thus save time and resources.

It wasn’t an unexpected setback for Trump. The courts were just upholding the country’s constitution and laws, the basis of which is fairness, equality and non-discrimination. By implementing bans which were against the American ethos and constitution, Trump was in fact trying to user in a new era of separation, bias and isolationism which he wants as the hallmarks of his new America. The President had taken more legal precautions while ordering the second ban as the first one had run into unprecedented trouble with a global backlash, with demonstrations taken out all over the country and abroad. But even those precautions didn’t stand the test of law, thus proving the impartiality and strength

of American constitution. As expected, the

Trump administration has decided to appeal the ban in the higher court. The Department of Justice said in a court filing it would appeal against the ruling by District Judge Chuang to the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in

Richmond, Virginia.It’s time for Trump to

abandon his discriminatory and anti-Muslim policies and act

like previous presidents. He says his ban is necessary for national security to protect the country from terrorist attacks, but it is actually a violation of the US Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom. The US has suffered no major terrorist threats from the people of the countries targeted under the ban. All these are poor countries fighting their own problems.

Trump is already reaping the rewards of what he has been sowing. He promised during the election campaign to ban Muslims from entering the United States, but it’s not Muslims alone who are keeping away from Trump’s America. A New York Times report says American colleges are witnessing a huge dip in foreign applicants and travel agents have already reported a fall in tourist enquiries. White supremacists are targeting and even killing people of other faiths mistaking them for Muslims. Trump is unleashing demons which will come back to haunt him.

10 SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017VIEWS

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

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

msalim@pen.com.qa

Second setback

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Today the situation is totally different due to Brexit. We’d be well advised to bring about a special relationship with Great Britain after its exit from the EU.

Sigmar Gabriel German Foreign Minister

Courts have thwarted Trump’s second ban on the entry of people from some Muslim countries into the US.

ED ITOR IAL

There are many remaining unknowns of the Syria conflict but it is increas-ingly becoming clear that the situation is moving into its final phases. All indications are that there

will be no clear military victory and that some form of negotiated settlement is inevitable.

The Syrian context has been transformed since the failed coup in Turkey last summer and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s subse-quent shift to consolidate his grip over the country.

This opening has led to the Astana process and rejuvenated hopes in an “Eastern” solu-tion, based on Turkish, Russian and, to some extent, Iranian cooperation.

While Astana has presented the most durable set of ceasefires so far in the conflict, it reinforced the inevitability of Bashar al-Assad remaining central to the foreseeable future of Syria.

In public, the calls for his removal are becoming fainter by the day, while in private, many, including some leading figures of opposition, are actively considering their options with him in office.

A political settlement that includes Assad will have far-reaching implications for Syria’s long-term peace and stability. In the immedi-ate term, this will affect the efficacy of a transition on a number of fronts.

First, given the likelihood that some rem-nants of the armed opposition will neither be defeated nor incorporated into a political set-tlement, any peace agreement is likely to uneasily coexist alongside efforts to combat ongoing resistance.

Rejectionist rebels will likely regroup, rearm, and fortify in the rural hinterlands with the aim of destabilising any post-conflict transition in Syria. This is already happening to some degree in Idlib, Daraa and elsewhere.

Similarly, the militias that fought for Assad will continue to seek a role in the post-settle-ment era. One of the major challenges will, therefore, be the Demobilisation, Disarma-ment, and Reintegration (DDR) of tens of thousands of fighters who have known noth-ing but war over the last six years.

Those not addressed will quickly disperse, and be driven into the arms of new insurgent groups, most likely in the form of a hybrid insurgency composed of the hardline anti-regime and or anti-settlement forces.

Second, while the political process will likely frame Syria as one unitary state with formal institutions, such as a governing coun-cil or another transitional body, new parliament, or legal system, informal aspects of the political settlement will constrain state effectiveness.

Given the nature of the conflict, backroom deals must, out of necessity, be formed at all levels, whether to satisfy Iranian ambitions, assuage the sectarian divisions, or reward Assad supporters who will inevitably feel that they have won the war for him on the

Implications for a Syrian transition under AssadSultan Barakat Al Jazeera

battlefield. These unwritten, informal agreements, pacts and alliances could prove to be an immense handicap on Syria’s formal institutions.

Administratively, state revenue will be a great challenge, in particular, the issue of local taxation, which is critical to a sustainable funding base and also to reconstituting state-citizen relations.

Even with a potentially strong asset base, it is likely that Syria will, for many years to come, generate symptoms of state fragility and lack of financial resources.

Furthermore, the nature of political transition will have a strong influence over the possibility for financing recon-struction. The cost of reconstruction will be high, with estimates ranging from $170bn to over one trillion dollars. Whatever way the numbers are inter-preted, Syria will be in need of vast amounts of international aid. Yet, Russia cannot afford to foot the bill for large-scale reconstruction and the United States President Donald Trump has announced an end to the era of nation-building.

The biggest contributors will there-fore likely be the European Union and the Gulf states. However, under an unre-constructed Assad regime, it is unlikely that the Gulf states will go back to their prewar levels of support to Syria.

The EU has a clear interest in bring-ing stability to Syria, in particular since Turkey can no longer be expected to act as a buffer zone.

While the EU will have to hold its nose and deliver the cash, it will expect its funds to be handled separately from

the Syrian state coffers.This will involve the

design of sub-entities and parallel structures - some of which may bear the name of the

Syrian government - but under a high degree of international supervision to ensure acceptable standards of accountability.

This poses dangers for Syrian own-ership of the reconstruction process and a long-term risk in de-capacitating the Syrian state while it is in a process of state-building.

The inability to trust the government will also mean that for the transitional phase reconstruction will be conceptual-ised only in terms of incremental, small-scale, humanitarian-driven projects rather than the massive eco-nomic and infrastructure reconstruction efforts that are required.

Furthermore, with sanctions, travel bans and other punitive measures are likely to be put in place if Assad were to continue his hold on power, and there is a risk of creating an isolated regime in the mould of Eritrea or Sudan rather than bringing the country back into the international fold of trade and development.

Fourth, the move of rebuilding under a protracted insurgency will lead to une-ven reconstruction and development in Syria.

In the absence of an effective state, the private sector which in Syria has tra-ditionally been efficient and effective - in part because of the dependable inef-ficiency of the prewar Syrian state - is likely to be welcomed back with open arms. Yet, given its nature and drive to generate a high return, its investments are likely to target areas where stability and security have also returned.

This will create a situation with sharply defined corridors of growth and a national development landscape that is operating at two or three different speeds.

Such an imbalance would offer the “warlords”, who have thrived throughout the conflict, the opportunity to launder their reputation into “reconstruction lords” in its aftermath, with more or less consistently marginalised areas of Syria continuing to pay the price. Finally, although perhaps half of all Syrians will accept Assad’s rule, embarking on a rec-onciliation process would be extremely difficult with him in power.

Given the launch of the international commission into abuses as well as the numerous accusations that have and will be made about the regime, transitional justice - particularly at the local and vil-lage level where local communities have witnessed the worst atrocities - may require imaginative forms of integrating religious and tribal justice mechanisms to reach a degree of closure and heal the wider wounds caused by six years of war and decades of repression.

The writer is the director of the Cen-

tre for Conflict and Humanitarian

Studies, Doha Institute for Graduate

Studies and professor at the Univer-

sity of York, UK.

Given the launch of the international commission into abuses as well as the numerous accusations that have and will be made about the regime, transitional justice - particularly at the local and village level where local communities have witnessed the worst atrocities — may require imaginative forms of integrating religious and tribal justice mechanisms to reach a degree of closure and heal the wider wounds caused by six years of war and decades of repression.

11SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017 OPINION

first devices. It also does not have any form of prod-uct lock-in as it does with western consumers who have owned other Apple products and are now buy-ing smartphones.

What’s more, Apple has not customised its phones or the applications for them to the needs of Indian consumers; they are the same as in the United States. Try asking Siri to recognise an Indian name or city, and it is clueless. Try asking it to play a Bollywood tune, as I have, and you’ll also be banging your head against the wall. And forget having sup-port for Indian languages: Everything is in English.

Apple does offer an Indian version of its music-streaming service, but it is expensive and largely inferior to those of local competitors, such as Saavn, Gaana and Hungama. It also has the same problem as the Apple India App Store: It requires credit cards, which less than 1 percent of the population have. This is no way to conquer a market.

Well-to-do Indian consumers who can afford iPhones want the latest and greatest, not hand-me-downs. They aren’t buying iPhones because they are

Fear and loathing on the border

As Donald Trump’s sordid vision of a “big, beautiful wall” on the United States-Mex-ico border begins to take shape, The Guardian has revealed that — of the more than 600 companies currently vying to

get in on the wall-building action — 10 percent are identified as “Hispanic-American-owned” businesses.

Posing a greater ethical dilemma, perhaps, is the potential opportunity for Mexican cement manufac-turing giant Cemex to profit handsomely from manic border fortification efforts. The firm has seen its shares leap in value since Trump’s election in November.

Of course, there’s little room for ethics when gobs of money are at stake. According to Reuters, an inter-nal US Department of Homeland Security report puts the price-tag of the wall at up to $21.6bn.

Indeed, in a world ever more committed to walls, barriers, and the profitability of exclusion, it seems ethical boundaries are the easiest to knock down.

Not just a wallWhile Trump would have his followers believe

that the US-Mexico border was itself dangerously nonexistent prior to his ascension to the presidency - with Mexican “rapists”, and other figments of his own imagination, flowing unencumbered into the country en masse — reality tells a very different story.

Frequently lost in all of the “big wall” talk, for example, is the fact that there is already a wall on the US-Mexico border and that it happens to be quite big.

A recent AJ+ video notes that the wall in its cur-rent form covers 1,051km and was erected at a cost of $3m a kilometre in certain parts.

But the wall can’t be measured in units of dis-tance alone, encompassing as it does a vast border security apparatus involving everything from heli-copters and drones to blimps, watchtowers, and gunboats, not to mention an ever-evolving number

of armed personnel.In an email to me, Todd Miller — author of Border

Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security — remarked that the number of US Border Patrol agents has “increased five-fold from 4,000 to 22,000” over the past 25 years, with “annual budgets for border and immigration enforcement rising from $1.5 to $19.5bn”.

In reference to the intense build-up of border machinery, Miller observed: “All of this Trump had at his disposal without any executive order and before he ever set foot in the White House.”

Now that Trump has two feet planted firmly therein and xenophobia has not only been catapulted into the realm of political correctness, but also embraced as a mark of national pride, you might say we’ve definitively crossed the border into a state of upbeat sociopathy.

Criminalising existenceThe increasingly militarised landscape of the US-

Mexico frontier serves a variety of pernicious functions.

For one thing, the obsession with border “secu-rity” helps to sustain the notion that the US is somehow under attack by migrants from Mexico and Central America, many of whom have either been forcibly displaced from their livelihoods by US-engi-neered free trade agreements and other punitive economic measures or are fleeing violent contexts

the US itself has played no small role in creating.The effective criminalisation of migrants for pur-

suing a dignified existence translates into an existential hazard, and an untold number of travel-lers have perished at the mercy of the elements while endeavouring to navigate the border region’s hostile terrain.

Migrants also run the risk of being kidnapped, murdered, raped, extorted, and otherwise abused in transit - a risk that exists purely because, as global have-nots, they’re denied many options for “legal” movement between countries and thus rendered even more vulnerable to exploitation.

According to a 2013 Amnesty International report on US-bound Central American migrants in Mexico, “it is believed that as many as six out of every 10 migrant women and girls experience sexual violence during the journey”.

But who in the US has time for empathy when our country is under migrant siege?

Cake and more cakeSince the border wall is designed to block human

movement in only one direction, I, as an American citizen, am permitted easy access to Mexican territory.

From my present location on the Yucatan penin-sula, I can report that there are, in fact, certain Americans residing in Mexico who apparently detect no irony in verbalising their support for Trump or

Apple’s prospects for the iPhone look dim in China, with declin-ing market share and competition from more advanced products. That is one

reason why Apple is now focusing on the second-largest smartphone market in the world: India.

“I sort of view India as where China was seven to 10 years ago from that point of view,” Apple chief executive Tim Cook said during an investor call last year. “I think there’s a really great opportunity there.”

Apple plans to begin manufacturing smartphones in India, starting with the smaller and cheaper iPhone SE, according to the Economic Times. It is also marketing a discontinued version of the iPhone 6 through online retailers for a discounted price of $450 — because its products can’t command the same premium prices there, CNET reports. This comes after Apple repeatedly failed to get permission from the Indian government to import refur-bished phones because of concerns that it would use India as a dumping ground for old technologies.

Apple is repeating the mistakes it made in China. It is relying on its brand recogni-tion to build a market and failing to understand the needs of its customers. By marketing inferior products, it may also be insulting Indian consumers.

Smartphones with capabilities similar to iPhones sell for a fraction of the iPhones’ cost, and Apple enjoys practically no brand recognition among the hundreds of millions of Indians who are buying their

What Apple is getting wrong in India

Mexican side of the US-Mexico border in Nogales.

technically superior; they are buying them for social gratification.

And Apple doesn’t even come close on price. Take the Lyf phones that telecom giant Reliance Industries is marketing. Its lower end smartphones sell for $45 and come with three months of unlimited data, text and calls. Higher-end models cost about $150 and have features comparable to the iPhone 7, which sells for $750 and higher.

Until recently, Samsung and India’s Micromax dominated the Indian market. But Chinese brands — such as Vivo, Xiaomi, Lenovo and Oppo — are making major inroads, now enjoying 46 percent market share, according to Counterpoint Research. These companies offer stunning OLED dis-plays (which Apple does not yet offer), state-of-the-art processors, and features that are popular in Asian markets, such as dual SIM capabilities and selfie cameras. The phones are also available in different Indian languages. They use Google’s operating sys-

tem Android, which enables them to have the Google Assistant converse in the Indian languages, including Hindi, that the assistant is learning.

It is also notable that Android has 97 percent market share in India. This means that there is little motivation for Indian developers to write software for the Apple platform and it will always be a laggard for hot new apps.

Apple typically sells its products online or through its very high-end retail stores. FactorDaily says the company is planning to open three Apple stores in India this year. But this is not the way to reach hundreds of millions of people in villages and small towns. Chinese vendor Oppo, for example, achieved great success by selling through 35,000 electronics retailers and setting up 180 service centers, according to Bloomberg.

If Apple is serious about entering India, it needs to do more than assemble components and open stores there. It must develop new products and services that suit the Indian market, and it should buy local competitors, such as Saavn and Gaana. With 500 million more people about to be connected to the Internet via smartphones, the opportu-nities are endless.

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referring to undocumented Mexi-cans in the US as “illegals”.

A bigger and better wall will no doubt further facilitate the job of persons intent on upholding the standards of imperial hubris.

Beyond the actual physical bar-rier, there’s also a significant psychological dimension to the wall, which operates as a conferrer of value upon human life and skews the results in favour of those lives north of the line.

Meanwhile, the climate of fear perpetuated by militarisation schemes helps justify the schemes themselves, in addition to distract-ing popular attention from national defects.

On a bus the other day, I chat-ted with a Mexican American man who resented the idea that his mother herself a resident of the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo — could be deemed a secu-rity threat and potential “invader” in the eyes of “Caligula”, as he referred to Trump.

The man reasoned that, were the US concerned about invasions, it should perhaps stop invading other countries.

But that, of course, would cramp America’s style and ruin the good old tradition of having one’s cake and eating it, too. Unfortu-nately, cake and ethics don’t mix.

The writer is the author of The

Imperial Messenger: Thomas Fried-

man at Work, published by Verso.

She is a contributing editor at

Jacobin magazine.

Belen FernandezAl Jazeera

Beyond the actual physical barrier, there’s also a significant psychological dimension to the wall, which operates as a conferrer of value upon human life and skews the results in favour of those lives north of the line.

Vivek WadhwaThe Washington Post

A salesman checks a customer’s iPhone at a mobile phone store in New Delhi.

12 SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017ASIA

South Koreans protest THAAD deploymentSeongju

AFP

Hundreds of South Koreans protested yesterday against the deployment of a US missile

defence system, a day after the visiting US Secretary of State reiterated that its installation would go ahead.

Rex Tillerson said in Seoul on Friday that the United States and South Korea would "proceed with the installation" of the sys-tem, known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).

Residents of Seongju county -- where the system will be deployed -- say it poses health and environmental hazards and argue that its presence could make them a priority target for North Korea.

About 2,000 residents of Seongju and a neighbouring county, 275km southeast of Seoul, rallied with banners read-

ing: "No THAAD but peace". Some 2,000 riot police

were mobilised to maintain order at the march and stop protesters reaching the instal-lation site.

Washington and Seoul say the system is for purely defen-sive purposes, but China fears it could undermine its own nuclear deterrent and has reacted with fury, imposing a series of meas-ures seen as economic retaliation on the South.

North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power and has con-ducted several atomic tests in defiance of the international community and UN sanctions.

Earlier this month, Pyongyang test fired a salvo of missiles that fell in waters off Japan.

On his visit to Seoul, Tillerson

-- who is now in Beijing -- held talks on North Korea's missile and nuclear threats with foreign min-ister Yun Byung-Se and acting

Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn.

"It's my expectation that the new government in South Korea

will continue to be supportive of the THAAD system, because it is directed solely at the defense" of the country," Tillerson said.

Health hazards

Residents say it poses health and environmental hazards and argue that its presence could make them a priority target for North Korea.

It's my expectation that the new government in South Korea will continue to be supportive of the THAAD system: Tillerson

Residents of Seongju county participate in a protest outside a golf course being used as the site for the recently installed US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, in Seongju, yesterday.

Thai elephant hospital at risk of closingBangkok

AP

WHAT is believed to be the world's first elephant hospi-tal says it may have to close because of budgetary prob-lems after a decade of declining contributions.

The Friends of the Asian Elephant foundation, which operates the hospital in Lam-pang, says it is facing bankruptcy unless it receives financial assistance from the government.

The hospital drew world-wide attention in 2008 when it developed the world's first prosthetic elephant leg.

Foundation head Soraida Salwala said on Friday that the group has barely enough money to continue operating until the end of the year.

Indonesia implements new labour migration policyTuban

Anatolia

Indonesia is implementing new measures to prevent its citizens from falling prey to

human traffickers and exploit-ative labour, officials said yesterday.

Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, director of protection and legal aid for Indonesians at the For-eign Ministry, said that the new measures, which came into force this month, are meant to tackle problems faced by Indonesian migrant workers abroad.

A new rule says that immi-gration officials will only issue passports to people with at least $1880 in savings.

"The rule by the Directorate General of Immigration was in response to the rising number of illegal migrant workers".

Immigration agency spokes-man Agung Sampurno said that the agency found that workers without enough savings are more vulnerable to falling prey to traffickers and exploitative labour.

He stressed that the savings requirement "only applies to

those who are strongly sus-pected to be nonprofessional migrant workers."

Since enforcement of the rule began, he said, immigration services have blocked the emi-gration of hundreds of people suspected of being illegal migrants workers.

"We believe the new rules will have a direct impact on the intensity of this transnational crime."

Iqbal said the issue is a com-plex one for the government since "it's difficult to handle when they are outside our borders. Our

authority is very limited,"Iqbal said Indonesian offi-

cials try to help 600 Indonesian migrant workers abroad every day, some 90 percent of them illegally employed.

In 2015, Indonesia banned its citizens from working as domestic help in 21 countries, mainly in the Middle East.

According to Foreign Minis-try, more than 630,000 Indonesians work in the Middle East, but experts suggest the number is much higher once undocumented and trafficked workers are taken into account.

Indonesian tribes rally for land rightsJakarta

Reuters

Thousands of Indonesian indigenous people gathered on Sumatra

island y to call on the govern-ment to protect their land rights as fears grow some tribes could become extinct.

A sprawling archipelago with more than 17,000 islands, Indonesia is home to an estimated 50 to 70 million indigenous people, but many do not have formal title to the land their families have lived on for generations.

For decades they have been locked in bitter battles with logging, palm oil and mining companies that have been expanding into their

homelands in the resource-rich Southeast Asian nation.

President Joko Widodo has pledged to improve their lives, but activists say his ambitious plans to boost infrastructure and energy production - including by building dams - mean more tribes are at risk of being displaced.

"Even though the govern-ment has nice policies on paper, we continue to face land grabs... and forced evic-tions throughout Indonesia," said Rukka Sombolinggi, dep-uty head of the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago.

"We are willing to share, but development has to be done with our consent".

SK Group chairman faces probe over Park's scandal

Labour abuse: Chicken farm wins lawsuitBangkok

Reuters

A Thai court dismissed a compensation claim by 14 migrant workers from

Myanmar who had alleged labour violations at a chicken farm that supplied to the Euro-pean Union.

In their lawsuit against Thammakaset farm and its buyer, agricultural giant Beta-gro, the workers had alleged forced overtime, unlawful sal-ary deductions, passport confiscation and limited free-dom of movement.

They demanded around $1.3m in compensation and civil damages.

The Saraburi province labour court dismissed the case and upheld an August 2016 order by the labour protection department for the farm to pay the workers nearly $49,000 for unpaid wages for overtime work.

"The court stood by the investigators' findings, but they didn't look into our claims about passport confiscation or sleep-ing next to the chicken coops," said Suthasinee Kaewleklai, a coordinator with the Migrant Worker Rights Network (MWRN), a local non-profit sup-porting the workers' case.

"We're satisfied to an extent, but we need to ask the workers if they have the energy to con-tinue fighting this case," she said.

In interviews last year, the workers said they clocked 20

hours a day for 40 days straight during intensive chick-rearing periods, sleeping in hammocks next to the gigantic warehouses where the flock lived.

They earned $7 a day, though the legal daily minimum wage for eight-hour days is $8.60, with one day off per week.

Thammakaset owner Chan-chai Pheamphon denied the charges and said the staff vol-untarily worked nights to rack up bonuses and chose to sleep next to chicken warehouse.

Chanchai said on Friday he would appeal the court's ruling. "I want them to cancel the com-pensation order," he said.

"I am appealing because I don't agree with the order to pay the workers $49,000."

Chancha has separately pur-sued criminal defamation cases against the 14 migrant workers and British rights activist Andy Hall, who has championed the workers.

Seoul

Reuters

South Korean prosecutors questioned the chairman of the SK Group yesterday in

connection with an influence-peddling scandal that brought down President Park Geun-hye, the latest corporate leader to come under suspicion.

Park, South Korea's first democratically elected leader to be removed from office, faces allegations that she colluded with a friend, Choi Soon-sil, to pressure big businesses to donate to foundations set up to back her policy initiatives.

Officials at the prosecutors' office could not be reached immediately for comment about

their reasons for summoning SK Chairman Chey Tae-won.

Chey did not comment to reporters when he arrived at the prosecution office.

A spokesman for the SK Group also declined to comment.

Park is due to appear for questioning on Tuesday.

She and Choi have denied wrongdoing.

An election to pick a new president will be held on May 9 and reform of South Korea's powerful family-run conglom-erates, known as chaebol, is a major campaign issue.

The SK Group is South Korea's third-largest chaebol, with units in chemicals, telecoms and semiconductors.

Chey is likely to be asked about discussions between the group and the presidential Blue House in 2015, around the time he was released from prison when a four-year term for embezzlement was commuted.

Three SK executives were questioned on Thursday as part of the same investigation.

At least two other conglom-erates are being investigated, including the Samsung Group,

South Korea's largest chaebol. Its leader, Jay Y Lee, is in deten-tion on trial on bribery and other charges. Lee denies all charges and wrongdoing.

A spokesman for the Lotte Group said this week it was cooperating with the prosecu-tors' investigation.

Park, who was impeached by parliament in December and dismissed from office by the Constitutional Court on March 10, is accused of bribery, extor-tion and abuse of power in the scandal that has rocked South Korea since October.

The political crisis comes as tension with North Korea has been rising over its weapons development in defiance of UN resolutions.

Supporters of South Korea's impeached president Park Geun-hye are draped in banners showing a portrait of Park during a rally, in Seoul, yesterday.

Investigation

Impeached president Park Geun-hye is due to appear for questioning on Tuesday.

"The court stood by the investigators' findings, but they didn't look into our claims about passport confiscation or sleeping next to the chicken coops."

Tribesmen from Indonesia's Sulawesi island, clad in traditional outfits sporting monkey skulls and hornbill headgear, participate in a gathering for indigenous communities in Tanjung Gusta.

13SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017 ASIA

Re-enactmentAfghanistan urged to tackle Taliban threatsUnited Nations

AP

The UN Security Coun-ci l cal led on Afghanistan's govern-ment to tackle the "alarming threats"

posed by the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Islamic State affiliates and other extremist groups which threaten the security and stability of the country.

A resolution adopted unan-imously by the Security Council extending the United Nations political mission in the country until March 17 next year expresses serious concern at the presence and potential growth of IS affiliates which pose "seri-ous threats to the security of Afghanistan and the countries of the region."

The Security Council reiter-ated its support for the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces "in securing their coun-try and in their fight against terrorism and violent extremism."

It called on the Afghan gov-ernment, with international assistance, to continue tackling threats from "terrorist groups."

Council members called for

strengthened international and regional security cooperation to deal with violence in the region and attacks by the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, Al Qaeda, IS, other extremist and armed groups, criminals and "foreign terrorist fighters."

The Taliban, who have been waging an insurgency against the US-backed government in Kabul for more than 15 years, advanced on a number of fronts in 2016.

Afghan forces have strug-gled to combat the militants since the US and Nato formally concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014.

The government is also fac-ing an IS affiliate, which is

seeking to expand its footprint in the country beyond the east-ern Nangarhar province, as well as attacks by Al Qaeda and other groups.

The UN's most powerful body expressed "deep concern" at the record number of civilian casualties reported in February and condemned suicide attacks, often in populated areas, and the deliberate killing of women and girls, including those promoting women's r ights , and journalists.

According to the UN report, 3,498 people were killed in 2016, including 923 children, and another 7,920 people were wounded, the highest total of civilian casualties recorded since 2009 when the UN mis-sion known as UNAMA began systematically documenting civilian casualties.

The resolution adopted by the council authorizes UNAMA to continue supporting the Afghan government including it coordinating international civilian efforts, organizing future Afghan elections includ-i n g t h e u p c o m i n g parliamentary elections, and facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Poppy cultivation in Kabul surges by 10%Kabul

Anatolia

Illegal poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has surged by 10 percent, the country’s Coun-

ter-Narcotics Ministry said yesterday.

Ministry spokesman Mohammad Hanif said that besides the traditional areas of

poppy cultivation in the coun-try’s south and southwest, the northern province of Badghes has fueled much of this year’s surge in illegal poppy cultivation.

“The fall in poppy cultiva-tion that we ensured in a number of provinces last year was negatively influenced by up to 17,000 hectares of poppy cul-

tivation in Badghes this year".Last year, the United Nations

Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said poppy was culti-vated on around 201,000 hectares of land across Afghanistan.

According to the office, the illicit proceeds of trafficked Afghan opiates total some $28bn.

US Legion of Merit award conferred to Naval Chief

Multan's VAWC accorded status of police stationLahore

Internews

PAKISTAN’S first Violence against Women Centre (VAWC) in Multan has been accorded the status of a police station by the provincial home depart-ment and the inspector general of police (IGP), empowering it to exclusively register and investigate cases of crimes against women.

This centre and others later are being established in the province by the Chief Minister’s Strategic Reforms Unit.

Officials said yesterday that the Multan centre had been assigned the status of a police station on the request of the Strategic Reforms Unit to support the project’s main idea of bringing together all justice delivery departments under one roof.

As many as 135 cases of violence against women have been registered in different police stations so far this year.

These include cases of domestic violence, honour killing, acid throwing, burn-ing, abduction and forced marriages.

Officials said the rate of such crimes was believed to be much higher than the reported data.

Pakistan to abolish two-year bachelors and masters programme

Islamabad

Internew

TheUnited States Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson conferred

the US Legion of Merit (Degree of Commander) award on Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah, who is on an official visit to the US, in a full honours ceremony held at the US Navy Yard.

Upon his arrival, Admiral Zakaullah was received by Admi-ral Richardson and a smartly turned out contingent of the US

Navy presented him a guard of honour, according to a Pakistan Navy press release issued.

The US Legion of Merit is one of the highest military awards of the US armed forces that acknowledges exceptionally meritorious conduct.

Later, Admiral Zakaullah called on Admiral Richardson in his office at the Pentagon. Dur-ing the meeting, they discussed matters of mutual interest, including bilateral naval collab-oration and the security environment in the Indian Ocean region.

Admiral Zakaullah thanked Admiral Richardson for the active participation of the US Navy in the multinational naval exercise AMAN-17 conducted by the Pakistan Navy in Karachi.

Admiral Richardson appre-ciated the professionalism of the Pakistan Navy personnel and the active role they played in mari-time security and stability of the region.

During meetings with Spe-cial Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Lau-rel Miller, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for

Political-Military Affairs Tina Kaidanow and Congressman Brad Sherman, matters of mutual interest were discussed.

The admiral highlighted Pakistan’s commitment and per-formance in the fight against terrorism and the Pakistan Navy’s efforts towards maintain-ing regional peace and security.

The dignitaries appreciated the role and contributions of Pakistan in spearheading vari-ous initiatives for maintaining peace and stability in the region.

Mismanagement

Terror risk

The Security Council reiterated its support for the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces "in securing their country and in their fight against terrorism and violent extremism."

Islamabad

Internews

The Higher Education Com-mission (HEC) of Pakistan has decided to abolish two-

year bachelors and masters programmes after the academic years 2018 and 2020 respectively.

Through an official letter, the HEC informed all degree award-ing institution in the country

yesterday that there will be no admissions in the conventional BA and BSc degrees after the year 2018 and in MA and MSc after 2020.

The letter says universities are using the abbreviations BS and BSc (Hons) for degrees awarded after 14 years of edu-cation and that, MPhil and MSc (Hons) is being used for degrees awarded after 18 years of edu-cation, which is creating

confusion for employers, both national and international.

The letter says the HEC had constituted a committee of experts from various universi-ties to work on the possibility of phasing out BA and BSc pro-grammes, to devise a mechanism for accommodating students who had already had BA and BSc degrees into a four year BS pro-gramme and that the committee had analysed BA and BSc

programmes in various universities.

“The committee proposed a bridging semester as foundation to cover the academic deficiency of students who would be enter-ing in to the 5th semester of the BS programme,” the letter reads.

It says all degree awarding institutions are advised to com-ply with the commissions’ endorsement of the committee’s recommendations.

Asked if the step will create hurdles for students as obtain-ing a four year bachelors degree may not be possible for every-one, HEC spokesperson Ayesha Ikram said the step had been taken for improving education standards.

Another HEC official said the letter was sent just to remind universities of the decision and that the deadline for this may be extended for a year or more.

Workers collect garbage from the Marilao River in Bulacan, north of Manila, yesterday.

China to build station on disputed shoalBeijing

Reuters

China will begin prepar-atory work this year for an environmental

monitoring station on Scar-borough Shoal in the South China Sea, an official said, as two US senators introduced a bill to impose sanctions on its activities in the disputed waterway.

China seized the strate-gic shoal, which is also claimed by the Philippines, in 2012 and the United States has warned Beijing against carrying out the same land reclamation work there that it has done in other parts of the South China Sea.

This week, Xiao Jie, the mayor of what Beijing calls Sansha City, an administra-tive base for disputed South China Sea islands and reefs it controls, said China planned preparatory work this year to build environmental moni-toring stations on a number of islands, including Scarbor-ough Shoal.

"The monitoring stations, along with docks and other infrastructure, form part of island restoration and erosion prevention efforts planned for 2017," Xiao said.

The report comes ahead of a visit to Beijing at the weekend by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, where he is expected to reiterate US

concern about Chinese island building.

Tillerson has called the activity "illegal" and last June, then US Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned that any move by China to reclaim land at Scarborough Shoal would "result in actions being taken by the both United States and ... by others in the region which would have the effect of not only increasing tensions, but isolating China."

A spokeswoman for the US State Department, Anna Richey-Allen, said it was aware of the Chinese report and reit-erated a call on South China Sea claimants to avoid build-ing on disputed features.

The Philippine foreign ministry declined to com-ment, saying it was trying to verify the reports.

Washington stresses the importance of free navigation in South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion worth of trade passes each year.

Correctional Services Department (CSD) personnel demonstrate tactics to counter a prison hostage situation during the department's Open Day at the CSD Staff Training Institute in Stanley, Hong Kong, yesterday.

South China Sea

China planned preparatory work this year to build environmental monitoring stations on a number of islands, including Scarborough Shoal: Official

14 SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017ASIA

13 Maruti workers get life sentence for murder New Delhi

AFP

AN Indian court yesterday sen-tenced 13 workers to life in jail for the murder of a senior man-ager in an outburst of deadly violence at a car plant in 2012, one of the country's worst epi-sodes of labour unrest.

The court last week con-victed a total of 31 workers, including 13 for murder, after hundreds of employees clashed with managers over wages and appointments at the Maruti Suzuki factory in Manesar.

The hearing in Gurgaon jailed 13 workers for murder-ing Awanish Kumar Dev, whose charred body was found in the remains of a building following the riots in July 2012.

Dev, who was a human resources manager, died after he failed to escape a blaze which was started by work-ers who went on the rampage in Manesar.

"Thirteen people who were convicted of murder have been given the life sen-tence," Rebecca John, a senior lawyer representing the workers, said.

"The court sentenced four of the remaining 18 to five years in jail, which means they have another one or two months to serve," John said.

97-year-old Indian enrolled for MA

Beijing

AFP

The US and China pledged yesterday to work together in addressing the threat

posed by North Korea's nuclear programme, as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned regional tensions had reached a "dangerous level."

The language from Secrea-try Tillerson and his Chinese counterpart after talks in Beijing was notably conciliatory after a run-up in which US President Donald Trump accused China of doing nothing to control its rogue neighbour while Beijing blamed Washington for fuelling hostilities.

"I think we share a common view and a sense that tensions in the peninsula are quite high right now and that things have reached a rather dangerous level," Tillerson said after talks

with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

"We will work together to

see if we cannot bring the gov-ernment in Pyongyang to a place where they want to make a

different course, make a course correction, and move away from the development of nuclear weapons."

Tillerson arrived in Beijing earlier yesterday after visits to US allies Japan and South Korea where he said the US would no longer observe the "failed" approach of patient diplomacy, warning that American military action against the North was an option "on the table."

But Tillerson refrained from further tough talk in his joint appearance with Wang, who appeared to chide the US diplo-mat over his rhetoric this week.

"We hope all parties includ-ing our friends from the United States could size up the situation in a cool-headed and compre-hensive fashion and arrive at a wise decision," Wang said.

Neither side indicated any concrete next steps, and Tiller-son did not explicitly back

Beijing's calls for negotiations with North Korea, which Wash-ington has rejected.

In a Friday Twitter blast, Trump had accused Beijing of failing to use its leverage as North Korea's key diplomatic and trade partner.

"North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!" Trump said.

The hardened US stance fol-lowed two North Korean nuclear tests last year and recent missile launches that Pyongyang described as practice for an attack on US bases in Japan.

Beijing wants to resume multi-lateral diplomatic negoti-ations with North Korea on dismantling its nukes -- which UN resolutions bar it from hav-ing. Various rounds of such talks in years past failed to deter Pyongyang.

Tillerson urges China to cooperate on North Korea

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrive for a joint press conference at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, yesterday.

Armed militant shot dead in BangladeshDhaka

AFP

Bangladesh police shot dead a suspected militant in the capital Dhaka yes-

terday, a day after a suicide bomber blew himself up at a security forces camp.

The man was killed as he tried to cross a security road-block on a motorbike carrying a bag with improvised explo-sive devices, according to Mufti Mahmud Khan, spokesman for the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).

"As he was carrying explo-sives we primarily suspect him of being a militant," Khan said, adding further investigation

was needed to ascertain his identity.

"A bomb disposal unit was rushed to the spot where it recovered the biker's bag con-taining multiple small improvised bombs, which were later diffused," Khan said.

According to local RAB commander Tuhin Mohammad Masud, the suspected attacker was in his early twenties.

The latest incident comes a day after a man blew himself up at a RAB camp near Dhaka's international airport, wounding two policemen, in an apparent botched suicide attack.

Bangladesh has seen a spate of deadly attacks recently on for-eigners, writers and activists.

China & Russia block UN statement on MyanmarUnited Nations AFP

China and Russia blocked a proposed UN Security Council statement that

would have expressed con-cern over the tense situation in Myanmar's Rakhine state, diplomats said.

Myanmar's military car-ried out a four-month offensive against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine that UN human rights investigators have said likely resulted in atrocities and crimes against humanity.

British Ambassador Mat-thew Rycroft said "there was no consensus in the room" for the statement.

Diplomats said China and Russ ia had raised objections.

The proposed British-drafted statement "noted with concern renewed fighting in some parts of the country and stressed the importance of humanitarian access to all the areas."

"We support the peace process and are one of the largest bilateral humanitar-ian aid donors, including in Rakhine state," said Rycroft,

whose country holds the presidency of the Security Council this month.

An agreed statement expressing concern could have led to further action, but the move by China and Rus-sia -- which both have veto power -- was seen as a clear signal that Myanmar should be left off the council agenda.

UN rights officials have accused the Myanmar mili-tary of extrajudicial killings, abuses and probable ethnic cleansing during the cam-paign against the Rohingya.

The 1.1 million Rohingya are loathed by many from the Buddhist majority, who insist they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even though many have lived in the coun-try for generations.

Yogi Adityanath to be

next Uttar Pradesh CMNew Delhi AFP

Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi's right-wing party yesterday picked a controversial leader to head India's most

populous state, where it won a landslide victory last week.

Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won an absolute majority in the north-ern state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 220 million people and seen as a bellwether of national pol-itics, in a massive vote of confidence for the premier half-way into his first term.

After an hours-long meeting with local BJP legislators yester-day, senior party leader M Venkaiah Naidu announced 44-year-old Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh's next chief minister.

"Tomorrow Yogi Adityanath will take oath as chief minister," Naidu said at a press conference

in Uttar Pradesh's capital Luc-know late yesterday.

Earlier, television footage showed BJP workers garlanding and feeding sweets to the Hindu hardliner who was draped in his iconic saffron-coloured robe.

A five-time MP from the BJP, Adityanath is a popular leader

known for his fiery Hindu rhetoric.

Most recently, he lauded US President Trump's travel ban that aimed to halt immigrants from a handful of Muslim-majority countries from entering Amer-ica, saying India needed similar action to check terrorism.

He has often fanned flames over religious conversions, inter-religion marriages and has reportedly been arrested and charged with several crimes in the past including rioting, attempt to murder and trespass-ing on burial places.

The rise of the Hindu priest-turned-politician in Uttar Pradesh, a state prone to sectar-ian strife, surprised many after Modi made his development agenda the focus of his campaign in the region, which is tradition-ally fractured along caste and religious lines.

Observers questioned whether Adityanath would con-tinue pushing his "Hindutva",

loosely translated as "Hinduness", ideology as chief minister.

"PM @narendramodi says development & growth is his pri-mary agenda. Allowing Hindutva hardliners to helm a major state is a costly mistake," said senior journalist Malini Parthasarathy on Twitter as #YogiAdityanath became a top-trending topic

But the BJP, which won 312

of the total 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh, reassured Adityanath would work for development and anti-corruption.

"This mandate is against caste politics, religious politics," Naidu said.

With last week's clear win in the politically crucial state, the BJP hopes to boost Modi's chances for a second term in

2019 general elections but it was unclear whether Adityanath's appointment would help it get there or backfire.

Modi's dominance has been largely unchallenged since he won the first overall majority in three decades in 2014 elections on a pledge to wipe out corrup-tion and kickstart the economy.

Patna

IANS

A 97-year-old, who enrolled for a masters in economics here in 2015, has been rec-

ognised by Limca Book of Records as the oldest man to do so.

The Limca Book of Records has included the name of Raj Kumar Vaishya for enrolling himself in a M.A. Economics in 2015 at Nalanda Open Univer-sity (NOU).

Vaishya said he enrolled nearly one and half years ago for M A Economics for two rea-sons: "To fulfil my long nurtured desire to get a Masters degree and to study economics to be able to understand why India has failed to solve problems like poverty."

Vaishya, who graduated in 1938 and retired in 1980 as a general manager in a private firm in Koderma (now in Jharkhand), lives with the

family of his second son Santosh Kumar in the posh Rajendra Nagar colony for last 10 years.

"I did my graduation from Agra University in 1938 and got a degree in law in 1940, but failed to get a Masters degree due to increasing family respon-sibilities," he said.

"Now, I am closer to fulfill my dream," he added.

Vaishya was born on April 1, 1920 in Uttar Pradesh's Bareilly town.

Crime Scene Unit personnel work on the spot where police shot dead a suspected militant armed with explosives in Khilgaon, yesterday.

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yogi Adityanath (centre) is greeted after he was elected as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, during the party lawmakers' meeting in Lucknow, yesterday.

New leader

Senior party leader M Venkaiah Naidu announced 44-year-old Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh's next chief minister.

Observers questioned whether Adityanath would continue pushing his "Hindutva", loosely translated as "Hinduness", ideology as chief minister.

Objection

The move by China and Russia -- which both have veto power -- was seen as a clear signal that Myanmar should be left off the council agenda.

15SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017 EUROPE

Paris

Reuters

Security forces shot dead a man who tried to seize a soldier’s gun at Paris Orly airport yesterday, forcing the evacuation

of the busy airport and putting security back in the spotlight in the middle of France’s presiden-tial election campaign.

The 39-year-old man was already on the radar of police and intelligence services, had earlier shot and wounded a police officer with an air gun after a routine traffic stop north of Paris, officials said.

With the country in the throes of a highly-charged elec-tion campaign after two years of attacks on civilians and public targets by Islamic State militants - several of them in Paris - the anti-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation.

A police source identified the man only as Zied B and said he was known to the police for theft and drug offences.

An army spokesman said he was shot dead after a struggle with a female soldier on patrol in the airport terminal after he had earlier shot and wounded a police officer with an air pistol during a police check on the opposite side of Paris.

The man’s father and brother were taken into police custody, a judicial source said. BFM TV, without giving a source, said the attacker had texted his father saying: “I’ve screwed up. I’ve shot a policeman.” President Francois Hollande said the case had been turned over to anti-ter-rorism prosecutors and a number of operations were under way.

The incident had shown the need for the “Sentinelle” security operation brought in after an outbreak of attacks by militants in 2015, he said.

More than 230 people have died in France in the past two years at the hands of attackers allied to the militant Islamist group Islamic State, whose strongholds in Syria and Iraq are being bombed by an interna-tional coalition including France.

These include coordinated bombings and shootings in November 2015 in Paris when 130 people were killed and scores injured. Yesterday’s train of events began at Stains, near Le Bourget airport in northern Paris, where the man fled in a car after he shot and wounded a police officer at a road check.

Soon afterwards, he was involved in a carjacking in another Paris suburb Vitry where he threatened customers of a bar, Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux told reporters.

Soon afterward at Orly, he tried to seize a Famas assault rifle from a young woman air force member who was patrolling the airport as part of the army’s “Sentinelle” security operation.

The man and the soldier fell to the ground after an “extremely violent attack”, an army spokes-man said. In the ensuing struggle

on the ground, other members of the patrol opened fire, killing him, an army spokesman said.

One witness, who gave only his first name of Dominique, said he saw a man seize the woman soldier by the arm and take hold

of her weapon. Her comrades tried to reason with her assail-ant. “We ran off, down the staircase. Afterwards, we heard two shots,” he told BFM TV.

“Sentinelle” is the govern-ment’s stepped-up security

response to the January 2015 Islamist attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo which killed 12 people.

The operation was reinforced after the November 2015 attacks in Paris.

Paris

Reuters

French Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon con-tinued to lose support in an opinion poll yesterday that showed centrist Emmanuel

Macron likely to win the presidential election.In a BVA poll for Orange, Hamon fell 1 percent-

age point in a week to 12.5 percent, coming fourth in the first round behind far-right leader Marine Le Pen with 26 percent, Macron with 25 and conserv-ative Francois Fillon with 19.5.

Hamon, who unveiled his full manifesto this week, has slid 4.5 points since the beginning of Feb-ruary, and is now just 0.5 points ahead of firebrand leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon.

Both candidates have categorically ruled out pulling out of the race, meaning a divided left is likely to be eliminated from the crucial

second-round runoff for the first time since Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie’s shock second place in 2002.

Fillon has been losing support since becoming embroiled in a scandal over employing his wife as his parliamentary assistant. Macron is seen in the BVA poll making it to the runoff and defeating Le Pen with 62 percent to her 38.

Eleven candidates have been approved to run for French president, the country’s Constitutional Council announced Saturday, a month before the vote. The eleven received the 500-plus signatures from mayors needed to compete in the first round of the election on April 23, the council’s president Laurent Fabius said.

With no candidate expected to win an outright majority at the first round, the two top contenders will go through to a decisive run-off on May 7.

On Monday evening, five main candidates will go head-to-head in the first of three TV debates.

Paris

Reuters

Presidential favourite Emmanuel Macron said yesterday that he wanted

to restore military service to France for some 600,000 young people each year as part of efforts to face a world enter-ing an era of “turbulence” comparable to the Cold War.

The 39-year-old former investment banker, running as an independent centrist, is seen winning the April/May election in a runoff with far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who herself has promised to bring back con-scription 16 years after it ended.

Ahead of the first face-to-face televised debates with his rivals for the Elysee palace next week, Macron’s speech to the military, defence and foreign policy community, sought to allay criticism from his oppo-nents that he would be too inexperienced for the top job.

He vowed to strengthen France’s overseas operations against Islamist militants in the Middle East and Africa, face Russia’s “military affirmation”, the United States’ “unpredict-ability” and the “militarisation of terrorism” that was leading to acts of war on home soil.

“The current period is a turning point comparable to the Cold War, but this time we are entering an era of extreme tur-bulence, a new era of conflicts,” Macron said. Outlining the need for Europe to reaffirm itself in the face of major powers like Russia, China and the US, Macron insisted that he would “serve France’s interests firsts” to ensure it kept its strategic autonomy and was able to act alone at any moment if needed.

The former economy min-ister under outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande was accompanied on Saturday by officials from current Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who has been advising his ex-cabinet colleague.

He is one of the few minis-ters in the existing government that has won plaudits and is expected to officially back Macron next week.

The country is in the throes

of a highly charged election campaign after two years of attacks on civilians and public targets by Islamic State mili-tants - several of them in Paris - that have killed more than 230 people and forced the gov-ernment to put 10,000 soldiers on the streets to reinforce secu-rity. France has been under a state of national emergency since November 2015.

The threat was again high-lighted after security forces shot dead a man who tried to seize a soldier’s gun at Paris Orly air-port after he had earlier shot and wounded a police officer during a routine police check.

“The strategic situation that I have described and the threats that weigh on our country forces us to reinforce the link between the army and the nation,” Macron said.

“I therefore want every young French citizen to expe-rience, even if only for short time military life - a short, obligatory and universal national service,” Macron said.

He said the conscription would involve about 600,000 young men and women each year and occur for a one-month period between the ages of 18 to 21. The army and national gendarmerie would oversee the service. “This is a major Repub-lican project for society that must enable our democracy to be more united, but also resil-ient,” he said.

Moscow

Reuters

The Russian lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has approved a

proposal to launch an inves-tigation into US media organisations that operate in Russia, it said in a statement posted on its web site.

The investigation, which will be conducted by the Duma’s information policy, technologies and communi-cations committee, will check whether CNN, the Voice of America, Radio Liberty and “other American media” are complying with Russian law.

The statement said the Duma backed the move after Konstantin Zatulin, an MP from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, proposed an investigation to retaliate for what he called a “repressive” US move against Russian state-funded broadcaster RT.

He said he was referring to an initiative by US Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who has introduced a bill to empower the Justice Department to investigate possible violations of the Foreign Agents Regis-tration Act by RT.

Shaheen, a Democrat, cited a US intelligence agency assessment that suggested RT was part of a Russian influ-ence campaign to help Donald Trump win the White House last year. The Kremlin and RT have strongly rejected that allegation.

Foreign media in Russia are overseen by the Russian Foreign Ministry, whose spokeswoman Maria Zakha-rova this week singled out Shaheen’s demarche for crit-icism, quipping ironically that the senator should have included a clause drawing up a list of books for burning.

The US move also solic-ited the ire of Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief, who told the daily Izvestia it had echoes of the activities of US Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Attacker shot dead at Paris Orly airportSecurity beefed up

President Francois Hollande said the case had been turned over to anti-terrorism prosecutors and a number of operations were under way.

Around 3,000 passengers were evacuated from Orly, France’s second-busiest airport, after the incident as security services sealed off the terminal and swept it for bombs, but no explosives were found.

Passengers waiting at Orly airport southern terminal after a shooting incident near Paris, yesterday.

Russian lower house backs probe into US media

Macron seen defeating Le Pen: BVA poll

Macron wants military conscription in France

The country is in the throes of a highly charged election campaign after two years of attacks on civilians and public targets by Islamic State militants —several of them in Paris — that have killed more than 230 people and forced the government to put 10,000 soldiers on the streets to reinforce security.

16 SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017EUROPE

Moscow

AFP

Russia yesterday marked a low-key third anniversary of the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, as Kiev blasted the annexation of

the strategic Black Sea peninsula as a “crime”.State-run television showed footage of

sparsely attended concerts and parades in cities across the vast country and there was much less fanfare over the event than in previous years.

President Vladimir Putin—who last year spent the anniversary visiting Crimea—was not expected to take part in any of the official celebrations that include a concert and firework display in Moscow.

Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 following the ouster of its Kremlin-backed leader by mass protests in Kiev.

Putin ordered out thousands of special forces troops to take control of strategic infrastructure before a hastily organised referendum was held that was rejected by the international community.

The Kremlin argued it was reacting to an ille-gal coup in Kiev. The move unleashed a wave of nationalist sentiment that saw Putin’s popular-ity soar, with many Russians seeing the region that once belonged to Moscow as their country’s rightful property.

The annexation plunged ties between Russia and the West to their lowest level since the Cold War, as the US and EU responded with sanctions against Moscow.

“Three years ago Russia committed a crime many thought unimaginable for 21st century - occupied Crimea,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry wrote on Twitter. The takeover of Crimea was followed by a separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine that has claimed some 10,000 lives in nearly three years of fighting that Russia is accused of stage-managing.

Paris

AFP

Britain’s Prince William and his wife Kate yes-terday told injured survivors of the 2015 Paris terror attacks

they admired their courage, on the second day of a visit to France.

The couple met the survivors at the Invalides military hospi-tal in Paris before viewing world-renowned Impressionist artworks by Claude Monet and Edgar Degas at the Musee d’Orsay.

They also watched France play Wales in a Six Nations rugby match at the Stade de France later in the day as the royal cou-ple wrapped up their first official visit to the city where William’s mother Diana died in a car crash 20 years ago.

At the Invalides hospital, William and Kate were clearly touched by the plight of 25-year-old Jessica Bambal Akan, who

was seriously injured in the deadliest attack to hit France, the coordinated shootings and sui-cide bombings in eastern Paris on November 13, 2015 that left 130 people dead.

The woman, who still needs

to use a wheelchair as a result of her injuries, was celebrating her 24th birthday with three friends at the Belle Equipe bar when jihadist gunmen sprayed the ter-race with bullets, hitting her in the leg, back and hip.

“We are all lucky to be alive,” she told the royals. Noticing the pleated and patterned Chanel dress that Kate was wearing, she told her she was determined to pursue a career in fashion despite her injuries. “I am ambi-tious, I am still ambitious. I need to live and to work. I want to show these men they cannot win,” she said.

A firefighter identified only as Kevin described how he was attending a concert at the Bata-clan concert hall that night when he heard gunfire. “They (the attackers) started shouting at the audience and opened fire,” he said. “Anyone who shouted was shot, so I tried to be as quiet as possible. “I was hit twice in the leg but lay there and kept quiet.” Ninety people were killed at the

Bataclan. William told the sur-vivors, who are being treated at the hospital: “You are very brave, you should be proud of yourselves.”

Later the couple surprised tourists and art lovers at the Musee d’Orsay, the highly pop-ular museum housed in a former railway station, by arriving for a visit that had not been announced to the public in advance.

William and Kate, who met while both studying history of art at university, were shown art-works including one of Monet’s iconic paintings of a fog-shrouded Houses of Parliament in London as the crowds snapped them on their phones.

They then moved on to the Trocadero building, overlooking the Eiffel Tower, where they watched a demonstration of rugby skills as part of an initia-tive to showcase Britain and France’s shared interests at a time when Britain is about to trigger the formal process of

leaving the EU. A young English boy at the event asked William what he thought of Brexit. The prince, sticking to the protocol that British royals are not sup-posed to get involved in politics, replied with a smile: “I can’t answer that question, but good try.” William pledged yesterday that Britain will retain close links with France despite Brexit as they attended a star-studded dinner at the British embassy with film stars Jean Reno, Audrey T a u t o u a n d K r i s t i n Scott-Thomas.

William, who is second-in-line to the throne, and his wife are acting as goodwill ambassa-dors for Britain just as the country prepares to trigger the formal process of leaving the European Union.

At a reception for young French entrepreneurs to launch a celebration of Franco-British links called “Les Voisins” (Neigh-bours), the 34-year-old prince said the two countries had much in common.

“This partnership will con-tinue despite Britain’s recent decision to leave the European Union,” William said. “The depth and the breadth of our cooper-ation will not change.”

The couple met French Pres-ident Francois Hollande soon after arriving in the capital. The trip comes as William faces crit-icism in the British media for missing a Commonwealth cele-bration to go skiing with friends.

British tabloids have ques-tioned his work ethic after a video emerged of him dancing at a nightclub during the holiday in the exclusive Swiss resort of Verbier. Maeva Tordo, a French woman who runs a company that encourages the creation of start-ups, had a conversation with the prince punctuated by laughter at a reception at the British embassy. “He has a good sense of humour. You can feel that he would like to set up a start-up himself. But we didn’t ask him about his dancing,” she told reporters afterwards.

Sofia

AFP

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev accused neighbouring Turkey of “interference” in the

country’s March 26 general elections and warned his government would not accept it.

“Turkey is our neighbour, friend and partner and we insist on devel-oping good neighbourly relations,” Radev told public BNT television. “But Turkey’s interference in our elections is a fact, and this interfer-ence is inadmissible.”

The statement came after over a week of escalating tensions between the two countries. Bulgaria is angered at Turkey’s open support for Dost, a party for the ethnic Turk-ish minority, which is running in the general elections for the first time.

The government in Sofia sum-moned Turkey’s ambassador and recalled its own envoy from Turkey for consultations on Thursday. Radev called for “more calm and de-esca-lation of emotions” but also warned Bulgaria was vigilant.

“Bulgaria’s institutions and rel-evant services are actively working on eliminating all interference in our electoral process and our internal affairs,” he said.

Separately, Bulgaria’s intelli-gence service, DANS, said that one Turkish national had been expelled and two more banned from enter-ing or residing in the country. One of the men was inciting anti-Bulgar-ian feelings in regions with a mixed Bulgarian and Turkish population, it said.

The long-time leader of the main MRF Turkish minority party in

Bulgaria, Ahmed Dogan, lashed out against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday, calling his April 16 referendum on expanding the president’s powers “madness.”

Bulgaria is home to a 700,000-strong ethnic Turkish minority, a legacy of the Ottoman empire. An additional 200,000 eth-nic Turks with Bulgarian passports, who left Bulgaria during the Com-munist era, reside in Turkey and a third of them regularly take part in Bulgaria’s elections.

Relations between ethnic Bul-garians and Turks have been peaceful, but many in the Turkish minority have bitter memories of assimilation policies from the Com-munist era, when the authorities forced them to adopt Slavic names.

Tensions between the two neigh-bouring countries also come at a time of a wider row between Ankara and the European Union ahead of the Turkish referendum, with a number of countries preventing Turkish ministers from attending referendum rallies.

Turkey has blasted German and Dutch politicians as “Nazis” and threatened to scupper a 2016 deal with the EU to brake the flow of migrants entering the bloc.

The row could be a major prob-lem for Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest country, since it shares a 270km bor-der with its southeastern neighbour, Radev said Friday.

“Escalation of the tensions along the EU-Turkey axis will rebound most powerfully on Bulgaria, because we are on the front line,” he warned, urging the EU to find a solu-tion that guarantees the security of all member-states.

Britain's Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (left) and his wife Kate, Duchess of Cambridge meet with the members of a rugby team near the Eiffel Tower, in Paris yesterday. RIGHT: Catherine and Prince William are welcomed by school children and students from the British Council's Somme project as they arrive at the Trocadero Square.

William & Kate praise 2015 Paris attacks survivors

People wave Russian national flag as they celebrate the third anniversary of the annexation of the Crimea by the Russian Federation in Sevastopol, yesterday.

Vote interference by Turkey'inadmissible': Bulgaria

Royal visit

William pledged that Britain will retain close links with France despite Brexit as they attended a star-studded dinner at the British embassy with film stars Jean Reno, Audrey Tautou and Kristin Scott-Thomas.

French magazines have described the royals’ trip as a charm offensive by Britain as it prepares to break away from the EU.

Russia marks third anniversary of Crimea takeover

17SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017 EUROPE

Aberdeen

Reuters

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon knuck-led down on her plan to hold a referendum on independence from the

UK yesterday, saying Brexit negotiations are destined to fail if Prime Minister Theresa May showed the same attitude to European partners as she had to Scotland.

“The Prime Minister’s atti-tude should worry all of us hoping that negotiations with Europe will not be a disaster because - and let me put this bluntly - if she shows the same condescension and inflexibility, the same tin ear, to other EU countries as she has to Scotland then the Brexit process will hit the rocks,” Sturgeon told her Scottish National Party (SNP) conference.

Theresa May said earlier this week that “now is not the time” for Scotland to hold a referen-dum with Britain’s exit from the EU in the offing. “There will be an independence referendum,” said Sturgeon, who is also leader of the devolved Scottish government.

Sturgeon caught the British government off-guard on Mon-day when she demanded a new referendum by early 2019 at the latest, just before the UK is expected to leave the European

Union. In response, British Prime Minister Theresa May said “now is not the time” for another ref-erendum, arguing all energies should be devoted to getting a good Brexit deal for the UK as a whole.

“The people of Scotland have a right to take their future into their own hands,” 70-year-old SNP member Tony Martin said outside the Aberdeen confer-ence, wearing a sandwich board with the names of all the politi-cal parties and groups supporting independence.

“We don’t want to go down on the Good Ship Brexit,” said Martin, who lives in Gullane near Edinburgh but is originally from

Leeds in northern England. The Scottish parliament is widely expected to back Sturgeon’s call in a vote next week.

“The will of our parliament must and will prevail,” Sturgeon said. “To stand in defiance... would be for the prime minister to shatter beyond repair any notion of the UK as a respectful partnership of equals.”

But she is also letting it be known that she would be “up for continued discussion” with May

regarding the timing of a refer-endum. In Scotland’s 2014 plebiscite, 55 percent backed staying in the UK. But the SNP says the political landscape has dramatically changed since then.

It argues the vote was based on expectations that the UK would remain in the EU, retain-ing its unhampered access to the European market and the right of job mobility. These rights could be swept away if May, fol-lowing last year’s Brexit

referendum, brutally severs ties with the EU, the SNP says.

Scotland voted by 62 percent to stay in the EU in last year’s ref-erendum but the result in Britain as a whole was 52 percent in favour of leaving. In a speech to her centre-right Conservative Party on Friday, May accused the SNP of “tunnel vision” and “obsessive nationalism”.

“It is now clear that using Brexit as the pretext to engineer a second independence

referendum has been the SNP’s sole objective,” she said.

As the debate heats up, former British prime minister Gordon Brown yesterday waded in with a compromise solution — giving Scotland sweeping new autonomy, such as the power to set sales tax and to sign interna-tional treaties.

Control over agriculture, fisheries and environmental reg-ulation — currently areas under EU control — would be handed to Scotland as Britain leaves the European Union, he said.

Brown, who is from the main opposition Labour Party, said this was would be “a patriotic Scottish way” to avoid both “die-hard conservatism” and “hardline nationalism”. “Post-Brexit realities make the status quo redundant and require us to break with the past,” he said.

Scotland’s relationship with the EU is at the forefront of the SNP’s renewed call for inde-pendence, although EU officials have indicated it would have to reapply to join the bloc rather than inherit Bri tain’s membership.

But the SNP is also banking on a growing desire for inde-pendence. According to the latest annual ScotCen Scottish Social Attitudes survey released on Wednesday, 46 percent of Scot-tish voters now back breaking away from the UK—a record high.

Hartlepool

AFP

In the former shipbuilding hub of Hartlepool, traditional bas-tion of the centre-left Labour

Party, lifelong supporter Stan grumbles that the party leaders have “lost their way totally”.

Like seven out of 10 voters in this post-industrial town in northeastern England, Stan, a sil-ver-haired pensioner, voted to leave the EU, ignoring the pleas of the pro-European Labour leadership. Theresa May’s Con-servatives are increasingly hoping to appeal to voters like Stan as she puts Britain on the path to Brexit, giving the party previously unimaginable hopes of winning in eurosceptic areas of the country once seen as Labour strongholds.

“And don’t mention immi-gration! I totally disagree with the Labour view on immigration. We’re a small island, so I’m against it!” fumes Stan.

Labour voters have also been put off by party in-fighting and the hugely unpopular Jeremy Corbyn — resulting in a stunning by-election win for the Conserv-atives in Copeland, a northwestern area that has been a Labour seat since 1924.

Kevin Mason, who works in the re-developed marina in Har-tlepool, where restaurants and pubs have replaced the hulking machinery and timber yards of the old docks, said he used to vote Labour but “doesn’t believe any more in their politics”. “A lot of people around here feel the same, they’re all just as disillu-sioned as me,” Mason, 59, said.

If May succeeds in her attempts to secure a clean break with the European Union in order to cut down on immigra-tion from other parts of Europe, experts say, her party could lure wavering Labour supporters.

Tribal loyalties and histori-cal bitterness against the Conservatives run deep in com-munities like Hartlepool but the staggering Copeland by-election victory last month showed all that could change.

“Theresa May has been quite forceful in the way she is deal-ing with Brexit and I think she is probably one of the main ingre-dients to the success of the

London

Reuters

Allegations from the United States that British spy agency GCHQ

snooped on Donald Trump dur-ing his election campaign are “arrant nonsense”, the deputy head of the U.S. National Secu-rity Agency (NSA) said in an interview yesterday.

President Trump has stood by unproven claims that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the 2016 White House race. On Thurs-day his spokesman cited a media report that Britain’s GCHQ was behind the surveillance.

Richard Ledgett, deputy director of the NSA, told BBC News the idea that Britain had a hand in spying on Trump was “just crazy”.

“It belies a complete lack of understanding of how the rela-tionship works between the intel community agencies, it completely ignores the politi-cal reality of ‘would the UK

government agree to do that?’”, Ledgett said.

There would be no advan-tage for Britain’s government in spying on Trump, given the potential cost, he said.

“It would be epically stu-pid,” said Ledgett, who is due to retire shortly.

Current and former NSA officials have described an acri-monious relationship between intelligence agencies and the Trump administration.

Trump, who became pres-ident in January, tweeted earlier this month that his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama had wiretapped him during the late stages of the 2016 campaign. The Republican president offered no evidence for the alle-gation, which an Obama spokesman said was “simply false”.

Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano on Tuesday accused the Government Communica-tions Headquarters (GCHQ) - the British equivalent of the NSA - of having helped Obama to spy on Trump.

Vijfhuizen

AFP

Relatives of those killed when flight MH17 was downed over Ukraine in

mid-2014, yesterday planted the first trees in a Dutch memo-rial park not far from where the ill-fated plane departed.

“Today is a very important day for all the next of kin. We are planting the first trees... to cre-ate a monument for MH17,” Evert van Zijtveld, chairman of the MH17 victims’ foundation said.

“We are planting the trees to ensure their memory will not be forgotten and to remind us that we still want justice for MH17,” Van Zijtveld, who lost a son, daughter and his parents-in-law, said.

The Malaysia Airlines Boe-ing 777 passenger jet was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur killing all 298 on board, most of them Dutch citizens.

“The 298 trees will remind us of each life that was stolen on July 17 that year,” said Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koend-ers, who also planted a tree.

The park, in the shape of a giant ribbon consisting of apple, ash and hawthorn trees among others, lies a few kilometres from Schiphol airport, from where MH17 took off. A Dutch-led criminal investigation into the attack concluded in Sep-tember last year that a BUK missile, transported from Rus-sia, and hit the plane.

There will be independence referendum: Sturgeon

Brexit gives May a fighting chance

by-election,” said Ray Martin-Wells, chairman of Hartlepool Conservatives.

Labour has held Hartle-pool since the early 1960s, with “New Labour” architect Peter Mandelson securing 60 percent of the vote in 1997. Current incumbent Iain Wright retained the seat in 2015, but support was sharply down from Mandelson’s day, with a majority of around 3,000 ahead of the United King-dom Independence Party (UKIP).

Successful negotiations in Brussels could boost the Con-servative Party in England,

which voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union.

“The Conservatives are going to be more of a threat,” Labour Leader of Hartlepool Borough Council Christopher Akers-Belcher said. Labour politicians were overwhelmingly in favour of the European Union, driving a wedge with voters in their heartlands, who were solidly pro-Brexit.

“At every parliamentary by-election since the people voted for Brexit, Labour’s share of the vote has fallen, pointing to a far more widespread disconnect

between the party and the peo-ple,” wrote University of Kent politics professor Matthew Goodwin.

“If Prime Minister Theresa May and her party can steal Copeland, then they will almost certainly run riot across mar-ginal Labour-held seats where Labour MPs are sitting on thin majorities,” he said. Despite this, although aligned over Brexit, many are in no hurry to cross the divide and back the Conserv-atives, who are still blamed for hastening the demise of local industry during the 1980s.

NSA official ridicules 'spying' allegation

Dutch families plant first trees at MH17 memorial park

Referendum call

Scotland voted by 62 percent to stay in the EU in last year’s referendum but the result in Britain as a whole was 52 percent in favour of leaving.

In Scotland’s 2014 plebiscite, 55 percent backed staying in the UK. But the SNP says the political landscape has dramatically changed since then.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaking at the Scottish National Party's conference in Aberdeen, Scotland, yesterday.

18 SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017AMERICAS

Lightnings strike during an unusual thunderstorm at the Atacama Desert, in Copiapo, Chile, yesterday.

Desert thunder

Washington

Reuters

Federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, have expanded a long-

running grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks to include the leak of Central Intelligence Agency docu-ments to the website, a source familiar with the inquiry said.

The source, who is famil-iar with the investigation and requested anonymity to dis-cuss sensitive information, said the probe is focused on who leaked descriptions and technical information on techniques and tools the CIA has used to eavesdrop on intelligence targets to the website.

US agencies have made only vague public comments on the latest WikiLeaks dis-closures, but security and law enforcement officials famil-iar with the investigation said in the wake of the leaks that it is focused on whether an intelligence contractor was responsible. At this point, they said, investigators do not think Russia or another for-eign government was involved. US officials have confirmed that Alexandria-based prosecutors have been conducting a federal grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and its sources. Some court documents on elements of the inquiry have been made public.

Chicago

Reuters

US trading partners limited shipments of poultry from Alabama, a top producer

of chickens for meat, over bird flu concerns as the state’s wait for federal confirmation of two suspected cases stretched past a week.

The European Union, Kaza-khstan and French Polynesia restricted shipments from Ala-bama counties with presumed cases of the disease, according to the US Department of Agri-culture’s website. The moves

came a day after the state reported the agency’s national animal-health laboratories had confirmed a separate case of bird flu there. Belarus blocked ship-ments from the entire state.

Alabama officials and poul-try producers have been waiting since March 8 for the National Veterinary Services Laborato-ries (NVSL) to confirm the two suspected cases, which involve a commercial chicken farm and a backyard flock, according to the state. The facility in Ames, Iowa, is the only one in the United States that officially con-firms cases of avian flu.

Swift confirmation is impor-tant for US trading partners, some of which restrict shipments from geographic areas with infected flocks, and for state offi-cials, who want to know which strain of the virus they are bat-tling. Highly pathogenic, or lethal, bird flu led to the deaths of about 50 million birds, mostly egg-laying hens, in the United States in 2014 and 2015.

Another widespread out-break could be a financial blow for poultry operators, such as Tyson Foods Inc or Pilgrim’s Pride Corp, because it could kill more birds or require flocks to

be culled. The national labs must determine the strain and pathogenicity of the disease in order to officially confirm an infection, according to the USDA. The process often takes just a day.

A rapid test can be made when poultry samples contain sufficient genetic material, USDA spokeswoman Lyndsay Cole said on Thursday. But the samples from Alabama’s two suspected cases contained low levels, meaning scientists had to start a testing process that can take 14 days, she said. Tests by a USDA-approved lab in Alabama and the

national labs have already iden-tified the H7 subtype of the virus from samples in the two sus-pected cases, she said.

“Our department respects the science behind the testing and is patiently waiting for accu-rate results,” said Amy Belcher, spokeswoman for Alabama’s agriculture department.

Alabama authorities pre-sume the suspected cases are not highly lethal, or pathogenic, bird flu because the animals did not show signs of being sick. Still, officials have been checking birds at nearby farms for infections.

Lima

AFP

El Nino-fueled flash floods and landslides hit parts of Lima, leaving some com-

munities cut off from roads yesterday, as others fled rising rivers and millions fretted that they won’t have drinking water.

Peru’s geographic extremes help fuel the often deadly force of the mudslides, known locally as huaycos, the indigenous Que-chua word for flash flood-landslide.

The South American nation of over 30 million has plenty of extremes: its Pacific coastal deserts in the west are inter-rupted by the steep, soaring Andes, famed for the Inca peo-ple and Machu Picchu in the south. Further east, Peru has hot Amazon basin lowlands.

The tremendous steepness of the mountains combined with many areas that are rocky and sandy but lack the

level of topsoil found in more temperate places, mean fewer trees are there to stop mudslides.

After weeks of heavy rain came sweeping toward the coast, it filled many riverbeds in coastal areas that went from empty to overflowing in no time. Some residents on the outskirts of the capital of 10 million peo-ple awoke Friday to the realization their bedrooms were filling with water.

Others found themselves cut off by mudslides that blocked portions of the main highway linking Lima to the center of the country. In one dramatic scene, rescuers used zip lines to help residents of Lima’s Huachipa neighborhood escape over the torrent of brown water that was once their street, as it swallowed up cars and trucks.

The floods have been trig-gered by El Nino, a warming of surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean that wreaks havoc

on weather patterns every few years.

But this year it has hit Peru particularly hard. “It’s a dif-ficult situation, there’s no doubt about it. But we have the resources” to deal with it, said President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

The government announced it would release 2.5 billion soles ($760 million) in emergency funds to rebuild affected areas. Over half a million people were getting assistance.

While Peruvians have been dealing with huaycos for centu-ries, many poor residents of cities and towns build makeshift homes in areas that they may not realize could be a flash-flood zone. At times, authorities do tell different groups to move, but they voice frustration that they have nowhere to go. And authorities’ presence in the poorest peripheral districts, many perched on mountain-sides, can be inconsistent.

Washington

Reuters

The US Justice Depart-ment is developing plans to temporarily reassign immigration judges from around

the country to 12 cities to speed up deportations of illegal immi-grants who have been charged with crimes, according to two administration officials.

How many judges will be reassigned and when they will be sent is still under review, according to the officials, but the Justice Department has begun soliciting volunteers for deployment.

The targeted cities are New York; Los Angeles; Miami; New Orleans; San Francisco; Balti-more, Bloomington, Minnesota; El Paso, Texas; Harlingen, Texas; Imperial, California; Omaha, Nebraska and Phoenix, Arizona. They were chosen because they are cities which have high pop-ulations of illegal immigrants with criminal charges, the offi-cials said.

A spokeswoman for the Jus-tice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, which administers immigration courts, confirmed that the cities have been identified as likely recipients of reassigned immi-gration judges, but did not elaborate on the planning.

The plan to intensify depor-tations is in line with a vow made frequently by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail last year to deport more illegal immigrants involved in crime.

The Department of Home-land Security asked for the judges’ reshuffle, an unusual move given that immigration courts are administered by the Department of Justice. A Home-land Security spokeswoman

declined to comment on any plan that has not yet been finalized.

Under an executive order signed by Trump in January, ille-gal immigrants with pending criminal cases are regarded as priorities for deportation whether they have been found guilty or not.

That is a departure from former president Barack Obama’s policy, which priori-tized deportations only of those convicted of serious crimes.

The policy shift has been criticized by advocate groups who say it unfairly targets immigrants who might ultimately be acquitted and do not pose a threat. The cities slated to receive more judges have more than half of the 18,013 pending immigration c a s e s t h a t i n v o l v e undocumented immigrants facing or convicted of criminal charges, according to data

provided by the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review.

More than 200 of those cases involve immigrants currently incarcerated, meaning that the others have either not been convicted or have served their sentence. The Justice Department did not provide a breakdown of how many of the remainder have been convicted and how many are awaiting trial.

As part of the Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Justice Department is also sending immigration judges to detention centers along the southwest border. Those temporary redeployments will begin tomorrow.

Former immigration judge and chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Schmidt said the Trump administration should not assume that all those charged with crimes would not be allowed to stay in the United States legally.

“It seems they have an assumption that everyone who has committed a crime should be removable, but that’s not necessarily true. Even people who have committed serious crimes can sometimes get asylum,” Schmidt said.

He also questioned the effectiveness of shuffling immigration judges from one court to another, noting that this will mean cases the judges would have handled in their usual courts will have to be rescheduled. He said that when he was temporarily reassigned to handle cases on the southern border in 2014 and 2015, cases he was slated to hear in his home court in Arlington, Virginia had to be postponed, often for more than a year.

Immigration judges to expedite deportations

Toronto

Reuters

Canada’s border authori-ties detained more Mexicans in the first 67

days of 2017 than they did annually in any of the three previous years, according to statistics obtained by Reuters. The spike comes immediately after Canada’s federal govern-ment lifted its visa requirement for Mexican citizens in December.

Many Mexicans looking north have shifted their focus from the United States to Can-ada as President Donald Trump vows to crack down on Amer-i c a ’ s u n d o c u m e n t e d immigrants, about half of whom are Mexican. On Friday,

Reuters reported, immigration judges were reassigned to 12 US cities to speed up deportation.

The Canada Border Serv-ices Agency (CBSA) said it detained 444 Mexican nation-als between Jan. 1 and March 8, compared with 410 for all of 2016, 351 for 2015, and 399 for 2014.

The CBSA can detain for-eign nationals if it is believed they pose a danger to the pub-lic, if their identity is unclear or if they are deemed unlikely to appear for removal or for a proceeding.

The number of Mexicans turned back at the airport has risen, too - to 313 in January, more than any January since 2012 and more than the annual totals for 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Flash floods and landslides take dramatic toll in Lima

Canadian border authorities detain many Mexicans

US prosecutors probing leak of CIA materials to WikiLeaks

Alabama awaits verdict on bird flu; importers limit trade

Cities identified

The plan to intensify deportations is in line with a vow made by President Donald Trump to deport more illegal immigrants involved in crime.

The targeted cities are New York; Los Angeles; Miami; New Orleans; San Francisco; Baltimore, Bloomington, Minnesota; El Paso, Texas; Harlingen, Texas; Imperial, California; Omaha, Nebraska and Phoenix, Arizona.

Residents crossing a flooded street after a massive landslide and flood in Trujillo, northern Peru, yesterday.

19SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017 AMERICAS

Human rights activists protest against femicide and violence in a demonstration at El Salvador del Mundo Square in San Salvador, yesterday, to demand justice for the recent fire that killed 40 girls at a government-run children's shelter in San Jose Pinula, Guatemala.

Seeking justice

Muslims attending a town hall meeting by the Council on American-Islamic Relations(CAIR) at the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center, yesterday, in Falls Church, Virginia. Local Muslims met with immigration attorneys, experts in immigration, and Virginia Attorney General, Mark Herring, regarding the Trump administration's "Muslim Ban 2.0".

Meet over 'Muslim Ban 2.0'

Washington

AP

Jermaine Anderson keeps going back to the same memory of Donald Trump, then a candidate for presi-dent of the United States,

referring to some Mexican immi-grants as rapists and murderers.

“You can’t be saying that (if) you’re the president,” says Anderson, a 21-year-old student from Coconut Creek, Florida.

That Trump is undeniably the nation’s 45th president doesn’t sit easily with young Americans like Anderson who are the nation’s increasingly diverse electorate of the future, accord-ing to a new poll.

A majority of young adults — 57 percent — see Trump’s presidency as illegitimate, including about three-quarters of blacks and large majorities of Latinos and Asians, the GenFor-ward poll found.

GenForward is a poll of adults age 18 to 30 conducted by the Black Youth Project at the

University of Chicago with The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

A slim majority of young whites in the poll, 53 percent, consider Trump a legitimate president, but even among that group 55 percent disapprove of the job he’s doing, according to

the survey. “That’s who we voted for. And obviously America wanted him more than Hillary Clinton,” said Rebecca Gallardo, a 30-year-old nursing student from Kansas City, Missouri, who voted for Trump.

Trump’s legitimacy as president was questioned earlier this year by Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.: “I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.”

Trump routinely denies that and says he captured the presidency in large part by winning states such as Michigan and Wisconsin that Clinton may have taken for granted.

Overall, just 22 percent of young adults approve of the job he is doing as president, while 62 percent disapprove.

Trump’s rhetoric as a candidate and his presidential decisions have done much to keep the question of who belongs in America atop the news, though he’s struggling to accomplish some key goals. Powered by

supporters chanting, “build the wall,” Trump has vowed to erect a barrier along the southern U.S. border and make Mexico pay for it — which Mexico refuses to do. Federal judges in three states have blocked Trump’s executive orders to ban travel to the U.S. from seven — then six — majority-Muslim nations.

In Honolulu, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson this week cited “significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus” behind the travel ban, citing Trump’s own words calling for “a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

And yes, Trump did say in his campaign announcement speech on June 6, 2015: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best...They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” He went farther in subsequent statements, later telling CNN: “Some are good and some are rapists and some are killers.”

It’s extraordinary rhetoric for

the leader of a country where by around 2020, half of the nation’s children will be part of a minority race or ethnic group, the Census Bureau projects. Non-Hispanic whites are expected to be a minority by 2044.

Of all of Trump’s tweets and rhetoric, the statements about Mexicans are the ones to which Anderson returns. He says Trump’s business background on paper is impressive enough to qualify him for the presidency. But he suggests that’s different than Trump earning legitimacy as president.

“I’m thinking, he’s saying that most of the people in the world who are raping and killing people are the immigrants. That’s not true,” said Anderson, whose parents are from Jamaica.

Megan Desrochers, a 21-year-old student from Lansing, Michigan, says her sense of Trump’s illegitimacy is more about why he was elected.

“I just think it was kind of a situation where he was voted in based on his celebrity status verses his ethics,” she said,

adding that she is not necessarily against Trump’s immigration policies. The poll participants said in interviews that they don’t necessarily vote for one party’s candidates over another’s, a prominent tendency among young Americans, experts say. And in the survey, neither party fares especially strongly.

Just a quarter of young Americans have a favorable view of the Republican Party, and 6 in 10 have an unfavorable view. Majorities of young people across racial and ethnic lines hold negative views of the GOP.

The Democratic Party performs better, but views aren’t overwhelmingly positive. Young people are more likely to have a favorable than an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party by a 47 percent to 36 percent margin. But just 14 percent say they have a strongly favorable view of the Democrats.

Views of the Democratic Party are most favorable among young people of color. Roughly 6 in 10 blacks, Asians and Latinos hold positive views of the party.

Scranton

AP

Hillary Clinton said yes-terday she’s “ready to come out of the woods”

and help Americans find com-mon ground.

Clinton’s gradual return to the public spotlight following her presidential election loss continued with a St. Patrick’s Day speech in her late father’s Pennsylvania hometown of Scranton.

“I’m like a lot of my friends right now, I have a hard time watching the news,” Clinton told an Irish women’s group.

But she urged a divided country to work together to solve problems, recalling how, as first lady, she met with female leaders working to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

“I do not believe that we can let political divides harden into personal divides. And we can’t just ignore, or turn a cold shoul-der to someone because they disagree with us politically,” she said.

Friday night’s speech was one of several she is to deliver in the coming months, includ-ing a May 26 commencement address at her alma mater, Wellesley College in Massachu-setts. The Democrat also is working on a book of personal essays that will include some

reflections on her loss to Don-ald Trump.

Clinton, who was spotted taking a walk in the woods around her hometown of Chap-paqua, New York, two days after losing the election to Don-ald Trump, quipped she had wanted to stay in the woods, “but you can only do so much of that.”

She told the Society of Irish Women that it’ll be up to citi-zens, not a deeply polarized Washington, to bridge the polit-ical divide.

“I am ready to come out of the woods and to help shine a light on what is already hap-pening around kitchen tables, at dinners like this, to help draw strength that will enable eve-rybody to keep going,” said Clinton.

Clinton was received warmly in Scranton, where her grandfather worked in a lace mill. Her father left Scranton for Chicago in search of work dur-ing the Great Depression, but returned often. Hillary Clinton spent summers at the family’s cottage on nearby Lake Winola.

She fondly recalled watch-ing movies stretched across a bedsheet in a neighbor’s yard, and told of how the cottage had a toilet but no shower or tub.

“Don’t tell anybody this, but we’d go down to the lake,” she said.

Most youth see Trump as illegitimate leader

Washington

AFP

US President Donald Trump unleashed a dia-tribe against Germany

yesterday, saying Berlin owes Nato “vast sums of money” and must pay the United States more for security.

His latest tweet storm comes a day after he met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Washington, where the two leaders showed little common ground over a host of thorny issues, including Nato and defence spending.

“Germany owes vast sums of money to Nato & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!” Trump tweeted yesterday morn-ing. He prefaced his statement by lashing out at the news media. “Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS,” he tweeted, “I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancel-lor Angela Merkel.”

That appeared to be far from the case on Friday, when the veteran German leader arrived hoping to reverse a chill in rela-tions after Trump criticized her during his campaign last year, saying her decision to allow ref-ugees into Germany was a “catastrophic mistake” and sug-gesting she was “ruining

Germany.”During a joint news conference, Trump accused Germany of unfair trade prac-tices and ripped into Washington’s Nato allies, demanding they pay back “vast sums of money from past years.” Merkel said Germany had com-mitted to increasing its military spending to two percent of GDP, a target Nato member states for-mally agreed in 2014 to reach within 10 years.

Trump had made European defense spending an issue dur-ing his campaign, saying the United States — which spends just over three percent of its GDP on defence — carries too much of the financial burden for supporting Nato.

However, at least one critic pointed out that Nato members don’t pay the United States for security, but contribute by spending on their own mili-taries. “Sorry, Mr President, that’s not how Nato works,” tweeted Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to NATO.

“This is not a financial trans-action, where Nato countries pay the US to defend them. It is part of our treaty commitment.”

Trump has also worried US allies by criticizing the military alliance as “obsolete” and fail-ing to meet the challenge posed by Islamic terror groups.

His attacks have come as

other Nato members are con-cerned about Russia’s aggressive posture on the continent. Rus-sia annexed the Black Sea peninsula Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has backed separa-tist rebels in eastern Ukraine.

US defence spending -- $679bn in 2016 -- accounts for nearly 70 percent of the total defence budgets of Nato’s 28 members.Besides the United States (at 3.36 percent of GDP), only Britain (2.17 percent), Poland (2.01 percent), Estonia (2.18 percent) and Greece (2.36 percent) currently reach the goal, according to NATO esti-mates for 2016.

Germany, whose militaris-tic past has led it traditionally to be reticent on defense matters, currently spends 1.2 percent of GDP. But the country’s defense minister has called for changes to the way Nato members’ com-mitments to budget targets are assessed. Speaking on Friday ahead of Merkel’s trip to Wash-ington, Ursula von der Leyen said that the two percent target paints an incomplete picture of actual contributions, saying member states that take part in Nato operations and exercises or contribute personnel and hardware should get credit toward the two pe “For me, the question is who is really provid-ing added value to the alliance,” she said.

Germany owes Nato ‘vast sums’: President

Michigan

Reuters

A man charged in the shooting of two Detroit police officers earlier

this week has been linked through DNA evidence to the fatal shooting of a university police officer last year, authorities said.

Raymond Durham, 60, who was charged in shoot-ings of two Detroit officers on Wednesday, is now the “prime suspect” in the November shooting death of Wayne State University Police Sergeant Collin Rose, Detroit Police Chief James Craig told the media on Friday.

Craig declined to provide details on the DNA evidence that links Durham to Rose’s death, citing the ongoing investigation.Durham was charged by the Wayne County Prosecutor on Friday in con-nection with the shootings of the two Detroit officers, the Detroit Free Press reported.

He was arraigned while in hospital, where he is receiving treatment after being shot in the leg during a shoot-out with officers.

One officer was shot once in the ankle and twice in the upper torso, but was wearing protective body armor that likely saved his life.

Public mandate

A majority of young adults — 57 percent — see Trump’s presidency as illegitimate, including about three-quarters of blacks and large majorities of Latinos and Asians, the GenForward poll found.

Overall, just 22 percent of young adults approve of the job he is doing as president, while 62 percent disapprove.

Hillary: Ready to come out of the woods

DNA links man to Michigan shootings

20 SUNDAY 19 MARCH 2017MORNING BREAK

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

Models present creations by Amapo during the Sao Paulo Fashion Week in Sao Paulo, Brazil, yesterday.

Bilateral tie-up

Illuminated boats await customers at the Doha Corniche yesterday. Pic: Kammutty VP / The Peninsula

Floats of light

FAJRSHOROOK

04.24 am

05.40 am

ZUHRASR

11.42 am

03.08 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

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PRAYER TIMINGS

Actress braved pregnancy while shooting for horror comedyLos Angeles

AFP

Two things stand out immediately about British actress, filmmaker and rising star Alice Lowe

(pictured) that make her an unusual subject in the rarified but often preten-tious world of celebrity interviewing.

The first is the venue — a pleasant but utterly run-of-the-mill early 20th century bungalow she has rented to receive journalists in suburban Los Angeles — and the second is that she is breastfeeding.

"We could have gone to a restaurant but I didn't want to be somewhere where I'm like 'stay in your pram and don't fall into the waiter,'" she says, cradling infant daughter Della, who was bawling but has suddenly adopted the blissed out expression of a yogi. Lowe's lack of airs could be explained by the fact that she's hardly A-list yet outside of the British TV comedy circuit. But you get the feel-ing that she'd be as down-to-earth with an Oscar on the bathroom shelf.

Her profile has been on the rise, in

any case, with a starring role and writ-ing credit on Ben Wheatley's exquisite serial killer comedy "Sightseers" (2012) and parts in Edgar Wright's "Hot Fuzz" and "The World's End" as well as Paul King's "Paddington."

Lowe, 39, is doing the Hollywood publicity merry-go-round to promote "Prevenge," a horror comedy she wrote and directed, not to mention appearing in every scene, during an intense 11-day shoot while she was heavily pregnant.

Another deliciously deadpan blood-bath, "Prevenge" follows delusional Ruth as she embarks on a bloody antenatal assassination mission she believes is being commanded by her unborn foe-tus to avenge the death of its father.

IN THE CLUB If the premise sounds outlandish,

Lowe's directorial debut — which is going to be released on March 24 in lim-ited theatres and the horror streaming service Shudder — has been lavished with critical acclaim.

She was approached to make it while six months pregnant, and realised

her initial hesitation was no more than an unconscious attempt to conform to how society expects pregnant women to behave.

She ended up making a movie that on one level is a natural heir to the revenge genre exemplified by Park Chan-wook's 2003 noir smash-hit "Old Boy," but one that explores the way society pat-ronises pregnant women while at the same time limiting their life choices.

"One of the main things I wanted to say is that women are individuals and pregnant women are individuals. Eve-ryone is different. That's one of the things you feel you're losing when you become pregnant," she says.

"It's like you're joining a group, some kind of club and there's this one-size-fits-all attitude that you're a mum ... and you're going to feel this way or that way." Lowe also wanted to challenge the tendency of TV and cinema to reduce pregnant women to nothing more than their baby bump — and the inclination to worry about whether female charac-ters in general are sympathetic.

"No one watches 'Taxi Driver' and

thinks this is a terrible representation of men, or taxi drivers. You do the same with women and everyone goes 'oh, she was so horrible, such a terrible repre-sentation of women,'" she says.

'SUPERHUMAN' Far from being worn out, Lowe felt

"superhuman" during the shoot, which includes a Halloween night out on the streets of the notorious Welsh party cap-ital Cardiff, where revellers took the place of paid extras.

"I had guys coming up to me and shouting in my face 'I'm not scared of you!' and I had to say, 'I am actually

pregnant, you know. This is a real preg-nancy bump," she recalls.

"I saw some crazy things that night. We walked past a group of about 30 people standing around a fight between three men, one of whom was in a wheel-chair. It was insane."

Lowe grew up in England's West Midlands and graduated in classics from Cambridge University.

Her TV career took off with "Garth Marenghi's Dark Place," a short-lived but clever send-up of low-budget 1980s soap opera featuring actors talking over scenes from a horror series they'd made years earlier that got cancelled.

Life following art as it often does, "Darkplace" itself was cancelled after six episodes, although it got a second life on America's Sci-Fi Channel — now SyFy — and has gone on to become a cult classic thanks to YouTube.

Lowe has since appeared in many of Britain's most successful comedy series — from "Black Books" to "The IT Crowd" and "The Might Boosh" — but says her film career has allowed her to realise she's "just not that into sit-coms."

Freezing the memory of glaciers for futureParis

AFP

Locked up in about 140 metres (460 feet) of ice capping a Boliv-ian mountain lie 18,000 years of

climate history, dating back to an epoch when humans were only just learning to farm.

But this precious archive of envi-ronmental change since the last Ice Age is melting fast, to the despair of scientists.

They have now decided to take matters in hand, in a remarkable ini-tiative that combines glaciology with high-altitude trekking.

An international team will set out in May on a gruelling trip up Bolivia's

6,400-metre Illimani peak to drill three ice cores from its crowning glacier.

These will be preserved for pos-terity, along with cores from other glaciers, in the natural freezer that is Antarctica.

"Eventually, these ice cores will be all that is left of the glaciers," said Jer-ome Chappellaz of France's CNRS research institute, a partner in the endeavour dubbed Ice Memory.

Glacier ice contains traces of gas, chemicals and dust.

Analysed in the lab, this is a treas-ure trove of data on past changes in the climate and environment, includ-ing rainfall trends, forest fires, atmospheric temperatures, levels of

greenhouse gases and chemical pol-lutants. They provide a crucial benchmark for understanding how our climate is mutating.

"The glaciers... hold the memory of former climates and help to predict future environmental changes," said the Institute of Research for Develop-ment (IRD), another mission member.

But time is running out."If global warming continues at its

current rate, glaciers at an altitude below 3,500 metres in the Alps and 5,400 metres in the Andes will have disappeared by the end of the 21st cen-tury," said the IRD. "These are unique pages in the history of our environ-ment which will... be lost forever." A

glacier is a slow-moving mass of ice formed when snow accumulates year after year, compacting the layers below into a dense body of ice.

At the Illimani site, two metres of snow fall every year, translating into a very detailed record that by now lies 140 metres deep. "Studying the glacier therefore means the past of this envi-ronment can be reconstructed as far back as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM)" — the peak freeze, about 21,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, mis-sion coordinators said in a statement.

At the time, vast ice sheets covered much of North America, northern Europe, and Asia, before starting to melt as the climate warmed, allowing modern humans to thrive and spread.

Work begins on longest suspension bridgeIstanbul

AFP

Turkey yesterday started work on building what it says will be the world's

longest suspension bridge, spanning the Dardanelles strait that divides Europe and Asia.

The bridge is the latest in a succession of massively ambi-tious infrastructure projects championed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the launch of the project comes a month ahead of a referendum on expanding his powers.

Authorities expect that work on the bridge will be com-pleted in 2023, the year that Turkey celebrates the 100th

anniversary of the foundation of the modern republic by Mus-tafa Kemal Ataturk.

Appropriately, the span of the bridge is to be 2,023 metres (6,637 feet).

This will make it the long-est suspension bridge in the world, overtaking the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge in Japan which is just under 2,000 metres long, state media said.

The ground breaking cere-mony was attended by Erdogan on the Asian side and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on the European side of the site.

"The bridge will be the number one in the world. It will connect Europe and Asia," said Erdogan.

HIGH TIDE 08:15 - 22:15 LOW TIDE 03:15 - 14:45

Strong wind at places and expected

thundery rain associated with strong

wind. Hazy at first and slight dust

to blowing dust at times and partly

cloudy to cloudy with chance of scat-

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WEATHER TODAY

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