nation - Oman Tribune

Transcription

3
Nation
17
35,428 private
vehicles registered
until June
SUNDAY
JULY 31 2016
212,551 are
insured in
private sector
MUSCAT
THE NUMBER OF INsured people in the private
sector in the Sultanate
stood at 212,551 while
the total subscribers at
the end of June stood at
30,131, according to the
latest statistics released by
the Public Authority for Social Insurance (Pasi).
A majority of those insured were in the age category of 26 to 30 years and
comprised 24.3 per cent
of the total active insurers
whereas their average salary
stood at 648 rials.
End of service cases that
include service termination
or resignation or transfer
and service termination
due to death or disability
and termination for other
reasons stood at 27,542
at the end of June 2016.
The number of Omanis
in the Social Insurance
System for the GCC citizens was 1,732 at the end
of June. This reflects an
awareness among Omani
worker of the importance
of pension systems and
social insurance systems
that provide security for
the worker and his family.
Oman News Agency
26 SHAWWAL 1437
Business
21
Banking sector
weathers oil price
slide: Zadjali
Founder & Chairman: Mohammed Bin Suleiman Al Taie
Leisure
Saving lives drives
India’s spending
on cleaner fuel
Editor-in-Chief: Abdul Hamied Bin Suleiman Al Taie
Nationals, expatriates throng venue to get feel of heritage
DAVID SOLOMON
MUSCAT
Sports
Djokovic pips
Berdych to reach
semis in Toronto
www.omantribune.com
Enthusiasm in the air on
museum opening day
THERE WAS AN ENTHUsiastic crowd outside the
National Museum on Saturday morning when it opened
its doors to the public.
People began to assemble
outside the museum much
before 9am, eager to be
among the first ones to get
inside. And slowly there began a steady flow of nationals, expatriates, tourists and
children, all excited.
Since the official inauguration of the National
Museum had already been
done several months earlier, Saturday’s opening
was without much fanfare.
The museum staff, for
their part, greeted visitors
with warm smiles and cheery
greetings as they ushered
them in after they had bought
their entry tickets. Among
them right in front was
Museum Acting Director
General Jamal Al Moosawi,
personally welcoming every
visitor. Additional staff gently guided people in the right
28
VOL 12 ISSUE 235 28 PAGES 200 BAISAS
US ‘sceptical’ of Aleppo
humanitarian corridors
WASHINGTON The United States (US) said it is
“sceptical” of a Russian announcement that it
had opened humanitarian corridors in Aleppo,
with Secretary of State John Kerry fearing a
potential “ruse.”
PAGE 16
Libya, armed brigade ink deal
BENGHAZI (Libya) Libya’s UN-backed government has signed a deal with an armed brigade controlling the major Ras Lanuf and Es Sider oil ports to
end a blockade and restart exports from the terminals
shut down since December 2014.
PAGE 5
Canadian plotted Bangla attack
DHAKA A Canadian citizen was one of the masterminds behind a mass killing at a Dhaka cafe,
Bangladesh police said on Saturday, after new
information came to light.
PAGE 10
Erdogan slams West
ANKARA Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the EU and US to “mind your own business”
after the West expressed alarm over the growing
crackdown against suspected coup plotters. PAGE 11
Clinton,Trump trade insults
HARRISBURG (US) Hillary Clinton and Donald
David Solomon/Oman Tribune
Jamal Al Moosawi welcomes a visitor to the National Museum on Saturday.
direction, after offering them
Omani coffee and dates.
Nizar Al Balushi, his wife
and four kids earned the
distinction of becoming the
first family to enter the museum. Others among the first
stream of visitors were some
Indians, a German couple
with their two children and
Cost of Miraah solar
project cut by 46pc
Trump traded insults at opposite ends of the
country on Friday, taking their fight for the White
PAGE 12
House to rival battleground states.
More pictures on Page 3
Renaissance Hall.
Established by the Royal
Decree No. 62/2013 issued on November 20,
2013, the museum was established with the specific
focus to preserve components of Omani cultural
heritage by supporting
Please turn to Page 5
Amal Sachedina, a research
scholar from Singapore.
The construction area
of the museum is 13,700
square metres of which
4,000 square metres is
dedicated to 14 galleries
with 5,466 artefacts on
display. In additions there
are 7,117 in stores, taking
the total to 12,583. The
galleries include the Earth
and Man Hall, Maritime
History Hall, Hall of Arms,
Hall of Civilisational
Achievements, Aflaj Hall,
Currency Hall, Prehistory
Hall, Hall of Oman and
the Outside World, Hall
of Greatness of Islam and
Coalition ‘not
blocking’
Yemen aid
Tourism strategy is getting
finishing touches: Mehrzi
W EATHER
PRAYER TIMING
Fajr
Sunrise
Dhohr
Asar
Maghrib
I’sha
04:14
05:36
12:18
03:42
06:55
08:13
MUSCAT
MAX
36˚C
MIN
29˚C
SALALAH
MAX
25˚C
MIN
23˚C
RIYADH
STAFF REPORTER
MUSCAT
PETROLEUM DEVELopment Oman (PDO) has
confirmed that the cost of
its $700-million Miraah
solar project has been
brought down by 46 per
cent after adoption of a new
programme with innovative
design and improved efficiency.
The project to be set
up by GlassPoint Solar
is the largest solar plant
and power generate will
be used to produce steam
for enhanced oil recovery
(EOR) of heavy and viscous
oil coming up at the Amal
oil field in South Oman. It
already has a pilot project
there.
Adel Bin Ali Al Busaidi,
Acting director of Miraah
project, said in a statement
that the plan was prepared
by Omani engineers and
local companies were assigned with the design,
supervision and implementation tasks.
The project is expected to reduce carbon-dioxide
emission by over 300,000 tonnes annually.
The project will break
ground in the third or fourth
quarter of this year with
steam generation from the
first glasshouse module in
2017. Once complete,
Miraah will deliver more
energy to the customer
than any other solar plant
in the world. The project is
expected to reduce carbondioxide emission by over
300,000 tonnes annually,
the equivalent of taking
63,000 cars off the road.
He explained that the
project consists of 36 glass
houses to be built in three
stages. Some important facilities in the first stage will
be completed by the end of
this year and to be run in
record time.
The first and second
stages will produce a total
of 2,000 metric tonnes of
steam to for EOR operations by mid-2018.
A total of 6,000 metric
tonnes of steam will be produced when the third phase
is completed in 2022 making it the largest project of
THE COALITION BATtling rebels in support of
Yemen’s UN-backed government has denied accusations from rights groups
that it is blocking aid and
goods bound for the conflict-scarred country.
“The coalition is not
imposing a siege or an economic boycott on Yemeni
territory,” the Riyadhbased coalition said in a
statement carried by SPA
state news agency.
The coalition “is fulfilling its duties towards
implementing UN resolutions that aim to prevent
weapons and ammunitions” reaching Yemen, it
added.
Rights groups have repeatedly accused the coalition, which controls air
and sea access to Yemen,
of preventing basic goods
from reaching the country,
especially in territories
controlled by Iran-backed
Houthi rebels.
Agencies
STAFF REPORTER
MUSCAT
THE MINISTRY OF
Tourism is giving finishing
touches to the draft of the
Oman Tourism Strategy
2016-40, according to HE
Ahmed Bin Nasser Al Mehrzi, Minister of Tourism.
In the Al Markazi issue of
the Central Bank of Oman
(CBO) he said that the
strategy had already got the
approval of the Council of
Ministers. The ministry was
in the midst of finalising the
details of strategy draft, he
said. Despite the sector experiencing some setbacks
initially indicators pointed
to signs of improvement,
reaffirming the sentiment
that the Sultanate was on
track, he added.
The strategy had been
prepared in collaboration
with the private sector
and on community-based
partnership principles.
The ministry welcomed
suggestions for the strategy, he added.
ONA
Visitors at a tourist spot in Dhofar. Various regions of tourism importance are to
be transformed into local, regional and global tourist centres.
The ministry had also
made great strides in simplifying procedures for investors and was now providing more than 90 per cent
of its services online. More
services would be provided
electronically once the Invest Easy programme became fully operational, the
minister said.
The investment required
for the strategy covering 24
years is 18.94 billion rials.
This included 12 per cent
to be chipped in by the government and the rest from
the private sector.
Various regions of tourism importance such as
Dhofar and Jebel Akhdar
are to be transformed into
local, regional and global
tourist centres
Several projects involving local investors
are being implemented
in these regions. The
Oman Investment Fund
is also implementing some
projects to develop tourism infrastructure in these
regions.
The ministry was keen
to promote community
partnership and the ministry will encourage local investors to establish
private companies. These
will get priority during the
implementation process,
the minister said.
Australia is moving up in the world... literally
SYDNEY
AUSTRALIA WILL ADJUST
its latitude and longitude, a
government science body says,
to put the vast country into
alignment with global naviga-
tion satellite systems.
The nation’s coordinates
are currently out by more than
a metre, Geoscience Australia
says, and the discrepancy could
cause major headaches for possible new technologies such as
driverless cars which require
precise location data.
“We have to adjust our lines
of latitude and longitude... so
that the satellite navigation
systems that we all use on our
smartphones these days can
align with all the digital map information,” Geoscience’s Dan
Jaksa told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation this week.
Australia currently moves
north by about seven centimetres each year due to normal
tectonic motion and Jaksa said
the change was needed “to keep
pace with that”.
He said smartphones were
already accurate to within 5-10
metres, but shrinking the gap
would be crucial in coming
years, particularly with greater
use of remotely-operated vehicles in farming and mining.
“(And) around the corner, in
the not too distant future, we are
going to have possibly driverless
2
NATION
OMAN TRIBUNE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
Grandeur of Ras Al Hadd
fort beckons visitors
OMAN TRIBUNE BIDS ADIEU TO AJITH DAS
Stone complex comprises a castle, two towers and high walls
SUR
Oman Tribune bid farewell to Editor Ajith Das on Thursday. He had been with the
paper since its launch 12 years ago and was the editor for five years. Oman Tribune
Chairman Mohammed Suleiman Al Taie in his address spoke about the growth
of the paper and thanked Ajith Das for his services and wished him the best for
his future endeavours. Thanking Ajith Das, Editor-in-Chief Abdul Hameed Al Taie
also lauded his services. Ajith Das thanked the management and the team for all
the help rendered during his long tenure and wished the paper greater heights.
4,349 youths
apply for
higher studies
programmes
MUSCAT
Sunil P. Ilayidam (centre) with the award.
Kerala writer gets
MN Vijayan award
STAFF REPORTER
MUSCAT
THE THIRD MN VIJAyan memorial award was
presented to critic and
writer Sunil P Ilayidam by
renowned Malayalam poet
KG Sankara Pillai here on
Friday. The award has been
instituted by cultural organisation Idam Muscat
One should not fear
depths and should go deep,
was the advice that the
thinker and critic MN Vijayan gave and this should be
followed in its truest spirit,
said KGS, as he is popularly
known the South Indian
state of Kerala. With the
changing times, there is
the need for perpetual self-
renovation and vigilance.
One needs to be critical of
things around and this calls
for newer alertness.
“We are possessed by
others or other things and
are caught in the shadows
of many things,” said KGS.
Words should be authentic and Sunil showed these
sparks of alertness which
have been covered well in
his work ‘Anubhuuthikalude Charithraveevitham’
which was considered for
the award, he said.
Shilin Poyyara welcomed
the gathering and Idam
general secretary chaired
the meeting. Writer NT
Balachandran and Achu
Ullatil from Qatar offered
felicitations.
ADMISSION TESTS AND
interviews for courses for the
academic year 2016-17
will be held from Monday to
Thursday, the Higher Education Admission Centre has
announced.
Candidates will be alerted
through text messages, said
Higher Education Admission Centre authorities. As
many as 4,349 candidates
have applied for 57 academic programmes in Sultan
Qaboos University, College
of Legal Sciences, technical
as well as military colleges.
Total seats for the academic programmes stand at
1,743. Students’ nomination was based on their fulfillment of admission requirements for such programmes
as well as comparing their
competitive averages with
other students applying for
the same programmes and
the exact number selected.
Dates and timings are
available on the website of
the centre.
Oman News Agency
CASTLES AND FORTS
in the Sultanate are an extension of the Omani cultural and military history,
which dates back to more
than 5,000 years.
The forts in the Governorate of South Al Sharqiyah are one of the intangible heritage elements. They
reflect the development
and prosperity that were
experienced by Oman at
that time. This is evident
in the richness and diversity of historic buildings
and their defensive, architectural and aesthetic
elements.
Ras Al Hadd fort is one
of prime tourist attractions
in the Wilayat of Sur that
falls in the Governorate
of South Al Sharqiyah. It
is located in the Nayabat
of Ras Al Hadd about 35
kilometers away from the
center of the wilayat.
The sun first rises over
Ras Al Hadd in the Arabian Peninsula, and it is the
separation between the Sea
of Oman and the Arabian
Sea. The fort is located on
a high plateau overlooking
the residential areas of the
Niyabat, as well as ships
and the entrance of Al
Hajar creek that runs from
the Gulf of Oman.
All tribes of the Niyabat were involved in the
construction of the fort,
which began in 1560 and
was completed in 1590,
spanning three decades.
The fort consists of a
castle and two towers connected by a large wall. The
base is about 3 metres wide
and it has a solid foundation
built of plaster and stone.
Visitors can enter the
building through the large
gate, which is 2.5 metres
wide and 3 metres long.
On the eastern side
of the fort, there is an
open room with a large
seat. Measuring 3 metres
in width, 6.5 metres in
length and 3.5 metres in
height, the room was used
as a parlour. The Al Sabla
room was used to settle
disputes and it is 3 metres
wide, 4.25 metres long and
3.5 metres high. There is
also another room that was
used as a temporary prison
that is 3 metres wide, 5.25
metres long and of 3.5 metres high.
The castle is 13.25 metres high, 13 metres wide
and 16 metres long. There
is a tower with a diameter of
7 metres.
Saud Bin Hamad Al
Alawi, Director of Tourism Department in the
Governorate of South Al
The fort is located on a high plateau overlooking the residential areas of the Niyabat.
Muskets on display in the fort.
A cannon on top of one of the towers.
Sharqiyah, said the Ministry of Tourism has paid
utmost attention and care
to Ras Al Hadd fort. Under
the auspices of the Ministry
of Heritage and Culture,
the structure was renovated twice; first in 1989
and then in 2008 when the
Ministry of Tourism also
played a key role.
Al Alawi said the fort is
one of the important tourist
attractions in the Wilayat of
Sur. It is open to both local
and international tourists
alike, to be a witness to the
glorious history of the Sul-
tanate, which is prospering
under the benevolent rule
of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Said.
The geographical location of the Sultanate and
the maritime and commercial activity of its people expose it to many civilizations
of that era. Those castles
and forts are one of the
most prominent historical
and cultural monuments
that stand witness to the
greatness of the Omani
people and they are the
pride of architecture.
Oman News Agency
NATION
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
OMAN TRIBUNE
3
National Museum sees many visitors on day 1
Visitors form a queue to purchase tickets on the opening day. (Right) Traditional Omani attire is on display.
Nizar Al Balushi, his wife and four kids earned the distinction of becoming the first family to enter the National Museum. (Right) The artefacts point to the glorious past of the Sultanate.
David Solomon/ONA
The museum is the collaborative result of the Sultanate working with Spanish and Russian consultants.
35,428 private vehicles
registered until June
MUSCAT
ACCORDING TO DATA
released by the National
Centre for Statistics and
Information (NCSI), the
number of private vehicles
registered in the Sultanate
since the beginning of the
year until the end of June
stood at 35,428. The total number of registered
vehicles was 52,674 with
an increase of 6.0 per cent
compared to the same period
in 2015.
Compared to the end of
June 2015, new registered
private vehicles recorded a
rise of 3 per cent. The new
government registered vehicles recorded a rise of 18.1
per cent. Registration of new
vehicles of the political bod-
New registered private vehicles recorded a rise of 3 per cent.
ies rose by 36.4 per cent to
45 vehicles. The registration of new teaching driving
vehicles also rose by 5.1 per
cent to 104 vehicles. Registration of temporary vehicles
also saw a rise of 3.4 per cent
and stood at 1,622.
In contrast, the registration of new commercial vehicles registered a decline
rate of 4.6 per cent, bringing their number by the end
of June 2016 to 11,288
55K720UW
vehicles. Registration of
leasing vehicles fell by 14.1
per cent to 1,914 vehicles.
Taxis dropped by 8.2 per
cent, bringing the number
to 313 vehicles.
Oman News Agency
4
NATION
OMAN TRIBUNE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
Meethaq 3-month salary bonus
scheme evokes strong response
MUSCAT
McDonald’s Birdie character interacts with cancer-affected children.
McDonald’s supports
Nelson Mandela Day
MUSCAT
THE CHILDREN’S ONcology Ward in the Royal
Hospital was all abuzz as
McDonald’s Birdie character made its presence felt to
mark the brand’s support to
the celebration of the Nelson Mandela International
Day organised by the South
African Embassy in Muscat,
informs a press release.
The UN designated Nelson Mandela International
Day in 2009 in recognition of
his contribution to peace and
freedom. Mandela wanted
to do good for the world and
his work is being continued.
Every year people around
the world are encouraged to
spend 67 minutes of their day
in service together. “Mandela served humanity. He’s
our inspiration amd icon, so
we want to give something
back, especially to the cancerafflicted children,” said Busi
Mangoegape, embassy’s po-
litical counsellor and deputy
head of the mission.
The embassy staff and
McDonald’s representatives
wore shirts that said, “Take
Action. Inspire Change.
Make Everyday a Mandela
Day”. McDonald’s’ active
involvement in community
events is part of its ongoing commitment to give
back to the local community, championing healthier
and happier kids.
Oman Tribune
MEETHAQ, THE PIOneer of Islamic banking
in Oman from Bank Muscat, has evoked strong
response to its salary
bonus scheme for customers. The first-of-itskind scheme offers five
per cent of salary as cash
bonus when applicants
transfer salary to Meethaq
Savings Account, informs
a press release.
The three-month limited
period scheme is open till
first week of September to
all applicants with a minimum monthly salary of 500
rials. For instance, an applicant whose salary is 500
rials can earn cash bonus of
25 rials whereas another
applicant whose salary is
3,000 rials is eligible for
150 rials and so on. The
maximum cash bonus will
be 500 rials and it will be
paid once to customers after the first salary credit to
Meethaq Savings Account,
the release adds.
There are no preconditions attached to
the salary bonus scheme,
except that the salary
must be transferred to
Meethaq Savings Account maintained at any
Meethaq branch in Oman
and the customer has to
stay with the bank for at
least six months. All new
applicants who transfer
their salary to Meethaq
are entitled to the five per
cent salary bonus up to a
maximum of 500 rials.
The cash bonus will be
given from shareholders’
profits / funds as Hiba.
“Meethaq is delighted
to receive strong response
to the unique salary bonus
scheme for customers. At
a time when additional income makes a big difference in the lives of people, Meethaq is continuing with the tradition of
exclusive and innovative
Sharia compliant financial
products, services and offers. Meethaq is focused
on offering high value
proposition to customers. The bank remains
committed to responsible
banking and customer
Sulaiman Al Harthy
service excellence aimed
at contributing to the
country’s progress and
development,” said Sulaiman Al Harthy, Deputy
Chief Executive Officer –
Islamic Banking.
Meethaq Savings Account
offers enhanced features
aimed at encouraging the
savings culture in Oman by
providing attractive benefits
to customers. Notably, the
Meethaq Savings Account
based on Mudarabah principle provides annual profit
rates of up to 1.25 per cent,
along with complimentary
life Takaful.
Meethaq is focused on
developing as a bench-
mark Islamic financial
institution in Oman and
the region. With just over
three years of operations,
Meethaq has attained the
leading position in the Islamic banking industry in
Oman in terms of financing receivables, branch
network, products and
services, IT infrastructure
and human resources development. Meethaq not
only provides benchmark
Islamic financial solutions
to support the country’s
development but also
plays a key role in raising
awareness and educating
people on important aspects of Islamic banking
and finance.
Meethaq offers a full
suite of Islamic banking
products and services, including savings account,
Baraem children’s savings
account, current account,
home finance, auto finance,
credit card, mobile banking and internet banking.
Presently, Meethaq has
branches across the Sultanate and plans to expand
the network, as well as
launch new products and
services to complement
the unique Islamic banking
experience. The bank has
invested in staff, systems
and controls to ensure
the service is delivered in
a professional, segregated
and fully Shari’a compliant
manner.
Meethaq extends support to all key economic
sectors with innovative
Shari’a based products
and is well positioned to
provide Islamic financial
expertise to all segments
and thereby promote the
good of society as a whole.
Meethaq has adopted
the best practices in Islamic banking and finance
worldwide to combine a robust model which protects
customers and complements the Islamic banking
industry. Every Meethaq
product goes through the
process of Shari’a compliance certification by the
Shari’a Supervisory Board
and is created in line with
the guidelines of the Central Bank of Oman.
Oman Tribune
LuLu gives Land Rover keys Top-up campaign
Firms find it
launched by Shell
tough to tackle to Dream Drive winners
Oman, Omantel
ransomware
MUSCAT
STAFF REPORTER
MUSCAT
ORGANISATIONS ARE
still unprepared for future
strains of more sophisticated
ransomware, according to
the mid-year cyber security
report of Cisco.
Fragile infrastructure,
poor network hygiene and
slow detection rates are
providing ample time and
air cover for adversaries to
operate. According to the report’s findings, the struggle
to constrain the operational
space of attackers is the biggest challenge facing businesses and threatens the underlying foundation required
for digital transformation.
Other key findings include
adversaries expanding their
focus to server-side attacks,
evolving attack methods and
increasing use of encryption
to mask activity.
So far in 2016, ransomware has become the most
profitable malware type in
history. Cisco expects to see
this trend continue with more
destructive ransomware that
can spread by itself and hold
entire networks, and therefore companies, hostage.
New strains of ransomware
will be able to switch tactics
to maximise efficiency.
It says future ransomware
attacks will evade detection
by being able to limit CPU
usage and refrain from command-and-control actions.
These new ransomware
strains will spread faster and
self-replicate within organisations before co-ordinating
ransom activities.
“As organisations capitalise on new business models
presented by digital transformation, security is the
critical foundation. Attackers are going undetected
and expanding their time to
operate. To close the attackers’ windows of opportunity,
customers will require more
visbility into their networks
and must improve activities,
like patching and retiring aging infrastructure lacking in
advanced security capabilities,” said Cisco ME vicepresident Mike Weston.
Visibility across the network and endpoints remains
a primary challenge. On average, organisations take up
to 200 days to identify new
threats. Cisco’s median time
to detection continues to
outpace the industry, hitting
a new low of approximately
13 hours to detect previously
unknown compromises for
the six months ending in
April 2016. This result is
down from 17.5 hours for
the period ended Oct 2015.
LULU HYPERMARKET
concluded its biggest annual promotion of the year,
Dream Drive 2016, with a
grand key handover ceremony. The final draw held
on July 18 marked the end
of the two-month long promotion. The key handover
ceremony was held in the
presence of staff and officials of the Lulu group at
the Baushar outlet on during the last week, informs
a press release.
Hearts pounded, smiles
widened and excitement
filled the air as the keys
handed over to all six winners who drove home brand
new Land Rover Discovery
Sports SUVs. The six winners of the luxury cars were
Shabinas Anchillath, Jayasree Ramesh, Sarah Salim
Al Halrami, Kaula Salim
Al Gazeri, Elisha Kachchap and Asma Juma. Apart
from the luxury cars, many
others won an array of gift
products from Ikon. The
ceremony witnessed the
presence of a huge number
of people who crowded the
outlet to be spectators of
the joyous occasion.
“This year’s Dream
Drive promotion too concluded on a fantastic note.
The promotion has overall
been very encouraging.
The campaign’s success
MUSCAT
LuLu Dream Drive winners pose with the keys along with LuLu staff.
and the positive feedback
it generated are only because of the huge number
of customers who participated in the promotion. As
a customer-centric group,
we always make sure that
we constantly engage with
our customers as they are
the heart of our business.
Parallel to business expansion, we look to connect with our customers
through different events,
offers and promotions.
We hope to keep the experience as rewarding in
the years to come,” said
Anath A.V. –Director,
Oman & India.
The ‘Dream Drive’
promotion, which started
on May 15 and ran till
July 13, gave shoppers a
chance to win 6 luxurious
cars and a range of marvelous and useful products
from Ikon. Customers
were issued coupons for
every purchase of 10 rials,
which entitled them to six
raffle draws. Apart from
the 6 Land Rover Discovery Sports SUVs, which
were the main attractions
of the promotion, customers had a chance to win 30
Ikon products like Ikon automatic washing machine,
Ikon air coolers, Ikon halogen air fryers, Ikon cooking
range and a host of other
household and electrical
appliances.
Shoppers had the opportunity to try their luck in the
six separate draws held in
six Lulu branches across
the Sultanate during the
campaign period. Along
with the Dream Drive
campaign, LuLu Oman
treated its customers to
product-specific
deals
and promotions on popular Ramadan essentials.
LuLu is committed to give
their customers something
new and exciting to look
forward to every time they
shop. With about 16 outlets
in Oman, LuLu caters to the
everyday needs of millions
of customers across the
country, who benefit from
its promise of providing affordable and quality products at fair prices.
SHELL OMAN MARKETing Company recently
announced a joint promotion with a top-up theme
– Top-up your engine with
Shell Lubricants and top-up
your mobile with Hayyak,
The promotion which will
be exclusive for participating Shell retail service stations across the Sultanate
has very simple mechanics.
A customer buying any 4
litre pack of Shell Helix or
Rimula lubricants will receive 2 rials Hayyak cards
on the spot – an instant
value add, the release adds.
“Campaigns like these
serve more than one objective, our customers are
already winners when they
choose Shell lubricants
with advanced technology
for protecting their engines,
and having a major partner
like Omantel joining with
us to give more value to the
customer makes it even more
exciting as it reinforces the
philosophy of “Omantel
– Together”, said , Mohammed Ali Al Farsi, GM
External Affairs & Business
Development Shell Oman.
The promotion is on
from July 25 till Sept 15
and customers can buy
their packs from participating Shell service stations
where the site staff members are wearing special
promotion T-Shirts. The
offer is valid till stocks last!
Oman Tribune
Oman Tribune
NFC Khasab-Dubai Al Hashar Electronics
trip plan on track opens Cool Zone
MUSCAT
THE NATIONAL FERRIes Company (NFC) and the
Executive Management
of Rashid Port at a joint
meeting recently agreed
in principle to carry out an
experimental journey to
Rashid Port to find out all
the technical details that
must be provided in the
port’s berths.
The meeting also discussed technical and logistic details to operate
the Khasab-Dubai route
in the upcoming period.
The meeting reviewed
and discussed all the facilities to be provided to
the ferries in the event of
starting the implementation of the journey programme between Khasab
and Dubai
The meeting touched on
the opportunities for NFC
to take advantage of the international forums and gatherings in Dubai, especially
Dubai International Expo
2020, which is considered
as one of the prominent international exhibitions that
attracts many visitors from
around the world.
The management of
Rashid Port expressed full
readiness to provide all the
facilities.
Oman News Agency
MUSCAT
COOL ZONE, AN EXCLUsive showroom for airconditioners by Al Hashar
Electronics, offers a wide
range of cooling solutions
to the people of Oman
under a single umbrella,
Al Hashar Electronics,
part of the prestigious Al
Hashar Group, is one of
the most focused, innovative and customer oriented
businesses in the Sultanate,
carrying a rich business
legacy of exemplary transparency and commitment.
Al Hashar Electronics
has come up with yet another innovative strategy,
offering a range of cooling
solutions to the people of
Oman under a single umbrella: the Cool Zone, an
exclusive showroom for
air-conditioners. Situated
in Al Ghubra, Muscat, the
showroom is a first-of-itskind initiative in the Sultanate, where customers
get to choose from some
of the top brands in the
air-conditioning sector.
The brands include Mitsubishi, Chunlan, Voltas,
Onida and Lennox, the
release adds.
“Cool Zone is a unique
ate in the future, taking us
closer to our customers,”
said Rajeev Sharma, general manager of Al Hashar
Electronics.
Cooling units for the
home, commercial, private, and institutional
concept, designed exclusively to meet the varied demands of customers in the
cooling segment. We plan
to launch a chain of Cool
Zones across the Sultan-
segments are available at
the Cool Zone. Beyond that
Cool Zone offers services
including full-scale installation for all brands.
Oman Tribune
INTERNATIONAL
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
OMAN TRIBUNE
Egypt doctor
handed
3-month jail
over FGM
Libya, armed brigade ink
deal to reopen oil ports
CAIRO
Government seeks to restart exports from closed terminals
AN EGYPTIAN DOCTOR
who performed a deadly female circumcision operation on a girl has served a
three-month sentence, he
and a lawyer said on Saturday, in a first since a 2008
ban.
Raslan Fadl had been
sentenced in January 2015
to two years in prison for involuntary manslaughter and
an additional three months
for practising female genital
mutilation (FGM).
He remained free, however, until his arrest last April,
said lawyer Reda El Danbouki, who had pursued the
case against Fadl.“He began
the sentence on April 2 and
was released on July 2,” said
Danbouki, the executive
director for the Women’s
Centre for Guidance and
Legal Awareness in Egypt.
Fadl, who denies that he
performed the operation,
said that he had served a
three-month sentence.
He said the two-year sentence by a court in the Nile
Delta province of Mansoura
had been suspended after he
“reconciled” with the family
of the 14-year-old girl who
died during the operation.
“Go to the court and
you’ll find the sentence has
been suspended,” he said.
“There was a reconciliation
with the girl’s father and
there is no problem now,”
he said, adding that the sentence was under appeal.
Agence France-Presse
BENGHAZI (Libya)
LIBYA’S UN-BACKED
government has signed
a deal with an armed brigade controlling the major
Ras Lanuf and Es Sider oil
ports to end a blockade and
restart exports from the
terminals shut down since
December 2014.
Reopening the ports
would be a huge step for
the North African state,
which since the 2011 fall
of Muammar Gaddafi has
slipped into chaos that has
cut its oil output to less
than a quarter of pre-2011
levels of 1.6 million barrels
per day.
No specific date was set
for restarting exports, but
swift resumption would be
hampered by technical damage from militant attacks
and by opposition from
the state-run National Oil
Corporation (NOC), which
objected to paying cash to
reopen the ports.
Libyan
Presidential
Council deputy Mousa Alkouni signed the agreement
late on Thursday with Ibrahim Al Jathran, commander
of the Petroleum Facilities
Guards, one of Libya’s many
armed brigades that has
controlled the terminals.
“I think the resumption
depends now on technical
part... and I think also it
will happen from within a
week to two weeks, but not
Reuters/Files
Smoke rises from burning oil storage tanks in the port of Ras Lanuf, Libya.
more,” Alkouni said.
He said the agreement
included paying an unspecified amount in salaries to Jathran’s forces. He
said they had not been paid
wages for 26 months. Their
role is protecting the oil
ports, though critics have
said they used it to extort
money from Tripoli.
In a statement issued
later on Friday, Alkouni
said there was “absolutely
no truth to rumours that the
resumption of oil exports
was the result of extortion
or deals”.
Rival governments and a
complex network of armed
groups who once fought
against Gaddafi and have
quasi official status are vying
for power and control of the
country’s oil wealth, closing
down pipelines and battling
over export terminals.
Ali Hassi, a spokesman
for Jathran’s PFG brigade,
said no date had been decided for reopening the ports
because that would depend
on the National Oil Corporation. But he confirmed an
agreement had been signed
between the council and
Jathran.
Jathran’s brigades led
blockades of the ports
starting in 2013, saying he
was trying to prevent corruption in oil sales, though
others disputed his motives.
He has also called for more
People rally for Kabila
Enthusiasm
in the air
on museum
opening day
will delay elections in a bid
to cling on to power.
“We came here to affirm
our support for Joseph Kabila,” Aubin Minaku, secretary
general of the ruling majority and president of the national assembly, told a crowd
estimated at over 40,000, a
correspondent reported.
“Kabila, stay as long as possible,” the crowd shouted.
In power since his father’s
assassination in 2001, Kabila is suspected by opponents
of eyeing a third term which
would involve changing the
constitution.
Opposition
protests
erupted after the Constitutional Court ruled in May
that Kabila could remain in
office in a caretaker capacity
beyond the end of his current mandate
Unicef’s Nigeria
aid to continue
Miraah
solar project
cost reduced
by 46pc
KINSHASA
Continued from Page 1
research and scientific
and historical studies, and
plans for conservation, in
addition to education and
community outreach.
The museum is the result of the Sultanate’s collaboration with Spanish
and Russian consultants
to curate the collections
and will play an important
role in preserving the cultural heritage of the Sultanate.
Between 2010 and
2014, the museum invited 30 experts and
scholars from within and
outside and was assisted
by 21 archaeological
missions for the preparation of the contents of
the museum.
The National Museum
is the first public building
in the Sultanate that will
have advanced facilities
for people with special
needs, including the blind
by using Braille language
in Arabic. It has also gone
in for open display to encourage people to directly
interact with content material.
While the entrance fees
for nationals and GCC
nationals, it is 2 rials for
residents and 5 rials for
tourists. But children and
people with special needs
will have free access.
TENS OF THOUSANDS
of people rallied in Kinshasa
late on Friday in support of
Congolese President Joseph
Kabila just two days after his
leading opponent returned
home to a massive welcome.
Political tension is high in
the country as the opposition fears that Kabila, whose
mandate ends in December,
capital Maiduguri,” Unicef
Nigeria Representative Jean
Gough said late on Friday.
“We continue to call for
increased efforts to reach
people in desperate need
across the state. We cannot
let this heartless attack divert any of us from reaching
the more than two million
people who are in dire need
of humanitarian assistance.”
The agency urged donors and humanitarian organisations to scale-up the
response to the emerging
disaster in Borno state, the
epicentre of Boko Haram’s
seven-year insurgency.
Unicef estimates that
244,000 children will
suffer from severe acute
malnutrition this year in
Borno state alone.
LAGOS
UNICEF WILL CONTINue to provide assistance to
millions of conflict-affected
children in northeast Nigeria, despite an attack on its
convoy by Boko Haram
militants, the UN children’s
agency has said.
The insurgents ambushed a humanitarian convoy that included
workers from Unicef,
UNFPA, and IOM while
returning from Bama in
northeast Borno state late
on Thursday, injuring
several people, including
two soldiers, and prompting Unicef to temporarily
suspend relief assistance to
review the situation.
“We are working at full
strength in the Borno state
its kind in the field of oil
and gas.
He pointed out that when
the project will be fully operational, it will provide
6.5 trillion British thermal
units of natural gas annually
after dispensing with the
traditional ways to burn gas
to produce steam. This will
save around 46 shipment of
liquefied gas annually.
On the challenges, Busaidi said the foremost
one was design owing to
the size covering 3 sqkm
equivalent to 360 football
fields. But the company
policy has helped in taking
forward the project with
national cadres who gained
sufficient experience and
confidence.
Australia
moving up
in the world
SULTANATE OF OMAN
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
TENDER ANNOUNCEMENT
The Ministry of Defence invites MOD registered suppliers to participate in the
following tender:
SUBJECT
TENDER
NUMBER
LAST
DATE FOR
INQUIRIES
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TO OBTAIN
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DOCUMENT
PRICE PER COPY
SUPPLY & INSTALLATION OF SPORTS
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FORCE BASE PROJECT
42/2016
23/08/2016
30/08/2016
220 rials
SUPPLY OF PLATE MOUNTING FALLING,
PAPER TARGET, RARGET, ROLL &
TARGET ZEROING
43/2016
29/08/2016
06/09/2016
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Tender documents and terms may be obtained on payment from the office of the Secretary of the Tender Committee, gate No. 14 of MAM Camp between 0900 to 1300 hrs
on the working days.
Payment of Tender documents to be made by using of any Visa Electron Cards or “Visa
credit” Cards.
cars or at least autonomous
vehicles where, 1.5 metres,
well, you’re in the middle
of the road or you’re in
another lane,” he said on
Thursday.
Australia’s local coordinate system, the Geocentric
Datum of Australia, was last
updated in 1994 and officials believe it will be out by
1.8 metres by 2020 unless
corrected. New data on the
country’s coordinates is expected to be available from
January 1 2017.
autonomy for his eastern
region.
Opening Ras Lanuf and
Es Sider would add a potential 600,000 barrels per day
of capacity to Libya’s crude
exports, though experts estimate damage from fighting
and the long stoppage must
be repaired before shipments are at full capacity
again.
The NOC has said damage from recent attacks by
Daish, which expanded in
the country’s chaos, meant
the ports would struggle to
get beyond 100,000bpd in
the near term.
Beyond technical problems, NOC chairman Mustafa Sanalla has also object-
ed to any deal with Jathran,
saying it was a mistake to
reward the brigade commander by paying to end
his blockade of the oil ports.
Sanalla said a deal including payments would
encourage other groups
to disrupt oil operations
in the hope of a similar
payout. The NOC has also
threatened to withdraw its
recognition of the Presidential Council.
Eurasia Group analyst
Riccardo Fabiani said the
agreement was likely to
stick, unlike previous attempts to reopen the ports,
because both sides had an
interest in making it work.
Facing resistance from
hardliners and protests
over living conditions, the
presidential council needs
oil revenues to improve
services and economic stability as a way of bolstering
its legitimacy. Jathran is also
increasingly politically isolated and has decided to side
with the council.
“Despite recent attempts
by the Tripoli-based NOC
to undermine the agreement, the unity government decided to prioritise
the reopening of the ports,”
Fabiani said.
“This deal will give the
Tripoli authorities muchneeded revenues and is a
relatively easy political victory.”
Reuters
5
UN extends
peace mission
in South Sudan
UNITED NATIONS
THE UNITED NATIONS
Security Council extended
a peacekeeping mission in
South Sudan late on Friday
until August 12 as the US
warned that it had received
“disturbing reports” of renewed violence in the south
of the country.
The mandate for the UN
mission was due to expire
on Sunday, so the 15-member council unanimously
renewed it for a brief period
while they consider imposing an arms embargo on the
world’s newest state and
sending in more troops.
US Ambassador to the
UN Samantha Power told
the council before the vote
that the recent violence in
Juba was “horrifying but
sadly not unexpected” because the country’s leaders
are unable to work together
for their people.
“We have just received
very disturbing reports of
significant violence in the
Equatorias (southern states)
in South Sudan and all of
us need to be on alert this
weekend because events
could spiral rapidly out of
control yet again,” Power
said.
“Let us not be fooled that
time is on our side, it is not,”
she said.
Power said the proposal
by the African regional
IGAD bloc to send an intervention brigade to Juba
should be supported by the
council. “We all need to
support them,” said Power.
“The US believes the
region’s proposal offers a
basis to re-establish a secure environment in Juba,
which is critical for the parties to make progress on
implementing the peace
agreement” and allowing
aid deliveries, she said.
South Sudan descended
into civil war after President Salva Kiir fired Riek
Machar as vice-president
in 2013.
Agencies
6
COMMENT
OMAN TRIBUNE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
‘Cyberian’ snoops
Hacking of Democrats emails is extension of Putin’s war strategy
Flying ahead
T
HERE is good news ahead of the proposed opening of the new Muscat International Airport later this year. Passenger traffic through
the two major airports of the Sultanate – Muscat and Salalah – has
sharply risen in the first half of this year. The 9.4 per cent increase
is significant in that it has been achieved despite global and regional
economic headwinds that have slowed growth. Number of flights
from Muscat International Airport went up to 49,641 in the first six
months when compared to the 45,385 during the same period last
year, according to data released by the National Centre for Statistics
and Information. The number of passengers also shot up by 17.6
per cent to 5.69 million from 4.84 million. International flights
marked a sharp increase to 45,232 during the first six months of
this year from 40,118 in the same period last year. The healthy set
of numbers will give confidence to the Sultanate’s aviation managers
who are expecting a smooth flight ahead once the infrastructure
is fully upgraded. The airport in Salalah has been renovated fully,
giving the users true flavour of Dhofar Governorate known for its
unique culture and fabulous traditions born out of frankincense
cultivation and trade. A new airport is already operational in Special Economic Zone Duqm (Sezad).
The peace and tranquillity that prevails in the Sultanate undoubtedly
contributes to the aviation sector’s
growth, despite trouble elsewhere Number of flights
in the region.
from Muscat
The number of international flights International went
has also soared by 13.5 per cent offup to 49,641
setting a fall in domestic flights. But
the number of domestic passengers
has risen by 9.9 per cent, showing an increase in the capacity with
the introduction of larger aircraft. The nation’s aviation authorities
have strategised for even growth across the nation which is manifest
in the growth in passenger traffic in the Sultanate’s other airports as
well. The success of the nation’s aviation strategy is reflected in the
growth profile of the national carrier, which has been proactively
pursuing expansion. Oman Air’s proposed addition of 70 aircraft
to its fleet by 2020 has propelled it to another league. The airline
plans to focus on high-growth markets like India, as CEO Paul
Gregorowitsch recently announced, ensuring long-term growth.
The airline, which has a 90 per cent load factor in the sector, where
it is offering 21,147 seats weekly, plans to increase to thrice daily
the frequency of flights to six destinations from the present twice
a day. These sectors – Mumbai, New Delhi, Kochi, Bengaluru,
Chennai and Hyderabad – contribute to the bulk of international
traffic from India and Oman Air, with its quality of service, should
have little problem cornering more of the traffic. About 91 per
cent of the work of the second terminal building has been done.
The terminal building spread over 360,000sqm promises to be
a little mirror of the abounding natural beauty and rich culture of
the Sultanate. HE Dr Ahmed Bin Mohammed Al Futaisi, Minister of Transport and Communications, has expressed confidence
that the new facility will benefit the Sultanate and its civil aviation
sector in a number of ways. Afterall airports are not mere transit
hubs but prime space that captures the essence of ethos of a land
and its people.
F
ORGET whether Russia’s
hacking of the Democratic
National Committee computer system and release of
the committee’s emails to
WikiLeaks were designed to benefit
Republican presidential nominee
Donald Trump. Try to overlook, temporarily at least, the content of those
emails, which have infuriated Bernie
Sanders supporters. Put aside partisan
politics for just one moment and stop
to think what has happened: According to preliminary assessments by the
US government and private analysts,
Russian intelligence agencies broke
into the computer system of one of
the two main political parties in the
United States and released what they
stole through WikiLeaks.
Such an act goes way beyond mere
intelligence gathering. It was clearly
designed to hurt the United States and
damage its credibility. It may also have
been meant to undermine Democratic
presidential nominee Hillary Clinton;
Russian President Vladimir Putin, as
has been reported, is not a huge fan of
her, based on his accusations of her
responsibility for protests in Russia in
December 2011. The hack may have
been orchestrated to boost Trump. In
fact, it may well be a combination of
these three things. But the bottom line
is that the Russians have attacked not
the DNC, or Clinton, but the United
States, its political system, and its
presidential election campaign, period!
To be clear, hacking into the
DNC’s emails is not a one-off move.
Russia launched a cyber-attack against
Estonia in 2007 and tried to mess
with the results of Ukraine’s election in 2014. The Kremlin’s trolls
wreak havoc on western journalists
and websites.
But Russian actions go well beyond
the realm of technology. Within the
past eight years, Russia has invaded
two of its neighbours: Ukraine starting in 2014 and Georgia in 2008,
and illegally annexed Crimea. The
country illegally maintains a troop
presence in the separatist regions of
South Ossetia, Abkhazia in Georgia,
and in Moldova’s Transnistria. It does
everything it can to prevent its neighbours from moving closer to Europe
– by corrupting, destabilising and, if
necessary, invading them. Successful,
reform-oriented, democratic neighbours, especially Ukraine,
after all, could
be dangerous
alternative
models to the
system Putin
oversees.
The Putin
regime has intervened militarily in Syria to prop up
the regime. Despite Secretary of State
John Kerry’s futile efforts, the United
States and Russia do not work towards
common interests in the Middle East.
Instead, Russia bombs sites in Syria
that the United States has urged it
to avoid. Russia has sold dangerous
missile defence systems and is striking
up new friendships with like-minded
regimes in the region.
Russia recklessly buzzes Ameri-
can and Nato aircraft and ships, and
threatens European nations if they
host Nato’s missile defence system.
It regularly demonises the West and
the United States in particular, alleging that they are the greatest danger to
Russia and conjuring up nonsensical
western conspiracy theories against
the Kremlin. And if all that were
not enough, Putin has launched the
VIEWPOINT
David J. Kramer
ugliest crackdown on human rights
inside Russia in decades, with opponents harassed, arrested, even killed;
NGOs closed down; minority groups
denied their basic rights; and Russian
orphans denied loving homes in the
United States because of Putin’s spite
over the Magnitsky legislation.
After each example of egregious
Russian government behaviour, I
ask myself: When does the United
States say enough is enough? How
many more Ukrainians must die –
the number is approaching 10,000
– due to Russian aggression, before
the United States says more sanctions
are warranted, not fewer – a change
that Trump has hinted he might support? How many more countries must
Putin invade before the United States
treats him and his regime as the serious threat it is? And how much will the
United States let him interfere with its
own election before it draws a line?
Whether Putin is operating out of
strength or weakness is an interesting
question – but to a large degree besides the point. The track record cited
above is enough proof of the harm he
can and is causing. Putin may be taking his country off a cliff, but we need
to make sure he does not take others
plummeting with him.
This is not a time to pine for chummy relations with Putin; it is a time to
show spine and strength and stand up
to the danger he poses.
WP-Bloomberg
About the author
David J. Kramer was US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from
2008 to 2009
An enemy of the state
Fang’s book is full of wit, mischief and surprises, Jay Mathews writes
Thought For The Day
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
Voltaire
Published by:
Omani Establishment for Press, Printing, Publishing & Distribution LLC
PO Box 463, Muscat 100, Sultanate of Oman. Tel: 24491919
email: [email protected]
Founder & Chairman
Mohammed Bin Suleiman Al Taie
Editor-in-Chief
Abdul Hamied Bin Suleiman Al Taie
EDITORIAL
Email: [email protected]
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Tel: 24491919. Fax: 24498938
CIRCULATION
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Email: [email protected]
C
HINESE physicist
Fang Lizhi was
once world famous,
but no more. He has
been forgotten in America,
where he finished his life
teaching and doing research
at the University of Arizona.
Publication of his name is
forbidden in China.
He died in 2012. When I
met him in 1989, I found him
to be soft-spoken, maybe a little dull. I was wrong. It turns
out that he wrote an amazing
book about his life, and it was
just published. It is an instant
cure for our American inferiority complex about China’s
schools.
There is still a tragic flaw
in the Chinese education
system, a fear of truth and
freedom that Fang (whose
full name is pronounced
Fahng Lee-jer) spent his life
trying to fix; he never succeeded. His story is full of
wit, mischief and surprises,
particularly for Americans,
because it speaks to our two
cultures’ shared love of fam-
ily, suspicion of authority and
taste for snarky humour.
Fang presents China, even
at its worst moments, in a way
Americans understand. It is
very funny. We can laugh as
the Chinese do, even in places
where we know it’s inappropriate.
The title, “The Most Wanted Man in China: My Journey
From Scientist to Enemy of
the State”, is misleading. It
suggests a spy thriller on basic
cable. The book is more like
my favourite sitcom, “The Big
Bang Theory”, on CBS.
The Chinese Cultural
Revolution of the late 1960s
was a horror – chaos, massive
closing of schools and offices,
at least 1.5 million deaths.
But Fang and his buddies
saw it as an excuse for a road
trip. “So many young people
threw themselves so passionately into the worship of Mao
Zedong in the fall of 1966,”
Fang wrote, because “they
could ride the railways free
of charge.” Fang and friends
told train conductors they
were Red Guards stirring up
revolution.
At first I was uncomfortable with his take on the tragic
event. But Mel Brooks sent up
the Holocaust (“Springtime
for Hitler”) in “The Producers,” so Fang should be allowed to make fun of this disaster. By calling themselves
the “Combat Brigade 71,”
his group got free lodging
and food. The trains were
so crowded that the young
bour on farms and in mines.
His science career resumed
only when the Cultural Revolution exhausted itself. But
he and his physicist wife, Li
Shuxian, could not suppress
their sharp wit. They thought
the political interpretations of
astrophysics they laboured
under were ridiculous, and
they dangerously said so to
their students.
Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels wrote that the uni-
At a favourite tourist stop in Hangzhou, the
weather turned against them
scientists found themselves
going in the wrong direction.
At a favourite tourist stop
in Hangzhou, the weather
turned against them. The gorgeous scenes “were foggy at
best,” he recalled. “The combat brigade was acutely disappointed.”
Eventually, Fang and his
friends were sent off to do la-
verse was unlimited, a widespread notion in the 19th
century. Then they died,
and their outdated theory
became state doctrine in the
Communist world. Chinese
scientists could not embrace
20th-century
research
showing that the universe
was once nothing but a tiny
point. When Fang was finally
allowed to give lectures on the
Big Bang (the theory, not the
TV show), he encountered
scepticism. A physics student
in Sichuan province stood
up and announced, in what
Fang remembered as placid
confidence, “This stuff is all
counterrevolutionary.”
Fang and Li escaped to
safety in the US Embassy in
Beijing shortly after the Chinese leadership crushed the
Tiananmen demonstrations
in 1989.
China’s education system
is still hurt by limits on independent inquiry and poor
schooling outside big cities.
But it has millions of young
people as clever and adventurous as Fang was. Many
are coming here, then going
back to China. That is good
for both countries.
WP-Bloomberg
About the author
Jay Mathews is an education
columnist and blogger for The
Washington Post.
West’s festering crisis of leadership
Politicians are wilting under pressure while people are showing resilience, Sylvie Kauffmann writes
A
FEW days before the
Bastille Day terrorist
attack in Nice, President Barack Obama
was in Poland for the Nato summit meeting, his mind obviously
as much in Dallas as in Warsaw.
As I listened to him during his
closing news conference, on July
9, I was struck by the sad, tired,
almost defeatist tone in the way
the leader of the most powerful
nation on earth addressed the divisions within American society,
after that week’s killings. “This
is not who we are,” he insisted,
as if trying to convince himself.
By the time he spoke in Dallas three days later, at the memorial service for the police
officers shot dead there, President Obama seemed to have
regained his confidence. But
two days later, on July 14, I was
reminded of that brief moment
when he let his guard down as
I listened to another president,
Francois Hollande, speaking
during an interview on French
television. Hollande said that
the state of emergency in force
since the November 13 terrorist
attacks would soon be lifted. But
as much as he wanted to sound
optimistic, with a presidential
election 10 months away, he
still looked sombre toward the
end. “To be president,” he said,
“means to have to face death,
tragedy.”
That was lunch time on Bastille Day. At 3 the next morning,
the French president was back
on television, after the carnage
that killed 84 people on the enchanting Promenade des Anglais in Nice, to announce that
the state of emergency would
be extended, for the third time.
“France is strong, stronger than
the fanatics that want to strike
her,” he said.
Today, France and the United
States are probably the West’s
two main targets of terrorism. In
France, our government warns
that we must “learn to live with
terrorism.” Yet just when they
need to be stronger, our societies seem fragile, tense, stirred
by powerful winds of revolt
against their elites and an economic order that has increased
inequalities. Can they withstand
the shock?
Similarly, the Pew Research
Center’s 2016 Global Attitudes
Survey found that France (the
European Union country with
the biggest Muslim and Jewish populations) was the European nation second only to
Spain in valuing diversity. The
monthlong Euro soccer competition, hosted by France just
before the Nice attack, also inspired intense fervour from the
This attitude shows
in an increasing
number of civic
initiatives
French public for its very diverse
national team; it was supported
throughout by enthusiastic singing of “The Marseillaise,” even
after it lost the final game.
Some statistics from the Ministry of Interior, though, show a
different picture: The number of
racist criminal acts went up 22.4
per cent in 2015. The reason for
this contradiction, the Human
Rights Commission’s experts
suggest, is that while individuals who carry out such acts are
becoming more radicalised, the
society at large is more aware of
the dangers of polarisation. This
attitude shows in an increasing
number of civic initiatives, and
in the results of the regional
election last December: After
the far-right National Front
did very well in the first round,
voters rallied against it and prevented it from winning a single
region in the second round.
Whether such healthy reactions will prevail after the Nice
massacre — and any future one
— is an open question. With a
big immigrant population from
North Africa and a very strong
National Front locally, Nice
itself is particularly vulnerable.
The sad reality is that people
of goodwill are not helped by a
significantly mediocre political
establishment. There could be
national unity at the bottom — if
only there were at the top.
The political debate in France
has not quite reached the abyss
of the campaign for the June 23
referendum on Brexit in Britain
yet, nor of Donald J. Trump’s
surreal pronouncements, but
it is going in that direction.
Le Monde’s
longtime
cartoonist Plantu feels that
politicians, media and social networks have stolen his job: “They
are now more caricatural than
my own caricatures,” he said.
In an interview with Journal du
Dimanche on Sunday, Prime
Minister Manuel Valls openly
worried about a trend that he describes as “the Trumpisation of
minds.” This, he said, “cannot
be our response to the Islamic
State.”
When citizens behave more
wisely than the men and women
who compete to represent them,
the time has come to take a hard
look at the state of our political
systems and its impact on our
societies further down the road
— particularly when modern democracies are under threat from
outside forces that have declared
war on them.
NYT News Syndicate
About the author
Sylvie Kauffmann is the editorial director and a former editor
in chief of Le Monde.
OPED
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
OMAN TRIBUNE
7
Tech rot is eating Apple from the inside
Failure to generate new ideas is badly reflected in the sales figures, Leonid Bershidsky writes
A
LACK of ideas is a gloomy
thing to behold in a tech
leader. Executives try to
strike all the right notes
and use all the latest buzzwords,
but the numbers show a disturbing
trend and competitors are way ahead
with real innovations that can be seen
and touched. This is now happening
to Apple.
Apple has released its fiscal third
quarter results. Revenue is 14.6 per
cent down year-on-year. Net income
is down 27 per cent. Even Apple’s
enormous cash pile, has decreased
slightly as debt – which Apple uses
to move overseas profits to the US –
grew by $5 billion. iPhone sales are
down 23.3 per cent on the year-ago
quarter – and they are the backbone
of the company’s revenue, still accounting for 56.8 per cent of it.
The growth in services – 18.8
per cent year-on-year – trumpeted
by Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook
during earning call – does little to
make up for that shortfall: Apple sold
almost $6 billion worth of services
in the latest quarter and $24 billion
worth of iPhones, so the scale isn’t
comparable.
“A debacle” could be a better
description. It’s not really caused by
currency headwinds, a slowdown in
the Chinese economy or any other
factor beyond Apple’s control. The
company is losing competitiveness
in both hardware and software, and
its concessions to smartphone commoditisation – such as the launch of
the mid-range iPhone SE, which
Cook called highly successful – are
doing little to stem the decline.
In hardware, it is losing to Samsung, a company whose earnings
have increased 17 per cent year on
year in the same quarter thanks to the
strong sales of the flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S7 Edge and
the Galaxy S7. Samsung struggled
throughout last year, after Apple
copied it by producing a large-screen
phone, but then it fought back with a
curved screen and better specifications. At the same time, it simplified
its product lineup and cut costs.
Samsung’s edge on Apple is
mainly in hardware. It’s the global
leader in high-end displays, and its
phones use more advanced display
technology than iPhones. Apple
will be buying Samsung’s OLED
(organic light-emitting diode) panels starting next year, but Samsung
will, of course, be the first to benefit from any technology advances
– for example, Samsung is working
on making these displays flexible,
then foldable.
Samsung and other smartphone
manufacturers are working closely
with Google on its plan to turn
mobile phones into virtual reality and augmented reality devices.
Samsung’s flagships can already be
turned into VR headsets, and these
capabilities will be ehnanced by VR
features baked into the new version
of Android, Google’s mobile operating system, which will debut this
fall and is already available in beta.
Lenovo has developed and will soon
release an AR phone.
Foldable phones with VR and
AR capabilities? Don’t expect
them from Apple yet. Cook was
asked about augmented reality on
a great commercial opportunity.”
Google’s plans are much more
specific, and there are real products attached to them. Cook isn’t
just following the Apple tradition
of not talking much about devices
that haven’t been released yet – he
doesn’t have much to say. He touts
tiny improvements (“beautifully
redesigned apps for music, maps
and news”) or advances long since
made by Google (“machine learn-
Google’s plans are much more specific, and there are
real products attached to them
the earnings call, and his answer
was vague: “AR can be really great.
And we have been and continue to
invest a lot in this. We are high on
AR for the long run. We think there
are great things for customers and
ing enables Siri to understand words
as well as the intent behind them”)
as if they can make a difference for
his company – the way AR, VR and
flexible screens surely will to the
Android ecosystem.
The reason Apple has fallen behind is that for years, its research
and development spending has
lagged behind its rivals. The company has stepped it up recently, but
it still hasn’t caught up.
Resting on one’s laurels is dangerous in any industry, but it can
lead to especially ugly results in
tech. Waiting for rivals to develop
new technology, suffer from growing pains and reap all the early errors
before putting out a product with all
the kinks ironed out may be a good
strategy, and it has served Apple
well. But the rivals may be less kind
to it in the future. They are unlikely
to let Apple reap nearly all the profits
again, as it has been doing on the
smartphone market. The next phase
of the mobile device revolution is
happening elsewhere, and Apple
will struggle to catch up, despite
its enormous financial resources.
WP-Bloomberg
An evolving menace called Zika
In this age of globalisation, germs can travel around the world, Sonia Shah writes
W
ITH the
Z i k a
virus
looming
just a
couple of years after Ebola
spread across West Africa,
what’s long been obvious
to experts should now be
clear to the rest of us: We
live in an era of emerging
pathogens. Between 1940
and 2004, more than 300
infectious diseases have
either newly emerged or
spread into new places and
populations. Florida Governor Rick Scott has called a
news conference to alert the
public to four cases of Zika
in South Florida transmitted
locally by mosquitoes. How
far it spreads remains to be
seen.
Though we imagine infectious microbes propagating according to their own
logic, many are resurging
thanks to the unintended
consequences of human
activity that would seem
to have little to do with the
biology of microbes, from
economics and housing
policy to architecture. As
these rejuvenated pathogens adapt to the man-made
environments that sprawl
across the planet, anything
from highways to swimming
pools can wind up triggering an outbreak.
In a globalised economy,
the public health implications of sick people getting
on airplanes and spreading
germs around the world are
obvious. But we’re less used
to thinking of things like
foreclosed homes, imported
tires and decorative bamboo
as public health concerns.
If we’re going to deal with
Zika and the pathogens that
will inevitably come after it,
we’re going to have to start.
Commerce has long provided unexpected opportunities for infectious pathogens to exploit, from the
Erie Canal, which slashed
the cost of shipping while
unwittingly carrying cholera across the country, to
the hydropower dams that
electrified the South while
simultaneously providing
succor for scores of malarial mosquitoes. Today,
abandoned properties and
deteriorating infrastructure, brought on by housing
crises and climate change,
similarly threaten us with
epidemics of mosquitoborne pathogens such as
Zika.
Just such an epidemic occurred in 2009, when dengue broke out in Florida.
That mosquito-borne disease, which causes joint and
bone pain so excruciating
that it’s called “breakbone
fever” in Latin America
and Asia, hadn’t been seen
in Florida since 1934.
That’s surprising, because
the state is surrounded by
countries where the disease is endemic, and the
mosquitoes that carry the
virus, Aedes aegypti, have
been established across
the Gulf Coast since the
16th century. A few years
ago, when I asked Florida
Keys mosquito-control expert Lawrence Hribar to explain what had happened, he
didn’t point to an invasion of
bugs or infected people. He
began his explanation with
the following: “There were
houses in foreclosure.”
The 2008 housing crisis hit Florida hard, Hribar pointed out, and nowhere harder than South
Florida, the epicenter of
the outbreak. Across the
state, more than 380,000
homes had been foreclosed,
and many abandoned. That
meant a lot of empty swimming pools. Then the rains
came. The pools filled with
standing water. With nobody home to notice or to let
inspectors in, those derelict
swimming pools became giant mosquito hatcheries.
It’s not hard to connect
the dots between mosquito
proliferation and the spread
of disease. In 2009, Florida
suffered an unprecedented
outbreak of dengue. Five
per cent of the population
of Key West was infected,
a study by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention found.
Two years earlier, Bakersfield, Calif., experienced a similar outbreak of
mosquito-borne West Nile
virus. The spring had been
dry, and the birds in which
the virus lurks were sparse,
so public health authorities
predicted that there would
be few infections that year.
Instead, cases soared. It
was only after an aerial survey was conducted that experts realised why: Armies
of disease-carrying mosquitoes had colonised scores of
swimming pools, hot tubs
and ornamental ponds.
Their neglect was similarly
linked to a housing crisis.
The previous year, there was
a nearly 300 percent spike
in delinquency notices.
Climate disruptions have
had a similarly unexpected
impact on the spread of
mosquito-borne disease.
When Hurricane Katrina hit
New Orleans in 2005, for
example, scores of flooded
and abandoned swimming
pools were quickly transformed into efficient mosquito breeding grounds.
And that expansion of mosquito habitat was followed
by a rise in severe cases of
West Nile virus in the region
the next year.
We’re not conditioned
to expect this. Rather, the
“built environment” –
buildings, waterways and
other man-made infrastructure that makes up our cities
and towns – has long been
our way of “improving” on
the natural environment.
It’s supposed to make us
more comfortable, productive and secure. Its modern
apotheosis, the air-conditioned suburban home replete with endless lawn and
sparkling swimming pool, is
the bedrock of the American Dream, a dream sold to
millions of people who took
out subprime mortgages to
achieve it.
The built environment
functions as intended only
when its components are
continuously maintained,
often at significant expense
in time and resources. That
might have been feasible in
an era of cheap, abundant
energy and easy credit. But
not anymore. The housing
crisis forced 3.1 million
The slave trade
ferried Aedes
aegypti to the New
World in the 16th
century
American properties into
foreclosure in 2008 alone,
leaving behind a rash of
abandoned homes and
neighborhoods that have
yet to be fully re-occupied.
Even today, there are more
than 1 million abandoned
properties across the country, and Florida counts more
“zombie” foreclosures –
properties that have been
abandoned - than almost
every other state. And
their neglect amplifies and
spreads vectors of disease
even more effectively than
the wild landscapes they
replaced.
The backyard swimming
pool perfectly encapsulates
the problem. Pools have no
natural inflow or outflow
of water. Without regular maintenance, such as
chemical adulteration and
continuous filtration, they
can rapidly become incubators of insects and microbes.
Blooms of algae appear.
Leaves and debris collect
on the surface. Impregnated
female mosquitoes, searching for water in which to lay
their eggs, swoop. And
the steep, smooth walls of
swimming pools preclude
the predators that would
feed on their eggs in natural
bodies of water.
Neglected swimming
pools often go undetected,
since pools are frequently
surrounded by privacy
hedges and high vegetation, obscuring problems
from passersby and public
health authorities. Even
when pools turn green and
buggy, satellite images can
fail to detect them. And
those that are noticed can
be difficult to access. In
many jurisdictions, by law,
when owners aren’t home,
swimming pools must be enclosed behind locked gates.
That helps prevent accidental drownings, but it also
blocks public health workers from treating neglected
pools with mosquito-killing
chemicals or stocking them
with mosquito-eating fish.
That’s not the only way
human activity has heightened the disease risk posed
by mosquitoes. Thanks to
the logic of rapid growth and
resource consumption, the
United States is home not
just to the Culex species that
carries West Nile virus, but
also to two invasive species
of mosquitoes from the genus Aedes, which are carriers of much more deadly
diseases such as yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya
and Zika.
Neither Aedes aegypti,
which hails from Africa,
nor Aedes albopictus,
from Asia, are native to the
United States. But two peculiarly American industries
brought them to our shores.
The slave trade ferried Aedes aegypti to the New
World in the 16th century.
These mosquitoes caused
repeated epidemics of yellow fever in American cities
in the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, in the mid-20th
century, another engine of
the economy, the automobile, brought Aedes albopictus. More specifically, the
trade in used tires, required
to service our fleet of vehicles, gave them a lift. Many
of these tires were imported
from Asia, where albopictus
lived in dark, wet tree holes.
The tires proved pleasingly
similar, and as the tires travelled across the continents,
so did albopictus.
In 2001, more albopictus pioneers caught a ride
in shipments of a popular
decorative plant called lucky
bamboo, packaged in standing water for the long voyage
from south China to California. The used-tire and
lucky bamboo trades have
since broadcast albopictus
across Europe, Africa and
Latin America. They join a
smattering of other trades
known to have disseminated pathogens throughout
the globe. Trade in frogs
has been implicated in the
spread of a pathogen called
chytrid fungus that’s wiping out amphibians; an air
shipment of rodents from
Ghana introduced a deadly
virus called monkeypox into
the United States in 2003.
Albopictus pushed aegypti to the edges of its
habitat. Unlike aegypti,
which thrives in tropical
weather and bites humans
exclusively, albopictus
tolerates temperate areas
as well and can bite people
or animals, spending its
days hiding in green vegetation. Aegypti retreated to
the Gulf Coast, lurking in
neglected neighborhoods
where pockets of stagnant
water collect in garbagestrewn lots, and where human blood is easily accessible through the broken
window screens of dilapidated homes. Albopictus
colonised the leafy suburbs
that sprawl across temperate parts of the country,
lurking in the high bushes
and hedges that surround
its gleaming necklace of
pools and hot tubs.
Today, 60 percent of the
US population is vulnerable
to albopictus mosquitoes.
A few emerge from my garden every time I walk out
my front door in the Baltimore suburbs, awakened
by the scent of my exhales,
hungry for blood (yes,
that’s all it takes). After they
bite, they’ll fly off in search
of still water to deposit their
eggs. In my neighborhood
of privacy hedges and lush
vegetation, there’s no telling where they’ll land.
For now, there’s little
federal funding on tap to
finance research and development of new tools to fight
Zika, despite months of
pleading from the CDC and
other agencies. What we do
have: an uptick in reported
cases of Zika; high-profile
athletes pulling out of the
2016 Olympics - which
might protect them, but is in
no way a meaningful public
health response for the rest
of us; and a Congress unable to reach agreement on
emergency funding to fight
the virus. The rest of us are
left to slather on mosquito
repellent and wait uneasily
for the inevitable news of
infants born with microcephaly.
There’s more we could
do. We could assess the
public health implications
of our built environment
the way we assess its environmental impact – before
construction begins. We
could empower public
health officials to do more
than combat outbreaks after
the fact, but also help regulate the social and economic
conditions that contribute
to outbreaks in the first
place.
As the strange tales of
swimming-pool outbreaks
show, housing crises,
economic shocks, climate
disruptions, and other economic and social factors can
affect public health in unexpected ways. Rather than
wait for swimming pools to
turn into mosquito hatcheries, we could start to address
the underlying economic
and social drivers that create these and other public
health hazards, before epidemics occur.
That would first mean
critically acknowledging
and assessing our role in
bringing about the conditions driving epidemics,
whether abandoned homes
or neglected neighborhoods, aging infrastructure
or trade patterns. And then
enlisting a response not
just from the biomedical
establishment but from
all sectors of society, from
consumers to banks to
builders.
WP-Bloomberg
8
INDIA
OMAN TRIBUNE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
Indian-Americans ‘key to Hillary’s presidential campaign’
PHILADELPHIA
INDIAN-AMERICANS
are “sleeping giants” and
can make a “significant
difference” in helping first
ever woman US presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton
break the ultimate glass
ceiling, according to her
Indian-origin supporters.
“Indian-Americans are
the sleeping giants. Indian
Americans in this campaign
need to harness and galvanise the resources especially
in the battle ground states of
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida
and Virginia,” said IndianAmerican Frank Islam, a
major fund raiser for the
Hillary campaign.
“I personally believe and
Hillary believes that they
can make significant difference, if the people go out
and vote,” said Islam who
was present at the Demo-
cratic National Convention
in Philadelphia where Hillary was nominated.
He said if the IndianAmericans would go out
and vote in these battle
ground states they can play
an “important role” and
tip the ballots. Islam, who
was part of the delegation
to travel to India with US
President Barack Obama
in January last year, exuded
confidence that Hillary as
president would take IndiaUS relationship to the next
height.
“She would be indispensable partner for India.
She would advocate and
embrace what Obama has
done so far,” he said.
“Hillary’s nomination
sends a powerful message
that the America’s major
party is ready to give command of the most powerful
nation to a woman. Her
message of unity and holding each other resonates
with majority of Americans,” said Rajwant Singh,
a Sikh community leader.
Noting that Hillary as the
Democratic presidential
candidate provides assurance to minorities especially the religious ones,
Singh said Sikhs are pleased
with nomination as she has
been a long time friend of
the community.
“She has stood by the
Sikhs during the challenging times in the aftermath
of 9/11. She has spoken
emphatically that nobody
should be made target of
hate and this is exactly the
kind of leadership is required to lead this nation,”
he said.
Separately, It is of “great
concern” that Donald
Trump has not sketched
out his policy on the crucial
South Asian region, a top
Hillary campaign adviser
has said while asserting that
the Democratic presidential
nominee has a very strong
record on ties with India.
If elected in the November general elections,
Hillary would continue to
strengthen the Obama administration’s policy on India and work towards economic integration of the
region, Daniel F. Feldman,
2 troops killed in
J&K gun battle;
curfew continues
ARMY ON SATURDAY
foiled an infiltration bid
along the Line of Control
(LoC) in Naugam sector of
Kashmir’s Kupwara district,
killing two militants in the
operation that also left two
soldiers dead.
Troops noticed suspicious movement along
the LoC in Naugam sector during the intervening
night and challenged the
intruders, who opened
fire, an army official said.
The soldier returned fire
leading to the gun battle in
which two terrorists were
killed, the official said.
He said two soldiers were
also killed while another was
injured in the operation
which was going on till last
reports came in.
“Two AK rifles, one
UBGL and other war-like
stores were recovered from
the scene of the gunbattle,”
the official said. This is second major infiltration bid
foiled by the army in Naugam sector this week.
Four militants were killed
and one was apprehended
alive in a failed infiltration
bid on July 26.
More than 50 people
have been killed and thousands injured in weeks of
unrest in Kashmir, sparked
by the death on July 8 of
rebel commander Burhan
Wani in a firefight with
government forces.
Nearly 100 protesters
and police were injured in
clashes on Friday as authorities sought to block a rally
called by separatist groups,
officials said.
A curfew continued to
be in force across large
parts of the territory for
the 22nd consecutive day
on Saturday. Schools and
RESULT
‘Simply
repressing
waves of unrest
in Kashmir is
not going to
produce the
results’
businesses remained shut
and Internet services suspended, although mobile
networks have been partially
restored.
“Curfew shall continue
in Pulwama and Kulgam
districts. Restrictions under
section 144 of the Criminal
Procedure Code will continue in other places,” a senior
police official said.
Separately, the US has
expressed concern over
the violence in Kashmir
and called on “all sides” to
make efforts to find a peaceful solution to the issue as
it wants to see the tensions
de-escalated, says a Washington report.
LeT operative sent
to NIA custody
NEW DELHI
A SPECIAL COURT ON
Saturday sent Bahadur Ali
alias ‘Saifullah’, a Pakistani
national allegedly working
for terror outfit Lashkare
Toiba (LeT), to National
Investigation
Agency
(NIA) custody till August
11 after the agency said
his custodial interrogation
was required to unearth the
larger conspiracy.
District Judge Amar
Nath sent the accused to
the custody after he was
produced before it and the
agency submitted that he
was required to be quizzed
in the case.
According to sources,
in its application, the NIA
had sought Ali’s custody
for 14 days to unearth the
larger conspiracy of the
terror outfit where the ac-
cused, along with his associates, had planned terror
attacks to “destabilise the
security and sovereignty”
of India.
The NIA is questioning the accused about the
involvement of his group
in spreading violence in
Jammu and Kashmir.
A fourth-class dropout
Ali, who hails from Jahama
village of Raiwind in Lahore, was arrested from
village Yahama in Mawar
area of Qalamabad, Handwara, in North Kashmir on
July 25. The army had recovered three AK-47 rifles,
two pistols and Rs23,000
from his possession.
Federal Minister of State
for Home Kiren Rijiju had
called Ali a “very good
catch” and said his arrest
will lead to many successes.
Press Trust of India
“We encourage all sides
to make efforts to find a
peaceful solution to this,”
state department spokesman John Kirby said when
asked about the ongoing
violence in Kashmir.
Separately, simply repressing waves of unrest
in Kashmir is “not going to
produce the results” India
wants, says a political science expert, stressing the
federal government has to
reach out to the youth in
the Valley and give them a
sense of belonging.
“One understands the
frustrations of the soldiers
particularly the Border Security Force and Central
Reserve Police Force who
are deployed there and
who are at the receiving
end of the stone-pelters.
But politicians in New Delhi
have to realise that merely
demonstrating a firm hand
is simply going to defer the
problem to another day,”
Sumit Ganguly, director,
Centre on American and
Global Security at Indiana
University, said.
“You may be able to bring
about a certain amount
of stability in the next few
weeks but all you will need is
another incident to spark a
third set of Wanis and demonstrations,” he said.
Ganguly also pointed
out the state and the federal governments’ failure
to address the issue.
Agencies
WASHINGTON
village in Dharwad district to
disperse them after an unruly
mob threatened to damage
public property and state
offices.
“The tribunal has done
injustice to the people of
Bagalkot, Belagavi, Gadag
and Hubballi-Dharwad
districts in the state’s northern region by denying their
share of the river water,”
Karnataka Vatal Paksha
president V Nagaraj said.
The three-member tribunal, headed by Justice
JN Panchal, on Wednesday rejected the state’s
petition for releasing 7.6
thousand million cubic
feet of the river water on
various grounds, including ecological damage the
project may cause to the
rich bio-diverse Western
Ghats in the region.
EXPRESSING CONCErn over reports of “rising intolerance and violence” in
India, the US has asked the
federal government to do
“everything in its power” to
protect citizens and to bring
to justice the perpetrators.
Responding to questions on reports of alleged
violence against people
eating beef and assault on
two Muslim women carrying buffalo meat in Madhya
Pradesh, State Department
spokesman John Kirby said:
“We stand in solidarity with
the people and the government in supporting exercise
of freedom of religion and
expression and in confronting all forms of intolerance.”
“We’re obviously concerned by reports of rising
intolerance and violence...
As we do in countries facing such problems around
the world, we urge the government to do everything
in its power to protect citizens and to hold the perpetrators accountable,”
he said.
Separately, US President
Barack Obama considers
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “good friend”
and both countries are in
close contact on resolving
the tensions over the South
China Sea following the
Hague court’s ruling.
White House Deputy
Press Secretary Eric Schultz
said: “We’re in close contact with the government
of India. Obama considers
Modi a good friend. We’ve
collaborated on a number of
projects.”
Agencies
Agencies
PTI
Kannada actors Shivrajkumar and Yash with other film artistes during protests on Mahadayi water issue as
several pro-Kannada organisations called for dawn-to-dusk Karnataka shutdown in Bengaluru, on Saturday.
Shutdown over water verdict
hits normal life in Karnataka
BENGALURU
NORMAL LIFE WAS DISrupted on Saturday across
Karnataka due to a shutdown by the people over an
inter-state tribunal rejecting
the state’s interim plea for
sharing the Mahadayi river
waters with.
“Barring incidents of
stone-throwing, forcible
closure of some shops and
blocking vehicular movement, the dawn-to-dusk
shutdown has been peaceful
so far amid tight security,”
an official said.
Schools, colleges, offices,
shops, markets, malls, theatres and hotels were shut
in response to the 12-hour
shutdown called by proKannada organisations
and farmers’ associations
against the Mahadayi Water Dispute Tribunal’s July
27 order, which disallows
water supply from the river
for drinking and irrigation
of farmland.
Essential needs, including supply of milk and sale
of vegetables, fruits and
provisions by petty shops
in residential areas were
exempted from the shutdown. Ambulance service
was allowed and medical
stores remained open.
Workers of the state-run
road transport corporations
joined the shutdown, affecting bus services in cities and
towns. Private buses, maxi
cabs, taxis and autos stayed
off the roads in support of
the call and fearing attack by
protesters.
Hundreds of passengers
alighting from trains at railway stations, commuters at
intra-state and inter-state
bus terminals and fliers at
the Bengaluru airport were
stranded in the absence of
transport service, as private
cars and two-wheelers kept
away.Additional police forces were deployed in all the
districts across the state to
prevent untoward incidents
and maintain law and order.
“We have deployed a dozen platoons of the Rapid Action Force, Karnataka State
Reserve Police and the Border Security Force in all the
four districts to monitor the
situation and maintain vigil,”
said a police official said.
Thousands of people,
including farmers, traders,
students and activists of the
Kannada Rakshna Vedike
(protection forum), held
demonstrations and rallies
in many cities and towns
across the state against the
tribunal order. The police
caned protesters at Yamanur
Actress Mamta’s
accounts frozen
over drug links
IT’S JOY TIME
THANE
PTI
Students celebrate after receiving their degrees during the 10th convocation of Nalanda Open University in
Patna, Bihar, on Saturday.
Indian-American girl youngest delegate at DNC
PHILADELPHIA
AN 18-YEAR-OLD INDIAN-American girl has become the
youngest delegate at the Democratic National Convention here
which has nominated Hillary
Clinton as the party’s presidential
candidate.
Sruthi Palaniappan from Cedar
Rapids and a student of Harvard
University is a strong supporter
of Hillary, the first woman to be
nominated as a presidential candidate by a major political party.
“It is truly an incredible experience. I have been able to witness
the democratic process and this is
truly an instrumental part of what
I am going to do in the future,”
Sruthi said.
Having met Hillary as many as
four times during the primary season, Sruthi said she is inspired by
US worried
over rising
intolerance
in country
2 terrorists shot dead in encounter
SRINAGAR
a foreign policy adviser of
the Hillary campaign, said.
“I have seen very little he
(Trump) has said on South
Asia. It is a great concern
that he has not sketched
out his policies on a range
of these issues. We do not
know where he is and when
he has given some policies,
he has gone back and forth
many times,” Feldman
said.
her leadership and vision and she
would herself like to join electoral
politics one day.
“I became involved in politics in
service and advocacy related activities and when the time came to be
involved in the election process, I
jumped right on board,” she said.
“I got into the Hillary campaign,
and went door to door canvasing
in my area. I was able to encourage
people to come out and vote. For
the primary voting I was entrusted
to count the votes on the Hillary
side,” Sruthi explained as to how
she became a delegate.
Her parents came to the US
from Chennai in 1992. Her father
Palaniappan Andiappan is also attending the convention as a member of the credentials committee
while her mother is a housewife.
They became citizens in 2006.
In addition to being the young-
est delegate, Sruthi made history
on Tuesday when she was given
an opportunity to represent Iowa
state during roll call votes. She said
Iowa is a state of female surge.
“I am extremely thankful for the
surreal opportunity to have represented the Iowa delegation as a roll
call speaker and to have been a part
of the historic nomination process
of our next president,” she said.
THANE POLICE HAS
frozen as many as eight
bank accounts, holding over
Rs9 million, of former film
actress Mamta Kulkarni in
Gujarat, Mumbai and some
adjoining areas in connection with the multi-million
ephedrine racket.
Kulkarni has already been
named as a prime accused
in the case linked to international drug cartel and her
partner Vicky Goswami.
According to a senior
police official, all the eight
bank accounts were frozen this week as part of
the probe in the case, as
her properties and bank
accounts are suspected to
have helped the drug cartel.
Police found that Kulkarni held a sum of Rs6.7 million (in foreign currency)
in a single account with
a private bank in Malad.
The rest, Rs2.6 million,
were stowed away in seven
other seized bank accounts
at Kalyan, Badlapur (in
Thane), Parel, Nariman
Point, Dharavi, Rajkot and
Bhuj (in Gujarat).
Investigators are also
questioning the elder sister
of Kulkarni and others who
dealt with the bank payments, he said. Also, police
have approached authorities
to get details of properties
owned by the accused and
are expected to attach it.
In all, there are 17 accused
in the case, of whom 10 were
arrested and rest are still at
large. Police has already filed
indictment in the Thane
district court against the arrested accused. Police had
earlier stated that Kulkarni
who had a significant role to
play in the racket attended
crucial meetings at Kenya
and Dubai, where drug
deals were struck and the
modalities for logistics were
finalised.
The arrests were made
when police seized around
18.5 tonne of ephedrine,
worth
approximately
Rs20 billion, after raiding the premises of Avon
Lifesciences Ltd in Maharashtra’s Solapur district
in April.
According to police,
ephedrine, which is a controlled drug, was allegedly
being diverted from the
Solapur unit of Avon Lifesciences and sent abroad
after processing. The
ephedrine power is used for
sniffing and is also used to
produce popular party drug
methamphetamine.
The entire drug racket
first came to light when
Thane police arrested a
Nigerian national in a drug
case on April 12.
INDIA
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
OMAN TRIBUNE
Sushma in
bid help
jobless
Gulf NRIs
50 die in flood
fury; millions
hit in Asom
NEW DELHI
the apartments.
The high court, while
ordering demolition, had
stayed the operation of
its order to pull down the
building close to the sea at
Colaba for 12 weeks to enable the housing society to
move the Supreme Court
with the appeal.
NEARLY 800 INDIAN
workers are reportedly
starving for the last three
days in Saudi city of Jeddah after losing their jobs
and federal Minister of
State for External Affairs
VK Singh is travelling to
the Gulf nation to sort out
the issue.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said the
Indian embassy in Saudi
Arabia has been directed
to serve food to them and
that she was monitoring
the situation on an hourly
basis.
Her response came following a tweet by a man
who said around 800 Indians are starving for the
last three days in Jeddah
and sought her intervention.
“We have asked @
IndianEmbRiyadh
to
provide free ration to the
unemployed Indian workers in Saudi Arabia,” she
tweeted. Sushma said Indians in Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait were facing various problems relating to
their work and wage and
that the “matters are much
worse” in Saudi Arabia.
She said MoS External
Affairs MJ Akbar will take
up the issue with Kuwait
and Saudi authorities.
“My colleagues @Gen_
VKSingh will go to Saudi
Arabia to sort out these
matters and @MJakbar
will take up with Kuwait
and Saudi authorities.
“I assure you that no
Indian worker rendered
unemployed in Saudi Arabia will go without food.
I am monitoring this on
hourly basis,” she said.
Sushma said a large number of Indians have lost
their jobs in Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait and that their
employers have not paid
wages and closed down
their factories.
“As a result our brothers and sisters in Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait are
facing extreme hardship,”
she said, adding while
the situation in Kuwait
is “manageable”, matters are much “worse” in
Saudi Arabia.
Later, Sushma posted
pictures of food being
provided to the Indian
workers.
Agencies
Thousands displaced in Bihar
GUWAHATI
FLOODS TRIGGERED
by days of torrential monsoon rain have claimed more
than 50 lives in eastern India this week, the country’s
home minister and reports
said on Saturday, with millions of people affected by
surging waters.
Rivers have burst their
banks, flooding villages
in Asom where 26 people
have died, federal Home
Minister Rajnath Singh said,
after carrying out an aerial
survey of the worst-affected
districts.
“The flood situation is
really grim. Twenty-six
people have died over seven
days and some 3.6 million
people are affected,” Rajnath said in Guwahati.
“No efforts are being
spared to help the people.
The NDRF (National Disaster Response Force)
and army are doing their
best. Some 60 boats have
been pressed into service
to rescue people.”
Thousands of people
were sheltering in makeshift
camps set up along highways and on higher ground
in the flood-ravaged state.
Severe floods have also
hit the state of Bihar where
26 people have also died
and several thousands have
been displaced, the Press
Trust of India news agency
reported on Friday.
More than 2.2 million
people in Bihar have been
affected by floods across the
state’s 10 districts, with rivers overflowing their banks,
officials said.
Vayasji, the principal
secretary of state disaster
management department,
said the flood situation is
grim in some districts following rising water level in
rivers. The department has
deployed officials and the
NDRF and state disaster
response force to provide
relief and rescue in floodhit areas.
Meanwhile,
federal
COMPENSATION
‘Thousands
of people are
sheltering
in makeshift
camps set
up along
highways’
Minister of State for Home
Kiren Rijju conducted an
aerial survey of flood-hit
areas of Arunachal Pradesh
where more than 300,000
people have been affected.
More than 80 relief
camps have been set up to
accommodate the displaced
people in the three districts.
In Uttar Pradesh, all major rivers of Terai region
continue to flow either
above or near the danger
mark due to continuous
rain in upper Himalayan
reaches and excess water
release from barrages.
A total of 52 Tehsils of
20 districts and over 800
villages with over two lakhs
persons are flood affected.
Most among them include
Siddharthanagar, Pilibhit,
Barabanki, Basti, Kushinagar and Badaun.
In Tamil Nadu, flood
alert has been issued in
low lying areas near south
Pennai river in Krishnagiri
district. Heavy rain has hit
normal life in many parts
of Salem district. Chennai
MeT office said the south
west monsoon has been
vigorous over north Tamil
Nadu.
Heavy rain in Karnataka
has led to an increased inflow of water into rivers and
lakes in Krishnagiri and Salem districts of Tamil Nadu.
In Krishnagiri, South
Pennai river is in spate.
The Kelavarapally dam
has almost reached its full
capacity of 44 feet. For the
safety of dam total inflow of
2320 cusecs water is being
released from the dam.
Incessant heavy rain
has crippled normal life in
several parts of Bengaluru.
Water logging has been
reported from many areas,
with a number of houses
flooded.
Mumbai continued to received incessant downpour
and more rain has been predicted for the city through
the weekend. However,
traffic seemed to be running smoothly overall even
as local trains run late.
Though vehicular movement remained slow in Gurgaon, it was an improvement
from the 15-km-long jams of
Friday. Repair works were
carried out to roads in some
parts after water cleared in
the morning, but rain returned by late morning.
Agencies
PTI
Vehicles pass through roads flooded due to monsoon rain in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, on Saturday.
Cop suspended in Kerala
over tussle with scribes
KOZHIKODE /
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
A KERALA POLICE OFFIcer who forcibly took away
four media persons attached
to Asianet TV channel from
a magistrate’s court to a police station in Kozhikode
has been suspended for
misconduct.
Sub Inspector PM Vimod was suspended by
state police chief Loknath
Behra. “This should not
have happened. I am sad,”
said Behra said. An official
probe into the incident has
been ordered.
Trouble started in the
morning when Vimod allegedly manhandled the
media persons who had entered the magistrate court
premises to cover the day’s
important cases. He then
forcibly took them away to
the Town Police Station,
adding to the already tense
relations between the lawyers community and media
persons in Kerala.
The police official said
the Kozhikode district
judge had asked the police
to remove the media personnel from the court premises, but later the Kerala
High Court got a clarification from the district judge
that the latter had not asked
for any ban of the media.
The high court registrargeneral Ashok Menon on
Saturday issued a press
statement stating that there
has been no ban imposed
on journalists from attending and reporting court
proceedings. Following a
huge media outcry, the four
Asianet TV officials were allowed to leave the station and
a senior official attached to
the Town Police apologised
for the turn of events.
However, when the
Asianet media personnel
came to the police station
to take back their broadcast
vehicle which was taken by
the police in the morning,
Vimod dragged the media
professionals into the police
station and threatened them
with action.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who
is in Delhi, said who were
protesting in front of Kerala House there, that action
would be taken in the matter
and that he views the incident very seriously.
Communist Party of
India-Marxist state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan
assured the media that what
happened at the police station was not acceptable and
tough action will be taken
against the official.
State BJP president
Kummanam Rajashekeran
said the incident shows that
those running the home department have failed.
“Curbing the media is
anti-democratic and this
high handedness of the police has to be controlled,”
said Rajashekeran.
Hearing of the second
provocative action by Vimod, journalists arrived
in large numbers and demanded that he be arrested.
Behra said if they get a
complaint about the assault
then “appropriate action
would be taken”.
Recounting the events,
Asianet scribe Binuraj said
in the morning: “We had
just arrived in the compound of the magistrate
court. Soon after the local
sub-inspector came menacingly towards us and
said they are taking us and
the driver of our vehicle to
the police station. They behaved with us as if we were
terrorists. In the station too
they behaved badly with us.”
Agencies
Army starts takeover of tainted Adarsh building
MUMBAI
ACTING ON THE SUPReme Court’s order, the army
has begun the process of
taking over the possession
of the scam-tainted Adarsh
building at Colaba in South
Mumbai.
A team of defence personnel arrived at the contro-
versial high rise on Friday
and commenced the process
of officially taking over its
possession from the Adarsh
Housing Society, which was
built in the posh locality for
Kargil war heroes and war
widows.
The proceedings are
likely to end on Saturday.
“On behalf of Government
of India, Indian Army is taking over possession of the
building from Adarsh Society to ensure its security and
prevent any encroachment.
The process is being
supervised by a registrar
nominated by the Bombay
High Court,” a defence
spokesperson said in the
statement.
9
The Adarsh scam kicked
up a huge political storm
after it surfaced in 2010,
leading to the resignation
of the then Congress chief
minister Ashok Chavan.
On July 22, the Supreme Court had asked
the federal government
to “secure” (which meant
there will be no razing)
the 31-storeyed building
after taking its possession
from the housing society
by August 5. It had asked
the registrar-general of the
Bombay High Court to ensure that either he or other
registrar, nominated by
him, supervises the handing over of the possession
of the building.
Simultaneously, it directed that an inventory of
documents of the housing
society pertaining to the
apartments be prepared
and be handed over to the
housing society to enable
him to pursue its legal
battles in various courts of
law. Earlier, the high court
had ordered demolition of
INSIDE INDIA
2 foreign inmates
die in jail brawl
IMPHAL
TWO FOREIGN NATIOnals, possibly from the Middle East, were among three
undertrial prisoners killed
early on Saturday in violence
inside the Sajiwa Central Jail
in Imphal East district of Manipur, sources said.
The federal home ministry has sought a report
about the incident from the
Manipur government. The
incident occurred at about
1am on Saturday.
Sources said two foreign
nationals, identified as
Sushak Ahmed and Abdul
Salam, in their mid 40s, allegedly killed a local man,
Thangmilien Zou of Churachandpur district of Manipur, shortly after midnight.
Zou’s skull was smashed
apparently with both blunt
and sharp weapons, they
said. It is yet to be established how the killers
managed to smuggle the
weapons into the prison.
On learning that Zou had
been killed, other inmates
beat the two foreigners to
death, sources said.
Though the mayhem
continued for more than
an hour, there was no intervention from the prison
staff and security personnel, they said.
The two foreign nationals had been arrested by
police at Moreh, the border
town, for entering Manipur
without valid travel documents in 2013. They have
been in judicial custody
facing trial.
Indo-Asian News Service
PROTEST AGAINST PRICE RISE
Indian-origin woman gets
25-year jail for teen assault
NEW YORK An Indian-origin woman in the US
has been charged with brutally abusing her
12-year-old stepdaughter for nearly two years,
said US authorities. She now faces 25 years
in jail. Sheetal Ranot, 35, was found guilty of
locking her pre-teen step daughter Maya Ranot,
in her bedroom without food or even water for
extended periods of time, the officials said in a
statement on Friday.
Farooqui found guilty of rape
NEW DELHI A court on Saturday held
Mahmood Farooqui, who is best known as codirector of the 2010 Hindi film ‘Peepli Live’,
guilty of raping an American woman. Additional
Sessions Judge Sanjiv Jain convicted Farooqui
under rape charges and fixed August 2 for hearing arguments on quantum of sentence.
27 die as lightning strikes Odisha
BHUBANESWAR As many as 27 persons were
PTI
A woman Congress worker holds a garland made of vegetables during a demonstration over the rise in prices
of vegetables in Bikaner, Rajasthan, on Saturday.
killed after being struck by lightning in different
parts of Odisha on Saturday, police said. While
the maximum number of eight deaths were reported from Bhadrak district, there were seven
casualties in Balasore district, five in Khurda,
three in Mayurbhanj and one each in Kendrapara, Jajpur, Keonjhar and Nayagarh, police said.
Death for train blast accused
Man gets life in jail for killing kid in UK
LONDON
A 27-YEAR-OLD INDIAN-ORIGINMAN
has been sentenced to life for the murder
of a toddler son of his girlfriend in the UK.
Hardeep Hunjan was convicted of murder earlier this week following the death of
13-month-old Noah Serra-Morrison, who
suffered 15 fractures to his body, including
a six-inch wound across his skull.
He was sentenced to serve a minimum
of 23 years in jail at Luton Crown Court
on Friday. Noah’s mother, 22-year-old
Ronnie Tayler-Morrison, was cleared of
murder but, along with Hunjan, jailed for
six-and-a-half years for causing or allowing
the death of a child and of cruelty to a child
under 16. “In my view neither of you have
provided a truthful account and it remains
a mystery why you, Hunjan, attacked him,”
said Justice Baker.
“But at some stage you took hold of Noah
and in addition to punching him to his head,
you swung him into one of the walls with
sufficient force to cause a fracture to his
skull and all four of his limbs,” Baker said.
The couple had claimed that Noah injured
himself falling from his cot, a claim prosecutors said was implausible during the trial
at Luton Crown Court in the east of England. “This has truly been one of the most
shocking and sickening cases of violence
we have ever come across,” Bedfordshire
Police said.
The couple - who had a “chaotic” relationship attempted to wash away forensic
evidence in a shower in the “blind hope that
somehow they might get away with it,” prosecutor Jane Bickerstaff told the court.
The trial heard Noah was subjected to
horrific and deliberate abuse for weeks
before he died. A post-mortem examination revealed that he suffered fractures to
an arm and leg around a week before his
death, and similar injuries to an arm and
leg between four and six weeks before he
died - 15 fractures in total, along with bruising over his entire body. Medical experts
said the boy’s injuries were similar to those
found in people involved in a car crash or
who had fallen from a building.
LUCKNOW A court in Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur
sentenced to death a Bangladeshi convicted in
the July 2005 Shramjeevi Express blast which
had left 12 passengers dead. Additional Sessions Judge Budhiram Yadav, who had convicted Mohammad Alamgir aka Ronny on Friday,
pronounced the sentence amid high security.
Karnataka CM’s son dies
BENGALURU Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s son, Rakesh Siddaramaiah, died of
multi-organ failure at a hospital in Belgium on
Saturday. Rakesh, 29, was undergoing treatment at Antwerp University Hospital in Brussels, where he was rushed on Tuesday after he
developed pancreas-related complications.
10
ASIA
OMAN TRIBUNE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
Canadian plotted
Bangladesh
cafe attack: Cops
Afghan cleric
in dock over
marrying
6-year-old girl
KABUL
recent years, particularly
with the food and more rehabilitation programmes.
But Raymund Narag, a
criminal justice scholar at
the Southern Illinois University in the United States,
said such conditions were
unthinkable in Western
nations. Jails nationwide
have nearly five times more
inmates than they were
built for.
AN ELDERLY AFGHAN
cleric has been arrested
after he married a sixyear-old girl, officials said
Friday, in the latest case
highlighting the scourge
of child marriages in the
war-battered country.
Mohammad Karim, said
to be aged around 60,
was held in central Ghor
province as he claimed her
parents gave him the girl as
a ‘religious offering’, officials said.
But they cited the family
of the girl, believed to be
in shock, as saying that she
was abducted from western
Herat province, bordering
Iran.
“This girl does not
speak, but repeats only
one thing: ‘I am afraid of
this man’,” said Masoom
Anwari, head of the women
affairs department in Ghor.
The girl is currently in
a woman’s shelter in Ghor
and her parents are on their
way to the province to collect her, the local governor’s office said.
“Karim has been jailed
and our investigation is
ongoing,” said Abdul Hai
Khatibi, the governor’s
spokesman.
The arrest comes just
days after a 14-year-old
pregnant girl was burned
to death in Ghor, in a case
that sparked shock waves in
Afghanistan.
The family of that girl,
Zahra, said she was tortured and set alight by her
husband’s family. But relatives of the teenager’s husband insisted her death was
by self-immolation.
The incidents underscore rising incidents of
child marriages in Afghanistan.
“In some regions because of insecurity and
poverty the families marry
off their daughters at a
very early age to get rid of
them,” Sima Samar, head of
the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, told reporters this
month.
Afghan civil law sets the
legal age of marriage at 16
for girls, yet 15 per cent of
Afghan women under 50
were married before their
15th birthday and almost
half were married before
the age of 18, according
to Save the Children.
Mastermind head of JMB faction
DHAKA
A CANADIAN CITIZEN
was one of the masterminds
behind a mass killing at a
Dhaka cafe, Bangladesh
police said Saturday, after
new information came to
light following a raid on an
extremist hideout.
Tamim Chowdhury,
whose whereabouts are
unknown, returned to
Bangladesh from Canada
three years ago.
He has since led and financed efforts to radicalise
young Muslims, officers
with knowledge of a probe
into recent attacks said.
The dual CanadianBangladeshi national, in
his early 30s, is thought
by counter-terrorism officials to lead a faction of
the Jamayetul Mujahideen
Bangladesh (JMB) militant
group, blamed for scores of
murders of foreigners and
religious minorities in the
country.
Five assailants stormed
an upscale cafe in Dhaka’s
Gulshan neighbourhood
on July 1 and killed 20
hostages, including 18
foreigners in Bangladesh’s
deadliest single militant attack.
A week later, gunmen attacked an Eid prayer gathering of 250,000 people
held to mark the end of
Ramadan, killing three.
“So far what we learnt is
that Tamim Chowdhury is
one of the masterminds of
the attacks of Gulshan cafe
and Sholakia Eid prayer
ground,” an officer said
on condition of anonymity.
“He trained the extremists behind the two attacks
and the nine extremists
killed at Kalyanpur,” the
officer said, referring to a
shoot-out by police at a flat
used as an extremist hideout on Tuesday.
He added that Chowdhury “has been working to
radicalise” young Muslims.
CRUCIAL LINK
Tamim
Chowdhury
returned to
Bangladesh
three years
ago and has
since led
radicalisation
efforts
Another senior police
officer said that Chowdhury’s role in fostering
extremism was revealed
during the interrogation
of Rakibul Hasan, 25, who
was arrested in the raid on
the hideout.
According to a police
first information report
into the raid, Chowdhury
and others gave him and
the nine militants killed in
the raid “money, explosives
and weapons” and “trained
and advised” them.
Hasan told police during the interrogation that
Chowdhury “used to visit
the extremists’ flat and give
them necessary funds and
encourage them by talking
about jihad and religious issues,” the report said.
Authorities blame the
JMB militant group for the
attack on the Holey Artisan
Bakery in Dhaka and the assault on the Eid gathering.
However, the Daish
group has claimed responsibility for the cafe attack,
releasing photos of the carnage and of extremists posing with the group’s flag.
Arrested
extremist
Hasan told police the
group busted in the raid
were members of the
Daish, with officers recovering its signature black
flags and robes from their
hideout.
But the national police chief AKM Shahidul
Hoque has rejected that
claim, asserting that they
were members of the
banned JMB.
Another senior officer
said that foreign intelligence agencies sounded
alarm bells on Chowdhury’s extremist activities
a year ago.
Police are investigating
whether the JMB faction allegedly led by Chowdhury
has any ties with the Daish.
The attack took place in
the city’s diplomatic enclave, and those killed were
from around the globe: Italian, Japanese, Indian, Bangladeshi and an American,
according to the country’s
Joint Force Command.
Agencies
Jason Reed/Reuters
Demonstrators gather outside Sydney Town Hall to protest against alleged child abuse in Northern Territory
detention centres in Australia.
Protests rage across Australia
over abuse of youth in prisons
MELBOURNE
HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE
rallied in major cities across
Australia on Saturday criticising the government’s
response to video showing
aboriginal children being
teargassed and abused in
prison.
Prime Minister Malcolm
Turnbull has ordered an inquiry into the treatment of
children in the detention
centre after the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation
this week aired footage
showing guards teargassing teenage inmates and
strapping a half-naked,
hooded boy to a chair.
But he has rejected calls
for a broader national inquiry.
The United Nation Human Rights High Commission called on Australia on
Friday to compensate chil-
dren abused in prison.
“We are shocked by
the video footage that has
emerged from Don Dale
youth detention center in
the Northern Territory,”
the UN Human Rights office of High Commission
said in a statement.
“We call on the authorities to identify those who
would allow independent
investigators to inspect
detention facilities.
Around 700 people rallied in Melbourne on Saturday and similar protests
were held in other major
cities around the country.
A photographer estimated
about 300 people turned
out in Sydney.
Turnbull has ordered a probe into the
treatment of aboriginal children in jail
committed abuses against
the children and to hold
them responsible for such
acts...
Compensation
should also be provided”.
The Commission also
called on the government
to ratify the Optional
Protocol to Convention
Against Torture, which
Indigenous Australian
rapper Adam Briggs said
the issues were national
ones and not limited to the
Northern Territory. “The
elephant in the room is
that it is a racism problem,
but they aren’t addressing
that,” Briggs said.
The Northern Territo-
ry’s corrections minister
was sacked just hours following the broadcast and
on Wednesday the territory
suspended the use of hoods
and restraints on children.
On Friday the Northern Territory government
dropped charges against
two of the six children
teargassed by police. According to court documents, the children had
been charged in June for
damaging the prison in an
escape attempt.
UN Special Rapporteur
on Torture Juan Mendez
said that the use of hoods,
restraints and gas on children in detention centers
could violate the UN treaty
barring torture.
The case highlights concern about the disproportionate numbers of aboriginal youth in custody.
Reuters
Manila’s war against crime packs decaying jails
MANILA
MARIO DIMACULANgan shares a toilet with
130 other inmates in one
of the Philippines’ most
overcrowded jails, and conditions are getting worse
as police wage an unprecedented war on crime.
Security forces have
killed hundreds of people
and detained thousands
more in just one month as
they have followed the orders of President Rodrigo
Duterte, who has said the
top priority at the start of
his six-year term is to eliminate drugs in society.
Those detained appear
doomed for lengthy stints
in an underfunded and
overwhelmed penal system,
like in the Quezon City
Jail where Dimaculangan
has wallowed for 14 years
while his trial over murder
Hillary ‘mural’
to be removed
MELBOURNE
AN AUSTRALIAN MURAL of US presidential
nominee Hillary Clinton
in a revealing, stars and
stripes swimsuit may be
taken down, after it has
reportedly been deemed
offensive.
The creator of the painting, the street artist who
goes by the name Lushsux
and who has also painted
murals of the likes of Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian, branded calls to
remove it “pathetic”.
The provocative mural is
on the wall of a small business in the Melbourne
suburb of Footscray, and
reports say the business
has been asked by the local Maribyrnong Council
to remove it.
“We believe it is offensive because of the
depiction of a near-naked
woman, not on the basis of
disrespect to Hillary Clinton, in accordance with
the Graffiti Prevention
Act 2007,” the council’s
chief executive Stephen
Wall told Fairfax Media
on Friday.
Wall said local police
had been asked to urgently
provide their opinion on
the mural, adding that the
council intended to issue
a notice to the building’s
owner to remove it within
10 days.
and robbery charges have
dragged on.
“Many go crazy. They
cannot think straight. It’s
so crowded. Just the slightest of movements and you
bump into something
or someone,” Dimaculangan said in one of the
jail’s packed hallways that
reeked of sweat.
There are 3,800 inmates
at the jail, which was built
six decades ago to house
800, and they engage in
a relentless contest for
space.
Men take turns to sleep
on the cracked cement
floor of an open-air basketball court, the steps
of staircases, underneath
beds and hammocks made
out of old blankets. Even
then, bodies are packed
like sardines in a can.
When it rains, the conditions are even worse as in-
mates cannot sleep on the
basketball court, which is
surrounded by the cells in
decaying concrete buildings up to four storeys.
The cash-strapped national government has a
daily budget of just 50
pesos ($1.10) for food
and five pesos (11 cents)
for medicine per inmate,
although with the bulk
buying of supplies, Quezon City Jail detainees have
a sustainable diet of soup,
vegetables and meat.
Pales of water are used to
flush the scarce toilets, with
the stench compounded
by the rotting garbage in a
nearby canal.
The jail’s management
does what it can to make life
bearable, such as running
dance competitions and
other rehabilitation activities. Inmates also say there
have been improvements in
Afghan Taliban
‘held talks in
China’ secretly
LIVE ACTION
PESHAWAR
Romeo Ranoco/Reuters
A rescuer rappels from a building while assisting a mock pregnant victim during an earthquake drill as part of
the joint capability demonstration of the Philippine Armed Forces’ Reserve Command in Taguig city, metro
Manila, on Saturday.
Lactating dim sum buns delight diners in HK
HONG KONG
SQUEEZE THE LACTATING
and defecating steamed dim
sum bun with coconut cream
inside, made to resemble one
of the popular Japanese ‘Kobitos’ characters, and you’re in
for a “hilarious” experience,
customers say.
But far from grossing people
out, Ray Kuo, assistant manager
at the restaurant, said it’s one of
the most popular items on the
menu.
“Actually we got a lot of good
reviews from them,” Kuo said.
“That is the main one they post
on Facebook and Instagram.”
Another crowd-pleaser is a
pooping ‘Gudetama’, the lazy
yellow egg character from Japan’s
Sanrio, and a cartoon turd made
out of cake.
The restaurant uses Japanese
animations, such as the ‘Kobitos’
by Toshitaka Nabata and ‘Gudetama,’ but switches the main theme
up every few months in addition
to alternating menu items.
“We don’t want the old traditional Chinese style of dim sum,
so we want make it more fashionable, Kuo said, emphasising the
restaurant’s appeal to teenagers
and a “younger crowd.”
Dutch exchange student,
Lineke Schrigver, said she knew
about the restaurants from social
media before even setting foot in
the city and happened to walk by
it.
“I have seen it on Facebook
and on Instagram already before
I came to Hong Kong, but I didn’t
know this was like a famous thing
or anything,” Schrigver said. “I
was like I want to go there.”
Schrigver said the food was “hilarious” but “really tasty.”
Taiwanese tourist, Miss Su,
who had just arrived in Hong
Kong said her family had first
eaten at a traditional dim sum
restaurant but were disappointed.
“I think it is a novelty and special so I wanted to have a try,”
Su said. “And it does taste really
good, cute and tasty.”
Kuo explained that everything
has been cleared with the copyrights holder, with a percentage
of the profits going to the animation companies.
Reuters
A DELEGATION FROM
the Taliban visited China
earlier this month to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, where the insurgent movement is fighting
the Western-backed government in Kabul, sources
in the Taliban said.
A delegation led by Abbas Stanakzai, head of the
Taliban’s political office
in Qatar, visited Beijing
on July 18-22 at the invitation of the Chinese government, a senior member
of the Taliban said.
“We have good terms
with different countries
of the world and China is
one among them,” said the
Taliban official, who spoke
on condition of anonymity.
“We informed Chinese
officials about the occupation by invading forces and
their atrocities on Afghan
people,” he said. “We
wanted the Chinese leadership to help us raise these
issues on world forums and
help us get freedom from
occupying forces.”
The visit was confirmed
by other senior Taliban figures who did not want to be
named because they were
not authorised to speak on
behalf of the Qatar political
office.
The Chinese foreign
ministry did not immediately respond to a request
for comment.
Along with Pakistan, the
United States and Afghanistan itself, China is a member of the four-country
group that tried to restart
peace talks with the Taliban
earlier this year.
That effort never got
beyond exploratory talks
between the countries
themselves and appeared
to break down definitively
when former Taliban leader
Mullah Mohammad Akhtar
Mansour was killed in a US
drone strike in Pakistan in
May.
However in public
statements, the Taliban
have said that they wish
to have good relations
with Afghanistan’s neighbours, many of which are
concerned at the threat of
local Islamist movements.
China has long been concerned that instability in
Afghanistan will spill over
into the violence-prone far
western Chinese region of
Xinjiang, where hundreds
have died in recent years in
unrest.
Reuters
EUROPE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
OMAN TRIBUNE
11
EU-Turkey migrant deal at risk of breaking down: Juncker
VIENNA
EUROPEAN COMMISsion head Jean-Claude
Juncker said that the EU’s
deal with Turkey on halting the flow of migrants
towards the bloc is at risk
of breaking down, in comments published on Friday.
“The risk is big. The
success so far of the pact is
fragile. President (Recep
Tayyip) Erdogan has al-
ready hinted several times
that he wants to scrap it,”
Juncker told Austrian daily
Kurier.
“(If that happens) then
we can expect migrants
to start coming to Europe
again,” he told the paper
in an interview to be published on Saturday.
The March accord between the European Union
and Turkey succeeded in
stemming the flow of mi-
grants but there are concerns that it could fall apart
after a failed coup against
Erdogan on July 15.
A subsequent purge in
Turkey has seen thousands
of arrests among the army,
the police and judiciary,
and hundreds have lost
their jobs in every major
Turkish ministry.
Three days after the attempt on the government,
a group of Turkish officials
assigned to monitor the migration deal on the Greek
side returned home, and
have yet to be replaced.
In a wide-ranging interview, Juncker also said
he was “very concerned”
about developments within
the 28-nation EU, particularly with regard to Poland
and Hungary.
“In Poland the government’s course of action
has damaged the rule of
law... I am watching with
concern preparations for
Hungary’s referendum on
migration,” Juncker was
quoted as saying.
On Wednesday the
European
Commission handed Poland’s
right-wing government
a three-month deadline
to reverse changes to its
Constitutional Court or
face sanctions for breaching EU norms on the rule
DIYARBAKIR (Turkey)
Reuters
ANKARA
PTI
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shakes hands with officers of the special police forces at their headquarters in Ankara, Turkey, on Friday.
France files first charges
over Daish church attack
PARIS
FRENCH AUTHORITIES
have filed the first charges
tied to the militant killing
of a priest in his church, as
the government announced
on Friday it would consider
a temporary ban on foreign
financing of mosques.
Three days before the
Tuesday attack authorities
found a video showing one
of the assailants, Abdel Malik Petitjean, pledging allegiance to Daish and speaking of “a violent action”.
A 19-year-old man was
charged with “criminal
conspiracy with terrorists”
and locked up over the video
on a mobile phone police
discovered at his home, a
judicial source said.
Three other people were
still being held by authorities for questioning.
The charges came as
Prime Minister Manuel
Valls said he would weigh
a temporary ban on foreign
financing of mosques.
Valls, under fire for
perceived security lapses
that -- for a period yet to be
determined -- there should
be no financing from abroad
for the construction of
mosques”.
The Socialist prime minister also called for imams to
be “trained in France, not
elsewhere”.
Three other people were still being
held by authorities for questioning
around the attacks, also
admitted a “failure” in the
fact that one of the militants
who stormed the church had
been released with an electronic tag pending trial.
In an interview with Le
Monde newspaper, he said
he was “open to the idea
He said Interior Minister
Bernard Cazeneuve, whose
portfolio also includes religious affairs, was working
on building a “new model”
for France’s relations with
Islam.
France has just over
2,000 mosques, for Eu-
BRUSSELS
MOST SCOTS STILL
back remaining in the
United Kingdom despite
Britons voting to leave the
European Union, a move
which was opposed by the
majority in Scotland, according to an opinion poll
published on Saturday.
Scotland’s nationalist
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said the June 23
vote for Brexit had put Scottish independence back on
the agenda just two years
after it was rejected in a referendum.
While Britons backed
leaving the EU by 52-48 per
cent, Scots voted by 62-38
per cent to remain in the
bloc, an outcome Sturgeon
argues has changed the po-
of Ministers and the European Parliament, then legal security is in danger,”
Juncker said.
“The
Commission
should really -- although
we’re not that far yet -launch a breach of treaty
procedure against Hungary. Orban though would
then claim that the Commission is taking the Hungarian people to court.”
Court places 17 scribes under arrest
rope’s largest Muslim
populations which numbers around five million.
In northern Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray where
85-year-old priest Jacques
Hamel was killed, Muslims
and Christians gathered
together in mourning after the attack that hit their
town.
“You share our pain.
This pain is also yours,”
Reverend Auguste Moanda
said, in a rare speech given
during Friday prayers at the
local mosque.
Meanwhile a source
close to the investigation
said a Syrian asylum seeker
had been taken in for questioning after being arrested
at a refugee centre in Alliers, central France.
Agencies
53pc Scots want to stay Belgium arrests
in UK despite Brexit vote 2 over terror plot
LONDON
ry EU quota plan to share
them around the bloc, and
will hold a referendum on
the scheme on October 2.
Right-wing
Prime
Minister Viktor Orban
this week called migration “poison” for Europe
and said that his country
“does not need a single
migrant”.
“If referendums are going to be organised on every decision of the Council
Erdogan asks
West to ‘mind
own business’
35 killed as
PKK rebels
try to storm
Turkey base
TURKEY’S
ARMY
killed 35 Kurdish militants
after they attempted to
storm a base in the southeastern Hakkari province
early on Saturday, military
officials said.
The overnight attack
came hours after clashes
in Hakkari’s Cukurca district between soldiers and
militants from the Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK) that
left eight soldiers dead, the
officials said.
The militants attempted
to take the base in three
different groups, but were
spotted by aerial reconnaissance. An air operation
was launched, killing 23 of
them, the officials said.
Four more were then
killed in a ground operation,
they said. The remaining
eight were killed in clashes
in Hakkari’s Cukurca district.
Friday’s clashes in Cukurca also left 25 soldiers
wounded, the officials said.
Turkey’s military - Nato’s
second-largest - is grappling
with the insurgency in the
mainly Kurdish southeast
as its senior ranks undergo
a major shake-up following
a July 15-16 coup attempt.
On Thursday, Turkey
announced an overhaul of
the armed forces, with 99
colonels promoted to the
rank of general or admiral
and nearly 1,700 military
personnel given dishonourable discharges over their alleged roles in the coup.
About 40 per cent of all
generals and admirals in
the military have been dismissed since the coup.
of law and democracy.
The move by the EU’s
executive arm is the second step in an unprecedented procedure which
could eventually see
Warsaw’s voting rights
suspended in the Council of Ministers, the EU’s
highest decision-making
body.
Hungary meanwhile has
refused to accept a single
migrant under a mandato-
litical landscape regarding
possible Scottish secession.
However according to
Saturday’s YouGov survey,
53 per cent of Scots wanted
‘There remains a
great deal of
uncertainty about
what UK’s ties with
the EU will look like
in the long term’
to stay part of the United
Kingdom with 47 per cent
backing independence.
Even when asked if they
would rather stay in the EU
but leave the UK, 46 per
cent of the 1,006 respondents said they wanted to re-
main in the UK and only 37
per cent preferred Scotland
becoming an independent
nation within the bloc.
“Inevitably, some will
suggest that the high-water mark of Scottish independence has now passed,
especially as it was thought
that leaving the EU might
persuade ‘No’ voters to
change their minds and
vote against the Union,”
said Joe Twyman, YouGov’s
Head of Political and Social
Research.
“However, the situation
is, naturally, more complicated than that. There
remains a great deal of
uncertainty about what the
UK’s relationship with the
EU will look like in the long
term.”
Reuters
BELGIAN POLICE ARrested two men “suspected
of planning an attack” in
Belgium following raids
late on Friday ordered by
an anti-terror judge, federal prosecutors said on
Saturday.
Belgium has remained
on high alert following
deadly March bombings
claimed by Daish in Brussels and a wave of deadly
attacks in the last month in
France and Germany, some
of them claimed by Daish.
The two men, identified
as Noureddine H. and his
brother Hamza H., were
arrested following house
searches in the Frenchspeaking areas of Mons and
Liege, a spokesman for the
federal prosecutors said.
“Both are suspected of
planning a terrorist attack
somewhere in Belgium,”
the spokesman said in an
English version of the statement. The French version
referred to “planning attacks” in the plural.
The prosecutor’s office
said there was for now no
connection with the bombings on March 22 at Brussels airport and a metro
station near the European
Union headquarters that
left 32 people dead.
No weapons or explosives were found in the
raids ordered by the judge
specialising in counterterror cases, it said.
A judge will review the
arrests of the brothers later
and decide whether to keep
them in custody.
France braces for ‘Black Saturday’
PARIS
FRANCE IS BRACING FOR ITS
annual Black Saturday, when millions of people return from their July
holidays and millions of others take
to the roads, rails and skies for their
August break.
The annual event is more charmingly referred to as the big “chassecroise” of the summer, a phrase
derived from a dance pattern.
“It would be nuts to get into a car
tomorrow,” said Paris restaurateur
Albert Aidan. “Ever since I was a kid
I can remember people talking about
the chasse-croise.”
Like clockwork, the motorways
fill up in both directions in what
seems like self-imposed misery for
both “juilletistes” -- July vacationers
-- and their August counterparts, the
“aoutiens”.
“Everyone knows it but they do it
anyway,” said Aidan, 57, while noting that many have no choice because
they rent their holiday homes by the
week, with contracts typically beginning and ending on a Saturday.
Railway stations and airports offer
their own dizzying versions of chassecroise, the tanned July people hoping
to maintain the zen they nurtured on
holiday while frazzled August people
are eager for a smooth start to their
vacation.
They are lucky if they are not
booked on Air France, however,
since the airline’s flight attendants
have selected this weekend as the
lynchpin of a week-long strike that
began on Wednesday, with one in
five flights cancelled.
Air France-KLM boss Jean-Marc
Janaillac is fuming, telling Le Figaro
newspaper: “This strike is extremely
regrettable and aggressive.”
The chasse-croise weekend is a
key revenue generator for the airline,
which normally carries 300,000 passengers over the two days, he said.
TURKISH PRESIDENT
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
on Friday told the EU and
US to “mind your own
business” after the West
expressed alarm over the
growing crackdown against
suspected coup plotters, as
a court placed 17 journalists under arrest.
Turkey has detained
more than 18,000 people
over the coup which Ankara blames on the USbased preacher Fethullah
Gulen, with the relentless
crackdown sparking warnings from Brussels that its
EU membership bid may be
in danger.
“Some people give us
advice. They say they are
worried. Mind your own
business! Look at your own
deeds,” Erdogan said in a
speech at his presidential
palace.
“Not a single person has
come to give condolences
either from the European Union... or from the
West,” said Erdogan.
“And then they say that
‘Erdogan has got so angry’!” he fumed.
“Those countries or
leaders who are not worried
about Turkey’s democracy,
the lives of our people, its
future -- while being so
worried about the fate of
the putschists -- cannot be
our friends.”
Erdogan vowed to take
all steps “within the limits
of the law” as Turkey seeks
legal retribution for the
perpetrators of the coup.
A Turkish official said
3,500 of those detained
have now been released
after questioning.
EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn
said he needed to see
“black-and-white facts
about how these people
are treated”.
“And if there is even the
CONDEMN
Those countries
or leaders who
are not worried
about Turkey’s
democracy
cannot be
our friends’
slightest doubt that the
(treatment) is improper,
then the consequences
will be inevitable,” he told
German daily Sueddeutsche
Zeitung.
Twenty-one detained
suspects on Friday appeared in front of a judge in
Istanbul to decide whether
to remand them in custody.
After a hearing lasting to
midnight, four were freed
but 17 placed under arrest
ahead of trial, charged with
“membership of a terror
group”, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.
Those held include the
veteran journalist Nazli
Ilicak as well as the former
correspondent for the proGulen Zaman daily Hanim
Busra Erdal, it added.
Among the four freed
was prominent commentator Bulent Mumay.
Foreign Minister Mevlut
Cavusoglu defended the
detention of reporters,
saying it was necessary to
distinguish between coup
plotters and those “who
are engaged in real journalism”.
The probe into coup
plotters widened its scope
to the financing of Gulen’s
activities in Turkey, with
what appeared to be the
first major arrests targeting the business world.
Security forces in the
central city of Kayseri detained the chairman of the
prominent family-owned
Boydak Holding company, Mustafa Boydak, and
two other top executives,
Anadolu said.
The president also announced that as a gesture of
goodwill after the coup he
was dropping hundreds of
lawsuits against individuals
accused of insulting him.
“I am going to withdraw
all the cases regarding the
disrespectful insults made
against me,” said Erdogan.
The authorities had said
earlier this year that over
2,000 people were being
prosecuted on charges of
insulting the president.
12
AMERICAS
OMAN TRIBUNE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
Clinton campaign network hacked in attacks on Democrats
WASHINGTON
A COMPUTER NETwork used by Democratic
presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign was
hacked as part of a broad cyber attack on Democratic political organisations, people
familiar with the matter said.
The latest attack, follows
two other hacks on the Democratic National Committee,
or DNC, and the party’s fundraising committee for candidates for the US House of
Representatives.
A Clinton campaign
spokesman said in a statement late on Friday that
an analytics data program
maintained by the DNC and
used by the campaign and
a number of other entities
“was accessed as part of the
DNC hack.”
“Our campaign computer system has been under
review by outside cyber security experts. To date, they
have found no evidence that
our internal systems have
been compromised,” said
Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill.
Later, a campaign official
said hackers had access to the
analytics program’s server
for approximately five days.
The analytics data program is
one of many systems the campaign accesses to conduct
voter analysis, and does not
include social security num-
bers or credit card numbers,
the official said.
The US Department of
Justice national security division is investigating whether
cyber attacks on Democratic political organisations
threatened US security,
sources familiar with the
matter said on Friday.
The involvement of the
Justice Department’s national security division is a sign
that the Obama administration has concluded that the
hacking was sponsored by a
state, people with knowledge
of the investigation said.
While it is unclear exactly
what material the hackers
may have gained access to,
the third such attack on sen-
sitive Democratic targets
disclosed in the last six weeks
has caused alarm in the party
and beyond.
Hackers, whom US intelligence officials have
concluded were Russian,
gained access to the entire
network of the fundraising
Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee, or
Clinton, Trump
take gloves
off, trade barbs
HILLARY
CLINTON
and Donald Trump traded
insults at opposite ends of
the country Friday, taking
their fight for the White
House to rival battleground
states and portraying starkly
different visions of America.
One of the most divisive
US campaigns in modern
history is entering a new
chapter with Republicans
and Democrats having selected their nominees, leaving the candidates slogging
it out before election day on
November 8.
Clinton followed her
historic acceptance speech
on Thursday as the first
woman presidential nominee for a major party with a
rally in Philadelphia before
embarking on a bus tour of
Rust Belt states Pennsylvania and Ohio.
In Colorado, a key western state, her Republican
opponent promised “no
more Mr Nice Guy.” He
trashed Clinton’s speech
as ‘average,’ called her a liar
and promised to end the migration of Syrian refugees.
“I’m starting to agree
with you,” he told supporters chanting “lock her up,
lock her up” in Colorado
Springs. “I’m taking the
gloves off,” he said. “Just
remember this Trump is
going to be no more Mr
Nice Guy.”
“I can’t think of an elec-
tion that is more important,
certainly in my lifetime,”
Clinton told supporters at
the rally in Philadelphia.
She portrays Trump as a
threat to democracy, and is
seeking to both woo moderate Republicans repelled
by the former reality TV star
and shore up a coalition with
progressives on the left of
her party.
“Donald Trump painted
a picture, a negative, dark,
divisive picture of a country
in decline,” she said.
“I’m not telling you that
everything is peachy keen -I’m telling you we’ve made
progress, but we have works
to do.”
She promises to focus
on parts of the country that
have been “left out and left
behind” -- constituencies
where declining living standards, fears about safety and
lost jobs have fueled support
for Trump.
Trump, who has never
previously held office, portrays himself as the law and
order candidate -- the outsider who will shake up an
out-of-touch Washington,
restore jobs, cut the deficit
and end illegal immigration.
“This country, if they
choose her, this country
will not be in good shape,”
Trump told ABC News on
Friday.
“She doesn’t know how
to win, she’s not a winner,”
he said in an excerpt of the
interview set to air on Sun-
day.
In Colorado, Trump
goaded Clinton on her failure to hold a news conference since December and
accused her of lying to the
FBI over its investigation of
her email scandal as secretary of state.
“We’re going to stop the
Syrian migrants from coming into the US,” he said
referring to the killing of a
French priest, whose attackers proclaimed allegiance to
the extremist group.
Trump’s campaign released a new ad on Friday
claiming that in Clinton’s
America ‘things get worse’
with taxes going up, terrorism spreading and voters losing jobs, homes and
hope.
“Change that makes
America great again,” the
video promised.
Clinton held a 6- percentage-point lead over Trump,
according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll with new wording
that was released on Friday.
Nearly 41 per cent of
likely voters favor Clinton,
35 per cent favor Trump,
and 25 per cent picked
“Other,” according to the
new July 25-29 online poll
of 1,043 likely voters, which
overlapped with the Democratic National Convention
in Philadelphia.
The poll has a credibility interval of 4 percentage
points.
Agencies
Reuters
Lula faces
trial for
obstruction
of justice
SAO PAULO
ter the two-third vote needed
to strip her of the presidency.
She has accused Temer,
of the center-right PMDB
party, of treason by working
with those against her.
Temer reaffirmed in the
briefing that he had no intention of standing for election
as president in 2018.
Rousseff and Lula will
both boycott the opening
ceremony of the Rio Olympic
Games, which run August
5-21, aides said this week.
Rousseff told France’s RFI
radio network on Monday
that she would not accept “a
secondary role in the Games
in Rio.”
BRAZIL’S FORMER President Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva and the former chief
executive of investment bank
Grupo BTG Pactual SA will
stand trial for obstruction
of justice, documents from
a federal court in Brasilia
showed on Friday.
Lula was previously under investigation in various
jurisdictions in a sprawling
corruption probe focused
on state-run oil company
Petroleo Brasileiro SA but
is now officially a defendant.
The case dates to last
November, when former
Senator Delcidio do Amaral and Andre Esteves, the
founder and former CEO of
BTG Pactual, were arrested
for allegedly trying to stop a
jailed former Petrobras executive from collaborating
with argest-ever corruption
investigation. The executive’s son recorded Amaral,
who is collaborating now
with prosecutors himself for
a lightened sentence, saying
judges could be influenced
into freeing his father and
that Esteves was willing to
pay for his silence.Lula’s
lawyers said that they had not
been notified of the court’s
decision but intended to
prove his innocence.
BTG Pactual declined to
comment. Esteves’s lawyer
Sepúlveda Pertence said,
“The judge will review our
defence and decide if it’s a
case for acquittal or even removing him as a defendant.
We’re convinced our client
has not committed any illegal acts and there is no fair
reason for a criminal case.”
Reuters
Hillary leads GOP rival by 6 points
HARRISBURG (US)
DCCC, said people familiar
with the matter.
The US Federal Bureau of
Investigation said on Friday
it was “aware of media reporting on cyber intrusions
involving multiple political
entities, and is working to determine the accuracy, nature
and scope of these matters.”
Joe Mahoney/AFP
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump kisses three-month-old Kellen Campbell of Denver, and holds
six-month-old Evelyn Keane of Castel Rock, Colorado, after Trump’s speech at the Gallogly Event Centre on
the campus of the University of Colorado on Friday in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Brazil impeachment must be
settled by Aug. 26: Temer
BRASILIA
BRAZIL’S POLITICAL
uncertainty must be resolved
by the end of August -- its
Olympic-hosting month -- by
reaching a verdict in the impeachment trial of suspended President Dilma Rousseff,
her interim replacement Michel Temer said on Friday.
Temer, the vice president
who has been acting head
of state since May, said he
expected Rousseff would
be definitively booted from
office. That would make him
president until the next elections in 2018.
His comments came during a briefing with interna-
tional news agencies just one
week before Brazil declares
the 2016 Olympic Games
open in Rio de Janeiro.
“The world needs to know
who is the President of Brazil,” Temer said.
He argued an impeachment trial verdict was necessary for Brazil to decide
who would represent it at
a G20 summit in China on
September 4 and 5.
“We are hoping that the
resolution of the impeachment comes between August
25 and 26, because if it takes
to September 4, 5 or 6, Brazil will not be able to go to the
G20 summit,” Temer said.
He said he was already
“acting as if I will stay on” as
president. But he stressed
that the procedure was
entirely in the hands of the
Senate, which will decide
Rousseff’s fate by holding
the impeachment trial.
Rousseff, from the leftist
Workers’ Party and the chosen heir of popular former
president Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva, is accused of breaking
government budget laws.
She says the charges are
trumped up and insists she
can survive the judgment
vote in the Senate.
But the odds look stacked
against her, and many analysts and observers believe
it’s likely the Senate will mus-
Crews battle to quell California wildfire CDC is kept at
arm’s length in
US Zika probe
CALIFORNIA (US)
FIREFIGHTERS BATtled for an eighth day on Friday to quell a deadly blaze
near California’s renowned
Big Sur coast that has destroyed dozens of homes,
threatened hundreds more
and forced several state
parks to close at the height
of summer tourist season.
The so-called Soberanes
Fire ignited last Friday just
south of the upscale oceanside town of Carmel-by-theSea and has roared through
nearly 32,000 acres of
drought-parched chaparral, grass and timber into the
Los Padres National Forest.
Mountainous terrain
combined with extremely
hot, dry weather conditions
have hampered efforts by
nearly 4,300 firefighters
to hack buffer lines through
dense vegetation around the
perimeter of the blaze, officials said.
Fire managers hope
steady reinforcements to
Michael Fiala/Reuters
A California Fire helicopter flies over Williams Canyon during the Soberanes Fire near Carmel Valley, California, on Friday.
their ground crews over the
past few days will help make
a difference, said Robert
Fish, a battalion chief with
the California Department
of Forestry and Fire Protec-
tion (Cal Fire).
“The key here is high
temperatures,
rugged,
steep terrain - a very difficult
firefight,” Fish said. Much
of the effort is focused on
halting the advance of flames
in the direction of Big Sur
communities, he said.
Containment stood at 15
per cent on Friday, up from
10 per cent during the previous few days, even as the
overall size of the fire zone
expanded slightly, leaving
2,000 structures threatened and about 350 people
under evacuation orders.
Flames have already destroyed 41 homes and 10
outbuildings, with at least
two other dwellings damaged by fire, officials said.
Firefighters did manage
to save a number of large
homes in the hills above the
exclusive Carmel Highlands
community. The fire threat
has prompted authorities
to close a string of popular
California campgrounds
and recreation areas along
the northern end of the Big
Sur coastline, including Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park
and Point Lobos Natural
Reserve.
Reuters
Drug lord turns jail cell into luxury suite
ASUNCION
PARAGUAYAN AUTHORITIES
got a surprise when they raided a
Brazilian drug lord’s jail cell... and
found a three-room luxury suite
complete with library, kitchen,
conference room and plasma TV.
Jarvis Chimenes Pavao, considered one of South America’s most
dangerous drug traffickers, had
been serving an eight-year sen-
tence for money laundering at the
Tacumbu prison in the Paraguayan
capital, Asuncion.
But little did anyone on the outside know what kind of lifestyle
that really meant -- until a powerful bomb was discovered inside the
prison.
Chimenes Pavao, who was due
for release next year but facing
extradition back to Brazil on drug
charges, had allegedly planned to
use the plastic explosives to blow a
hole in the prison walls and escape.
But his plan backfired when police poured into the prison to investigate and discovered his pimped
out cell.
The ‘VIP cell,’ as it was known
to prisoners, had three rooms with
en suite bathroom, a kitchen and
conference room, air conditioning, stylishly tiled walls, plush furniture and a library complete with
a DVD collection to watch on the
big-screen plasma TV, reporters
saw during a visit.
The DVDs included the full collection of ‘Pablo Escobar,’ a TV
series on the feared Colombian
kingpin who was killed in 1993, a
hero of Chimenes Pavao’s.
The raid, which took place on
Tuesday night, has already shaken
up the Paraguayan penal system.
Chimenes Pavao’s lawyer, Laura
Acasuso, told reporters the corruption that enabled her client to turn
his cell into a luxury suite reached
all the way to the top.
“Six or seven justice ministers
and six or seven prison directors
took bribes from Chimenes Pavao.”
Justice Minister Carla Bacigalupo
was sacked almost as soon as the
scandal broke. Her replacement,
Ever Martinez, vowed a crackdown.
CHICAGO
THE STATE OF FLORIda, the first to report the
arrival of Zika in the continental United States, has yet
to invite a dedicated team of
the federal government’s
disease hunters to assist
with the investigation on the
ground, health officials said.
Coordination with the US
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention since the
state reported possible local
Zika transmission on July 19
has been conducted largely
at a distance, they said. That
is surprising to infectious
disease experts, who say a
less robust response could
lead to a higher number of
infections.
While Florida has a
strong record of battling
limited outbreaks of similar mosquito-borne viruses,
including dengue and chikungunya, the risk of birth
defects caused by Zika adds
greater urgency to containing its spread with every
available means, they say.
Other states have quickly
called in CDC teams to help
track high-profile diseases.
“You only have a small
window. This is the window
to prevent a small-scale outbreak from spreading,” said
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the
National School of Tropical
Medicine at Baylor College
of Medicine in Houston.
Florida on Friday said
that four cases of Zika in
the state were likely caused
by mosquito, the first sign
that the virus is circulating
locally, though it has yet to
identify mosquitoes carrying the disease.
Florida Governor Rick
Scott said the state health
department was working
with the CDC as it continues its Zika investigation.
CDC said it is closely coordinating with Florida officials who are leading the
effort. Dr Marc Fischer, a
CDC epidemiologist, has
gone to Florida at the state’s
request.
But the state has not invited in the CDC’s wider
emergency response team
of experts in epidemiology, risk communication,
vector control and logistics,
according to Florida health
department spokeswoman
Mara Gambineri.
In its plans to fight Zika
nationwide, CDC stressed
that such teams would help
local officials track and contain the virus. Similar teams
were sent to Utah earlier this
month to solve how a person
may have become infected
while caring for a Zika-infected patient, before local
officials went public with the
case, and quickly joined an
effort to contain an Ebola
case in Dallas in 2014.
Reuters
NEWS FEATURE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
OMAN TRIBUNE
13
Russia ‘has motive’ for US mail hacking
Moscow ‘interferes in geopolitical rival’s domestic politics in bid to destabilise and shape events’
MOSCOW
THE KREMLIN SAYS
it had zero involvement
in the hacking of Democratic Party emails while
US officials say the hack
originated in Russia. We
may never know who is
right, but one thing is for
sure – Russia had motive,
capability and form.
Seen through Kremlin
eyes, Moscow would only
be doing what it feels the
US has been doing to it for
years anyway – interfering in a geopolitical rival’s
domestic politics in an attempt to destabilise and
shape events.
President Vladimir Putin said in February he had
seen specific intelligence
suggesting Russia’s foreign
enemies – code for Washington – were preparing
to meddle in Russian parliamentary elections later
this year.
And in 2011, Putin accused the US State Department and Hillary Clinton,
its then head, of stirring
up street protests against
his rule.
“We need to head off
any external attempts to
interfere in the elections,
in our domestic political
life,” Putin, who is facing
re-election in 2018, told
officers from Russia’s FSB
security service in February.
“You know that certain
kinds of (political) technologies exist and have
already been used in many
countries.”
That was shorthand for
Ukraine, Libya, Egypt and
Syria, which Putin thinks
Washington irresponsibly
destabilised. People who
have studied him for years
say he believes the US is
trying to foment the same
kind of unrest to oust him.
His credo, set out when
talking about Daish last
year, is to strike first “if
a fight is inevitable” and,
as Russia has shown in its
reaction to what it sees as
Nato’s aggressive build-up
near its borders, to respond
in kind.
“Clearly the Kremlin
feels it should and can insert itself into domestic
politics in other countries
in much the same way it believes the US and Europe
Reuters/Files
Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures as he addresses students during his visit to German Embassy school in Moscow, Russia. Putin had earlier accused the US State Department of stirring
up street protests against his rule.
insert themselves into
Russian politics,” Samuel
Greene, the director of the
Russia Institute at London’s King’s College, said.
“In their view it is fair
play. They have seen the
West involving itself in
politics in Ukraine and
other former parts of the
Soviet space and feel they
should be able to pretty
much do the same thing.”
He said such disruptive behaviour was driven
by a calculation: to stir up
trouble in other countries
so they have less bandwidth
to focus on Russia.
Mark Galeotti, senior
research fellow at the Institute of International
Relations Prague, said he
believed another motive
for the hack – if Russia was
behind it – would be to portray US democracy as venal
and chaotic and so take the
sting out of western accusations that Russian elections
are corrupt.
Kremlin-backed media
has tilted its coverage in
favour of Trump over Clinton, and Putin has praised
the Republican candidate
as “very talented”. But
Greene said he thought
what would matter most
to Moscow would simply
be to destabilise and to
ensure that whoever won
on November 8 emerged
as a weak figure.
Navigating a grinding
economic crisis caused by
low oil prices, and at odds
with the US over both Syria
and Ukraine, Putin is under
pressure.
He needs the West to lift
the sanctions it imposed on
Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine,
which have cut off access to
western credit markets and
technology imports.
Above all, though, he
wants to make sure that external forces do not derail
his own push for continued
dominance in a political
landscape where the liberal opposition is almost
completely absent from
TV screens and parliament.
Nikolai Patrushev, the
head of Russia’s Security
Council, said earlier this
year there had been a spike
in the number of cyber attacks on Russian government bodies and critical
infrastructure by foreign
intelligence services.
And Putin, speaking
in February, complained
about what he said were
more than 24 million attacks in the past year.
Andrei Soldatov, an
expert on the FSB and coauthor of Red Web, a book
about the Kremlin’s sprawling surveillance machine,
said he thought if Russia
had hacked the Democratic
Party it would have been to
send a signal that it could do
the same and wanted US intelligence services to desist.
“This could have been
Secret shelter to protect Mexico scribes
MEXICO CITY
WHEN PHOTOJOURnalist Ruben Espinosa felt
harassed by the authorities
in eastern Mexico, he fled
to the capital. Without protection, he was shot dead in
a case still unsolved a year
later.
Now, a group of journalists is about to open a secret shelter in Mexico City
to protect colleagues like
Espinosa in one of the most
dangerous countries in the
world to be a reporter.
“It’s a house where we
want them to have food,
with all the basic services,
where they are safe and
they have psychological
help,” Judith Calderon,
president of the House of
Rights of Journalists, said.
Journalists who face
threats can request government protection in Mexico,
but the hideout will give another option for those who
don’t trust the authorities,
who sometimes are the tormentors.
The organisation refused
to reveal the shelter’s location for security reasons,
but said that it will be able
to house a dozen people
when it opens in the coming weeks.
The group already has a
waiting list. “Colleagues
feel safe because, for the
first time, there’s a house
to protect journalists”
without having to ask for
help from the government,
Calderon said.
AFP/Files
Photojournalists and activists protest against the murder of their colleague Ruben Espinosa and four women in Mexico City.
The House of Rights of
Journalists was founded
in 2010 by Mexican news
media veterans to protect
and advise their peers who
are in mortal danger.
More than 90 journalists have been murdered
and another 17 have disappeared in Mexico since
2000, according to Reporters Without Borders.
In the eastern state of
Veracruz alone, 19 media
workers have been killed
in the past six years. Espinosa, 31, had fled Veracruz
due to threats.
Public officials and drug
cartels have been accused
of intimidating journalists,
or worse.
Pedro Tamayo, a
45-year-old crime report-
er, was the latest victim of
violence in Veracruz.
Tamayo was shot dead on
July 20 outside his house
in front of his wife and two
grown sons, despite being
under special protective
measures given by the state
of Veracruz.
The measures included
taking him to another state
for several months, and
daily police patrols at his
house after he returned to
Veracruz.
But Tamayo’s family said
that state police were present during the murder and
did nothing to catch the
killers.
The federal government
launched a programme
to protect journalists in
2012. Veracruz created
its own the same year.
Since then, officials
say, 181 reporters have
received assistance.
The aid measures range
from a panic button to
bodyguards and home
surveillance cameras. They
can also be hidden in other
states.
“What will guarantee
their protection is physical
security along with the reduction of impunity,” said
Leopoldo Maldonado, coordinator of journalist protection at the press rights
group Article 19.
“Impunity persists and
that is a clear message that
a worse aggression can take
place at any time,” Maldonado said.
With unsolved crimes
and killers roaming free,
the Committee to Protect
Journalists ranks Mexico
in eighth place in its Global
Impunity Index, just under
Afghanistan and worse than
Pakistan or Russia.
Mexico City is considered safer than other parts
of the country, which is
why Espinosa’s unresolved
murder on July 31, 2015,
came as a shock.
Espinosa was shot dead
along with four women in
an apartment. The motive
for his killing remains a
mystery.
“Ruben’s murder was a
shock. Although journalists have been attacked by
police in protests in Mexico
City, most of the murders
have taken place in the
(other) states,” Calderon
said.
While Calderon’s organisation completes the
security measures for the
shelter, Espinosa’s case
highlights the weak spots in
the informal network that
journalists have set up to
help colleagues in danger.
Espinosa refused to sign
up with the government
protection programme,
and left Veracruz with the
help of other colleagues.
Nevertheless the shelter’s administrator, the
journalist and activist Sara
Lovera, is convinced that
her project will work.
“We no longer want
goodwill or help from alleged saviors,” Lovera said.
an attempt to deter the US
(from hacking and meddling), to try to shake the
US establishment, and to
try to weaken Clinton,”
said Soldatov. “It’s pure
politics, it’s not about
military secrets.”
In Moscow, Trump, who
has spoken of his desire for
better relations with Russia
and praised Putin, is seen
as far more likely to cut a
sanctions deal with Russia,
while Clinton is regarded
as a hawk on Russia.
“Everyone in Moscow
believes that with Clinton in the White House it
would be absolutely impossible to get the sanctions
lifted,” said Soldatov.
Trump has already raised
hackles in Ukraine by saying he would be willing to
consider lifting sanctions.
Experts say the Russian
state, via the FSB, has a
well developed offensive
hacking capability. It has
previously been accused
of deploying that capability in Estonia, Georgia and
Ukraine. Russian military
intelligence, GRU, is
known to have similar capabilities, Soldatov said.
There are also other nonstate hacker groups which
experts say sometimes collaborate with the security
services, motivated by patriotism or money.
Galeotti said Russia’s
capacity to mount cyber
attacks had increased over
the past two years. Previously, Moscow would
force amateur hackers
into its service, he said, but
lately “what we are seeing
is much more of a push towards creating professional
in-house capacity”.
In this case, however,
Soldatov said he thought
it more likely that amateur
hackers would have been
responsible for the US
hack rather than the FSB
or GRU who, if involved at
all, would have played only
a very minor role.
One reason for reaching that conclusion was
how sloppily and hastily
prepared the cover-up of
the hack looked, he said.
Reuters
14
OMAN TRIBUNE
KALEIDOSCOPE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
UPHOLDING TRADITIONS
Fred Dufour/AFP
A dancer in traditional Yi costume waits to perform at the Torch Festival in Xichang, China’s Sichuan province. As a result of fast urbanisation in the rural area of China, the traditional costume is fading away for the Yi people
in daily life.
SWEET PEDDLER
HOMEBOUND!
Aref Karimi/AFP
An Afghan rides a horse and another leads his horse as the sun sets in Injil district of Herat province, Afghanistan.
MASK MARCH
Ivan Alvarado/Reuters
A man sells candy floss on the beach in Copacabana.
WINGED VISITOR
Andy Buchanan/AFP
Pro-Scottish Independence supporters with Scottish Saltire flag masks pose for a picture at a rally in George
Square in Glasgow, Scotland. Several thousand pro-independence supporters marched and rallied in central
Glasgow calling for Sottish independence from the UK.
Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters
A hummingbird flies in the sanctuary ‘El Paraiso de los Colibries’ near Cali, Colombia.
SPORTS
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
OMAN TRIBUNE
15
Herath spins Lanka to emphatic win
Mendis adjudged man-of-the-match after epic 176 runs; Australia suffer first Test loss under Smith
PALLEKELE (Sri Lanka)
RANGANA HERATH CLaimed four Australian wickets to spin Sri Lanka to a remarkable 106-run victory
on an intriguing final day
in the weather-hit first Test
in Pallekele on Saturday.
A hamstrung Steve
O’Keefe and Peter Nevill
tried to delay the inevitable with nearly 30 overs
of dogged resistance but
could not deny Sri Lanka
only their second Test win
over Australia which put the
hosts 1-0 up in the threematch series.
Chasing 268 runs for
victory, Australia eventually folded for 161 in Steve
Smith’s first loss as their
Test captain.
Australia set a new record
as the last 154 deliveries of
their innings did not produce a single run. O’Keefe
and Nevill also featured in
the slowest partnership in
Test cricket among those
that lasted at least 100 balls.
It was a remarkable win
for Sri Lanka, who were
shot out for 117 in the first
innings and were reeling
at six for two in the second
before Kusal Mendis made
an epic 176, which earned
him the man-of-the-match
award.
“Credit to Kusal, the way
he played and scored 176
which certainly turned this
game. It was tough to come
back from there,” Smith
said at the presentation
ceremony. “We were sure
268 on this wicket on day
four and five was going to be
difficult and it turned out to
be that way.”
Herath, who claimed
4-49 in the first innings,
took 5-54 in the second
and fittingly sealed the win
by bowling O’Keefe, who
is unlikely take part in the
Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP
Sri Lanka’s successfully appeals for a leg before wicket decision against Australia’s Nathan Lyon (second from right) during the fifth and final day of their opening Test match at the Pallekele
International Cricket Stadium in Pallekele on Saturday.
remainder of the series,
towards the end of the afternoon session.
“I don’t have words to
explain after a very hard
few months. We regrouped,
trained really well and prepared to the best,” Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews
said. He praised Mendis as
a “special talent” while also
praising Herath and left-arm
Chinaman bowler Lakshan
Sandakan, who claimed seven wickets on a memorable
Test debut. “He is a brilliant
find for us,” Mathews said.
SCOREBOARD
Sri Lanka first innings 117 all out (D de
Silva 24, K Perera 20; Josh Hazlewood
3-21, Nathan Lyon 3-12)
Australia first innings 203 all out (A
Voges 47; Rangana Herath 4-49, Lakshan
Sandakan 4-58
Sri Lanka second innings 353 all out
Reuters
(Kusal Mendis 176; Mitchell Starc 4-84)
Australia second innings (overnight Australia 83 for three)
J Burns b Sandakan - - - - - - - - - - - - 29
D Warner b Herath - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1
U Khawaja lbw b D. Perera - - - - - - - 18
S Smith lbw b Herath - - - - - - - - - - - 55
A Voges c & b Herath - - - - - - - - - - - 12
M Marsh lbw b Herath - - - - - - - - - - 25
P Nevill c Chandimal b De Silva - - - - - 9
M Starc c & b Sandakan - - - - - - - - - - 0
N Lyon lbw b Sandakan - - - - - - - - - - - 8
S O’Keefe b Herath - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 4
J Hazlewood not out - - - - - - - - - - - - - 0
Extras: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 0
Total: (all out in 88.3 overs) - - - - - 161
Fall of wickets: 1-2, 2-33, 3-63, 4-96,
5-139, 6-140, 7-141, 8-157, 9-161
Bowling: Pradeep 6-3-16-0, Herath 33.316-54-5, D. Perera 13-3-30-1, Sandakan
25-8-49-3, De Silva 11-7-12-1
Hockey festival to Taylor, Watling
be held on Aug. 12 and Boult move
NZ closer to win
MUSCAT
A HOCKEY FESTIVAL
to celebrate the 70th Independence Day of India will
be held on August 12 at the
Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex in Bausher from 5pm
to 8pm, a press release from
Oman Hockey Association
(OHA) said on Saturday.
The celebration to mark
India’s Independence Day is
being held for the 10th year
and is organised under the
patronage of Embassy of India and Ambassador of India
in coordination with Oman
Hockey Association.
Ambassador of India HE
Indramani Pandey will be the
chief guest, the guest of honour will be Aftab Patel, CEO
of Al Omaniya Finance and
Chairman of Oman Cricket.
The special guest will be Said
Nasser Al Darmaki, Secretary General of OHA.
The following teams will
participate for the Independence Day Cup and Dhyanchand Trophy with Team
Coorg Dubai participating
for the first time in Oman.
In first match, Team
BULAWAYO (Zimbabwe)
Aftab Patel
Coorg Muscat will face off
with Team Coorg Dubai
and in the second match
Ambassador XI will take
on Indian School Al Seeb.
The absence of UTSC and
Beatrice XI, who have been
supporting the festival for
the past several years, will
be highly missed.
The main sponsor of the
event is Waleed Associates
LLC (a Zawawi Group)
Muscat, Sultanate of Oman.
“We feel it’s a great gesture
by the Dr Umar Zawawi
Group,” organisers said.
The organisers will honour the sponsors for their
cooperation and assistance.
Mass International Co. has
kindly agreed to be the partner in the celebration.
Principal of Indian School
Al Seeb Nagesh Kelkar has
confirmed the participation of the school’s choir to
recite the National Anthem
of India and Oman. A children’s competition will be
organised by the women’s
section under the supervision of Kanchan Bijlani and
prizes will be awarded to
the children who correctly
recite the Indian National
anthem.
Oman Tribune
CENTURIES FROM ROSS
Taylor and BJ Watling and
a three-wicket haul from
Trent Boult moved New
Zealand closer to a huge
win over Zimbabwe in the
first Test in Bulawayo on
Saturday.
After Taylor scored an
unbeaten 173 and Watling
made 107 in a New Zealand
total of 576 for six declared,
Boult struck three times in
six deliveries to send Zimbabwe crashing to 17 for four
in their second innings.
Craig Ervine’s unbeaten
49 helped the hosts recover
to 121 for five at the close of
day three at Queens Sports
Club, but Zimbabwe still
need 291 runs to make
New Zealand bat again in
the match.
While the first two days
of the game had been distinctly one-sided, the third
was even more brutal as
Taylor and Watling added
253 for the sixth wicket for
New Zealand, who went on
to claim four Zimbabwean
wickets in the first four
overs of their reply.
The Black Caps lost
nightwatchman Ish Sodhi
in the second over of the
day as they resumed on 315
for four, but that simply allowed Taylor and Watling to
get on with their productive
alliance.
The pair hardly offered
the Zimbabweans a sniff in
the four hours that they were
together, as Taylor brought
up his 14th Test hundred
and Watling registered his
sixth.
They were finally parted
five overs after the tea break
when Watling pulled a short
delivery to deep square-leg,
and the dismissal led Kane
Williamson to declare with
a first-innings lead of 412.
“He told us to just be
positive and bat with a little
bit of intent,” Taylor said of
the captain. “You still have
to respect the bowlers.
Oman Sail in action on second day of racing.
Oman Air keep lead in
tough Hamburg race
MUSCAT
OMAN SAIL’S CREW ON
Oman Air came face to face
with some of Hamburg’s
infamous challenges late
on Friday but still came
away with five podium positions, including three outright wins to maintain their
overall lead in the Extreme
Sailing Series in Germany,
a press release said on Saturday.
All seven teams made it
to the podium at some stage
during the seven-race pro-
gramme, reflecting the degree of difficulty in achieving any sort of consistency
in a very shifty and unstable
breeze that topped out at
a bracing 14 knots when
all the GC32s catamarans
took off on their foils and
flew around the race course.
Morgan Larson’s team
opened the second day of
racing with a runners-up
place which was promptly
followed by their first victory
of the afternoon, a resounding 40-second win over SAP
Extreme Sailing Team, their
strongest rivals throughout
the day.
There were two more
Oman Air firsts including a
61 second win, again over
SAP Extreme Sailing Team
to bring day 2 to a close, by
which time, their lead at the
top of the table had extended
to 12 points over Alinghi
who posted two wins. “It was
very hard but very good out
there today. On such a tight
race course, there is a lot of
action,” said Omani bowman
Nasser Al Mashari.
Oman Tribune
Rosberg grabs German GP pole with dramatic late lap
HOCKENHEIM (Germany)
Patrik Stollarz/AFP
Nico Rosberg (centre) waves after the qualifying session of the Formula
One German Grand Prix next to Daniel Ricciardo (left) and Lewis Hamilton.
NICO ROSBERG REGAINED THE
initiative in his duel for the Formula
One world title with Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton on Saturday,
when he grabbed pole position for the
German Grand Prix with a dramatic late
qualifying lap.
The 31-year-old German driver, inspired by racing on home soil and in
front of his team’s home crowd, looked
to be set for second place on the grid
after electrical problems forced him
to abort his first flying lap in the third
qualifying session.
But he responded with a bold and
dramatic lap in the final minutes of a
tense session to secure the prime starting slot and a chance to regain the lead-
ership of the drivers’ championship.
Rosberg clocked a startling best lap
of one minute and 14.323 seconds to
outpace the defending three-time
champion by 0.123 seconds.
When Hamilton went for his final
lap, he was unable to improve and regain the initiative and Rosberg could
celebrate, while a disappointed Hamilton struggled to hide his feelings.
“Well done, Nico, a fantastic lap and
well done under the circumstances,”
said Mercedes technical chief Paddy
Lowe, who revealed that Rosberg’s
car was heavily fuelled.
It was Rosberg’s third pole at Hockenheim, 30 years after his father Keke
had claimed his final pole at the famous
old circuit in 1986, his fifth of the season and the 27th of his career.
Behind the two Mercedes Australian
Daniel Ricciardo, in his 100th Grand
Prix, was third fastest for Red Bull
ahead of his teammate Dutch teenager
Max Verstappen, the pair slightly more
than three-tenths behind.
The two Ferraris of German Sebastian Vettel and Finn Kimi Raikkonen
were fifth and sixth ahead of Nico
Hulkenberg of Force India, Finn Valtteri Bottas of Williams, Sergio Perez
in the second Force India and Felipe
Massa in the second Williams.
“Yes it was a great feeling,” said
Rosberg. “It was a great lap, but I also
had extra fuel just in case I needed to
go again and do a third lap.”
Hamilton lost time on his final lap
when he locked up at the hairpin and
again when he over-drove in the sta-
dium section, while Rosberg revelled
in the technical demands of the track
and obeyed the adage of ‘making the
car do the work’.
The Englishman was in laconic
mood when he spoke afterwards.
“It has been a good weekend,” he
said. “I had no problems. I had the pace
today but just couldn’t finish it off on
that last lap, so I didn’t really have much
of a lock-up, it was subtle and I didn’t
really lose any time. It should be a good
day for Mercedes tomorrow.”
Ricciardo was happy to grab third
ahead of Verstappen. “I think we got
pretty close to the Mercedes,” he said.
“We may have different tyres available for the race so that hopefully will
make it interesting.”
16
US ‘sceptical’ of
humanitarian
corridor in Syria
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
26 SHAWWAL 1437
US allows
American
planes for
Iran flights
FROLICKING IN SHIP’S WAKE
WASHINGTON
and to revive the country’s
flagging economy.
Security forces frequently engage in deadly clashes
with extremist groups in
the mountainous west of
the country.
Last year the Islamic
State jihadist group
claimed two high-profile attacks in Tunisia that killed
59 foreign tourists.
The country has been in
a state of emergency since
November, when a suicide
bombing, also claimed by
IS, killed 12 presidential
guards in central Tunis.
Economic
growth
slowed to 0.8 percent last
year from 2.3 percent in
2014, and unemployment
nationwide stood at 15 percent at the end of last year.
THE UNITED STATES
said it would allow foreign
airlines to fly US-made
aircraft to Iran, providing greater assurance to
aviation companies as Iran
tries to re-establish trade
and business links following the lifting of sanctions.
The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets
Control on Friday issued a
license allowing US-made
planes to have “temporary
sojourn” in Iran, meaning
airlines such as Lufthansa,
Turkish Airlines, or others
flying frequently to Iran are
expressly allowed to use
US-made planes, or planes
with US parts, to fly there.
Iran and world powers
reached a deal on Teheran’s
nuclear programme last
July that allowed for the lifting of most sanctions on the
country, although many US
sanctions remain in place.
The deal allows for US
companies to obtain licenses to sell civil aircraft to Iran,
but a proposed deal between
Boeing Co. and Iran has
drawn the ire of members
of the US Congress, who
are trying to block it.
The license issued on
Friday has no impact on
the proposed Boeing deal.
Because of a quirk in the
law, US-made planes could be
flown to other countries under
USsanction,suchasCuba,Sudan, Syria, and North Korea.
Iran was an exception to this,
said Jonathan Epstein, an attorney at Holland & Knight in
Washington.
Practically speaking,
many airlines were already
flying US-made planes or
those using significant
amounts of US parts, Epstein said.
Reuters
Families leave besieged Aleppo
WASHINGTON
THE UNITED STATES
said it is “sceptical” of a
Russian announcement
that it had opened humanitarian corridors in Aleppo,
with Secretary of State John
Kerry fearing a potential
“ruse.”
However, Dozens of
families left the besieged
opposition-held east of
Aleppo city on Saturday
through a “humanitarian
corridor” to the government-held west, Syria’s
official Sana news agency
reported.
Russia, a key ally of the
Syrian government in the
five-year war, announced
on Thursday several corridors for civilians and
surrendering fighters to
leave the northern Syrian
city, which has been under
heavy assault for weeks.
Besieged residents were
cowering indoors, afraid
to use what some called
“death corridors.”
Kerry – who has spoken
twice with Moscow in the
past day and met his Russian
counterpart Sergei Lavrov
on Tuesday in Laos – said
cooperation between Moscow and Washington could
turn sour if the announcement proves deceitful.
“It has the risk, if it
is a ruse, of completely
breaking apart the level
of cooperation,” Kerry
said. “On the other hand,
if we’re able to work it out
today and have a complete
understanding of what is
happening and an agree-
ment on the way forward,
it could actually open up
some possibilities.”
The proposal raised
concerns that the corridors
could be used to flush out
Aleppo before a final push
by the Syrian government
forces to take the city.
“We are taking a look at
Russia’s announcement of
humanitarian corridors, but
CITIZENS FLEE
‘This morning
dozens of
families left via
the corridors
identified...
to allow the
exit of citizens
besieged by
terrorist groups’
given their record on this, we
are sceptical to say the least,”
said White House Deputy
Press Secretary Eric Schultz.
The White House remains “deeply concerned
about the situation in
Aleppo,” said Schultz.
“Over the last few weeks
Russian and Assad regime
offensive have offensively
cut off the opposition held
parts of the city. This only
exacerbates the humanitarian situation by laying
siege to some 300,000
civilians,” Schultz said.
“Access to the city
should be open to fully
allow for unimpeded humanitarian support and
commercial traffic to Syrian
civilians in their homes.”
The evacuations came
48 hours after Syria ally
Russia announced that
three humanitarian passages would be opened
to allow civilians and
surrendering fighters to
cross from the rebel-held
districts of the city.
“This morning dozens
of families left via the corridors identified... to allow
the exit of citizens besieged
by terrorist groups in the
eastern neighbourhoods,”
Sana reported.
“They were welcomed by
members of the army and
taken by bus to temporary
shelters,” it added. It also
said “a number” of women
over the age of 40 had left
the rebel-held east and had
been taken to shelters.
The agency carried
photos showing dozens of
people, mostly women and
children, walking past soldiers and boarding buses.
State television also
broadcast footage it said
showed residents crossing
from the east to the west.
Sana added that “armed
men from eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo”
had turned themselves in
to army soldiers in Salaheddin district, without giving
figures or showing pictures
of the incident.
The Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights confirmed
that “a number” of civilians
had left the east of the city
through a passage in the
Salaheddin neighbourhood.
Agencies
Gary Cameron/Reuters
A pair of dolphins leaps in the wake of Royal Caribbean cruise line ship ‘Grandeur of the Seas’ in the Atlantic
Ocean between Bermuda and the United States main land.
Tunisia government faces
confidence vote in House
TUNIS
TUNISIA’S PARLIAMEnt was gathered on Saturday for a vote of confidence
that could see Prime Minister Habib Essid unseated
after just a year and a half
in office.
Essid’s government has
been widely criticised for
failing to tackle the country’s economic crisis, high
unemployment and a series
of jihadist attacks.
“I’m quite aware that the
vote will be against me,”
Essid, 67, told parliament
ahead of the planned vote.
“I didn’t come to obtain
the 109 votes (needed to
remain in office). I came to
expose things to the people
and to members of parliament,” he said.
Duterte ends truce with rebels
MANILA
PHILIPPINE PRESIDENT
Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday withdrew a unilateral
ceasefire with communist
rebels after his ultimatum
for the group to reciprocate
lapsed.
Duterte had announced
the truce on Monday to
help end one of Asia’s longest insurgencies which
claimed tens of thousands
of lives since the 1960s.
But the ceasefire was
short-lived after communist rebels in the southern
province of Davao del Norte
killed on Wednesday one
government militia member
and wounded four others.
Duterte on Friday gave the
communists an ultimatum
to explain the incident and
to reciprocate the government ceasefire by Saturday
afternoon but the deadline
passed without a truce declaration from the rebels.
“I am hereby ordering
the immediate lifting of the
ceasefire,” Duterte said.
“I am ordering all security forces to be on high alert
and continue to discharge
their normal functions to
neutralise all threats to national security.”
Duterte, who assumed
office on June 30 after a
landslide election win, has
said it was his “dream” to
forge peace with communist rebels but asked them
to show “good faith”.
Exiled rebel leader Jose
Maria Sison, Duterte’s uni-
versity professor, said the
communists were set to
declare a ceasefire Saturday
evening but the president
had already called off the
truce before an announcement could be made.
“Volatility, lack of prudence in something as sensitive and delicate as peace
negotiations between two
armed fighting sides, it’s
hard to agree with people
who are quick to judgment,” Sison told ABSCBN television.
“The
revolutionary
movement is treated as if
it’s a servant of the new
boss. That cannot be.”
A regional spokesman
for the communists’ armed
wing, the New People’s
Army, also said Saturday
that the government ceasefire in the southern region
of Mindanao was “spurious” because security
forces were still conducting
combat operations.
The New People’s Army
is believed to have fewer
than 4,000 gunmen, down
from a peak of 26,000 in
the 1980s, according to
the military. But it retains
support among the deeply
poor in rural areas, and its
forces regularly kill police or
troops while extorting money from local businesses.
Despite the withdrawal
of the ceasefire, both sides
said they were still keen on
pushing through with the
resumption of peace talks
set on August 20.
Essid has been under
growing pressure since
President Beji Caid Essebsi appeared on local
TV in June to slam the administration and propose
creating a new government
of national unity.
The premier said he
would be ready to resign
“if the country’s interest
demanded it”, but has said
he refused to leave under
pressure without a vote of
confidence.
If Essid loses the vote,
Essebsi would be required
to choose the “most suitable person” to form a new
government.
Essid had already been
forced into a broad reshuffle in January, when the
country witnessed some of
its worst social unrest since
the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime dictator Zine
El Abidine Ben Ali.
His supporters have condemned “pressure” from
supporters of Hafedh Caid
Essebsi, the president’s son
who is among the leaders of
the Nidaa Tounes party.
Essid’s coalition government includes four groups
including the party Essebsi
founded in 2012, Nidaa
Tounes, and the Islamist
Ennahda party.
Tunisia, whose 2011
uprising inspired similar
revolts across Arab countries, has been touted as a
regional example of a successful transition to democracy after a revolution.
But successive governments have struggled to
tackle a jihadist insurgency
Pokemon
GO players
robbed
Harry Potter play
hits London stage
LONDON
LONDON
THREE TEENAGERS
playing the hit game Pokemon GO have been robbed at
gunpoint in a north London
park and forced to hand over
their mobile phones, British
police said on Saturday.
Armed robberies are rare
in the UK and police said
they were hunting three
suspects in relation to the incident on Tuesday evening.
While one suspect
demanded that the three
teenagers hand over
their phones, a second
revealed what the police
said was a handgun from
his waistband.
Reuters
HARRY POTTER FANS
were buzzing with excitement on Saturday as ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed
Child’, a stage play that
imagines the fictional boy
wizard as a grown-up father
of three, opened in London.
After nearly eight weeks
of well-received preview performances, London’s Palace
Theatre hosted the opening
gala as the general public was
invited to strap themselves
in for a new adventure in the
saga that has captivated millions around the globe.
Arriving for the opening
gala, creator JK Rowling
told the Press Association
she was “so happy” that
fans had heeded her pleas
to keep the plot a secret,
and said she hoped the
play would one day appear
on Broadway.
Set 19 years after the
events of Rowling’s seventh and final book, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows’, the play sees a
grown-up Potter working
at the Ministry of Magic.
The official plot outline
for the play reads: “While
Harry grapples with a past
that refuses to stay where it
belongs, his youngest son
Albus must struggle with
the weight of a family legacy
he never wanted.
“As past and present fuse
ominously, both father and
son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes,
darkness comes from unexpected places,” it said.
Like many of his fans,
Potter has now grown up
and has three children with
his wife Ginny Weasley, the
sister of his friend Ron.
He still has his trademark
round-rimmed glasses and
the scar on his head, a permanent reminder of his
nemesis Lord Voldemort,
but must now help his
youngest son Albus confront the family’s dark past.
Printed at Al Watan Al Omaneya Printing Press
17
TOP COCOA GRINDING COUNTRIES
2015/’16 forecasts
2014/’15 estimates
Ivory Coast
Netherlands
Germany
U.S.
Indonesia
Ghana
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
26 SHAWWAL 1437
Banking sector weathers
oil price slide, says Zadjali
Brazil
Malaysia
0
200
400
600
thousand tonnes
Source: International Cocoa Organization.
CBO tells lenders to avoid any risks in external markets
G. Cabrera, 09/06/2016
STAFF REPORTER
MUSCAT
BIZ BYTES
MoF decides
to transfer
shares to OIF
MUSCAT The Ministry
of Finance which holds
shares in Oman and
Emirates Investment
Holding has decided
to transfer them in the
name of Oman Investment Fund. The company said the ministry
decided to transfer
5.28 million equity
shares, representing
4.33 per cent equity
stake, in the name of
OIF owned by government pursuant to an
internal decision on
management of government investments.
INDICATORS
Draft Rates
India Rs.
Pakistan Rs.
Bangladesh Taka
Philippine Peso
174.00
272.10
203.50
122.10
Source: Oman & UAE Exchange
THE BANKING SECTOR
in the Sultanate has been
able to withstand the global
oil price decline and operate
in full swing, offering more
banking facilities to boost
the commercial environment, according to CBO
Executive President HE
Hamoud Bin Sangour Al
Zadjali.
In his foreword to
Markazi magazine, Zadjali
said this was confirmed in
the recent annual bankers’
meeting which was attended
by chief executives, general
managers and officials from
local banks.
The meeting aimed at
enhancing the existing cooperation and co-ordination
between banking institutions and the CBO on the
one hand and creating infallible solutions to issues
and challenges facing the
banking sector and facilitating all its tasks on the
other. “This will play a part
The headquarters of CBO. The central bank in its Al Markazi magazine said credit
offered by banks to the private sector witnessed an increase of 11.4 per cent.
in improving the Omani
economy and backing up
the exerted efforts for the
purpose of diversifying
sources of national income
in the country,” he said.
But Zadjali had a word
of caution, saying that in
spite of these efforts, the
challenges were clear and
present, casting a shadow
on growth due to the continuous decline in global
oil prices. This naturally
impacts growth of the sector in one way or another.
Regardless of these
challenges, banks have
drawn up a roadmap for
themselves since last year
and succeeded in facing
challenges, which enabled
them to achieve positive
results during the past
Opec output to reach Financial firms
top performers
record high in July
on MSM in H1
LONDON
OPEC’S OIL OUTPUT
is likely in July to reach its
highest in recent history,
a Reuters survey found, as
Iraq pumps more and Nigeria manages to export additional crude despite militant
attacks on oil installations.
Top Opec exporter Saudi
Arabia has kept output close
to a record high, the survey
found, as it meets seasonally
higher domestic demand
and focuses on maintaining market share rather
than trimming supply to
boost prices.
Supply from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has risen
to 33.41 million barrels per
day (bpd) in July from a revised 33.31 million bpd
in June, according to the
survey based on shipping
data and information from
industry sources.
The increase in Opec
production has added to
downward pressure on
prices. Oil has fallen from a
2016 high near $53 a barrel
in June to $42 as of Friday,
pressured also by concern
about weaker demand.
Opec’s production could
rise even further should
talks to reopen some of
Libya’s oil facilities succeed. Conflict has been
keeping Libyan output at a
fraction of the pre-war rate.
“This could shortly release more oil into an already abundantly supplied
market,” Carsten Fritsch
of Commerzbank said,
although earlier hopes of
a restart have not been realised.
“It therefore remains to
be seen whether this time
will be different.”
Opec’s output has
climbed due to the return
of former member Indonesia in 2015 and another,
Gabon, this month, skewing
historical comparisons. July’s supply from the remaining members, at 32.46
million bpd, is the highest
in Reuters survey records,
starting in 1997.
Supply has also risen
since Opec abandoned in
2014 its historic role of
cutting supply to prop up
prices as major producers
Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran
pump more.
In July, the biggest increase of 90,000 bpd has
come from Iraq, which has
exported more barrels from
its southern and northern
ports despite a pipeline
leak that restrained south-
ern exports.
Nigeria, where output has
been hit by militant attacks
on oil facilities, has nonetheless exported slightly
more in July than June,
the survey found, although
crude exports remain significantly below the 2 million bpd seen in early 2016.
Output in two major producers is largely stable. Iran,
Opec’s fastest-growing
source of supply expansion this year after the lifting of Western sanctions,
has pumped only 20,000
bpd more as the growth
rate tops out for now, the
survey found.
Saudi output in July was
assessed at 10.50 million
bpd, close to June’s revised
rate and the record 10.56
million bpd reached in June
last year.
“Exports are down a bit,
offset by higher direct burn
and slightly higher refinery
runs,” said an industry
source who monitors Saudi
output. “For the time being,
I’m sticking to my numbers, which suggest supply
is flat.” Of countries with
lower production, Libyan
output edged down due to
the stoppage of a major oilfield, Sarir.
Reuters
MUSCAT
THE FINANCIAL SECtor has been the best performing sector on the
Muscat Securities Market
(MSM) at the first half of
2016 as it closed at 7266
points; an increase by 789
points, compared to the
same period last year.
The good performance is
attributed to the improved
results of MSM listed financial companies especially
banks and investment companies, which performed
well and managed to both
keep pace with investor’s
aspirations and achieve
good growth in the financial indicators despite oil
prices drop.
During the first half of
2016, all MSM listed banks
performed well. The initial
data point out that
Bank Muscat net profit
increased to 90.4 million
rials compared to 89.8 million rials in the corresponding period last year. The net
profits of National Bank of
Oman (NBO) increased to
29.4 million rials compared
to 28.1 million rials. The
net profits of Bank Dhofar
increased to 22.6 million
rials compared to 26.1 million rials last year.
The initial data also shows
that the net profits of HSBC
Oman increased by 51.9
Galfar wins
5.29m-rial
OETC tender
STAFF REPORTER
MUSCAT
GALFAR ENGINEERING
and Construction has been
awarded Oman Electricity
Transmission Company’s
tender to upgrade the Adam
grid station for 5.29 million
rials. The completion period
is 15 months in addition to
six weeks for mobilisation
and the company expects
reasonable income from it,
according to an MSM filing.
In March, the company
had won a major contract to
build Yabal Khuff project on
plot for Petroleum Development Oman (PDO).
per cent i.e. from 5.2 million rials to 7.9 million rials.
On the other hand, Bank
Nizwa managed to reduce
its losses to 727,000 rials
compared to 3.2 million
rials loss at the first half of
2015. Al izz Islamic Bank
also managed to reduce its
loss from 3 million rials to
about 2.1 million rials.
Sector wise, the financial
sector index grew by 12.1
per cent compared to 7.9
per cent by the industrial
sector index, 6.8 per cent by
MSM 30 index, 5.8 per cent
by service sector index and
3.6 per cent by the Sharia
index.
The financial sector
sample includes six banks
namely Bank Muscat, Bank
Dhofar, Ahlibank, Bank Sohar, Bank Nizwa and HSBC
Oman Bank. It also includes
6 investment companies
namely Al Anwar Holding,
Gulf Investment Services,
Oman Emirates Investment Holding, Ominvest,
Sharqiyah Investment Holding, in addition to a single
insurance company “Oman
United Insurance”.
The market value of the
financial sector sample is
about 3.1 billion rials or
34 per cent of MSM listed
joint stock companies’ market value, which is about 8.9
billion rials.
Oman News Agency
year whether in terms of
deposits, banking facilities or profits. The first
months of the current year
indicate the achievement
of good results by banks
where the overall assets
of commercial banks increased by 9.1 per cent to
28.6 billion rials in March
compared to 26.2 billion
rials during the same period last year.
The credit quota for institutions and individuals
amounted to almost 66.6
per cent of total bank assets
with an increase of 9.5 per
cent or 19.1 billion rials.
Credit offered by banks
to the private sector witnessed an increase of 11.4
per cent amounting to 16.8
billion rials. Investment in
securities stood at 2.9 billion rials, in government
development it was up by
29.2 per cent to 864.7
million rials and government treasury bonds to
about 401.3 million rials.
Investments of commercial
Please trun to Page 18
Bank Dhofar to
raise 40m rials
via rights issue
STAFF REPORTER
MUSCAT
BANK DHOFAR PROposes to raise 40 million
rials through a rights issue.
According to a filing to the
Muscat Securities Market,
the lender said the bank’s
board of directors had approved a rights issue at an
issue price of 200 baisas
per share with a nominal
value of 100 baisas and a
premium of 98 baisas, besides the issue expense of
2 baisas.
The issue is subject to
all necessary regulatory
approvals. Details of the
issue, including the rights
ratio and the record date will
be announced after receipt
of the approvals.
The board resolution
supersedes and replaces
the rights issue which was
approved on March 29,
2015, the filing adds.
The issue proposal comes
at a time when the bank has
gone way ahead with its
plans for merger of Bank
Sohar. Both the institutions
have agreed to a ratio where
every share of Bank Dhofar
will be exchanged for 1.29
shares of Bank Sohar.
The two entities had told
MSM in early June that
their boards had reached
an agreement on the share
swap ratio and other terms
and conditions would be
documented in a merger
agreement which would be
subject to regulatory and
shareholders’ approval.
Bank Dhofar made the
first move way back in 2013
and there had been a number of discussions over the
years till the agreement was
reached.
The merger is expected
to create the Sultanate’s
second-largest bank with
assets worth 7 billion rials.
During the first six
months ended June 30,
2016, Bank Dhofar posted
a 15.65 per cent rise in net
profit at 26.17 million rials
from 22.63 million rials in
the same period in 2015.
The bank’s total assets
grew by 12.11 per cent to
3.8 billion rials from 3.39
billion rials the previous
year.
18
BUSINESS
OMAN TRIBUNE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
Saudi economy
set to pick up
momentum in ’17
Banking
sector
weathers oil
slide: Zadjali
IMF sees inflation easing to 2%
WASHINGTON
SAUDI ARABIA’S REAL
GDP growth is expected
to slow to 1.2 per cent in
2016, but recover to 2 per
cent in 2017 as the pace of
fiscal consolidation eases
and to settle around 2.25
-2.5 per cent over the medium-term, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) has
said.
Inflation has risen in recent months to 4 per cent
as energy and water prices
have been increased, and
is expected to ease to 2 per
cent in 2017, the IMF said.
Bank deposits have declined, but growth of credit
to the private sector remains
strong. Capital buffers
are high, NPLs low, and
banks are well provisioned
against loan losses. SIBOR
has moved higher in recent
months and the spread to US
rates has widened as liquidity
has tightened, it said. SAMA
relaxed the loan-to-deposit
ratio in February and increased its reverse repo rate
by 25 basis points to 0.5 per
cent in December.
Based on current policies, the fiscal deficit is projected to narrow to 13 per
cent of GDP in 2016. Nonoil revenues are expected to
increase, while spending
restraint, particularly on
the capital side, will result
in a substantial reduction in
expenditure, IMF said.
The fiscal deficit is
expected to be financed
through a mix of deposit
drawdown and domestic and
international borrowing.
The current account deficit is projected to narrow
to 6.4 per cent of GDP in
2016 and then move close
to balance by 2021 as oil
prices partially recover.
SAMA’s NFA are expected
RECOVERING
Based on
current
policies, the
fiscal deficit
is projected
to narrow to
13 per cent of
GDP in 2016
to fall further in 2016, but
the pace of decline will slow
over the medium term.
Directors agreed that
the exchange rate peg to
the US dollar is the best
option for Saudi Arabia
given the current structure
of its economy, and emphasised that a continued
fiscal adjustment is needed
to support the peg. They
saw merit in reviewing the
peg periodically to ensure it
remains appropriate, given
the desired evolution of the
economy away from its current reliance on oil.
Saudi Arabia has begun a fundamental policy
shift to respond to low oil
prices. The government
has introduced a series of
reforms over the past year
and has recently set out
plans for a bold and ambitious transformation of the
Saudi Arabian economy
in Vision 2030 and the
National Transformation
Program. Diversifying the
economy, creating jobs
for nationals in the private
sector, and implementing
a gradual, but sizable and
sustained fiscal consolidation to reach budget balance
in five years are key policy
priorities, IMF noted.
IMF noted that Saudi
Arabia faces important challenges stemming from the
decline in oil prices. They
welcomed the authorities’
timely response, which,
supported by sizeable fiscal
buffers and a strong and resilient financial system, has
maintained macroeconomic
growth and stability.
Agecncies
File
Pedestrians walk past an advertising poster for ICICI Bank in Mumbai. ICICI Bank reported a 25 per cent fall
in first-quarter net profit.
Bad loan provisions squeeze
ICICI Bank net profit in Q1
MUMBAI
ICICI BANK, INDIA’S
top private sector lender
by assets, reported firstquarter profit fell about
25 per cent as its provisions for bad loans more
than doubled.
Standalone net profit
fell to Rs22.32 billion
($334.62 million) for its
fiscal first quarter to June
30, from Rs29.76 billion
a year earlier, the Mumbaibased bank said in a statement on Friday. The profit
was, however, ahead of
analysts’ expectations of
Rs21.99 billion.
Indian banks have seen
their bad loans surge after
an asset quality review ordered by the Reserve Bank
of India, which has set a
March 2017 deadline for
a sector clean-up, as high
bad loans hobble credit
growth.
ICICI’s gross bad loans
as a percentage of total
loans rose to 5.87 per cent
as of end-June, from 5.82
per cent three months earlier. On the top of its gross
bad loans of about Rs272
billion, the bank said it
has about Rs387 billion of
loans on its watch list.
“Our focus is to contin-
ue to work on resolution
of most of these large exposures,” Chief Executive
Chanda Kochhar said on a
conference call, referring
to the watch list loans.
The bank, which is also
listed in New York, is setting up a dedicated credit
monitoring group to help
tackle a rise in sour assets
in the corporate and smalland-medium enterprises
segments, she said.
ICICI’s
provisions
jumped to Rs25.15 billion in the June quarter,
from Rs9.55 billion a year
earlier. The provisions
were less than the Rs33.26
billion made in the March
quarter.
The bank’s domestic
loans in the quarter grew
17 per cent from a year
earlier, with loans to individuals rising at a faster rate
of 22 per cent.
ICICI Bank’s life insurance unit has filed for an
initial public offering that
if it goes through will be
India’ biggest IPO in six
years. The bank, which
is selling a stake of about
12.6 per cent in the joint
venture with Britain’s
Prudential, will get all the
proceeds from the IPO.
Agencies
banks in foreign securities
witnessed a rise of 40 per
cent to reach 824.8 million
rials.
“We hope these rates
increase with the improvement of global oil
prices and the associated
improvement of economic
circumstances. It is no secret that the continuous decline of oil prices is a cause
for concern as it leads to a
decline in government
financial returns which
eventually impacts economic growth and the flow
of government deposits
in banks as well as raises
concerns about the cost of
funding,” he said.
Banks have been asked
to explore opportunities
available for providing
funds in the local market
and avoid exposure to
any risks in external markets. They have also been
urged to offer credit to local production sectors and
be vigilant when exposed
to the securities market
and set a benchmark for
lending to the real estate
sector.
Banks need to develop a
conservative approach that
is compatible with the action plans of each entity and
the types of risks they could
face as a result of the new
economic circumstances
emerging from the oil price
decline. Also, they need to
support all initiatives and
ideas that aim at economic
diversification, he said.
Flagging non-oil business dims GCC outlook Dentons helps
DUBAI
ECONOMISTS HAVE
cut growth forecasts for
most of the rich oil exporting countries of the Gulf as
non-oil business activity
slows because of government austerity measures,
a quarterly Reuters poll
found.
Last year, growth in the
six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council began to lose
steam as governments
reduced spending to limit
big budget deficits caused
by cheap oil.
This year, those austerity
measures - including cuts
to energy price subsidies,
smaller bonuses for state
employees, and higher
taxes and fees - are start-
ing to make a major dent in
consumers’ income, slowing economies further.
Median forecasts for
gross domestic product
growth this year have been
cut for four of the six GCC
countries, including the
biggest, Saudi Arabia and
the UAE, the poll of 18
economists showed. Forecasts were cut for next year’s
growth in five countries.
In Saudi Arabia, the median prediction for GDP
growth this year was lowered to 1.2 per cent from
1.5 per cent in the last
Reuters poll, conducted in
April. Growth in 2017 is
now expected to be 1.7 per
cent instead of 1.9 per cent.
First-quarter Saudi GDP
data, released by the gov-
ernment earlier this month,
showed the non-oil sector
shrank 0.7 per cent from a
year earlier, its worst performance in at least five years.
“We think that tighter fiscal policy will continue to
weigh on the non-oil sector
for the foreseeable future,”
said London-based Capital
Economics, which forecasts
growth of just 0.3 per cent
in Saudi Arabia this year,
the second-lowest estimate
among the 18 analysts.
“At the same time,
growth in the oil sector
has slowed sharply in recent months and, given the
backdrop of ample global
oil supplies, we expect it to
remain sluggish for the rest
of this year.”
Reuters
Gulf Line Transport gets 2 Higer coaches
MUSCAT
SALALAH-BASED GULF
Line Transport is a prominent luxury travels company. Running long distance
routes from Salalah to Yemen, Muscat and Dubai,
the comfort and safety of
the travelers are of utmost
importance to the company. Every coach is strictly
scrutinised, checking for
the highest standards in
the aforementioned parameters and more.
When
considering
the expansion of their
25-coach fleet, Gulf Line
Transport turned to Towell
Auto Centre for the best.
Recently, Towell Auto
Centre’s General Manager, Riyadh Ali Sultan
handed over two brand
new Higer Coaches, to Said
Abdulla Al Rawas, CEO of
Gulf Line Transport. The
coaches have started plying
Salalah-Yemen-DubaiMuscat.
Each new Higer coach
is a 12 meter long beauty,
with a 550 Ltr. fuel tank,
that embodies comfort,
safety and durability. The
Cummins Euro III engine
with ZF transmission,
SACHS clutch, TELMA retarder and ZF power steering coupled with WABCO
air brake system and ABS
ensures easy handling. The
air suspensions promise a
smooth and stable ride.
The coach boasts of spacious interiors with 49 + 1
+ 1 seats, each with 3-point
seat belts. Furthermore, an
effective roof mounted AC,
plug-in facility to charge
handheld, mobile and laptop devices, and an HD
player with 2 LCD monitors convert a mundane
drive into an exciting road
trip for the passengers.
For the passengers’ convenience and safety, there
are 2 doors, two emergency
rooftop exits, and luggage
compartments with parallel
opening doors.
Higer automobiles can
be found at the Towell Auto
Centre (TAC), Ghala (adjacent to Bridgestone tires).
Operational for more than
5 years, TAC carries a wide
range of the Higer models,
inclusive of luxury coach,
big buses & school buses.
Their durability, stability
and comfort has made Higer
buses the chosen and favourite of top travel and logistic
firms.
Oman Tribune
Qurayyat IWP
award contract
MUSCAT
GLOBAL LAW FIRM
Dentons has advised
Qurayyat Desalination, a
special purpose company
formed by Hyflux and Modern Channel Services, to
award a $250 million contract for design, build, own
and operate the Qurayyat
desalination project as part
of the Qurayyat Independent Water Project (IWP).
The project was awarded by government-owned
Oman Power and Water
Procurement Company
(OPWP) under a 20-year
water purchase agreement
with OPWP and adds another 200,000 cubic metres
per day of drinking water
to the country’s water supply. The transaction reached
financial close in June and
involved cross-border elements across Oman, Singapore, the UK and the UAE.
Dentons ME senior partner, Neil Cuthbert, said,
“We are delighted to have
worked with Hyflux and
Modern Channel Sources
on the Qurayyat independent water project, particularly as it was Hyflux’s first
Build-Own-Operate (BOO)
project in the Middle East”.
The Dentons team was
led by Neil Cuthbert and
assisted by partners Ian
McGrath in Istanbul, Ian
Dalley in Abu Dhabi and
Paul Sheridan, Andrew Figgins and Sadaf Buchanan in
Muscat, as well as Dubai associates Carina Onzer and
Mona Hammadi, Muscat
associates Justine Harding,
Darshi Sanganee, Yasser
Taqi, Umaima Al Wahaibi
and Fatma Makki, and Muscat trainee Fatma Al Rashdi.
Last month Hyflux said
that its subsidiary has
achieved financial close for
the non-recourse project
financing of Qurayyat Independent Water Project.
The $185-million facility is being provided to the
Qurayyat Desalination by
Mizuho Bank, Standard
Chartered Bank, Dubai International Financial Centre
Branch and Clifford.
Agencies
BUSINESS
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
Daimler to skirt US tariffs with new unit
DETROIT
GERMAN AUTOMAKER
Daimler broke ground this
week on a $500 million
plant in Charleston, South
Carolina to build vans, with
the company hoping at last
to avoid steep US import
tariffs.
When the factory comes
online by the end of the decade, it may also help the
company pay lower wages
and circumvent labour
unions.
Volker Mornhinweg,
head of Mercedes-Benz
Vans at Daimler, said the
key reasons for putting the
plant in Charleston were the
city’s excellent port operations and logistics and because Daimler already operates a factory next door.
Avoiding the 25 per cent
tariff that the US puts on
imports of commercial vehicles was also crucial.
“We won’t have to pay
the tariff,” he said, adding
that the Mercedes-brand
Sprinter vans were currently built in Dusseldorf,
Germany and then shipped
to the US where they are reassembled.
“It’s a logistical nightmare,” Mornhinweg said.
South Carolina wages are
markedly lower than those
in Germany and the governor, Republican Nikki
Haley, opposes organised
labour.
“We discourage any
companies that have
unions from wanting to
come to South Carolina
because we don’t want to
taint the water,” she told
The Greenville News, a local newspaper.
Assembly line workers
get $18 an hour in South
OMAN TRIBUNE
19
US economic
growth hits
slow lane in Q2
Consumer spending rises 4.2%
WASHINGTON
File
Chairman of Daimler and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars Dieter Zetsche reveals the new Mercedes GLE Coupe
during the 2015 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Daimler broke ground this week on a
$500 million plant in Charleston, South Carolina.
Carolina, according to Labor Department figures.
Hourly wages for German
autoworkers are closer to
$37 an hour.
Frank Klein, director of
operations at MercedesBenz Vans, said the company’s practice was to pay a
“competitive” wage wherever it builds a plant.
According to Mornhinweg, the new Charleston
plant should be operational
around 2020, following the
introduction of the next
Sprinter model, with some
versions capable of running
on electricity or featuring
driverless navigation.
The new Sprinter will
also fall under Daimler’s
Freightliner brand, part of
its truck operations.
Daimler
representatives touted their success
in the US commercial van
market, which represents
nearly a half-million newly
registered units per year
and had traditionally been
dominated by General
Motors, Ford Motor
Company and what is now
known as Fiat Chrysler
Benz Vans USA. Mathias
Geisen, head of marketing for Mercedes vans in
the United States, said the
Ford Transit van had quickly captured 50 per cent to
60 per cent of the market
while Mercedes held 8 per
The unit may also help the company pay
lower wages and circumvent labour unions
Automobiles. The arrival
of the Sprinter on the US
market helped popularise
the European style of van,
spurring American makers
to market their own similar,
taller versions, suitable for
different trades and cargos.
The van can also be outfitted as an ambulance,
according to Bernhard
Glaser, head of Mercedes-
cent to 9 per cent based on
current sales.
The courier service FedEx now uses the Sprinter,
he noted.
Geisen said Ford enjoyed
a robust, nationwide network of dealerships, while
the Ram ProMaster was
built in Mexico and therefore not subject to US trade
barriers.
The Charleston plant will
help even the playing field
for Daimler, Geisen said.
Daimler is not the only
automaker to set up operations in the southern United
States, where organised labour has struggled to make
inroads. Volkswagen, Nissan and Honda also maintain auto plants which the
United Automobile Workers has yet to bring into its
fold.
According to Glaser,
Mercedes-Benz vans have
risen in US sales for five
straight years. One of the
Sprinter’s selling points will
be its easy customisation
to meet each customer’s
needs.
“You’re the expert in
your trade and your van
is the tool to get the job
done,” Glaser said.
Agencies
THE US ECONOMY
grew more slowly than expected in the second quarter of 2016, rising a modest
1.2 per cent, according to
an advance estimate released by the Commerce
Department.
The department also revised first-quarter growth
estimates for gross domestic product downward
to 0.8 per cent from 1.1
per cent, reflecting results
in residential investment,
private inventories and exports that were poorer than
previously reported.
The second quarter
results were well below
analysts’ expectations of
2.6 per cent growth and
could temper the cautious
optimism expressed at this
week’s meeting of the US
Federal Reserve. The Fed
had left rates untouched
but acknowledged a somewhat rosier economic picture, leaving open the possibility of rate increases in
2016 should conditions
continue to improve.
The results come in the
middle of a hotly contested
presidential election in
which voters’ economic
prospects are a key issue.
“Today’s report underscores that there is more
work to do and the presi-
dent will continue to take
steps to strengthen economic growth and boost
living standards,” Jason
Furman, chairman of the
Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement
issued by the White House.
The statement noted a
strong rise in consumer
spending at 4.2 per cent.
The small rise in secondquarter growth reflected in-
PICKING UP
Disposable
personal income
rose 3.1 per
cent to $106.3
billion, faster
than the first
quarter’s revised
estimate of 2.5
per cent
creases in consumer prices
and exports and smaller
drops in federal spending
and non-residential fixed
investment, according to
the commerce department.
These gains were offset, however, by smaller
spending from state and
local governments as well
as from companies.
GDP is the broadest
measure of the monetary
value of goods and services
produced across the econ-
omy, including consumer
and government spending,
private investment and exports.
Disposable personal income rose 3.1 per cent to
$106.3 billion, faster than
the first quarter’s revised
estimate of 2.5 per cent.
Personal savings were
also down nearly 10 per
cent at $763.1 billion, according to the department.
Spending on national defence was down 3 per cent,
a lesser decrease than in the
3.2 per cent seen in the first
quarter. The Commerce
Department advance estimates are based on incomplete data and are subject
to regular revisions.
“While no doubt disappointing, the GDP data
are backward looking and
whether or not the Fed
hikes interest rates again
this year depends more on
the future data flow than
what happened back in
the second quarter,” said
Chris Williamson of IHS
Markit.
“However, the ongoing softness of growth in
the second quarter will
no doubt add to calls for
policymakers to err on the
side of caution and as such
greatly reduces the chance
of any rate hike before December.”
Agencies
Kia models’ details just a missed call away Most EU banks
MUSCAT
NOW, IT TAKES JUST
one missed call on 22 31
41 51 (no charges) to know
any information about Kia.
In the words of the spokesperson, “For our customers
who have pressing engagements and packed schedules, we have set up a dedicated number to answer any
query related to features,
colours, price, models
availability, promotions &
offers on Kia models. This
is yet another reflection of
our untiring efforts to connect with every customer,
everywhere in Oman, not
just through the number but
also via Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube & Instagram.”
According to a customer
who used the facility, “The
number 22 31 41 51 is easy
to remember and there are
no charges attached to it. All
that one has to do is to give
a missed call and Kia will do
the rest. They will answer
any inquiry related to features, colours, price, models availability, promotions/
offers on Kia models...”
Adding to the customer’s
observation, the Kia spokesperson said, “Over the years,
Kia is making it convenient
for its customers to reach
out to it. Whether it is a oneon-one interaction in the
Kia showrooms, or through
social media including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube &
Instagram. If we look at the
recent accomplishments of
Kia Oman on social media,
then we will see that the KiaOman YouTube channel
won the Silver award at Oman
Tech award event 2016. The
KiaOman YouTube page has
close to 750,000 views. And
the KiaOman Facebook page
crossed the 50,000 likes
milestone.”
Kia Motors Corporation
(www.kia.com) – a maker
of quality vehicles for the
young-at-heart – was founded in 1944 and is Korea’s
oldest manufacturer of motor vehicles. Over 3 million
Kia vehicles a year are produced in 10 manufacturing
and assembly operations in
five countries which are then
sold and serviced through a
network of distributors and
dealers covering around 150
countries.
Kia today has over 49,000
employees worldwide and
annual revenues of $45 billion. It is the major sponsor
of the Australian Open and
an official automotive partner of Fifa – the governing
body of the Fifa World Cup.
Kia Motors Corporation’s
brand slogan – “The Power
to Surprise” – represents the
company’s global commitment to surprise the world
by providing exciting and
inspiring experiences that
go beyond expectations.
Kia in Oman is ranked
amongst the Top Distribu-
tors in the world. Reliable
International Automotive
(RIA), the distributor for
Kia in Oman provides a rewarding ownership experience for customers. Excellent product attributes and
unmatched facilities easily
ensure their absolute satisfaction, every mile of the
way.
No wonder then that
Reliable International Automotive has been ranked
amongst the top Kia distributors worldwide and
has been honoured with
prestigious accolades including the ‘Good Partnership award, ‘Family Like
Care’ Service award’, and
‘Kia ‘Distributor of Distinction’ award.
Oman Tribune
fail stress test
LONDON
BANKS FROM ITALY,
Ireland, Spain and Austria
fared worst in the latest European Union stress test,
which the region’s banking watchdog said on Friday
showed there was still work
to do in order to boost credit
to the bloc’s economy.
Eight years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers
sparked a global banking
meltdown, many of Europe’s banks are still saddled with billions of euros
in poorly performing loans,
crimping their ability to lend
and putting off investors.
“While a number of individual banks have clearly
fared badly, the overall
finding of the European
Banking Authority - that
Europe’s banks are resilient
to another crisis - is heartening,” Anthony Kruizinga at
PwC said.
Italy’s Monte dei Paschi, Austria’s Raiffeisen ,
Spain’s Banco Popular and
two of Ireland’s main banks
came out with the worst results in the EBA’s test of 51
European Union (EU) lenders. “Whilst we recognise
the extensive capital raising done so far, this is not
a clean bill of health,” EBA
Chairman Andrea Enria
said in a statement. “There
remains work to do.”
Agencies
By arrangement with Harvard Business Review
20
OMAN TRIBUNE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
People can identify if someone is lying only 54pc of the time, writes Leslie K. John
Measures
to prevent
deception
R
OBUST social
psychology research indicates
that people lie
— and lie often. One prominent study
found that people tell, on
average, one or two lies
every day. Negotiators are
no exception. Judging from
studies done in 1999 and
2005, roughly half of those
making deals will lie when
they have a motive and the
opportunity to do so. Deception is thus one of the
intangibles that negotiators
have to prepare for and take
steps to prevent.
Many people assume
that the solution is to get
better at detecting deception. There’s a widespread
notion that one can reliably
spot a liar through subtle
behavioural cues. But evidence doesn’t support that
belief. One meta-analysis
found that people can correctly identify whether
someone is telling a lie only
54 per cent of the time.
Is there anything you
can do to ensure you’re
not duped in a negotiation?
Yes, if you focus on prevention rather than detection.
There are several sciencebacked strategies that can
help you conduct conversations in a way that makes
it more difficult for your
counterpart to lie. Though
these methods aren’t failsafe, they will leave you
better positioned in your
dealmaking and help you
create maximum value.
Encourage
reciprocity
Humans have a strong
inclination to reciprocate
disclosure: When people
share sensitive information with us, our instinct
is to match their transparency. In fact, simply telling
people that others — even
strangers — have divulged
secrets encourages reciprocation. In a series of
studies that I conducted
with Alessandro Acquisti
and George Loewenstein,
we presented readers of
The New York Times with
a list of unethical behaviours, such as making a
false insurance claim and
cheating on one’s tax return. People who were
told that “most other participants” had admitted
doing those things were
27 per cent more likely to
reveal that they had done
Touch points are becoming
platforms in their own right,
writes Michael Schrage
S
likewise than were people
who were told that only a
few others had made such
admissions.
A good way to jumpstart reciprocity is to be
the first to disclose on an
issue of strategic importance. This strategy has
the added benefit of letting
you frame the negotiation,
which can enhance your
chances of finding breakthroughs.
Ask the right
questions
Most people like to
think of themselves as honest. Yet many negotiators
guard sensitive information that could undermine
their competitive position.
In other words, they lie by
omission, failing to volunteer pertinent facts.
The risk of not getting
the whole story is why it’s
so important to test your
negotiating
partners
with direct questions.
Research by Maurice
Schweitzer and Rachel
Croson found that 61 per
cent of negotiators came
clean when asked about
information that weakened their bargaining
power, compared to 0 per
cent of those not asked.
Unfortunately, this tactic
can backfire. In the same
experiment, 39 per cent
of negotiators who were
questioned about the information ultimately lied.
But you can go a long way
toward avoiding that outcome by posing your queries carefully. Research
by Julia Minson, Nicole
Ruedy and Schweitzer
indicates that people are
less likely to lie if questioners make pessimistic
assumptions (“This business will need some new
equipment soon, right?”)
rather than optimistic ones
(“The equipment is in good
order, right?”). It seems
to be easier for people to
lie by affirming an untrue
statement than by negating
a true statement.
Watch for dodging
Savvy
counterparts
often get around direct
questions by answering
not what they were asked
but what they wish they’d
been asked. And, unfortunately, we are not naturally
gifted at detecting this evasiveness. As Todd Rogers
and Michael Norton have
Touch points
define, design
user experience
found, listeners usually
don’t notice dodges, often
because they’ve forgotten
what they originally asked.
In fact, the researchers
discovered that people
are more impressed by
eloquent sidestepping
than by answers that are
relevant but inarticulate.
Dodge detection is improved, however, when
listeners are prompted to
remember the question.
In a negotiation, therefore,
dentiality, we may actually
raise their suspicions, causing them to clam up and
share less. My colleagues
and I have discovered that
strong privacy protections
can also increase lying. In
addition, we’ve found that
when questions are posed
in a casual tone rather
than a formal one, people
are more likely to divulge
sensitive information.
Cultivate leaks
‘People inadvertently leak information in
all kinds of ways, including own questions’
it’s a good idea to come to
the table with a list of questions, leaving space to jot
down your counterpart’s
answers. Take time after
each response to consider
whether it actually provided the information you
sought.
Don’t dwell on
confidentiality
Research shows that
when we work to assure
others that we’ll maintain
their privacy and confi-
People inadvertently
leak information in all
kinds of ways, including in
their own questions. For
example, suppose you are
in charge of procurement
for a firm and you’re about
to sign a contract with a
supplier who has promised
to deliver goods within six
months.
Before signing, he asks
you what happens in the
event of late delivery.
The question could be innocent, but it might also
signal his worries about
meeting the schedule.
When people leak mindlessly, the information
tends to be accurate.
Astute negotiators realise that valuable knowledge can be gleaned simply by listening to everything their counterparts
say.
Even if your counterpart
is determined to withhold
information, you can still
encourage leakage.
In a series of experiments, my collaborators
and I found that people
are much more likely to
let slip information about
their engagement in sensitive behaviours than
they are to explicitly divulge it. In one study, we
probed New York Times
readers about matters
such as lying about their
income.
We asked people in
one group if they had ever
engaged in specific activities. We took an indirect
approach with the other
group, asking participants to rate the ethicality of various behaviors
using one of two scales
— one scale if they had en-
gaged in the behavior and
a different scale if they had
not. Participants in the latter group were roughly 1.5
times likelier to admit (tacitly) to bad behaviour than
were people asked pointblank about their conduct.
In a negotiation, you might
use similarly indirect tactics to glean information.
Here’s one more strategy that might encourage your counterpart to
inadvertently show her
hand: Request contingency clauses that attach
financial consequences to
her claims. If she balks at
agreeing to them, it may
be because she’s lying. At
a minimum, such a reaction should prompt you
to probe further.
Lying surrounds us —
and can be a real impediment to the creation of
value in negotiation. The
good news is that deploying
science-backed strategies
can go a long way toward
bringing out the best in
negotiations — and in the
parties involved.
New York Times Syndicate
(Leslie K. John is an associate professor at Harvard Business School.)
USTAINABLE success requires the right
touch; sustainable digital success requires
the right touch points. Pokemon Go is already the fastest-growing mobile game
in US history, and it’s astonishing popularity
highlights how profoundly touch points — any
interaction between your customer and your offering — define and design user experience. Much
of Go’s global appeal comes from an augmented
reality sensibility that literally and figuratively
transforms real-world environments into digital
playgrounds. Touch points brilliantly coalesce
into “touch surfaces” and “touch constellations.”
But Pokemon Go’s accelerating success
shouldn’t obscure the fact that touch point transformation is becoming a transcendental design
driver for user experience across industries. Traditional user-experience definitions barely mention — let alone describe — “touch point design.”
But it’s increasingly clear that touch points are
becoming platforms in their own right.
Amazon.com’s Dash Buttons offer a superb
minimalistic example. Individually, they’re
simple, dedicated and disciplined to a specific
outcome. Collectively, they represent both a
platform and a portfolio of options for easy and
convenient purchase. With apologies to Nintendo’s Pokemon designers, Dash Buttons similarly
augment physical reality.
My current favourite example comes from Neta-Porter. The luxury fashion company had been
running a sale and sending my wife several colorful promotions encouraging her to shop one more
time. Nothing clever there. But the last mobile
message came with a touch point inviting her to
look at what goodies were left in her size. In other
words, the touch point encouraged and facilitated
a bespoke search. Of course she checked.
Four concurrent Ps make touch point transformation work. Touch points become:
Purposes: Networked digital technology has
turned the touch point from a “point of contact”
to an explicit “point of purpose.” The focus is on a
desired or desirable outcome. Something happens
that matters. Like Legos, targeted touch points
easily assemble into platforms that can deliver
personalised results. This holds as true for Tinder
as for Snapchat filters.
Prompts: They nudge, encourage and invite
the user to touch them, to take a specific action.
Please swipe me/press me/click me and something good will happen. This is as true for augmented reality games as new Jimmy Choos.
Probes: Touch points let users access more information and insight about the larger product
experience. Ideally, users learn just enough to
decide whether they want to do (or play or order)
more.
Perspectives: Touch points provide novel perspectives; that is, they enable users to see and/or
experience the service from different views and
angles. These perspectives can be visual or informational. Pokemon Go’s augmented reality and
Snapchat filters are perspective creators. They
make it easier to appreciate the touch point’s
probe and/or prompt.
Aligning these four Ps — or turning them into a
virtuous cycle of touch point personalisation and
customisation — will increasingly become one of
digital media’s important user-experience design
challenges.
(Michael Schrage, a research fellow at the
Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the
author of ‘The Innovator’s Hypothesis,’ ‘Who
Do You Want Your Customers to Become?’ and
‘Serious Play.’)
Customers who shop in stores tend to buy more as they make impulse purchases, writes Xueming Luo
O
NE of the biggest challenges
for brick-and-mortar retailers is finding a strategy to
compete with online-only
sellers such as Amazon.com. Although Wal-Mart and JC Penney, for
example, have invested substantially
in e-commerce operations to complement their physical stores, the economics facing these hybrid retailers remain
daunting. Both chains announced store
closings in 2016.
For retailers that operate both
stores and websites, the conventional
‘omnichannel’ strategy is to encourage shopping across channels so that
customers who shop only in stores will
begin also buying online, and vice versa.
Promotions and coupons are one way to
promote this behaviour, and retailers
such as Macy’s, Bed Bath and Beyond
and Home Depot routinely use them.
However, few retailers have closely
examined the profitability of such promotions. And they typically pay little
attention to a variable that may be particularly important when customers
are deciding whether to shop online or
in-store: the distance between home and
the nearest store.
To understand how these variables
interact to affect customer behaviour
and retailer profitability, a research
team led by Luo worked with a Chinese
Benefits of ‘omnichannel’ retailing
department store on its coupon strategy. The researchers randomly selected
56,000 members of the store’s loyalty
programme. On the basis of purchase
records, they identified 8,692 who
shopped exclusively online and 24,804
who shopped only in physical stores.
(They dropped the remainder, who already shopped in both channels, from
the study.) Some of the 33,496 targeted
customers were sent coupons redeemable only online; some were sent coupons good only in physical stores; and
some were sent coupons good in either
channel. Members of a control group
got no coupons at all.
The researchers then monitored purchases over the next week and compared
the coupon recipients’ behaviour — and
the effect on the chain’s profits, net of
coupon costs — with that of the control
subjects. For their analysis, they divided
the shoppers into two categories according to their proximity to a physical store.
The dividing line was 5 kilometres, a
distance that makes sense in a densely
populated urban area where many shoppers rely on public transportation.
Among customers who live d close to
a store, no type of coupon made a significant difference to shopping or profits.
For those customers, the researchers
concluded, the costs of getting to a store
were low, so no added motivation was
needed to prompt a trip.
Among customers who lived farther
away and had previously shopped only
online, the online coupon generated
twice as much profit as among the con-
retailers want customers to shop in both
channels, in the belief that it shows the
customer has a stronger relationship
with and is buying more from them.
Driving customers online also helps
physical retailers rationalise the huge
investments they’ve made in information technology to support their websites and mobile apps.
However, incentivising a store-toonline shopping
migration ignores
several key points:
Customers who
shop in stores
‘The more profitable play is to coax
tend to buy more,
online shoppers to come into your stores’
partly because
they make more
impulse purchases.
trol group, and the flexible coupon They’re also more willing to buy tactile,
increased profits by 800 per cent. But “experiential” goods such as apparel,
when distant shoppers who’d previously shoes and makeup. And they’re less
bought only in stores were given online- likely to compare prices, because that’s
only coupons, profits from them fell by harder to do in-store than online. “If
51 per cent.
customers come to your (physical)
In other words, encouraging online stores regularly, you should not encourcustomers to visit a store increased prof- age them to shop online,” Luo advises.
its, but incentivising in-store customers The more profitable play is to coax onto shop online decreased them.
line shoppers to come into your stores,
This may seem counterintuitive: Most where the environment can induce them
to spend more. “That’s the winning omnichannel strategy,” Luo says. How to do
that? The research shows that coupons
redeemable only in stores and targeting
previously online-only shoppers who
live some distance away can work well.
Another strategy, which Wal-Mart
and some other retailers are already
implementing, is to give online customers incentives (such as free shipping) to
have orders sent to a local store for pickup rather than delivered to their homes.
Finally, reducing the real or perceived costs of traveling to a store (by,
for example, locating stores near public
transit or ensuring ample parking) may
make distant online customers more inclined to visit.
The researchers are confident that
their insights apply to retailers in the
United States and other markets, although what constitutes living “close”
to a store will vary according to population density, car ownership and suburbanisation.
The results of this research are also
surprising given that many outside
observers believe that physical retailers should be shuttering stores more
aggressively. For example, a report is-
sued in April by Green Street Advisors,
a real estate research firm, says that US
department stores should close a combined 800 stores — about 20 per cent of
their locations — to bring costs in line
with sales per square foot, which have
dropped by 24 per cent over the past
decade. The retailers reject this advice:
They say it assumes that the sales from
a store that closes can be easily shifted
online, but that in fact it is very difficult
to win those sales back.
Luo points to another trend that
illustrates the advantages of having a
physical store as part of an omnichannel strategy: Companies that began as
online-only have started to invest in
brick-and-mortar locations.
For example, in May Amazon announced plans to open additional
physical stores (it already operates
one in Seattle). In these expansions,
Amazon joins formerly online-only
retailers such as Warby Parker (eyeglasses) and Bonobos (apparel) that
have opened physical stores. “Online
shopping is very goal-oriented and
transactional,” Luo says. “Traditional
retailers’ strength is the in-store shopping experience, and they need to play
that up.”
(Xueming Luo is a marketing professor
at Temple University.)
With less space, dream big
Finding comfort in togetherness
— PAGE 22
21
SUDAY JULY 31 2016
— PAGE 23
26 SHAWWAL 1437
Poetry that
strikes a
deep chord
A woman’s viral poem
about race started a
difficult conversation,
writes Colby Itkowitz
W
An Indian Oil employee
delivers a liquefied petroleum gas cylinder in
the village of Mangrauli, Uttar Pradesh, India.
LPG way for a smoke-free life
Saving lives main focus for cleaner fuel, write Dhwani Pandya, Debjit Chakraborty
K
AMLESHKUNwar, a mother
of three living
in a central
Indian village,
first used cooking gas to
prepare a meal about a
month ago. For years, her
family struggled with the
ash and smoke that comes
from burning wood, until
they received a free gas
connection from the government as it tries to change
how India’s poor cook.
Since May, state-owned
oil marketing companies
have distributed 1.8 million liquefied petroleum
gas connections under a
new program targeting the
extremely poor, according
to official estimates. The
government’s aim overall
is to increase penetration
to 80 percent, adding 100
million connections, over
three years, according to
Y.K. Gupta, an executive
director at Indian Oil Corp.,
India’s largest fuel retailer.
The renewed focus on
safer cooking options will
drive LPG use up from records as the government
tries to reduce the more
than 900,000 premature
deaths the Institute for
Health Metrics and Evaluation attributed to household air pollution in 2013.
It will also make India more
import dependent and
strain infrastructure. To
cope, Hindustan Petroleum
Corp Ltd. estimates it and
its peers will need to invest
$1.5 billion (100 billion
rupees) over the next few
years to build new plants,
expand old ones and lay
pipelines, plus additional
outlays on improving port
capacities.
“When you are pushed
to deliver something by a
target date, definitely there
will be stress in the system,
but that is good for the
system,” Mukesh Kumar
Surana, chairman of Hindustan Petroleum, said in
an interview from Mumbai.
“We will be pushed to work
harder. It will help us study
our assets better; lot of inefficiencies will get removed
in the process by force.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government
has earmarked 80 billion
rupees to provide free LPG
connections to women from
families living below the
poverty line, adding to at
least two other programs
An Indian Oil truck driver talks on the phone as he delivers liquefied petroleum gas
cylinders in the village of Mangrauli, Uttar Pradesh, India.
aimed at reducing the use
of fuels such as wood and
cow dung. The indoor and
near-home pollution generated by burning these is the
leading cause of premature
death in India after high
blood pressure, according
to Kirk R. Smith, a professor of global environmental
health at the University of
California, Berkeley.
Kamleshkunwar says four
other families in her village
of Bapaiya, Madhya Pradesh,
have benefited from the government’s program. She and
her husband are laborers,
and the gas connection is
one comfort in an otherwise
hard life, she explained. Too,
the hours they once spent collecting wood is time they now
spend with their children.
For Rita Sharma, 27, a
housewife in Mangrauli
village about 22 miles
from New Delhi, India’s
capital, a governmentsubsidized connection she
got about five months back
was one of the best gifts of
her 12 years of marriage.
“It has changed my life,”
the mother of three said.
“This is for women like
me. It brings an end to the
tears.”
LPG consumption was
already growing at a steady
clip in India as it spread
from urban, to semi-urban
and rural areas. Usage has
climbed at an average of
7 percent annually since
2000, touching a record
19.5 million tons in 201516, according to government data. Overseas purchases have grown more
quickly and are poised to
overtake domestic supply
this fiscal year, according
to Ashutosh Jindal, the joint
secretary for marketing at
the Ministry of Petroleum
and Natural Gas.
Some experts fear the
government’s push to accelerate LPG adoption will
be hampered by inadequate
port and pipeline infrastructure, while new projects will
face delays in approvals as
well as hurdles to land acquisition and right of way.
“India no doubt suffers
from inadequate infrastructure in regards to LPG
imports,” said Sri Paravaikkarasu, a Singapore-based
consultant at Facts Global
Energy. “While there are
plans to expand import terminals and pipelines, they
are moving at a slow pace.”
Indian Oil’s Gupta estimates the nation will build
up to 7.5 million tons of
new LPG import terminals
over five years, including
a 2-million-ton terminal
at Paradip and two at Haldia on the east coast. The
Kandala terminal on the
west coast has been recom-
missioned while a number
of smaller ones are being
revived, he said. The three
state oil marketing companies are also adding 10,000
new distributorships and 15
new bottling plants.
Much of the focus of new
infrastructure investment
will be north-eastern and
central India, with states including Assam, West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand and
eastern Uttar Pradesh likely
to see the most consumption
growth, Gupta said.
“Making clean fuels
more available seems the
best way to bring clean
household environments
to poor people and also
reduce the burden on all
Indians due to household
contributions to reducing
ambient pollution,” Smith,
from the University of California, Berkeley, said in an
e-mailed response to questions. “The national program being laid out is truly
pioneering in this respect,
although of course much
needs to be done before it
is successful.”
Washington Post-Bloomberg
GETTING A RINGSIDE VIEW
Yuri Maltsev/ Reuters
Seagulls sit on a rope as a submarine sails during a rehearsal for the Navy Day parade in the far eastern port of Vladivostok, Russia.
HEN Savanna Hartman
watched the emotional
press conference of
Alton Sterling’s family
and saw the deceased man’s son collapse into sobs, she couldn’t shake the
image of the family’s pain. She couldn’t
stop crying for the black man shot dead
by police.
She sat and started to write all that she
was feeling. And in 15 minutes she’d
penned a poem in a style called spoken
word. She’d done the same after the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting. But this
time, when she recorded herself reading it live on her Facebook page, she
couldn’t have known her words would
be viewed more than 18 million times
through her social media page alone.
In the video, Hartman’s face fills the
vertical screen. Her voice quivers and
her eyes, rimmed with tears, are downcast for most of the 10-minute reading.
She describes racial tensions from the
perspective of someone keenly aware
of her own “white privilege.”
“ I wasn’t born rich, but don’t get it
twisted.
“See how I look? My white skin is my
privilege.
“I don’t get watched when I go to the
mall.
“If I get stopped for a ticket it doesn’t
end in a brawl.
“As a mother of sons I
thought, everyone is up
and arms about whether
[Sterling] was guilty or
not guilty, but he had a
child, he had a son and it
became very real to me,”
Hartman said in a recent
interview
“I don’t know what it’s like to go out
for snacks
“And end up lying dead on my back
“My car’s never been watched or followed around
“My kids don’t play in parks and then
get gunned down “
“As a mother of sons I thought, everyone is up and arms about whether
[Sterling] was guilty or not guilty, but
he had a child, he had a son and it became very real to me,” Hartman said in
a recent interview. “It hit me on a human
level that this was a man with a son. To
see someone treated as so invaluable,
and to see that ripple through his family,
that was very difficult for me, it really
stirred my heart.”
Hartman, 25, is a Christian whose
faith, she said, has taught her to love
everyone, especially the disenfranchised. She and her husband are
pastors, and recently opened their
own church in Tampa, Fla., which
they’ve named the Banner Church.
They want their congregation to
be filled with people from diverse
backgrounds, who may have been
ostracised and are looking for acceptance, she said. They want love
to be the shared experience.
That’s the message Hartman wanted
to impart with the video. She wanted it to
be a wake-up call for other white people;
a motivation for them to take responsibility for the racial biases that persist,
and to take action to work against them.
“ These aren’t opinions these are
black and white facts
“This isn’t about Black men, white
women, or cops
“It’s about senseless behavior that on
all sides must stop
“Whites aren’t all racist and Blacks
aren’t all thugs
“All our lives matter, we were all
bought with love “
Hartman posted the video on the evening of July 6, the day after Sterling was
killed during an arrest in a Baton Rouge
parking lot. The reaction from her Facebook friends was initially negative, with
people accusing her of speaking out of
turn. Hours later she considered taking it down. She never wanted to hurt
anyone with her words, she said, she just
wanted to start a difficult, but important
conversation.
22
HOME
OMAN TRIBUNE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
In an older apartment, modern glamour, writes Jura Koncius
A
LTHOUGH Nina
Dunham was born in
the “Mad Men” era,
she had never gravitated toward midcentury modern design. But when
she walked into an airy 1960s
lobby in Southwest Washington’s
River Park, with its floor-to-ceiling
windows, bright-blue tiles and lowslung Knoll furniture, she felt at
home.
“It looked straight out of ‘The
Jetsons,’ “ says Dunham, who
ended up buying a one-bedroom
co-op in the high-rise in 2006. “I
just loved it.”
Dunham hired Washington
designer Rachel Dougan of ViVi
Interiors to gut and decorate the
730-square-foot apartment, which
wasn’t looking so modern anymore.
Dougan reimagined the home’s
floor plan, expanding the kitchen
and bathroom and eliminating dark
hallways and poorly designed closets. She conjured up entertaining
zones, crafted clever storage solutions and added dramatic lighting
(while keeping everything petfriendly for Dunham’s two Somali
cats). “I approached this as if I was
designing a luxurious suite in a
boutique hotel,” Dougan says.
Dunham, 52, an assistant at a
private equity group who loves to
throw cocktail buffets and hockeywatching parties, says, “I wanted a
space that reflected who I was and
that made me happy.”
Dougan, 49, gave the place
a dramatic new look, with ethereal Fornasetti cloud wallpaper,
minimalist Jonathan Adler dining
chairs, kitchen cabinets lacquered
in turquoise and a Venetian silk
chandelier. “Knowing Nina is
not a full-on Jetson in her taste or
lifestyle, I adopted a rather broad
interpretation of mid-century to
include many lush - and, dare I say,
groovy - elements from the ‘60s and
‘70s,” Dougan says. “The aim was
to capture just enough of River
Park’s DNA to maintain a sense of
place in the overall design.” She
used the colors found in the building’s lobby - blue, black and cream
- throughout.
River Park is a rare oasis of midcentury design in Washington. It
sits on 11 acres and is made up
of 134 townhouses, some with
distinctive barrel roofs, and 384
apartments in twin high-rises with
distinctive aluminum grills. The architect was Charles M. Goodman,
who designed the original terminal
at Reagan National Airport.
Eric J. Jenkins, an architect
and professor at Catholic University and River Park resident, has a
copy of the original 1960s sales
brochure promising “a new kind
of living with all electric kitchens,
TV antennas and an arts and craft
room.” Jenkins says River Park
was one of the first desegregated
complexes in Washington and also
promoted aging in place.
The living room has several places to sit.
A Fortuny Scheherazade silk lighting fixture captures the glamorous and exotic
feeling of the apartment.
The bathroom has a dramatic, sparkly look.
Dunham had been living on
Capitol Hill when in 2006 her
mother, who was having health issues, wanted to move closer to her.
Both mother and daughter bought
one-bedroom units in River Park.
Her mother died in 2008; Dunham
eventually sold that unit and began
re-evaluating her lifestyle, considering upgrading to a townhouse or
moving elsewhere.
But in 2011, she met Dougan
at a book club, and they became
friends. They talked at length about
Dunham’s apartment and what she
could do with it. “I realised I didn’t
need more space,” Dunham says.
“So much of my life had been about
larger, better, more. Why shouldn’t
I just reuse my own footprint and
create the perfect apartment for
me?”
She hired Dougan in 2012, and
over the next few years, they shaped
a new layout and planned a vibrant
redecoration. Dunham got rid of
almost everything, except art, accessories and a few pieces that had
belonged to her mother.
“We agreed we wanted a vibrant
The kitchen, with its marble countertops, blue lacquered cabinets and fauxshagreen wallpaper, sparkles.
style, to bring the energy out in the
apartment. But it was important
that the space also be calming, a
Nina Dunham loved the design
vibe and the lifestyle of River
Park.
refuge,” Dougan says.
Today, when you open the front
door, you enter a glamorous jewel
box of a kitchen, with David Iatesta
antiqued mirrors, turquoise cabinets and white Italian marble counters. “Our goal was not to look like
a kitchen but to function beautifully
as one. We wanted you to come in
and feel like you are in a swanky
lounge,” Dougan says.
To maximise the living area,
Dougan divided it into spaces: an
eating and entertaining space with a
faux leather table that also serves as
a workspace; a lounge area for tea
or drinks with a William Yeoward
mirrored walnut cabinet for storage; and a living area with an olive
velvet sectional sofa. A black library
wall fitted with an ethanol fireplace
defines the right side of this main
room and minimises the 55-inch
TV. On another wall, two floating
white Besta consoles from Ikea
provide storage without taking up
floor space.
The bedroom is illuminated by
bold Fornasetti cloud wallpaper.
Dougan hand-cut the shapes of
the clouds to avoid having a hard
edge where the wall meets the ceiling. When the blue paint meets the
curves of the clouds, it makes the
room sort of float. “It’s like waking up in heaven every morning,”
Dunham says. A brass display cabinet from a 1930s department store
displays a collection of purses and
evening bags.
The bathroom was furnished as
meticulously as the other rooms.
The unexpected black-on-black
stylised floral wallpaper and black-
Rachel Dougan of ViVi Interiors
planned every inch of storage in the
remodelling project.
and-white marble floor tiles make a
dramatic backdrop. Although the
Pax storage closet is an affordable
find from Ikea, the custom pulls are
Lalique crystal.
Dunham says the whole project
was a gift to herself, after some
tough years taking care of her
mother. “This was about pleasing me. I didn’t really think about
the resale value of what we did. I
invested in what made me happy.”
Sometimes, she says, that’s the best
investment of all.
What’s on the walls in a small
space really matters
Wallcoverings and paint colors
make a big statement in a small
space, especially if you go bold, as
designer Rachel Dougan of ViVi
Interiors did at Nina Dunham’s
one-bedroom co-op. “Bold and
clever use of paint and wallcovering
can help make a sad corner cheery,
help with an awkward floor plan or
turn an architectural eyesore into
a feature,” Dougan says.
The living room shows the distinctive
grillwork on the outside of the building.
HEALTH
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
OMAN TRIBUNE
23
Finding comfort
in togetherness
Electrical brain stimulation can
boost memory during sleep
USE of electrical brain stimulation can enhance memory during sleep and strengthen memory in healthy people, says a
study. According to the researchers, transcranial alternating
current stimulation (tACS) is a non-invasive method that can
potentially help millions of people with conditions such as autism, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia and other major depressive disorders. For years, researchers have recorded electrical brain activity that oscillates or alternates during sleep,
which presents itself as waves on an electroencephalogram
(EEG). These waves are called sleep spindles and scientists
have suspected their involvement in cataloguing and storing
memories as we sleep. The researchers, for this study, have
reported selectively targeting sleep spindles -- burst of oscillatory brain activity visible on an EEG -- without also increasing other natural electrical brain activity during sleep. This
has never been accomplished with tDCS - transcranial direct
current stimulation where a constant stream of weak electrical
current is applied to the scalp.
Eat nuts to reduce
inflammation
IN a study of more than 5,000 people, researchers have
found that greater nuts consumption is associated with lower levels of biomarkers of inflammation, a finding that may
help explain the health benefits of nuts. Five or more servings of nuts per week or substituting nuts for animal proteins tied to a healthy profile of inflammatory biomarkers,
the findings showed. “Population studies have consistently
supported a protective role of nuts against cardiometabolic
disorders such as cardiovascular disease and Type-2 diabetes, and we know that inflammation is a key process in
the development of these diseases,” said corresponding
author Ying Bao from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in
Boston, Massachusetts. “Our new work suggests that nuts
may exert their beneficial effects in part by reducing systemic inflammation,” Bao noted. Previously Bao and her
colleagues observed an association between increased nut
consumption and reduced risk of major chronic diseases
and even death, but few prospective cohort studies had examined the link between nut intake and inflammation.
Premature infants more likely to
develop chronic kidney disease
PREMATURE infants are twice as likely to develop chronic
kidney diseases like acute kidney injury (AKI) and kidney failure compared with full-term babies, according a study. Acute
kidney injury (AKI), or a rapid decline in kidney function, is
common in premature infants which leads to higher likelihood
of dying or of needing an extended stay in the hospital.Acute
kidney injury in premature infants is common and predicts
poor clinical outcomes, suggested the study.The study also
stated that the amount of proteins excreted in the urine from
infants with kidney injury are different from those compared
to infants with healthy kidneys, according to a study. The
study, which appeared in the Clinical Journal of the American
Society of Nephrology (CJASN), could lead to better diagnostics related to kidney health in newborns. Because developing
better diagnostic tests for AKI could lead to better prevention
and treatment, the researchers assessed the potential of 14
urine proteins for indicating the presence of kidney damage.
Using single drops of urine from 113 preterm infants, they
found that several of these proteins are good candidates for
further research.
Breastfeeding ups brain
development in preemies
PRE-term babies who were fed more breast milk within the
first 28 days of life showed better levels of intelligence, academic achievement, working memory as well as higher brain
function by the age of seven, equivalent to infants at full-term,
finds a study. The findings showed that infants who received
predominantly breast milk on more days during their neonatal
intensive care unit (NICU) hospitalisation also had larger deep
nuclear gray matter volume -- an area important for processing and transmitting neural signals to other parts of the brain
-- equivalent to babies born full-term.Further, ingesting more
human milk correlated with better outcomes, including larger
regional brain volumes and improved cognitive outcomes at
age seven. “Our data support current recommendations for
using mother’s milk to feed preterm babies during their neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) hospitalisation,” said lead
author Mandy Brown Belfort, Neonatologist, at Brigham and
Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts, US. “Many mothers of
preterm babies have difficulty providing breast milk for their
babies, and we need to work hard to ensure that these mothers
have the best possible support systems in place to maximise
their ability to meet their own feeding goals,” Belfort added.
Hormone system that controls
BP may also affect your weight
A HORMONE system that controls blood pressure and is often targeted to treat heart disease can also lower metabolism
as well as promote obesity, says a study. Besides regulating
BP, the renin-angiotensin system (RAS), also plays a role in
controlling energy balance and metabolic rate and therefore
may be important in obesity. But, depending on where in the
body this hormone system is operating, it can have opposing
effects on weight gain, the researchers said. When the RAS is
elevated in the brain, it increases energy expenditure by increasing resting metabolism, resulting in weight loss. However, increased activity of the RAS circulating in the body (the
peripheral RAS) -- which occurs during obesity in humans and
experimental animals -- has the opposite effect, decreasing
resting metabolism and increasing weight gain. “At a very simplistic level, you can think of the brain RAS as the gas pedal on
metabolism and the peripheral (circulating) RAS as the brake,
with angiotensin as the driver,” said Justin Grobe, Assistant
Professor at the University of Iowa in the US.
These families who share a rare disease gathered for a reunion, writes Mark Guarino
T
HE first time Jake
Tompkins knew
something was
wrong was when
he fell off a stage.
He was a touring musician,
playing bass guitar. During
a club show in Oakland, he
couldn’t understand why he
couldn’t keep his balance, or
why his brain would tell him to
play one note and his fingers
would play another.
Then he hit the floor.
“People thought I was drunk
or on drugs,” he said. It was
neither. Tompkins had Friedreich’s ataxia (FA), a rare degenerative neuromuscular
disorder that affects about one
in 50,000 people in the US
When Tompkins, 36, was diagnosed in 2004, he did what
many afflicted with the disease
do: He hid. The New York native moved to North Carolina
where he knew no one and,
because he lost the ability to
play his instrument properly,
he became a recording engineer. For 10 years, he was in
denial. “I didn’t want people
to see me,” he said.
For most people with FA,
the symptoms often appear
during childhood: They lose
coordination of their arms and
legs, experience extreme fatigue and slurred speech,
and some develop heart conditions. Because the disease
is rare they are unlikely to
know someone else who has
it. “Scary and lonely,” is how
Tara Herman, a 40-year-old
single mother from the Buffalo, N.Y. area described it.
Diagnosed after her second
child was born, she said the
disease “makes you want to
be alone with your feelings.”
Which is why a grassroots
event in rural Indiana called
“FA Woodstock” has quietly
become akin to the storied
Woodstock festival for multiple generations affected by
FA who need one another.
Every year for three days in
July, people from all over the
US and in Europe who are
affected by the rare disease
travel to a 20-acre horse ranch
in LaPorte County, about 90
minutes southeast of Chicago. Like any excursion at
A horse barn is transformed into a crafts
center at FA Woodstock. Children and adults
made tie-die T-shirts together while inside the
barn horses were routinely taken out for children to ride.
the height of summer, they
camp, they swim, they make
crafts and they eat and drink
and watch fireworks. The
event, founded and hosted
by an Indiana couple whose
daughters have the disease,
is also a boon to researchers,
who have been using the access to so many patients to
help speed along a treatment
or even a cure.
The recent scene on the
grounds of the Flying H
Ranch looked like a family reunion: Children tossing
balls in a pool, their parents
enjoying pulled pork sandwiches under a tent, dogs
running after a trailer taking
kids to a fishing hole, teenagers huddled under the eaves
of a barn to make tie-die Tshirts, others leaning over
the rails to coo at a baby goat.
But it soon became apparent
that this family is bonded by
something other than blood.
Wooden tracks laid over the
grass allowed for easy wheelchair access to and from buildings and, in some corners,
adults in wheelchairs gathered
in clusters for lively conversation and cocktails.
Physical therapy and nutrition can slow the progression
of their disease, but those at
the reunion said the knowledge that FA could shorten
their lives sweetens the time
they spend with each other.
“Life is short and we only
have one life. We can’t wait
for somebody to find a cure
to live,” said Francois Saez,
48, who traveled to Indiana
from his home outside Paris.
“These people are my family.”
The event is a kind of a prolonged open house hosted by
Tom and Paula Hook. The
ranch is their home. The fifty
volunteers who keep things
running are all friends from
the area. Much of the food is
donated and local police officers pitch in for the fireworks.
Paula Hook said the impulse for starting the event
dates back to when her daughter Kati, now 33, received her
diagnosis at the age of 19,
and was reluctant to leave
her bedroom for years. “I
hated that,” she said. Carli,
a second daughter, was diagnosed shortly afterwards.
The first Woodstock was
meant to give them and other
young people their age an opportunity to hang out. With
the help of two friends, the
Hooks announced the event
on Facebook, threw together
some food, and on the first day
35 people showed up.
That number is now up to
105, many of them families.
“The parents get more out of
it than the kids do because it is
nice to know you are not fighting this alone,” Hook said.
Besides enjoying the sun and
outdoors, Hook said parents
compare notes. “Some of the
quirky things that you think
that only your child is doing,
these people will say ‘no, my
child does the same thing.’ It
just gives you a sense of belonging,” she said.
Louie Wilks-Reeves, 15,
traveled alone to Indiana
from Brighton in the UK
He says that even though his
friends back home know “the
basics” involving his disease,
it isn’t the same as spending
time with people who are just
like him. “It makes me feel less
alone,” he said.
Lisa Woods, 50, heard of
the event through a Yahoo
parents group in February.
Her 13-year-old daughter
Lilly was diagnosed five
years ago and just recently
Lisa can tell that “her friends
are starting to leave her behind.” So she drove the five
hours from Medina, Ohio to
give her daughter a chance to
meet new friends. In one day,
success: “It’s awesome!” Lilly
says on a pool break. Back
home, the teenager said she
is self-conscious that she
“walks like a zombie.” But
at the Hook ranch, she said
“they all have it so I’m not the
odd one out.”
The event’s success has
attracted the attention of the
Friedreich’s Ataxia Research
Alliance (FARA), an advocacy
group outside Philadelphia
that raises money for research.
So far there are about five clinical trials in process to find a
treatment and Felicia DeRosa,
the group’s communication
director, says “it’s a matter of
time” until one is approved.
“We have lost young people,
which is why we are pushing
so hard,” she said.
The German physician
Nikolaus Friedreich first
described the condition in
the 1860s but it wasn’t until
1996 when it was understood
as a gene alteration that limits
frataxin, a protein connected
to energy production, which
leads to the degeneration of
heart muscle and nerve cells.
The new food fad
The hip, orange super food is displacing French fries, writes Megan Durisin
T
HE once lowly sweet
potato is being reborn as a kind of hip,
orange super food.
Gone are the days when
the only time Americans
encountered the tuber was
mashed up and topped with
marshmallows alongside a
Thanksgiving turkey. Today, sweet potatoes turn up
everywhere, as healthier,
nutrient-dense alternatives to
French fries at burger joints or
colorful side dishes for swanky
restaurants. They have more
fibre and fewer calories than
white potatoes.
And the appeal isn’t just
among Americans, who are
eating twice as many sweet
potatoes as they did in 2002.
Demand also is surging in Europe. In the U.S., the world’s
biggest exporter, farmers are
planting their biggest crop in
five decades after their shipments overseas doubled in five
years to an all-time high. Nutritionists say consumers who
want to eat fewer grains and
processed foods are choosing
sweet potatoes.
“We’ve seen various different plants emerge as new
superstars,” said Kristin Kirkpatrick, manager of wellness
nutrition services at Cleveland
Clinic Wellness Institute.
“From a diet perspective,
people are so interested in really eating much closer to the
farm. Sweet potatoes could
be clumped in with beets and
kale and some of these other
things that are coming from
the ground and not coming
from a plant where people
are wearing hairnets.”
While Americans still eat
far more white potatoes -- as
French fries or just baked or
mashed -- demand has slowed.
Consumption was 113.7
pounds (51.6 kilograms) per
person last year, down from
125.4 pounds a decade ago,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Meanwhile,
sweet potatoes are catching on
and growers are marketing
them as a year-round staple.
In 2015, consumers ate 7.5
pounds, up from 4.5 pounds
in 2005 and 3.7 pounds in
2002, USDA data show.
Sweet potatoes, which
belong to a different plant
family than white potatoes
and yams, were already well-
established as a root vegetable in Central America and
South America by the time
explorer Christopher Columbus arrived in the late 1400s.
They were a big part of the
U.S. diet almost a century
ago, peaking in the 1930s,
before falling out of favor
over the next six decades.
With demand and output
now rebounding, the crop is
marketed in everything from
dog food to vodka.
“They’ve been phenomenally popular” at DMK
Burger Bar in Chicago, where
sweet-potato fries served
with a lemon-Tabasco aioli
have been on the menu since
the first restaurant opened in
the Lakeview neighborhood
in 2009, said David Morton,
co-founder of DMK Restau-
rants, which operates three of
the burger joints in the Chicago area, as well as locations
in Soldier Field. “They have
a very, very loyal following.”
Most of the U.S. crop is
grown in the Southeast,
where land has traditionally been used for tobacco
and cotton. More than half
comes from North Carolina.
Total domestic output last
year jumped 4.8 percent to
31 billion pounds, the highest
since 1946, USDA data show.
Seedings this year are
forecast at the highest since
1965, the USDA estimates,
providing a profit boost
to farmers at a time when
global surpluses of grain
and oilseeds have led to lower prices and losses on those
crops. A farmer can generate
$1,200 to $1,400 of operating income per acre growing sweet potatoes, up from
$827 in 2012, according to
an analysis by Elizabeth Canales, an assistant professor
of agricultural economics at
Mississippi State University.
By comparison, U.S. farm
income is falling for many
crops, and some Midwest
corn growers may barely
break even.
Sweet potatoes have a “really positive demand-side
story,” said Roland Fumasi,
a senior fresh-produce analyst with Rabobank Food &
Agribusiness Research and
Advisory in Fresno, California. “While you’ve seen production really, really rapidly
rise, price has also gone up
over that time period. It gives
those producers an incentive to spend more and drive
yields.”
Kornegay Family Farms in
Princeton, North Carolina,
sowed 800 acres of sweet
potatoes this year, up from
600 in 2015 and double the
amount a decade ago, said
Kim Kornegay-LeQuire,
vice president of the company’s sweet-potato packing and marketing unit. The
family, which began farming
in 1953, also grows tobacco,
soybeans, peanuts, wheat,
watermelon and asparagus.
It packages about 760,000
pounds of sweet potatoes a
week, with three-quarters of
that exported, she said.
24
CINEMA
OMAN TRIBUNE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
CELEB TALK
Gwyneth Paltrow to get
married?
ACTRESS Gwyneth Paltrow
reportedly wants to marry
American television writer, director and producer Brad Falchuk later this year. The “Iron
Man 3” actress› divorce from
rocker Chris Martin -- the father of her children Apple, 12, and 10-year-old Moses
-- was only finalised last week, but she has already
begun planning her nuptials to Falchuk and has even
enlisted the services of a wedding planner, reports femalefirst.co.uk. “Gwyneth and Brad are talking seriously about marriage and are in the process of picking a day at the end of autumn,” a source told Heat
magazine.
Jennifer Aniston will not
have Botox
ACTRESS Jennifer Aniston is
not keen on getting a Botox.T
he “Horrible Bosses” star -who recently penned an essay
slamming “objectification and
scrutiny of women” -- admits
she has learned to accept her
natural look after a boyfriend
told her she looked better
without any make-up, reports mirror.co.uk. “Why
would you want to (have Botox and) atrophy muscles
anyway? If you don›t work out, eventually everything drops,” Aniston told InStyle magazine.
Matt Damon returns to the ‹Jason
Bourne’ franchise as the off-the-grid
title character who is soon on the run
and out to get a crooked CIA director.
More mileage from old film
Kangana looking forward
to Ritesh Batra’s film
ACTRESS Kangana Ranaut will
reportedly do Ritesh Batra›s
film next year. She is said to
have “loved the script” narrated
by “The Lunchbox” fame director. According to a source close
to the actress, Kangana will do
Batra›s film in March after she
wraps up her mega project “Jhansi Ki Rani”. “She
loved the script that Ritesh narrated to her and is really looking forward to it,” added the source.
‘Jason Bourne’: Still running, fighting, shooting, writes Michael O’Sullivan
T
HE reunion of Matt
Damon and Paul
Greenglass in «Jason
Bourne,» an alliance
of star and director
that has previously produced
two successful sequels to «The
Bourne Identity,» is a naked bid
to resuscitate a franchise whose
increasing desperation was already apparent in «The Bourne
Legacy.» That 2012 spinoff of
the Robert Ludlum-inspired
spy series, which featured neither Damon nor Greenglass,
came and went without much
notice. Unfortunately, the
new film - despite an enjoyably
buzzy, of-the-moment plot that
is heavily fuelled by paranoia
over social-media-data mining
and government surveillance suffers from the same problems
that surfaced in Greenglass› earlier outings with Damon, «The
Bourne Supremacy» and «The
Bourne Ultimatum»: a reliance
on formulaic plotting and a fre-
netic-to-the-point-of-vertigo
visual style.
Just how frenetic is it? At
times, «Jason Bourne» looks like
it was shot by the monkey cam
from «Late Night With David
Letterman.» Its shaky, handheld
cinematography and seemingly
amphetamine-powered editing characterised by so many blurry
zooms, pans and quick cuts that
it makes a GoPro skateboarding
video look like «Citizen Kane» drive home the message that we
are potentially being watched
and listened to every second of
the day, no matter where or who
we are. That topical subtext is the
best thing about «Jason Bourne,»
but the unattractive appearance
of the film undercuts, rather than
serves, the theme.
As in Damon›s earlier appearances as Jason Bourne, an
amnesiac operative trying to
simultaneously piece together
and leave behind his past as
a remorseless, CIA-trained
DISCOVERY 0600 Gold
Divers 0700 Alaska The
Last Frontier 750 Cuban
Chrome 0840 Fat N’
Furious Rolling Thunder
0930 GI Dough 0955
Auction Hunters
1020
Dallas Car Sharks 1045
How Do They Do It? 1110
How Stuff’s Made 1135
Alaskan Bush People 1225
The Last Alaskans Look
Back 1405 GI Dough 1430
Auction Hunters
1455
Dallas Car Sharks 1520
Alaska The Last Frontier
1610 Cuban Chrome 1700
Fat N’ Furious Rolling
Thunder
1750
How
Stuff’s Made 1815 How
Do They Do It? 1840 Fat
lic the agency›s skeletons on a
WikiLeaks-style website run by a
Julian Assange stand-in (Vinzenz
Kiefer). But after Nicky›s attempt
to enlist her pal in whistleblowing goes violently south, Bourne
decides to hunt down the spooks
that got her, whether they›re penpushers, like the evil CIA director (Tommy Lee Jones), or hit
men, like the sociopath known
only as the Asset (Vincent Cassel). A revelation about Bourne›s
back story with that killer adds a
layer of personal vendetta to the
narrative, but it›s less interesting
than the film›s ripped-from-the
headlines themes.
Those come courtesy of a
company - part Facebook, part
Google - that has been in cahoots with the CIA to develop
a social-media platform called
Deep Dream that will vacuum all
your metadata (and actual data),
enabling the feds to know everything about everyone. When
the company›s Zuckerbergian
founder (Riz Ahmed) has second
thoughts about his deal with the
devil, he becomes a target of the
agency›s wrath as well.
All this plays out at a breakneck pace that is paradoxically
unengaging, despite the nonstop action. As Greenglass›s
«Bourne» films have grown ever
more hyperactive, you may find
yourself longing for the first,
Doug Liman-directed movie,
which actually set aside moments for quiet contemplation
and conversation before returning to scenes of Bourne running,
fighting and shooting people.
No more. There is barely time
to show a character arriving in
some new airport, let alone enjoying an in-flight meal. The plot of
«Jason Bourne» jumps from city to
city, and from car chase to shootout, with the pitiless efficiency of
the Asset, who leaves in his wake
an almost laughably large pile of
bodies and upside-down vehicles.
Kajal to play a homely wife
in next film
MOST popular for playing urban, glamorous roles to a tee,
actress Kajal Aggarwal will be
seen playing a homely wife to
Ajith Kumar in his yet-untitled
next Tamil outing. “Kajal will
be seen as Ajith›s wife in the
film. Unlike her previous roles, she will be seen in a
homely avatar,” a source from the film›s unit told
IANS. To be helmed by Siruthai Siva, the shooting of
the film will commence in Bulgaria from next week.
“The crew has already left. The actors will leave over
the weekend and Kajal will join in the second week
of August. The team has planned to shoot for 40 days
across several locations in Bulgaria. They might also
extend the trip,” he said. Tipped.
CINEMAS
TELEVISION
ANIMAL PLANET 0602
River Monsters
0649
Mutant Planet
0736
Swamp Brothers
0800
Swamp Brothers
0825
Dog TV 0915 Treehouse
Masters 1010 Penguins
On A Plane Great Animal
Moves 1105 The Wild
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The Wild Life Of Tim
Faulkner
1200
Dog
TV 1255 Ten Deadliest
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2135 The Wild Life Of Tim
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2300 Treehouse Masters
2355 Ten Deadliest Snakes
With Nigel Marven 0050
Gator Boys 0145 Gator
Boys 0240 Biggest And
Baddest
killing machine, the new film
features its hero living off the
grid. Opening near the border
between Greece and Albania,
where Bourne appears to be eking out a living fighting shirtless
hulks in bare-knuckle, no-rules
brawls, the movie quickly settles
into the comfortable groove
of every «Bourne» movie so
far. That›s Bourne on the run
-from Greece to London to
Berlin to Las Vegas, with stops
in between - from corrupt CIA
officials and thugs, all of whom
want to kill him before he can expose whatever secret assassination and/or espionage program
they are currently about to be
embarrassed by. («Treadstone,»
«Blackbriar» and «Iron Hand»
are some of the code names you
will hear. It hardly matters what
they mean.)
The film opens with Bourne›s
old co-worker and flame Nicky
(Julia Stiles) hacking into a CIA
database in order to make pub-
N’ Furious Rolling Thunder
1930
Street Outlaws
2020 The Island With
Bear Grylls 2110 Auction
Hunters 2135 Dallas Car
Sharks 2200 Impossible
Engineering 2250 Valley
Uprising 0030 Fat N’
Furious Rolling Thunder
0120 Cuban Chrome 0210
Impossible
Engineering
0300 Valley Uprising
OSN MOVIES ACTION
0454 Batman vs. Robin
0645
Airplane vs.
Volcano 0845 Crimson
Tide 1045 Faster 1245
Batman Unlimited Animal
Instincts 1430 I, Robot
1630 X-Men The Last
Stand 1830 Crimson Tide
2030 Transformers Age
Of Extinction
2330
Death Race 0115 Zero
Tolerance
OSN MOVIES DRAMA
0400 Calvary 0600 Grand
Central 0800 Foreverland
1000 The French Minister
1200 Grand Central 1400
Rosewater 1600 Changing
Hearts 1800 The French
Minister 2000 The Kings
Of Summer 2200 Inside
Llewyn Davis 0000 Suite
Francaise
0200
The
French Minister
OSN MOVIES KIDS 0530
The Olsen Gang In Deep
Trouble 0700 The Dragon
Pearl 0900 Dixie And The
Zombie Rebellion 1045
The Nutcracker Sweet
1215 LooneyTunes Rabbit’s
Run 1345 Vampire Dog
1530 Saving Santa 1700
Space Warriors
1900
The Nutcracker Sweet
2100 Echo Planet 2300
Saving Santa 0030 Space
Warriors 0215 Dixie And
The Zombie Rebellion
0345 Echo Planet
AL BAHJA
CINEMA
CITY CINEMA, GRAND MALL
TEL: 22020002
FINDING DORY - (3D) (Animation |
Adventure | Comedy) (PG), Cast: Ellen
DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Ed O’Neill,
Timings: 12:30PM,5:00pm
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE (Action)
(12+), Cast: Dwayne Johnson and Kevin
Hart., Timings: 03:00PM & 09:30PM
ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING
GLASS (2016) (PG12), Cast: Mia
Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Timings: 2:30PM,7:15PM
& 9:15PM
THE CONJURING 2 (2016) (15+), Cast:
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Wolfe, Timings: 04:45PM,11:45PM
THE CONJURING 2 (2016) (15+)
Gold Class, Cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Madison Wolfe, Timings:
06:15PM,11:15PM
STAR TREK BEYOND (2016) (PG12),
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl
Urban, Timings: 12:45PM,7:00PM &
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Tel: 24692656 (after 2pm)
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN – 3D
(PG12) Action / Thriller, Cast: Alexander
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THE CONJURING 2 – 2D (15+) Horror
| Mystery | Thriller, Cast: Vera Farmiga,
Patrick Wilson, Madison Wolfe, Timing:
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Action | Comedy | Crime, Cast: Dwayne
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Arabic| Comedy / Thriller, Cast: Amr
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NERVE – 2D (15+) Crime | Mystery
|Thriller, Cast: Emma Roberts, Dave
Franco, Emily Meade, Timing : 03:15,
07:45 PM
JASON BOURNE – 2D (PG12) Action |
Thriller, Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee
Jones, Alicia Vikander, Timing: 07:00,
11:45 PM
LITTLE BOY – 2D (PG) Drama| War,
Cast: Jakob Salvati, Emily Watson, David
Henrie, Timing: 05:00 PM
CITY CINEMA, RUWI
Tel: 24831809
SCREEN 1
DISHOOM (Action) –PG, Cast : – John
Abraham, Varun Dhawan, Jacqueline
Fernandez and Akshaye Khanna, Timing: 3.30, 6.30, 9.30 PM
SCREEN 2
SULTAN(2D) (Action, Drama, Sport)
–PG12, Cast : – Marko Zaror, Salman
Khan, Anushka Sharma, Timing: 3.45,
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MADAARI (PG) (Thriller, Drama) –PG,
Cast : – Irrfan Khan, Jimmy Shergill,
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MADAARI (PG) (Thriller, Drama) –PG,
Cast : – Irrfan Khan, Jimmy Shergill,
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Radhika Apte, Timing: 6.45 PM
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JASON BOURNE – 2D (Action/Thriller)
(PG12), Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee
Jones, Alicia Vikander, Timings: 2:30,
9:00, 11:45PM
THE CONJURING 2 – 2D (Horror/Mystery/Thriller) (15+), Cast: Vera Farmiga,
Patrick Wilson, Madison Wolfe, Timings:
3:45, 11:45PM
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE-2D (Action/
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Timings: 7:00PM
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Thriller) (PG12), Cast: Amr Abdel-Geleel
Enaam Salosa, Timings: 4:45PM
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Rajinikanth, Winston Chao, Radhika Apte,
Timings: 8:45PM
SULTAN -2D (Hindi/ Action) (PG12),
Cast: Salman Khan, Marko Zaror, Anushka
Sharma, Timings: 3:30PM,
MADAARI - 2D (Social/Thriller) (PG),
Cast Irrfan Khan, Jimmy Shergill, Vishesh
Bansal, Timings: 6:15PM
DISHOOM - 2D (Action/Adventure)
(PG12), Cast John Ibrahim, Varun Dhawan, Nargis Fakhri, & Jacqueline Fernandez, Timings: 9:15, 11:15PM
ANURAGA KARIKKIN VELLAM - 2D
(Comedy) (PG12), Cast Irrfan Khan,
Jimmy Shergill, Vishesh Bansal, Timings:
6:45PM
CITY CINEMA, SUR
MARAUDERS ( Action ) ( 12+ ) CP#,
Cast : Bruce Willis, Christopher Meloni,
Dave Bautista., Timing: 3:00, 6:30,
11:45 PM.
SULTAN (Hindi) ( Action ) ( PG12
) CP#, Cast : Salman Khan, Anushka
Sharma, Marko Zaror., Timing: 3:15,
8:30, 11:30 PM.
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE ( Action
| Crime | Comedy ) (12+) CP#, Cast :
Dwayne Johonson, Kevin Hart, Danielle
Nicolet, Timing: 5:00, 9:00 PM.
SHAJAHANUM - PAREEKITTIYUM (
Malayalam | Romance | Comedy ) ( PG )
CP#, Cast : Kunchako Boban, Jayasurya,
Amala Paul, Timing: 7:00 PM.
Mystery | Thriller), Cast: Vera Farmiga,
Patrick Wilson, Madison Wolfe, Timing:
9.00 PM
DISHOOM PG12 (Hindi ) (Action |
Adventure), Cast: John Ibrahim , Varun
Dhawan , Nargis Fakhri, and Jacqueline
Fernandez, Timing: 11.15 PM
NERVE 15+ (Crime | Mystery |Thriller),
Cast: Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, Emily
Meade, Timing: 4.30 & 7.30 PM
JASON BOURNE PG12 (Action | Thriller), Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones,
Alicia Vikander, Timing: 5.15 & 11.45 PM
ANURAGA KARIKKIN VELLAM PG12
(Malayalam) (Comedy), Cast: Biju
Menon, Asif Ali, Sreenath Bhasi, Timing:
9.15 PM
CITY CINEMA, PANORAMA MALL
CITY CINEMA, SALALAH
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN - (3D)
(Action | Adventure | Drama) (PG12) VIP
LOUNGE, Cast: Alexander Skarsgård,
Rory J. Saper, Christian Stevens, Timings:
03:45PM, 07:00PM & 09:15PM
(Action | Adventure | Drama) (PG12)
VIP MX4D, Cast: Alexander Skarsgård,
Rory J. Saper, Christian Stevens, Timings: 03:30PM, 06:30PM, 09:00PM &
11:15PM
(Action | Adventure | Drama) (PG12),
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Rory J. Saper,
Christian Stevens, Timings: 02:45PM,
07:15PM, 09:15PM & 11:45PM
NERVE - (2D) (Crime | Mystery |
Thriller) (15+), Cast: Emma Roberts,
Dave Franco, Emily Meade, Timings:
03:15PM
LITTLE BOY - (2D) (Drama| War) (PG),
Cast: Jakob Salvati, Emily Watson, David
Henrie, Timings: 07:15PM
JASON BOURNE - (2D) (Action | Thriller) (PG12), Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy
Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Timings:
05:00PM & 11:45PM
DISHOOM - (2D) (Hindi |Action | Adventure) (PG12), Cast: John Ibrahim,
Varun Dhawan , Nargis Fakhri, and
Jacqueline Fernandez, Timings: 09:15PM
& 11:30PM
THE CONJURING 2 - (2D)
(Horror | Mystery | Thriller) (15+)
VIP LOUNGE, Cast: Vera Farmiga,
11:30PM
THE CONJURING 2 - (2D) (Horror
| Mystery | Thriller) (15+), Cast: Vera
Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Madison Wolfe,
Timings: 03:45PM, 09:15PM
KABALI - (2D) (Tamil | Crime |
Drama) (12+), Cast: Rajinikanth,
Winston Chao, Radhika Apte, Timings:
06:30PM
STAR TREK BEYOND - (3D) (Action |
Adventure | Sci-Fi) (PG12), Cast: Chris
Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Timings: 05:00PM
CITY CINEMA, BURAIMI
CITY CINEMA, AZAIBA MALL
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (3D) PG12
(Action | Adventure | Drama), Cast:
Alexander Skarsgård, Rory J. Saper,
Christian Stevens, Timing: 4.45, 7.00,
9.00 & 11.30 PM
KABALI 12+ (Tamil) (Crime | Drama),
Cast: Rajinikanth, Winston Chao, Radhika
Apte, Timing: 6:15 PM
THE CONJURING 2 15+ (Horror |
Chao, Radhika Apte, Timing: 06:10,
09:00, 11:15 PM
DISHOOM (2D) (Action |Adventure)
(PG12) CP#, Cast: John Ibrahim , Varun
Dhawan , Nargis Fakhri, and Jacqueline
Fernandez, Timing: 03:45, 05:15, 08:55,
11:15 PM
SULTAN (Hindi) (2D) (Action) (PG12)
CP#, Cast: Salman Khan, Anushka Sharma, Timing: 03:00, 10:15 PM
MADAARI (Hindi) (2D) (Social | Thriller)
(PG) CP#, Cast: Irrfan Khan, Jimmy
Shergill, Vishesh Bansal, Timing: 02:45,
08:45 PM
ANURAGA KARIKKIN VELLAM (Mal)
(2D) (Comedy) (PG12) CP#, Cast: Biju
Menon, Asif Ali, Sreenath Bhasi, Timing:
06:15, 07:45 PM
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (3D) (Action
| Thriller) (PG12) CP#, Cast: Alexander
Skarsgard, Margot Robbie, Christoph
Waltz, Samuel Jackson, Timing: 02:30,
04:40, 06:45, 11:45 PM
KABALI (Tamil) (2D) (Crime | Drama)
(12+) CP#, Cast: Rajinikanth, Winston
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (3D) (PG12)
(Action | Adventure | Drama), Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Rory J. Saper, Christian
Stevens, Timings: 12:15/02:30/06:30/09
:15/11:30PM
JASON BOURNE (2D) (PG12) (Action
| Thriller), Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy
Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Timings:
01:00/11:55PM
THE CONJURING 2 (2D) (15+) (Horror
| Mystery | Thriller), Cast: Vera Farmiga,
03:45/09:15PM
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE (2D) (12+)
(Action | Comedy | Crime), Cast: Dwayne
Timings: 01:00/04:45PM
DISHOOM (3D) (PG12) (Hindi) (Action
| Adventure), Cast: John Ibrahim, Varun
Dhawan, Nargis Fakhri, and Jacqueline
Fernandez, Timings: 08:45/11:15PM
SULTAN (2D) (PG12) (Action), Cast:
Salman Khan, Marko Zaror, Anushka
Sharma, Timings: 03:00PM
ANURAGA KARIKKIN VELLAM (2D)
(PG) (Malayalam) (Comedy), Cast: Biju
Menon, Asif Ali, Sreenath Bhasi, Timings:
06:45PM
KABALI (2D) (12+) (Tamil) (Crime |
Drama), Cast: Rajinikanth, Winston Chao,
Radhika Apte, Timings: 06:15PM
THE CONJURING 2: ( Horror/ Mystery/
Thriller ) : Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson,
Madison Wolfe, Showtime: 3.15 p.m.& 7.30
p.m., CP NO : 1924 ( 15+ )
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN : (Action/ Adventure/Drama ) : Alexander Skarsgard, Rory J.
Saper, Christian Stevens, Showtime: 1.15 pm,
5.30 p.m., 9.45. p.m & 11.55 p.m., CP NO :
1946 (PG12 )
JASON BOURNE: ( Action/Thriller ) : Matt
Damon, Alicia Vikander, Julia Stiles, Showtime
: 5.45 p.m., 9.45 p.m. & 11.55 p.m., CP NO
: 1947 (PG12)
NERVE : (Crime/ Thriller) : Deve Franco, Emma Roberts, Emily Meade, Showtime:
2.00 p.m., 4.00 p.m. & 8.00 p.m., CP NO
: 1948 ( 15+)
FILM INFORMATION
Tel: 24540856 Fax: 24541231
Reservation: 24540855.
E-mail:[email protected]
Website:www.albahjacinema.net
STARS CINEMA
STARS CINEMA 1
KABALI ( TAMIL) ( ACTION)
Cast : Rajanikanth & Radika Apte
Show Time : 6.30 pm
ANURAGA KARIKKIN VALLAM (MAL)
(COMEDY) (PG 12)
Cast : Biju Menon & Asif Ali
Show Time : 3.00, 10.00 pm
CINEMA 2
Show Time : 3.30, 9.30 pm
(COMEDY) (PG 12)
Show Time : 6.30 pm
CINEMA 3
FILM CITY, QURUM
Telephone: Ruwi: 24831152
ENGLISH MOVIES (DVD)
Prince of Persia
Titanic When in
Rome Tooth Fairy
Clash of the Titans
Cop out The Young
Victoria
(COMEDY) (PG 12)
Show Time : 6.45 pm
Show Time : 3.45, 9.45 pm
CINEMA 4
HINDI MOVIES (DVD)
No One Killed
Jessica Dil
Toh Bacha
Hai Ji Band
Baja Baarath
Guzaarish Jhootha
Hi Sahi Toonpur
Ka Superhero
Rakth Charitra 2
Mirch Tees Mar
Khan Golmaal
3 Rakth Charitra
Action Replay
Godfather Ramaa
Peepli Live
Lamhaa Crook
Anjaana Anjaani
Aisha Tere Bin
Laden Help
Housefull We Are
Family Emotional
Atyachar
Dabaang
SULTAN ( HINDI) ( ACT\SPORTS)
Cast : Salman Khan & Anushka Shama
Show Time : 6.45pm
INFORMATION:
Tel: 24791641, 24786776, 24789032
Website: www.isurf.com
NEXT CHANGE
KASABA (MAL)
25
SIT. VACANT
Job vacancies:- Accountants - 3 nos.
-Bread maker- 15 nos.
- Cake/ sweet maker- 15 nos.
All candidates from India,
Nepal and Philippines are
preferred. All CVs send to
Al Kawther Modern Bakery
Sultanate of Oman Email:
[email protected]
Contact: 00968- 90444409
Microsoft certified trainer
Database- programming
training manager. Tel:
98850637
Supermarket manager with
10 years experience. Tel:
98802258
Required: gynecology &
obstetrics specialists, a
pediatrician, a dentist and a lab
technician for a polyclinic in
Sohar. Tel: 92000070
Urgent requirement for a
Diploma holder in civil for
scaffolding purposes.
Contact (Abdul Malik)
[email protected]
Shatti Al Qurum Medical Center
looking for a female nurse with
MOH licence minimum two years
experience. Tel: 99848212,
[email protected]
Immediate requirement of
quantity surveyor diploma in civil
engineering or quantity surveying
with 15 years experience (10
years in road construction) Send
CV to [email protected]
Required employees hairdressing
to work in a beauty center in
Muscat. Tel: 99267187
Experienced and trained
kindergarten teacher for well
reputed bilingual school in
Mabela area Muscat. Interested
and suitable candidates must
reply to Email: anitasuresh11@
yahoo.com
Design agency looking for
graphic designer with gulf
experienced with proficiency in
Adobe suites is desired. Those
interested kindly send sample
portfolio & contact to
[email protected]
salary of 80/- OMR per month.
Tel: 97452633
Resident 20 years in Oman, 10
years experience in procurement,
Omani government tenders, setup
marketing plans and strategies,
importing, organising events and
projects, holding British passport,
enable for quick travel to finalise
businesses, have driving licence
and NOC. Tel: 94123939
F OR RENT
Villa in Al Khoud
Villa in Al Qurum. Tel:
92978878, 99224005
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
Villa in Sur Al Hadid on the
Corniche near Dreams resort.
Tel: 99112262, 92125648
An open showroom for rent
at Maabela. Area: 713m2.
Price: 04.000 OMR per
meter (negotiable). The
showroom includes offices &
toilets. Tel: 99822112
Flat for rent in Wadi Al
Kabir. Tel: 94016100
2 flats, 2 showrooms and
shops in Mabelah next to
Said bin Taimur Mosque.
Tel: 96991161
Finder hand over to ROP
2BHK flat in Al Amerat 5/3 near
Ihsan Masjid asked 200 RO. Tel:
96529678
Flats in Al Khuwair, Al Bustan,
Azaiba, Wadi Kabir, Darsait,
Hamriya, Al Hail & Seeb.
Tel: 24182000, 95250300,
99110600
A flat in South Ghubra
near American School. Tel:
99333919
FOR SALE
An industrial plot at Rusayl,
super corner. Area: 1,000m2.
First line. Price: 140,000
OMR. Tel: 93500188
Muscat Driving school
Price list for Drums & Slope
Contract for 10 hours (OMR 7)70 RO
Contract for 30 hours (OMR 4.5)1350 RO
NOTE: Test 30 RO for vehicle+ 5 RO
for police & all payment in advance.
To inquire direct: 94085688
Ploynin Thoarsa
Nationality: Thai
Passport No. : AA 6357836
P P LOST
Miss Ananya Wanta
Nationality: Thai
Passport No. : AA 5858474
Bilal Madanlal Hanuman
Nationality: Indian
Passport No. : F 6189372
Kabir Ahamad
Nationality: Bangladeshi
Passport No. : AB 8368529
SERVICES
Zharna
Passport No. : BA 0775596
A youth having a car ready to
transport person within Muscat
& the airport. Tel: 98988014
Faruque Miah
Passport No. : C 1428171
Project cleanliness of the
premises by 8 workers. Tel:
97730779
FREE INFORMATION ABOUT
ISLAM
If you want to know more about
Islam, please call: 99425598,
99250777, 99353988, 99253818,
99341395 and 99379133. For
ladies: 99415818, 99321360,
99730723
or visit: www.islamfact.com
www.iicoman.om
SIT.WANTED
Motorbike driver to work in
restaurant in Al Ghubra. Tel:
99895688
Syrian architect 10 years
experience in the field of
engineering consulting firms and
major contracting companies in
Abu Dhabi, very good knowledge
of AutoCad, MAX, Photoshop
and customers interview.
Experience in supervision and
implementation. Tel: 93705069
Bangladeshi housemaid with
NOC, 38, has experience in
Oman, cooking, cleaning and
looking after children. Required
INFORMATION
FLIGHT TIMINGS
WEATHER FORECAST
Departures
WEATHER FORECAST
31-07-2016
WEATHER: Cloudy skies over coastal areas of Dhofar Govemorate and adjoining mountains with intermittent drizzle .Mainly clear skies over rest of
the Sultanate with existence of high clouds and chances of convective clouds
development and isolated rain occasionally thundershowers over Al-Hajar
Mountains and adjacent willayat during afternoon .Chance of late night to
early morning low level clouds or fog patches along most of coastal areas
with chance of light isolated rain. Chances of dust rising winds over deserts
and open areas.
EXPECTED WINDS: Along the coastal areas of Oman Sea wind will be easterly to northeasterly light to moderate, and it will be southwesterly moderate
to fresh along coastal areas of Arabian Sea, while over rest of the Sultanate it will be southerly to southeasterly light to moderate occasionally fresh.
SEA STATE: Rough sea along the Arabian Sea coasts with maximum wave
height of 3.5 meters and slight along Oman sea coast and Musandam coasts
with maximum wave height of 1.0 meters.
CAUTIONS: The continuous raise in sea conditions along most the coastal
areas of Sultanate. Low horizontal visibility during fog and thundershower.
Fresh downdraft winds may be associated with thundershowers.
TEMPERATURE: Muscat maximum 36˚C & minimum 29˚C. Salalah maximum 25˚C & minimum 23˚C.
RELATIVE HUMIDITY: Muscat 60 to 90 per cent & Salalah 85 to 95 per
cent.
TIDE: Muscat High Tide: 07:23am. & 05:50pm. Low Tide: 12:37pm. &
01:09am. Salalah: High Tide: 07:49am & 05:03pm. Low Tide: 11:48am.&
12:59am.
SERVICES
Royal Oman Police
Emergencies and inquiries
9999
General Directorate of
Passport and Residence
24569603
Directorate General of Customs 24521109
Traffic violations inquiries
24510228,
24510227
Public Relations Admin
24560099
Royal Oman Police online
address
www.ropoman.net, www.
[email protected]
OMANTEL
Directory Information 1318
GSM Service
1234
Muscat Ruwi
24633233
Qurum
24633316
Al Khuwair
24632099
Seeb
24537300
Al Khoudh
24537300
Nizwa
25410123
Sumail
25351288
Rustaq
26875123
Sohar Industrial
26751939
Sohar
26840123
Shinas
26748424
Suwaiq
26714172
Barka
26883454
Sur
25546663
Ibra
25570000
Masirah
25504123
Jaalan Bani Bu Ali
25554123
Al KamIl
25557003
Buraimi
25650123
Ibri
25690998
Mirbat
23268424
Airport
24521174
Dibba
26836660
Khasab
26730166
AIRPORT INFORMATION
Inquiries
24519456
24519223
Domestic Flights
24519230
Enquiry
24600100
Ministry of Commerce 24817013
PHARMACIES
HELPLINE
TEMPERATURES
24 HOURS BRANCHES OF Muscat PHARMACY
Ruwi Main 24702542, 24794186
Al Sarooj, Sarooj Filling 24695536
Al Khuwair, Souq 24485740, 24487980
Al Ghubrah, Al Maha Filling 24497264
Al Mawelah, Al Maha Filling 24537080
Sohar, Old Souq 26840211, 26842703
Salalah 23291635
Al Hail 245359770
Hamriya 24833323
Carrefour, City Centre 24558704
Al Shatti, Qurum 24695477
24 HOURS ATLAS PHARMACY, GHUBRA 24503585
Duty hours Pharmacies Tel. No.
8pm – 8am Scientific, Al Qurum, Bausher 24566601
8pm – 8am Al Hashar, Ruwi, Muttrah 24833115
8pm – 8am Ahmed, Al Hail north 24541856
8pm – 8am Al Salam, Al Mabilah, Al Seeb
24451092
1pm – 4pm Al Nabhani, Ghala, Bausher 24591454
1pm – 4pm Muscat, Al Hamriyah, Muttrah 24833323
1pm – 4pm Al Jabri, Al Mawaleh south 24544824
1pm – 4pm Belqees, Al Mabilah south 24454624
8pm – 1am Al Murshid, near Al Rustaq Hosp 26875561
8pm – 1am Barka, Al Souk, Barka 26882140
8pm – 1am Al Shifaa, Al Souk, Saham 26854997
8pm – 1am Badr Al Jashmi, Al Souk, 25524533
8pm – 1am Al Lamaa, Alayat Ibra, Ibra 25571860
8pm – 8am Al Ruwdha, Al Souk, Sur 25546454
1pm – 4pm Sur, Al Souk, Sur 25540669
8pm – 8am Zahrat Al Buraimi, Al Sara St, 693504-050
8pm –8am Al Shamsi, Al Sara St 25650452
8pm – 8pm Al Ziyanah, Al Iraqi 25694458
1pm – 4pm Al Aryaf 2, Al Souk, Ibri, 25691389
8pm – 8am Muscat, Al Souk, Sohar 26840211
1pm –4am Ahmed Al Sa’adi, Sohar 26842242
8pm – 8am Al Hazfa, Marfa Dares, Nizwa 25426102
1pm – 4pm Al Qala’a, Farq, Nizwa 25431666
8pm – 8am Muscat, Oqad, Salalah 23210635
1pm – 4pm Naïf, Al Salam St, Salalah 23299466
HOSPITALS
Hospital Board Emergency
Royal 24599000
Health Services Dpt
Muttrah 24797602
Quriyat 24845001 24845003
SQH,
Salalah
Police
23211555
24603988
23211151
24603980
Khoula
Al Nahda
Ibn Sina
Nizwa
Al Rostaq
Sumayil
Izki
Haima
Al Buraimi
24560455
24831255
24876322
25439361
26875055
25350055
25340033
23436013
25650855
24563625
24837800
24877361
25425033
26877186
25350022
25340033
23436055
25652319
Sur
Tanam
Masirah
Ibra
Adam
Bidiya
Ibri
Saham
Khasab
25440244
25499011
25404018
25470533
25434167
25483535
25491011
26854427
26830187
25461373
25499033
25404018
25470535
25434055
25483535
25491990
26855148
26830187
Dibba
26836443
26836443
Burkha
26828397
26828397
Sinaw
25474338
Intensive Care Unit at Khoula Hospital:
Very limited visiting of ICU patients
from 3pm-4pm daily Burns Unit: 4pm6pm on week days. 10am-12noon and
4pm-6pm on weekends and holidays.
Special Care Baby Unit: Parents may
visit at any time.
City
Max Min
Seeb
Khasab
Dibba
Madha
Buraimi
Yanqul
Ibri
Fahud
Sohar
Suwaiq
Rustaq
Samail
Nizwa
Saiq
Jabal Shams
Bahla
Adam
Mudhebi
Ibra
Sur
Ras Al-Hadd
Masirah
Duqm
Haima
Marmul
Mhout
Thumrait
Salalah
Qairoon Hairiti
Salalah Port
AL-Halaniyat
Jabal Samhan
Jabal AlQamar
Al Amerat
35
40
37
35
42
39
42
42
36
36
39
40
40
27
22
40
41
40
40
39
34
30
32
40
38
35
31
26
20
25
26
20
21
38
28
33
30
29
30
28
30
28
29
27
28
26
27
21
17
26
28
26
26
26
25
25
24
26
27
25
24
23
19
23
23
18
19
30
Departures
Arrivals
Arrivals
Flight No.
To/Via
STD
Flight No.
To/Via
STD
Flight No.
To/Via
STD
Flight No.
To/Via
STD
AI986
9W539
WY643
WY637
WY225
WY281
WY211
WY235
WY657
WY201
WY685
FZ132
WY271
WY601
WY371
WY123
WY325
WY901
WY241
WY847
WY691
WY667
TK775
WY209
WY331
WY3903
4H585
PK260
NL772
ET625
EK867
QR1133
EY385
FZ042
WY3931
4H586
GF561
WY917
WY3921
G9842
WY603
CV732
WY3301
RG126
WY323
WY669
WY651
FZ044
WY291
WY373
WY823
WY815
WY903
WY253
WY343
NL769
WY633
IX818
G9115
WY843
WY231
WY905
WY605
WY203
WY263
WY641
WY245
EK863
WY337
IX554
WY919
Bombay
Bombay
Kuwait
Abu Dhabi
Cochin
Banglore
Trivandrum
Hyderabad
Bahrain
Bombay
Riyadh
Dubai
Jaipur
Dubai
Colombo
Munich
Karachi
Salalah
Delhi
Jakarta
Dammam
Doha
Istanbul
Goa
Kathmandu
Salalah
Doha
Peshawar
Peshawar
Addis Ababa
Dubai
Doha
Abu Dhabi
Dubai
Sohar
Dacca
Bahrain
Khasab
Duqum Oman
Ras Al Khaima
Dubai
Hong Kong
Mukhaizna
Abu Dhabi
Karachi
Doha
Bahrain
Dubai
Calicut
Colombo
Kuala Lumpur-Sgapore
Bangkok
Salalah
Madras
Lahore
Lahore
Abu Dhabi
Mangalore
Sharjah
Manila
Hyderabad
Salalah
Dubai
Bombay
Lucknow
Kuwait
Delhi
Dubai
Kathmandu
Trivandrum
Khasab
0020
0020
0050
0105
0105
0110
0110
0110
0110
0115
0115
0115
0135
0145
0155
0200
0210
0215
0215
0215
0225
0225
0230
0235
0245
0250
0300
0310
0330
0435
0450
0500
0500
0510
0635
0700
0715
0715
0745
0745
0750
0800
0800
0815
0835
0835
0840
0845
0845
0900
0900
0905
0910
0915
0915
0930
0940
0940
0955
0955
1000
1020
1020
1025
1030
1040
1040
1045
1050
1055
1100
QR1129
EY383
IX442
WY311
WY347
9W533
GF563
FZ038
WY3303
WY3901
IX350
WY113
WY655
WY633
WY631
WY143
WY645
WY405
WY101
WY423
WY413
WY153
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26
SPORTS
OMAN TRIBUNE
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
Streb, Walker share top spot in PGA
29-year-old American’s 63 matches best in major; holder Day two behind, McIlroy misses cut
SPRINGFIELD (US)
UNHERALDED ROBERT
Streb matched the recordlow round in major golf
history late on Friday with
an astonishing seven-under
par 63 to seize a share of
the lead after the second
round of the PGA Championship.
Top-ranked defending
champion Jason Day’s
amazing run of seven birdies in eight holes to grab a
share of third was overshadowed by a 29-year-old
American on a rain-soaked
Baltusrol layout soggy
enough to surrender low
scores in a wild afternoon
of shot making.
Back-nine starter Streb
made a lone bogey and
eight birdies, the last of
them on a curling 21-foot
putt at the par-three ninth
to make history and match
compatriot Jimmy Walker
for the 36-hole lead at
nine-under 131.
“I was pretty excited
about it,” Streb said. “I
was waiting on it to break,
waiting on it to break and
it finally turned there at
the end.
“It was a great round.
Happy to be part of that
63 club.”
Streb’s 63 was the 30th
shot at a major but he was
the 28th player to achieve
the feat, Fiji’s Vijay Singh
and Australian Greg Norman having done it twice.
British Open champion
Henrik Stenson and runner-up Phil Mickelson
each did it two weeks ago
at Royal Troon.
Baltusrol has surrendered the most 63s of any
major course with four,
including two of only four
in US Open history, the
63s of Jack Nicklaus and
Tom Weiskopf in the first
Andrew Redington/AFP
Robert Streb of the US hits his second shot on the 17th hole during the second round of the PGA Championship at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, New Jersey, late on Friday.
round in 1980, and another by Thomas Bjorn at
the 2005 PGA Championship.
Streb, whose lone US
PGA victory came in the
2014 McGladrey Classic, has gone 27 US PGA
events without a top-10
showing since placing
10th at the 2015 PGA
Championship, although
he was fourth at this year’s
European Tour Nedbank
Challenge in South Africa.
Streb missed the cut in
all three prior majors this
year but played the round
of his life to put himself
in contention for a major
title.
“The ball-striking and
putting has been a little
difficult this year,” he said.
“Just been trying to hang
on by a thread. Obviously
it’s coming together this
week, which is nice.”
Australia’s Day fired a
65 to stand two strokes
adrift on 133 along with
Argentine rookie Emiliano
Grillo, who shot 67.
Day, who battled illness and fatigue in round
one, became annoyed at a
double-bogey on the seventh hole and responded
with short birdie putts at
eight and nine, 18-foot
birdie putts at 10 and 13
around a 10-footer at the
par-3 12th.
Then came a stunning
37-footer at 14 and a fivefooter on 15 for good measure, although he failed to
take advantage of the par-5
17th and 18th or he might
have shot 63, or better.
“That double bogey
kicked me in the bum a
little bit,” Day said. “A
little disappointed I didn’t
birdie either of the par-5s.
But I’m saving them for the
weekend.
Morning
showers
dumped an inch of rain on
the 7,428-yard layout and
halted play for 41 minutes
as groundskeepers cleared
puddles from greens and
standing water from fairways. Balls held on saturated greens and made up
for the lack of fairway roll.
“It was much softer,”
Walker said. “If you were
in the fairway you could do
anything you wanted with
the golf ball.”
Sweden’s Stenson was
alone in fifth after his second consecutive 67 with
two-time major winner
Martin Kaymer of Germany sharing sixth on 135
with Americans Patrick
Reed and Brooks Koepka.
Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama eagled the second
hole on his way to a 67 to
share ninth with Welshman Jamie Donaldson and
Americans Rickie Fowler
and Harris English.
Fourth-ranked Rory
McIlroy fired a 69 but
could not overcome a
bogey-less first-round 74
and the four-time major
champion missed the cut
on 142 by a stroke.
US left-hander Mick-
elson, who opened with a
triple bogey after a tee shot
that went over a fence and
onto a street, birdied the
last to make the cut on the
number.
Second-ranked Dustin
Johnson, who won the US
Open last month, fired a
72 to finish on 149. Only
10 players had worse 36hole totals.
The PGA of America
apologised after a rules
blunder that impacted
the first back-nine starters, including Japan’s
Yuta Ikeda, who shot 67
to stand on 137.
The location guide
sheet given Ikeda’s group
showed a hole cut on the
left side of the green when
it had actually been put on
the right side, a blunder
not caught until the group
had played approaches at
the 10th, which Ikeda bogeyed.
Also on 137 was Jordan
Spieth, whose shot from a
gravel path at the seventh
hole aroused ire for television viewers over possible
rules violation, although a
PGA of America statement
said there was no violation.
No Jackett required as Wolves sack manager
LONDON
WOLVERHAMPTON
Wanderers have sacked
manager Kenny Jackett
just over a week after China-based Fosun Group took
over the English Championship club from long-stand-
ing owner Steve Morgan.
Main Wolves director
Jeff Shi had decided to
“relieve Kenny Jackett of
his duties”, the Midlands
outfit said in a statement
on their website on Friday.
Former Millwall manager Jackett, 54, joined
Wolves in May 2013, taking them back to the second tier at the first attempt
with a record total of 103
points, after successive
relegations. The following season Wolves came
seventh and only missed a
playoff spot on goal differ-
ence. Last term they struggled to a 14th place finish
in the Championship.
“I would like to sincerely
thank Kenny for everything
he’s done for Wolves over
the last three years,” Shi said.
“He’s shown true professionalism during his tenure
and over the course of the
transition to new ownership. I would like to wish
him all the very best for
the future.”
British media reported
that the Fosun conglomerate had paid about $59.54
million to buy the club, with
the new owners prioritising a return to the Premier
League. Morgan, who had
owned Wolves for nine
years, had said in an open
letter to the fans that Fosun
had pledged to invest 20-30
million pounds in the club
over the next two years.
Wolves, who were
founder members of the
Football League, were
relegated from the top
flight in 2012. Their heyday was in the 1950s when
they won the English title
three times.
Reuters
Kenny Jackett
Guatemala
soccer ex-chief
pleads guilty
NEW YORK
Jessie Vargas reacts after a fight.
Vargas anxious to
take on Pacquiao
LOS ANGELES
THERE ARE NO SHORTage of suitors for Manny
Pacquiao, but MexicanAmerican boxer Jessie
Vargas thinks he has the
inside track when it comes
to enticing the Filipino superstar back into the ring.
“I am the WBO welterweight champion and he
wants to return to fight for
this belt. So I am happy to
give him a title shot,” Vargas said during the Nevada
Boxing Hall of Fame function on Friday.
Vargas (27-1-0) said late
on Friday he is in talks with
Pacquiao’s camp to hold a
fight on November 5 at the
Thomas & Mack Centre
arena in Las Vegas.
“The fight is still under
negotiation and I can say
that soon we will announce
it, although I do not want to
advance because in boxing
everything can change every minute,” Vargas said.
Undefeated Terence
Crawford has also been
named as potential opponent for Pacquiao, who is
likely to return to the ring
later this year according to
his promoter Bob Arum.
Arum tweeted on Friday
night that he is also talking
to a group that wants to
stage Pacquiao’s next fight
in the Middle East.
“Meeting on Sunday
with people anxious to put
on a @MannyPacquiaoTR
fight in the Middle East,”
Arum wrote.
Vargas won the vacant
WBO welterweight title
with a ninth round TKO
of Sadam Ali in March.
“Manny has never faced
someone like me. I’m at my
best, I have several advantages. I’m taller and faster
than him. I’m really smart
fighter too,” Vargas said.
“I not only want to face
him but I want to beat him.
Juan Manuel Marquez did it
and I want to beat him too,
mainly because at his best
he was someone who gave
many headaches to Mexico
fighters,” he said. Record
eight division champion
Pacquiao announced his
retirement from boxing in
April after his unanimous
decision victory over Timothy Bradley.
A FORMER PRESIDENT
of Guatemala’s soccer federation pleaded guilty late
on Friday to charges he
received bribes to award
lucrative media and marketing rights for soccer
matches, the latest development in the US corruption investigation into
world soccer’s governing
body Fifa.
Brayan Jimenez said he
was guilty of racketeering
conspiracy and wire fraud
charges at a hearing in
federal court in front of US
Magistrate Judge Robert
Levy. Jimenez also agreed
to forfeit $350,000.
Jimenez is accused of
taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes
in exchange for authorising “friendly” matches
played by the Guatemalan
national soccer team and
for awarding contracts for
media rights for the team’s
World Cup qualifier matches to the sports marketing
firm Media World.
The company is a subsidiary of Imagina US, the
Miami-based affiliate of
Spanish media giant Imagina group.
“Over a period of years,
Media World transmitted
these bribes from its US
bank accounts to the defen-
dant and a co-conspirator,
often using intermediaries
in the United States and
Guatemala,” the US Department of Justice said in its announcement of the plea.
Lawyers representing
Jimenez did not immediately respond to a request
for comment.
Jimenez, who had been
president of the country’s
soccer federation since
2010, was arrested in Gua-
Jimenez is accused
of receiving bribes
to award lucrative
media and
marketing rights
for soccer matches
temala in January and later
extradited to the United
States. He now faces a
maximum sentence of 20
years for each count.
Jimenez is among 42
individuals and entities
charged as part of a US investigation into schemes
involving more than $200
million in bribes and kickbacks sought by soccer
officials for marketing and
broadcast rights to tournaments and matches.
Reuters
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
27
OMAN TRIBUNE
Blanket ban on Russian weightlifters
RIO DE JANEIRO
A BAN ON ALL RUSsian weightlifters dealt a
new blow to the country
ahead of an International
Olympic Committee meeting on Saturday that will
be dominated by multiple
doping scandals.
New criticism of the athletes’ village in Rio added
to the dark clouds hanging
over the Games which start
in one week.
The
International
Weightlifting Federation
(IWF) banned all eight
Russian contenders -- five
men and three women -entered for Rio.
About 117 Russian
competitors from the 387
initially put forward by the
Russian Olympic Committee have now been banned
from the Games. They
include 67 track and field
athletes.
Weightlifting’s reputation “has been seriously
damaged on multiple times
and levels by the Russians,
therefore an appropriate
sanction was applied in
order to preserve the status
of the sport,” the IWF said.
“We would like to highlight the extremely shocking and disappointing
statistics regarding the
Russian weightlifters.”
Among those banned,
Artem Okulov is a world
champion while Ruslan Albegov took a bronze medal
at the 2012 London Games
and Tatiana Kashirina a silver.
The IOC has taken fierce
criticism for not ordering a
blanket ban on Russia after
an independent report said
there was state-organised
doping at the 2014 Sochi
Winter Olympics.
The IOC executive is to
meet on Saturday and Sunday to discuss the crisis.
The full IOC meets from
Monday.
World Anti-Doping
Agency (Wada) president
Craig Reedie, who is also
an IOC vice-president, is to
give a report on the agency’s activities on Saturday.
Reedie had led calls for a
blanket ban on Russia over
the doping.
The IOC decided last
week however that individual sporting federations
had to examine Russian entries and decide whether
they should be allowed to
compete.
The Olympic committee
will take a final decision
on Russian entries based
on the recommendations.
It is not yet known when
this will be announced
however.
Boxing, golf, gymnastics and taekwondo are
among sports still to have
announced their decisions.
A small fire at the Rio
athletes village on Friday,
which forced the evacuation of the Australian delegation, left a new stain
on preparations for the
Games.
Team spokesman Mike
Tancred said “there was
a lot of smoke” but that
athletes returned after
fire fighters controlled the
blaze. “There was no big
drama,” he said.
Australia had led a boycott over conditions at the
village last week. And Rio
de Janeiro mayor Eduardo
Paes lashed out Friday at
the Olympics organising
committee, accusing it
of “serious problems” in
managing the village.
Paes
blamed
the
AUG
All eight competitors out of Rio; Fire at athletes village forces evacuation of Australian delegation
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Riocentro – Pavilion 2
WEIGHT CLASSES
Athletes have
three attempts
in snatch and clean
and jerk. Total of
best lifts decides
final placement
Weights: Range
from 0.5kg to 25kg
Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters
A weightlifter from Chile trains at the Games village.
Rio2016 committee for
a slew of problems at the
village, which has been his
public relations nightmare
all week.
“The athletes’ village was
ready. Then the organising
committee took charge for
three months, and there
were extremely serious
management problems.
“During those three
months, people intruded
into the apartments and a
lot of things were stolen,”
he told O Estado de Sao
Paulo newspaper.
“The doors were left
half-open. The organising
committee was careless,
objectively speaking.”
He said his office was
informed of the problems
only last week, despite a
series of weekly meetings
between his staff and the
organising committee.
Paes’s week got off to a
rough start Sunday when
the Olympic village opened
to a boycott from Australia, which refused to move
in because of exposed wir-
ing, leaking pipes, blocked
toilets, unlighted stairwells
and other problems.
More than 600 plumbers
have been working at the
village this week to make
repairs.
The Rio Games start on
August 5 and run through
to August 21.
Men: Eight – from
56kg to +105kg.
Women: Seven –
48kg to +75kg
London Olympics gold medallist
(+75kg class) Zhou Lulu (CHN)
Weight increased
by at least 1kg for
each attempt
SNATCH: Most difficult lift, weight pulled up in one motion
Wide grip on bar, Pull – bar
Squat under bar
initial lift uses
reaches
legs and
pelvis,
hips
body
extends
to propel
bar upwards
CLEAN AND JERK: Two separate moves,
allowing heaviest lifts
Squat, bar
Stand
resting on
Narrower
Pull
upper chest
grip
Finish –
lifter
standing
in static
position
Thrust
Finish
Clean
Jerk
Total weight lifted – snatch and clean and jerk (super heavyweight class)
Olympic
records
World
records
Hossein Rezazadeh (IRI)
Zhou Lulu (CHN)
Aleksey Lovchev (RUS)
Tatiana Kashirina (RUS)
Sources: Rio 2016, Olympic.org, IWF
Sydney 2000
London 2012
Houston 2015
Almaty 2014
Picture: Getty Images
© GRAPHIC NEWS
Moscow to
send 266
competitors,
says minister
US rout Venezuela in Father, son share Olympics
basketball tune-up
sorrow after doping ban
CHICAGO
MOSCOW
MOSCOW
KYRIE IRVING SCORED
13 points as the US basketball team improved to 4-0
in their run up to the Rio
Olympics with an 80-45
exhibition win over Venezuela late on Friday.
Klay Thompson also
scored 13 points for the
Americans, who cruised
to victory despite shooting 42.4 per cent, below
the 49.8 percent averaged over their first three
tune-up games. Team US
also committed 13 turnovers in the game in front
of a crowd of 20,578 at the
United Center in Chicago.
DeMarcus Cousins tallied seven points and 12
rebounds, while Kevin
Durant made three-ofnine and finished with nine
points.
Team US led 13-12 well
into the first quarter before
breaking the game open
with a 12-0 surge. They
then closed the half with
eight unanswered points.
John Cox led all scorers
with 14 points, including
12 in the first half. Venezuela was unable to take
advantage of some spotty
shooting by the Americans
and shot just 21.9 per cent
in the opening 20 minutes,
and 23.9 overall.
Cox, the son of former
RUSSIAN HAMMER THrower Sergey Litvinov
and his father have a lot
in common: a first name,
an athletics discipline and
now a history of missing the
Olympics.
The suspension of Russia’s athletics federation
over “state-sponsored”
doping will deny the
30-year-old a shot at Olympic glory, just as the Soviet
boycott of the 1984 Los
Angeles Games did for his
father and coach, legendary Soviet hammer thrower
Sergey Litvinov.
Father and son recognise the striking parallels
between their careers and
wish the stinging memories
of 1984 had not returned
more than thirty years later.
“There is nothing good
in this,” Litvinov Sr. said
about seeing his son sidelined from Rio like he was
in 1984.
Unlike many banned Russian athletes, Litvinov and
his father have been openly
critical of Russia sports authorities and their inability to reform the scandalridden anti-doping system
in time for track and field
athletes to compete in Rio.
Litvinov Sr., 58, thinks
that Cold War-era politics
weighed into the decision
RUSSIA’S SPORTS MINister said Saturday that the
national team to compete
in the Rio Olympics starting next week so far has 266
competitors, although decisions were still pending on
several athletes.
“As of this morning I can
say that we will represent
29 disciplines out of 34,
with 266 people,” minister Vitaly Mutko said in an
interview with sports channel Match-TV.
Besides 67 track and
field athletes banned by the
International Association
of Athletics Federations
(IAAF) over revelations of
a state-run doping scheme,
dozens more have been told
not to compete in Brazil, including swimmers, rowers,
and wrestlers.
Mutko said that Russia is
still expecting to hear final
judgement on its swimming
team Saturday.
“In swimming, we announced a team of 35 people, now 26 have passed the
selection process,” he said.
The US Anti-Doping
Agency said on Friday that
Olympic medallist Nikita
Lobintsev has tested positive for meldonium.
Jonathan Daniel/AFP
Kyrie Irving (No. 10) of the US puts up a shot against
Venezuela during pre-Olympic exhibition game at
United Centre in Chicago, Illinois, late on Friday.
NBA player Chubby Cox,
made six-of-12 from the
field and had two steals.
Irving was the lone US
player in double figures in
the first half.
The Americans built
their lead to 56-31 at the
end of three quarters, out-
rebounding Venezuela
54-29. Team US will play
its final exhibition game
Monday in Houston against
Nigeria before heading to
Brazil, where it faces the
Chinese national team on
August 6.
472kg
333kg
475kg
348kg
Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP
Russian Sergey Litvinov competes in the men’s hammer throw final at a track and
field meet called “Stars of 2016” in Moscow on Thursday.
to keep Russians away. He
blamed the country’s sports
authorities for their “passive
approach” to the problem.
His son, who competed
at the youth level and the
2009 world championships for Germany before a
falling-out with the federation there saw him change
his allegiance, has rejected
the popular notion in Russia that the ban is a Western
conspiracy aimed at eliminating strong competitors.
“I don’t have a negative
attitude towards the West,”
he said after a consolation
track and field in Moscow
held for the banned athletes.
“You have to look for the
problem within yourself
first. There is no smoke
without fire.”
Litvinov Sr., who won
silver at the Moscow Olympics, had his sights set
on gold for Los Angeles,
having won his first world
title one year ahead of the
Games.
The Soviet boycott devastated him.
“A great depression
swept over me,” Litvinov
Sr. said. “It took me a whole
year to return to my normal
self.”
Although he returned
to win gold at the boycott-
free 1988 Seoul Games
-- Olympics in which Litvinov said the sports world
could finally breathe -- his
absence from the Los Angeles Games left a stain on his
stellar career.
“I could have had a
chance to go for gold,” he
said. “But what can I say? It
didn’t happen and that’s it.”
Litvinov Sr. declined to
answer questions whether
he had doped or had witnessed the use of performance-enhancing drugs
among his Soviet teammates. But he said that doping “has always existed.”
US sailor to help clean Rio’s bay ahead of Games kickoff
RIO DE JANEIRO
Damir Sagolj/Reuters
Brad Funk collects garbage during a clean-up effort.
BOBBING ON RIO DE JANEIro’s Guanabara Bay in a blue
and white fishing boat, American sailor Brad Funk uses a
plastic bin to scoop rubbish
from the waters where Olympic sailing races will take place
next month.
Funk missed out on his
dream of competing in Rio
2016 in the two-man 49er sailing class, but travelled to Brazil
anyway with the aim of clearing
the path for those who did, including his girlfriend British
windsurfer Bryony Shaw.
A native of Clearwater,
Florida, Funk is leading his own
clean-up effort to help remove
rubbish from the Bay which is
clogged by sewage from some
15 municipalities, home to
some 9 million people.
“I decided that if I am not
going to compete, I want the
sailors to not have problems
when they sail,” he told Reuters. “I love Rio, and it is
very important to me that the
Olympic Games is a success and
the trash does not get stuck on
the sailboats, taking medals
away from them.”
In recent months, concern
flared over pollution levels in
the bay and nearby sea, where
sailing, windsurfing and longdistance swimming events are
being held. Two academic
studies seen by Reuters in
June showed the waters were
infected by drug-resistant super
bacteria and microbes normally
found only in hospitals.
The State Environmental
Agency (Inea), which is conducting daily monitoring of
water quality with the help of
the World Health Organisation
(WHO), insists the water quality is fine, helped by the rapid
movement of water through the
mouth of the bay where events
will be held.
More worrying for many
competitors, however, is the
floating debris which could
crash against boats and slow
them down in the competition.
Inea has deployed 12 green
eco-boats - each with a wire
metal scoop on the front that
lifts rubbish out of the water and
into its hull. It has also placed 17
red floating eco-barriers across
the mouth of rivers and canals
feeding the bay, which collect
debris floating on the water’s
surface. Just the eco-barrier in
the Canal do Cunha had collected 208 tonnes of rubbish in
the last month, Inea said.
Reuters
28
SUNDAY JULY 31 2016
26 SHAWWAL 1437
Djokovic pips Berdych to reach semis
Monfils sees off home favourite Raonic in 72 minutes; Wawrinka storms into his first Toronto last four
TORONTO (Canada)
NOVAK
DJOKOVIC
said he needed some luck
to escape late on Friday
with a 7-6 (8/6), 6-4 victory over Tomas Berdych for
a place in the semi-finals of
the ATP Toronto Masters.
The top seed with three
Canadian titles was tested
in a 71-minute opening set
but survived before motoring to victory over a top 10
rival he has now beaten in
25 of 27 meetings.
Djokovic needed two
hours to reach the final
four, winning his 12th
straight match against
Berdych. The Czech
has now lost 17 straight
matches against top five
opponents.
But it was not all oneway traffic for Djokovic,
who struggled to close out
a testing tiebreaker.
Berdych showed his desire by winning five consecutive points from 1-3 down
in the first-set decider, only
to miss on three set points
as he finally handed over
the set to his opponent.
Djokovic earned a second-set break for 2-1 and
rode the margin to his eventual victory in a match which
was well below his best level.
“I don’t know how I
got out of that tiebreak,”
Djokovic said. “I guess I
was just able to focus on
the next point.
“Tomas had a doublefault (on set point) and
some errors. I was very fortunate to win that first set.
“I really had some relief
going into the second.”
Djokovic will line up
Saturday night against
on-form Frenchman Gael
Monfils, who dominated
Canadian fourth-seeded
and home favourite Milos Raonic 6-4, 6-4 in 72
minutes.
Monfils, who won last
week’s Washington title,
was untouchable on the
night.
“I played good, I’m
strong, full of confidence,”
Vaughn Ridley/AFP
Novak Djokovic of Serbia plays a shot against Tomas Berdych of Czech Republic during the Rogers Cup at the Aviva Centre in Toronto, Ontario, late on Friday.
RESULTS
he said. “I feel confident
with my game.
“When I’m in shape, I’m
tough to beat.”
Second seed Stan Wawrinka stormed into his first
semi-final here, thrashing
South Africa’s Kevin Anderson 6-1, 6-3.
The Swiss second seed
Quarter-finals
Kei Nishikori (JPN x3)
bt Grigor Dimitrov (BUL)
6-3, 3-6, 6-2
Stan Wawrinka (SUI x2)
bt Kevin Anderson (RSA)
6-1, 6-3
Novak Djokovic (SRB x1)
bt Tomas Berdych (CZE
x5) 7-6 (8/6), 6-4
Gael Monfils (FRA x10)
bt Milos Raonic (CAN x4)
6-4, 6-4
will next face Japanese
third seed Kei Nishikori,
who beat former top-10
player Grigor Dimitrov
6-3, 3-6, 6-2 with four
breaks of the Bulgarian’s
serve.
Although he’s still recovering from the rib problems
which forced him out of the
fourth round of Wimbledon, Asia’s top player won
his 39th match of 2016,
fighting back in the third
set after losing the second
and lifting his record over
Dimitrov to 3-0.
Wawrinka was in full
flow against Anderson as
he swept the opening set
in a master-class display.
Anderson, ranked 34th,
has yet to reach the final
four at the Masters 1000
level, losing in all seven of
his attempts.
Wawrinka needed just
73 minutes to dispatch
Anderson, who was limited
to six aces and dropped his
serve four times.
“It was a really good
match, I started really well
the first game,” Wawrinka
said.
“It’s one of the best
matches of the year I’ve
played. It showed me that I
was ready, aggressive, moving really well. I was calm,
served very good and mixed
up my game.”
Two-time Grand Slam
winner Wawrinka, the
world number five, is
chasing his fourth title of
the season after success
at Chennai, Dubai and
Geneva.
Kerber sets up Wimbledon rematch with Halep
MONTREAL
ROMANIA’S SIMONA
Halep rallied for a 3-6,
6-1, 6-1 victory over
Svetlana
Kuznetsova
late on Friday to set up a
semi-final showdown with
Angelique Kerber at the
WTA Montreal tournament.
Halep, seeded fifth,
will have a chance to
avenge her quarter-final
Wimbledon defeat at the
hands of Australian Open
champion Kerber, who
reached the final four in
Montreal with an emphatic
6-2, 6-2 victory over teenager Daria Kasatinka.
“It was very tough, I
feel really tired now, she
played very well and she’s
very strong so I knew it
was going to be like this,”
Halep said.
“All I can say is that I’m
very happy I could win
against her, because we always have tough matches.”
Once Halep shook off
some early nerves, she
was able to pressure the
Russian veteran’s serve
and was rewarded when
Kuznetsova surrendered
an early break in the second set with a double fault.
Halep seized control for
good with an early break
in the third to keep alive
her hopes of improving
on her runner-up finish
in Canada last year -- when
she retired from the final
against Belinda Bencic
with an illness.
While Kerber encoun-
Minas Panagiotakis/AFP
Simona Halep of Romania hits a return against Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia during the Rogers Cup at Uniprix Stadium in Montreal, Canada, late on Friday.
tered little resistance
against Russia’s Kasatinka
she said Halep would be
another matter.
“It’s going to be tough,”
Kerber said. “We’ve
played a lot of good matches in the past.”
In the day’s other quarter-finals, world No. 121
Kristina Kucova’s fairytale
run continued on Friday
night with a straight set
win over 15th seeded Johanna Konta.
The Slovakian qualifier,
who ousted Canada’s Eugenie Bouchard in the third
round, fashioned a 6-4,
6-3 victory to end Konta’s
impressive recent run and
quash her hopes of becoming the first British player
in 32 years to reach the
top 10. Kucova’s win sets
up a semi-final clash with
tenth seeded Madison Keys
who defeated Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 7-6 (7/3), 1-6,
6-0.
“I cannot believe it,
I’m so happy. There is
no secret to my success,
I feel so good here, I get
so much energy from the
crowd,” Kucova said.
“Although I’m already a
bit tired but they help me
through.”
RESULTS
Quarter-finals
Simona Halep (ROM x5)
bt Svetlana Kuznetsova
(RUS x9) 3-6, 6-1, 6-1
Angelique Kerber (GER
x2) bt Darya Kasatkina
(RUS) 6-2, 6-2
Madison Keys (US x10)
bt Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (RUS x16)
7-6 (7/3), 1-6, 6-0
Kristina Kucova (SVK)
bt Johanna Konta (GBR
x15) 6-4, 6-3

nation - Oman Tribune

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