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By Javad HeiranniaINTERVIEW

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42 1 1 12India’s Iran oil imports rise to 5-year high in July

Rouhani insists Iran attaches importance to ties with Africa

Italy will face some problems against Iran, Lozano predicts

Over 100 cities competing to take title of Iran’s Book Capital

W W W . T E H R A N T I M E S . C O M I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L YA I L Y

TEHRAN — Richard W. Murphy, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia, is of the opinion that it is still too soon to make judgment over the future course of Turkish foreign policy.

“It is early to be categorical about the changes which Presi-dent Erdogan will make in Turkish foreign policy after the failed coup attempt on his regime,” Murphy tells the Tehran Times.

For example, Murphy says, Turkey’s foreign policy in recent years has “changed from one of

‘no problems with neighbors’ to one forced to deal with multiple problems.”

Murphy, who retired in 1989 after serving 34 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, also says, “An-kara’s assertion that there was an American role in the failed coup attempt may account for some of the im-provement in Turkish-Ira-nian ties.”

Following is the text of the interview:

President Erdogan has an-nounced that he plans to make some

changes in the Turkish foreign policy. What will be the chang-es?

A: It is early to be categorical about the changes which Presi-dent Erdogan will make in Turkish

foreign policy after the failed coup attempt on his regime. In recent years, as far as its regional role is concerned, Turkey’s foreign policy has

changed from one of “No problems with neighbors”

to one forced to deal with multiple prob-

lems. This was most dramatic in the case of Syria as An-

kara moved from close friendship to bitter enmity calling for Presi-dent Assad to step down. Before the coup there were reports that Turkey was considering how to improve relations with Syria but without specifics as to what it had in mind. Turkey had also moved to increase cooperation with regional and international powers through exerting greater control over its borders and block the transit of international volunteers seeking to join the forces of the Islamic State (Daesh). It also negotiated with the European Union an agreement to restrain the flow of refugees to Eu-rope. 9

TEHRAN — Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani said on

Monday that the freed prisoners of war (POWs) are “paragons of patience”.

The remarks by Larijani came as Iran is marking the arrival of the first group of POWs to the country on August 16, 1990. They had been captured in the Iraqi war against Iran in the 1980s.

“Patience and resistance of the prisoners of war are role model for the region,” Larijani said during a ceremony held to hail the bravery and patience of parliamentarians who were among

the POWs.The Muslims in the region have learned from

the Iranians’ courage and also from the revolu-tionary forces’ experiences, added Larijani.

Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, launched a sudden massive air and ground attacks on Iran on September 22, 1980. It captured large swathes of the Iranian land in the early days of the war.

The Iraqi army also used chemical weapons against Iranians, both military and civilian. Still Thousands of people continue to suffer from the effects of chemical weapons.

The damages of war on Iran was also esti-mated at hundreds of billions of dollars.

Murphy sees Ankara’s assertion of U.S. role in coup as

reason for improvement in Turkey-Iran ties

Iran-Qatar gas race and lack of unitization

Many oil fields and gas reserves extend from one country to another beneath their com-

mon boundary in such a way that the deposit can be extracted, wholly or partially, by one side or the other.

It is unfortunate that there is an ab-sence of international legal framework requiring unitization between the two neighboring countries on exploiting such cross-border deposits.

And this is applicable to the world’s largest gas field which Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf.

The huge offshore field covers 9,700 square kilometers of area, 3,700 square kilometers of which, called South Pars, are in Iran’s territorial wa-ters. The remaining 6,000 square kilo-meters, called North Dome, are situat-ed in Qatar’s territorial waters.

The field is estimated to contain a significant amount of natural gas, ac-counting for about eight percent of the world’s reserves, and approximate-ly 18 billion barrels of condensate.

Although there is no international law instructing the governments to unitize on exploiting the joint deposits, there are already some unitization treaties and joint development agreements between countries that share such reserves.

These treaties and agree-ments create the framework for the development of the reserves that straddle the border between the two sides. The first such treaty was con-cluded in 1976 between Britain and Norway on exploiting joint deposits in the North Sea.

In case of Iran-Qatar joint gas field, competition between the two coun-tries on exploiting the field, under the condition of no unitization treaty, puts the long-term interests of both sides at risk, as it hinders the field’s optimal dynamic extraction (the optimal rate at which a non-renewable resource should be exploited). 4

Resistance festival to screen docs by Michael Moore, Oliver Stone

TEHRAN — Iran’s 14th edition of the

International Resistance Film Festival (IRFF) plans to screen documentaries by the U.S. filmmakers Michael Moore and Oliver Stone.

Moore’s “Where to Invade Next” and Stone’s “Mi Amigo Hugo” are scheduled to be shown in the documentary section of the festival, which will in Tehran from September 23 to 30.

“Where to Invade Next” shows Moore spending time in some Euro-pean and African countries, where he compares their methods of dealing with social and economic problems with the methods in the U.S.

“Mi Amigo Hugo” is a gathering of testimonies of family, friends, intellectu-als and politicians who honor and re-member Hugo Chavez, a Venezuelan politician who served as the 64th pres-ident of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013.

The International Resistance Film Festival will be held during the Sa-cred Defense Week in September to commemorate the anniversary of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Iran’s finance ministry, Exim Bank of China

sign MOUTEHRAN — The Ira-nian finance ministry

and the Export-Import Bank of China (Exim Bank) inked a memorandum of understanding on financing econom-ic and infrastructure projects and ex-panding bilateral cooperation as well.

The penned accord embraces roads, ports, transportation, power plants, tel-ecommunications, industrial estates, oil and gas, healthcare, agriculture and tourism plans, IRNA reported.

The Iranian deputy finance minister, Mohammad Khazaei, and the depu-ty director of the Chinese bank, Sun Ping, signed the MOU on the sidelines of the 16th meeting of the Iran-China Joint Committee in Beijing on Tuesday.

During the event, Iranian Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Ali Tayyebnia highlighted the significance of the joint economic committee in bolstering stra-tegic relations between the two coun-tries. The Iranian minister said that the meeting of Iran-China Joint Economic Committee is being held under the con-dition that the two countries’ political relations are at a very satisfactory lev-el and chances are high for expansion of mutual economic ties due to the set grounds for further cooperation.

Referring to China as one of the biggest trade partners of Iran in recent years and the upward trend of trade between the two countries, he admit-ted that there are still some problems with the banking relations, which will be resolved soon.

TEHRAN — Iranian security and intelligence officers on

Monday and Tuesday killed four and arrested six members of a Daesh-affiliated network in

the western province Kermanshah, Kerman-shah governor said on Tuesday.

They were planning suicide bombings in central parts of the country, IRNA quoted As-

sadollah Razani as saying.“A Daesh-affiliated terrorist team which had

penetrated into the borders to conduct opera-tions in central parts of the county was busted

on Monday and Tuesday in one of Kerman-shah’s neighborhoods and another city of the province,” Razani stated.

2

Iran kills four Daesh affiliates, arrests six

Iran will respond firmly to any violation of JCPOA: Araqchi

2

Freed POWs are paragons of patience: Larijani

TEHRAN — More than 80

foreign companies from 17 coun-tries will attend Iran International Maritime and Offshore Technologies Exhibition (IRANIMEX2016), which will be held on the Persian Gulf is-

land of Kish from October 18 to 21.Considering the fact that the

exhibition is Iran’s biggest event in the field of marine industries it could be considered as a comple-mentary for Iran Oil Show, Shana news agency quoted Peyman Ma-

soudzadeh, the event’s secretary as saying on Monday.

He added that many foreign companies have shown interest in showcasing their latest achieve-ments in the event. According to the official, Germany, Italy, Spain,

China, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, and Singapore are among the countries which will participate in the exhibition.

More than 20 percent of the exhibition’s booths are allocated to foreign exhibitors, he added.

Over 80 foreign companies to attend IRANIMEX2016 expo

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Russia uses Iranian airbase to launch airstrikes on Daesh in Syria

TEHRAN — As the U.S. military uses Incirlik air base

in Turkey to pound militants in Iraq and Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry also announced on Tuesday that it was using the Hamadan Airbase in western Iran to launch attacks on Daesh strongholds in Syria.

“On August 16, 2016, Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and Su-34 tactical bombers took off from the “Hamedan” airbase (the Islamic Republic of Iran) and carried out a concentrated air-strike on objects of the ISIS and Jab-hat al-Nusra terrorist groupings in the provinces of Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and Idlib,” the statement said.

2

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Tu-22M3 long-range bombers at the Hamadan air base, western Iran.

TEHRAN — Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas

Araqchi said on Tuesday that Iran will re-spond firmly to any violation of the nucle-ar deal, officially called Joint Comprehen-sive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Under the JCPOA, Iran is tasked to slow down its nuclear activities and the West remove its sanctions on the country.

The deal struck in July 2015 between Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) went into force early this year.

“We are pursuing all the issues in the form of a joint committee,” said Araqchi, the deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs.

He said that there exists certain short-falls in the way that the West is imple-menting the JCPOA.

Some major European banks are reluctant to enter banking transac-tions with Iran, fearing a punishment

by the U.S. Treasury.William O. Beeman, a professor of the

State University of Minnesota, told the Tehran Times last month that “the Office

of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the U.S. Treasury Department maintains that European banks ‘may’ be violating Amer-ican banking sanctions IF their transac-tions involve U.S. dollars.”

Beeman said since the United States maintains some old sanctions against Iran that are not related to the JCPOA it has “warned that if the treasury determines that these transactions violate the non-JCPOA related U.S. sanctions, the Euro-pean banks may be fined.”

“This has made European and Asian banks afraid to enter into financial trans-actions with Iran because the fines in the past have been substantial--billions of dollars,” he lamented.

He said, “By not clarifying these mat-ters, the OFAC, which is staffed by peo-ple who are extremely hostile to Iran, has managed to unilaterally block the finan-cial benefits for Iran involving all the other P5+1 nations.”

1 Iran had already opened its airspace to Rus-sian fighters as well as missiles fired from its Caspian Sea flotilla in October 2015, when four Russian warships launched a total of 26 Kalibr cruise missiles from the Cas-pian Sea, training on target in Syria.

This is the first time Iran is cooperating with Russia in such capacity, acting as a springboard for the Russian air force to operate more efficiently in its war on terrorism.

Iran and Russia have been assisting the Syrian gov-ernment in fight against the foreign-backed militan-cy which has been holding swathes of territory in the country as well as in Iraq.

According to the announcement carried on the Russian Defense Ministry’s website, “the strikes have eliminated 5 large ammunition depots with armament, munitions and fuel, training camps of militants near Ser-akab, Al-Ghab, Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor cities, 3 control centers of militants near the cities of Jafra and Deir ez-Zor as well as a significant number of militants.”

The Iranian deployment diminishes possible risks posed by terrorist groups obtaining anti-aircraft weapons, Sputnik quoted a member of Russia’s Federation Council Defense and Security Committee as saying on Tuesday.

“We know that the chances of Daesh and other ter-rorist organizations obtaining anti-aircraft weapons are minimal, but nevertheless, using only one military base [Hmeymim, Syria] bears some limited risks for our Aer-

ospace Forces,” Sen. Viktor Ozerov told RIA Novosti. He added that the base in Iran would give the Russian forces “more options for striking blows” against mili-tants in Syria.

The new was confirmed by Iran’s National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani who also acts as Teh-ran’s military coordinator with Russia and Syria.

Iran and Russia “enjoy strategic cooperation in the fight against terrorism in Syria, and share their facilities and capacities to this end,” said Shamkhani, according to IRNA.

“Constructive and extended cooperation among Iran, Russia, Syria, and the resistance front has made the situation difficult for terrorists and this process will continue with the beginning of a new and extended operation until their annihilation,” Shamkhani, a former military chief, pointed out.

Shamkhani did not comment on what he meant by “new and extensive operations.”

The announcement came one day after Iran’s Depu-ty Foreign Minister for African and Arab Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari met with his Russian counterpart Mikhail Bogdanov in Tehran.

Also, it comes at a time when Russia, Iran, and Turkey have been more of a regional front, expressing strong determination to find a fix for the Syrian crisis.

Turkey used to be at odds with Iran and Russia over Syria. While Tehran and Moscow espouse Bashar al-As-sad as Syria’s president, Ankara was less well-disposed toward the current Syrian government at least until be-fore the July 15 coup in Turkey.

AUGUST 17, 2016AUGUST 17, 20162I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

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MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS

Russia uses Iranian airbase to launch airstrikes on Daesh in Syria

1 Located in western Iran, Kermanshah province has border crossings with Iraq.

Iran shares upwards of 1400 km borders with Iraq, the longest compared to other neighboring countries.

Security forces swooped on the hideout of the ter-rorists on Monday night, killing three and seizing sui-cide-bomber vests, grenades, and rifles, according to the provincial official.

Locals could hear rounds being fired, the governor said.

During another clash with members of the same net-work, one more was killed and six were arrested.

“During a second clash, one key member of the cell was killed and some were arrested.”

The news was also confirmed by Brigadier General

Manouchehr Amanollahi, the provincial police chief. Other officials including Intelligence Minister

Mahmoud Alavi, Hossein Zolfaghari, the deputy interi-or minister for security issues, and Mojtaba Maleki, Ker-manshah prosecutor general, confirmed that four were killed. They put the number of arrestees at six.

“As a result of the operations, four of the terrorists were killed, dozens arrested, and a huge amount of ex-plosive material, equipment, ... seized,” said Alavi.

“One of the members killed in the clashes had already been spotted who was a high-ranking figure of the Takfiri current in Iraq,” Zolfaghari said.

Western and eastern borders of Iran have been a hotbed for terrorist activities, mainly influenced by weak border monitoring of neighboring countries, including

Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.Every so often Iranian forces bust terrorists groups in

the regions, while losing forces, keeping a vigilant eye on its mainland.

In June, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry announced it had thwarted several planned bombings in Tehran and other cities, following extensive intelligence operations across the country, which borders Iraq to its west.

The country’s intelligence officers have already prov-en themselves, preventing terrorist blasts in the country, while its vast borders are surrounded by terrorist teams.

This is while terrorist groups have conducted operations in almost all regional countries, including Turkey and Lebanon.

Even European counties have not been safe from terrorist attack.

Iran kills four Daesh affiliates, arrests six High-ranking Daesh militant in Iraq is among the killed

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Iran Connect conference removes ban on Iranian officials

TEHRAN — The Iranian Ministry of ICT has announced that Iran

Connect, an ICT-related conference to be held in Teh-ran by a private British company, has removed its ban on Iran’s security and political officials who are under international sanctions in a bid to eliminate grounds for any suspicion by Iranian authorities.

The conference is merely technical, therefore no Iranian security or political official has requested a seat in it in the first place, the announcement pub-lished on the ministry’s website on Tuesday said.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

TEHRAN — Haddad-Adel, a former senior lawmaker, has said

that President Hassan Rouhani is more concerned than anybody else, referring to shows of great con-cern by some conservatives over the nuclear deal.

Speaking to the Etemad newspaper in an inter-view published on Tuesday, Qolamali Haddad-Adel also commented on the next year’s presidential elections, saying he has of yet no intention to run.

Elsewhere, he said, “I am prepared to negoti-ate with [Mohammad Reza] Aref over the common grounds between principlism and reformism.”

Rouhani more concerned than anyone: Haddad-Adel

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Salehi names security director of atomic energy organization

TEHRAN — Hossein Rahmat has been appointed as director of

Protection and Security at the Atomic Energy Or-ganization of Iran (AEOI).

AEOI chief Ali Akbar Salehi also appointed Rah-mat’s predecessor as his own advisor and assistant, ISNA reported.

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Defense minister: U.S. doesn’t like Iran to reap JCPOA benefitsTEHRAN — The Iranian defense minister said on Tuesday that the

United States does not fancy the idea of Iran enjoy-ing the benefits of the nuclear deal, officially called the JCPOA.

However, Hossein Dehqan said, the post-JCPOA situation is much better than the condition Iran was under the sanctions, saying that the deal did not render a lost game for Iran, Mehr reported.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

TEHRAN — The Turkish prime min-ister has said his country and Iran

will propose “the best” solution to the Syrian conflict.“No country knows the regional problems better

than Iran and Turkey,” Binali Yildirim said on Tues-day, Anadolu Agency reported.

In another part of his speech, Yildirim thanked Iran for expressing support for the Turkish govern-ment amid the July 15 coup.

Turkish PM: Tehran, Ankara to offer best solution to Syrian crisis

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Iran arrests dual national ‘linked to intelligence services’

TEHRAN — Iran said on Tuesday it had arrested a dual national last

week in Tehran linked to Britain’s intelligence service.“The accused was working in an economic sec-

tor related to Iran,” Tehran Prosecutor General Ab-bas Jafari Dolatabadi said, Newsweek reported.

Dolatabadi did not identify the accused person nor the second nationality.

The prosecutor said the arrest was part of a crackdown against “Western infiltration”.

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MP says Larijani staunchly backs Rouhani administration

TEHRAN — A senior principlist MP says Majlis Speaker Ali Lari-

jani staunchly supports the Rouhani administration.In the 2013 elections everyone from principlists

to reformists were worried that the previous 8 years’ policies may linger on, Kazem Jalali told the Iran newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday.

“The very first person who, after the election, went to the Strategic Research Center (of the Expediency Council), and congratulated the election to the then president-elect was Larijani,” the MP underlined.

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Iran will respond firmly to any violation of JCPOA: Araqchi

TEHRAN — Irani-an Foreign Ministry

spokesman Bahram Qassemi con-demned on Monday Saudi Arabia’s air strike on a hospital in Yemen, calling it an “obvious crime against humanity”.

“The international community’s saddening silence over targeting the schools and hospitals has made Saudi Arabia bolder in committing inhumane crimes,” Qassemi remarked.

Qassemi said, “This behavior is re-sulted from the deafening silence of the international community and hiding this regime’s crimes by the international bodies, especially the UN.”

He added that the “war monger-ing” system of Saudi Arabia has no

limit in killing civilians including wom-en and children.

“It is obvious that the Yemeni rep-resentatives’ action in reopening the parliament and legal and democratic structures has made Saudis angry; so, the Saudi child killer regime seeks to take revenge from the innocent Yemeni people by vast attacks on hospitals and schools,” he explained.

Saudi airstrikes on a hospital in north-ern Yemen that Doctors Without Borders was helping operate on Monday has left at least 11 people killed and 19 injured.

Yemen’s parliament held on Satur-day its first session since the outbreak of conflict in the Arab country almost two years ago.

TEHRAN — Presi-dent Hassan Rouhani

on Tuesday reiterated a foreign policy priority by Tehran that the Islamic Re-public favors expansion of relations with African countries.

“Iran and the African countries have common goals and causes and we can support each other in many (international) forums and international developments,” Rouhani said during a meeting in Tehran with Alain Aime Nyamitwe, the Burundian minister of external relations and interna-tional cooperation.Rouhani evaluated relations between Iran and Burundi as “positive” and “friendly” and highlighted the necessity of strengthening ties.

The president added, “The Non-

Aligned Movement member states should play an important role at the international arena through boosting relations and co-operation.” Elsewhere, Rouhani called the Western countries’ “political interference” and “military presence” in various regions of the world “one of the most serious chal-lenges to the international community”. It is essential for NAM to play a “positive” role in facing such challenges, the presi-dent noted.He also expressed hope that a long-lasting peace and stability would be established in Burundi.

Domestic problems in countries should be solved through “democracy, peace and friendship”, he remarked.

For his part, Nyamitwe called for expan-sion of ties at the international bodies.

Rouhani insists Iran attaches importance to ties with Africa

Saudi attack on Yemeni hospital is an ‘obvious crime against humanity’: Iran

Shamkhani says Iran and Russia “enjoy strategic

cooperation in the fight against terrorism in Syria,

and share their facilities and capacities to this end.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi

Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers flying from Hamadan air base

UN experts urge Bahrain to end crackdown on Shia communityA number of United Nations-appointed independent experts have called on the Bahraini regime to halt its heavy-handed crackdown on the country’s Shia community, stressing that such practice is in violation of basic human rights in the tiny Persian Gulf Island.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the UN specialists said the kingdom should stop “arbitrary” arrests and summons and release those who are put behind bars for exercising their rights.

They further called on Manama to “lift the restrictions on movement” imposed on Shia religious leaders and human rights campaigners.

Pointing to the recent dissolution of al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, Bahrain’s main opposition group, as well as restrictions on the practice of religious rites, peaceful assem-blies and Internet access, the UN specialists concluded that the “Shias are clearly being targeted” in the Persian Gulf island state.

They further accused the House of Khalifah regime of bringing a wide range of “groundless” charges against the Shias in a bid “to hide a deliberate targeting” of the majority religious community in the country.

Additionally, the experts expressed concern over the au-thorities’ practice of stripping Shia figures of their citizenship, saying, “People are being left stateless and are facing depor-tation from Bahrain.”

Top Shia cleric Sheikh Issa Qassim had his citizenship re-voked by authorities in June, with Bahrain’s Interior Ministry accusing the clergyman of seeking the “creation of a sectarian environment.” Sheikh Qassim has rejected the allegations.

Bahraini rulers have come under fire both at home and abroad for ramping up their crackdown on dissent.

Amnesty International and several other international rights organizations have also denounced the regime in Bahrain for rampant human rights abuses against opposition activists and anti-regime demonstrators.

Bahrain, a close ally of the United States in the Persian Gulf region, has seen a wave of anti-regime protests since mid-February 2011.

Scores of people have been killed and hundreds of others wounded or detained amid Manama’s ongoing crackdown on dissent and widespread discrimination against the country’s Shia majority. (Source: Al Jazeera)

25 civilians killed as Saudi jets bomb regions across YemenAt least 25 people, including two children, have been killed in the latest Saudi military airstrikes against residential neighbor-hoods in Yemen.

The House of Saud regime’s fighter jets struck a vehicle on Tuesday morning as it was traveling along a road in the Abs district of the northern Yemeni province of Hajjah, leaving five people dead, Arabic-language Yemen al-Yawm television re-ported.

A clergyman, identified as Sheikh Matroud Saleh al-Soufi, was reportedly among the deceased.

The airstrike came less than a day after a Saudi airstrike hit a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF/Médecins Sans Frontières) in the same Yemeni district, killing at least 25 people.

The medical charity said another 20 people were also in-jured in the attack.

MSF spokeswoman Malak Shaher said the Geneva-based international humanitarian-aid organization has had a team at the Abs public hospital since 2015.

Yemen’s Ansarullah (Houthi) movement strongly con-demned the aerial attack, saying it was carried out in flagrant violation of a ceasefire agreement, which took hold at mid-night on April 10.

Also on Tuesday, Saudi jets pounded residential buildings in Bani al-Harith district north of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, leaving two women and two children dead.

Some 17 people were also injured in the Saudi airstrikes against Bani al-Harith.

Sixteen other Yemeni civilians were killed in attacks on a village near the capital, where some nine others were also wounded. (Source: Press TV)

AUGUST 17, 2016AUGUST 17, 2016 INTERNATIONALh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l 3I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

United States Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he will introduce “extreme vetting” of immi-grants and set up a new “commission on radical Islam” if he wins the U.S. election in November.

In a foreign policy speech on Mon-day, the billionaire businessman said the goal of the new commission would be to “expose” networks within the U.S. “that support radicalization”.

As president, Trump said, he would ask the state department and depart-ment of homeland security to identify regions of the world that remain hostile to the U.S., and where screening might not be sufficient to catch those who pose a threat.

“We should only admit into our country those who share our values and respect our people,” he said from Youngstown, Ohio.

As part of the plan, Trump, who has previously called for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., said that he would “temporarily suspend immigration” from countries that have a history of “export-ing terrorism”.

He said that every year, the U.S. ad-mits 100,000 permanent immigrants “from the Middle East”, and hundreds of thousands more temporary workers and visitors from the same region.

Fight against ISILOutlining his policy to fight the Islamic

State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) terrorist group, Trump also reversed an earlier position, promising that he would work with NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) allies to defeat the armed group if elected.

“We will also work closely with NATO on this new mission,” said Trump, whose previous remarks about the organiza-tion earlier this summer drew heavy crit-

icism from U.S. allies, and even some of his fellow Republicans.

Trump, who last week called U.S. President Barack Obama “the founder” of ISIL, also attacked his Democratic op-ponent Hillary Clinton for enabling the rise of the terrorist group.

Sticking largely to prepared remarks and reading from a teleprompter, some-thing he rarely does, Trump also crit-icized Clinton's record as secretary of state and said she lacked the judgment and character to lead the country.

Trump's comments came amid in-creased scrutiny of his campaign and his off-the-cuff, inflammatory statements.

Before his speech, the Clinton cam-

paign said on Twitter: “Trump's candi-dacy alone is undermining our national security”.

In a campaign appearance with Clin-ton in the state of Pennsylvania, Vice President Joseph Biden said that Trump “has no clue what it takes to lead this great country”.

Biden also said that Trump's accusa-tion that Obama and Clinton had cre-ated ISIL endangered the lives of U.S. troops abroad.

Separately on Monday, U.S. Asia ex-perts who served in past Republican ad-ministrations said they would back Clin-ton in the presidential race, as Trump would lead to “ruinous marginalization”

for the U.S. in the region. In an open letter, the eight former

senior officials said that with global stra-tegic competition growing, including from China, it was “absolutely the wrong time to elect an unstable, ill-prepared amateur with no vision or foresight to meet the manifold challenges of the 21st century”.

The signatories to the letter included Michael Green, who served as President George W Bush's top Asia adviser at the White House, James Clad, a former dep-uty assistant secretary of defense, and Patrick Cronin, a former senior official at the U.S. Agency for International Devel-opment. (Source: agencies)

The Islamic state in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) terrorists have killed seven Iraqi border guards and in-jured 17 others in the western Anbar Province close to the border with Jordan.

Reporting on Tuesday, the Kurdish media network Rudaw said the fatalities were caused after the mili-tants struck a battalion of the guards west of the pro-vincial capital of Ramadi.

A number of the terrorists were themselves killed in ensuing clashes, while others fled to the desert after fighting intensified.

Separately, Iraqi Peshmerga fighters thwarted an ISIL attack against the town of Sinjar in the neighbor-ing Nineveh Province, killing 60 of the terrorists. Some 120 militants had partaken in the strike. Five Kurdish fighters were injured in the counter-attack.

The town came under ISIL control in August 2014. Backed by airstrikes, Kurdish forces and allied militia fighters liberated the town last November.

Troops nearing MosulMeantime, Security forces in Syria and Iraq are clos-

ing in on the cities of Raqqa and Mosul, ISIL’s so-called headquarters in the respective countries.

Also on Tuesday, Iraq’s war media said the country’s army troops had retaken the al-Qayyarah district to the south of Mosul from the terror group.

The operation to liberate al-Qayyarah has so far led to the liberation of 12 villages and resulted in the death of the group’s military commander in the district as well as a number of other Takfiri elements.

Chemical weaponsMeanwhile, ISIL terrorists have used internation-

ally-banned chemical weapons in their recent attack against civilians in a village in northern Iraq.

Hossain Hajem, the deputy governor of Mosul in Nineveh province, made the announcement.

He added that at least 17 civilians, including women and children, suffered respiratory problems after ISIL shelled Osija village, located on the southern outskirts of Mosul.

Hajem said it was believed, after initial inspection, that the shells contained chlorine gas, a choking agent banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Conven-

tion.The official added that the terrorist group had

shelled several other villages on the southern outskirts of the provincial capital over the past 24 hours, leaving at least three people dead and four others injured.

It is not the first time the ISIL has used chemical weapons against civilians.

On February 18, Kurdish authorities reported a similar attack launched by ISIL on the city of Sinjar, where at least 30 Peshmerga fighters were injured.

In addition to Iraq, the terrorist group has fre-quently used poisonous agents against people in Syria.

On April 7, nearly two dozen people were killed and over 100 others injured in a chemical attack by ISIL against members of the Kurdish People’s Protec-tion Units (YPG) in Aleppo.

According to a report by the Syrian-American Medical Society, ISIL has carried out more than 160 attacks involving “poisonous or asphyxiating agents, such as sarin, chlorine, and mustard gas” since the beginning of the conflict in Syria in 2011. Over 1,490 people have been killed in the chemical attacks.

The northern and western parts of Iraq have been plagued by gruesome violence ever since ISIL ter-rorists mounted a large-scale offensive in the coun-try in June 2014. The group also has a presence in neighboring Syria, where Syrian government forces are pushing it out of much of the areas it has overrun.

(Source: agencies)

Fifteen Guantanamo Bay prisoners have been transferred to the United Arab Emirates in the biggest such re-lease for years.

The Pentagon said that the trans-fer of 12 Yemenis and three Afghans brought the total number of prisoners left in the United States military-run jail in Cuba down to 61.

Since the September 11, 2001 at-tacks in New York, about 780 inmates have been kept at Guantanamo.

Once freed, former prisoners are usually subject to supervision and what are called rehabilitation programs.

Amnesty International USA, a rights group, welcomed the announcement as a sign U.S. President Barack Obama was serious about closing the contro-versial jail before he leaves office.

“It's a significant repudiation of the idea that Guantanamo is going to be open for business for the indefinite fu-ture,” Naureen Shah, Amnesty Interna-tional USA's security and human rights program director, told the AFP news

agency.Obama wants to close the facility

before he leaves office at the start of next year but has been continually op-posed by Republican lawmakers.

Still, the U.S. has in recent months

accelerated the rate at which prisoners who have been approved for transfer are released from the jail.

When Obama took office there were 242 detainees at Guantanamo. Monday's announcement means 19 in-

mates remain who have already been cleared for transfer.

Donald Trump's vowNovember's presidential election

will likely help determine the future of the prison, as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has vowed to fill Guantanamo with “bad dudes” should he win the White House.

Trump has said he would “bring back a hell of a lot worse than water-boarding,” referring to a method of torture banned by the U.S. govern-ment in 2007.

To date, just 10 of the prisoners have faced a criminal trial, including the “9/11 Five” led by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who were accused of plotting the September 11, 2001 at-tacks.

Guantanamo is a U.S. naval base carved out of a remote chunk of land on the tip of southeastern Cuba. The government of George W Bush opened the prison there.

(Source: Al Jazeera)

Trump to form committee 'on radical Islam' if president

ISIL kills seven Iraqi border guards, uses chemical weapons in a village

Washington transfers 15 Guantanamo prisoners to UAEMan arrested for arson over California wildfireA man has been arrested and charged with arson over a raging wildfire in Northern California that has destroyed more than 175 homes and threatens hundreds more.

Damin Pashilk, 40, was arrested on Monday and faces 17 counts of arson over the destructive Clayton Fire, which is one of a dozen major wildfires across the drought-hit United States West.

Pashilk is also suspected of involvement in many other fires in the town over the past year.

However, it was not clear how arson investigators linked Pa-shilk to the blaze.

The massive wildfire began on Saturday in the foothill com-munity of Lower Lake some 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of San Francisco.

The blaze, which has been fueled by fierce winds, had burnt about 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) by late Monday afternoon and was about 5 percent contained, fire officials said.

Over 1,600 firefighters are battling the fire that has left doz-ens of families homeless when their houses were razed by the flames.

The conflagration threatens 1,500 more structures.(Source: agencies)

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4I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

E C O N O M Y h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / e c o n o m yAUGUST 17, AUGUST 17, 20162016

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F Marketers prefer social platforms like Face-book and Twitter over video platforms such as YouTube for their digital video campaigns, ac-cording to a recent study from Trusted Media Brands.

Advertiser Perceptions, on behalf of Trusted Media brands, surveyed 300 media executives regarding their current and future digital video strategies.

A whopping 65 percent of the marketers sur-veyed voted social platforms — like Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter — as their top choice for digital video campaigns. In fact, social channels bested video platforms like YouTube by 10 per-centage points.

Samsung has all but confirmed that the much anticipated Samsung Gear S3 will be announced next month at IFA 2016.

The Korean tech giant has fired out invites for its press event at the Berlin-based tech expo, and it hasn’t exactly been subtle with the hints as to what might be unveiled.

The first invite features a pair of watch hands in the background and the latest one mentions the word ‘Gear’ and invites attendees to ‘Talk about 3’.

Samsung traditionally uses IFA to reveal its latest Galaxy Note smartphone but things are definitely going to be different this year – the covers were taken off of the Note 7 at a dedicated Unpacked event earlier this month, along with a new Gear VR headset.

The German carmaker Audi is rolling out tech-nology that will allow its vehicles to communicate with traffic lights.

Audi of America, which is owned by Volkswa-gen, said select 2017 Q7 and A4 models built after 1 June 2016 would be equipped with the system.

Audi’s version of technology known in the indus-try as “V-to-I”, or vehicle to infrastructure, displays a countdown before a red light turns to green, with a countdown also appearing when it is too late to get through an approaching signal before it turns red.

“This is our foray into V-to-I,” said Pom Mal-hotra, general manager of Audi’s connected vehi-cles division.

India's Iran oil imports rise to 5-year high in July

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Marketers are not choosing YouTube for digital video

Samsung Gear S3 set for September launch

Audi to sell cars that talk to traffic lights

SNIPPETSIran almost self-reliant in manufacturing agricultural machineries

155 industrial, mining projects to be inaugurated in Iran’s Government Week

Iran coffee, tea exhibit to kick off today in Tehran

TEHRAN — Head of Iran’s Ag-ricultural Mechanization Devel-

opment Center Kambiz Abbasi announced that 95 percent of agricultural machineries in Iran are manufactured domestically, IRNA reported on Tuesday.

Abbasi noted that Iran’s domestic industry of agricultural machineries has experienced a boom during the past three years thanks to the Comprehensive Agricultural Mechanization Plan ratified by the incumbent government besides the opened lines of credit and imple-mentation of policies of resistance economy- a set of policies outlined by the Supreme Leader, calling on the government to secure the utili-zation of the country’s resources, struggle to promote a knowledge-based economy, take efforts to increase energy consumption effi-ciency, and finally, boost domestic production.

TEHRAN — On the occasion of Iran Government Week (Au-

gust 23-29), 155 industrial and mining projects will become operational all over the country, Spokesman of Iranian Ministry of Industry Manouchehr Tahaiee announced in a news conference.

As IRIB news reported, above 50 trillion ri-als ($1.41 billion) of investments are made on these projects and after starting operation, the projects will create 9,000 direct jobs, he said.

“Eight of the said projects are planned to be inaugurated in the presence of the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the First Vice Presi-dent, and the Minister of Industry Moham-madreza Nematzadeh,” Tahaiee added.

TEHRAN — Iran’s 2nd Coffee and Tea Exhibition will start its

operation in Tehran’s Goftegoo Park today, IRIB news reported.

Besides the Iranian companies, representatives from eight countries, namely Italy, Turkey, Spain, Brazil, Denmark, France, and Switzerland will re-portedly showcase their products in the four-day event.

ECONOMYd e s k

ECONOMYd e s k

ECONOMYd e s k

ECONOMYd e s k

India's July oil imports from Iran rose to their highest in at least five years, climbing to over 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) for the second time in five months, revised tanker arrival data obtained from trade sources show.

India, Iran's top oil client after China, shipped in about 523,000 bpd oil in July, an increase of 37 percent from June and more than double from a year ago, the data showed.

Iran used to be India's second-biggest oil supplier after Saudi Arabia until 2011, when New Delhi had to cut purchases from Tehran because of western sanc-tions.

India's oil imports from Iran have been consistently rising since the lifting of sanctions earlier this year. In the first four months of this fiscal year, India's imports from Iran have climbed 48 percent more than a year ago to about 420,000 bpd, the data showed.

Last month two state refiners Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum lifted oil from Tehran after a gap of years. In July, Saudi continued to be the top oil sup-plier to India followed by Iraq, the data shows. Ven-ezuela remained the third-biggest oil supplier.

(Source: Reuters)

TEHRAN — Singa-pore’s deputy secre-

tary of Ministry of Trade and Industry as well as the CEO of International Enter-prise Singapore, called for a new model for expansion of trade relations between Iran and Singapore, IRNA reported on Tuesday.

Addressing a meeting with the mem-bers of Iran Chamber of Commerce,

Industries, Mines and Agriculture (IC-CIMA), Lee Ark Boon said on Monday that before the sanctions Singaporean companies had a successful contribu-tion in Iranian projects and now a model for renewing economic cooperation is needed.

Lee noted that implementation of the past two years’ agreements and creat-ing a new model for bilateral coopera-

tion are the main focuses of his meetings with Iranian officials.

He underscored expansion of eco-nomic relations and enhancing bilateral cooperation as the main goals of his visit to Iran.

The official also noted that the two countries’ chambers of commerce should aim to pave the way for com-panies to identify each other and make

joint investment.In the event, Ahmad Fayyaz, Sec-

retary General of ICCIMA, for his part mentioned that with the sanctions lifted, many countries have reopened their trade development offices in Iran.

Singapore could also become an ac-tive trade partner of Iran and boost its trade cooperation with the country by opening an office, he added.

1 Qatar started production of gas from the field in 1991,

11 years prior to Iran, and extracted 214 billion cubic me-ters (bcm) of gas until 2002, when Iran started produc-tion.

From 2002 to 2014, Qatar extracted 1,242 bcm, 70 percent more than Iran’s extraction of 710 bcm.

During that period, just in 2005, Iran reached the same amount of production as Qatar.

In 2014, extraction stood at 177 bcm for Qatar; almost double that of Iran’s 95 bcm.

And also in 2015, Qatar extracted gas twice as much as Iran.

According to British Petroleum Statistical Review of World Energy June 2016, Iran produced 192.5 bcm of gas in 2015 and Qatar’s gas production stood at 181.4 bcm in the same year. Given that Iran’s production from South Pars accounts for half of its total gas production, so the country has extracted 96.2 bcm of gas from the joint field in 2015, almost half of Qatar’s production from it, which accounts for the total gas production of the country.

Ali-Akbar Sha’banpour, the managing director of Pars Oil and Gas Company, which is in charge of exploiting the field in the Iranian side, said in late April that Iran produced 132 bcm of gas from the joint field in the past Iranian calendar year (ended on March 19) which was equal to 75% of Qatar’s production.

The increase came mainly from inaugurating three development phases of South Pars including phase 12 (in March 2015) as well as phases 15 and 16 (in January 2016).

South Pars, Iran’s part of the joint field, is divided into 24 standard phases, of which phases 1-10, 12, 15 and 16

are fully operational. Each standard phase is projected to produce 50 million cubic meters of gas per day. Phases 17 and 18 as well as 19 are operating at half capacity.

Sha’banpour said that Qatar has already extracted gas from the field twice more than Iran.

Although, he believes that Iran will catch up with Qa-tar by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2017) once five development phases of South Pars (including phases 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21) become opera-tional.

Saying that Qatar’s annual production from the field has been fixed at 177 bcm over the past three years, the official opined that Qatari developers are now mostly fo-cused on the maintenance of their activities rather than speeding up production, the condition that supports Iran reaching its Persian Gulf neighbor’s level of production.

Azizollah Ramezani, the director for international af-fairs of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), told the Tehran Times that as Pars Oil and Gas Company has

already fulfilled all of its commitments regarding devel-opment of South Pars, it will also fulfill its planning for inaugurating the five mentioned phases by the yearend, especially given that they have no financial limitation at the moment.

Although, Mohammad-Sadeq Jokar, the senior ener-gy expert in the Institute for International Energy Studies (IIES), believes that completion of these phases may not come true by the end of current calendar year, but it will be fulfilled in the next year.

He also told the Tehran Times that given technical and marketing considerations, Qatar has no plan currently to speed up its production from the field.

He said even Iran can catch up with Qatar during the scheduled time, it will be just a momentary equal pro-duction, while Qatar has started production from the field many years sooner than the Islamic Republic and they have already extracted gas considerably more than Iran.

The senior oil expert opined that anyway, Iran will catch up with Qatar or even outrun it in exploiting the field; the fact is that if each side considers no limitation in extraction and it will lead to a competition between them, the result will be nothing rather than endangering the field’s optimal dynamic extraction which will be detri-mental to the interests of both sides.

He concluded that although Iran and Qatar did not come to a unitization agreement over extracting from the joint field before starting exploitation in their sides, they should now adopt policies more adjusted with each other for a logical extraction to preserve the deposit and also their bilateral interests.

Iran, Singapore in need of new trade model

Iran-Qatar gas race and lack of unitization

Goldman Sachs: Look at exports and commodities to judge China's economic transitionThose looking for proof of China's economic rebalancing act should stay clear of macro data and focus instead on micro evidence, according to Goldman Sachs.

The investment bank released a research note Tuesday, detailing how changes in the composition of exports and commodity consumption are the most useful metrics to evaluate how Beijing is moving toward a consumption-led model, the so-called new economy.

"While the exports share of gross domestic product (GDP) in China today is similar to the level seen in the mid-1990s, the types of goods exported by China have changed signifi-cantly" Goldman explained.

Footwear, clothing, and toys were the top five categories of Chinese exports back in 1995, while telecom equipment, automatic data processing machines, cathode valves, furni-ture, and jewelry became the top five exports in 2014, GS noted.

"This is evidence that China has been moving up the ex-port value chain."

Commodity consumption provides another way of meas-uring China rebalancing since changes in consumption can reveal shifts in underlying economic activities, Goldman not-ed.

Appetite for 'new economy' commodities, such as soy-beans, nickel, and gasoline, have risen in recent years, ver-sus 'old economy' resources like wheat, steel, and diesel that have been relatively stable, the note said.

Goldman offered the following explanation for its selec-tion of 'new economy' commodities.

Soybeans are often used as animal feed in countries where the demand for meat and dairy is high, nickel is used to make stainless alloys for industrial and consumer products, while gasoline, jet fuel and LPG are better indicators of consump-tion than industrial-related products like diesel and fuel oil.

It may be tempting for economists to evaluate the transi-tion based on the investment-to-GDP metric, seeing as in-vestment-led growth was a key characteristic of China's 'old economy,' but China's investment share of GDP is unlikely to fall significantly, Goldman warned.

(Source: CNBC)

Iran, holder of the world’s biggest natural gas reserves, says it will start exports to Iraq in the next month, more than a year later than it originally planned.

Shipments will start at 7 million cubic meters a day to supply a power plant in Baghdad, Hamid Reza Araghi, director of the National Iranian Gas Co., said in an inter-view with the Iranian Students’ News Agency. A second route to Basra will be opened in

2017, with shipments eventually reaching 70 million cubic meters a day.

Iran is boosting crude oil and natural gas exports after international sanctions were eased in January. While its crude output has rebounded faster than expected, the natural gas exports to Iraq have taken more time. The National Iranian Gas Export Co. said in 2014 it would start exports to Iraq the fol-lowing year.

“They are most of the way there,” Rich-ard Mallinson, an analyst at Energy Aspects in London, said by phone on Monday. “Iraq desperately needs gas for its power stations.”

Iran has natural gas reserves of 1.2 trillion cubic feet (34 billion cubic meters), almost 40 percent more than Qatar, the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, accord-ing to BP Plc. By converting gas into LNG, producers can ship by tanker to markets not

linked by pipelines. Iran’s natural gas network is already linked to Turkey.

Output at South Pars in Iran will be 540 million cubic meters a day by the end of this year, from 430 million cubic meters a day currently, Iran’s oil ministry news service Shana reported Aug. 3. For Iraq, gas imports can fuel its power plants, helping to alleviate blackouts and freeing up more of its oil for export. (Source: Bloomberg)

Iran says gas exports to Iraq to start in next month after delay

HISTORY & HERITAGEh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m AUGUST 17, 2016AUGUST 17, 2016 5I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

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By Niv Sadr

Egypt sets sight on Chinese for tourism stimulusWarm sunshine, peaceful beaches, colorful reefs and a cup of iced drink are always essentials for a heaven-like vocation, and also compose the reason why Sharm el-Sheikh is famous around the world.

However, as Egypt’s most famous tourism city, Sharm el-Sheikh is still suffering from the sluggish income growth in the tourism sector, with hope on the coming season and a new market, China.

“We have gone through a very tough period because of the terrorism,” Egyptian Tourism Minister Yehia Rashed told Xinhua in an exclusive interview recently, adding that the de-clining dollar income in tourism is the main reason of the current economic woes in his country.

Egypt has been suffering from the weak economy, espe-cially in tourism, the second largest U.S. dollar income sector, over the past few years due to political turmoil.

The situation further deteriorated due to the Russian plane crash in Sinai that killed over 200 in October last year and a tragic fall of an EgyptAir flight in May that killed all 66 people on board.

“Egypt is where the history started, and tourism is a very cultural embedded industry. We have one-third of the antiq-uities of the world and the largest beaches on the Mediter-ranean Sea and the Red Sea, which I believe is very attractive for the Chinese tourists,” Rashed explained Egypt’s interests in Chinese market.

“With the testimony of all people, including the Chinese living in Egypt, it is evident that Egypt is safe and a good choice for everyone for holidays,” he added.

According to a report by the Egyptian statistics authority, the number of tourists coming to the country declined in May by 51.7 percent, comparing to the same month last year, with the main reason of the flight bans carried out by Russia, Britain and some other Western states after the plane accident last year.

At the same time, the number of Chinese visitors to Egypt increased from 65,000 to 135,000 in 2015, while the tourism ministry targets to multiply the number in 2016, given the growing bilateral relations the two countries.

“The good news is we have witnessed a slow growth in tourists recently, especially during the vocational month in the Arab countries,” Khaled Fouda, South Sinai Governor of Egypt, said in an interview on Sunday.

“Besides the traditional origins of tourists, now we have turned our eyes on China, a country with a large population and ancient culture, similar to Egypt,” the governor said, add-ing that Sharm el-Sheikh is highly and technologically-based re-secured, ready to welcome people around the world. (Source: Xinhua)

Kim Berghout is a Hitchhiker, writer & video maker from Netherlands who trav-elled to Iran in a different way a couple of months ago. Two things make this travel interesting: first the way she travelled; she and her partner Lena hitchhiked from Netherlands to Iran. Second, her idea about Iran.

In an Interview with khabaronline she talked about her favorite city in Iran, worst food she ate in Iran and her other experiences.

First of all tell me about yourself, what countries did you travel to?

I travelled through the Balkans to Tur-key, Georgia, Armenia to Iran. From Iran I went to Azerbaijan and took the ferry to Kazakhstan then I spend summer in Central Asian Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and I will travel to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in a few days.

You have travelled to several countries, what was the most different thing about Iran?

In comparison to traveling in Europe, I would say the hospitality standards. Eve-ryone welcomed me all the time, invited me for tea, food or meet their family. Crazy!

On the other hand I heard that this kind of hospitality is mostly a treatment for Europeans and not foreigners from let’s say - Afghanistan.

So I might have a biased experience but basically all the people I met were extremely nice and caring. Iran has such sweet people. It really added to - or was even the main factor - of the joy of trave-ling in that county.

People genuinely wanted to help me and have a good time in their country.

I have a critic about Iranian society too, people seem to be not so used to be-ing able to say what they think out loud, I noticed that in the country itself as well as when I published my videos about my experience in Iran and got - next to tons

of nice and positive comments - some re-sponses from people who said I shouldn’t be ‘allowed’ to publish this.

They were afraid Iran would appear bad in the news (although - in my opin-ion - my videos give a very positive view on Iran) and ask me to adjust my opinion.

What do you think is the reason of biased behavior of Iranian people?

I have no idea. I think they might have a stereotype about Europe that’s it is all do great and so much freedom and rain-bows and unicorns. Although it’s not …

Which cities in Iran did you travel to?

I went to Tabriz, Sanandaj, Hamadan, Isfahan, Shiraz, Yazd, Mesr village, Tehran and cities along the Caspian Sea.

I liked the nature the best - the green hills of Kordestan, the desert in Mesr, the rice paddies and jungle in the north of Iran. The area around Babak fort. Great for camping.

But Shiraz is my favorite city. The ar-

chitecture is stunning I love the magic mosque. And the bazar around the big mosque with the fountains is Isfahan is also really nice.

Tell me your best and worst memory in Iran?

Best: all the friends I made along the way. I am still in contact with many Iranian people and I am sure I will see them again someday.

Worst: that people were sometimes so worried, that they didn’t let Lena and me do anything.

For example, when an old men in the park chased a guy who was just play-ing guitar for us - and not bothering us - away. Or when the police stopped us from hitchhiking and put us on a bus.

I know I am traveling in an extreme way (by hitchhiking and camping anywhere) and that it makes people worried about me.

However, it’s still my choice to do so. I can decide about my own live and follow my own dreams. I understand, that it must look weird sometimes. It’s something I want

to establish with my travels: showing that you can do anything you want and dream of, as long as you are willing to face your own fears and go for it. And oh, to promote and inspire women to travel on their own.

Because the world is not a bad place if you focus on the positive side and push yourself to get out of your comfort zone and make your dreams come true!

Since it was a big dream of me - to be able to hitchhike all the way from the Netherlands to Iran on my own and I made it. And it felt awesome.

Why do you travel in this way? What is your goal?

I hope I can inspire women I meet on the road (oh, and men as well) and the people that follow me online to also face their fears and follow their dreams. It doesn’t have to be traveling - that’s just my dream. Everyone has different dreams and a different purpose in their lives. Let that light shine! I know you have it in you, and you know it too.

Go for it. Make a plan. Stick to it. Don’t look back! Don’t think too much about all the bad things that might happen ... Be ready to face your fears. Let these inner Devils show themselves, and be ready to defeat them!

It also works the other way around. I learn something from everyone I meet on the way.

What about Iranian women, did you inspire them?

I think so, Lena and I got many ques-tions from women in Iran about how we travel. We got many Questions from men as well as women.

Sometimes I get messages on my Fa-cebook, Instagram or email that people like my pictures and writing about what I am doing and that it inspired them to travel or follow their dreams as well. I love that so much. When someone tells me I was able to help or inspire them some-how, that makes my day.

The full text of the interview is available on the Tehran Times website

Iranians genuinely wanted to help travelers to have a good time in their country: Dutch hitchhiker

AUGUST 17, 2016AUGUST 17, 20166I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

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INTERNATIONALh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l AUGUST 17, AUGUST 17, 20162016 7I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

By Kadri Gursel

One wonders, when it comes to the complex conflicts of the Middle East, what potential allies and adversaries Trump can actually

name. Can he distinguish between the factions fighting in Syria? Does he care about

the struggles for civil liberties and better governance in a host of Arab states? Can he

identify a single Kurdish group?

Trump’s view of the Middle East would make sense if nobody lived in the Middle East

Donald Trump banged the same old drum during a speech on national security in Ohio on Monday. The

Republican nominee hailed his candidacy as one of strength and toughness, tout-ed his clarity of vision over the troubles that blight the Middle East and endanger America, and grandstanded once more on the threat of “radical Islam.” (You can read the transcript here, including helpful foot-notes put in by the Trump campaign citing articles by journalists who would likely be surprised to be implicated in the speech.)

As my colleagues have already report-ed, nearly the entire national security estab-lishment in Washington -- which includes many card-carrying Republicans -- seems to balk at the notion that Trump could be a viable, qualified commander-in-chief. Such doubts have not inhibited his campaign nor, it seems, dimmed his zeal.

Extreme vettingTrump promised “extreme vetting” of

potential Muslim immigrants coming to the United States, whatever that means. He listed a few “moderate” Muslim allies he would enlist, countries, it should be noted, that are already rather firmly in Washing-ton's orbit. Then, he offered this anodyne policy proposal: “Our new approach, which must be shared by both parties in America, by our allies overseas, and by our friends in the Middle East, must be to halt the spread of radical Islam,” he said.

Never mind that the Obama ad-ministration has spoken ad nauseum about countering Islamist extremism and has set about, perhaps unconvincing-ly, waging a battle of ideas with radical Is-lamist groups in cooperation with partners in the Middle East. Never mind, moreover, that much of the violence inflicted by rad-ical Islamist groups like the Islamic State is on largely Muslim communities living far from American borders.

Instead, the enemy Donald Trump seeks to name – “radical Islam” -- is a broad, all-encompassing entity, an ideological

scarecrow that would justify turning our backs on refugees and shutting the door to legal Muslim immigrants. Going by Trump's speech, the whole region somehow fits into this category: “Radical Islam” is the root of honor killings in Pakistan, the perfidy of the Islamic State and other jihadist organiza-tions in Syria and abroad, and the driving agenda of Iran, a country whose own proxy wars against Sunni extremist groups Trump conveniently forgot to mention.

One wonders, when it comes to the complex conflicts of the Middle East, what potential allies and adversaries Trump can actually name. Can he distinguish be-tween the factions fighting in Syria? Does he care about the struggles for civil liber-ties and better governance in a host of Arab states? Can he identify a single Kurd-ish group?

Indeed, if nothing else, Trump's speech showed a consistent disregard for the lives and aspirations of people living in the be-

nighted part of the world for which he has a “plan.”

Trump started off his prescription of all that ails the Middle East with a glimpse of a supposedly happier time. “Let’s look back at the Middle East at the very beginning of 2009, before the Obama-Clinton adminis-tration took over,” he said. “Libya was stable. Syria was under control. Egypt was ruled by a secular president and an ally of the United States.”

Arab SpringIn other words, before the upheavals of

the 2011 Arab Spring, everything was fine. The great sin here, according to Trump, is that the White House allowed popu-lar uprisings to dislodge autocratic lead-ers. Unsurprisingly, Trump and other GOP politicians hailed the autocratic Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, who came to power in a military coup in 2013 and has since presided over a shocking crack-down on the country's Islamist opposition

and other dissidents and members of civil society.

Now, perhaps this is Trump displaying his noted contempt for political correct-ness. Maybe he thinks Arabs and others in the Middle East shouldn't have democracy -- better they are “under control” -- but that doesn't square with other statements in his speech, where he accused the Obama administration of not speaking up enough for persecuted minorities in the region.

This was not the most blatant contradic-tion of the day, though. Trump reiterated his longstanding opposition to “nation-build-ing” and regime change in the Middle East. And, yet, then, he insisted three times that the United States should “keep the oil” that exists in Iraq after committing troops to the country. He explained this scenario with a remarkable bit of nostalgia:

This proposal, by its very nature, would have left soldiers in place to guard our as-sets. In the old days, when we won a war, to the victor belonged the spoils. Instead, all we got from Iraq -- and our adventures in the Middle East -- was death, destruction and tremendous financial loss.

While he's opposed to the sort of Ameri-can interventions that unsettled Iraq, Trump has no qualms offering up a 19th-century imperialist fantasy of occupation and re-source extraction. His disdain for the sover-eignty of the countries in the Middle East is compounded by a disinterest in the futures of the people living there. Trump's vision is as WorldViews framed it earlier in the cam-paign, “a kind of set for 'American Sniper'— a woebegone place of dusty towns crawl-ing with bad guys and not much else.”

There is no easy fix to the overlapping and spiraling crises of the region. There are legitimate criticisms to be made about the indecision of the White House and the follies of the previous Bush administration in launching an unnecessary, destabilizing war in Iraq. There's a conversation to be had about the limits of American power. And the Arab world itself has to face up to the failure of its own politics.

(Source: The Washington Post)

Turkey-EU clash is now just a matter of time

P resident Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s warnings that Tur-key’s refugee deal with the European Union will collapse if it fails to waive visa restrictions for Turks

have become more frequent, almost routine in recent days, signaling a looming and serious crisis in Turkish-EU ties.

The emergency rule Erdogan declared after surviving the failed July 15 coup has meant the suspension of a series of basic rights and freedoms in Turkey, making the planned visa waiver even more difficult and hastening the course to-ward collision. The row was aggravated by a psychological factor as Erdogan feels anger and mistrust toward EU lead-ers who, according to him, failed to extend him adequate support after the putsch.

Since the beginning of August, Erdogan has grown markedly tougher on the issue, warning every five days on average that Turkey will stop readmitting refugees if the EU fails to introduce visa-free travel for Turks, with the Turkish press calling his warnings a “showdown.”

In his most recent challenge Aug. 12, Erdogan told Ger-many’s RTL television, “The visa liberalization and readmis-sion are very important. The process is currently ongoing. Unfortunately, Europe has failed to keep its promise on the issue. We want to take steps simultaneously. If [the visa waiver] happens, fine. If not, I’m sorry but we’ll stop the readmissions.” He had made similar remarks on Aug. 2 and Aug. 8 as well.

Erdogan’s warningsErdogan’s warnings are based on the March 18 deal be-

tween Turkey and the EU, under which Ankara pledged to take back all refugees who cross illegally from Turkey to Greece after March 20. Visa-free travel for Turkish nationals was part of the agreement — hence the reciprocity link Er-dogan draws between the two. The introduction of the visa waiver was slated for June, but that target was missed, and all signs now indicate it is not forthcoming anytime this year.

Originally, the EU had planned to lift visa requirements for Turks in October 2016 if everything went smoothly under a visa liberalization agreement the two sides signed on Dec. 16, 2013, more than two years before the refugee deal. The plan was brought forward to June and incorporated into the refugee deal as a result of personal efforts by Turkey’s then-Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. The EU agreed because the new timing changed nothing about the 72 criteria Tur-key was supposed to fulfill for the visa waiver, something that Ankara was perfectly aware of.

9

By Ishaan Tharoor

Replacing just one sugary drink with water could significantly improve healthThink one little sugary soda won't make a difference on your waistline? Think again.

If people replace just one calorie-laden drink with water, they can reduce body weight and improve overall health, according to a Virginia Tech researcher. "Regardless of how many servings of sugar-sweetened beverages you consume, replacing even just

one serving can be of benefit," said Kiyah J. Duffey, an adjunct faculty member of human nu-trition, foods, and exercise in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and independent nutrition consultant.

Consuming additional cal-ories from sugary beverages like soda, energy drinks, and sweetened coffee can increase risk of weight gain and obesity, as well as Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Duffey's findings, which were recently published

in Nutrients, modeled the effect of replacing one 8-ounce sugar-sweetened beverage with an 8-ounce serving of wa-ter, based on the daily dietary intake of U.S. adults aged 19 and older, retrieved from the 2007-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys.

Duffey, along with co-author Jennifer Poti, an assistant pro-fessor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, showed that this one-for-one drink swap could reduce daily calories and the prevalence of obesity in populations that con-sume sugary beverages.

The 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that no more than 10 percent of daily calories come from added sugar and that calorie-free drinks, particularly water, should be favored.

(Source: EurekAlert)

How coral bleaching happens in warming watersA team from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Bris-bane, Australia filmed a particular type of mushroom coral as it responded to warming water temperatures.

Researchers found the solitary Heliofungia actiniformis coral inflated to more than three times its normal body size before suddenly expelling the tiny algae cells that live in a symbiotic relationship within its tissues.

But as ocean temperatures rise due to global warming and natural climate variability, corals are becoming increasingly stressed and expelling their algae.

Pollution and extreme weather events can also cause coral to shed the algae. Without their food source, coral turn white and grow more susceptible to disease and death, a phenomenon known as coral bleaching.

During the past few years, the longest-lasting global coral bleaching event on record has been occurring, a result of global warming and an El Niño event.

While scientists have long known that coral bleaching can happen, the new video provides the first recorded evidence of this particular coral species' bloat-then-burp response to heat stress, according to a peer-reviewed study published August 12 in the journal Coral Reefs.

Researchers Brett Lewis and Luke Nothdurft from QUT’s ma-rine facility used a microscope, digital camera and smart tablet to capture the moment. (Source: Mashable)

Saturn's moon Titan has deep canyons flooded with liquid methaneOn Earth, water spends eons eroding rock to carve magnificent canyons. It turns out that the same process occurs on Titan, Sat-urn’s largest moon. But instead of liquid water, the frigid moon’s grand canyons are full of liquid methane.

“Earth is warm and rocky, with rivers of water, while Titan is cold and icy, with rivers of methane. And yet it’s remark-able that we find such similar features on both worlds,” Alex Hayes of Cornell University said in a statement. In a new study co-authored by Hayes, researchers used data from Cassini — an orbiter that stud-ies Saturn and has made sev-eral close passes of Titan — to show that Titan possesses these canyons, some of them nearly 2,000 feet deep.

The canyons, which appear to contain the same liquid meth-ane seen in Titan’s oceans, represent the first direct evidence of liquid-filled channels on the moon.

Titan is widely considered to be the most Earthlike world ever studied, thanks to its dense atmosphere and stable lakes, rivers and oceans. But while that thick atmosphere produces some strangely Earthlike processes — like a rain cycle — temperatures that hover around -290 degrees Fahrenheit turn familiar phenomena topsy-turvy. At those temperatures, any H2O on the surface would be hard as rock (not unlike the mountains of water ice on Pluto). But methane — which melts into liquid under Titan-esque conditions but would boil away into gas given just a few tens of degrees more warmth — flows through the moon’s uncanny valleys with ease.

(Source: union-bulletin.com)

NEWS

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

8I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

M E D & S C I h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o mAUGUST 17, AUGUST 17, 20162016

In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking made an audacious prediction that black holes aren’t totally black; they evaporate over time, emitting tiny amounts of radiation in the process.

Now some physicists have reported the strongest evidence to date that Hawking was right in a new paper in Nature Physics.

Black holes got their name because their gravitational force is so strong, not even light can escape once it passes be-yond the event horizon -- a theoretical point of no return. But then Hawking dis-covered that it’s theoretically possible for black holes to evaporate over time via a quantum mechanical process known as “Hawking radiation.”

Virtual particlesAccording to quantum mechanics, even

the vacuum of space isn’t truly empty. So-called “virtual particles” can pop in and out of existence over such short time frames that they don’t violate established laws of physics. But if a virtual particle pair appears at the event horizon of a black hole, and one of the pair falls in, the black hole would appear to be emitting photons (particles of light), losing a bit of its mass in the pro-

cess. The bigger the black hole, the longer it takes to evaporate. So-called “mini-black holes, which physicists hope to create at the Large Hadron Collider, would wink out of existence within fractions of a second.

Hawing’s idea has enormous implica-tions for theoretical physics, most notably for the black hole information paradox. But how do you test such an audacious hy-pothesis? In 1981, Bill Unruh , a physicist at the University of British Columbia, Van-couver, proposed a thought experiment involving a sonic analogue of a black hole he nicknamed a “dumb hole” -- except in this case it is sound, not light, that becomes trapped in a kind of event horizon.

Unruh drew an analogy with a waterfall where the water flows faster and faster as it falls over the edge.

Eventually the water will be flowing faster than sound can travel through water, so any phonons (particles of sound) try-ing to escape will just get sucked back in. Dumb holes don’t actually exist in nature, although Unruh loves to tell people that we create rotating black hole analogues every time we take a bath.

(Source: Gizmodo)

We're one step closer to proving black holes evaporate

The China Railway Corporation announced on Monday that its "China Standard" bullet trains, also known as electric multiple units (EMUs), have started operation in northeast China's Liaoning Province.

Train No. G8041 departed from Dalian for Shenyang, capital of Liaoning on Monday. It is the first passenger ser-vice using China Standard EMU trains, said Zhou Li, head of technological management at the China Railway Corpora-tion, the national rail operator.

"China independently owns the design of the EMU, and it will be a leading model for China to export to the world," Zhou said.

The China Standard EMU uses the latest exterior de-sign, reduces energy consumption, and adopts a standard parts design, he said. It has reinforced safety features com-

pared with old models, he added. The trains can reach a speed of 350 kilometers per hour.

China's EMU fleet of 2,470 trains is the world's largest, and the total length of high-speed track in the country -- 19,000 km -- represents 60 percent of the global total.

In the future, China will offer rail products and solutions according to the needs of various countries, he added.

Chinese bullet trains have already found international customers in Indonesia, Russia, Iran and India.

Construction of a 150-km high-speed link between the Indonesian capital Jakarta and Bandung began in January 2016. It will cut travel time between the two cit-ies by about two thirds. The project is almost entirely Chinese, including the technical standards, survey and design, construction, equipment manufacturing and personnel training.

(Source: The Shanghai Daily)

China-standard bullet train start operation

Sometimes reality is stranger than fic-tion as the old adage goes. Scientists at Penn State studying a distant star called KIC 8462852 have released a new study postulating that based on the light it is emitting, an alien race may have con-structed a massive device that harnesses the power of the star.

The theory is that the aliens have con-structed a shell or semi-shell (a swarm in the jargon of the study) around the star and are siphoning off its power slowly over time. If this sounds like something out of an episode of Star Trek, then you are not far off.

The device being described is called a Dyson Sphere or a Dyson Swarm de-pending on the particulars of the con-struction. It’s named after physicist Free-man Dyson who described the concept in a 1960 study.

The idea is that a massive system of en-ergy collection is constructed all around the perimeter of a star. The most obvious tool for such a system is an array of solar panels. The panels essentially would form a globe all around the star and collect solar energy released over time.

The star is dimmingThe new study in question postulates

the existence of the Dyson because of the way that the star is dimming over time. While it’s almost impossible to imagine what capabilities a hypothetical alien group might have, it is safe to say that the construction of a Dyson Sphere would be

a mind-boggling achievement.Put differently, just to encompass

the Earth with mirrors would be a hard enough challenge. The circumference of the Earth is around 24,000 miles which means its diameter is about 7,600 miles. That gives the planet a surface area of around 1.8 trillion miles – essentially to construct a Dyson Sphere just around an Earth sized object would require quad-rillions of solar panels. And the sun is much larger than the Earth. For that rea-son, the concept of a Dyson Sphere has largely stayed relegated to the bounds of science fiction.

Again, it’s impossible to practically image what capabilities an alien species might have, but a Dyson Sphere seems difficult to fathom in practice. Nonethe-less, if such a device were built, it would mean that the civilization would have es-sentially unlimited power.

(Source: oilprice.com)

Using Google Glass, a team of researchers is developing a ‘smart’ portable system that will use functional near-infrared spec-troscopy (fNIRS) to measure a person’s brain activity on the go. The applications for fNIRS are endless -- from training air traffic controllers and drone operators to studying how students with disabilities learn best or why different people are more receptive to certain commercials.

“This is a new trend called neuroergo-nomics. It’s the study of the brain at work — cognitive neuroscience plus human factors,” said Hasan Ayaz, associate re-search professor at Drexel University. The phrase “neuroergonomics” was coined by the late Raja Parasuraman, former profes-sor at George Mason University and the co-author of the study. Until now, most studies involving fNIRS took place indoors. A group of Drexel biomedical engineers, in collaboration with researchers at George Mason University, have now brought their portable fNIRS system “into the wild.”

In their study, published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, the re-searchers successfully measured the brain activity of participants navigating a college campus outdoors. The researchers wanted to compare one group of participants navi-gating campus with Google Glass to anoth-er group using Google Maps on an iPhone.

They found that overall, users with Google Glass had a higher situation aware-ness and lower mental workload than their peers navigating with an iPhone.

Google GlassThe team also found that users wear-

ing Google Glass fell victim to “cognitive tunneling”, meaning they focused so much more of their attention to the dis-play itself, that they easily ignored other aspects of their surroundings.

“What we were able to see were the strengths and weaknesses of both. Now that we know we are able to capture that, we can now improve their design,” said Ayaz. This opens up new areas of applications. “We will be able to analyze how the brain is functioning during all of these natural activities that you can-not replicate in artificial lab settings,” the authors noted.

fNIRS is a way to measure oxygena-tion levels in the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for complex behaviors like decision-making, cognitive expression and personality development.

(Source: The Indian Express)

Google Glass-type device might soon read your mind

Scientists suggest aliens are harnessing energy from this star

Women who take the common pain reliever acetami-nophen during pregnancy may be more likely to have chil-dren with behavior problems than those who don’t use the drug, a British study suggests.

Researchers analyzed survey data from about 7,800 mothers and found more than half of them took acetami-nophen at some point during pregnancy.

Overall, about 5 percent of their children had behavior problems by age 7. The odds of hyperactivity, conduct is-sues and emotional problems were all higher among the offspring of women who reported using acetaminophen while pregnant, the study found.

This doesn’t necessarily mean pregnant women should avoid taking acetaminophen, however, said lead study au-thor Evie Stergiakouli of the University of Bristol in the UK.

“It is still appropriate to use acetaminophen during

pregnancy because there is a risk of not treating fever or pain during pregnancy,” Stergiakouli said by email. “Other pain medications are not considered safe to use during pregnancy.”

The study doesn’t prove acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol, directly causes developmental issues in chil-dren, noted Dr. Hal Lawrence, executive vice president and chief executive of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

Behavioral disorders "Behavioral disorders are multifactorial and very difficult

to associate with a singular cause,” Lawrence, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. The “brain does not stop developing until at least 15 months of age, which leaves room for children to be exposed to a number of factors that could potentially lead to behavioral issues.”

To explore the connection between prenatal acetami-nophen use and behavior issues in children, researchers examined data on how many women reported taking the drug at 18 weeks and 32 weeks of pregnancy as well as when their children were 5 years old. They also looked at acetaminophen use by the women’s partners.

At 18 weeks of pregnancy, 4,415 mothers, or 53 per-cent of them, reported using acetaminophen, as did 3,381 mothers, or 42 percent, at 32 weeks.

When the kids were 5 years old, more than 80 percent of the women and their partners used acetaminophen.

The study didn’t find any association between postnatal use of the drug by either parent and behavior issues in children, or any link based on whether the partners took the drug while women were pregnant.

(Source: Business Insider)

Pain drugs in pregnancy tied to behavior issues in kids

The bigger the black hole, the longer it takes to evaporate. So-called “mini-black holes, which physicists hope to create at the Large Hadron Collider, would wink out of existence within

fractions of a second.

Stephen Hawking

Ban Ki-moon: ‘My replacement should be a woman’

Syria: Many terrorists killed in air and artillery strikesSyrian Army units destroyed terrorist organizations’ mortar launching pad and a den, killing and injuring a num-ber of terrorists northwest of al-Na-ziheen Camp in Daraa al-Balad area in Daraa Province.

A military source told SANA on Tues-day that terrorists Qusai Fawzi al-Taani and Kazem Hassan al-Sarhan al-Na’emi were identified among the dead.

Another army unit killed a number of terrorists after targeting their gather-ings near al-Kark water reserve in Daraa al-Mahata.

AleppoThe Syrian Army Air and Artil-

lery Forces destroyed terrorists’ posi-tions, vehicle convoys, some armored and others equipped with machine-guns, and cars loaded with ammunition and killed scores of terrorists east of Khanaser, Khan Touman, Kafer Hamra, Mitrem, west of al-Mansoura , at the surroundings of the Military Academies and Talet Bazo in Aleppo and its coun-tryside.

Hama/IdlebMore than 40 terrorists, some of

them leaders, were killed in intensified strikes by the Syrian Air Force and the army’s artillery that targeted gatherings, fortified positions and supply routes of the so-called “Ahrar al-Sham”, “Jund

al-Aqsa” and “Ajnad al-Sham” in the countryside of Hama and Idleb.

The military source told SANA that the strikes hit targets in Tal Merei, to the west of al-Tamaniaa, Tal Skeik and to the west of Atshan in the northern country-side of Hama province near the border with Idleb.

The source added that the strikes also targeted sites to the east of Khan Sheikhoun, al-Sheikh Mustafa and to the east of Maaret al-Nouman in the southern countryside of Idleb.

As a result of the strikes, more than 40 terrorists, some of them are groups’ leaders, were killed and at least 20 oth-ers were injured, while 11 vehicles, some of which equipped with machine guns, were destroyed.

Homs Syrian Army Air Force destroyed the

Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) terrorist group vehicles and po-sitions in al-Sukhneh, in the areas to the north and east of Palmyra, to the west of Um Sahreej and in Msheirfa Qubliya villages to the east of Homs Province.

Deir EzzorThe Syrian Air Force destroyed po-

sitions and vehicles for ISIL terrorists, killing many of them, in al-Sinaa neigh-borhood in Deir Ezzor city.

(Source: SANA)

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said a woman should lead the United Nations for the first time since it was set up more than 70 years ago.

As he nears the end of his second five-year term, Ban said it was “high time” for a female secretary-general after eight men in a row have led the organization.

There are 11 candidates vying to succeed Ban: six men and five women.

Ban stressed that the decision was not up to him, but to the 15-member Security Council, which must recom-mend a candidate to the 193-member general assembly for an approval usual-ly seen as rubber-stamping.

Without giving any names, he said there were “many distinguished, mo-tivated women leaders who can real-ly change this world, who can actively engage with the other leaders of the world.”

By tradition, the job of secre-tary-general has rotated among differ-ent regions of the world. Officials from Asia, Africa, Latin America and western Europe have all held the post.

East European nations, including Russia, argue that they have never had a secretary-general and it is their turn. A group of 56 nations are campaigning

for the first female UN chief.The Security Council has held two

informal polls in which 12 candidates participated, and in each the high-est-ranked woman was in third place, a disappointment to many.

Antonio Guterres, a former Por-tuguese prime minister who has also headed the UN refugee agency, topped both polls.

In the first straw poll, Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, who heads UNESCO, came in third but in the second she dropped to fifth. In the second poll, Argentina’s foreign minister Susana Malcorra, who was Ban’s former chief of staff, moved up to third. The former Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic, who placed last in the first poll, dropped out.

The three other female candidates are New Zealand’s former Prime Minis-ter Helen Clark, who heads the UN De-velopment Program; Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica, a UN official who played a key role in shaping last December’s his-toric agreement to fight climate change; and the former Moldovan foreign min-ister, Natalia Gherman.

The Security Council has scheduled another straw poll on August 29 and at least one, possibly two, more are ex-pected to be held in September.

(Source: AP)

WORLD IN FOCUSh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l 9I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

J U M P

Israeli military forces have leveled ten Palestinian houses to the ground in the occupied West Bank.

According to Palestinian sources, Is-raeli forces destroyed two Palestinian houses in the town of Beit Jala, located 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) south of al-Quds (Jerusalem), on Tuesday, Ma’an reported.

Earlier in the day, Israeli bulldozers, escorted by a large number of soldiers, rolled into the town of Sa’ir, located eight kilometers (five miles) northeast of al-Khalil (Hebron), and demolished eight Palestinian buildings in the area after Is-raeli troopers forced their residents out.

The development came only a day after Israeli forces destroyed the family house of slain 17-year-old Mohammed Nasser Tarayra over his alleged role in a deadly stabbing attack against an Israeli girl late last June.

35 hurt as Palestinians, Israeli forces clash

Also on Tuesday, clashes were report-ed between a group of young Palestinian men and Israeli soldiers in the Fawwar refugee camp, located six kilometers (3.7 miles) southwest of al-Khalil.

Israeli military forces fired live bullets and tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd. There are reports that at least 35 Palestinians sustained injuries during the scuffles.

Furthermore, Israeli forces arrested six people during separate overnight raids on a number of houses across the occu-pied West Bank. Another four Palestini-ans were detained in eastern Gaza Strip.

The occupied territories have wit-nessed a fresh bout of tensions ever since Israeli forces restricted the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East al-Quds in August 2015.

More than 230 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces in the tensions since the beginning of last October. The violence has also killed at least 32 Israelis, two Americans, an Eri-trean and a Sudanese.

Israelis scheming to replace Aqsa Mosque with ‘third temple’

Meantime, Israeli institutions and or-ganizations are reportedly awaiting the regime’s go-ahead for the construction of a so-called “third temple” in place of

al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in the Israeli-occupied al-Quds.

The Palestinian-run International Mid-dle East Media Center (IMEMC) inde-pendent news organization carried the report on Monday, citing Israeli television channels.

Israeli Zionists claim they have the right to build a third temple in line with “scriptural prophecies” to follow the tra-dition of the first and second ones built in ancient times.

Back in June, Israeli Minister of Agricul-ture and Rural Development Uri Ariel said “the first temple was destroyed in 586 BCE, the second temple in 70 CE,” adding that he wished to see a third one built.

The al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are situated in Haram al-Sharif or Temple Mount in Jerusalem al-Quds, which was occupied by Israel in 1967.

The mosque is the third holiest site in Islam after Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina. The site is also holy to Christians and Jews.

In August 2015, Israel imposed restric-tions on the entry of Palestinian worshi-pers into the compound, which is under

the administration of Jordan, sparking a fresh wave of tensions with Palestinians.

According to the agreement signed between the Tel Aviv regime and the Jor-danian government after Israel’s occupa-tion of East al-Quds in 1967, visits to the compound by Israelis are permitted, but non-Muslim worship is prohibited.

On Sunday, fresh clashes erupted near the mosque after over 300 Israeli settlers entered the compound and performed rituals inside in violation of the agreement.

Muslims consider the trespass into the al-Aqsa Mosque yard as part of an Israe-li Judaization campaign that targets the holy city of al-Quds and a provocation.

King of Jordan denounces ‘viola-tions’ of al-Aqsa Mosque

Elsewhere, Jordan’s King Abdullah II said on Monday that he stands firm-ly against any Israeli attack on al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied al-Quds.

In an interview with the Jordanian broadcaster Ad-Dustour, the monarch promised to fight “repeated violations and attacks carried out by Israel and ex-tremist groups” at the holy site.

Israeli Police Spokesman Mickey Rosen-

feld told Al Jazeera that the Jewish visitors who had not abided by visitation guidelines were removed from the premises.

Police units were stationed at several locations throughout the area, he said, in order to prevent clashes from occurring between the Jewish visitors and employ-ees of the Waqf.

Israel occupied east al-Quds in 1967 and later annexed the territory in a move never recognized by the international community.

Israeli authorities prepare to build settlement cutting West Bank in two

Meanwhile, Israeli authorities are tak-ing preparatory measures for the con-struction of an illegal settlement in the southern part of the occupied West Bank that would essentially split Palestinian ter-ritories in two.

Israeli rights group Peace Now, in a statement released on Monday, an-nounced that Israeli officials notified the Israeli Supreme Court on August 10 that they had embarked on a land survey in Nahla Village near the city of Bethlehem with the purpose of annexing the area.

Peace Now added that the move would facilitate the establishment of the illegal set-tlement of Givat Eitam, noting that a road will link the region to the nearby Efrat set-tlement, located 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) south of Jerusalem al-Quds.

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Ham-dallah denounced the measures as steps toward the further separation of Bethle-hem from the rest of the southern West Bank and stonewalling the formation of an independent Palestinian state.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian terri-tories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

The United Nations and most coun-tries regard the Israeli settlements as ille-gal because the territories they are built on were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Gene-va Conventions, which forbid construc-tion on occupied lands.

Nevertheless, the Israeli regime con-tinues to build more settlements and ex-pand existing ones.

(Source: agencies)

Israeli forces flatten 10 more Palestinian houses in West Bank

Indian security forces on Tuesday killed five protesters and injured 10 in clashes that erupted after crowds an-gered by the killing of a pro-independence figure in disputed Kashmir pelted them with stones and defied a curfew, officials said.

Indian-ruled Kashmir has witnessed violent protests since July 8, when security forces killed a field com-mander of Hizbul Mujahideen who enjoyed widespread support in the Muslim-majority region.

Kashmir also saw an upsurge in violence around In-dia’s Independence Day holiday on Monday, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country would not bow to terrorism and accused neighbor and archrival Paki-stan of glorifying it.

A senior police official said hundreds of protesters threw stones at security forces as they tried to restore order on the streets of Budgam, a district 30 km (18 miles) south of Srinagar, the state’s summer capital.

The latest casualties came as security forces opened fire with automatic rifles, a step up from their earlier use of shotguns, whose pellets are meant to incapacitate but not kill. Locals say the shotguns have inflicted severe in-

juries, and even blinded, hundreds of people, among them innocent bystanders.

Indian troops killed a total of seven on Monday in two incidents, five of them gunmen who had attempted a cross-border incursion and two more, who had attacked a Srinagar police station.

One officer died in the police station shootout.At least 64 people have been killed and thousands

injured during 39 days of protests, while schools, shops, banks and offices remain closed in much of Kashmir as

paramilitary troops patrol arterial roads, residential are-as and mosques.

Kashmir is at the center of a decades-old rivalry be-tween India and Pakistan, which also rules its northern part, and backed an insurgency in the late 1980s and 1990s that Indian security forces largely crushed.

Both countries claim Kashmir in full.New Delhi has rejected Pakistan’s invitation to hold

talks on the future of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s north-ernmost state, and Modi said he had received messages of support from leaders in restive parts of Pakistan.

In a speech on Monday, Modi accused Pakistan of committing atrocities in its own province of Baluchistan, escalating a war of words that Islamabad said was in-tended to divert attention from the troubles in Indi-an-administered Kashmir.

Modi’s Defense Minister, Manohar Parrikar, raised the temperature further on Tuesday, saying Indian troops had “sent back five terrorists yesterday”.

He told a rally, “Going to Pakistan is the same as go-ing to hell.”

(Source: Reuters)

Protests intensify in Indian Kashmir, security forces kill five

Murphy sees Ankara’s assertion of U.S. role in coup as reason for improvement in Turkey-Iran ties

1 It secured financial pledges to support its own sub-stantial refugee population as well as to reinvigorate long stalled talks with EU membership. Ankara had also restored its dialogue with Israel and taken steps to restore its relations with Moscow strained by the shoot down of a Russian war plane which had violated Turkish air space.

In the wake of the coup attempt there have been wide-spread arrests and dismissals in Turkey’s military and civilian bureaucracies. There have also been persistent accusations that Washington had foreknowledge of the coup and even supported regime change in Turkey. The U.S. has vigorously denied this but the rumors persist. This tension, together with Turkey’s demand for extradition of President Erdogan’s princi-pal critic from the U.S., portends a period of strained relations even though both governments are aware of the danger of letting this situation lead to strategic redirections.

Q: What is the importance of President Erdogan’s visit to Russia? Will it help solve the crisis in Syria?

A: President Putin is well aware of the tensions between Turkey and the EU over its membership application and of the current strain in U.S.-Turkish relations. Putin is interested in gaining Turkish support for an oil pipeline on its territory for Russian exports which could potentially weaken European unity on the issue of sanctioning Russia over its Ukrainian and Crimean policies.

Probably, Putin also argued his case that the current Syrian regime is the only viable power able to lead the country and defeat the radicals of the Islamic State. If Putin is inclined also to express understanding of Turkish concerns about Kurd-ish aspirations, of whatever nationality, as well as to support Turkish resentment of foreign pressures on human rights is-sues this will further encourage Erdogan to improve Turkey’s bilateral relations with Russia.

Q: In a policy shift Ankara has recently been mostly focus-ing on the Middle East. Does this mean that Ankara has no hope to be a member of the EU?

A: I do not think that Turkey is ready to abandon its ap-plication for EU membership although it resents the delays it has faced in dealing with Europe and is particularly unhappy about Europe’s position that it has the right to judge Turkey’s performance on human rights issues.

Q: What are the reasons behind the recent improvement in Tehran-Ankara relationship after the coup?

A: Ankara’s assertion that there was an American role in the failed coup attempt may account for some of the improvement in Turkish-Iranian ties. Such assertions confirm longstanding sus-picions among some in Iran’s leadership circle of the U.S. desire to destroy its regime and play a negative role throughout the region. Iranian critics of the U.S. may see the possibility of mak-ing common cause with Erdogan’s Turkey.

AUGUST 17, 2016

Turkey-EU clash is now just a matter of time

7 So far, Turkey has met 67 of the said criteria. Erdo-gan is reluctant to fulfill the remaining five, but wants the visa waiver to go ahead all the same — a demand that lies at the core of the dispute. The most important part of the home-work Ankara refuses to do requires amendments in Turkey’s anti-terror law in line with EU norms. The EU’s objective here is pretty clear: to strip Turkish security and judicial authorities of a legal framework that allows for violations of basic rights and freedoms and thus make sure that visa-free travel does not encourage victimized Turks to seek political asylum in EU countries. So, the EU’s rationale is to protect itself against a possible new wave of migration, facilitated by visa-free travel while oppressive and restrictive laws remain in place.

Of note, two of the four other criteria at which Erdogan balks require legal amendments to align with EU norms on fighting corruption and the protection of personal data.

It’s worth recalling, however, that Erdogan’s threats to abolish the refugee deal did not begin after the July 15 putsch. The 2013 agreement, with all its 72 conditions, had been signed in Erdogan’s presence in Ankara, yet in May he was able to say, “They have put forward 72 points, saying we should do this and that. This story is something new. These [conditions] didn’t exist before. Where did they come from?”

Erdogan’s pretextIn the days before the putsch, Erdogan’s pretext for reject-

ing the five outstanding criteria was the all-out war Ankara had launched on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in July 2015. He argued that amending anti-terror laws while the fight against the PKK was in full swing would play into the hands of the militants. Now, he has an even stronger reason to dig in his heels: to sustain unhindered the massive, merci-less purges and clampdowns targeting the Gulen community — officially branded by Turkey the Fethullah Gulen Terror Or-ganization — whose military network has emerged as the planner and perpetrator of the putsch.

Under the state of emergency, Turkey has become a coun-try run through legislative decrees exempt from constitutional checks, with freedoms further suppressed and the European Convention on Human Rights put on hold. Thus, it has drifted further away from the EU and can in no way be expected to fulfill the pending conditions for a visa waiver.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people have landed in police custody or in jail, lost their jobs and seen their properties confiscated as the draconian onslaught on Gulenists rages both at state institutions and public life in general, threatening an exodus of political refugees to Europe.

In sum, the post-putsch conditions have reinforced the EU’s reasons to maintain the visa restrictions, while Erdogan has become tougher in demanding their removal. As long as these conditions prevail, the eruption of a severe crisis be-tween Turkey and the EU is only a matter of time.

(Source: Al Monitor)

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I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

S O C I E T Y h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s o c i e t yAUGUST 17, 2016AUGUST 17, 201610Monitoring pollutants atop agenda, says Tehran environment chief

TEHRAN — Monitor-ing pollutants is of high

priority in controlling Tehran’s air pollution, the chief of Tehran province’s department of environment said on Monday.

“What we had overlooked until 2014 in minimizing Tehran’s air pollution was sta-tionary sources of air pollution which are ordinarily the key polluting sources,” Mo-hammad-Hadi Heidarzadeh told a press conference, ISNA news agency reported.

Some 300 power plants started to switch from mazut to gas in 2014-2015 and an-other 245 units added to this number over the past year (March 2015-2016) and the number is expected to double by the end of the current Iranian calendar year falling on March 20, 2017, Heidarzadeh pointed.

All such power plants are required to report on their pollutants level and those units violating the law will be getting a warning or shut down, he added.

780,000 clunkers scrapped over past 4 years

Heidarzadeh said that from March 2012 to March 2016, a total of 780,000 clunkers were scrapped in the country.

Some 10,500 other old cars must be scrapped by March 20, 2017 of which 6,300 are already scrapped, he added.

21 days of excellent air quality last year

Mentioning the relatively mild improve-ment on the air quality over the past 4 years, Heidarzadeh noted that while the number of days with excellent air quality were 3 in those years they increased to 21

days in the previous Iranian year.Additionally no days of moderate air

pollution with chances of causing discom-fort for all people were reported last year, he stated.

Being Tidy and Messy Carole: It is beyond me how you and Oscar can be room-mates. You’re very tidy and he’s, well, a slob. Felix: It’s not always easy, but we’re making it work. Carole: Isn’t Oscar really messy all the time? Whenever I see him, his clothes are rumpled and his hair is unkempt. Felix: His room is really cluttered, but he keeps the com-mon areas in passable condition. I do have to straighten up fairly often, and I sometimes have to pick up after him, but that’s because I’m pretty nitpicky. Carole: That’s very tolerant of you. Felix: Well, we have set up a system so that if things get too messy, I have some recourse. Carole: Really, what’s your system? Felix: Oscar and I agreed that every time he leaves a big mess, I can fine him. Carole: That seems kind of drastic, but maybe it works for you guys. Felix: Yeah, it keeps the place pretty clean. Carole: Still, knowing Oscar, you must have had to fine him a lot. Felix: Let’s just say that my next vacation will be in Monte Carlo!

(Source: eslpod.com) Words & phrases

be beyond somebody: to be too difficult for someone to understandtidy: someone who is tidy keeps their house, clothes etc. neat and cleanslob: someone who is lazy and untidymake something work: try hard to live with the problem you have as best as you canmessy: dirty or untidyrumpled: not neat and tidyunkempt: unkempt hair or plants have not been cut and kept neatcluttered: filled or scattered with a disorderly accumulation of objects or rubbishcommon area: here it means an area of the house which is shared between the two roommates passable: fairly good, but not excellentstraighten up: to make something tidypick up after somebody: to tidy things that someone else has left untidynitpicky: be concerned with or find fault with insignificant detailstolerant: allowing people to do, say, or believe what they want without criticizing or punishing themrecourse: something that you do to achieve something or deal with a situation, or the act of doing itfine: to make someone pay money as a punishmentdrastic: extreme and sudden

L E A R N E N G L I S H

N E W S I N B R I E FSome 6,800 clinics charge patients less than $1 a visit: health minister

Iranian universities to offer Azeri Turkish language

Intercepting smuggled goods at Iranian airports grow 11-fold

TEHRAN — There are some 6,800 clinics nationwide in underprivileged

districts which charge patients less than $1 for medical fees, the Iranian health minister said on Tuesday.

Hassan Qazizadeh-Hashemi made the remarks over a meeting in Tehran chamber of commerce, industries, mines and agriculture here on Tuesday, Tasnim news agency reported.

These clinics are financed by the government and the patients pay a fee of less than $1 instead of normal fee of some $10, Qazizadeh-Hashemi noted.

TEHRAN —Azeri Turkish language will be offered as a new field of study

at Iranian universities in the coming acedemic year start-ing September 22, the deputy science minister said.

Preceded by Kurdish language studies which was launched last year, now Azeri Turkish studies are de-signed to give the student the opportunity to study this language at an academic level, Mojtaba Shari’ati-Niasar said, Khabaronline reported.

The official further noted that some 70 new fields of study have been offered to the students over the past three years.

Azeri Turkish is mainly spoken in Iranian Azarbaijan and Turkish (also known as Istanbul Turkish) is mainly spo-ken in Turkey.

TEHRAN — Intercepting smuggled goods at the Iranian airports grew

11-fold in the first four months of the current Iranian calendar year, starting March 20, compared to the same period last year, the airports police chief said.

Hassan Mehri made the remarks over a press confer-ence held on Tuesday, IRNA news agency reported.

Mehri explained that there is now an upward trend in smuggling various items such as drug, money or gold by hiding them in parcels and packages.

“A network of drug dealers who hid 20 kilograms of opium in food warmers to smuggle them out of the country to Australia were caught at Imam Khomeini air-port recently,” he highlighted.

Elsewhere in his remarks, he warned the passengers not to accept packages from strangers at the airport as there might be some illegal goods hidden inside them.

Least said, soonest mended Explanation: a difficult situation will be resolved

more quickly if there is no more discussion of it For example: I’ve always thought it best not to dwell

on grievances too long. Least said, soonest mended.

Angle for Meaning: to try to get something you want without

asking directly for it For example: She was obviously angling for an in-

vitation.

Ahead of the pack

Explanation: if a person or organization is ahead of the pack, they are better or more successful than their rivals

For example: Our products will have to be more in-novative if we want to stay ahead of the pack.

ENGLISH PROVERB PHRASAL VERB ENGLISH IDIOM

ENGLISH IN USE

Iranians donate more than 2m blood units Over two million blood units were collected in Iran last calendar year (March 2015-March 2016), the Blood Transfusion Organization director said on Tuesday.“We have the highest index of blood donation among developing countries,” IRNA news agency quoted Ali-Akbar Pourfatollah as saying.“We have 27 blood units per 1,000 population which is good,” he said, adding “the number is 30 to 50 in developed countries.”

مردم ايران بيش از 2 ميليون واحد خون اهدا كردندرئيس سازمان انتقال خون روز سه شنبه گفت: مردم ايران سال گذشته بيش از 2 ميليون واحد

خون اهدا كردند.به گزارش ايرنا، على اكبر پورفتح اهللا گفت: ما درميان كشورهاى درحال توسعه بيشترين شاخص

اهداى خون را داريم.وى افزود: به ازاى هر يك هزار نفر جمعيت 27 واحد خون داريم كه شاخص خوبى است و در

كشورهاى پيشرفته اين رقم حدود 30 تا 50 واحد به ازاى هر يك هزار نفر جمعيت است.

LEARN NEWS TRANSLATION

IN FOCUS ISNA/ Abdolreza Darvish

People walk along the dry riverbed of the Zayandehrood in the city of Isfahan, central Iran. A paddle boat is docked on its dusty banks, reminding when water flowed between its banks.

A 7-year-old boy in Ohio tried to sell his toy dog to get money for food, police in Franklin said.

“We heard about the boy from a concerned man who came into the police station and said there was a small child carrying a stuffed animal in a busy section of Franklin,” Franklin Police Officer Steve Dunham said of the incident August 7.

When officers went to the area, Dunham spotted the boy in front of a pharmacy and got out of his car to speak with him. The boy was really nervous at first, Dunham told CNN.

“I think he thought he would get in trouble,” he said. “He told me he was hungry and was trying to get mon-ey for food.”

Chief Russ Whitman told CNN the boy said he had not eaten in several days.

While other officers went to the child’s home, Dun-ham took the boy to a fast food restaurant and the two had dinner together.

The officers who went to investigate the boy’s home reported it “was in deplorable condition and there were

other children there,” Dunham said, adding that they found garbage and liquor bottles everywhere, and there was a strong smell of cat urine.

Four other boys -- ages 11, 12, 15 and 17 -- also lived in the house.

The parents, who were home at the time, were each charged with five counts of child neglect, Whitman said. They pleaded not guilty in court August 9 and have a

pretrial conference scheduled for September, Lt. Brian Pacifico said.

“I’m very proud of my officers for what they did, but of-ficers across the nation go above and beyond every single day,” Whitman said. “We just happened to be put in the limelight. You can find stories like this everywhere with po-lice officers every day. That’s why we get into this business, to help people.”

Child Protective Services contacted another family member to pick up the boys.

The 7-year-old watched cartoons at the police station with a dispatcher for a few hours until a family member picked him up, Dunham said.

The boys’ parents were not jailed, but the children re-main in the care of relatives, according to Franklin Police.

St. Vincent De Paul at St. Mary’s Church in Franklin is organizing a donation drive to raise money for the family, according to Whitman.

Franklin is north of Cincinnati, in southwestern Ohio.(Source: CNN)

Ohio boy tried to sell toy for food, police say

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S P O R T Sh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s p o r t s AUGUST 17, 2016AUGUST 17, 2016 11I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Kenya’s Rudisha retains 800m titleKenya’s David Rudisha obliterated his rivals in the 800 meters final on Monday to become the first man since 1964 to retain his Olympic title over the distance.

Rudisha, the world champion and world record holder, stormed to victory with a devastating final-lap sprint that ce-mented his place among the greats such as New Zealand’s Peter Snell, the last man to successfully defend an 800m Olympic gold.

Nicknamed ‘King David’ in Kenya, Rudisha hit top gear in the final 300 meters to surge ahead of his rivals with his trademark finishing kick and win gold in a season’s best time of one minute 42.15 seconds. “I am so excited. It is the greatest moment of my career,” Rudisha told reporters.

After winning his first Olympic gold and setting a world re-cord at the 2012 London Games, Rudisha suffered a couple of injury-ravaged years that dented his confidence and caused him to miss the 2013 world championships.

He struggled for much of the current season and came third in national Olympic trials but the 6-foot-3-inch Maasai runner looked in total control of the Rio Games final as his long stride and fluid running style propelled him to victory.

“It’s been very difficult,” Rudisha said, referring to his inju-ries. “I have stayed focused and positive. My coach has been great and given me hope.”

The 27-year-old crossed the line several meters ahead of Algeria’s Taoufik Makhloufi, the London Games gold medal winner over 1,500m.

Makhloufi said the silver medal boosted his confidence ahead of the 1,500m event later this week.

“I am so happy to make my country proud,” he said. “I dedi-cate this to the poor people.”

Fast-finishing American Clayton Murphy set a personal best time to take bronze ahead of France’s Pierre-Ambroise Bosse.

“When I saw I could get bronze, I just kept pushing,” said Murphy, who was delighted to have raced against Rudisha.

“He is somebody I’ve looked up to since he broke the world record. It was an honor to race him.”

(Source: Reuters)

For Usain Bolt, the best is yet to come in RioRIO DE JANEIRO — Moments after winning his third Olympic gold medal in a row in the men’s 100 meters, Jamaica’s Usain Bolt began to plan for his strongest race.

I hope you were sitting down. No, the 100 isn’t where Bolt shines most. His best event – and his favorite, he’s said – is ac-tually the 200 meters, which holds its semifinals on Wednesday and the finals on Thursday.

His first forays in track and field competition came in the 200, as a teenager in Jamaica. Now, as he prepares for the final individ-ual sprint of his Olympic career, his name is littered throughout the all-time record list: Bolt has run four of the top six times in history, including a world-record 19.19 seconds in Berlin in 2009.

“I am ready to go,” he said.He even has his sights set on a new world record. Bolt said be-

fore competition that he hopes to run the 200 in under 19 seconds.“I really want it,” he said. “I really, really, really want that one.

I always wanted to run sub-19 (seconds). But you never know.”So here’s the big question: Can anyone beat Bolt in the 200?There’s LaShawn Merritt, the two-time medalist who took

bronze in Sunday’s 400 finals. There’s another American sprinter, Ameer Webb. And there are two fellow Jamaicans, Yohan Blake and Miguel Francis, very much in medal contention.

But there’s a short answer to that big question: No, there’s no one on the track here in Rio who can beat Bolt when he’s at his best.

And he’s given every indication that he has found the form needed to complete yet another medal trifecta – gold in the 100, 200 and the 4x100-meter relay.

(Source: USAToday)

Rio Olympics 2016: Shaunae Miller wins 400m gold in thrilling finishShaunae Miller of the Bahamas won a dramatic gold medal in the women’s 400m final at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

In a thrilling finish, Miller stumbled and then dived across the line as she edged out American world champion Allyson Felix to win in 49.44 seconds.

Felix took silver in 49.51 seconds with Jamaica’s Shericka Jack-son third. “The only thing I was thinking was the gold medal and the next thing I know I was on the ground,” Miller, 22, said. “It was just a reaction.”

She added: “I’ve never done it before. I have cuts and bruises, a few burns.”

Great Britain’s Christine Ohuruogu, who won Olympic gold in 2008 and silver in 2012, failed to reach the final.

“I don’t know what happened,” said Miller, who finished sec-ond to Felix at the World Championships in Beijing in 2015.

“My mind just went blank. I heard my mom screaming. When I heard her screaming, I was like, ‘OK, I had to have won the race’.

A tearful Miller, flagbearer for her country at the opening ceremony, told BBC Sport: “It is such an emotional moment for me. Before I came into the race I told myself, ‘This is the moment I’ve been waiting for ’ and I just gave it my all.”

Her coach, Lance Brauman, added: “She gave everything she had and her legs gave out at the line. It was not intentional.”

Felix, who won the 200m at London 2012 and has three relay gold medals, now has seven Olympic medals in total - more than any other woman in US track and field history.

(Source: BBC)

S P O R T Sd e s k

Barcelona coach Luis Enrique has confirmed that more new faces will arrive at the Nou Camp this transfer window while some squad members will be sold.The Spanish champions have recruited Andre Gomes, Samuel Umtiti, Lucas Digne and Denis Suarez since the end of last season while Marc Bartra, Thomas Vermaelen, Adriano Correia and Sandro Ramirez have de-parted.

“I believe that players will come and some players will leave,” Luis Enrique said

in Tuesday’s news conference. “All the players want to be starters,”

Luis Enrique said. “But no one has come to me to tell me that because they don’t have to.”

When asked how he was managing the goalkeeping situation, Luis Enrique said: “I’ve just told them (Stegen and Bra-vo) not to knock themselves with the goal posts or the net, the rest is up to them...

“I just want three goalkeepers in my first team.”

(Source: Reuters)

Joao Havelange, the former president of FIFA, died in Rio de Janeiro’s Samar-itano Hospital on Tuesday, the hospital said, without giving further details until authorized by his family.

The former Olympic swimmer and water polo player for Brazil had been in and out of the hospital in recent months with respiratory problems.

Havelange, who was 100, was the first non-European to head the Interna-tional Football Federation (FIFA), world soccer’s governing body. He helped to

transform the group and its flagship event, the World Cup, into a multibil-lion-dollar enterprise.

After serving 24 years as head of FIFA, Havelange resigned as its hon-orary president amid corruption al-legations against him and others in 2013.

The Engenhao stadium in Rio de Janeiro, where many of the Rio Olym-pic events are currently underway, was named in his honour.

(Source: Reuters)

Luis Enrique expects more Barcelona signings

Brazil’s former FIFA soccer boss Havelange, 100, dies in Rio

Holder Russia sweeps Holder Russia sweeps past Iran in straight sets past Iran in straight sets

Rio de Janeiro — Defending Olympic cham-pion Russia overpowered Iran 3-0 (25-23,

25-16, 25-20) for its fourth victory and one loss in Pool B of the men’s volleyball tournament at Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

The winner took third place of the pool and Iran finished in fourth place.

Raul Lozano’s men have been scheduled to meet Italy on Wednesday.

Russia outscored Iran in spikes 40-37, blocks 10-7, aces 5-1 and made only 14 unforced errors compared to 20 by the losers.

Maxim Mikhaylov led Russia with 18 points, including three blocks and one ace, while Egor Kliuka charted 10 in the win. Ar-tem Volvich contributed three blocks and finished with points.

Motjaba Mirzanjapour was the best Iranian scorer with 15 points, with 13 of those via attacks.

Iran came all the way back from a four-point gap to tie at 19-all with a spike by Mousavi but kills by Tetyukin and Kliuka gave back the lead to Russia at 22-20.

The Iranians bounced back to tie at 23-23 behind the at-tacks of Gholami and Mousavi but Russia closed the set 25-23 on the shoulder of Volvich and Kliuka, fivb.org wrote.

In the second set, Kliuka gave Russia a two-point lead for 9-7 and they steadily increased the margin behind good serves and defence at the net. Russia took the set 25-16 with five blocks in the process, two by Mikhaylov.

The third set was close up to halfway when Kliuka landed a spike and Volvich blocked Ghafour for a two-point Rus-sian advantage they never relinquished. Mikhaylov blocked Ebadipour for 25-20.

S P O R T Sd e s k

Russian national volleyball team’s coach Vladimir Ale-kno said that beating Iran in Pool B of the men’s volley-ball tournament at Rio 2016 Olympic Games was very important.

Olympic champion Russia defeated Iran in straight sets (25-23, 25-16, 25-20) in the tournament on Monday.

Alekno knows the upcoming matches are crucial and

teams need to play at their highest level if they want to survive in the battle for the Olympic medals.

“It was very important to win. In this situation it is better to play with more superiority, to play better than your opponent. I think all Russian players in the team did their job against Iran,” he added.

(Source: Tasnim)

LONDON — The top four European leagues are set to automatically qualify four teams each to the group stage of the Champions League from 2018-19, according to multiple sources.

UEFA’s executive committee is expected to approve the measure when it meets later this month, sources said, part of a set of changes to the European competition that will be implemented for the cycle between 2018-2021.

The club competition committee, led by Fernando Gomes of the Portuguese Football Federation, had been involved in tough negotiations for some six months with stakeholders, including a number of clubs from top leagues who threatened to boycott the Champions League if their demands were not met.

The additional guaranteed slots will be agreed as a compromise after UEFA was able to stand firm in deny-ing many of those demands, as well as staving away the threat of a breakaway European Super League at least through 2021.

According to sources, the demands had included en-try to European competition based on “historic merit” -- a “parachute” for popular clubs who fail to qualify on the pitch -- as well as the possibility of European ties to be played at weekends so as to increase broadcast audiences, and the creation of a new entity -- co-owned by UEFA and the clubs themselves -- to run the Champions League.

Based on the current UEFA country coefficient ranking, the four countries who would benefit directly from the

measures are Spain, Germany, England and Italy.Currently, the top three leagues qualify three teams

directly to the group stage, with a fourth having to en-dure a two-legged playoff round. The fourth-ranked league enters two teams directly to the group stage, with a third into the playoff round.

The change would give the top four leagues five more guaranteed teams, for a full 50 percent of the 32 group-stage slots.

Leagues from other countries, including France in fifth and Russia in sixth, can move into the top four coefficients based on their clubs’ performances in Eu-ropean competition.

(Source: ESPN)

Rio de Janeiro — Volleyball coach Raul Lozano says that Italy is the

favorite to win the Olympics but may faces some problems against Iran.

Iran was defeated against defending Olympic champion Russia in straight sets (25-23, 25-16, 25-20) in Pool B of the men’s volleyball tournament at Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

“It is very important for Iran to move into the second round since it is its first time in the Olym-

pics. In the first set we played better than in the next two when Russia made fewer mistakes than us and played better,” Lozano told fivb.com.

“It is very clear that Italy is the favorite. If they play under their level and we play above ours, we can surprise them.

We will go out to give a good try and who knows what can happen. Maybe Italy faces some problems with the pressure and we take advan-tage of that,” the Argentine said.

Defeating Iran was very important, Russia’s coach Alekno says

Champions League set to approve four group slots for top leagues - sources

Italy faces some problems against Iran, Lozano predicts

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Poem of the day

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TEHRAN — The Iranian National Commission for UNESCO announced

on Tuesday that over 100 cities are competing to earn the title of Iran’s Book Capital for the Iranian calendar year of 1396 (March 20, 2017-2018).

“Iran’s plan to choose a book capital every year was an imitation of UNESCO’s plan to select a city as the World Book Capital City that the organization initiated in 2001 in order to promote reading as a means of sustainable development and as a method for stopping the violence and ignorance,” the director of the Cultural Department of Iranian National Commission for UNESCO, Abdolmehdi Mostakin, told the Persian service of IRNA.

He said that Iran meets all the criteria that UNESCO has defined in selecting the Book Capital.

Iran’s plan to select a book capital annually was launched in 2014 in a collaboration between the Iranian National Commission for UNESCO and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

The southwestern city of Ahvaz won the title in 2015 and the northeastern city of Neyshabur is currently Iran’s Book Capital.

The two centers also organize the Festival of Book Loving Villages and Nomads every year to promote reading among villagers and nomads.

Mostakin also said that 1010 villages will take part in this year’s festival.

Works by Iranian illustrator Farshid Mesqali on show in Taiwan

Harry Potter “Cursed Child” producers crack down on scalpersNEW YORK (Reuters) — Tickets for London stage play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” are in such high demand that asking prices are reaching thousands of pounds (dollars), but producers are warning buyers to be beware.

Holders of about 60 tickets bought from touts, or scalpers as they are known in the United States, or through resale websites have been refused entry so far because producers are barring resold tickets. The eighth story in the Harry Potter franchise is sold out through December 2017 at London’s Palace Theatre.

One resale website recently listed a single ticket for 6,200 pounds ($8,000). Producers say they are doing their utmost to combat high prices on the secondary market and that tickets

resold online, through newspapers or through resale websites will be void for entry.

“From the outset accessible pricing has been of paramount importance to us. We have already been able to identify and refuse entry to a significant number of people who purchased tickets through resale sites and will continue to track down touts and refuse entry to anyone who has knowingly bought a ticket from a tout through the secondary market,” the play’s producers said in a statement.

“Staff at the Palace Theatre refuse entry for tickets that they are able to identify as re-sold,” they added.

Harry Potter fans don’t like the sky-high prices, but some can see why some people are willing to pay them.

TEHRAN — Works by Iranian illustrator

Farshid Mesqali are on show in an exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan, displaying a selection of works by the winners of Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration.

The exhibition which opened on July 19 highlights the works by winners of illustration award within the past 50 years, the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults has announced in a press release published on Tuesday.

Mesqali received the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1974; he is the only Iranian winner of the award in the illustration category.

His illustrations have been chosen

from the books “The Little Black Fish”, “The City of the Snakes”, “Arash, the Archer ”, “I, the Hedgehog and My Doll” and several more.

The exhibit will be running until September 20, and will later travel to different other countries for three years.

The Hans Christian Andersen Award is the highest international recognition given to an author and an illustrator of children's books. The Author ’s Award has been given since 1956 and the Illustrator ’ Award since 1966.

Iranian author Hushang Moradi Kermani has also received the Hans Christian Anderson prize in 1986 for his book “Kids of the Carpet-Weaving House”.

TEHRAN — The Lorestan Cultural and

Economic Festival was inaugurated in Tehran’s Goft-o-Gu Park on Monday with a wide range of interesting programs highlighting the culture of the western province.

A number of cultural officials, including Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali Jannati and Iranian Interior Minister Abodolreza Rahmani Fazli, attended the opening ceremony of the festival, which began with live Lori traditional music performance.

Speaking at the ceremony, Jannati praised Lorestan for its variety of traditions and customs, which have formed the precious heritage of the region.

“Lorestan have made its people deeply interested in poetry, and we can really say that Lorestan is the land of melodies. In this culture poetry flows in the daily life of people,” he said.

“The epic poets of Lorestan are great many in numbers and are rooted in historical and regional events, which narrate the stories of the heroes and heroines like Ali Mardan Khan and Mir-Gholam,” he

explained.He said that whatever remains in the

historical memory of each nation forever is the epics created to defend the respect and knowledge of man.

Jananti continued that the people of Lorestan have always been brave and never surrendered themselves to the enemies.

Open-air theatrical and musical performances, and exhibition of Lori costumes and food are among the programs arranged for the five-day festival, which also aims to highlight the economic potential of the region.

Noon:13:08 Evening: 20:10 Dawn: 4:55 (tomorrow) Sunrise: 6:26 (tomorrow)

PICTURE OF THE DAY Honaronline/Alireza Farahani

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Actress Fatemeh Motamed-Arya holds a plaque of honor that she received from the cast and crew of “Harir” for her health and pacifist activities during the premiere of the movie at Tehran’s Andisheh Cultural Center on August 15, 2016. The movie directed by Feryal Behzad is about Harir, a talented young woman whose social life has deteriorated due to her obesity.

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Over 100 cities competing to take title of Iran’s Book Capital

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People are seen in a file photo walking in front of the tomb of Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam in Neyshabur, which is currently Iran’s Book Capital.

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LA gallery to showcase photos of Abbas Kiarostami

TEHRAN — A collection of photos of renowned filmmaker

Abbas Kiarostami is scheduled to go on display in an exhibition, which will open at the Los Angeles branch of Seyhun Gallery on August 19.

The collection contains about 20 photos by Sasan Tavakoli-Farsani who collaborated with Kiarostami in some art projects, including “Persian Carpets”, “Forest without Leaves”, and “Seven Plane Trees”.

The exhibition will run until August 24.Kiarostami, who was suffering from a severe

gastrointestinal disease, died in a Paris hospital on July 4.

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Iranian artists honored at

Chinese festivalTEHRAN — Iranian artists were honored

at the Green Gem Contest, a part of the Libo International Children Animation and Comics Festival 2016 (ICACF), which was held in the Chinese city from August 6 to 10.

“Children of Oak” directed by director Saadat Rahimzadeh won the silver medal in the Animated Works section while “Lady with Flower Hair ” by Sara Tabibzadeh and “Flower and Nightingale” by Mehdi Aqajani received honorable mentions in this section.

Iranian cartoonist Sohrab Kheiri also received an honorable mention for his work in the Still Image Works section.

Artworks by adults and children were put on display at the festival, which also screened movies from different countries, including Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Spain, the U.S, South Korea, China and Iran.

Lorestan cultural festival opens in Tehran

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A Lori music band performs during the Lorestan Cultural and Economic Festival in Tehran’s Goft-o-Gu Park on August 15, 2016. (Mehr/Asghar Khamseh)

Iranian films line up for Moondance festival

TEHRAN — A number of Iranian movies will go on screen in the various sections of

the Moondance International Film Festival, which is scheduled to be held in Boulder, Colorado on September 4 and 5.

Amongst the films are “Atlan” directed by Moin Karimeddini and “Meeting with the Leaf” by Hayedeh Moradi both produced by the Documentary and Experimental Film Center.

The lineup also includes “The Sea and the Flying Fish” by Mehrdad Ghaffarzadeh that received an honorable mention at the 37th Moscow International Film Festival.

According to the organizers, the Moondance festival seeks to promote

filmmakers and artists who actively increase awareness, provide multiple viewpoints and address complex social issues.

“Quiet Leadership” comes to Iranian bookstores

TEHRAN — A Persian version of Italian football manager and former footballer

Carlo Ancelotti’s book “Quiet Leadership” has recently been published by Milkan Publications in Tehran.

Translated by Shuresh Bashiri, the book is Ancelotti’s full, riveting story of his managerial career, his methods, mentors, mistakes and triumphs.

Ancelotti is the only manager who has won the UEFA Champions League three times and reached four finals. He is regarded as one of the best and most successful managers

of all time.

Iranian director to stage “The Conference of the Birds” in Texas

TEHRAN — A cast of young trainee actors led by Iranian director

Mohammad Aqebati will perform “The Conference of the Birds” at the Eisemann Center for Performing Arts in Richardson, Texas on August 19.

The play is based on Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar ’s allegorical masterpiece of the same name that he composed during the twelfth century.

“The Conference of the Birds” describes the quest of the birds, which symbolically represent Sufis, for a mystical bird in Iranian mythology called simorgh (phoenix).

In conclusion, thirty birds that have eventually survived their journey realize they can integrate to form a simorgh, a clever play on the words simorgh and “si morgh” meaning “thirty birds” in Persian.

The performance is arranged to mark the 1st anniversary of the AramArt World Music and Art Institute in Plano that promotes Iranian art and culture in the international community.