Gulf Times

QATAR | Page 7
INDEX
QATAR
4 – 9, 27, 28
10
REGION
ARAB WORLD
11, 12
INTERNATIONAL 13 – 24
COMMENT
BUSINESS
CLASSIFIED
SPORTS
25, 26
1 – 7, 18 – 24
8 – 18
1–8
SPORT | Page 8
Spain’s
Navarro wins
Qatar
Open
Al-Sada hails
HBKU’s role in
moulding youth
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SUNDAY Vol. XXXVII No. 10012
February 28, 2016
Jumada I 19, 1437 AH
www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals
QCS to launch
QR30mn cancer
training centre
By Joseph Varghese
Staff Reporter
HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani hands over the Golden Sword to HH
Sheikh Mohamed bin Khalifa al-Thani, owner of Gazwan that won HH The Emir’s Sword
race at the Qatar Racing and Equestrian Club in Al Rayyan yesterday. Sport Page 1
QATAR | Visit
Djibouti president to
arrive in Doha today
32.78
-70.16
-0.71%
in
Qatar has condemned the attack
on a public park and a hotel
late Friday in the Somali capital,
Mogadishu, killing and wounding
several people. A Foreign Ministry
statement yesterday reiterated
Qatar’s firm position which rejects
violence and terrorism in all its
forms and manifestations, whatever
its motives and justifications.
9,847.36
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Attack in Somali
capital condemned
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QATAR | Official
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In brief
QE
Latest Figures
GULF TIMES
Golden Sword winner
DOW JONES
Emir attends Qatar Open final
Djibouti President Ismail Omar
Guelleh will arrive in Doha today for
an official visit to Qatar. HH the Emir
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani
will meet with him tomorrow.
HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani attended the Qatar Total Open
final yesterday evening. The Emir watched the match between Spanish player
Carla Suarez Navarro and Latvian Jelena Ostapenko, which ended in victory for the
Spanish player, 1-6, 6-4, 6-4 to win the championship title. The match was attended
by a number of their excellencies sheikhs, ministers, heads of diplomatic missions
and senior officials. Sport Page 8
M
aking further advancements
in the fight against cancer in
the country, Qatar Cancer
Society (QCS) will open a QR30mn
cancer training centre soon, a senior
official of QCS has disclosed.
“The Ooredoo Cancer Training
Centre, modelled with a QR30mn financial support from Ooredoo is in the
final stages of completion. The centre
is expected to be handed over to us in a
few weeks’ time. We will announce the
opening dates soon,” Sheikh Dr Khalid
bin Jabor al-Thani, chairman of QCS,
told Gulf Times recently.
Located at the Barwa Towers at Al
Sadd, the centre occupies the top four
floors of Tower2. The 18th and 19th
floors will be used for the training facilities while 20th floor will be for the
administrative staff and the top floor
will be the office of the chairman and
others.
Sheikh Khalid said: “The centre has
a number of rooms. We have a training
centre than can accommodate about
100 people and there are smaller halls
too. In addition there is a library, cafeteria, consultation rooms, children’s
room, physicians and paramedics’ stations, prayer rooms among others.
“The centre aims at educating peo-
Sheikh Dr Khalid bin Jabor al-Thani gives the details about the new centre.
PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil
ple at different layers. There are programmes for physicians as well as for
paramedical medical staff. Then, there
is a programme for supporting general
public which we aim to be the biggest.
“The programme aims to train people how to deal with patients who have
been newly diagnosed with cancer or
people who are already suffering from
it. This aims to provide psychological
support for patients as well as support
during the phases of treatment.”
QCS chairman said: “We are creating support groups. They will help the
patients how to go through the phases
of chemotherapy, radiation and other
treatments. It is all part of community
education and part of the bigger pro-
gramme of fighting cancer.”
He noted that QCS can train more
than 100 people at one time as the
main auditorium alone can accommodate about 100 people while smaller
rooms can engage about 50 people.
“We will be able to judge the programme only after six months of operation. The first few months will be used
for training our own people. About 1214 people from QCS will be working on
this project,” Sheikh Khalid noted.
“The centre may not cover all types
of cancer forms but will focus on the
most prevalent ones in Qatar such as
breast, colon, pancreas, liver, leukaemia, prostrate and lung cancer among
others,” he added.
4
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
QATAR
Students attend science expo training course
Commerce Minister attends Qatar-UAE forum
Qatar Science and
Engineering 2016
Exhibition, organised by the
Research and Development
Sector in Qatar Foundation
for Education, Science and
Community Development
(QF), conducted a
specialised training course
on “Skills For Presentation
of Projects & Commitment
The Qatari delegation
headed by the Minister of
Economy and Commerce,
HE Sheikh Ahmed bin
Jassim bin Mohamed
al-Thani, reviewed Qatar’s
experience in promoting
investment and economic
climate in the state as
well as the projects and
opportunities offered in
To Safety & Security
Standards. “
High school students who
are participating in the
exhibition taking place at
Qatar National Convention
Centre from March 8-10
have attended the course
which was conducted in
Arabic and English.
The workshop aimed at
teaching students on rules
and guidelines for the
competition.
At least 200 students
(65% of them are Qatari)
will compete at this year’s
edition. Participants will
present their research
projects in the categories
of scientific and research
disciplines.
The Qatari delegation headed by the Minister of Economy
and Commerce, HE Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohamed
al-Thani, attending the Qatar-UAE Economic Forum in Abu
Dhabi.
‘Single’ expatriates
expected to gain
from realty changes
S
ingle expatriates in
Qatar can expect
more housing options
as some real estate agents
seem willing to offer them
flats vacated by families, it
is learnt.
As some middle-income
expatriates have reportedly
left the country or are planning to send their families
back home, flats occupied
by them - or targeted at such
residents - are expected
to lie vacant in the coming
days, say real estate industry
insiders.
To cope with the emerging situation, realty agents
and property owners may
be compelled to consider
offering such vacant flats to
single expatriates, according
to a real estate professional
whose firm has mostly catered to families until now.
He said many of his longtime customers were vacating their family accommodation and asking for smaller
residential units instead at
lower rents.” This is owing
to job uncertainties, particularly for the main earning income of the family,” he
added.
Some expatriates with
job-related concerns are also
reportedly waiting for the
current academic year to end
before they can send their
children back to their native
countries.
It is found that the owners
of some buildings in the city,
where it was difficult for single expatriates to hire apartments until recently, are now
willing to have them as tenants in view of the emerging
situation.
“Landlords are now
showing interest in
giving their properties
to such groups of
expatriates on rent”
“While such landlords or
their representatives would
not respond to any queries
from bachelors earlier, they
are now showing interest
in giving their properties to
such groups of expatriates
on rent,” said an official of a
real estate firm.
Sources told Gulf Times
that some of the flats vacated
by single expatriates in the
wake of rightsizing by companies were still lying vacant
as the owners were unable to
get new tenants.
Meanwhile,
expatriates
are hopeful that the trend
may lead to a drop in rents.
“We really hope that the
rents come down,” said one
of them.
those areas.
The Ministry’s delegation
taking part in the second
Qatar-UAE Economic Forum
held in Abu Dhabi, UAE,
on 24-25 February made
presentations through
which it displayed the
initiatives, legislation and
experiences conducted
by the State of Qatar to
develop business and
investment environment
and encourage the private
sector to play its role
in achieving economic
diversification.
The Qatari delegation also
discussed with the UAE
co-operation in consumer
protection and combatting
commercial fraud.
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
5
QATAR
Nigerian president arrives in Qatar
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari arrived in Doha yesterday on an official visit to Qatar. HE the Minister of
Energy and Industry Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada and the ambassador of Qatar to Nigeria Abdulaziz bin Mubarak
al-Muhannadi received the Nigerian president at Hamad International Airport.
Two QU engineering college teams to
take part in Shell Eco-marathon Asia
T
wo student teams
from Qatar University
College of Engineering (QU-CENG) will take
part in the seventh edition of
Shell Eco-marathon Asia, to
be held in Manila, the Philippines, from March 3 to 6.
Over 100 student teams
from all across Asia, Middle
East and Africa will gather
for the four-day event to
showcase, test and drive
their self-built, fuel-efficient vehicles on the city
streets of Manila.
“A public event celebrating ideas and innovation,
the best up-and-coming
engineers, designers and
inventors, and cutting-edge
thinking about energy and
mobility, Shell Eco-marathon will be held for the
third and final time in Ma-
nila, at a specially designed
street circuit,” according to
a statement.
At the event, student teams
are challenged to stretch the
boundaries of fuel efficiency
in a real-world urban environment, and winners are
determined by the mileage
achieved on a litre of fuel,
rather than speed.
QU’s teams are made up
of students from CENG’s
departments of mechanical,
electrical and industrial engineering. They will be racing alongside students from
universities, colleges and
technical institutes from 16
countries across the region.
Rob Sherwin, general
manager, corporate affairs,
and deputy country chairman, Qatar Shell, said: “We
are very pleased to see Qa-
tar University once again
participating in Shell Ecomarathon Asia. It is very impressive to see the high level
of detailed preparations and
innovative thinking that the
students have demonstrated
in the design and assembly
of the vehicles.”
Student teams may participate in the Prototype or
UrbanConcept vehicle categories of the competition.
The Prototype category will
see student teams entering
cars of the future – streamlined vehicles focused on
maximising fuel efficiency
through innovative design
elements, such as drag reduction.
The UrbanConcept category will focus on more
“roadworthy” fuel-efficient
vehicles. Aimed at meeting
the real-life needs of drivers, these vehicles are closer
in appearance to the highermileage cars seen on the
roads today.
Abdulaziz
al-Shiebah
from the QU Gernas team
said, “Shell Eco-marathon
is a great opportunity to
build teamwork and communication skills while
tackling a real-life engineering problem.”
Shell Eco-marathon Asia
2016 will see 24 On-Track
awards with prize money of
$2,000 for winners in both
the Prototype and UrbanConcept categories.
In addition, teams will also
vie for five Off-Track awards:
communications,
vehicle
design, technical innovation,
safety and perseverance and
spirit of the event.
6
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
QATAR
QRCS chief launches new
relief projects in Lebanon
A
A group photo with Syrian children.
high-profile
delegation of Qatar Red
Crescent
Society
(QRCS) has visited Lebanon
to review relief projects for
Syrian refugees there and
hold meetings with international relief officials.
The QRCS delegation
comprised Saleh bin Ali
al-Mohannadi, secretarygeneral, and Rashid bin Saad
al-Mohannadi, director of
social development and Al
Khor branch.
The delegation inaugurated several QRCS projects
for Syrian refugees, including solar water heaters installed at two shelter complexes in Sir Ed Donie.
Co-funded by QRCS and
Bahrain Red Crescent Society
(BRCS), the project will provide warmth for more than
700 Syrians who live about
1,000m above sea level, helping protect them against
cold-related diseases.
The
secretary-general
described the project as
crucial, as pre-studies
showed gaps in the supplies
for Syrian refugees in this
cold area. “Water heaters
will help the refugees withstand the brunt of the winter,” he noted.
“QRCS’s strategy is focused
on
sustainable,
well-planned and feasible projects that meet the
needs of displaced people,”
al-Mohannadi said. “We are
happy with the contribution
by BRCS under the umbrella
Officials and dignitaries at the event.
Rota and QC pledge
$2mn to support
education in Yemen
R
each Out to Asia (Rota) participated in the three-day
Yemen humanitarian crisis conference organised in
Doha recently by Qatar Charity (QC).
At the end of the conference, Rota, in partnership with QC,
pledged $2mn in aid with the aim of supporting the education
sector in Yemen.
Rota is a member of Qatar
Foundation for Education,
Science and Community Development (QF).
The conference, titled “The
humanitarian crisis in Yemen:
the challenges and prospects
of humanitarian response”,
was held in collaboration with
13 regional and international
humanitarian organisations.
Rota’s participation in the
conference was aligned with
QF’s mission of using education as a tool to unlock human
potential.
QC invited Essa al-Mannai,
executive director of Rota, to
chair the educational workshop
that was held on the first day of
the conference to shed light on
the state of the education sector during the Yemeni crisis.
Al-Mannai said, “We were
focusing on the development
of education opportunities in
Yemen long before the current crisis. However, today, it
seems more urgent than ever
to join global efforts and share
our expertise in order to provide effective and immediate
solutions for the half-a-million students who have been
forced out of education due to
political conflicts.
“I would like to thank Qatar Charity for their efforts
and congratulate them on the
great success of this important conference.”
The conference brought together more than 150 experts
specialised in humanitarian assistance in the fields of
education, health, water and
environment, and economic
empowerment to provide humanitarian relief to the people of Yemen.
Participants discussed the
need for the establishment
of a collaboration framework
that brings local, regional,
and international organisations together to implement
an action plan, starting with
re-enrolling students in
schools and improving education conditions in Yemen.
Yousef bin Ahmed al-Kuwari, CEO of QC, said: “We
would like to thank Rota for
the great support it has provided. This includes pledging
$2mn in collaboration with
Qatar Charity, as well as Mr
Essa al-Mannai chairing the
workshop and sharing Rota’s
expertise in how to overcome
challenges facing the education sector in Yemen.”
Participants are scheduled
to meet again on March 7 in
order to establish an office to
co-ordinate and organise relief work in Yemen.
of the GCC SecretariatGeneral.”
He took part in preparedness training to inform
the displaced about how to
deal with fire, storm, snow
and flood risks. The training
was conducted in co-operation with the Lebanese Red
Cross for 10,400 beneficiaries in 20 camps.
Then, the delegation went
to Central and Western Beqaa, where they launched a
project to pave passages inside Al Homsi camp, Saadnayel, with diphenol and
reviewed the progress in installing thermal insulation
sheets inside the tents.
The visitors also supervised the distribution of
warm clothes to Syrian stu-
dents at the Al Amal School
of the camp. Then, they
moved to Majdal Anjar to
open a new physiotherapy
centre and visit the department of oncology and
pharmacy at Ghiras Al Khair
Centre.
The delegation held a
meeting with the deputy
representative of the Office
of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Lebanon,
Lynne Miller.
An MoU was signed by
al-Mohannadi to offer a
$50,000 contribution to
UNHCR’s winterisation aid
programme. Accordingly,
heating oil vouchers will
be delivered to 1,000 Syrian families in Arsal, north-
eastern Lebanon.
Another meeting was
held with the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East country director for Lebanon,
Matthias Schmale. The
meeting discussed the humanitarian situation of
Palestinian refugees in
Lebanon and how to work
together to help them.
The visit to the country
concluded by attending the
closing ceremony of the 10day Health Emergencies in
Large Populations Course,
held by QRCS in Beirut, in
co-operation with the International Committee of
the Red Cross, Lebanese Red
Cross and Qatar University.
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
7
QATAR
HE Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada,
Minister of Energy and Industry.
HE the Minister of Energy and Industry Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada and some of
the senior officials at the HBKU Community Leaders Forum.
Al-Sada hails HBKU role
in moulding Qatar’s youth
H
amad Bin Khalifa
University (HBKU),
a member of Qatar
Foundation For Education
Science and Community
Devleopment,
welcomed
more than 100 senior government officials and private sector executives from
various industries in Qatar,
at its inaugural Community
Leaders Forum last week.
HE Dr Mohamed bin
Saleh al-Sada, Minister of
Energy and Industry who
delivered the keynote address said: “One cannot help
but notice HBKU’s immense
contribution to the four pillars of Qatar’s National Vision 2030 by developing our
nation’s most valuable and
important resource – Qatar’s youth. We surely look
forward, with great expectations, to HKBU’s continuing role in contributing to
Qatar’s ambitious developmental plans.”
The event was used to
highlight that all industries,
however financed or organised, need adequate numbers
of well-trained, high-quality leaders and staff to meet
their needs, more so in Qatar
where all sectors are growing
at an unprecedented speed.
“2015 witnessed
unprecedented growth
of the university,
offering a number
of postgraduate
programmes and
conducting research
Among those attending
the event, were HE Sheikh
Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani,
chairman and CEO of Al Faisal Holding Company, Sheikh
Faisal bin Fahad al-Thani,
acting managing director of
Maersk Oil Qatar, and the
presidents, chairmen, CEOs
and senior representatives of
a number of major compa-
nies and organisations.
Faisal Alsuwaidi, president of Research and Development at Qatar Foundation, was also present, as
were representatives of educational partners of HBKU,
including the deans of HEC
Paris in Qatar and Northwestern University in Qatar.
Dr Ahmad Hasnah, president of HBKU, stressed
the need to develop strong
and effective relationships
for the benefit of internships, employment and
research
collaborations.
He said: “2015 witnessed
unprecedented growth of
the university, offering a
number of postgraduate
programmes and conducting research in response to
the current and future needs
of Qatar in the sectors of energy, environment, science,
and medicine.”
Sheikh Faisal said: “In
these times of unprecedent-
ed growth that the nation is
witnessing, it is important
to build awareness on the
role that universities can and
should take in building the nation on one hand, and the role
that the business community
can play in supporting these
universities and the students.”
Dr Khaled Letaief, provost of HBKU, gave a presentation about HBKU at the
forum and he used the opportunity to shed light on
the university’s programmes
and research initiatives and
to point out the role HBKU
can play in serving Qatar’s
future aspiration.
HBKU plays a key role in
helping shape Qatar’s future by, not only providing
interdisciplinary education
and training to leaders from
the nation’s varied sectors,
but by also motivating its
students, faculty, and staff
to target challenges faced by
the country.
8
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
QATAR
Teach For Qatar and
QNB sign partnership
H
HE Sheikha Hind bint Hamad al-Thani along with QNB and Teach For Qatar officials.
E Sheikha Hind bint Hamad alThani, founder and chairperson of Teach For Qatar, and Ali
Ahmed al-Kuwari, chief executive officer, Qatar National Bank (QNB), have
signed a partnership to promote education.
QNB joins Teach For Qatar as its
newest partner as both parties share a
commitment towards advancing education in Qatar, by contributing to the
development of the local independent
school system.
As a result of the agreement QNB’s
CEO will now hold a seat on the Teach
For Qatar board of directors. Additionally, QNB will endorse Teach For Qatar’s
mission and vision through funding
and networking opportunities. QNB
will also support the Teach For Qatar
secondment programme by offering its
employees the opportunity to join the
Teach For Qatar Fellowship.
Mohammed Fakhroo, CEO, Teach for
Qatar, said, “We are delighted to welcome
QNB and appreciate their support of our
mission. We look forward to welcoming QNB members into our next cohort
through our secondment programme, a
unique opportunity for QNB employees
to enhance their leadership skills while
contributing to the learning and development of our nation’s future leaders.”
Al-Kuwari added, “As the country’s
first Qatari-owned commercial bank,
we have an obligation to give back to the
community, and we are delighted to join
Teach For Qatar in its efforts to improve
the local education sector, in line with
the Qatar National Vision 2030.”
QNB recently held a ceremony here to recognise its top
e-learning performers during 2015.
QNB honours
top e-learning
performers
Q
NB held a ceremony
to recognise top elearning performers
during 2015.
The ceremony, which was
held to honour the achievements of some nine top
QNB e-learning performers, saw the attendance of
representatives from both
QNB and Malomatia, QNB’s
e-learning partner.
It included the presentation of certificates to the
QNB employees, followed
by Malomatia’s handing of
a commemorative gift to
QNB to celebrate the strong
partnership between the
two organisations.
QNB’s distinguished elearning programme is offered in co-operation with
Malomatia, the leading IT
service provider in Qatar,
committed to playing an integral role in the development
of an advanced IT environment to help drive the country’s growth as one of the region’s leading economies.
Through the e-learning
portal, QNB’s Learning and
Development Centre provides the bank’s employees
with a comprehensive range
of bespoke training and development programmes to
help them meet their rolespecific needs and help
drive their careers further
by imparting technical efficiency, advanced skills and
the ability to deal with every
job requirement.
QNB said it is keen to encourage more staff members
to sign up for such courses,
which help fulfil their personal and professional ambitions of furthering their
skills and demonstrating
the high levels of performance the QNB Group is
known for.
QNB Centers of Excellence executive manager
Nada al-Ansari said the latest developments in QNB’s
e-learning services will enhance the banking focus of
the e-learning courses.
Senior officials at the symposium.
QU hosts symposium
on GCC education
Q
atar University College of Education
(QU-CED) hosted
a symposium yesterday on
“Education in Gulf Co-operation Council countries:
Educational creativity and
aspirations”.
The event aimed to promote best practices in education in the GCC region,
and to facilitate collaboration and co-ordination
among educators to advance professional development, educational research,
and the development of new
strategies in the curricula.
It brought together over
30 speakers including academics, researchers, experts and practitioners from
Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait,
Oman, Saudi Arabia, and
United Arab Emirates. They
discussed the educational
initiatives in the GCC and
addressed the challenges
facing the education sector
in the region.
Attendees included QU
president Dr Hassan Rashid
al-Derham, founder and
chairman of Al Faisal Without Borders Foundation HE
Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim
al-Thani, QU vice president
and CAO Dr Mazen Hasna,
CED dean Dr Hissa Sadiq,
as well as ministry officials,
and CED faculty, students
and staff.
Keynote speaker assistant
professor Dr Khalifa al-Su-
waidi from UAE University
Department of Curriculum
and Learning Methods presented on “Coming through
the desert: educational
contradictions”.
The programme agenda featured the launch of
Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim
Al-Thani Award for Educational Research. It also included sessions and workshops that addressed a wide
range of topics.
Dr al-Derham said, “This
forum is an advance step towards promoting efforts to
establish co-ordination between the educational systems in the GCC countries,
and to create opportunities
of exchanging successful
experiences and building
excellent professional partnerships. Over the past few
years, the GCC countries
made tremendous efforts to
advance general and higher
education.”
Sheikh Faisal said: “I am
honoured to participate
in this educational forum
to launch our educational
project which is related to
scientific research and aims
to develop knowledge and
education in Qatar. In this
regard, we believe that the
private sector reflects the
readiness of societies to
contribute with the government sector to disseminating awareness in the area of
education.”
Chance of rain in some parts
The Met department has
predicted a chance of rain
in some parts of the country
today.
The minimum and maximum
temperatures today are
expected to be 17C and
26C, respectively, with the
forecast for Doha being 18C
and 23C.
The forecast for inshore
areas says partly cloudy
to cloudy conditions are
expected, and there is also
a chance of rain in some
places.
Offshore areas, too, are likely
to similar cloudy conditions
and scattered rain is
expected there as well.
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
9
QATAR
DFI chief: New golden
age for Arabic cinema
By Joey Aguilar
Staff Reporter
F
Fatma al-Remaihi speaking to reporters at a discussion
recently.
ilms supported by the
Doha Film Institute
(DFI) have started receiving international recognition with Theeb and
Mustang movies sealing a
nomination to the Oscars
this year.
The 88th annual Academy Awards ceremony will
take place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California in the United States tomorrow (Monday in Qatar
and Sunday in the US).
“We started not very
long ago but we see many
of these films and Arab filmmakers make it to the international scene,” DFI chief
executive officer Fatma alRemaihi told reporters at a
discussion recently.
She expressed elation on
the nomination of the two
Arab movies to a prestigious
international film festival
saying their hard work now
brings tangible results.
Directed by Naji Abu
Nowar, Theeb was nominated for Best Foreign Language
Film. It was also nominated
twice at the British Academy of Film and Television
Arts for Best Film Not in the
English Language.
Winning top awards at
Palm Springs, Cannes, Chicago and Stockholm Film
Festivals, director Deniz
Gamze Erguven’s Mustang
was also nominated for Best
Foreign Language Film. It
got nine nominations at the
2016 French Caesars.
“The growing acceptance
of these films marks a new
golden age of Arabic cinema and we are honoured
to be driving this positive
change,” al-Remaihi said.
She believes such international acclaim will inspire aspiring filmmakers
in the country and those in
the region to be more creative and work even harder in
producing quality films.
DFI has been nurturing
and supporting Arab talents locally and beyond its
borders aimed at unlocking their potentials. It also
vowed to continue looking for new talents and
supporting their projects.
“There is a whole ecosystem that is presented
for filmmakers in Qatar and
the region that can support
them in their projects from
inception to finalisation
and showing it later to the
audiences,” al-Remaihi said.
Another DFI-backed film,
director Basil Khalil’s Ave
Maria was nominated for Live
Action Short Film category
to the Oscars, competing
against 144 other films.
The Rotterdam International Film Festival 2016 had
seen three DFI-backed films
- Mountain, The Last Land,
and The Garbage Helicopter
– sharing the spotlight. The
latter continues to be shown
in more than 40 screens
across Europe and Canada.
Six films, which received
grants from DFI, also made
it to the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival
screenings.
Since 2010, DFI has supported more than 250 films
and produced a global
alumnus of filmmakers who
earned the respect of the international film community
“due to their unique voices
and approach instorytelling.”
She noted that DFI is also
exerting efforts to create a
sustainable film industry as
part of its mandate.
“There is a lot of emphasis on economic diversification not just in Qatar but
also in the whole world especially in the Gulf region,”
she added.
According to the DFI
CEO, increasing film activities in Qatar will create more
employment opportunities
across all sectors,.
She expects the institute
to contribute to Qatar’s aim
of becoming a knowledgebased economy “which
will enhance lives, inspire
confidence
and
create
opportunities for everyone.”
“We will partner with
like-minded entities in the
region in our goal of celebrating our cinema and
taking it to the rest of the
world,” the DFI official said.
Carbon dioxide
can be tapped into
green energy, says
QU professor
C
arbon dioxide (CO2),
increasing concentrations of which
leads to a rise in global surface temperature, can be
tapped and transformed
into green energy using innovative approaches, a professor from Qatar University (QU) has said.
“The captured CO2 is
combined with hydrogen
obtained from renewable
sources to produce methanol,” Centre for Advanced
Materials chair Prof Syed
Javaid Zaidi said while presenting the carbon-neutral-cycle at a conference.
This methanol is then
used as feed stock for petrochemical industries and
as transportation fuel. The
CO2 emitted from the combustion process is recycled
back to produce methanol.
“In this way, no CO2 is
emitted in environment, the
process is carbon-neutral
and results in carbon-free
environment.”
Zaidi, also the chair of
Qatar Fuel Additives Company at QU, said the presence of more CO2 is an opportunity to transform it
into green energy.
Besides contributing to a
country’s economic growth,
carbon-neutral-cycle will
also help in protecting the
environment with its zero
toxic emission.
“Renewable methanol is
fed to direct methanol fuel
cells to generate power,
which has wide range of applications,” he pointed out.
“Fuel cells are at the verge
of commercialisation and
poised to become future
source of clean energy.”
Zaidi also highlighted
several technologies and
processes that can be used
Prof Syed Javaid Zaidi
to transform CO2 emissions
to clean energy via fuel cells.
These include CO2 hydrogenation, dry reforming of CO2 with natural
gas, electrochemical and
photochemical reduction
processes.
The chemical recycling
of CO2 to produce carbon
neutral renewable fuels and
clean energy is considered
as a feasible and powerful
new approach that is at the
stage of gradual development and implementation,
according to Zaidi.
Citing Qatar’s efforts
in trying to address CO2
emissions, the QU professor noted that the country
will have to embark on different programmes that reduce emissions and develop
solutions to transform CO2
into clean energy.
In Qatar, he said manufacturing and construction
industries alone contribute to 32% of CO2 emissions while 35% comes from
producing electricity and
transport.
Zaidi sees the outlook
for reducing CO2 as bright
since Qatar and the GCC
region has plenty of solar
energy.
“Using advanced materials, clean energy technologies can be developed to
reduce the impact on the
environment,” he added.
Envoy meets Turkish ministers
QNA
Ankara
T
urkish
Minister
of Foreign Affairs
Mevlut
Cavusoglu has held a meeting
with
Qatar’s
ambassador to Turkey, Salem
Mubarak Shafi al-Shafi.
The Turkish minister
praised bilateral relations
between the two countries and their strong coordination on regional and
international affairs.
They discussed how to
boost bilateral relations
further, as well as delib-
erating on the latest regional and international
developments.
Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources
Berat Albayrak also met
with the Qatari ambassador. They discussed issues
of joint interest, particularly in the energy field.
10
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
REGION
Rouhani and moderates make
gains in high-stakes Iran votes
Reuters
Tehran
P
resident Hassan Rouhani
won a resounding vote of
support and his moderate
allies made a strong showing in
high-stakes elections that could
speed up Iran’s post-sanctions
opening to the world, according
to early partial results yesterday.
Tens of millions thronged
polling stations on Friday for a
twin vote to the 290-seat parliament and the 88-member Assembly of Experts, which selects
the country’s highest authority,
the supreme leader.
An initial tally of 1.5mn votes
counted in Tehran - fewer than
one-fifth of the capital’s eligible
voters - showed Rouhani and his
pragmatic ally, ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, leading
the race for the Assembly of Experts, according to interior ministry figures.
Reformists and moderates
also seemed set to make big
gains against Islamic hardliners in parliament. The twin poll
was seen by analysts as a potential turning point for Iran, where
nearly 60% of the 80mn population is under 30.
The elections were the first
since a landmark nuclear deal
last year that led to the removal
of most of the sanctions that
have damaged the economy over
the past decade.
Supporters of Rouhani, who
championed the nuclear deal,
were pitted against hardliners
close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamene, who are deeply wary
of detente with Western coun-
tries. The conservative Guardian
Council had restricted both races
by disqualifying most reformist
and many moderate candidates.
However, of the top contenders for Tehran’s 16 Assembly of
Experts seats, the partial count
showed 13 were members of a list
led by Rouhani and Rafsanjani,
though some were consensus candidates also backed by hardliners.
The three most prominent
hardliners received lesser scores:
Ahmad Jannati was 10th, the assembly’s current chairman Mohammad Yazdi came 12th, and
arch-conservative MohammadTaghi Mesbah-Yazdi was teetering on the edge in 16th place.
Preliminary results of the
parliamentary poll carried by
the semi-official Fars and Mehr
News agencies indicated reformists and independents linked to
them were leading so far against
hardliners in several cities.
Even if reformists do not
emerge with a majority in the
legislature, dominated since
2004 by conservatives, analysts
say they will secure a bigger
presence than before.
A Reuters tally, based on official results published so far, suggested the pro-Rouhani camp
and allied independents were
leading in the parliamentary
vote. Some moderate conservatives, including current speaker
Ali Larijani, support Rouhani.
Of the first 61 seats declared,
18 went to hardliners, 17 to reformists, 12 to independents
and 14 will be decided in runoffs in late April because no
candidate won the required 25
percent of votes cast. Five of
the initial winners were women.
Interior Minister Abdolreza
Rahmani Fazli told state television results for Tehran’s 30
parliament seats would be announced on Saturday evening.
Conservatives usually perform well in the countryside
while young town-dwellers tend
to prefer moderate candidates.
Reformists seeking more social and economic freedoms and
diplomatic engagement voiced
high hopes of expanding their
sway in parliament and easing
conservative clerics’ grip on the
experts’ assembly.
Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst and economist who served
as an adviser to former President Mohammad Khatami, said
initial indications were beyond
reformist expectations.
“It seems the number of candidates who belong to the reformist and independent groups
will be the majority in parliament and I am hopeful that the
new parliament will be perfect
for us,” he said.
“In the Assembly of Experts
our initial expectation was 15 to
20 percent but it seems it will be
beyond that.”
Rafsanjani, 81, a prominent
leader ever since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, called for national unity now the divisive
campaign was over.
“The competition is over and
the phase of unity and cooperation
has arrived,” state news agency
IRNA quoted him as saying. “The
time after elections is the time for
hard work to build the country.”
Asked by Reuters on Friday
what would happen if reformists
did not win, he said: “It will be a
major loss for the Iranian nation.”
Newspapers hailed what they
saw as a huge turnout, including
many young voters. Polling was
extended five times for a total of
almost six extra hours because so
many people wanted to vote.
Iran’s Financial Tribune newspaper said three million firsttime voters were among the nearly 55mn people aged 18 and over
who are eligible to cast ballots.
Interior Ministry spokesman
Hosseinali Amiri said more than
33mn votes had been cast but
that tally was not final. It would
probably take three days to count
all the votes, he said.
Mehr news agency published a
list of both official and unofficial
parliamentary winners so far,
breaking down their affiliation
as 82 conservative, 49 reformist
and 71 independent.
Authorities had promised that
all Iranians would be able to vote
and on Friday opposition leader
Mir Hossein Mousavi and his
wife voted for the first time since
being put under house arrest in
2011, an ally of Mousavi’s said.
Among voters in Khorasan
square, a working class neighbourhood in Tehran, on Friday,
Mahnaz Mehri, a 52-year-old
mother of four, said she was voting for reformists because they
had a better vision for the economy and foreign policy.
In Meydan Beheshti square, a
mainly conservative neighbourhood, Reza Ganjialilu, a 28-yearold employee at an electronics
shop said he did not favour the
reformists.
“I have a duty to my country.
This group of people (conservatives) are the best. Our main
concern is preserving our reli-
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, right, shakes hands with his Swiss counterpart Johann Schneider during an
official welcoming ceremony following the latter’s arrival for talks, in Tehran yesterday.
gion, ideology, not just the economy,” he said.
Iran, which has the world’s
second-largest gas reserves, a
diversified manufacturing base
and an educated workforce, is
seen by global investors as a huge
emerging market opportunity, in
everything from cars to airplanes
and railways to retail.
For ordinary Iranians, the
prospect of this kind of investment holds out the promise of a
return to economic growth, bet-
ter living standards and more
jobs in the long run.
An opening to the world of this
scale — and Rouhani’s popularity — have alarmed hardline allies of Khamenei, who fear losing
control of the pace of change, as
well as erosion of the lucrative
economic interests they built up
under sanctions.
Both camps appeared successful in getting supporters out
to vote on Friday. Although extensions of voting are common
in Iranian elections, many were
surprised to see voting booths
still packed in mid-evening.
Whatever the outcome, Iran’s
political system places considerable power in the hands of the
conservative Islamic establishment including the 12-member
Guardian Council, which vets all
electoral candidates. It had already tried to shape Friday’s vote
by excluding thousands of candidates, including many moderates
and almost all reformists.
Air strike on Yemen market kills 30
AFP
Sanaa
A
Saudi-led air coalition air strike on
a market northeast
of the rebel-held Yemeni
capital Sanaa killed at least
30 rebels and civilians,
witnesses said.
The air strike targeted
three rebel vehicles as they
entered a market in the
town of Naqil bin Ghaylan,
killing at least 30 Houthi
insurgents and civilians, one
tribal source in the area said.
The
rebel-controlled
Saba news agency gave a
higher death toll, saying
that 60 civilians were killed
and wounded in the attack
but it did not mention any
casualties among fighters.
The attack hit Khulaqa
market, which is known
for selling qat, a mild
narcotic that is chewed
throughout Yemen, witnesses said.
The area is part of the
Nehm region, where coalition-backed loyalists have
been advancing against
the rebels as they try to
close in on Sanaa.
Rights groups have repeatedly urged the coalition to avoid causing
civilian casualties.
Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch accused
the coalition of using USsupplied cluster bombs.
The coalition last month
announced that an independent inquiry would examine charges of possible
abuses against civilians in
the conflict.
A panel of UN experts
says the coalition has
carried out 119 sorties
that violated humanitarian law, and called for an
international probe.
The coalition launched
late March 2015 an air campaign against Iran-backed
rebels in support of the
UN-recognised President
Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
The Iran-backed Shiite rebels have controlled
Sanaa since September
2014 and had placed Hadi
under house arrest.
But he escaped, intially
seeking refuge in second
city Aden last year before
fleeing to the Saudi capital,
Riyadh, as the rebels advanced on the southern port.
Hadi returned to Aden
after loyalists backed by the
coalition drove the rebels
out of there and four other
southern provinces in the
summer.
But Hadi and senior officials continue to spend
most of their time in Riyadh
against a backdrop of worsening security in Aden, the
temporary base of the government.
The UN warned this
month of a “human catastrophe unfolding in Yemen”,
where it says more than 6,100
people had been killed in the
fighting since last March.
The UN said another
Boys look at a car destroyed by a Saudi-led air strike in Sanaa
yesterday.
3,000 people had been
wounded and 2.5mn people
forced to flee their homes.
Donors at a conference in
Qatar pledged Wednesday
$220mn of aid to Yemen.
Also yesterday, the United
Arab Emirates, a key member
of the Saudi-led coalition,
said that one of its soldiers
has died in Yemen when his
military vehicle overturned.
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
ARAB WORLD
Darfur’s displaced
kids battle to learn
Abdelmoneim Abu Idris Ali, AFP
Abuzar Camp, West Darfur
A
buobeida Ali was a toddler
when militiamen stormed his
village in Sudan’s Darfur in
2003, murdering his father and driving his family out, ending his hopes for
a normal childhood and education.
Now aged 17 and out of school for
nine years, he is one of the more than
870,000 Darfuri children living in
camps for the displaced who struggle
to balance their studies with the need
to survive.
“When we came here, I left school
after four years to help my mother
support my sisters who are studying,”
Ali said, sitting in the yard behind the
hut he shares with his family in the
Abuzar camp near West Darfur state
capital Geneina.
Since leaving school, he has worked
in a restaurant at the small marketplace set up in the winding, dusty alleys of the camp.
He works serving cheap meals and
scrubbing plates from morning until
sunset bringing in a daily salary of 15
Sudanese pounds ($2.50).
In West Darfur, where 30% of children are out of primary school, Ali’s
meagre salary helps to allow his four
younger sisters to attend two government-run primary schools that serve
the camp.
“I want to go back to school, but circumstances...” he said, his voice trailing off.
Ali’s home village of Nuri - dominated by the Masalit ethnic group he
hails from - was one of the first attacked in the 13-year Darfur conflict.
Ethnic minority insurgents rebelled
against the Arab-dominated government of Omar al-Bashir in 2003, saying their region was being marginalised.
Darussalam Abdel Gadoos walks with a notebook at the Abuzar camp near
West Darfur state capital Geneina.
The government unleashed ground
forces and allied militia to crush the
rebels, with villages like Ali’s torched
and 2.5mn people driven from their
land in the ensuing fighting.
Now 1.4mn live in camps for the
displaced, more than half of them
children.
They risk a “lost childhood,” a
spokesperson for the UN’ children’s
agency Unicef told AFP.
Clashes in Jebel Marra in the heart
of Darfur that erupted on January 15
have displaced another 82,000 people, 60% of them children.
Sudan’s conflict-stricken peripheries “have amongst the highest levels
of malnutrition, lowest vaccination
coverage, highest percentage of children out of school and highest levels of
child mortality,” according to Unicef.
Unicef said under-18s “unfortunately continue to bear the biggest
burden of one of the most protracted
man-made disasters.”
In a bid to persuade children like Ali
Egypt teens take to street
fashion in search of fame
By Tony Gamal-Gabriel, AFP
Cairo
E
gyptian teenager Islam stood
shirtless in an upscale Cairo
neighbourhood wondering what
to wear, a turquoise shirt or a black
sweater, as he prepared for a photo
shoot. “Should I wear a tie as well?”
asked Islam, 15, combing back his slick
black hair.
This is not a regular fashion shoot
or a scene being filmed for an Egyptian
film. Behind the camera is one of Islam’s friends, who plans to capture the
teenager at his best.
The idea is to upload Islam’s pictures on social media networks like
Facebook and Instagram, and collect as
many “likes” as possible.
Over the past four years, many
Egyptian teenagers have become part
of a growing circle of such “Famous
People” groups on social media networks, some ultimately looking to become celebrities.
Hundreds of youngsters like Islam
are a common sight in posh Cairo districts these days, carrying expensive
cameras and trendy clothes in their
backpacks - ready to pose for a photo
shoot wherever possible.
Mostly hailing from Cairo’s impoverished neighbourhoods, they seek
out expensive cars and luxury villas as
props.
Often dressed provocatively, these
teenagers are challenging taboos in a
conservative society.
In Egypt, where 30% of the 90mn
population is aged between 10 and
24, such teenagers can also be seen as
challenging a repressive regime that
has crushed all opposition and monopolised public space.
In the capital’s upscale Maadi district where many foreigners live, Islam and nearly a dozen other teenagers from an industrial suburb hunt for
locations.
Sporting skinny jeans and trendy
haircuts, they photograph themselves
in front of imposing wrought iron and
wooden gates to villas, but often get
ejected by guards.
“At home they don’t think much of
my trousers,” said Islam.
“They say tight clothes are for girls,
and my father hates my haircut,” said
Islam, as two policemen approach to
briefly question them.
“People shout at us or threaten to
call the police. But we’re not doing
anything wrong. We just take pictures.
It’s our passion and we will continue,”
said Ahmed Amin, 16, who has 1,300
followers on Facebook.
After several odd jobs, Amin purchased the SLR camera he now carries
and he charges 35 Egyptian pounds
($4.5) for five photos.
Ziad Akl, an expert on political sociology at the Cairo-based Al Ahram
Center for Political and Strategic Studies, describes the trend as a “generational conflict”.
It is a clash between “youths whose
morals and values are evolving and a
society that denies change and diversity,” Akl said.
These youngsters are setting a new
trend, just as more and more women
and college girls have turned to conservative attire in past decades.
“We are in the process of redrawing
boundaries of personal freedom,” said
Akl. “These youngsters feel that anyone can dress the way he wants or have
haircuts or tattoos he likes.”
The trend is worrying the authorities, which like any other “repressive
regime would like to control society”,
Akl said.
“The police will continue to resist
this phenomenon by using repressive
and intimidating means.”
Some youngsters have ended up
in police stations, but the success of
Sonek Diab, 21, keeps them motivated.
A trendsetter since high school days,
Diab has turned into an idol for many
Egyptian youngsters.
He has already shot two commercials, including one for a fast food
chain that contacted him directly on
his Facebook page.
With his trademark dreadlocks, Diab
gained fame through his photographs
taken on Cairo streets. He has more
than 75,000 followers on Instagram.
“I used to be stopped in shopping
malls by people keen on taking pictures
with me,” said Diab, who now wants to
make a full-time career in the fashion
industry.
Diab’s success story serves as a motivator.
“I want to become an actor or a
model, or do commercials or become a
television presenter,” said Ahmed Zein,
16, who attends a theatre workshop. “I
simply love the camera.”
Young Egyptian photographer Abdelazizi Khaled (right) takes photos of his friends during a ‘fashion photo-shoot’ for their
social media accounts, outside the Hanging Church in Old Cairo.
to stay in education, the UN’s World
Food Programme provides nearly
600,000 Darfuri children with meal
assistance.
The plates of lentils or fava beans
are provided in schools so parents do
not have to cover the costs of meals
and pull children out to work.
Two thousand children in Abuzar
- one of Darfur’s smaller camps with
about 17,000 residents - receive this
support, among them 10-year-old
Darussalam Abdel Gadoos. Her family fled an attack on their village three
years before she was born.
Dressed in a bright blue dress and
gleaming white headscarf, Abdel
Gadoos was keen to show off what she
had learned in school, laughing and
chanting her times tables in a lilting
voice in a courtyard among the camp’s
densely packed shacks.
She has already seen many of her
classmates leave the government-run
school she attends next to the camp.
“Our class is full of boys and girls,
there are about 115 of them but most
stop studying,” she said.
She has been receiving the food assistance in class from the WFP and
her father - a community leader in the
camp - said it has helped her.
“Lots of children don’t go to school
because of their circumstances, the
father doesn’t work, like me - I work
one day and then wait a few more
without any job,” Abdel Gadoos Atim
said.
With nine other children to feed,
Atim said conditions are difficult for
his family, but he wants Abdel Gadoos
to stay in school. His daughter helps
the family outside school hours, tending to the goat they keep on a patch of
dirt near their home.
But she is determined to continue
her studies, and has already decided
on a career. “I want to become a teacher,” she smiled.
Restoration work
A worker rests as restoration work is conducted on Al Azhar mosque in
Cairo.
11
12
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
ARAB WORLD
Most guns fall silent as delicate
truce takes effect across Syria
Reuters
Beirut
G
uns mostly fell silent in
Syria and Russian air raids
stopped yesterday, the
first day of a cessation of hostilities that the UN has described
as the best hope for peace in five
years of civil war.
Under the US-Russian accord
accepted by President Bashar alAssad’s government and many of
his foes, fighting should cease so
aid can reach civilians and talks
can open to end a war that has
killed more than 250,000 people
and made 11mn homeless.
Russia, which says it intends
to continue strikes against areas
held by Islamist fighters that are
not covered by the truce, said it
would suspend all flights over
Syria for the first day to ensure
no wrong targets were hit by mistake.
The truce seemed largely to be
holding, though rebels reported
what they described as occasional government violations, and
one commander warned that unchecked, the breaches could lead
to the agreement’s collapse.
Jaish al-Nasr, a group affiliated
to the Free Syrian Army (FSA)
which has backed the truce, said
government forces had fired
mortars, rockets and machine
guns in Hama province and that
warplanes had been constantly
present in the sky.
“Compared to the previous
days it is nothing, but we consider that they broke the truce,”
Mohamed Rasheed, head of the
group’s media office, told Reuters.
Another FSA-affiliated group,
Alwiyat Seif al-Sham, said two
of its fighters had been killed and
four more wounded when government tanks shelled them in
rural areas west of Damascus.
A Syrian military source denied the army was violating the
truce agreement. State media
described rocket attacks near
Damascus and several deadly attacks by Islamic State. But overall
the level of violence was far reduced.
“Let’s pray that this works
because frankly this is the best
opportunity we can imagine the
Syrian people has had for the last
five years in order to see something better and hopefully something related to peace,” UN Syria
envoy Staffan de Mistura said at
a midnight news conference in
Geneva.
“I think that the feeling that we
have today is that the situation is
very different but of course every
day has to be monitored,” he said.
The agreement is the first of its
kind to be attempted in four years
and, if it holds, would be the most
successful truce of the war so far.
De Mistura said he intends
to restart peace talks on March
7, provided the halt in fighting
largely holds.
But there are weak spots in a
fragile deal which has not been
directly signed by the Syrian
warring parties and is less binding than a formal ceasefire.
Importantly, it does not cover
powerful militant groups such
as Islamic State and the Nusra
Front, Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb in
Hama province. Nusra has called
for redoubled attacks.
Moscow and Damascus say
they will continue to fight them,
and other rebels say they fear this
stance may be used to justify attacks against them too.
The truce is the culmination
of new diplomatic efforts that
reflect a battlefield dramatically
changed since Russia joined the
war in September with air strikes
to prop up Assad. Moscow’s intervention effectively destroyed
the hope his enemies have maintained for five years - encouraged
by Arab and Western states - to
topple him by force.
Like several other rebel figures
contacted by Reuters, Fares Bayoush, head of the Fursan al-Haqq
rebel group which fights under
the FSA banner, said front lines
were far quieter. But he added
that violations were taking place
and if continued could lead to the
“collapse of the agreement”.
In early reports of violence, a
Syrian rebel group in the northwest said three of its fighters had
been killed while repelling an attack from government ground
forces a few hours after the plan
came into effect.
Syria’s state media said at least
six people were killed and several
wounded in two suicide bomb attacks east of Hama city, including
the car bomb claimed by Islamic
State. Three children were killed
and 12 wounded in an unspecified Islamic State attack in Joura
neighoburhood in Deir al-Zor
province.
Fadi Ahmad, spokesman for
the FSA First Coastal Division
in Latakia province said government helicopters had dropped
eight “barrel bombs” on the area
in the early afternoon. Assad’s
opponents have long accused
the government of using such
bombs - oil drums packed with
explosives - to cause indiscriminate damage in rebel-held areas,
which Damascus denies.
The Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights, a monitoring
A UN handout photo released yesterday shows a general view of the operations centre that provides 24/7
communications and liaison support for the Syria Ceasefire Taskforce at the UN Office in Geneva.
group, said government forces
dropped five barrel bombs on the
village on Najiya in Idlib province. The village is controlled by
several groups including Nusra
Front.
Nusra Front fighters yesterday
pulled out of residential areas in
several towns they run in Idlib
province to avoid being blamed
by local people for civilian casualties if the areas are bombed
by Russia, residents and rebel
sources said.
The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said Islamic State fighters had
attacked Tel Abyad, a town near
the Turkish border, prompting
air strikes by the US-led coalition
to try to drive them back.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said
it would suspend air strikes in a
“green zone” - defined as those
parts of Syria held by groups that
have accepted the cessation of
hostilities - and make no flights
at all yesterday.
“Given the entry into force of
the UN Security Council resolution that supports the Russian-American agreements on a
ceasefire, and to avoid any possible mistakes when carrying out
strikes, Russian military planes,
including long-range aviation,
are not carrying out any flights
over Syrian territory on Feb. 27,”
the ministry said.
Sergei Rudskoi, a lieutenantgeneral in the Russian air force,
told a news briefing that Moscow
had sent the US a list of 6,111 fighters who had agreed to the ceasefire deal and 74 populated areas
which should not be bombed.
A rebel fighter said government forces briefly fired artillery
at a village in Aleppo province,
which he said was under the control of the Levant Front, another
FSA group. But he said the frontline was quieter than before.
“There is calm. Yesterday at
this time there were fierce bat-
tles. It is certainly strange, but
the people are almost certain that
the regime will breach the truce
on the grounds of hitting Nusra.
There is the sound of helicopters
from the early morning,” he told
Reuters earlier on Saturday.
Fighting raged across much of
western Syria right up until the
cessation came into effect but
there was calm in many parts of
the country shortly after midnight, the Observatory said.
“In Damascus and its countryside ... for the first time in
years, calm prevails,” Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman
said. “In Latakia, calm, and at
the Hmeimim air base there is no
plane activity,” he said, referring
to the Latakia base where Russia’s warplanes operate.
After years in which any action by the UN Security Council
was blocked by Moscow, Russia’s
intervention has opened a path
for multilateral diplomacy while
undermining the long-standing
Western demand that Assad
leave power.
The Security Council unanimously demanded late on Friday
that all parties to the conflict
comply with terms of the plan.
UN-backed peace talks, the
first in two years and the first to
include delegations from Damascus and the rebels, collapsed earlier this month before they began, with the rebels saying they
could not negotiate while they
were being bombed.
The government, backed by
Russian air strikes, has dramatically advanced in recent weeks,
moving close to encircling Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the
war, and threatening to seal the
Turkish border that has served
as the main lifeline for rebel-held
areas.
Truce Day 1: savouring a morning without bombs
AFP
Damascus
F
A man carries a bag of bread in central Abbasid Square, next to the Jobar suburb of Damascus.
or many people across battle-torn Syria, yesterday
morning was unusual: for the
first time in years, they could take a
quiet neighbourhood stroll as their
children played in the park.
Less than a day into a landmark
ceasefire deal in parts of the country, residents say their usual routine has been thrown off without
the usual sounds of artillery, rocket
attacks, or helicopter-borne barrel
bombs.
“We’re totally lost today, our
daily schedule has completely
changed!” jokes Hasaan Abu Nuh,
an activist from the town of Talbisseh in Homs province.
“Normally, the helicopter takes
off at 8am and the party starts there were some violations today,
but it’s nothing,” Abu Nuh tells
AFP.
The guns fell silent at midnight
on Friday across large parts of Syria, after the government and nearly
100 rebel groups agreed to a cessation of hostilities brokered by the
US and Russia.
For 11-year-old Ahmad, that
meant something special: he could
go to the park with his siblings.
He beams as he swings
back and forth in the small
playground near his home in
the Sukari neighbourhood
of bomb-battered Aleppo
city.
“My father used to take
us himself to go play in the
park on Fridays only, when
he could be sure there would
be no shelling or clashes
nearby,” he says. “But this
morning, he allowed us to go
by ourselves to the park near
our home.”
Osama Diri, who lives in
the nearby Al Maghayir district, says he was surprised
how busy Aleppo’s streets
were when he woke up yesterday.
“Normally, we wake up
and there’s very little movement in the morning until
noon because of the airplanes,” he says.
“Most of the residents
would be at home. But now
we don’t hear the sounds of
artillery or planes at all.”
Tired of nearly five years
of war, many residents had
been deeply sceptical that a
ceasefire could hold across
the country, where more
than 270,000 people have
been killed in the past five
years.
“We were waiting until
the clock struck midnight
so we could see what would
happen,” says Faez Sandeh,
who lives in the Al Kalasseh
district with his wife and
child.
“Thank God, the situation
is good so far. There’s been
no shelling, no warplanes,
and more people are walking
in the streets.”
Abu Sharif, one rebel stationed near Aleppo city, says
the battle lines were so calm
he was able to return home.
“I returned from my post
in the Al Breij area, which is
a front line between us and
the regime,” he says.
“The situation was good
and relaxing for us there,
as there were no attacks or
infiltration attempts by the
regime forces.”
Commanders in Ahrar alSham, a hardline Islamist
group, say even they were
abiding by the ceasefire.
“There were some clashes between us and regime
forces after midnight, but
they didn’t last more than
half an hour,” says Abu Abdo
al-Assir, an Ahrar leader in
Aleppo. “Now, we will be
committed to the truce as
long as the regime also commits to it.”
His comments are particularly encouraging, as Ahrar
al-Sham is one of the groups
whose alliance with Al Qaeda’s local affiliate - excluded
from the deal - had sparked
worries the truce would not
hold.
For Syrians near Damascus, whose morning coffee
was often accompanied by
the crash of artillery rounds,
yesterday’s quiet was a sign
of hope.
Shadi Matar is an activist in the rebel bastion of
Daraya, west of the capital.
Despite a pledge by the regime that it would continue
operations there, Matar says
the first hours of the truce
were calm.
“On a normal day at this
time, there are three or four
planes flying around to drop
barrel bombs,” he says. “Today, thank God, this isn’t
happening.”
Inside the capital, hours
of quiet were interrupted
when several shells hit the
central district of Abbasiyeen, without causing casualties.
Bassem Salhab, 55, insists
that everyone should remain
optimistic.
“For the first time we feel
safe after everyone committed to the truce. Syrians
generally want nothing more
than a ceasefire,” he says.
“People are sick and tired
and this crisis has dragged
on. The ceasefire is the only
solution.”
Medical student Ammar
al-Rai says the relative calm
nationwide has erased some
of his pessimism about the
future of Syria.
“All my friends are happy that it’s quiet, even if
it’s temporary,” says the
22-year-old. “One of my
friends in Germany sent
me a message this morning to ask me jokingly, is the
war over? When can I come
back? Damascus is more
beautiful without war.”
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
13
AFRICA
AU to boost mission
to Burundi: Zuma
AFP/Reuters
Nairobi
T
he African Union (AU) is
to boost its human rights
and military observers in
Burundi as part of efforts to calm
the country’s long-running political crisis, South African President Jacob Zuma said yesterday.
Zuma led a delegation of five
African leaders in talks with Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza on Friday after meeting opposition leaders, amid increasing
violence and fears of a return to
civil war.
The crisis, triggered by Nkurunziza’s controversial decision
last April to run for a third term,
which he won in an election in
July, has seen violence become
routine, with more than 400
people killed and nearly quarter
of a million fleeing the country.
“The AU will deploy 100 human rights observers and 100
military monitors to Burundi to
monitor the situation,” a statement on the South African presidency’s website said.
Zuma did not say when the
monitors would arrive in Burundi.
Led by Zuma, the presidents
of Mauritania, Senegal and Gabon, as well as Ethiopia’s prime
minister, visited the capital Bujumbura on Thursday and Friday
to seek a solution to Burundi’s
10-month-old political gridlock.
The AU agreed to send the delegation during a January summit
when Burundi successfully faced
down a plan to deploy 5,000
peacekeepers to the country.
The group met Nkurunziza as
well as two opposition leaders,
religious authorities, civil society representatives and a former
president.
The vast majority of opposition leaders and independent
Nkurunziza (left) bids farewell to Zuma
at Bujumbura airport.
civil society representatives are
currently in exile.
The AU delegation “expressed
its concerns about the levels of
violence, loss of life, and the
general state of political instability in the country”, said the statement. “We believe strongly that
the solution to Burundi’s political problems can be attained only
through inclusive and peaceful
engagement.”
Ugandan President Yoweri
Museveni, the AU’s mediator in
the ongoing crisis, “will convene
an inclusive dialogue that will be
attended by all important stakeholders as soon as possible”, the
statement said, without giving
more specific details.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon had secured a promise of “inclusive dialogue” from Nkurunziza to help
end the turmoil during a visit to
Bujumbura shortly before the AU
mission.
Previous talks mediated by
Museveni have failed, with the
Burundian government refusing to sit with some opponents
who it accuses of involvement
in a failed coup last May and of
months of violence including
grenade and rocket attacks
The AU also called on the international community “to restore the provision of assistance
to Burundi as requested by the
people of Burundi”.
Nkurunziza has been accused
of violating the constitution, as
well as the Arusha Accord that
brought an end to the country’s
1993-2006 civil war, which left
about 300,000 people dead.
One opposition leader, Charles
Nditije of the UPRONA party, on
Friday cast doubt on the AU delegation’s intent, saying that it
seemed they had come to “consolidate Nkurunziza in his third
term”.
Western powers have urged
Africans to act.
The United States and European nations have withheld some
aid to poor Burundi and taken
other steps to try to put pressure
on the government to resolve the
crisis, but they say it has had little impact.
Details about the new mission
were not immediately clear.
Diplomats said other African
monitors sent to Bujumbura last
year had been stuck in their hotel
unable to work because Burundi
refused to sign a memorandum
allowing them to operate.
Burundi’s opposition said 200
monitors were not enough.
“They have to increase the
number so they can cover the
large part of the (country’s) territory,” said Thacien Sibomana,
spokesman for the opposition
UPRONA party. “They unfortunately remained silent on the
peacekeepers deployment while
people are continuously dying.”
Malawi officials to lose perks amid budget hits
Ministers
told to sign
integrity
pledge or
face sack
Reuters
Dar es Salaam
Malawi will cut the benefits enjoyed by cabinet ministers and top civil
servants as the government works to rein in spending due to a foreign
aid freeze and weak tax revenue, the finance minister said yesterday.
International donors, led by Malawi’s former colonial ruler, Britain,
halted direct aid to the southern African nation in 2013 over the
so-called “cashgate” scandal in which senior government officials
siphoned millions of dollars from state coffers.
“Cabinet has decided that the Treasury and the Office of the President
and Cabinet should review the various perks, including travel, vehicle
and fuel entitlements for minister and senior public servants that
should be scaled down,” Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe told
Reuters.
He spoke a day after outlining plans to trim the 2015/16 national budget to 906bn kwacha ($1.23bn) from 929bn kwacha previously because
of the failure to meet revenue targets in the first half of the year.
Like many of its neighbours, Malawi is also grappling with a steep
devaluation of its kwacha currency that has been fueled by the aid
suspension and declining export earnings from the key tobacco crop.
Malawi relies on aid for 40% of its budget.
T
anzanian President John
Magufuli has threatened
yesterday to sack cabinet
ministers who do not declare
their assets or fail to sign an integrity pledge, part of his anticorruption drive.
Magufuli launched several initiatives to clamp down on corruption since winning an election in November.
Businesses have long said corruption was a major obstacle to
working in the east African nation and a deterrent to investment.
Tanzania is ranked 117th out
of 168 countries in Transparency
International’s 2015 corruption
perception index where No. 1 is
least corrupt.
“The president’s instructions
that all ministers who were yet to
declare their assets and liabilities should do so before 6pm (on
Saturday) has been implemented,” the prime minister’s office
said in a statement.
It said those who did not
would be fired.
Earlier this week, a body that
monitors civil servants said four
senior ministers and one junior
minister had yet to sign.
Cabinet ministers and other
public officials are required by
law to declare their assets and
liabilities at the country’s ethics
secretariat by December 31 each
year, but in the past this has often been ignored.
The integrity pledge is new.
Magufuli, who took office late
last year, has pledged to root out
corruption and sacked several
senior officials, including the
head of the government’s antigraft body.
Tanzania is one of Africa’s
biggest per capita aid recipients,
but payments have often been
delayed because donors said
they were concerned about corruption, poor governance and
the slow pace of reforms.
Mugabe decries
factionalism at
birthday party
AFP/Reuters
Masvingo, Zimbabwe
Z
imbabwean
President
Robert Mugabe blamed
foreign interference again
for the infighting and succession battles plaguing his party
as the world’s oldest leader celebrated his 92nd birthday at a
lavish affair.
Thousands of party loyalists,
representatives of foreign nations and members of the public
watched as Mugabe released 92
balloons in the air, with songs
and ululations ringing out
around him.
Several cakes were on display
at the public festivities yesterday, one in the shape of Africa
(pictured), another a whopping
92kg replica of the party venue:
the Great Zimbabwe ruins, a
Unesco world heritage site built
in the 13th century as the headquarters of the Munhumutapa
empire.
Balloons and cake, however,
did little to hide the infighting that has defined the ruling
ZANU-PF party in the last year
as Mugabe continues to avoided
naming a successor, despite his
advanced age and recent speculation over his health.
Mugabe, who turned 92 last
Sunday, has ruled for 36 years
during an era marked by voterigging, mass emigration, accusations of human rights abuses
and economic decline.
On his actual birthday, state
media poured praise on his leadership since independence from
Britain.
In its 16-page special supplement, the Sunday Mail said
on its front cover: “Thank You
Bob, We now have a voice, since
1980.”
Vice-President
Emmerson
Mnangagwa is viewed as the
likely next president, but in recent weeks he has been publicly criticised by Mugabe’s
wife Grace in a sign of growing
rivalry.
“Factionalism, factionalism
and, I repeat, factionalism has
no place at all in our party,” Mugabe told guests including senior party officials, government
Mugabe’s birthday cake in the shape of the map of Africa during
celebrations marking his birthday at the Great Zimbabwe
monument in Masvingo.
Left: Mugabe and his wife Grace at the party organised by
supporters in a drought-stricken area of Masvingo, drawing
criticism from opponents who said the celebrations were an affront
to ordinary Zimbabweans.
ministers, foreign diplomats and
representatives of ruling parties
from Angola, Botswana, South
Africa, Namibia and Tanzania.
“It should never be allowed to
exist ... We should remain united and use proper channels to
solve our differences.”
The long-time leader also
used the opportunity to launch
into a characteristic attack on
the West.
“The British and American
in their cunning ways, as usual,
have also utilised such opportunities to offer huge sums of
money to individuals both within and outside the party to cause
factionalism which has greatly
affected the youth especially
as of the recent past,” Mugabe
charged.
The scale of the celebrations,
costing a reported $800,000
this year, attracts annual controversy in Zimbabwe, which
recently declared a “state of
disaster” due to an ongoing regional drought and widespread
food shortages.
“There is very little to celebrate for a 92-year-old who has
presided over the collapse of the
economy, reducing the country
to a nation of vendors and beggars,” Takavafira Zhou, a political analyst at Masvingo State
Residents gather at the scene of a car bomb attack near Somali Youth League Hotel in Mogadishu.
Shebaab attack kills at least 14: police
Reuters/DPA
Mogadishu
A
n attack on Friday by a Somali Islamist group next to
a busy park and a hotel in
the capital killed at least 14, while
30 others were injured, police said
yesterday.
Shwbaab militants, who want to
topple the Western-backed government, claimed responsibility for the
attack.
The government said a truck
bomb was detonated near the entrance to the park and close to the
Somali Youth League Hotel, known
as SYL Hotel, in the seaside capital
Mogadishu.
A Shebaab spokesman said in a
statement to Reuters the death toll
was 20 soldiers, while two members
of the group died.
The group often gives a higher
death toll for the attacks it carries
out than the official numbers.
Police Major Ahmed Abdullahi
told Reuters that the latest attack
killed five members of the security
forces and nine civilians, while 30
others were injured.
On Friday, another police officer
said three militants had also been
killed.
“It was a truck bomb carrying
200kg of explosives,” Somali Security Minister Abdirizak Omar told
state radio.
The SYL Hotel is frequented by
diplomats, government officials,
foreign nationals and even hosts
visiting heads of state.
It is located near the presidential
palace.
The massive explosion created a
15m crater and “was the biggest one
ever witnessed in Somalia”, Omar
said.
Last year, Shebaab targeted the
same hotel in a suicide car bombing
as Turkish delegates were preparing for the visit of President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan.
Fifteen people, all of them Somali, were killed.
Witness Osman Abdullahi, who
said he counted six bodies at a nearby restaurant, told DPA: “I thought
a missile landed in the area. My
other colleagues were speculating
an airstrike was carried out.”
Also targeted was Peace Garden, a
public garden near the hotel, which
attracts hundreds of families in the
evenings and at the weekend.
“We were one of the people who
were taking their time with their
kids in the garden at the time of the
attacks,” said Abdiqani Omar, a father of four, who managed to exit
the area to safety.
“A flying stone hit my head.
There was a blood in my face, but
not so serious,” he said.
University, told AFP.
Zimbabwe has suffered a series of food crises and hyperinflation since Mugabe’s land
reforms when farms were seized
from white farmers for redistribution.
On Tuesday, scores of young
supporters from the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party staged a
protest in Masvingo.
Protest placards read: “No
birthday when children are
starving” and “We want jobs,
not bashes.”
Local media reported that
party activists ordered teachers
and villagers in the rural districts of Masvingo to make cash
donations to help pay for this
year’s celebrations.
Mugabe has said no-one
would starve as a result of a
drought which has left 3mn
people in need and prompted
the declaration of a state of disaster in most rural areas.
But in a characteristic gibe
at Western countries, he said
Zimbabwe would not accept aid
if it came with conditions that
the country should accept gay
rights.
“If aid, as I understand, is to
be given on the basis that we
accept the principle of gay mar-
riages, then let that aid stay
where it is,” Mugabe said during an hour-long speech at the
birthday bash yesterday. “We
don’t want it. It is rotten aid,
filthy aid and we won’t have anything to do with it.”
Zimbabwe has appealed for
nearly $1.6bn to help pay for
grain and other food, but no aid
organisation is known to have
attached such a condition to assistance.
Mugabe’s lavish birthday
parties have become an annual pilgrimage for loyalists and
those seeking favours from the
veteran leader, but this year’s
celebration in the drought-battered Masvingo province proved
particularly controversial.
In Masvingo, some 75% of
the staple maize crop was destroyed by the parched conditions, making it the hardest-hit
in the southern African nation
in the worst drought since the
early 1990s.
“The money that is being
budgeted for this ill-conceived
birthday bash should actually be used to import maize to
avert the impending starvation
in Masvingo province and other
parts of the country,” Obert
Gutu, a spokesman for the
MDC, said in a statement.
14
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
AMERICAS
Buffett to
GoP: Don’t
‘bet against
America’
AFP
Washington
R
Hillary Clinton during solicitor David Pascoe’s annual oyster roast and fish fry at the Orangeburg County Fairgrounds in, South Carolina.
Clinton eyes a decisive
win as S Carolina votes
Sanders has received a cool welcome
from the electorate in South Carolina
AFP
Washington
H
illary Clinton is eyeing a decisive
win in South Carolina’s Democratic presidential nomination
race, hoping to gain momentum against
Bernie Sanders before the high-stakes
“Super Tuesday” contest.
One week after Donald Trump barrelled
to victory in the state’s Republican vote,
yesterday Democrats took centre stage in
South Carolina, where 55% of voters in the
2008 party primary were black.
Clinton is expected to win the southern
state, and leads in the national delegate
count at this early stage, having won two
of the first three nomination contests -- in
Iowa, narrowly, and Nevada.
Polling stations opened their doors at
7am (1200 GMT)yesterday and were to
close 12 hours later, at which point a winner could be announced if one candidate
has a clear lead.
“It would be a super send-off to do well
here,” Clinton told several hundred mostly
African American voters, who gathered
Friday for an oyster roast and fish fry at the
county fairgrounds in Orangeburg.
By contrast, Sanders received a cool
welcome from the same crowd when he
arrived unexpectedly at the event on the
heels of the former secretary of state.
“In 1963, I was there with Doctor (Martin Luther) King for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” he said,
earning some applause.
Bernie Sanders greets supporters after
he addressed a rally at the Township
Auditorium in Columbia, South Carolina.
Later in Columbia, Sanders delivered
his final speech to an oversized, halfempty auditorium — while in Iowa, he
had easily filled an arena with 5,000 supporters.
While Sanders has the support of some
high-profile African Americans such as
film director Spike Lee and the rapper
Killer Mike, Clinton is backed by many local elected officials and black community
figures.
The 68-year-old also has the support
of many of the same voters who supported
her husband, Bill, whose popularity as a
presidential candidate rivalled even that of
Barack Obama.
Both presidents are men whom Clinton
knows well, and she frequently jokes about
being a part of their political lineage.
“I’m not running to do either one of
their third terms, but I do think they really
did a good job for America, and it would be
foolish not to learn from them,” Clinton
said.
In South Carolina, Clinton’s campaign
has worked hard to hammer home the
message that she is the only candidate who
can break down barriers still preventing
minorities from getting ahead.
Some Clinton supporters say Senator
Sanders, a transplanted New Yorker and
self-declared democratic socialist who
now represents Vermont, is little known in
the south.
Although Sanders, 74, was in South
Carolina Friday, his prospects in the state
are poor and he has invested few resources
here.
Instead, he is focusing on states like
Ohio and Minnesota that vote in March,
when a whopping 45% of the delegates
who will attend the nominating convention are up for grabs.
He was scheduled to be in Texas and
Minnesota yesterday, while Clinton will be
back in Columbia by night.
Only 3% percent of delegates for July’s
nominating convention in Philadelphia
will be awarded by the end of the day.
But the 11 states that hold Democratic
nominating contests just days later on Super Tuesday will send a whopping 18% of
the delegates to Philadelphia.
Clinton is ahead in most of the 11 states,
but Sanders has the edge in Massachusetts
and his adopted home state of Vermont.
Since he entered the campaign last year,
Sanders has made up some lost ground
with minorities in terms of face and name
recognition.
But Clinton’s supporters, minority or
otherwise, invariably say she is “qualified”
and “experienced”.
Jay Smith, a retired African American,
came to the polls in Columbia yesterday
with her son Roy and young grandson.
Both voted for Clinton.
“She’s the strongest of the candidates.
She’s been in it her whole life,” Smith
said.
Bernie? “No, he’s too old.”
Retired African American teacher Elvira
Kennedy, 70, also voted for Clinton.
“She’s the best candidate,” she said.
“We never had a woman president, it’s
about time we give a woman a chance to
mess everything. Men have been doing it
for 300 years.”
Tessa Blackwell, 29, a white restaurant
manager, said she voted for Sanders.
“I really love that he’s doing such a
grassroots campaign, and that he’s not
bought by any corporation,” she said.
“He’s more for the people by the people.”
A win would mark Clinton’s third since
February 1, and could silence critics who
say she has led a sluggish campaign.
Since entering the race last April, Clinton’s campaign has had its ups and downs.
One of its lowest points was the FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private
email server during her tenure as secretary
of state.
The issue made headlines again on Friday, when the State Department released
1,500 pages of her emails to meet a deadline to disclose all releasable portions of
her electronic correspondence in its possession by tomorrow night.
But the candidate said she was not worried.
“I am, you know, personally not concerned about it, I think that there will be
a res+olution on the security inquiry,” she
told MSNBC.
Polls carried out last week gave Clinton
a clear advantage in South Carolina: about
56% compared to 28% for Bernie Sanders.
Supreme court justice candidate
list is still open: White House
Reuters
Aboard Air Force One
T
he White House said yesterday that more candidates could be added to
its list of potential nominees to
fill the Supreme Court vacancy
caused by the death of justice
Antonin Scalia.
“We are still in a position
where the list is not closed
at this point,” White House
spokesman Josh Earnest told
reporters during a briefing.
“There are still people being
considered for inclusion on the
list of people that the president
may consider for filling a supreme court vacancy.”
The White House has not officially revealed its list of potential
picks to replace Scalia. Earnest
said he did not expect a nominee
would be named before president
Barack Obama meets with congressional leaders at the White
House on Tuesday to discuss the
matter.
Scalia’s death left the court
with four conservative and four
liberal justices, meaning that
Obama’s nominee could tip the
balance of the court to the left for
the first time in decades.
Republicans, who control the
Senate, have said the seat should
remain vacant until Obama’s
successor takes office next January so voters could have a say in
the selection when they choose a
new president in the November 8
election. But Obama has vowed
to press ahead with nominating
a justice.
Earnest said the White House
would seek the help of former
administration officials to coordinate outside activist groups
in the fight over filling the vacancy.
The New York Times first reported on Friday that the administration was recruiting former
Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter
and former White House director
of legislative affairs Katie Beirne
Fallon to help in its campaign.
“We are going to draw on
their contacts, and on the work
they’re doing outside the administration to help us make
the case, and organise the effort
around the president’s constitutional responsibility to fill a
vacancy on the supreme court,”
Earnest said.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, a federal trial judge in Washington, is
being considered to fill the vacancy on the US supreme court,
US President Barack Obama walks to the Oval Office of the White
House in Washington after a one day trip to Jacksonville, Florida.
the National Law Journal reported on Friday, citing a lawyer who
was contacted as part of the vetting process.
The unidentified lawyer was
contacted this week and was
asked about Jackson’s tenure on
the US district court for the District of Columbia in the context
of her being a potential nominee
for the supreme court, the Journal said.
The lawyer described the
conversation, which lasted less
than 30 minutes, as a “preliminary inquiry”, the Journal reported.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request
for comment on the Journal
story.
President Barack Obama is expected to announce a nominee in
the next several weeks to replace
justice Antonin Scalia, who died
on February 13.
Scalia’s death left the court
with four liberals and four conservatives, and Republican leaders in the Senate have vowed to
block anyone Obama nominates.
The Senate must confirm the
nominee.
Nevada governor Brian Sandoval, a moderate Republican,
took himself out of consideration
for appointment to the supreme
court this week after his name
surfaced as a possible nominee.
If nominated and confirmed
Jackson, 45, would be the first
African-American woman on the
Supreme Court.
She was confirmed to the federal district court in Washington
in March 2013.
During
her
confirmation
hearing, she received support
from US house of representatives speaker Paul Ryan, who is
related to her by marriage, the
Journal reported. Jackson’s husband, Patrick Jackson, is the twin
brother of Ryan’s brother-in-law
William Jackson.
Jackson served as a federal
public defender in Washington
and then at a law firm. In 2010,
she was appointed to the US sentencing commission.
enowned investor Warren Buffett has a message for presidential
candidates lamenting the supposed decline of the country:
the United States is better than
ever.
The billionaire stock picker
waded into the campaign yesterday in an annual letter to
shareholders of his holding
company Berkshire Hathaway
by dismissing what he called a
“negative drumbeat”.
“It’s an election year, and
candidates can’t stop speaking
about our country’s problems
— which, of course, only they
can solve,” the 85-year-old
philanthropist wrote, without
naming names.
“Many Americans now believe that their children will
not live as well as they themselves do. That view is dead
wrong,” he said.
Babies born in the United
States today are actually the
“luckiest crop in history”, he
added.
“For 240 years it’s been a
terrible mistake to bet against
America, and now is no time to
start,” said the man called the
“Oracle of Omaha” after his
hometown in the midwestern
state of Nebraska.
“America’s golden goose of
commerce and innovation will
continue to lay more and larger
eggs.”
The candidates in the Republican primary race have, in
particular, painted a picture of
a fading superpower, famously
summarised in property magnate Donald Trump’s slogan:
“Make America great again”
Buffet — the world’s thirdrichest man in 2015, according
to Forbes Magazine — has publicly backed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Buffett’s annual shareholders’ letter is widely read thanks
to his hugely successful investing record, ability to distil
complicated subjects and dispensing of home truths.
Berkshire Hathaway —
which employs more than
350,000 people in the insurance, railroad and many other
firms it controls — also holds
large stakes in Coca-Cola, IBM
and other companies.
The octogenarian also revealed a secret of his longevity
in his letter.
During Berkshire Hathaway’s upcoming shareholders’ meeting, he would consume enough Coke and candy
“to satisfy the weekly caloric
needs of an NFL lineman”, he
said.
“There’s nothing like eating carrots and broccoli when
you’re really hungry,” he added, “and want to stay that way.”
Man kills four at
home in Seattle
Reuters
Washington
W
ashington state authorities yesterday
were seeking to confirm the relationship between
a man who fatally shot four
people at a rural home west
of Seattle then turned the gun
on himself following a tense
standoff with law enforcement.
Details of the slayings in
Belfair, about 40km west of
Seattle, remained under investigation, including when the
victims were killed and why
the gunman might have targeted them.
The violence appeared to be
a “family-domestic situation”,
a Mason County Sheriff ’s official said.
“As far as I know, this is one
family, the shooter was the father and the victims were his
family,” Chief Deputy Russell
Osterhout told Reuters.
The
medical
examiner
would determine the identities and cause of death of those
involved.
Osterhout said the lone survivor, a 12-year-old girl, escaped or was released by the
gunman before the suspect
emerged from the house after hours of negotiations with
law enforcement and a police
SWAT team and shot himself in
front of sheriff ’s deputies.
A neighbour, Jack Pigott, 79,
who lives across the road from
the crime scene, told Reuters
by telephone he heard several
bursts of gunfire coming from
the wooded property Thursday
night, and assumed it was target shooting.
Police arrived at the home
after the suspect himself called
a sheriff ’s sergeant on the officer’s work cell phone to say
that he “did something” and
asked that authorities be sent
to the residence, Osterhout
said.
It was not explained how the
suspect knew the sergeant’s
phone number, but sheriff ’s
deputy chief Ryan Spurling
said “the gunman did have a
previous contact with the sergeant”.
The latest round of deadly
US gun violence came a day
after a man near Wichita, Kansas, fatally shot three people to
death and wounded 14 before
he was slain by police at a Kansas lawnmower factory where
he worked.
New bomber to be
designated B-21
Reuters
Washington
U
S air force secretary Deborah James on Friday
unveiled the first image
of a new Northrop Grumman
Corp long-range bomber and
said it would be designated the
B-21, as losing bidder Boeing
Co said it would forego further
challenges.
James revealed the first artist’s rendering of the secret
bomber, an angular flying
wing, at the Air Force Association’s annual air warfare
symposium. She said the name
of the new warplane would
be chosen in a contest among
service members.
The programme has been
shrouded in secrecy since its
inception for fear of revealing
military secrets to potential
enemies, and to avoid giving
the losing bidders any details
before their formal protest was
rejected last week.
Northrop won a contract
worth an estimated $80bn in
October to develop and build
100 new bombers, but work
on the plane was delayed for
months while federal auditors
reviewed a protest by Boeing
and its key supplier, Lockheed
Martin Corp.
Boeing said on Friday it
would skip any further protests with the US government
accountability office or in the
federal courts.
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
15
ASEAN
Vocational training
Myanmar
anti-drug
group seeks
safety after
ambush
AFP
Myitkyina
C
A student works on sewing machine at a government funded training centre that provides vocational training to former sex workers in Jakarta, Indonesia. Indonesia is making final preparations to demolish
the biggest red-light district in the capital as the first step to eradicate prostitution in the nation by 2019.
Asean ‘seriously’ concerned
about rising sea tensions
Reuters
Vientiane
S
outheast Asian nations
expressed serious concern yesterday about
growing international tension
over disputed waters in the
South China Sea.
China claims most of the sea
but Southeast Asian countries
Malaysia, the Philippines,
Brunei and Vietnam have rival
claims. Friction has increased
over China’s recent deployment of missiles and fighter
jets to the disputed Paracel island chain.
“Ministers remained seriously concerned over recent
and ongoing developments,”
the 10-members Association
of Southeast Asian Countries
(Asean) said in a statement
after a regular meeting of the
group’s foreign ministers in
Laos.
Land reclamation and escalating activity has increased
tensions and could undermine
peace, security and stability in
the region, Asean said in the
statement.
The US has criticised China’s building of artificial islands and facilities in the sea
and has sailed warships close
to disputed territory to assert
the right to freedom of navigation.
On Friday, the US urged
China’s President Xi Jinping
to prevent the militarisation of
the region.
Vietnam, which accused China of violating its sovereignty
with the missile deployment,
echoed the US call yesterday.
“We call for non-militarisation
in the South China Sea,” Dep-
uty Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh
told reporters after meeting his
Asean colleagues.
“We have serious concerns
about that,” he said, when
asked about China’s increasing military activity in the region. The group agreed to seek
a meeting between China and
Asean’s foreign ministers to
discuss the South China Sea
and other issues, Cambodian
Minister Hor Namhong said.
China’s maritime claims are
Asean’s most contentious issue, as its members struggle to
balance mutual support with
their growing economic relations with Beijing. China is the
biggest trade partner for many
Asean nations.
Neighbours Vietnam and
China compete for influence
over landlocked Laos, which has
no maritime claims but finds
itself in the difficult position of
dealing with neighbours at odds
over the South China Sea. Laos
is tasked with finding common
ground on the issue as the Asean
chair in 2016. “The South China
Sea issue is a headache that Laos
would really rather not have to
deal with,” said one Western
diplomat in Vientiane.
Thongloun Sisoulith, Laos
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, played
down the challenge.
“We are a close friend of Vietnam and China, we try to solve
the problems in a friendly way,”
he told Reuters yesterday. “We
are in the middle, but it’s not a
problem.”
Barack Obama is set to become
the first US president to visit the
country in September to attend
an annual summit hosted by the
Asean chair.
Car bomb injures seven in Thai south
AFP
Bangkok
A
Military personnel inspect the site of a bomb attack at Muang district in the troubled
southern province of Pattani, Thailand yesterday.
car bomb detonated outside an urban police station
in Thailand’s restive south
yesterday, injuring at least seven
people and offering a reminder of
the region’s simmering violence
as the ruling junta eyes full peace
talks with the insurgents.
The explosive, hidden inside a
passenger car, was set off in the
middle of the day in the capital
of Pattani province, one of three
states wracked by rebellion in the
kingdom’s southern tail.
“The bomb was put in a Honda
Jazz, which was stolen from a nearby village this morning,” provincial
police commander Major General
Thanongsak Wangsupa said.
More than 6,000 people have
died in 10 years of near-daily vio-
lence between state security forces
and the loose network of insurgents, who are seeking greater autonomy from Buddhist-majority
Thailand, which annexed the region a century ago.
Yesterday’s bomb injured at least
six police officers and one civilian
and sent plumes of black smoke
streaming into the sky.
The wounded have been hospitalised for burns and other critical
injuries from the explosion, emergency workers said.
Thailand’s military, which seized
control of the entire country in a
2014 coup, has been reaching out
to some representatives from the
shadowy insurgent network in
an effort to start full-scale peace
talks.
Similar negotiations spearheaded by the former ousted government faltered amid criticisms
that they did not include repre-
sentatives from all of the militant
factions. Details on the internal
workings of the insurgent network
are scant, as the groups rarely make
public statements or claim responsibility for their attacks.
Critics have cast doubt on the
junta’s peace efforts, pointing to
routine human rights violations in
the region that have bred a deep
mistrust of the military among locals.
The region has been governed by
emergency laws for the past decade
that grant authorities sweeping
powers to arrest and detain suspects without warrants.
In a report released earlier this
year, rights groups accused the
army of torturing scores of detainees with impunity in its efforts to
extinguish the rebellion.
The report’s researchers said the
situation has deteriorated since
Thailand’s 2014 coup.
hristian anti-drug vigilantes in Myanmar said
yesterday they had halted
a mission to raze poppy fields
while at least 30 of their members were recovering from injuries sustained during violent
clashes with unknown attackers
this week.
Pat Jasan, a hardline Christian
group known for flogging drug
users, said it was assailed by a
mob wielding explosives and
stones Thursday after it set out
to destroy poppy plants against
the wishes of local farmers in the
hilly and far-flung Kachin state.
Myanmar is the world’s second largest opium producer
after Afghanistan, despite the
government’s repeated vows to
eliminate the drug trade.
Production has boomed amid
weak law enforcement in the
northern war-torn frontier,
where ethnic minority rebel
groups seeking greater autonomy from the state have been
battling the Myanmar army for
decades.
It’s believed that both ethnic
militias and the Myanmar military have tapped the lucrative
multibillion dollar trade to finance their long-running wars.
Impoverished farmers in the
remote regions meanwhile say
they have few other viable alternatives to sustain a livelihood.
The injured Pat Jasan members are now receiving medical attention at a hospital in the
provincial capital Myitkyina,
with tensions running high as
hundreds of others camp out in
a nearby township to wait for
orders from above, the group’s
spokesman Lum Hkawng said
yesterday. He said the organisation’s leadership is in talks with
local authorities, who stand accused of failing to protect the activists from the ambush.
“I can not say whether we
will go on our way or not,” Lum
Hkawng said.
The sudden attack Thursday
morning came after several days
of a tense stand-off between the
Pat Jasan marchers and police,
who had blocked the group from
entering surrounding poppy
fields citing concerns of armed
farmers ready to hit back.
Local police have not responded to repeated requests to
comment.
The injured activists, seen by
an AFP photographer laying sideby-side and hooked up to IVs in
Myitkyina’s bare-bones hospital,
are all in a stable condition, according to the group’s spokesman.
“And we arranged a safe place for
the rest of the members who were
attacked,” he added.
Determined to root out a
scourge of heroin addictions that
have eviscerated local communities, Pat Jasan formed its loose
network two years ago with the
backing of the powerful Kachin
Baptist Church.
Its members, who don camouflage vests and combat helmets on their missions, have
used forceful methods, including beating drug users, in their
efforts to break addictions.
British tourists swept down
Vietnam waterfall to death
AFP
Hanoi
T
hree British tourists found
dead at the foot of a surging waterfall in Vietnam
fell into a current above the 20
metre drop-off, the director of a
tour company said yesterday.
The bodies of two women and
one man were retrieved Friday
by scores of aid workers who
scrambled down cliffs abutting
the tiered waterfalls outside of
Dalat, a city nestled in Vietnam’s
central highlands.
The Datanla falls are a popular
hub for adventure tourists, with
opportunities to rappel on the
rocks and luge around the jungle
park. Le Viet Luc, the director of
a company that runs tours to the
site, said the trio was exploring
one of the area’s seven waterfalls without proper permission
from the agency when they were
swept up by a strong current.
“They fell into the stream of
this waterfall and died after being hit by violent waters,” he
said, adding that their bodies
were transferred to Ho Chi Minh
City late Friday night.
The British Embassy in Hanoi
released a statement on behalf of
the family of the man, Christian
Sloan, who local media reported
to be 25 years old.
“Christian’s death is a very
sad loss to us. He was a very
popular young man, formerly in
the Royal Navy, who had many,
many friends not just locally but
around the world. He lived for
life,” the statement said.
The embassy declined to release the names of the two women, ages 18 and 25, who entered
the country together earlier this
month, according to state media.
“Our sympathies are with the
families and friends at this difficult time. We are in close contact
with local authorities in Vietnam
on their behalf,” the UK embassy
said.
Vietnam and its neighbours in
Southeast Asia are travel magnets for young backpackers,
but accidents are frequent amid
weak law enforcement and scant
safety oversight.
British ambassador to Vietnam Giles Lever (centre) talks with local officials yesterday as he tours the site where three British tourists were killed in an
accident near a waterfall on the outskirts of the central highland town of Dalat.
16
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA
US presses
Xi to reduce
sea build-up
AFP
Washington
T
he White House pressed
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday to expand
his non-militarisation pledge
to cover the entire South China
Sea, despite Beijing’s recent military activity in the area.
Daniel Kritenbrink, senior
director for Asian affairs at
the National Security Council, spoke amid rising tensions
between the two countries
over China’s deployment of
surface-to-air missiles, radar
gear, air strips and fighter jets
on an islet there.
During a state visit in September, Xi insisted that “China
does not intend to pursue militarization” in the Spratly Island chain - known as Nansha
in Chinese.
The islands are claimed in
part or whole by Brunei, China,
Malaysia, the Philippines and
Vietnam.
“We think it would be good if
that non-militarization pledge,
if he (Xi) would extend that
across the entire South China
Sea,” Kritenbrink told a forum
at the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies.
“We’re going to encourage
our Chinese friends and other
countries in the region to refrain from taking steps that
raise tensions.”
China claims almost the
whole of the area -- through
which a third of the world’s oil
passes -- while several other
littoral states have competing
claims, as does Taiwan.
“This is an incredibly important waterway through which
much of international trade
flows,” Kritenbrink said.
“We are concerned that
China has taken a number of
unilateral steps over the last
several years that we think raise
tensions in the region and are
destabilising.”
The Asian giant is using
dredgers to turn reefs and lowlying features into larger land
masses for runways and other
military uses to bolster its
claims of sovereignty.
Earlier this week, US Pacific
Command chief Admiral Har-
ry Harris warned that China
was changing the “operational
landscape in the region.” He
has called for more flyovers and
patrols. “Short of war with the
US, China will exercise de facto control of the South China
Sea,” Harris said.
Kritenbrink also urged China to respect an international
court’s decision due later this
year on Manila’s dispute with
Beijing over territorial claims
in the South China Sea.
Kritenbrink said he expected
the upcoming ruling by the
Permanent Court of Arbitration to be “extremely important” because it will mark the
outcome of a process that allows countries to use peaceful
legal means to pursue disputes.
China does not recognise The
Hague-based court’s authority,
but it has ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea at
the centre of the case.
“When that ruling comes
out, it will be binding on both
parties,” Kritenbrink said.
“That will be an important
moment that all of us in the region should focus on.”
This undated picture released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) yesterday shows North Korean leader Kim
Jong-Un inspecting the test-fire of a newly developed anti-tank guided weapon at an undisclosed location.
New North Korean rocket turns
enemy tanks into ‘boiled pumpkin’
AFP
Seoul
Canberra sends relief ship N
to Fiji in wake of cyclone
Reuters
Sydney
A
ustralia is sending a relief ship to Fiji to assist
in the recovery effort after Cyclone Winston, the worst ever recorded in the southern hemisphere, tore through the island nation last
Saturday, as the sheer scale of the disaster becomes
clearer.
The death toll from the category five storm remains at 42, according to a statement from Fiji’s
National Disaster Management Office, although
that figure is expected to rise.
Many communities remain without water and
it could be weeks before electricity is restored,
the statement said.
The scale of damage and loss is becoming apparent to authorities and aid organisations as
communications are being gradually restored
throughout the archipelago. Unicef spokeswoman Alice Clements said her organisation now estimates that more than 62,000 Fijians are homeless and living in evacuation shelters.
“People are very resilient here and have got a
solution to every problem, but there are just so
many people who don’t have any options,” Cle-
ments said. “As hard as we are working and as
hard as the government is working the scale of
this is going to outrun us all unless we get help,”
she said.
Australia’s military vessel, HMAS Canberra,
left on Friday and was expected to arrive in Fijian waters early next week. It was carrying three
helicopters and 60 tonnes of supplies, including
water purification equipment and medical supplies. The ship’s departure came as Australia’s
foreign ministry said on Twitter that the first
helicopter load of Australian aid had reached the
hard-hit remote island of Koro yesterday.
The Asian Development Bank’s South Pacific
director, Rob Jauncey, told Radio New Zealand
that Fiji’s economy would face losses of “tens of
millions of dollars” because of the destruction of
sugar crops and an expected drop in tourism.
The effects of Cyclone Winston were being
felt on the eastern coast of Australia, more than
2,600km southwest of Fiji, yesterday.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology issued
dangerous surf warnings and authorities closed
many beaches in the states of Queensland and
New South Wales as swells of up to six metres (20
feet) generated by Cyclone Winston battered the
coast.
orth Korea yesterday
boasted of a newly
developed
anti-tank
weapon that its leader said was
so powerful it could turn the
most heavily armoured enemy
tanks into “boiled pumpkin”.
Pyongyang’s state media
said leader Kim Jong-Un had
watched tests of the portable,
laser-guided rocket and declared it had the “longest firing
range in the world”, and was “as
accurate as a sniper’s rifle”.
“He noted with great satisfaction that even the special
armoured tanks and cars of the
enemies which boast their high
manoeuvrability and striking
power are no more than a boiled
pumpkin before the anti-tank
guided weapon”, the KCNA
news agency. Kim called for the
weapon to go into mass production as soon as possible and for
it to be deployed to frontline
units and coastal defence units.
With a siege mentality bordering on paranoia, North
Korea maintains a huge military. It has some 1.2mn active
troops out of a population of
around 25mn — double the
size of the armed forces in
South Korea, which has twice
as many people. But most of
North Korea’s weapons are
outdated and the military is
seriously hamstrung by the
impoverished state’s chronic
fuel shortages.
The shortages are likely to
worsen when the country is
slapped with tough new sanctions the UN is now weighing
over a nuclear test and longrange rocket launch Pyongyang
conducted earlier this year.
Japan’s population ‘fell by nearly a million’
Agencies
Tokyo
J
apan’s population shrank by nearly a
million during the last half-decade, official census figures confirmed on Friday, an unprecedented drop for a society
not ravaged by war or other deadly crisis,
and one that helps explain the country’s
persistent economic woes.
It was the first time since Japan began
collecting census data in 1920 that a nationwide count recorded a decline in the
population, though surveys based on smaller samples have shown a downward trend
for years, New York Times reported.
The population stood at 127.1mn in 2015,
the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said, down by 947,000, or
0.7%, compared with the last census in
2010.
A shrinking population creates ripples
that are felt from the economy to politics.
With one of the lowest birthrates in the
world and little immigration, Japan has seen
this inflection point coming for years, if not
decades. Yet efforts by the government to
encourage women to have more children
have had little effect, and there is little public support for opening the doors to mass
immigration.
“These numbers are like losing an entire
prefecture,” Shigeru Ishiba, a cabinet min-
ister in charge of efforts to revitalize Japan’s
especially depopulated rural areas, said at
a news conference. A handful of Japan’s 47
prefectures, administrative districts similar
to provinces or states, have populations of
less than a million.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe responded
to the census report by reiterating a longterm goal of keeping the population from
falling below 100mn.
Projections by the government and international bodies like the UN suggest
that will be difficult, however.
The latest UN estimates suggest that
Japan’s population will fall to 83mn by
the end of the century, down 40% from
its peak.
Aussie icebreaker refloated in Antarctica after grounding
AFP
Sydney
A
n Australian icebreaker
that ran aground in Antarctica during a blizzard
has been refloated, officials said
yesterday as they work to bring
the vessel’s expeditioners home.
The Aurora Australis ran
aground with 68 people on board
after breaking its moorings on
Wednesday and was stuck on
rocks at Horseshoe Harbour,
close to Australia’s Mawson station.
“The Aurora Australis was
successfully refloated and is now
out of Mawson harbour,” director of the Australian Antarctic
Division Nick Gales told reporters in Hobart.
“It is going to remain in the
vicinity of Mawson harbour for
a few days while the P&O crew
conduct a very thorough assessment of any damage that has occurred during the event.”
“Importantly there is no evidence that any oil has been spilt
or any pollution event has occurred,” he added.
The 37 expeditioners onboard
were rescued by barge Friday and
taken to Mawson station, while
the crew remained to refloat the
ship, which is owned by P&O
Maritime Services, using its ballast system and work boats.
Shaun Deshommes, P&O
A handout photo provided by Australian Antarctic Division yesterday, shows some of the 37 expeditioners evacuated from the flagship icebreaker Aurora Australis which ran aground at
Australia’s Mawson research station in Antarctica.
Maritime’s operations manager,
said it would take up to three
days to fully assess the damage
to the boat’s hull, including using underwater cameras.
“The breach is relatively
small,” he told reporters at a
press conference with Gales,
adding that only a small tank had
been damaged.
“It is not affecting in any
manner the stability or the
safety of the vessel.”
It is expected that the boat,
which is capable of breaking
ice up to 1.23 metres thick, will
journey back to Australia for
repairs.
Gales said the Australian
Antarctic Division was engaging with other Antarctic
programmes on how to bring
the expeditioners back to Australia. The US Antarctic programme has already agreed to
take more than 30 expeditioners from another of Australia’s
stations, Davis, to Casey sta-
tion, some 1,500 kilometres
away, by plane later.
That group had been scheduled to return to Australia on
the Aurora Australis after a
southern hemisphere summer
in Antarctica. They are now ex-
pected to be flown home on an
AAD plane in the coming days.
Gales said Australia would
consider the assets of other
countries active in the region —
including France, the US, South
Africa, China and Japan — before deciding on the best option to bring the expeditioners
at Mawson home.
Saying it was like an “international jigsaw puzzle”, Gales
said Australia would seek to
minimise disruption to other
nation’s programmes.
“We really try and look for
the most efficient and effective
and safe way to respond to the
situation that minimises impact on other programmes as
well as is able to give us the assistance we need,” he said.
Australia’s
Environment
Minister Greg Hunt thanked
the “broader Antarctic community” for its help given the
dangerous and hostile environment.
In a statement, Hunt also
thanked “the many nations
which have been quick to offer
logistical support to the Australian Antarctic programme”.
Several countries have territorial claims on Antarctica,
viewed as a potential future
source of huge mineral resources, although under a 1949
agreement the frozen continent is designated a scientific
preserve.
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
17
BRITAIN/IRELAND
Protest against nuclear submarine
Relatives of
murdered
man to hold
skydive
Evening Standard
London
T
A protester during a march in central London yesterday in demonstration against a proposed renewal of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapon system. Tens of thousands
of people joined the protest in central London yesterday. A decision is expected to be taken later this year on replacing the ageing submarines which carry the
Trident missiles at an estimated cost of £31bn
Voters punish Irish
coalition: exit polls
Austerity measures appear to have
claimed the government
AFP
Dublin
I
reland faced political uncertainty yesterday after two exit polls indicated
voters had punished the governing
coalition in Europe’s fastest-growing
economy, still feeling the pain of years of
austerity.
As counting got under way following
the parliamentary election, it appeared
prime minister Enda Kenny’s centre-right
Fine Gael and its Labour junior partner
would lose support as voters angry at continuing hardship shifted to independents
and leftwing parties.
Exit polls indicated the two government
parties would take between 55 and 68 seats
between them, far short of the 80 needed
to win a second term.
“It’s a very disappointing day from the
government’s point of view,” Tom Curran,
Fine Gael’s general secretary told broadcaster RTE.
“If the exit polls are right... we will fall far
short of being able to form a government.”
Derek McDowell, Labour’s general secretary, added: “It’s clearly not going to be a
good day. We are clearly going to lose some
good comrades during the course of the
day and I am very sorry about that.”
Both polls indicated that unless Kenny
can scrape together support from a variety
of small parties and independent politicians, the only clear viable government
could be a union of Fine Gael with runners
up Fianna Fail.
A man removes campaign posters after polling stations closed in Dublin.
The two are politically similar but bitter rivals whose divisions date back to Ireland’s 1920s civil war and who ruled out a
deal with each other before the election.
“It’s hard to see any sort of government
without Fine Gael and Fianna Fail getting
together,” said Michael Marsh, a professor
at Trinity College Dublin who conducted
the RTE exit poll.
“Either we can have another election
now and do away with the count, or we’ll
let them muddle around for a month or so
and maybe they can think the unthinkable,” he added, referring to the possibility
of the two parties teaming up.
As stacks of ballot boxes were emptied
out and counting began in centres around
Ireland, turnout was reported to be slightly under the 70% seen in the last election,
with first results expected by the early
hours of Sunday.
Fianna Fail, the party most closely associated with Ireland’s economic crisis
and housing crash, appears to have recovered some ground since it was routed in
the last election in 2011. On the rise were
independent politicians, newly-formed
parties, anti-austerity groups and the
leftwing Sinn Fein party.
The republicans, whose president is
Gerry Adams and who were once seen as
the political wing of the Irish Republican
Army (IRA), have rebranded themselves
as an anti-austerity force south of their
power base in Northern Ireland.
It now looks like they could be on course
to achieve their goal of becoming the main
opposition party in Ireland.
Ireland has become the fastest growing
country in the eurozone in recent years,
with predicted GDP growth of 4.5% in
2016.
Kenny had asked voters to return the
coalition to “keep the recovery going”, in
the first election held since the country of
4.6mn people exited a bailout in 2013 imposed after the financial crisis.
But anger about rising homelessness
and poverty was clear on the streets of
Dublin, where thousands marched against
austerity on the weekend before the vote
calling for an end to a controversial water
tax.
“They have broken every single promise, every single promise,” said Jim, a
middle-aged Dubliner who said he had
voted for the government five years ago
but was “totally against” them this time
round.
“I’m self-employed. I have to deliver. If
you break promises, I don’t want to know
you,” he added.
The impact of the election may be felt
far beyond Ireland’s borders, according
to the Economist magazine, which commented that a Fine Gael defeat with the
economy doing well may ramp up pressure on Brussels to reconsider its policy on
austerity.
“Ireland’s election may well turn out
to be a historic event, not simply for Fine
Gael or the other parties contesting it, but
also for the future of the eurozone,” it said.
he mother and sister of
murdered Josh Hanson
will take part in a skydive on what would have been
his 22nd birthday.
Josh Hanson, 21, from
Kingsbury, was stabbed in the
neck while at RE Bar in Eastcote on October 11 last year.
He died at the scene and a
post-mortem
examination
gave a cause of death as haemorrhage, inhalation of blood
and an incised wound to his
neck.
The clubber would have
turned 22 today and to pay
tribute, his mother Tracey and
sister Brooke will embark on a
skydive.
His mother explained:
“Two years ago, Josh did a
skydive to raise money for a
girl in America who needed
an operation, and he was so
brave.
“It was suggested that a
skydive would be a great way
to celebrate his birthday this
year. I am excited to feel closer
to Josh through the skydive,
but I am also petrified.”
His mother said every day
was a “living nightmare” and
she was not sure how to cope
knowing her “amazing” son
would not be able to celebrate
his birthday.
She said: “Last year for Josh’s
21st birthday I made a special
Oreo cake and he loved it.
“This year I have had a similar
cake made with Josh’s face on it.
“This is surreal; I have
never put my children’s faces
on cakes because they have always been there with me.”
Josh’s sister, Brooke said
she was nervous about completing the skydive but said it
was a “privilege” to take part
in the challenge in her brother’s memory.
Officers investigating Hanson’s death are continuing to
appeal for the whereabouts
of Shane O’Brien, 27, from
Ladbroke Grove, who is being
sought in connection with the
murder.
Detective chief inspector Noel McHugh, from the
homicide and major crime
command, said: “Our work to
locate and arrest O’Brien; and
anyone who may be assisting
him, continues.
“We remain totally focused on the investigation and
achieving justice for Tracey,
Brooke and all of Josh’s family and friends. However long
it takes, we are not going to
give up.
“As with any investigation,
the public are our eyes and
ears. People will have seen
and heard things about where
O’Brien is.
“I would appeal to anyone
who may be contemplating
whether they should make
that call to the police to do the
right thing and make the call.”
A £10,000 reward is available for information leading to
O’Brien’s arrest and prosecution.
Charity launches
appeal to save girl
Evening Standard
London
A
worldwide appeal has
been launched to help
save the life of a young
Londoner after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form
of leukaemia.
Vithiya Alphons, 24, from
Walthamstow, was told she
had Acute Myeloid Leukaemia
just days into her final year at
Cardiff University.
Doctors told Alphons she
needs a stem cell transplant
in order to survive but she is
yet to find a suitable donor after her brother Clime, 22, was
only a 50% match.
The search has become
more complex than most because of a lack of donors from
South Asian backgrounds.
The 24-year-old was told
her best option was finding a
more suitable, unrelated, donor in the next two months.
To help matters, blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan has
launched a worldwide appeal
to help the young Londoner.
Alphons said: “It’s frustrat-
ing but I don’t think it’s about
Asian people not wanting to
sign up.
“They just don’t know what
it is. They think it’s taking
something from your bone. We
have to raise awareness.”
Her friends and family have
issued appeals on social media
to help find a lifeline.
Alphons added: “I’ve been
blown away by the support.
I’ve had thousands of messages from people I don’t even
know, saying they’ve signed
up and are spreading the word.
“Some of my friends are
hoping to arrange donor drives
at their universities. It’s been
incredible.”
Ann O’Leary, from Anthony Nolan, said: “Vithiya
is a bright and inspirational
young woman and somewhere
out there, there’s a potential
lifesaver who could give her a
lifeline by donating their stem
cells.
“We are so grateful to Vithiya for raising awareness of the
need for more Asian and ethnic minority donors, and for
busting the myth that donating stem cells is painful.”
Sister of boy knifed at 15 speaks of her agony
Evening Standard
London
T
he sister of murdered teenager Alan Cartwright has told
of her devastation that her new
baby sister will not be able to meet her
younger brother.
Today marks the one year anniversary of the death of the 15-year-old,
who was knifed in the chest as he cycled along Caledonian Road in Islington
with two friends.
The unprovoked attack by Joshua
Williams, 18, who was jailed for a minimum of 21 years on September 18, was
over in just a matter of seconds.
Williams tried to steal Alan’s bicycle
before fatally stabbing him in the chest.
The teenager staggered a few hundred
yards before collapsing outside Cally
Pool.
Cherrie Ives spoke out over the loss of
her brother Alan Cartwright.
His sister Cherrie Ives, 22, today told
the Standard how difficult the year has
been since her brother’s death and the
birth of her baby sister, Emily, who was
born just weeks after Alan was murdered.
She said: “It is really odd because obviously her big brother was meant to be
here when she was due to be born.
“She will know about her brother in
good time, it is just really strange. She
has blue eyes just like him.”
The hardest thing to deal with since
Alan’s death, Ives said, is knowing that
she will never see him again, adding:
“You expect him to walk in the door or
get a phone call.”
“I am still coming to terms with that,”
she said. “Now I say ‘do you remember
when Al did that’ – talking about him in
the past tense is hard.”
Occasions such as family birthdays,
what would have been Alan’s 16th
birthday in June and Christmas have
also been difficult to cope with.
Miss Ives said: “[Christmas] was like
a normal day for us. We didn’t do anything special. We still had Christmas
dinner and we still had a place for Al set
at the table.
“But instead of seeing him there, we
went to the cemetery.
“It was hard when it was his 16th
birthday, when it was my birthday, my
mum’s and my nan’s. I just try and put
it to the back of my mind so I’m not
solely focusing on that because they
are special days and I don’t want to remember he is not here.”
Ives said she and her family have
been taking it “day by day” since Alan’s
death, adding: “We are still strong and
getting by.”
Alan was one of 15 teenagers whose
lives were claimed by knife crime in
2015.
A vigil is being held outside Cally
Pool yesterday – one year to the day of
Alan’s death. The teenager’s family will
hold a two-minute silence, release balloons and lanterns and Miss Ives said
she will let off a single firework to mark
the one year anniversary.
People who want to attend the vigil
are asked to arrive before the twominute silence begins at 7.30pm.
A CCTV image has been released
of a man detectives want to speak to in
connection with two knifepoint robberies at a bookmakers in east London.
Both robberies took place at Coral in
The Portway, Stratford, with the first
on November 24 and the second on December 4.
A Metropolitan Police Service
spokesman said on both occasions, a
staff member was en route to bank takings when they were robbed at knifepoint.
A total of £7,500 is said to have been
taken.
The suspect is described as a black
man who was wearing a black balaclava with grey vertical stitching up the
middle, a black Nike puffa-style jacket
and black Nike Air Force 1 trainers with
white soles.
A body has been found in the
search for a missing man from north
London.
Obi Xipe Khan, also known as Ekbal
Obi Khan, 29, was reported missing
from Enfield in January.
A Metropolitan Police Service
spokesman today confirmed officers
from the Marine Police Unit recovered the body of a man from the River
Thames in south-east London on
Thursday.
The man was confirmed dead at the
scene and the death is being treated as
non-suspicious.
A Met spokesman said: “Whilst formal identification is yet to take place,
officers believe the deceased is Obi Xipe
Khan, also known as Ekbal Obi Khan,
29, who was reported missing from Enfield.
“His next of kin have been informed.”
A post-mortem examination will be
held in due course.
Enquiries into the circumstances of
the death are ongoing and being carried
out by officers in Enfield.
18
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
EUROPE
Farmers make their
grievances known at
Paris expo opening
AFP
Paris
A
ngry farmers facing ruin
heckled President Francois Hollande and tore
down the agriculture ministry’s
pavilion as France’s annual farm
fair kicked off yesterday.
City dwellers looking to get
in touch with their rustic roots
flocked to the flagship farm expo
against the backdrop of a deeply
distressed agricultural sector,
which saw farmer frustrations
boil over.
Five members of the main
farmers’ union FNSEA were arrested after the protesters destroyed the stand’s walls and furniture, the union said.
The farmers wanted to “say
loud and clear at the stand ... that
this country’s agricultural producers don’t feel like citizens”,
FNSEA secretary general Dominique Barreau told AFP. “That’s
the exasperation, that’s where we
are!”
Earlier, livestock farmers
booed and whistled as Hollande and Agriculture Minister
Stephane Le Foll arrived to inaugurate the nine-day event in
southern Paris set to attract some
700,000 visitors to the vast Porte
de Versailles exhibition centre.
“I hear the cries of distress,”
said Hollande, who plans to seek
re-election in 15 months despite
dismal approval ratings. “If I am
here today it’s to show that there
is national solidarity.”
France has seen months of nationwide protests, with farmers
blocking roads with their tractors
and dumping manure outside
government offices, generally
enjoying broad public support.
At the exhibition centre, excited children gawked at massive
cows, giggled at suckling pigs
and timidly reached into cages to
pet rabbits amid the hay-strewn
aisles.
“It’s good for little Parisians to
see real cows,” said homemaker
Brigitte Bruneau, 59.
Angelique Mellion, with sixyear-old Tao in tow, said she
came “to teach my son about
agriculture and to taste regional
products. So we’re both happy”.
Despite the widespread despair in the farming sector, exhibitors were loath to boycott the
event.
“We are here even if our heart
isn’t in it,” said Florent Dornier
of the Jeunes Agriculteurs (Young
Farmers) union.
Pig farmer Philippe Vasseur
from the Sarthe region agreed,
saying: “That would be too bad,
because these visitors are also
our consumers. We are here to
discuss things.”
Truffle-grower Narcisse Perez,
wearing an enormous black felt
hat from the southwest Perigord region, seemed happier with
his lot, unfazed by the effects
of clement weather on his crop,
which he harvests using both
pigs and dogs.
“The truffle is capricious,” he
said. “You have to adapt.”
And honey maker Luquet
Francis, 42, says his bees in the
central Limousin region are little threatened by weedkillers and
pesticides because there are no
mega-farms in the area.
The cavernous hall devoted to
regional specialities is a grazer’s
delight, with visitors free to taste
slices of Auvergne sausage, samples of Loire Valley wines, chunks
of Cantal cheese ... each from a
unique and cherished terroir, or
soil.
But pain lies behind the bonhomie.
Laurent Pinatel, spokesman of
the national small farmers group
Confederation Paysanne, told
AFP earlier that the French farm
Hollande speaking to a farmer holding a goat during the president’s
visit to the agricultural show.
Left: A general view shows cows and a placard with the inscription ‘I
am a breeder and I am dying’ during the opening day of the ‘Salon de
l’Agriculture’ (Agriculture Fair) in Paris.
Below: Journalists work amongst debris after angry farmers
destroyed the French ministry of agriculture information booth on
the opening day of the annual Paris agricultural show.
sector “is experiencing its worst
crisis ever” with some 5,000
farmers leaving each year.
The government says more
than 40,000 farms are in extreme
distress.
Cindy Papin, 24, was visiting
from the northwest, where many
of the most violent protests have
occurred.
“It’s the cradle of milk and pork
production,” she said. “More and
more livestock farmers are committing suicide.”
The beef, pork and milk sectors
have seen prices collapse because
of declining sales to China and
especially a Russian embargo on
most Western food imports in
retaliation for sanctions over the
Ukraine crisis.
In addition to that, wholesalers, engaged in a years-long price
war, are demanding ever deeper
cuts from suppliers, who are in
turn squeezing farmers.
“We are not asking for a decent
living, we want to live, full-stop,”
Marion Quartier, a dairy farmer
in the northeastern Aube region,
adding that consumers “no longer know what things cost”.
The Salon de l’Agriculture is
a must on the calendar of any
ambitious politician, and ahead
of next year’s election, the gladhanding – and the “stroking
of cows’ behinds” made virtually compulsory by earthy former
president Jacques Chirac – is the
order of the day.
But the FNSEA warned: “It’s
out of the question for the fair to
become a political beauty contest
once again.”
Nevertheless, Hollande did
not fail to make a stop to admire
the fair’s mascot, a Bazadais
cow from southwestern France
named Cerise (Cherry).
One year on, Russians march to honour Nemtsov
AFP
Moscow
T
housands of Russians
marched through Moscow and Saint Petersburg
yesterday in memory of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov
who was gunned down near
the Kremlin a year ago in the
highest-profile assassination of
Vladimir Putin’s rule.
On a bright sunny afternoon
opposition supporters thronged
the streets in the Russian capital
amid heightened police security
as a helicopter hovered overhead.
Some marchers carried Russian flags, placards, flowers and
Nemtsov’s portraits. Others
chanted: “Russia will be free”
and “Russia without Putin”.
Some 20,000 joined the march
including Nemtsov’s allies – top
opposition leader Alexei Navalny and former prime minister
Mikhail Kasyanov, according to
AFP journalists.
Moscow police, who are often accused of downplaying the
popularity of opposition events,
said 7,500 showed up.
Many protesters said that the
People visit the site of Nemtsov’s murder on the first anniversary of
his death, with St Basil’s Cathedral seen in the background, in central
Moscow. The placard reads ‘Russia will be free!’
situation in Russia had got worse
since the opposition politician’s
murder.
“Aggression and xenophobia have gone through the roof,”
Anastasia Osipova told AFP.
“Over the past year things have
become so much worse, both
when it comes to the economy
and freedom of speech,” said the
20-year-old, clutching an EU
flag.
“The authorities, this regime
killed Nemtsov,” said Yevgeny
Mishchenko, 41. “The economic
situation is worsening. Support
for the authorities is crumbling.
This will all end in a civil war, like
a hundred years ago.”
Russians also formed a huge
line to lay flowers at the Great
Moskvoretsky bridge where
Nemtsov, a jovial 55-year-old
with a mop of black curly hair,
was killed.
US Ambassador John Tefft
was among those who came to
pay their respects earlier, laying
a wreath with a ribbon saying
“From the American people”.
Some said they would come to
the makeshift shrine shortly before midnight, the time the politician was gunned down.
In Putin’s hometown of Saint
Petersburg, some 4,000 people
turned out to honour Nemtsov.
“Putin is Russia’s nightmare”,
one placard read, while some
chanted “Putin get out”.
“The authorities should know
there are opponents,” Varvara
Mikhailova, 24, said in the former
imperial capital. “If we protest,
something will change.”
Russia’s annexation of Crimea,
fighting in Ukraine and Moscow’s
confrontation with the West have
left the country deeply polarised.
Most of the population – who
critics say have been under the
spell of pro-Kremlin propaganda
– support Putin despite mounting economic troubles, while a
minority says Russia is hurtling
towards catastrophe.
Smaller
commemorative
events took place across Russia.
On the eve of the anniversary,
lawmaker Dmitry Gudkov, one
of the few independent voices
in parliament, suggested that
deputies observe a moment of
silence in Nemtsov’s memory but
most of his colleagues refused.
Nemtsov, a former deputy
prime minister in the government of Boris Yeltsin, was gunned
down on February 27, 2015, while
walking across a bridge a short
distance from the Kremlin and
Saint Basil’s Cathedral with his
Ukrainian model girlfriend.
Putin, whose rule has seen the
steady suppression of independent media and opposition parties, promised an all-out effort to
catch the killers.
“Who dared?” a furious Putin
asked his aides after Nemtsov
was hit in the back by four fatal
shots, the opposition Novaya
Gazeta said.
Within weeks five men – all
Chechens from Russia’s restive
North Caucasus – were arrested
and charged with murder.
The detainees, including Zaur
Dadayev, a member of a Chechen
interior ministry battalion accused of being the gunman, are
now awaiting trial for what investigators say was a carefully
planned contract killing.
Complaints of migrant harassment
Multiple women have come forward to complain about harassment
by a group of foreign-looking men at a shopping centre in the
northern German city of Kiel in recent days, police confirmed
yesterday.
The uptick in complaints at the Sophienhof centre comes after a
Thursday night incident in which a group of three German teenage
girls say they were followed and harassed by a group of more
than 20 men, all of whom seem to have some kind of migrant
background.
Police have identified two asylum-seekers from Afghanistan, aged
19 and 26, as the main culprits.
The two also allegedly filmed and photographed the girls using
their mobile phone cameras.
The two men, along with two others, were briefly detained after the
incident.
A special investigation unit has been brought in to help police
investigators in Kiel to pore through surveillance videos and other
mobile phone recordings to get a better idea of what happened on
Thursday.
Danish environment minister quits
AFP
Copenhagen
D
enmark’s
environment
minister resigned yesterday, ending a crisis of
confidence that had threatened
to topple Prime Minister Lars
Lokke Rasmussen’s minority
centre-right government.
“Today I have announced to
the prime minister that I resign
from the post as environment
and food minister,” Eva Kjer
Hansen said in a statement, saying she did not want to “stand in
the way” of the government.
The Conservative People’s
Party, which has just six seats in
parliament but whose support is
crucial to Rasmussen’s minority government, on Wednesday
threatened to withdraw its backing if the premier did not sack
Kjer Hansen.
The party said it had lost confidence in the minister in a row
over agricultural reforms.
But Rasmussen said he was not
prepared to sack her, leaving the
government’s fate uncertain.
The Conservatives accuse Kjer
Hansen of giving them wrong
information about a package of
agricultural regulations, which
they said could have serious consequences for the environment.
Hansen’s critics specifically
accuse her of giving into the farm
lobby on norms governing the
use of fertilisers, leaving water
supplies exposed to increased
pollution from agricultural runoff.
Swedish girl tells
of life under IS
AFP
Stockholm
M
arilyn Nevalainen was
just 15, and pregnant,
when she left Sweden with an Islamic State (IS)
recruit, though she did not
realise what a mistake she had
made until she was in Iraq.
Desperate, she called home
from the IS stronghold of Mosul in northern Iraq begging for
help, and was ultimately rescued by Kurdish forces.
On Friday, foreign ministry
spokeswoman Veronica Nordlund told AFP that Nevalainen, who is originally from the
southwestern Swedish town of
Boras, has “returned to Sweden
with her family”.
She landed on Thursday in
Stockholm with her parents,
who had travelled to Iraq several times over the past eight
months to try to bring her
home, according to regional
newspaper Boras Tidning.
Police said her boyfriend, a
Moroccan who reached Sweden as an unaccompanied minor three years ago, was dead.
Kurdish forces rescued the
girl near Mosul on February 17,
according to a statement from
the Kurdistan Regional Security Council.
Nordlund would not reveal
many details of the rescue,
though she confirmed it was
the result of “collaboration between the Swedish authorities
and foreign governments”.
In an interview broadcast this week by TV channel
Kurdistan 24, the Swede said
in broken English that she met
her boyfriend in 2014 and that
he became radicalised after
watching IS videos.
“Then he said he wanted to
go to ISIS (another acronym for
IS) and I said, ‘Okay, no problem,’ because I did not know
what ISIS meant or what Islam
was,” she said.
She was pregnant when they
left Sweden in May 2015, taking
trains and buses across Europe
until they finally crossed the
border from Turkey to Syria.
They were then driven by IS
militants to Mosul.
“In my house we had nothing, no electricity, no water,
nothing. It was totally different from how I lived in Sweden, because in Sweden we
have everything, and when I
was there I did not have anything, did not have any money
either. It was a very hard life,”
she said.
“When I got a phone, I started to contact my mum and I
said I wanted to go home. She
contacted the Swedish authorities,” she told Kurdistan 24.
Swedish media has published text messages she sent
her mother while in Iraq.
“I’m going to die in a bombing or they’re going to beat me
to death or I’m going to kill
myself mum, really, I don’t
have the strength to go on,” she
wrote.
According to Swedish media
reports, she gave birth to a son
in Iraq. She and the child returned to Sweden together.
Her boyfriend, Moktar Mohammed Ahmed, a Moroccan,
had come to Sweden alone in
August 2013 at the age of 17.
“He had been a suspect in
a burglary in Stockholm,” Ulf
Hoffmann, a police investigator, told AFP.
The young man, also suspected of drug crimes, was
dead, Hoffmann added, without specifying how he had
died.
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
19
INDIA
‘Breach of privilege’
if Smriti knowingly
misled parliament
IANS
New Delhi
W
ith the Congress deciding to
serve a breach of privilege notice against the federal Human
Resource Development Minister Smriti
Irani for allegedly misleading parliament
on the JNU controversy and the suicide by
Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, experts say
the minister could be hauled up if she had
“knowingly” misled the two houses.
“Certainly, if she has done knowingly,”
said former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath
Chatterjee told IANS on the phone from
Kolkata.
Irani’s claim that doctor and police were
not allowed to reach Vemula’s room in
hostel and the situation was used for political mileage has been contested by Hyderabad University’s medical officer, P Rajshree, who had attended on the deceased
and on his mother Radhika and others.
Rule 222 of the Lok Sabha’s Rules of
Procedure and Conduct of Business says:
“A member may, with the consent of
the Speaker, raise a question involving a
breach of privilege either of a member or
of the House or of a Committee thereof.”
However, it is for the Lok Sabha speaker to allow the privilege notice. The procedure is similar for Rajya Sabha, with the
chairman having to give his consent.
Rajshree has said that she reached the
spot within five to seven minutes after
being informed of the suicide. By then,
the scholar was already dead and there
was no scope of reviving him.
Participating in debate in Lok Sabha on
February 24, Irani had said: “... Nobody
allowed a doctor near this child, to revive
this child, to take him to the hospital. Nobody allowed a doctor near him. The police has reported that not one attempt was
made to revive this child, not one attempt
was made to take him to a doctor. Instead
what was done was that his body was used
as a political tool, hidden. No police was
allowed till 6.30 the next morning.”
Former Lok Sabha secretary general Subhash Kashyap said: “If a person
says on the floor of the house something
which is incorrect or untrue and does so
to wilfully, deliberately to mislead the
house, then a question of privilege may be
involved. Any member of the house can
give notice to the speaker requesting that
he may be allowed to raise it as a privilege.
Thereafter, it will depend on the speaker.”
However, Kashyap said that it would be
for the speaker to accept the version of a
National Students Union of India activists stage a demonstration outside Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti
Irani’s residence in New Delhi yesterday.
Congress leadership decides to move privilege motion in parliament
The opposition Congress yesterday
decided to move a privilege motion against
HRD Minister Smriti Irani for misleading
parliament over the JNU row and the death
of a Dalit student in Hyderabad university.
“The Congress will move a privilege
motion against the HRD minister for misleading the parliament,” Congress general
secretary Mukul Wasnik told reporters at a
press conference in New Delhi, jointly ad-
dressed by former union ministers Kumari
Selja and Manish Tewari.
“The minister has not only been economical with the truth but has also wilfully misled
the parliament on the unfortunate suicide
of a young Dalit student, Rohith Vemula,” he
added. Wasnik also said that the statement
of Irani in parliament was contrary to the
claims made by Rohith’s mother.
“The strong words from Rohith Vemula’s
minister or a member if they retract on
their earlier statement.
Not only has Irani’s account of the
events subsequent to Vemula’s suicide
been questioned, but even the organizers of a Mahishasura Divas on the JNU
campus have disputed a pamphlet that
the minister had read out from in the two
houses. They have denied that the pamphlet was theirs.
Can a minister or a member of the parliament read out from a document whose
veracity is yet to be ascertained?
“The minister is responsible for whatever he/she says or the document she relies upon,” Kashyap said.
Kerala Light Metro
projects ‘on track’
IANS
Thiruvananthapuram
M
etro Man E Sreedharan yesterday denied reports
that there is a difference of opinion between him
and the Kerala government over the proposed
Rs67.28bn light metro projects to be implemented in
Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram.
“There exists no difference of opinion at all. Since they
are government officials, they will have a lot of questions to
ask and it’s our duty to clarify it,” Sreedharan told reporters
here. There have been media reports that things are not fine
between Sreedharan and the state finance department over
the proposed light metro project.
Sreedharan said the central government was examining
the detailed project report, which was approved by the Kerala cabinet, and is expected to give an in principle approval
to it in three months’ time.
The state government has engaged the Delhi Metro Rail
Corp (DMRC) as interim consultants to identify and take up
the preliminary and preparatory works, he said.
“As things stand today, they (DMRC) are the only ones
who are capable of taking up this project and whether they
should be given the final contract rests with the government.”
Sreedharan said the work for the project could start as
soon as the in principle approval was received. “The first
phase of the 21.82 km in the capital city will be ready in
three years’ time and the entire 13.33 km Kozhikode project
will be completed in four years’ time,” said Sreedharan.
He said Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)
had agreed to provide financing - Rs.47.33bn with an interest rate of 0.3% and a 10-year moratorium on repayment
with another 30 years for actual repayment.
“The rest of the funds will come from the state and the
centre,” said the ‘Metro Man’.
Sreedharan enjoys an iconic status in the country in implementation of rail transport projects, credited with being the leader in realising with despatch and efficiency the
hugely challenging Konkan Railway as well as the Delhi
Metro Rail project.
He is also overseeing the Kochi Metro project which is
expected to begin commercial operations on November 1
this year. If that happens, the project will become the fastest completed project in the country.
mother, who has lost her son to BJP and
in particular the HRD minister’s campus
politics, is a stamp of how recklessly and
ruthlessly their party is hell bent on clamping down the voices of dissent,” Wasnik
said while quoting remarks made by
Rohith’s mother Radhika Vemula. Radhika
had said on Friday that she wanted to meet
Smriti Irani and ask her on what basis did
she declare Rohith to be anti-national.
Though the Congress has declared it
would move a privilege notice against
Irani, the Left parties have yet to take a
call.
“We, the left parties, are yet to consult
among ourselves. We will decide tomorrow,” said D Raja of the Communist Party
of India, a Rajya Sabha member.
Kanhaiya says court
attackers were ‘highly
politically motivated’
IANS
New Delhi
T
he mob that beat me up at
the Patiala House Court
seemed to be highly politically motivated as they were well
prepared for the attack,” Jawaharlal Nehru (JNU) Students’ Union
president Kanhaiya Kumar has
said in a video.
Kanhaiya Kumar and a few
journalists were assaulted at the
Patiala House Courts complex on
February 15 and 17.
Recalling the attack on him,
he said in a video broadcast by
CNN-IBN news channel that one
of the attackers also entered the
corridor of the court where the
hearing was scheduled to be held.
The Delhi Police did not take
any action while the attackers escaped, he said in the video which
CNN-IBN said is footage of Kanhaiya Kumar testifying before a
Supreme Court-appointed panel
investigating the Patiala House
Court violence.
Kanhaiya Kumar said the lawyers’ mob was prepared for the
attack as when they saw him at
the entrance of Patiala House
courts complex, he heard them
calling other people saying that
Kanhaiya had arrived.
The lawyers started attacking me while raising slogans, he
added. “I think they (attackers)
are highly political motivated.”
Kanhaiya Kumar told the panel
that the mob also attacked the
police officials who escorted him.
“Main is desh ka naujawan
hoon. Main JNU mein PhD kar
raha hoon. Log keh rahe hain ki
main desh-drohi hoon. Kuchch
media mera trial kar rahi hai (I
am a youth of this country. I am
doing my PhD in JNU. People are
calling me a traitor. A section of
the media has put me on trial),”
said Kanhaiya Kumar.
“But I told the judge that I have
full faith in the Constitution,” he
added.
Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested
on February 12 on the charge of
sedition. Later the police also
detained two more JNU students
Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya. More students have
either been named as suspects or
questioned.
The police action came after
some students of JNU organised
on February 9 an event in support of Afzal Guru, who was a
convict in the December 2001
terror attack on parliament and
was executed in 2013.
Kanhaiya Kumar and other
students have been charged with
raising anti-India slogans.
“The lawyers kept beating me
Ashutosh Kumar too
likely to be arrested
Ashutosh Kumar, a student
facing sedition charges for
allegedly raising “anti-India”
slogans on the Jawaharlal
Nehru University (JNU) campus,
is likely to be arrested, sources
said yesterday.
Ashutosh Kumar became
part of the police investigation
yesterday after the investigating agency asked him on
Friday night to join the probe at
Vasant Vihar police station here,
sources said.
Sucheta De, the national
president of All India Students’
Association (AISA), an organisation active in JNU, also said
Ashutosh has gone to the police
station to join the probe.
“Ashutosh, Rama Naga
and Anant Prakash Narayan
communicated to police a few
days ago their intention to join
the enquiry, gave their contact
number and told the police to
call them whenever needed,”
said Sucheta De.
She said police called
Ashutosh Kumar on Friday
night to come to the police station yesterday morning. “So he
has gone today. We were never
resisting.”
right from the front gate till the
court room. One of the attackers
managed to enter the corridor of
the court with me. He was also
present in the room adjoining the
court room, where proceedings
were scheduled to be held,” said
Kanhaiya Kumar.
“I informed the Delhi Police
present in the court that he is the
person who attacked me. The attacker was not even dressed in
lawyer’s uniform. Delhi police
didn’t even try to arrest him and
the attacker fled from the spot.
I was disrobed during the attack
and also lost my footwear,” he
added.
The panel appointed by the
Supreme Court asked Deputy
Commissioner of Police (New
Delhi) Jatin Narwal how did the
police fail to provide security to
Kanhaiya Kumar and allowed the
attacker inside the corridor of
the court.
Narwal replied that he immediately rushed to the spot but
could not recognize the attacker
as he entered with the south
Delhi police team escorting Kanhaiya Kumar.
An official of South Delhi police told panel members that
the man who entered with Kanhaiya Kumar inside the corridor
claimed to be his lawyer.
Muziris should spread message of cosmopolitanism: president
By Ashraf Padanna
Kodungallur
P
resident Pranab Mukherjee
yesterday inaugurated Kerala’s new tourism project, a
mammoth conservation undertaking based on archaeological
findings on the ancient spice route
linking India with contemporary
ancient civilisations.
The Muziris Heritage Project
aims at reviving a three-millennia-old cultural and civilizational
heritage that brought the Arabs,
Europeans and the Chinese traders to the Kerala coasts in search
of spices.
The president said the project
should spread the message of Indian cosmopolitanism far and
wide adding to the country’s soft
power across the world.
“Kerala has through the ages
demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt to new traditions and
values in every sphere of human
thought and endeavour,” he said.
The project is an effort to conserve and showcase a culture that
had existed for over 3000 years
when Kerala had established itself
as a major centre of spice trade
with the ancient port of Muziris as
its hub.
However, historians like MGS
Narayanan dispute the claims
about its exact site.
“This town and its surroundings
have been a thriving centre of Islam, Christianity, Judaism as well
as Hinduism,” the Mukherjee said.
“Kodungallur is also believed to
be the place where the Apostle of
Jesus Christ, St Thomas, landed
bringing with him Christianity to
India much before it reached Europe.”
President Pranab Mukherjee lights the traditional lamp at the launch of Kerala Tourism’s Muziris Heritage Project as (from left) state chief secretary
Jiji Thomson, MLA T N Prathapan, Governor Justice P Sathasivam, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, MP K V Thomas and MLA V D Satheesan look on.
The project, initiated six years ago,
comprises the development works
of palaces, Cheraman, synagogues,
a performance centre and museum.
It also envisages the conservation of archaeological monuments within 125 square kilometres spread across Thrissur and
Ernakulam districts, including
Cheraman Masjid, believed to be
India’s first mosque.
Muziris finds mention in the
Voyage around the Erythraean Sea,
a work by a Greek-speaking Egyptian merchant from the middle of
the first century CE, described as
one of the four active ports which
exported pepper and other goods.
Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist of the first century CE, refers
to Muziris, in his encyclopaedic
work, Naturalis Historia, as ‘the
first emporium’ of India, a place
reserved for the business interests
of foreign traders.
It is believed that a devastating
flood that changed the course of
the Periyar river or an earthquake
in the 14th century led to its decline.
But, the Malabar coast remained
a prime destination for foreign
traders and visitors, including
Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo, who
wrote extensively about it.
The Arabs continued their
flourishing trade in spices and the
Chinese were frequent visitors.
“The kings gifted land to set up
places of worship and offered protection and patronage to believers
of different religions,” he said.
“Today, Kerala is a state where
religions share traditions. Many
churches light oil lamps and raise
flags as is done in Hindu temples.
Similarly, the Cheraman Mosque
has an oil lamp which is always lit.”
This is the largest conservation
project in India and the first green
project in Kerala. The next phase is
supported by the Unesco and UN
World Tourism Organization.
The initiative links 41 countries
in Asia and Europe with India,
where Kerala’s pepper, precious
stones, silk, beads, ivory and pottery reached, in exchange for gold
coins, glass, wine and wheat.
This initiative aims to revive
cultural and academic exchange
between these nations for the development of a multi-national
cultural corridor.
Mukherjee also released a coffee table book on the Spice Route,
which in first-ever by a tourism
board is available on Kindle.
Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said the project, implemented
with active federal support, would
define the state’s tradition of accepting and absorbing other cultures from around the world.
Tourism Minister A P Anil Ku-
mar said it would open doors to the
immense opportunities in educational tourism, a growing industry
across the world.
After a lot of research, excavation works and consistent efforts
to restore a lost heritage, the state
has planned to open 29 museums.
A hop-on-hop-off boat tour of the
Muziris Museums has also been
developed as a unique way to experience this remarkable heritage.
Recently, the Parliamentary
Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture had applauded the Kerala government’s
initiative, saying it will not only
revive India’s glorious heritage
as a destination for travellers and
traders but would also give a larger
foothold for garnering world tourism revenue.
India is also keen on the idea of
promoting the ancient Sea Route
used for trade and commerce.
20
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
INDIA
Witnesses
emerge in
Haryana
‘rapes’
IANS
Chandigarh
A
n all-women inquiry committee set
up by the Haryana government to
probe alleged mass gang rapes of
women began its probe yesterday, with a
couple of witnesses claiming to have seen
hooligans assaulting some women.
The women were commuting on National Highway-1 during the violent Jat agitation earlier this week when they were allegedly sexually assaulted.
Niranjan Singh, an elderly Sikh man, told
media yesterday that he saw hooligans assaulting women commuters and tearing off
their clothes.
“I have seen this happening with my own
eyes. The hooligans attacked the women
and girls and tore off their clothes. Some
were chased into the fields, some were
dragged,” the witness said.
The alleged incidents took place early
last Monday. Media reports said mass gang
rapes took place and that up to 10 women
were sexually assaulted by a group of nearly
40 hooligans during the Jat community’s
agitation for reservation.
The reports said the women were pulled
out of their cars, stripped and gang raped
in nearby fields. The victims later reached a
nearby popular roadside eatery and sought
help.
Another witness, Yadwinder, claimed he
saw three women with children and some
men who were trying to save themselves
from the Jat protesters.
“We were at some distance but I clearly
saw three women with torn clothes trying
to escape from the area,” Yadwinder, who
was travelling in a bus and had to hide in a
nearby premises, said.
The state government’s inquiry committee, headed by a woman Deputy Inspector
General (DIG) Rajshree Singh and comprising two women Deputy Superintendents of
Police (DSPs), Bharti Dabas and Surinder
Kaur, yesterday started the probe into the
reported incidents. The committee visited
Hasanpur village near Murthal, where the
alleged assault took place.
The committee has been set up to look
into allegations that women commuters
were pulled out of their cars during the
recent Jat agitation and mass gang-rapes
took place at Murthal in Haryana’s Sonepat
district.
Haryana Director General of Police
(DGP) Y P Singhal on Friday said the inquiry committee would thoroughly probe
the allegations.
The reports said clothes and undergarments of women were found strewn in
the area but Haryana Police claimed these
could have fallen out from bags of the commuters who were stopped and chased away
by the Jat protesters who set their vehicles
on fire later.
Additional Chief Secretary P K Das told
Victims want army to stay
The residents of violence-hit Jhajjar district
in Haryana yesterday told a visiting federal
minister that the armed forces deployed in
their area should continue to provide them
security for several weeks more.
The people told federal Minister of State
for Defence Rao Inderjeet Singh that they
still feared for their security and had little
trust left in the local police and civil administration after the trail of violence left by the
Jat community’s agitation for reservations.
The police and civil administration remained inactive during the nine days of violent Jat agitation despite several complaints
and messages for help, they said.
Rao Inderjeet Singh on Saturday visited
various areas of Jhajjar, some 45km from
Gurgaon, to enquire after the well-being of
people living there.
He said he would discuss the issue with
federal Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar
and federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
The minister paid condolences to
families of three Saini youths, belonging to
non-Jat community, who were killed during
the violence.
He also went to Silani Chowk, where
the statue of one freedom fighter and Rao
Inderjeet’s ancestor Rao Tula Ram was
demolished by miscreants’ during the Jat
agitation.
Rao Inderjeet Singh addressed a gathering of people and appealed to them to
maintain peace and harmony.
media here on Friday the state government
was “very serious about this alleged incident and those found guilty would not be
spared”.
Das appealed to people to cooperate and
provide information without any fear. “The
identity of any informer would not be disclosed,” Das said.
DGP Singhal denied that police personnel at lower-level might be trying to keep a
lid on the episode. It was alleged that police
officials told the women victims not to report the matter as nothing would come out
of it.
Haryana Police and the state government
had on Wednesday denied any incident of
“indecent behaviour” and rape of women
in Sonepat during the recent agitation.
“Investigations conducted by the principal secretary, Industries and Commerce,
Devender Singh and Inspector General of
Police Paramjit Ahlawat had found the allegations made in the report false and baseless,” the DGP claimed earlier.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court on
Wednesday took suo moto notice of media
reports in this regard.
Justice Naresh Kumar Sanghi said the
high court could not sit as a “mute spectator” to the reported incidents and that
these needed to be probed by a “premier
investigation agency”.
Leftist student unions clash with police during a protest rally against the West Bengal government in Kolkata yesterday.
Burdwan varsity row: student
leaders blocked in Kolkata
IANS
Kolkata
A
t least 100 student activists
led by the SFI were yesterday prevented by police from
meeting West Bengal Governor K N
Tripathi to urge him to intervene and
restore normalcy at Burdwan University which has been on the boil
after police baton-charged a group
of student agitators.
During a protest march yesterday
in Kolkata, activists affiliated to four
Left-wing organisations - the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), All
India Students Federation (AISF),
All India Students’ Block (AISB) and
Progressive Students Union (PSU)
- were stopped by police at Metro
Channel, around 2km from Raj Bhavan.
A scuffle ensued between the police and student leaders resulting in
the arrest of 65 agitators, claimed
SFI leader Vikas Jha.
“Even though we brought the issue of irregularities in results and
examinations to the attention of the
state government, they failed to take
any steps to normalise the situation.
We want the entire matter to come
to the governor’s attention so that
he can restore normalcy in the campus,” he said.
The protest was against the alleged “attack by Trinamool Congress workers on students who were
on hunger strike” in the varsity on
Friday.
“Trinamool Congress goons
brought from outside the campus
backed by some of the staff of the
university aligned with the Trinamool, attacked and beat up the stu-
dents (who were on hunger strike)
and injured several of them on Friday night,” said Jha.
Trinamool
leader
Sitaram
Mukherjee however denied the allegations, asserting “none of the
party’s workers laid a hand on any of
the students”.
“We had gone to the campus
to rescue the faculty as they were
locked up inside the premises during the students’ agitation,” he said.
The ongoing agitation at the varsity was triggered by the batoncharge on students by police on February 23.
The student agitators had allegedly vandalised the campus, about
100km from Kolkata, over anomalies
in undergraduate results and postponement of exams on February 22.
Vice Chancellor Smritikumar
Sarkar said the university admin-
istration was forced to seek police
security after some agitators, pretending to be students, vandalised
the campus.
On February 23, TV grabs showed
the agitators, affiliated to SFI, waving flags and trying to climb over the
gate. Police were seen chasing them
and resorting to baton-charge.
Leader of the opposition Surjya
Kanta Mishra criticised the state
government over the issue saying
“the ruling party’s goons are threatening the common man”.
“It shows that the state government is terrified. They do not have
any way but to attack,” he told the
media.
State Education Minister Partha
Chatterjee has urged the vice chancellor to look into the reported
anomalies. “This matter is being
exploited for political gain,” he said.
Kerala has become a truly digital state: president
IANS
Kozhikode
P
resident Pranab Mukherjee yesterday lauded Kerala’s
achievements in promoting
information technology and declared the state to be the first “digital state” of India.
“With broadband connectivity in every gram panchayat, Kerala
has emerged as a truly digital state,”
Mukherjee said at a function at the
Cyber Park near here.
The president noted Kerala’s
progress in becoming digitally enabled, right from the launching of a
pilot Akshaya e-literacy project in
Long road
Malappuram district in 2002 to now
when the state revenue department
alone is issuing about 30,000 digital
certificates to the citizens daily.
The Akshaya project, which has
since expanded all across the state,
was the first district-wide e-literacy
project in India. There are currently
about 2500 Akshaya centres across
the length and breadth of the state,
which also provide internet access
and e-service delivery to the people.
Mukherjee also praised the efforts
of the IT@school project aimed at
providing basic computer knowledge to every high school student.
The state established its first State
Data Centre in 2005 to deliver governmental services through e-gov-
ernance and set up the second centre in 2011, he said.
“It is heartening to note that Kerala has now over 600 e-governance
applications covering almost all
departments, delivering e-services
to its citizens. They are also being
made available on the mobile platform now. All districts of the state
have been covered under the e-District project,” said Mukherjee.
The president said the growth of
internet and smart-phone penetration had rapidly transformed Kerala
into a knowledge-powered economy.
He said the state has a mobile
tele-density of 95% and an internet access covering over 60% of the
population.
Shah fetes ‘fort’ Gujarat
IANS
Ahmedabad
B
Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari lays the foundation stone yesterday of a national
highway at Dhakuakhana in Assam’s Lakhimpur district.
The president also inaugurated
the first IT Park in the Malabar region which is spread over of 0.5mn
square feet and will provide a base
to 5,000 professionals, besides creating indirect employment for over
20,000 people in the region.
“This IT Park has the distinction
of being the first in its class to be developed in the country by a labour
cooperative society, the Uralungal
Labour Contract Co-operative Society,” he noted.
The society, formed in 1925 by social reformer Guru Vagbhadananda,
has helped in improving the living standards of the economicallyweaker sections by providing them
job opportunities, Mukherjee said.
JP national president Amit
Shah yesterday described
Gujarat as a “fort of the
BJP”, asserting the party would
form the government in the state
after the 2017 assembly elections.
Shah, who arrived here for
the first time after once again
becoming the party’s president,
said the Bharatiya Janata Party’s
victory in the 2017 elections
would “shatter the hopes of the
opponents who are day-dreaming”.
During his felicitation ceremony at Ahmedabad airport,
Shah said: “Gujarat was, is and
will remain a fort of BJP.”
Without naming the opposition Congress, Shah said BJP’s
zealous workers have fanned out
in every nook and cranny of the
state and would prove wrong
all those “who have been daydreaming about change of power
in Gujarat”.
He said the party workers’
target in the state was victory
and they were ready to clear
“any difficulties and thorns in
the way”.
Shah, however, did not elaborate on the difficulties that the
party could face in the run up to
the 2017 assembly elections.
“In 2017, the chants of ‘long
live BJP’ and ‘Bharat mata ki jai’
would reverberate. We will win
even more convincingly under
the guidance of Narendrabhai
(Modi) to serve the 60mn Gujaratis again,” he said, avoiding
any reference to Chief Minister Anandiben Patel, who was
present.
“The win won’t be a full stop,
but just a comma before an even
better future of the state. We will
celebrate even the golden jubilee
of our win,” he said.
Stating that the party was
now ruling in 13 states and at
the Centre where it was the first
party to get absolute majority in
20 years, Shah said: “The party
with the humble beginning as
Jan Sangh in 1950 had never imagined it.”
“This is not a political journey
but a journey of ideology. Under the successful leadership of
Narendrabhai our government is
marching ahead for all-inclusive
growth taking into account the
poor, farmers, labourers, Dalits, tribals and other backward
classes,” Shah added.
He said of the last six assembly elections, the BJP had won
four and formed a government
in those states. “We lost only in
Delhi and Bihar. But in Delhi,
our percentage of votes did not
diminish while in Bihar it even
jumped up by a good margin,” he
said.
Shah, also a local BJP legislator
from Naranpura constituency,
was accorded a warm welcome
on his arrival here.
Chief Minister Anandiben, her
ministerial colleagues, state incharge of the party Dinesh Sharma, national vice president Purushottam Rupala and other top
state party leaders were present
to receive him at the airport.
Newly appointed Gujarat BJP
president Vijay Rupani was also
felicitated in the presence of
Shah.
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
21
LATIN AMERICA
Pope Francis meets new leader of his homeland
AFP
Vatican City
T
Pope Francis with Macri during the latter’s visit to the Vatican.
‘Dognapping’ on
the rise in Brazil
By Reese Ewing, Reuters
Sao Paulo
W
hile Brazil’s economy
is in the doghouse,
one
underground
business is bucking the trend –
“dognapping”.
Bosco, a black and white
Boston Terrier stolen in November from outside a grocery
store in Sao Paulo’s posh Jardins neighbourhood, became
the poster-pup for the rise of
dognappings.
His owner, screenwriter
Fernando Pedrosa, unleashed
a storm of comment on social
media sites Facebook, Twitter
and Instagram under the tag
#cadeobosco, which translates
as “where is Bosco”.
Raul Rocha, one of a team of
six investigators at DetetivePet
in Sao Paulo that helped broker
Bosco’s return, said that in the
past, thieves were mostly in it
for quick cash, selling the pilfered pooch at informal sidewalk fairs or to black market
puppy mills.
“These days, more of our
cases involve ransom,” Rocha
said in his office, adding he has
seen a sharp increase in stolen
dogs in the past year. “Criminals are using the owner’s attachment to the dog to ensure
payment.”
Pedroso declined to comment on his ordeal, saying that
he and Bosco wanted time to
recover. But his postings have
encouraged other owners to
post stolen pets.
Police say there are no official figures on animal theft but
detectives and local media say
thieves are increasingly preying on the booming pet business.
Brazilians have more than
52mn dogs, according to the
IBGE federal statistics institute – exceeding the number of
children under 14 years in Latin
America’s largest economy.
About one in every four families owns at least one dog in
Brazil, compared with roughly
one in every three families in
the United States, according to
trade group Pet Brasil.
Owners are being warned
by industry groups and veterinarians not to leave their dogs
leashed outside of shops and to
walk them in groups.
Thieves target small breeds
such as Pomeranians, Pugs
and Pekingese, which tend to
be easier to carry off without a
struggle.
They also offer attractive returns on the black market.
Most thefts occur on the
street and are not violent, Rocha said.
At GAMA PET, a high-end
pet shop in the Shopping Cidade Jardim mall in Sao Paulo,
a six-week-old French Bulldog sells for more than 7,000
reais ($1,750), the equivalent
of 10 months’ salary on Brazil’s
minimum wage.
Thieves would get only a
fraction of this amount selling an undocumented dog on
the street, pet detective Rocha
said.
A local start-up with private
equity backing called Marq
Systems will launch in April
a global positioning system
(GPS) and cellular-equipped
device that attaches to animals’
collars and signals the owners’
smart phone its whereabouts
every few minutes.
“We realised the owners
needed a reliable way to locate
their pets for their own comfort,” said Daniel Rosenfeld,
one of the founding partners.
Colombia reports 42,706 Zika cases
Colombia has registered 42,706 cases of people infected with Zika,
including 7,653 in pregnant women, the country’s National Health
Institute reported yesterday.
The latest count represents an increase of 5,695 new cases of the
mosquito-borne virus in the last week, including 1,300 in pregnant
women.
Although the disease’s symptoms are undetectable or mild in most
people – including low fever, headaches and joint pain – Zika’s rapid
spread has raised alarms in Latin America because it has been
tentatively linked to a serious birth defect known as microcephaly
in babies born to women who became infected while pregnant.
Microcephaly is an irreversible condition in which babies are born
with abnormally small heads and brains and suffer damage to their
cognitive and motor development.
There is currently no cure or vaccine for Zika.
Clinical exams were used to identify 34,464 cases in Colombia, the
health ministry said.
Laboratory tests confirmed infections in another 1,612, and 6,630
were listed as suspected Zika infections.
Colombia has reported the largest number of cases in Latin
America after Brazil, where the outbreak was first detected last year
and where 1.5mn Zika cases have been reported.
The health authorities predict more than 600,000 people will
be infected with the Zika virus in Colombia this year, and expect
more than 500 cases of microcephaly if trends seen in Brazil are
repeated.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) warns that the virus will
probably spread throughout the Americas except Canada and Chile.
he first pope from Latin
America met at the Vatican yesterday with the
new leader of his homeland Argentina which is struggling with
huge debt, poverty and drugs
trafficking.
The meeting between Pope
Francis and President Mauricio
Macri marked a new stage in the
often tense relations between
Argentina and the Holy See, especially over social issues such as
gay civil unions.
“This was a meeting of old
acquaintances,” Macri told journalists afterwards, saying they
discussed “problems like poverty
and drugs trafficking”.
A statement issued by the
Vatican also said that the two
talked about those issues along
H
aiti’s interim leader
Jocelerme Privert has
named a former central
bank governor as prime minister
to help pull the country out of a
paralysing electoral crisis.
Appointed by decree, FritzAlphonse Jean will work on
forming a government before
delivering a policy statement to
Haitian lawmakers.
With some 60% of the population suffering from extreme
poverty in this poorest of the
Americas countries, Jean said
that he was aware of the challenges he faces, and criticised
previous administrations.
“For decades, frustrations
have piled up in our country due
to unkept promises,” the head of
state said on Friday during his
first public speech. “We need to
stop improvising and start planning.”
Standing by his side, Privert reiterated his goal to unite a
highly polarised political system.
“The country’s future does
not depend on a single citizen or
single party alone. The future of
the country depends on us all,”
the president said. “It’s time for
all of us to make sacrifices in the
interest of national unity.”
But just hours before Jean
took office, his predecessor
Asked about the possibility
of the Pope visiting Argentina,
Macri said that Francis didn’t expect to come this year, but that he
would visit “as soon as possible”.
Macri is also expected to meet
during his visit to Italy President Sergio Mattarella and Prime
Minister Matteo Renzi before returning to Argentina today.
Since taking over in December from his leftist predecessor
Cristina Kirchner, pro-business
Macri has made it a priority to
mend relations with foreign
powers and investors, after a dispute erupted over debts dating
back to Argentina’s 2001 default.
US President Barack Obama is
scheduled to visit Argentina in
March.
In a recent interview with
AFP, Macri said the visit shows
the country is returning to the
international fold after years of
tension.
Guatemala convicts
ex-soldiers for sex
slavery and murder
AFP
Guatemala City
A
Guatemalan court has
sentenced two former soldiers to 120 and 240 years
of prison for subjecting at least
15 indigenous women to sexual
slavery and other crimes during
the country’s civil war.
The accused are guilty of
“crimes against humanity, murder and forced disappearance”,
Judge Yassmin Barrios ruled at
a hearing at a Guatemala City
court on Friday.
Following a trial which lasted
nearly a month, the judge handed
a 120-year sentence to retired
colonel Esteelmer Reyes, 59, for
crimes against humanity in relation to enslavement between
1982 and 1983 and the murder of
a woman and her two daughters.
He was handed 30 years for the
slavery charge and 90 years for
the murder.
At the time, Reyes headed a
military outpost at Sepur Zarco
in the northeastern Guatemala.
During the trial, prosecutors
accused Reyes of “authorising
and consenting to soldiers under
his command exercising sexual
violence and inhuman, cruel
and degrading treatment against
Maya-Q’eqchi’ women”.
Co-accused Heriberto Valdez,
74, was handed 30 years of prison
on slavery charges and another
210 years for the forced disappearance of seven people.
During the trial, which has
been described by activists as
“historic”, indigenous women
with their faces covered described to the court what they
Valdez attends the final hearing
of the Sepur Zarco case in
Guatemala City. Former military
commissioner Valdez was
sentenced to 240 years in
prison.
had suffered as sexual slaves.
As the decision was read out,
more than 500 activists who had
attended the trial broke into applause, singing and shouting slogans against the soldiers.
“It is very important to highlight the role of the victims because not only do they have to go
before a court, but must confront
stigma, ridicule and abuse,” 1992
Nobel Peace Prize winner and indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchu told AFP.
Ada Valenzuela, president of
the National Union of Guatemalan Women, said that the decision brought an end to a “historic
trial which has vindicated the
lives of women who have waited
for more than 30 years for the legal process to arrive at the truth”.
Reyes’ lawyer said that the defendants would appeal the ruling.
Guatemala’s 36-year civil war
Above: Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu
(right) embraces a victim of sexual abuse
after a judge declared two former military
men guilty of keeping 11 indigenous
women as sex slaves during Guatemala’s
civil war.
Right: Former Guatemalan army colonel
Reyes is seen in the courtroom after
the verdict was delivered. A judge has
sentenced him to 120 years in prison for
committing crimes against humanity, as
well as sexual violence and slavery against
15 indigenous women of the Mayan ethnic
Q’eqchi group.
left more than 200,000 people
dead or missing, according to
the United Nations, which place
most of the responsibility for
war-time atrocities and excesses
on the government forces.
Those who suffered most from
the human rights violations
committed during the war were
the indigenous peoples, who
make up more than 40% of Guatemala’s population of 16mn.
Mexico’s monarch butterfly
population up this season
AFP
Mexico City
Monarch butterflies cling to a plant at the Monarch Grove Sanctuary
in Pacific Grove, California, in this December 30, 2014 file photo.
Haiti names ex-central bank head as premier
AFP
Port-au-Prince
with human rights, peace and
social justice, and the church’s
contribution to Argentinian society, “especially to the younger
generations”.
Francis was the former cardinal of Buenos Aires and he knew
the centre-right Macri when he
was mayor of the Argentinian
capital from 2007 to 2015.
His relations with Macri were
rather tense, with the future
pope seen as more left-leaning.
Evans Paul said he disapproved
of the nomination.
“We should not allow our
country to be led down a path of
chaos,” the former prime minister said during a press conference with several members of
the outgoing government.
Jean said he was aware of his
political foes.
“When there’s a change in
government, there are always
these sorts of grudges,” he told
AFP.
The persistent political tension will complicate an already
difficult mission for the interim
president and his prime minister.
Within his 120-day mandate,
Privert is due to see to the end an
electoral process that was interrupted in January.
Privert took office on February
14, a week after the departure of
president Michel Martelly, who
left without a successor after a
vote to choose his replacement
was postponed over fears of violence.
Haiti is the poorest country
in the Americas, still struggling
to get back on its feet after being
hobbled by a devastating 2010
earthquake and now plunged
into a drawn-out electoral crisis.
There is still much uncertainty over the country’s ability to
hold presidential and legislative
elections within the next four
months.
T
he monarch butterfly population has soared in its
Mexican winter sanctuary
this season, marking a recovery
for the threatened species that
migrates across North America,
officials said on Friday.
The orange and black butterfly
covered 4.01 hectares (9.9 acres)
of pine and fir forest in the 20152016 season, more than tripling
last year’s figure of 1.13 hectares,
Mexican, US and Canadian officials said.
While researchers measure the
population by the area it covers, it estimates that there were
150mn butterflies this year in the
mountains of central Mexico.
But officials and conservationists warned that they must sustain their efforts or risk reversing
this progress.
“The area occupied by the
monarchs in the Mexican sanctuaries has increased in the last
two seasons, which suggests the
start of a recovery of this butterfly,” said Omar Vidal, Mexico
office director for the World
Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
“It’s very good news. At the same
time, we can’t lower our guard in
any of the three countries and we
must redouble our efforts to ensure this migratory phenomenon
transcends this and the next generation.”
The rebound comes after the
population hit an all-time low of
0.67 hectares in 2013-2014.
The decline has been blamed
on illegal logging in their Mexican wintering grounds and the
drop in milkweed on which they
feed due to the use of pesticides
in the United States and Canada.
The butterflies travel more
than 4,000km (2,500 miles) from
Canada to spend the winter in a
mountain reserve straddling the
states of Mexico and Michoacan.
They usually arrive at their
nesting ground between late October and early November and
head back north in March.
Alejandro del Mazo, the head
of Mexico’s office for protected
areas, credited the recovery to
the “great results” of the joint
actions taken by the Mexican, US
and Canadian governments to
reverse the decline.
The goal, which follows a
mandate given at a 2014 North
American summit, is to increase
the area to six hectares by 2020.
This compares to a high of
18.19 hectares in 1996-1997.
Dan Ashe, director of the US
Fish and Wildlife Service, said his
country has restored more than
100,000 hectares of fields without pesticides in the past year,
with an investment of $20mn.
“I am encouraged by the good
news coming out of Mexico, an
indication that we have the ability to save the North American
monarch butterfly and with it
one of the most remarkable wildlife migrations on the planet,”
Ashe said. “But there is much
more we need to do and it will
take a co-ordinated citizen effort
on a scale never before seen.”
Ashe urged people across the
region to help the butterfly thrive
by planting milkweed, and reach
the goal of having 250mn monarchs by 2020.
“A simple stand of native
milkweed can make every backyard, school, community centre,
city park and place of worship a
haven for breeding or migrating
monarchs, and together we can
bring about the greatest citizen
conservation victory of our generation,” he said.
But Vidal of WWF warned that
herbicides are still a major problem in the United States, along
with illegal logging in Mexican
sanctuaries.
“The threats to the monarch
remain and if they are not dealt
with, if actions are not followed
through, the migratory phenomenon won’t recover,” he said.
22
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN
US to go ahead with F-16 sale to Pakistan: State Department
Internews
Islamabad
T
he US State Department
yesterday defended the
decision to sell F-16 aircraft to Pakistan and endorsed
Islamabad’s position that the
planes were being used in counter-terrorism operations.
In a separate statement, the
Pakistan embassy in Washington
appreciated the Obama administration’s determination to go
ahead with the proposed sale.
The deal, however, is facing
stiff resistance in the US Congress where lawmakers have
moved resolutions both in the
House and the Senate, seeking to
block the sale.
“We support the proposed
sale of eight F-16s to Pakistan
to assist Pakistan’s counterterrorism and counterinsurgency
operations,” said a State Department spokesperson Helaena W
White.
“Pakistan’s current F-16s
have proven critical to the success of these operations to
date,” she added, endorsing Pakistan’s position that it had effectively used its existing fleet
of F- 16s in counter-terrorism
operations.
India, and some US lawmakers, have rejected this claim,
saying that the F-16s have not
been useful in such operations
and would ultimately be used
against India. But White noted
that the operations Pakistan was
conducting in Fata with the help
of F- 16s, “reduce the ability of
militants to use Pakistani territory as a safe haven for terrorism
and a base of support for the insurgency in Afghanistan.”
She also noted that “these
operations are in the national
interests of Pakistan, the United
States, Nato, and in the interest
of the region more broadly.”
White said that the administration was “committed to
working with Congress to deliver security assistance to our
partners and allies that furthers
US foreign policy interests by
building capacity to meet shared
security challenges.”
A spokesman for the Pakistan embassy, Nadeem Hotiana,
pointed out that the US administration had already notified
Congress of its ‘determination’
to sell F-16s to Pakistan. “The
public notification clearly articulates the reasons for the prospective sale,” he added.
“We support the proposed
sale of eight F-16s to
Pakistan to assist Pakistan’s
counterterrorism and
counterinsurgency
operations”
“We appreciate the public
assessment of the US leaders in
response to Congressional enquiries that Pakistan has used
F-16s effectively against terrorists and the subject sale is also
intended to strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to continue the
ongoing operations,” the embassy said.
The statement noted that
the proposed sale would help
strengthen Pakistan’s counterterrorism capacity under a mutually agreed defence co-operation framework.
US lawmakers have until
March 12 to block the sale but
they have acted promptly, introducing two resolutions in the
House of Representatives and
the Senate this week. Both resolutions urge the administration
not to sell these planes and other
weapons to Pakistan.
On Thursday, the head of
a powerful Senate committee called for a detailed hearing
on the proposed deal, arguing
that it was not the right time to
sell weapons to Pakistan. The
developments may cast a long
shadow on the sixth session
of the US-Pakistan Strategic
Dialogue, scheduled on Feb 29.
Former Republican presidential
candidate Senator Rand Paul introduced a joint resolution in the
Senate on Wednesday, seeking
to block the sale of F-16 fighter
jets and other military hardware
to Pakistan including eight Advanced Integrated Defensive
Electronic Warfare Suites and 14
Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing
Systems.
“While we give them billions
of dollars in aid, we are simultaneously aware of their intelligence and military apparatus
assisting the Afghan Taliban,”
said Senator Paul in the resolution, which has now been sent
to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. Congressman Dana
Rohrabacher, who actively seeks
to disintegrate Pakistan, moved
another joint resolution in the
House of Representatives.
“The government of Pakistan
has been using weapons from
the US to repress its own citizens and especially the people of
Balochistan,” said the lawmaker
while introducing the resolution.
“The deciding factor of
whether to support this Joint
Resolution is, for me, the arrogant and hostile actions taken
by the government of Pakistan
against the man (Dr Shakil Afridi) who helped bring Osama
bin Laden to justice,” Rohrabacher said. Another former
Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain,
however, said that it was a difficult issue as both India and
Pakistan were important for the
United States.
Clashes, air
strikes leave 34
militants dead
AFP
Islamabad
T
he Pakistani military’s
latest ground and aerial
onslaught in the troubled
northwest killed at least 34 Islamist militants yesterday while
five of its troops also died during
clashes, security officials said.
The attacks come days after Pakistan’s powerful military chief
General Raheel Sharif ordered his
troops to begin the last phase of a
bloody operation targeting militants in the country’s restive northwest along the Afghan border.
Pakistani air force jets pounded militants’ hideouts in the
northwestern tribal belt, killing
at least 15 Taliban insurgents including six Uzbeks.
The strikes were carried out
in the Maizer area of the Datta
Khail region in North Waziristan,
which is considered a stronghold
for Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP) militants.
“As many as four hideouts
were destroyed in the strikes this
morning. Among the 15 killed
militants were six Uzbeks,” a security official in the area said.
Later in the evening, the military issued a statement saying
its “ground forces surrounded a
group of fleeing terrorists in the
Mangroti area near the Afghanistan border in the Shawal region
of the North Waziristan district
and 19 militants were killed during the intense exchange of fire”.
“Four security forces personnel including an officer also embraced martyrdom,” the statement added.
A senior security official in
Peshawar confirmed the strikes
and clashes.
“The air strikes have increased in the last few days and
we have hit targets today also.
We have hit the hideouts many
times during the last few days,”
the official, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity, said.
Also yesterday, a Pakistani
soldier was killed and two others
wounded when their vehicle hit
an improvised explosive device
planted on a roadside in North
Waziristan’s Datta Khail.
The Pakistani army launched
Operation Zar-e-Azb under US
pressure in 2014 in a bid to wipe
out militant bases in the North
Waziristan tribal area and bring
an end to the near decade-long
Islamist insurgency that has cost
Pakistan thousands of lives.
The conflict zone is remote and
off-limits to journalists, making
it difficult to verify the army’s
claims, including the number and
identity of those killed.
Pakistan’s Islamist insurgency
began after the US-led invasion
of neighbouring Afghanistan in
2001 which led to a spillover of
militants across the border and
a surge in recruitment for Pakistani extremist groups.
Pakistan’s relative success
in fighting militancy stands in
marked contrast to Afghanistan,
which is facing record numbers
of civilian casualties following
the withdrawal of Nato combat
troops at the end of 2014.
Pakistan welcomes US, Russia deal on Syria
Pakistan has welcomed the agreement reached
between Russia and the US for a nationwide
cessation of hostilities.
The US and Russia agreed this week on a “cessation
of hostilities” between the Syrian government and
groups fighting it in a deal that keeps out the Islamic
State group and the al-Nusra Front.
“We also appreciate the efforts of the International
Syria Support Group and sincerely wish for the
success of the agreement,” a Foreign Ministry
spokesman said.
He said Pakistan has always maintained a
principled position on Syria based on neutrality,
impartiality and respect for the territorial integrity
and sovereignty of Syria.
“We, however, remain concerned on the
humanitarian crisis and the urgent need to
address the refugee crisis,” the spokesman said.
On Monday US Secretary of State John Kerry and
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reached
the terms of a nationwide cessation of hostilities
in Syria.
Afghan National Army soldiers arrive at the site of an attack in Kabul yesterday.
Dozens killed, wounded in
Afghanistan suicide attacks
Reuters
Kabul
A
Taliban suicide bomber
blew himself up near the
Afghan defence ministry in Kabul yesterday, causing
heavy casualties just hours after
an attack in the eastern province of Kunar killed 13 people
and put prospects for new peace
talks in doubt.
The attack in Kabul, which
occurred as defence ministry
workers were leaving their offices, killed as many as 12 people
and wounded eight, according
to a ministry statement, although Kabul police said nine
people had been killed and 13
wounded.
Witnesses at the scene,
where a large plume of smoke
spiralled into the sky, said they
had seen a number of bodies on
the ground. The area was sealed
off as police and army vehicles
surrounded the blast site.
“I wanted to cross the bridge
when I heard an explosion,” said
a witness who gave his name
as Zulgai. “I went to the area ...
there were damaged cars and
shattered windows everywhere.”
The Taliban claimed respon-
sibility for the attack which the
movement’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said killed 23
officers and wounded 29 others.
He said there were no civilian
casualties.
The high-profile attack came
as officials from Afghanistan,
Pakistan, the United States and
China have been pressing for a
resumption of the peace process
interrupted last year between
the Western-backed government in Kabul and the Taliban.
But it remains unclear
whether the Taliban, struggling to contain deep internal
divisions, will take part in direct
peace talks that the four-nation
group hope will be held in Islamabad as early as next week.
In a statement issued after
the attack in Kunar, President
Ashraf Ghani said his government would not conduct peace
talks with groups that killed innocent people and said security
forces would step up the fight
against terrorism.
Earlier yesterday, a suicide
bomber killed a local militia
commander and at least 12 others outside the governor’s compound in Asadabad, the provincial capital of Kunar, near the
border with Pakistan.
Howling in the woods: dogfighting in Pakistan
DPA
Haripur, Pakistan
S
ummoned closer by the
howling of dogs and the
beat of drums, a large
crowd gathers near a stream in
Haripur in Pakistan’s northern
mountains.
Some 2,000 men are braving
harsh Himalayan winds to cheer
on their pets in what has become
a regular winter fixture in the
town: dogfighting.
The more the muscular animals soak each other in blood,
the higher the excitement among
the spectators.
“I love it ... it is fun,” says
Naveed Ahmed, a 23-year-old
tailor who came to watch with
friends.
The dogs’ blood stains the
open yard where the men sit in a
circle, watching anxiously to see
which will win the day’s main
battle.
The animals’ growling, and
the spectators’ cheering and
clapping echo throughout the
wooded valley.
The fight ends when a dog
dies, abandons the battle, or an
owner withdraws his pet be-
cause the animal is too injured to
continue.
No one seems to know when
the sport started in this region
but it is now considered part of
rural culture, with dogfights organized across Pakistan in the
winter months from January to
March.
Noor Ahmed, 45, and his
cousins from the province of
Punjab, hundreds of miles from
Haripur, have entered 2-yearold Shola in the competition.
The grey bulldog is one of four
pets Ahmed has in his hometown.
“I’m fond of dogs,” he says
as the announcer calls Shola’s
name on the loudspeaker. “I
bring my Shola here for pride. If
he wins, I’ll be happy.”
Raising a fighting dog takes a
lot of money and energy, Ahmed
says.
“I feed my dog with milk,
meat, nuts and yogurt,” he says.
“And I give him a massage with
olive oil every day, and take him
out for running and exercise.”
Ahmed says he spends up to
Rs40,000 ($380) a month on
each dog, almost enough to sustain an average family in rural
Pakistan.
Dogfights are illegal in Pakistan, and punishable by a maximum six-month sentence under animal cruelty
laws, but this does not deter the crowds.
Shola, a muscular canine, has
fought twice in Punjab and won
on both occasions.
But he meets his match in
Dora, a male bulldog-bull terrier half a year older than Shola.
Dora overpowered his younger
rival after half an hour of intense
fighting.
Dora’s owner, 55-year-old
Amjad Khan, comes from Kashmir.
“I’m proud that my dog has
won another fight, his ninth in
total,” he says.
Dora is left with skin wounds
- which were washed with antiseptic solution in the nearby
river - but no major injuries.
“It hurts me. I raise my dog
like my kid and when he gets
injured, it really saddens me,”
Khan says. “Once my Dora was
badly bruised in a fight in Murree
near Islamabad and I didn’t eat
anything for three days.”
Shola survived the fight and
was not badly injured despite
losing.
Deaths are rare but injuries,
mostly skin wounds, are a certainty in every clash, says doctor
Akmal Rana, a vet based in the
capital Islamabad.
“Sometimes dogs are so
bruised that it takes them
months to recover,” says Rana,
who has been treating pets injured in fights for 30 years.
Dogfights are illegal in Pakistan, and punishable by a maximum six-month sentence under
animal cruelty laws, but this
does not deter the crowds.
An organiser of the Hariput
fight says the spectators’ passion
and lively betting keeps them
coming back.
“It is the involvement of money that makes it so popular,” he
says, introducing himself with
only his family name Shah.
For animal rights activists, the
fights reflect an underlying neglect of animal welfare in Pakistani society.
Home Four Paw and Claw, a
dog shelter in the southern city
of Karachi, supervises the rescue
of injured animals from the dogfights as well as other strays.
“It is extremely depressing,”
says Mustafa Ahmed from the
shelter.
Police are reluctant to heed
calls to stop the fights.
“This has been going on for
generations,” says Haripur police chief Khurram Rashid. “It is
a sport and a cultural festival. We
know it is illegal but have never
arrested anybody.”
Asad Rajput, a lawyer in the
capital Islamabad, says the British-era animal cruelty law needed to be strengthened.
“It is not enough at all,” he
says. “In 25 years, I have never
seen anybody coming to court on
charges of animal cruelty.”
Back in Haripur, just before
the day’s final fight, organizer
Shah announces the schedule for
upcoming events.
There will be more fights
in Haripur, as well as in the
nearby district of Abbottabad,
he says.
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
23
PHILIPPINES
Failure to pass Bangsamoro
law ‘may fuel extremism’
By Catherine S Valente
Manila TImes
T
he failure of Congress to
pass the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL)
may drive the youth to extremism, an international group
monitoring the peace process
warned.
The Third Party Monitoring
Team (TPMT), a body jointly
created and tasked by the government and the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF) to
monitor the implementation of
the Comprehensive Agreement
on the Bangsamoro (CAB), issued its third annual Public
Report on Friday highlighting “the need to sustain public
confidence in the peace process
during the governmental transition.”
TPMT chairman Alistair
MacDonald admitted that the
killing of police commandos in
Mamasapano,
Maguindanao
cast a dark shadow over the
peace process and led to the
non-passage of the BBL in Congress.
“The past year has been a difficult one, with the tragic events
at Mamasapano casting a dark
shadow over the peace process throughout the year, and
with Congress being unable to
complete its deliberations on
Poe camp’s ‘lazy
officials’ blamed
for cancelled rally
Manila Times
Manila
F
or the camp of presidential aspirant Rodrigo Duterte, political
rival Senator Grace Poe and her
running mate Sen. Francis Escudero have nothing to blame
but their “lazy organisers” for
their failure to secure permits
for a campaign rally supposed
to have been held in Davao City
on Thursday.
Peter Lavina, Duterte’s
spokesman, said the allegation
that the senators’ camp was
barred from conducting a rally
in Davao City, where Duterte is
mayor, was “simply baseless if
not ridiculous.”
“Their organisers are lazy,”
Lavina said in a statement.
“They did not do their job.
That’s not our fault or the city
government of Davao’s fault.”
The Poe-Escudero tandem
and senatorial candidates on
their slate had cancelled their
scheduled sorties in Davao and
Leyte province Thursday because they lacked permits to
do so.
Lavina
explained
that
groups conducting rallies
in Davao City’s public parks
are required to pay only P150
for use of electricity and to
co-ordinate with the Traffic
Management Centre and the
Central 911 for standby emergency unit.
The processing of permits
is usually completed within a
day, he said.“We learned that
there was an application, but
this application was not pursued,” he stressed in Filipino.
“The ones who filed it did
not return. Maybe they were
lazy, tired or just looking for
an excuse. Whose fault is
that?”
Lavina stressed that it is
not the nature and character
of Duterte – or of Davao City
for that matter – to curtail
the freedom of groups and
people to use public spaces.
the BBL,” MacDonald said in a
statement. Congress adjourned
for the national campaign on
February 3, 2016. It will resume
session on May 23 up to June 10,
largely for the canvass of votes
and proclamation of winners in
the presidential and vice presidential races.
“The failure of this Congress
to complete its deliberations on
the BBL has meant that confidence in the peace process
among the wider Moro community has taken a knock,” said
MacDonald, who used to be European Union (EU) Ambassador
to the Philippines.
“This setback, with its attendant frustration, could in-
crease the risk that some young
people may become more attracted to violent extremism,”
he added.MacDonald stressed
the need to sustain public confidence in the peace process.
He noted that the successful
conclusion to the peace process
is “the most effective vaccination” against the risk of violent
extremism.
“Transitional justice and reconciliation is an important part
of the CAB. The anger and hatred borne of the Mamasapano
incident played into the deeprooted prejudices among the
peoples of the Philippines. It is
therefore imperative that this
be carried forward as a national
effort,” he added. MacDonald
said the Framework Agreement
on the Bangsamoro and the
Comprehensive Agreement on
the Bangsamoro will remain as
the cornerstone of peace.
“It will be essential to build
a path forward… so that the
next administration can hit the
ground running, to work to sustain public confidence in the
process during this period of
uncertainty, and to reaffirm the
commitment of all stakeholders
to winning the prize of peace,”
he said.
Government chief negotiator
Miriam Coronel-Ferrer thanked
the TPMT for its invaluable role
“in ensuring that both the gov-
ernment and the MILF adhere
to the signed documents.”
“The TPMT’s third annual
report and the recommendations therein will be taken with
utmost consideration in line
with our shared desire to sustain and nurture the Bangsamoro peace process and finish in
due time the implementation
of the CAB which includes the
passage and ratification of a
CAB-based Bangsamoro Basic
Law,” she said.
The TPMT, established in
2013, has the mandate to monitor, review and assess the implementation of all signed
agreements between the government and the MILF.
Joyride
L
iberal Party (LP) presidential candidate Manuel
“Mar” Roxas vowed to
create 6mn jobs in the agriculture and manufacturing industry if he wins in May.
Roxas bared his plan after a
meeting with a workers’ group
in Barangay Barbara, Baliuag,
Bulacan.
“I see, more or less, creating a million jobs every year.
I have done this before in DTI
(Department of Trade and
Industry) when I was able to
make the call centre (Business
Process Outsourcing) industry grow. Now,millions of our
workforce is employed in this
sector. That happened because
we had a plan, not a wish.
It didn’t happen overnight
or by chance,” Roxas said.
“We stuck with our strategy;
we sought the help of the private sector, enlisted the help
of schools to help us in training…that’s why we were able
to mount a concrete action,” he
added.
Roxas vowed to implement
existing laws against contractualisation and trade unionism.
There are at least 18 pending bills that seek to stop contractualisation in the labour
sector. These measures seek to
ban probationary employment
exceeding six months.
“I can assure you, the laws
protecting our workers will
be implemented. Employees
have the right to assembly for
the protection of their rights,
especially against employers
who don’t pay their SSS (Social
Security System) dues,” Roxas
said.
T
he Police Regional Office-3 (PRO3) has stepped
up its campaign against
illegal gambling, particularly
the operation of “pula puti” and
“drop ball” in all funfair establishments/mini carnival known
as “perya,” operating in Central
Luzon.
Chief Supt. Rudy Lacadin,
police regional director, ordered
all his city and provincial po-
lice directors to advise all illegal
gambling operators on their responsibilities to stop these operations.
Supt. Timoteo Pacleb, PNP
OIC provincial director of Bulacan, said that Lacadin has forwarded the order to his 24 station commanders.
Those who fail to comply
and meet the requirements of
the law will be subject to police
operations.
The order comes on the heels
of complaints from some religious leaders lodged before the
T
hree people have been
killed after a small ferry
sank in the Philipines, police said yesterday, the latest in a
series of maritime accidents in
the archipelago.
The Lady Aime ferry was
travelling to Alabat Island from
the coastal town of Gumaca, 117
kilometres from Manila, when it
sank just 200 metres from shore
at 4.40pm on Friday, said Chief
Inspector Juan Byron Leogo.
Fishermen on the seashore
were able to rescue 60 passengers and four of the crew, but
three passengers were killed,
said Leogo, the town police chief.
He attributed the sinking to
“sudden high and strong waves”
and possible “overloading”, saying the boat’s maximum number
of passengers is less than 50.
A police report said part of the
boat was destroyed by the waves.
Authorities are considering
criminal charges against the ferry owners.
Poorly-maintained, looselyregulated ferries form the backbone of maritime travel in the
Philippines, a sprawling archipelago of 100mn people.
Frequent accidents involving
overloaded ferries in recent decades have claimed thousands of
lives, including the world’s worst
peacetime maritime disaster in
1987 when the Dona Paz ferry
collided with an oil tanker, leaving more than 4,300 dead.
Manila Times
Manila
A little boy gets flying lessons from a soldier at Sangley Point in Cavite City where the Philippine Navy held its fly and sail programme
that allowed children and disabled persons ride helicopters and military vessels.
A
north Cotabato
Manila Times
Manila
T
he chief of police of
Matalam town in north
Cotabato and three of
his men narrowly escaped Friday morning an ambush attempt by New People’s Army
(NPA) rebels in a remote village in the town, police reports
said yesterday.
Reports reaching the PNP
National Operation Centre,
in Camp Crame, said that the
incident took place at around
9.30am in Brgy. Kibia.
In the report, Senior Inspector Sunny Leoncito said
that he, along with three of
his men, were on their way
for a meeting in Brgy. Kibia on
Manuel ‘Mar’ Roxas: job creation plan
Campaign against illegal gambling
Manila Times
Manila
AFP
Manila
German
found
dead on
yacht
Roxas vows to create 6mn jobs in Cops survive
farm, manufacturing industries rebel ambush in
By Llanesca T Panti
Manila Times
Three die
in fresh
ferry
accident
office of the president claiming that PRO3 is not doing anything to address illegal gambling
where minors are allowed to play
at the peryahan in full view of
police authorities.
It was learned that perya operations in Bulacan have been
mushrooming allegedly under
the protection of some local officials, police authorities and even
mediapersons.
Lacadin said he gave his order
based on the complaints not only
by religious leaders but other
concerned sectors as well.
board a police patrol car when
a landmine, believed to have
been planted by NPA rebels,
exploded.“We are all safe,”
Leoncito said. “The explosion occurred about one metre
from our vehicle.”
He added that he and his
men traded shots with the NPA
rebels, who were waiting to
carry out an ambush in a nearby hill. The rebels withdrew
toward the direction of Brgy.
Salvacion, also in Matalam.
Responding policemen have
recovered PVC pipes, wirings
and shrapnel from the ambush
site. Military estimates say
there are around 4,000 armed
members of the NPA spread
across the country and involved in waging a protracted
war against the government.
still unidentified man
believed to be a German
was found dead Friday
afternoon on board a yacht
drifting in the Pacific Ocean
off the coast of Barobo town in
Surigao del Sur, police reports
said yesterday.
Reports reaching the PNP
National Operation Centre, in
Camp Crame, said the Barobo
Municipal Police Station (MPS)
received a phone call at around
4pm from a concerned citizen
that a yacht was seen floating off
the coast of the said town.
Christopher Rivas, 23, a resident of P-4 Poblacion, in Barobo, was fishing together with an
unidentified companion when
he spotted the yacht, painted
white and whose sail was broken,
from afar.
The fishermen approached
and came aboard the vessel to
check it out.
Rivas said he saw the lifeless
body of an adult male that was
already in a state of decomposition and sitting at the right portion of the yacht, believed to be
the radio room.
The fishermen then towed the
yacht toward the shores of Barobo, and called the police.
Police reports said the yacht
probably belongs to a certain
Manfred Fritz Bajorat, a German national, and that the boat’s
name was “Sajo.”
‘Pressure judiciary’ for resolution of journalists’ cases
Manila Times
Manila
P
ressure for the speedy resolution
of cases involving slain journalists
should not be exerted on the executive
branch but on the judiciary, Malacanang
said yesterday.
In a radio interview, Presidential Communications Undersecretary Manuel Quezon stressed that the Aquino administration
is very concerned with the killings of journalists but added that the matter now rests
with the courts where the cases have been
filed.
“It’s with the courts,” he told the staterun dzRB radio. “There have been many
instances when we have all been waiting for
justice and a resolution because the process
at the courts is very slow. But the courts are
independent, so the government can’t do
anything about it.”
He added, “And it requires our constant
appeals to the judiciary in a respectful but
firm manner to bear in mind that justice delayed is justice denied.”
Quezon made the statement in reaction to
a call by the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) for an investigation into the
killing of Filipino journalists, particularly
the case of a radio reporter in Mindanao
who was shot dead earlier this month.
“It has always been a cause of grave
concern and great outrage that journalists should die for the fact that they take
their job seriously and serve the people,” he
stressed.
“In these cases, we should bear in mind
that there is a taskforce that has been set
up and that we can point to cases moving
faster.”
Elvis Ordaniza, 49, a crime reporter for
dxWO Power99 FM radio, was shot dead by
unidentified gunmen, who barged into his
home on February 16 in Pitogo town, Zamboanga del Sur province.
24
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL
Nepal probes plane crash
IANS
Kathmandu
A
day after an Air Kasthamandap plane crashlanded in Nepal, the
country’s
government
has
formed a four-member commission to probe the incident in
Kalikot district.
The commission was formed
under the coordination of Yagya
Prasad Gautam, former secretary ministry of culture, tourism
and civil aviation, Xinhua quoted Suresh Acharya, joint secretary at the ministry, as saying.
Other members of the commission include Lt Colonel
Rabindra Basnet of Nepal army,
Goma Air engineer R K Singh
and an undersecretary of the
ministry.
Friday’s incident comes just
two days after the crash of Tara
Airlines in Myagdi district, killing all 23 people on board including three crew members.
There were altogether 11 people on board in Air Kasthaman-
dap’ single engine plane including two crew members. While
crew members - Captain Dinesh
Neupane and co-pilot Santosh
Rana lost their lives during the
crash landing, all the passengers
were saved.
Nepalese authorities said that
most of the passengers have sustained minor injuries while two
were critically injured.
Meanwhile, the government
officials said that the concerned
authority would examine the
condition of all the single engine
planes operating in the country.
Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Ananda
Prasad Pokharel on Friday said
that he has already instructed
the domestic airlines not to
fly such planes before their
technical tests.
Joint Secretary Acharya said
that Civil Aviation Authority of
Nepal, the regulatory body of
aviation sector, has allowed
single engine plane only to conduct chartered flights. “They are
not licensed to conduct regular
flights,” he said.
S
A small plane operated by Kasthamandap Airlines is seen on a field after it crashed in Kalikot.
Three more suspected of
killing priest arrested
Reuters
Dhaka
P
Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli: “As we have no misunderstandings
now, our focus will be on implementing the seven-point deal.”
Oli terms
India visit
successful
IANS
Kathmandu
N
epalese Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli has
termed his visit to India as successful, saying it had
helped improve relations with
the southern neighbour.
Addressing a meeting in
Siddharthanagar yesterday,
Oli termed his six-day India
visit fruitful, The Himalayan
Times reported.
“Earlier the relations between the two neighbours had
soured during the Madhes agitation but my visit has helped
improve the relations between
the two countries,” he said.
“As we have no misunderstandings now, our focus
will be on implementing the
seven-point deal,” Oli added.
Oli also urged the agitating
Madhes-based political parties to join the government.
“As we have delivered the
constitution, now is the time
to focus on development,” he
said.
“So, I call on the agitating
leaders and Nepali Congress to
join the government and participate in the nation building
process.”
Also, seeking an end to rumours being spread against
the constitution, Oli clarified
that any demand against the
national interests would not
be addressed.
He also reiterated that the
government would end loadshedding within two years.
Lanka
opposition
attacks
govt over
failure
to curb
‘poaching’
olice in Bangladesh have
arrested three more men
suspected of killing of
a Hindu priest, the latest incident of increasing Islamist
violence in the south Asian
nation.
The three men are members
of the banned militant group
Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), police said, and
join three other suspects in
custody who have been charged
over February 20’s deadly
attack.
The six are accused of slitting the throat of the priest,
shooting and injuring two
devotees and setting off homemade bombs at a Hindu temple in northern district of
Panchagarh.
One of the men arrested on
Friday admitted involvement
in the attack, said Humayun
Kabir, the deputy inspector
general of police in charge of
northern Bangladesh.
Guns, home-made bombs,
bullets and bladed weapons
were also recovered from the
suspects, he said.
Police said the temple attack was perpetrated by a local
militant group, while Islamic
State claimed responsibility in
a statement issued via social
media.
Bangladesh has experienced a wave of militant
violence in recent months,
including a series of bomb attacks on mosques and Hindu
temples.
The government denies that
Islamic State has a presence in
the Muslim-majority country
of 160mn people.
ri Lankan government
has come in for a strong
criticism by the opposition, which accused it
of failure to stop continuous
incidents of alleged poaching by Indian fishermen in its
waters.
“This shows the levels the
government has fallen into. They
can’t stop the Indians from coming,” Dinesh Gunawardena, the
leader of the opposition group
backing former president Mahinda Rajapakse, told parliament
on Friday.
“Our northern fishermen
are in distress. Recently there
was this religious event in the
Kachchathivu, there were a
large number of Indian devotees there. We have come to
agreement to allow certain
days of fishing for the Indians
in the northern seas. So why
can’t the Indian government
stop poaching?” Gunawardena
asked.
Sri Lankan fishermen accuse
their Indian counterparts of
poaching in their waters in the
northern seas.
Lankan authorities say the
Indian fishermen also indulge in
bottom trawling, and have expressed concern over the alleged
practice which they say destroys
marine resources.
Sri Lanka is contemplating
new laws to confiscate equipment of Indians accused of
poaching despite their release
through the legal process.
Minister urges chief justice to point
out lapses in war crimes cases
By Mizan Rahman
Dhaka
A
gainst the backdrop of strong dissatisfaction of the Supreme Court
about the way the prosecution and
the investigation agency of the war crimes
tribunal are handling the 1971 war crimes
cases, Law Minister Anisul Huq yesterday
urged Chief Justice (CJ) Surendra Kumar
Sinha to give observations about these in
the upcoming verdict.
“Whatever the CJ has said is discernible. I learned it from the reports appearing
in the media. The thing for me to do now
is to know completely why the honourable
chief justice has said this,” he said.
The minister was talking to newsmen
after attending a seminar on arbitration
in Dhaka.
“I believe he will for sure point this out
in the upcoming verdict, and if he doesn’t
do, I will take his advice for sure about
what he had tried to say and why. After learning the matter completely, I will
Harbour sunset
act to find a remedy in this regard,” Huq
added.
The Supreme Court on February 23
came down hard on the ICT prosecution
and the investigation agency for their
poor performance in dealing with the war
crimes cases.
Earlier, the highest court in its observation in the verdict on the appeal of another Jamaat leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee,
blamed the prosecution and the investigation agency for their ‘incompetency’.
Chief Justice Sinha vented his anger
when a five-member bench of the Supreme Court led by him was hearing an
appeal filed by war crimes accused Mir
Quasem Ali challenging his death penalty.
The bench gave the observation after
receiving records and documents of International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), saying that the prosecution could not produce witnesses in some charges brought
against Quasem.
During the hearing, the CJ said they
are shocked at the performance of the
prosecution and the investigators for
Bangladesh Law Minister Anisul Huq:
“Whatever the CJ has said is discernible.”
Satellite communication facility
launched for hospital ships
By Mizan Rahman
Dhaka
F
A container ship sails near Colombo harbour as the sun sets in Sri Lanka yesterday.
their incompetence in dealing the war
crimes cases.
Huge amount of money are being spent,
but their responsibilities are not reflected
in their performance, the CJ observed.
The attorney general was placing arguments before the apex court when the CJ
made his observations.
Chief Justice Sinha told the attorney
general that the judges were shocked
to note that the prosecutors appear before the media and make statements
immediately after a session of the case
proceedings at the tribunal.
The CJ asked the attorney general why
action is not being taken against the incompetent prosecutors and investigators.
The International Crimes Tribunal-2 on
November 2, 2014, sentenced Quasem to
death after finding him guilty on 10 charges of abducting, confining and torturing
people during the liberation war in 1971.
Earlier, the SC in a verdict on the case
against war criminal Sayedee castigated
the prosecutors and investigators for their
poor performance in handling the case.
riendship, a non-governmental organisation
(NGO) in Bangladesh, in
association with SES, a worldleading satellite operator based
in Luxembourg, yesterday announced the launching of the
first state-of-the-art maritime
VSATs on river barges.
The maritime VSATs will
be deployed on three floating hospital ships - Lifebuoy
Friendship Hospital, Emirates Friendship Hospital and
Rongdhonu Friendship Hospital now operating in Bangladesh - with technical assistance from Square Informatix
(Bangladesh).
Maritime VSAT is the use
of satellite communication
through a very-small-aperture
terminal (VSAT) on a moving
ship at sea.
The formal launching will
be held on March 2 at Emirates
Friendship Hospital.
In May 2014, Friendship collaborated with SES for development of SATMED project, an
e-health platform conceived
by SES and supported by the
Luxembourg government and
the ministry of cooperation and
humanitarian action.
SATMED is a satellite-based
communication solution aimed
at improving public health in
emerging and developing countries, most significantly in isolated areas with poor connectivity.
It is the medical extension
of the disaster recovery platform that was built for quick
release in areas that were hit by
severe natural or human-made
catastrophes.
SATMED enables communications between doctors, thus
propagating the transfer and
exchange of medical knowledge
and supporting tools for medical e-learning and e-teaching.
An IT cloud infrastructure
accessible around the globe
facilitates the data exchange
between professionals and the
setup of a medical infrastructure such as electronic medical records and tele-radiology
systems.
SATMED is an open, flexible
and affordable solution that
perfectly fits SES’s range of
satellite based e-activities.
As part of the project scope,
Friendship will install three
maritime VSATs to enable constant Internet connectivity
and data communication in its
three floating hospitals: Emirates Friendship Hospital, Lifebuoy Friendship Hospital and
Rongdhonu Friendship Hospital.
“The SATMED project is a
great illustration of convergence and true partnerships of
governments, the private sector and the NGOs,” said Runa
Khan, founder and executive
director, Friendship.
She said mutual trust and
collaboration can make innovative steps forward where they
see huge benefits thus impact
on the beneficiaries.
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
25
COMMENT
The end of cross-border surrogacy?
Commercial surrogacy leads
to human trafficking and the
exploitation of women and
ethical concerns outweigh
the economic benefits
By Donna Dickenson
London
T
he global trade in babies
born through commercial
surrogacy is slowly being
shut down. India, Nepal,
Thailand, and Mexico have introduced
measures that would limit or ban
foreigners from hiring locals as
surrogate mothers. Cambodia and
Malaysia look likely to follow suit.
In an industry in which the
conventional wisdom has long
dismissed efforts to “buck the
market,” this is a surprising – and
welcome – development. Uncritical
proponents of biotechnology tend to
celebrate the fact that technological
breakthroughs have outpaced
government regulations, arguing that
this has allowed science to progress
unfettered. But the determination of
countries that have historically been
centres of commercial surrogacy to
stop the practice underscores the
naiveté of that position.
It is no coincidence that the
countries cracking down on crossborder surrogacy are those in which
the practice takes place. The argument
that all parties – surrogate mothers,
babies, and commissioning parents –
benefit from the transaction has not
withstood scrutiny.
Consider India, where the surrogacy
industry is valued at $400mn per year;
until recently, some 3,000 fertility
clinics were operating in the country.
And yet, as worries have mounted
that commercial surrogacy leads to
human trafficking and the exploitation
of women, India’s authorities have
concluded that the ethical concerns
outweigh the economic benefits.
India has yet to finalise its antisurrogacy legislation. But the way
the debate has evolved since the first
bill was proposed in 2008 illustrates
the rapid change in how the practice
is viewed. The earliest drafts of the
legislation actually encouraged
commercial surrogacy, mandating
that mothers employed as surrogates
surrender their babies. Given that
under common law, the woman who
bears a child is legally its mother, this
provision would have been radically
pro-surrogacy.
Since then, however, the focus
of the discussion has shifted, as
unsavoury – and sometimes bizarre –
aspects of the trade have come to light.
For example, in one case, Germany
– where surrogacy is illegal – refused
to accept twin children of a German
father born to an Indian surrogate,
while India demurred at giving the
father an exit visa so that he could
remove the children.
In October 2015, India’s Ministry
of Health and Family Welfare,
under pressure from the country’s
Supreme Court, declared that
international commercial surrogacy
was unconstitutional. The Council
for Medical Research sent out a
notification to all clinics, instructing
them not to “entertain” foreign
couples – including non-resident
Indian citizens and people of
Indian origin. The next month, the
Department of Health Research
banned the importation of embryos
to be implanted into surrogate
mothers, making the procedure nearly
impossible.
To be sure, India is not the only
country involved in cross-border
surrogacy. Indeed, Indian regulations
limiting surrogacy services to
heterosexual couples who have been
married for at least two years had
already caused some of the trade to
relocate, most notably to Thailand.
But there, too, attitudes have been
shifting, especially after an Australian
couple refused to take responsibility
for a baby born through surrogacy who
was diagnosed with Down Syndrome.
The couple did take the boy’s twin
sister, however, making it clear that
what they had paid for was not the
“service” provided by the mother, but
the children themselves – or rather, just
the one who met their requirements. As
a result, it has become harder to deny
that cross-border surrogacy is akin to
selling babies.
In August 2015, Thailand restricted
surrogacy to couples in which at least
one partner holds Thai nationality.
Offences under the law are punishable
by up to ten years in prison – for
the surrogate and commissioning
parents alike. As in India, surrogacy
touched a deep nerve in Thailand,
where some see it as neo-colonialist
exploitation, with babies as the raw
commodities being extracted for the
benefit of Westerners. “This law aims
Beware a three-way US race
By Bruce Ackerman
Tribune News Service
I
n the next couple of weeks,
Michael Bloomberg will
decide whether to launch an
independent bid for the US
presidency. That’s an enticing
prospect, since the continuing
strength of Donald Trump and
Bernie Sanders threatens to force a
radical choice between two extremes.
Nevertheless, before succumbing
to centrist temptation, the former
New York City mayor should take a
hard look at the Constitution. He will
find that his run for the White House
could precipitate one of the worst
constitutional crises in American
history.
The problem is the 12th
Amendment. Enacted in 1804, it
establishes the rules for presidential
selection if no candidate secures
a majority of 270 electoral votes
– a distinct possibility should
Bloomberg enter the race. The
sphere of competition will then
move from the states to the House of
Representatives, where Bloomberg
will confront formidable challenges.
He will have to persuade Republican
and Democratic lawmakers to betray
the tens of millions of loyalists who
voted for their party’s nominee. But
he’ll have to do more than gain a
majority of House members. Under
the amendment’s special rules, each
state delegation casts a single vote,
and the winning candidate must
convince 26 delegations to support
him. Even if Bloomberg carries a few
key states in November, his fate will be
determined by representatives from
regions that rejected his candidacy.
In addition, there are 11 states with
only one or two House members – and
their idiosyncratic views will have
a disproportionate say in the final
choice.
Worse yet, if a state’s delegation
is equally divided, it can’t vote at
all. This means that the process will
degenerate into a free-for-all as rival
candidates engage in desperate efforts
to nudge one or another fence-sitter in
their direction.
At this point, a final factor will
make for more melodrama. If the
House can’t pick a chief executive
by Jan 20, the amendment provides
an interim remedy. It says that the
new vice president will become
acting president while the political
bargaining continues.
The three vice presidential
nominees will be in the same position
as their running mates – none will
have gained a majority of the electoral
college. Anticipating this eventuality,
the authors of the 12th Amendment
designed another system for resolving
the vice presidential contest.
Under this secondary scheme, it’s
the Senate, not the House, that does
the deciding, and a simple majority
of senators suffices to make the
choice. But the Senate can choose
only between the top two, not the top
three, candidates. As a consequence,
Bloomberg’s running mate might be
barred from the competition from the
start.
In any event, the major party in
control of the Senate will almost
certainly install its own candidate, not
Bloomberg’s. Suppose, for example,
that the Democrats regain control of
the Senate and put Sanders’ running
mate, Elizabeth Warren, into office.
This might shock the previously
paralysed House into action: Perhaps
the Republicans would abandon
Trump and support Bloomberg in a
desperate effort to save the country
from Warren?
The emergence of a BloombergWarren pairing illustrates a larger
point. Given the arcane constitutional
rules, the only way for Bloomberg to
win is by manipulating procedures
that will be utterly mysterious to the
overwhelming majority of ordinary
citizens. If the multibillionaire does
succeed in backroom deals that
procure him the presidency, his ascent
will serve only as a dramatic display of
the power of Wall Street to lord it over
the American people.
Such a victory will have
devastating consequences. Consider
how the tea party pressured
congressional Republicans to
make life difficult for Obama. Life
will be even more difficult for
Bloomberg, who will also contend
with the disappointed “political
revolutionaries” among the
Democrats inspired by Sanders. As
the struggle between Congress and
the president escalates, ordinary
Americans will turn away in despair.
This massive wave of alienation will
permit the extreme right and the far
left to become even more powerful
forces in the next presidential
election – with Trump and Sanders,
or their successors, taking over both
parties and competing with each
other in their radical programmes to
sweep away the Washington elite.
The time for Bloomberg to consider
this grim future is now. He has always
presented himself as a thoughtful
pragmatist who disdains ideological
posturing. But only the blindest
follower of Antonin Scalia – the most
adamant constitutional originalist
– can fail to recognise that the 12th
Amendment, passed during the
presidency of Thomas Jefferson, can’t
cope with the realities of modern
politics.
If Bloomberg is a true patriot,
he will not allow his personal
ambition to throw the US into a grave
constitutional crisis.
to stop Thai women’s wombs from
becoming the world’s womb,” was
how Wanlop Tankananurak, a member
of Thailand’s National Legislative
Assembly, put it.
By November 2015, about a dozen
Indian and Thai clinics had shifted
operations to Phnom Penh. That
development might at first seem to
support the argument that the trade
can never be stamped out – only
relocated. But, so far, the number
of clinics that have set up shop in
Cambodia is small. And some reports
indicate that Cambodia’s interior
ministry intends to treat commercial
surrogacy as human trafficking, with a
potential prison sentence.
Nepal, too, has declared a
moratorium on surrogacy, after some
in the country denounced the practice
as exploitative. In April 2015, after an
earthquake struck Kathmandu, Israel
evacuated 26 babies born through
surrogacy, but left their mothers –
most of whom had crossed over from
India – stranded in a disaster zone.
Malaysia also seems on track to ban
the practice. And in Mexico, the state
of Tabasco, the only jurisdiction in the
country where surrogacy is legal, has
restricted it to Mexican heterosexual
married couples in which the wife is
infertile. During the legislative debate,
Deputy Veronica Perez Rojas denounced
surrogacy as a “new form of exploitation
of women and trafficking.”
There is the risk, of course, that the
ongoing international clampdown
will drive commercial surrogacy
underground. But that risk only
underscores the need for clear and
strict legislation. Even if some wouldbe parents are willing to break the law,
the vast majority will be deterred by
the penalties, including the risk that
they will not be allowed to keep the
baby or that they will be unable to
obtain an exit visa for it.
The pro-surrogacy camp
emphasises the benefits of the
practice, which include increased
reproductive choice and the
accommodation of sexual pluralism.
But while these may be genuine and
important considerations, they cannot
be placed above the need to prevent
the exploitation of some of the world’s
most vulnerable women. – Project
Syndicate
zDonna Dickenson is Emeritus
Professor of Medical Ethics and
Humanities at the University of
London.
Weather report
Three-day forecast
TODAY
High: 23 C
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Partly cloudy to cloudy with a
chance of rain at places
MONDAY
High: 27 C
Low: 19 C
S Showers
TUESDAY
High: 26 C
Low: 18 C
Sunny
Fishermen’s forecast
OFFSHORE DOHA
Wind: NE-NW 08-15/20 KT
Waves: 2-4/6 Feet
INSHORE DOHA
Wind: NE-SE 04-12 KT
Waves: 1-2/3 Feet
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Live issues
The future of sustainable seafood is synthetic
By Jennifer Bates
Tribune News Service
D
riverless cars, virtual-reality
theme parks, human tissue
produced by 3-D printers
– it seems that nearly
every day there’s a new technological
advancement that sets the world
abuzz with excitement. But, while
these innovations will no doubt
improve lives, what could be more
exciting than an innovation that can
improve the world? Enter, shrimp
created in a laboratory.
Yes, shrimp. You’ve likely heard of
laboratories that grow beef patties
from real bovine cells, but these days
all eyes are on re-creating one of the
tiniest living beings – from scratch.
This shrimp differs from other labproduced meats in that it contains no
animal protein. How is that possible?
Scientists simply analysed shrimp at
the molecular level in order to build
a replica out of algae and other plant
proteins. The result is a product that
tastes and feels like the real thing – so
much so that a major tech company
has already placed an order for it to be
served in its staff cafeteria.
And synthetic shrimp is much more
than science fiction come to life – it is
an absolute necessity.
Shrimp are fascinating social
beings. They use sound or polarised
light to communicate, and one shrimp
species is even considered to be the
loudest animal on the planet. Some
live in complex colonies similar to
beehives, while others mate for life.
And they can live for more than six
years.
But our dinner plates belie
the tale told by these remarkable
characteristics. Every year, Americans
consume 1.3bn lb of these interesting
little animals. We pull them from
their watery homes, rip off their
exoskeletons and boil them without a
second thought.
And it’s not just shrimp who suffer,
thanks to our gluttony. Americans
expect their shrimp to be plentiful,
and we expect them to be cheap. But
the prevalence of low-cost shrimp
is an ecological disaster: Boats that
net wild shrimp are also responsible
for the deaths of tens of thousands of
endangered sea turtles each year in the
US alone, while shrimp farms create
cesspools of antibiotics, fertilisers,
pesticides, faeces and other waste.
And despite their tiny size, farmed
shrimp’s carbon footprint packs
a wallop, roughly 10 times more
damaging than that of beef.
Humans suffer, too. Investigations
in Thailand have revealed that the
country’s $7bn shrimp export industry
and modern-day slavery often go
insidiously hand-in-hand. The
forced labourers – including children
and victims of human trafficking –
spend up to 16 hours a day with their
hands in icy water as they peel and
disembowel shrimp, which then make
their way around the globe, including
into US grocery stores and restaurants.
Lab-produced shrimp is free of
these drawbacks. Greenhouse-gas
emissions generated from creating
meat in a laboratory are up to 96%
lower than those from producing
traditional meat, and there is no
resulting disruption to ecosystems
or food chains. No humans must toil
for hours to peel these shrimp, which
are naturally shell-free. And unlike
the disingenuous “humanely raised”
labels slapped onto meat from animals
who were still abused and slaughtered,
this meat truly is humane.
Synthetic shrimp – what’s not to
love? The future’s so close, you can
literally taste it.
Around the world
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26
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
COMMENT
Chairman: Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah
Editor-in-Chief : Darwish S Ahmed
Production Editor: C P Ravindran
P.O.Box 2888
Doha, Qatar
[email protected]
Telephone 44350478 (news),
44466404 (sport), 44466636 (home delivery)
Fax 44350474
GULF TIMES
Race to develop
5G under way, but
challenges remain
Technology lovers keenly watched the launch of
shiny new smartphones, smartwatches, cameras and
virtual reality (VR) headsets by consumer electronics
heavyweights at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
last week.
But at the centre stage of the global wireless industry’s
annual marquis event in the Catalonian city of Spain
were the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G and virtual reality.
IoT is a proposed development of the Internet in
which everyday objects have network connectivity, be
sensed and controlled remotely across existing network
infrastructure, allowing them to send and receive data.
A forecast suggests that the market for IoT services will
top $101bn this year, nearly 30% more than the $78bn
that businesses spent last year.
By 2020, spending for services like network
deployment, operations management and data analytics
is forecast to balloon to $257bn.
Experts estimate that the IoT will consist of almost
50bn objects by 2020.
According to industry experts, the next big thing to
revolutionise the way we connect will be the ‘5G’ or the
fifth generation of mobile networks.
The super-fast wireless network of the future is still
likely a few years away from becoming a reality.
Nevertheless, it was a hot topic at MWC in Barcelona
this year, where some of the world’s most innovative
companies and
influential technologists
gathered to discuss the
future of connectivity.
5G is expected to
massively speed up the
Internet and unlock
the Internet of Things,
making driverless cars and talking fridges a reality, but
experts warn plenty of hurdles remain.
It should permit devices to connect over the Internet,
allowing them talk to us, to applications, and each other.
“4G was an improvement on 3G, with more speed,
but it basically came from the same sphere, while 5G
has aspirations to solve a whole range of uses, which are
outside that sphere,” points out Viktor Arvidsson, head
of strategy for Ericsson France.
In future, 5G could have a whole range of applications
underpinning the Internet of Things — the increasing
inter-connection of everyday appliances — with uses as
varied as transport, health or industrial machinery, for
which 4G is completely unadapted.
That said, one of the major challenges in realising 5G
will be to “connect the unconnected”. An estimate shows
that about 4bn people around the world still has no
Internet access at all!
Hence, 5G will require massive investment to create
a truly global network- one that ensures up to 99.9%
network coverage around the globe!
Highlighting this massive challenge, some experts
have cautioned mobile operators not to rush to make the
Internet faster for the small proportion of mobile users
who already have access to a decent connection at the
expense of improving things for those who haven’t been
served quite so well.
While a global race to develop 5G and IoT is under
way, technology leaders will have to devise a strategy to
“connect the unconnected”.
Otherwise, the exciting leap in technology may still
remain beyond the reach of a majority of people around
the globe!
‘5G has
aspirations to
solve a whole
range of uses’
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2014 Gulf Times. All rights reserved
A future of happiness,
tolerance and youth
Tolerance is no catchphrase,
but a quality we must
cherish and practice. It must
be woven into the fabric
of our society to safeguard
our future and maintain the
progress we have made
By Mohamed bin Rashid
al-Maktoum
Dubai
O
ver the past two weeks, I
have heard and read many
questions, comments, and
news stories regarding
recent changes to the government
of the United Arab Emirates. Why,
everyone seems to want to know, did
we establish a Ministry of Happiness,
Tolerance, and the Future, and why
did we appoint a 22-year-old Minister
of Youth?
The changes reflect what we have
learned from events in our region over
the past five years. In particular, we
have learned that failure to respond
effectively to the aspirations of young
people, who represent more than half
of the population in Arab countries,
is like swimming against the tide.
Without the energy and optimism of
youth, societies cannot develop and
grow; indeed, they are doomed.
When governments spurn their
youth and block their path to a better
life, they slam the door in the face of
the entire society. We do not forget
that the genesis of the tension in our
region, the events dubbed the “Arab
Spring,” was squarely rooted in the
lack of opportunities for young people
to achieve their dreams and ambitions.
We are proud that the UAE is a
young country. And we are proud
of our youth. We invest in them and
empower them precisely because
they are our future. We believe that
they are faster than us in acquiring
and processing knowledge, because
they have grown up with tools and
techniques that we lacked at their
age. We entrust them with driving our
country to new levels of growth and
development, which is why we have
now appointed a cabinet minister of
their age and created a special council
of youth.
We have also learned from hundreds
of thousands of dead and millions of
refugees in our region that sectarian,
ideological, cultural, and religious
bigotry only fuel the fires of rage. We
cannot and will not allow this in our
country. We need to study, teach, and
practice tolerance – and to instill it in
our children, both through education
and our own example.
That is why we have appointed
a Minister of State for Tolerance.
Twentytwo-year-old Shamma al-Mazroui, who was appointed as the United Arab
Emirates’ new Minister of Youth.
We believe that a legal framework
should formalise the tolerance our
society already displays, and that our
policies and initiatives will provide
an outstanding example to our
neighbours.
When the Arab world was tolerant
and accepting of others, it led the
world: From Baghdad to Damascus
to Andalusia and farther afield,
we provided beacons of science,
knowledge, and civilisation, because
humane values were the basis of our
relationships with all civilisations,
cultures, and religions. Even when our
ancestors left Andalusia, people of
other faiths went with them.
Tolerance is no catchphrase, but a
quality we must cherish and practice.
It must be woven into the fabric of our
society to safeguard our future and
maintain the progress we have made.
There can be no bright future for the
Middle East without an intellectual
reconstruction that re-establishes
the values of ideological openness,
diversity, and acceptance of others’
viewpoints, whether intellectual,
cultural, or religious.
With every lesson we learn comes
a decision that will shape our future.
But we also know that we can learn
by looking to the future, not just
the past or present. Simply put, we
must think of what life will be like
in a post-oil economy. That is why
we have invested heavily – more
than 300bn dirhams ($81.5bn) – in
establishing a focus for the UAE’s path
ahead, with the aim of preparing for
a diverse economy that frees future
generations from dependence on the
ever-fluctuating oil market.
Achieving that goal requires
reconsidering our legislative,
administrative, and economic system
fully to move away from dependence
on oil. We need a strong and
appropriate regulatory infrastructure
to build a sustainable and diverse
national economy for our children and
their children.
In writing this commentary, I want
to send a clear message to others in
our region that change happens by our
hands only. Our region does not need
a super-strong external power to stop
its decline; we need the power from
within that can overcome the hatred
and intolerance that has blighted life
in many neighboring countries.
I am writing to send a message
that governments in our region and
elsewhere need to revise their roles.
The role of government is to create
an environment in which people can
achieve their dreams and ambitions,
not to create an environment that
government can control. The point is
to empower people, not to hold power
over them. Government, in short,
should nurture an environment in
which people create and enjoy their
own happiness.
We are not new to this talk about
the government’s role in promoting
happiness. Since the dawn of history,
happiness is all that humanity has
sought. Aristotle said the state
is a living being which develops
in seeking the achievement of
moral perfection and happiness
for individuals. Ibn Khaldun said
the same thing. Likewise, the
US Declaration of Independence
upholds the pursuit of happiness as
every person’s right.
In our own time, the UN is now
calling for changes in the criteria
used to measure governmental
success from economic indicators to
measures related to human happiness
and wellbeing. It has dedicated the
UN International Day of Happiness
to emphasise the importance of this
shift.
Focusing on happiness is
both feasible and fully justified.
Happiness can be measured, and
its evaluation is already the subject
of many programmes and studies.
Moreover, it can be developed and
its achievement linked to material
objectives. Studies have shown that
happy people produce more, live
longer, and drive better economic
development in their communities
and countries.
The happiness of individuals,
families, and employees, their
satisfaction with their lives and
optimism for the future, are crucial
to our work, which cuts across every
sector of government. That is why
there must be a minister to guide
and follow up with all government
institutions (as well as provide
leadership to the private sector).
Ours is no empty promise. We will
seek to create a society where our
people’s happiness is paramount,
by sustaining an environment
in which they can truly flourish.
And we hope our formula benefits
others in the region. The formula
is straightforward: national
development based on core values, led
by youth, and focused on a future in
which everyone achieves happiness.
– Project Syndicate/Mohamed Bin
Rashid Global Initiatives, 2016
zMohamed bin Rashid al-Maktoum is
Vice President and Prime Minister of
the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of
Dubai.
Less than zero in Japan
By Koichi Hamada
Tokyo
I
n a bold attempt to reflate the
Japanese economy, the Bank of
Japan has now pushed interest
rates on deposits into negative
territory. Though this policy is not
new – it is already being pursued by
the European Central Bank, the Bank
of Sweden, the Swiss National Bank,
and others – it is uncharted ground for
the BOJ. And, unfortunately, markets
have not responded as expected.
In theory, negative rates, by forcing
commercial banks essentially to pay
the central bank to be able to park their
money, should spur increased lending
to companies, which would then
spend more, including on hiring more
employees. This should spur a stockmarket rebound, boost household
consumption, weaken the yen’s
exchange rate, and halt deflation. But
theory does not always translate into
practice; while the BOJ’s introduction
of negative rates almost immediately
pushed the interest-rate structure
lower, as expected, the policy’s effects
on the yen and the stock market have
been an unpleasant surprise.
One reason for this is widespread
pessimism about Japan’s economy,
reinforced by volatility in China,
monetary tightening in the US, and the
collapse in world oil prices. But, as BOJ
Governor Haruhiko Kuroda recently
reported to the House of Councillors,
Japan’s economic fundamentals are
generally sound, and pessimistic
predictions are greatly exaggerated.
In fact, Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe’s economy strategy – so-called
“Abenomics” – has enabled Japan
to stay on a reasonably positive
path in highly uncertain times,
with the economy showing signs of
steady recovery from its decades of
stagnation. Since Abe took office in
2012, 1.5mn jobs have been created,
and the unemployment rate has fallen
from 4.6% to 3.3%. Moreover, tourism
has surged, and both company and
government revenues have been rising
rapidly.
Even Japan’s external challenges
may not be such bad news. For
starters, Japan, like emerging
economies with flexible exchange-rate
regimes, may actually benefit from
America’s monetary tightening, as an
appreciating dollar makes Japanese
exports more competitive. Similarly,
because Japan can meet at most 6%
of its own energy needs, cheap oil is
a true blessing – one that may well
endure for some time to come.
As for the economic situation
in China, there is certainly reason
for concern. The problem is that,
while the “hardware” of the Chinese
economy has advanced substantially
since Deng Xiaoping initiated his
“reform and opening up” policy almost
four decades ago, the “software” of
economic policymaking is constrained
by excessive state management. As
a result, the country is struggling to
shift to a more sustainable growth
model, underpinned by a thriving
services sector and strong domestic
consumption.
Until China reckons with the ruling
Communist Party’s stranglehold on key
levers of the economy, it will be a source
of market uncertainty that reverberates
throughout the global economy. But
even here Japan’s situation is not as
dire as many seem to think, owing to its
limited exposure to China; for example,
exports to China amount to only 3% of
Japan’s GDP.
Given this, there is no reason why
the Tokyo stock market should gyrate
whenever the Shanghai market shakes.
The conventional hedge-fund strategy
should be going short on Shanghai
stocks and long on Tokyo stocks.
And yet, even though Japan’s
economic situation is far from dire,
introducing negative interest rates
has not been treated as what it is: a
manoeuver to loosen monetary policy.
Instead, the Japanese stock market
regarded negative rates as a harbinger
of greater financial risk, and speculators
have remained bullish on the yen.
The statistician and economist
Yoichi Takahashi tells me that the
yen’s 8% appreciation over just ten
days in February is abnormal, and
probably fuelled by speculative
attacks. In his opinion, some
interventions in the exchange market
by the Ministry of Finance may
need to be pursued to contain the
extraordinary fluctuations.
From 2003 to 2004, the Japanese
treasury purchased a large amount
of dollars, thereby easing monetary
conditions at a time when the BOJ
was reluctant to pursue open market
operations. In recent years, however,
the yen’s exchange rate has been
determined through monetary policy,
not manipulated by intervention. In
general, I welcome this new approach,
and thus do not recommend major
interventions to change the direction
of the yen exchange rate. I do, however,
believe that sporadic interventions may
be needed to punish speculators who are
taking advantage of temporary market
psychology to keep the yen far above its
market value. – Project Syndicate
zKoichi Hamada, Special Economic
Adviser to Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe, is Professor Emeritus of
Economics at Yale University and at the
University of Tokyo.
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
27
QATAR
Traffic department
issues new handbook
for driving schools
A
n exhaustive range of issues,
including how to drive safely,
traffic
violations/penalties,
how to keep one’s vehicle in good
condition and others, are covered in a
new ‘driving handbook’ issued by the
Traffic Department at the Ministry of
Interior.
The handbook provides for a unified
curriculum that will be taught at all driving schools in the country, local Arabic
daily Arrayah has reported.
Experts feel the new, comprehensive
handbook will help further improve the
training of new drivers at driving schools
across the country.
The handbook introduces trainees to
different types of vehicles, including light
ones, trucks, motorbikes, heavy equipment, forklifts and others.
It covers all relevant aspects, such
as the principles of driving in different weather conditions, safety equipment that should be kept in vehicles
and how to use them, and how to keep
a car well-maintained to avoid sudden
breakdowns.
Further, the handbook gives information on how to deal with accidents and
what to do for the injured while waiting for
an ambulance to arrive.
Traffic expert Hassan Nassar told the
daily that the handbook is in line with the
traffic law and its executive regulations. It
also lays special focus on different aspects
of traffic awareness.
For instance, it gives illustrations on
how to drive at intersections, overtaking
and where to stop. There is also a section
on traffic violations and penalties and how
to settle them.
Meanwhile, the handbook talks about
common mistakes by motorists and how
one should be constantly alert to avoid any
dangerous situation. It also includes practical advice for motorists on how to avoid
accidents, with a special focus on safe
driving techniques.
Nassar expects the new driving handbook to considerably improve the training of new drivers due to its comprehensive scope, adding that it is well prepared
and follows approved international traffic
standards.
The curriculum will be mandatory for
all trainees applying for a driving licence
through different driving schools in the
country.
Earlier, the Traffic Department had held
a forum on having a unified driving curriculum and its role in improving the efficiency of new drivers. Officials from the
Traffic Department and various driving
schools took part.
Naval chief meets envoy
Swedish ambassador Ewa Polano met with the Commander of
the Qatar Emiri Naval Forces, Major General Mohamed Nasser
al-Mohannadi, recently. Several subjects of bilateral interest, as
well the situation in the region, were discussed at the meeting.
They also discussed Swedish participation in the upcoming
Doha International Maritime Defence Exhibition and Conference (Dimdex), to be held from March 29 to 31. Simon Carrol, a
senior executive from Swedish company Saab Group, which will
participate in Dimdex, also attended the meeting.
Tributes paid to late
Mohamed al-Shamlan
M
arzooq Al Shamlan & Sons
(MSS) has launched its quarterly in-house news magazine dedicated to its visionary leader,
the late Mohamed al-Shamlan, recently at its corporate head office in
the presence of delegates from Switzerland, family members, friends and
staff of MSS.
Tariq Marzooq S A al-Shamlan,
deputy managing director, welcomed
the delegates and thanked them for
their time and presence in paying
tribute to his brother, under whose
leadership MSS has grown to be one
of the foremost watch retailers in the
country.
Sara Mohamed al-Shamlan, daughter of Mohamed al-Shamlan, urged all
MSS staff to carry forward the legacy
of her father and achieve his visions
and thanked all for being part of the
legacy.
Maja Koenig, CEO of Sarcar
Watches, and Alfred Neuenschwander, senior sales director, Century
Watches, shared their experiences
and memories of Mohamed alShamlan.
MSS general manager K V Ravi
thanked all the delegates, family
members, friends and company staff
for their presence and assured that
MSS will follow the footsteps of the
late Mohamed al-Shamlan to offer
customers the “tradition of time”.
The MSS magazine is available at all
Crono, Crono fashion and Watch Corner stores.
Alfred Neuenschwander, Sara Mohamed al-Shamlan, Maja Koenig, Tariq Marzooq S A al-Shamlan and K V Ravi during the
launch of the MSS newsletter.
28
Gulf Times
Sunday, February 28, 2016
QATAR
Prominent Qatari entrepreneur and jeweller Hussain Alfardan welcoming Indian ambassador Sanjiv Arora and his wife Chhaya
at the Alfardan Jewellery pavilion, Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition, yesterday. PICTURE: Jayan Orma
A large number of people visited the expo held at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre. Pictured above is a view
from one of the counters at the Alfardan Jewellery pavilion. PICTURE: Jayaram
Jewellery and watches
expo ends on a high
Qatar customers’
decisions ‘not guided
by trends elsewhere’
T
T
he 13th edition of the Doha
Jewellery and Watches
Exhibition (DJWE), held
under the patronage of HE the
Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser
bin Khalifa al-Thani, concluded
yesterday.
Organised by Qatar Tourism
Authority (QTA) and delivered
by Elan Group, DJWE 2016 took
place at the recently-opened
Doha Exhibition and Convention
Centre (DECC) for the first time.
More than 500 brands of jewels
and watches exhibited at DJWE,
giving visitors the opportunity to
“enjoy spectacular one-offs, new
models of watches and works of
art in precious metals and gems”,
according to a statement.
“The Doha Jewellery and
Watches Exhibition has enjoyed a superb week, during
which visitor response has been
overwhelmingly positive,” said
Ahmed al-Mulla, chief operations officer of Elan Entertainment. “Everyone involved has
worked hard to make this edition
of DJWE the best ever, and we are
delighted with the result.”
Visitors from Doha, the region
and abroad were impressed by
the brand-new displays and also
praised the new location, DECC,
the statement noted.
DJWE 2016 also saw the introduction of new activities such
as workshops for enthusiasts
and designers to see experts at
work, and a number of information seminars on jewellery and
watches.
Innovative Swiss watchmakers Cabestan outlined the unique
chain-driven system, underlying
their elite exclusive range, while
New-York-based jewellery house
David Webb spoke about the
timeless modernity of the founder’s enduringly desirable designs.
The Doha exhibition permits
exhibitors to sell directly to visitors. The International Gemological Institute (IGI) attended
he purchasing decisions
of customers in Qatar are
guided by individual tastes
and not prevailing trends in other
markets, according to a prominent jeweller who runs companies in the US and Thailand.
Arto Artinian, president and
CEO of Bangkok-headquartered
Artinian Company Limited,
made the observation while attending the 13th Doha Jewellery
and Watches Exhibition (DJWE).
Buyers of jewellery and other
luxury products in Qatar have
no particular favourites when
it comes to the type of jewels,
feels Artinian. “They appreciate
whatever is good. Most of their
buying decisions are influenced
by individual tastes and not by
any prevailing trends in other
markets,” he said.
He noted that the jewellery industry as a whole was focusing
on emerging and fast-developing
markets, where economic development over the past two years
had been steady. “The Gulf countries continue to do okay,” he said.
Replying to a query on the
comparatively large stock of emeralds at his stall, located in the
Alfardan Jewellery pavilion, he
said the stone had a number of
A wide range of exquisite collections were put on display at the exhibition. PICTURES: Jayaram
takers among locals in Qatar.
At the same time, rubies
sourced from different markets
such as Myanmar, parts of South
America and Sri Lanka also have
a “fairly good number” of customers in this region, including
Qatar, it was observed.
On the availability of skilled
craftsmen in the industry, Artinian
said even most of the requirements
were met by personnel from traditionally strong areas such as Italy,
India, South America and Thailand, among some others. Workers
from his homeland, Armenia, are
also consistently contributing to
the world market.
Meanwhile, Artinian observed
that whenever there is a slowdown in the global economy, it
is natural that the premium jewel
business will be affected at different levels, depending on the
size of each market.
Artinian said though the jewellery business is usually propelled
by the passion of clients, developments in the global economy
do have an impact on trading and
customers from the Gulf are also
seemingly reacting in the same way
as their counterparts elsewhere.
Most regular buyers, he said, are
keenly watching the ongoing economic ups and downs and exercising control on spending.
Brands such as Sartoro and
Marli are run by Artinian.
Participants as well as visitors expressed satisfaction with the Doha
Exhibition and Convention Centre, which hosted the event.
Models strike a pose at the venue.
DJWE for the first time, as the
world’s largest independent gem
certification and appraisal institute for diamonds, coloured
gemstones and jewellery.
The IGI brought Doha’s first
ever mobile diamond jewellery
testing laboratory to provide potential buyers with on-the-spot,
world-respected accreditation of
the quality of each and every gem
exhibited.
The more recherché luxury
watch manufacturers demonstrated different brands of signature exclusivity.
By Ramesh Mathew
Staff Reporter
TAG Heuer took the opportunity to unveil a completely new
watch, Connected, with three digital watch dials (known as faces)
reproducing the appearance and
function of a traditional dial from
TAG Heuer’s Carrera collection.
Exclusive watch personalisation expert George Bamford outlined the possibilities of a range
of intricately personalised coating and engraving services designed for steel sports watches.
Celebrated jewellers also unveiled new, one-off pieces with
fascinating stories behind the
stunning appearance. Tahitian
pearl jeweller Robert Wan revealed a black pearl collar 40
years in the making, on show for
the first time at DJWE 2016, while
renowned jeweller Moussaieff
brought a rare colour-changing
necklace of pink and purple sapphires and London-based Glenn
Spiro a beryl necklace containing
a stone gifted in the 1920s by a
Romanov exiled in Paris.
Each jewel exhibited at DJWE
was evaluated before arrival for
size, clarity and quality, and the
exhibition standards allowed
entry to only the world’s most
precious metals: platinum, palladium, pure and sterling silver,
and white, yellow, and rose gold.
“With new, more stringent selection criteria in place, and an
abundance of rare and one-off
creations, this year’s showcase
for the world’s loveliest gems
has reaffirmed Doha’s eminence
among locations renowned for
luxury,” the statement added.
The DJWE is organised by QTA
as part of the Qatar National Tourism Sector Strategy 2030 to attract
more visitors to the country.
Arto Artinian at his stall at DJWE 2016. PICTURE: Jayaram
Maersk Oil recognises achievements of Qatari employees
M
aersk Oil Qatar (MOQ)
recently held its annual
Qatarisation event, recognising its employees and programmes that support efforts to
recruit and develop high-calibre
Qatari professionals into future
leaders of the oil and gas industry.
During the event, MOQ’s
Leadership Team presented
awards to 14 Qatari employees in
five categories: leadership, individual, departmental, academic
and special recognition. Besides,
there were appreciation awards
for high performance and long
service at MOQ.
A panel discussion, where employees shared their experiences
from international assignments
at Maersk Oil’s headquarters, was
also held at the event.
A number of employees who
have played a significant role in
advancing Qatarisation, as mentors or managers were recognised
at the event, which was attended
by representatives from Qatar
A moment from the annual Qatarisation event.
Petroleum, Supreme Education
Council, Qatar University, Texas
A&M University at Qatar and College of the North Atlantic - Qatar.
In his opening address at the
event, MOQ managing director
Lewis Affleck said: “Our focus
remains not only on increasing the number of Qataris in our
workforce but also on recruiting the most talented Qataris on
the market and increasing the
number of nationals in leadership and offshore positions.”
In 2015, MOQ focused on quality development efforts and the
provision of further educational
opportunities to employees.
The company’s drive resulted
in an increase in the number of
Qatari nationals in leadership
positions and offered a number
of Qatari employees the opportunity to undertake international
assignments to help broaden
their expertise, according to a
statement.
MOQ also saw an increased
participation in the company’s
various tailor-made development programmes.
Moza al-Naimi, MOQ’s head
of Qatarisation, said: “We are
firmly committed to recruitment,
retention and providing the best
career development opportunities for nationals to support Qatar’s future generation of technical and business leaders.”
The Qatari Leadership Talent
Pool, MOQ’s flagship leadership
development programme, also saw
a rise in participation. This included new, external recruits joining
the company as identified talents.
The Qatari Development Programme, a two-year rotational
programme that supports fresh
graduates in bridging the gap
between academic and professional life in the early stages of
their career, completed its first
full cycle with 14 employees
graduating in 2015.
A second intake of 10 Qatari
employees started in 2014.