By Javad HeiranniaINTERVIEW

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42 1 1 12Boeing exec opposes Iran licenses for others if its deal blocked

Bulgaria can serve as bridge between Iran and Europe: Rouhani

Raul Lozano satisfied with Iran’s World League elimination

Iranian musician composing opera on Nezami for Germany

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 YL Y

TEHRAN — A professor of Shanghai Interna-tional Studies University argues that Russia’s in-tervention in Syria “has forced Turkey and Israel to reassess their diplomatic alliances in order to retain some influence over intense international negotiations that will affect their vital interests.”

In an interview with the Tehran Times, Rob-ert R. Bianchi says, “Turkey is worried that Rus-sia and the United States are competing for Kurdish military assistance and that they will promise statehood to seal the bargain.”

Following is the text of the interview: What made the Erdogan government

to drop some of its preconditions to recon-cile with Israel? Will it affect the Turkish se-curity or economy?

A: Turkish leaders are trying to adapt to mul-tiple threats stemming from the prolonged war in Syria which has pushed Turkey into conflicts with its neighbors while also aggravating ethnic and political tensions at home. Turkey’s govern-ment knows that it needs help from several di-rections and it wants to mend fences abroad so that it can focus on protecting internal security.

Russia’s intervention in Syria has forced Tur-key and Israel to reassess their diplomatic alli-ances in order to retain some influence over in-tense international negotiations that will affect their vital interests—particularly Great Power discussions over the future of Syria, the politi-cal status of Kurdish territories, and the possible creation of an independent Palestine.

Why did Turkey decide to reconcile with Russia too? Will it affect the ruling AKP party’s policy in Syria?

A: Turkey is worried that Russia and the United States are competing for Kurdish mil-itary assistance and that they will promise statehood to seal the bargain. Israel wants Russia to replace France as the leader of new peace talks on Palestine—probably hoping

the talks will then fail because of U.S. oppo-sition. Both Turkey and Israel fear being left behind in a new balance of power that will benefit the U.S. on one side along with Rus-sia and Iran on the other side. Hence, Turkey and Israel believe they need to cooperate as much as possible to prevent the Americans and Russians from imposing unacceptable deals that grant political rights—including statehood—to Kurds and Palestinians.

What will be the effects of these chang-es on Turkey itself? Are the terrorist attacks inside Turkey linked to AKP’s foreign policy?

A: Inside Turkey, Erdogan will find little sym-pathy from other politicians even in his own party. Having made so many enemies at home, he is unable to muster the support needed to meet powerful pressures from Turkey’s borders and beyond. He might be tempted toward mil-itary over-reaction in eastern Turkey, in Iraq, in Syria or on all three fronts together. Such actions could easily backfire and put Erdogan at odds with Turkey’s military leaders. Having recently dismissed Ahmet Davutoglu, the coun-try’s most respected diplomatic thinker, Erdo-gan has no Kissinger-like figure to insulate him from attack.

‘Russian intervention in Syria forced Turkey, Israel to restore diplomatic alliance’ India’s GoAir to launch flight to IranGoAir, which is about to become the fourth private airline from India to operate overseas flights, has chosen to start with Iran, Kuwait, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkey, countries to which no Indian carrier flies.

The Wadia group-owned budget airline, which has sought government approval for the purpose, is likely to start international services to 14 coun-tries by early next year.

These will also include China, Thailand, Maldives, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Oman, Qatar and the UAE.

The Mumbai-based carrier wants to begin international operations from the next summer schedule. Flying rights are granted by the government twice a year—for the summer and winter schedules.

The summer schedule begins from the last Sunday of March and extends up to the last Saturday of October.

“We are requesting to be des-ignated to fly to the countries mentioned on a scheduled ba-sis during the summer schedule 2017. Extensive evaluations have been conducted to arrive at a phase-wise plan for implementa-tion,” GoAir chief executive officer Wolfgang Prock-Schauer wrote to the ministr y.

“We require allocations for proper planning and hence, we request the ministry for early approval,” the letter said.

Go Air, which received its 20th air-craft, an Airbus A320 Neo, last month, is the fifth-biggest Indian carrier with a market share of 8.1%. The airline launched domestic operations in No-vember 2005.

(Source: Hindustan Times)

Noori Pictures purchases “Zemnako”

TEHRAN — Noori Pictures, a Par-

is-based studio and motion picture distributor, has obtained the rights for the worldwide marketing of the doc-umentary “Zemnako”, Persian media announced on Monday.

The movie directed by Mehdi Qor-banpur tells the story of a 40-day-old newborn who loses his mother in the aftermath of the Iraqi chemical weap-ons attack on the Kurdish city of Hal-abja in 1988.

Noori Pictures is owned by Iranian producer Katayun Shahabi who was on the jury for the 69th Cannes Film Festival this year. Noori Pictures is also the distributor of “Nahid” by Iranian director Ida Panahandeh, which was honored in the Un Certain Regard sec-tion of the 2015 Cannes.

Officials point finger at PJAK over

assassination attempt on MP

TEHRAN — Iran has pointed an ac-

cusing finger at the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) over the recent as-sassination attempt on an MP, saying the assault is being investigated by se-curity and judicial bodies.

The vehicle carrying Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, the representative of Eslamabad-e Gharb in Majlis, came under attack by four terrorists as he was travelling to the village of Rijab on Sunday.

While Falahatpisheh and two more survived the assassination unscathed, sustaining injuries, the driver and head of the Veterinary Department of Da-lahou County lost their lives in the shooting.

Attackers, 4, fled the scene imme-diately. No group has claimed respon-sibility yet.

The attack comes amid Saudi Ara-bia’s former spy chief Turki al-Faisal attendance in an annual meeting of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organisa-tion (MKO), which Iran designates as a terrorist group. In 2012, the U.S. took the MKO off the terrorist black-list.

Also, it comes one week before President Rouhani’s trip to Kerman-shah province, which includes Eslam-abad-e Gharb. 2

TEHRAN — Responding to concerns raised over “Iran’s

ballistic missile programme” in the NATO sum-

mit in Warsaw, the Iranian Foreign Ministry has rejected them as “baseless” and “repetitive.”

While commending the signing of the nuclear

deal with Iran and its subsequent implementation in its communique issued on July 9, the 28 mem-ber-alliance said it remains “seriously concerned

by the development of Iran’s ballistic missile pro-gramme and continuing missile tests that are in-consistent with UNSCR 2231.” 2

Iran rejects NATO concerns over missile program as ‘baseless’

See page 4

Iran regains about 80% of its pre-sanctions oil market share4

TEHRAN — The director for non-communicable dis-

eases research center of Iran has said that the center is aiming at controlling and preventing non-communicable diseases in the country.

Farshad Farzadfar made the remarks during a high- ranking health officials’ visit to the center including Dr. Oleg Chestnov, World Health Organization (WHO) Assis-tant Director-General for Non-communica-ble Diseases and Mental and Sameen Sid-diqi WHO Representative in Iran here on Monday.

The center which is operating in associ-ation with WHO, United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and universities such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Ox-

ford, is focusing on providing enough evi-dence for the health policy makers to take effective measures in preventing non-com-municable diseases by running large-scale surveys in various provinces of Iran, Farzadfar noted.

For instance, in one of the projects called STEPS the researchers are due to run tests on

31,000 individuals nationwide, he added.He went on to say that the project is

revolving around detecting the risk fac-tors for non-transmissible diseases by interviewing and sampling the targeted individuals.

According to deputy health minister Ali-Akbar Sayyari, non-communicable dis-eases are growing to threaten the health of Iranians as 70 percent of deaths are the un-fortunate result of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart attack, asthma, and respiratory conditions.

Almost all these conditions are rooted in lack of movement, smoking, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, unhealthy diet, and drinking, Sayyari explained.

Iran on track to curb non-communicable diseases

12 Pages Price 10,000 Rials 38th year No.12596 Tuesday JULY 12, 2016 Tir 22, 1395 Shawwal 7, 1437

A poster for “Zemnako”

Tehran, Sofia ink 3 cooperation MOUs

TEHRAN — Iran and Bulgaria signed

three memorandums of understand-ing in Tehran on Monday to boost bi-lateral relations in various fields.

The MOUs were signed in the presence of Iranian First-Vice Pres-ident Es’haq Jahangiri and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, IRNA reported.

An MOU was penned by Iranian Minister of Communications and Infor-mation Technology Mahmoud Va’ezi and Bulgarian Minister of Transport, Information Technology and Commu-nications Ivaylo Moskovski.

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TEHRAN — The Atomic En-

ergy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said on Monday that Tehran will expand cooperation with France on the International Thermonucle-ar Experimental Reactor (ITER).

ITER is an international nu-clear fusion research and engi-neering megaproject, which will be the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics ex-periment. It is an experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor

that is being built next to the Cadarache facility in the south of France.

“The Iranian officials have reached an agreement upon cooperation with France in the international project on nucle-

ar fusion known as ITER,” AEOI spokesman Behrooz Kamalvandi stated.

Kamalvandi also said that Iran is holding negotiations with China on redesigning the Arak heavy wa-ter reactor.

Tehran seeking close cooperation with France on ITER

1 Senior Iranian officials have reacted to the assas-

sination attempt. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and Mohammad Reza Aref, a key reformist lawmaker, have requested an immediate probe into the issue.

Also, Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Amoli Larijani said on Monday that “some reactionary countries in the region coupled with the global arrogance seek to foment inse-curity in the country by equipping terrorism.”

Also in this regard, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Com-mittee, said the assassination attempt was a calculated one, most likely hatched by terrorist groups.

According to him, the terrorists are being searched for by the IRGC and hopefully, will be punished soon.

Terrorist groups backed by Iran’s enemies have been carrying out acts of terror mostly in border areas during recent months to scuttle the country’s security.

The IRGC said in June that Iranian troops had killed five terrorists in an ambush in the country’s northwest near the border with Turkey. In its statement, the IRGC added that those killed were all members of PJAK, an offshoot of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The IRGC said their “five-member band” was decimated near the Irani-an city of Sardasht.”

The IRGC’s Ground Force Commander, Brigadier

General Mohammad Pakpour, also said in June that the Iranian forces were engaged in clashes with two terrorist groups in the country’s northwest near the border with Iraq and killed a number of terrorists. He added that the two groups were trying to infiltrate into Iran through the Oshnavieh border area to carry out sabotage and ter-rorist acts.

In February, Iranian border guards arrested 10 mem-bers of terrorist groups who were attempting to infiltrate into the country through eastern and western borders. Terrorist attacks are rare in Iran, but al-Qaeda-linked and other groups stage hit-and-run assaults from time to time.

TEHRAN — A key founder of the Islamic

Revolutionary Guard Corps has warned Saudis of an unimaginable elimination by Iran if Riyadh presses on with its hostile approach.

“It takes us a little while to lose our cool, but if we do, we leave no trace of Saudis on the earth,” wrote Mohsen Rezaee on his Instagram page.

The incendiary words by Rezaee come

days after Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former spy chief, attended an an-nual meeting of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organisation (MKO), which Iran desig-nates as a terrorist group.

During the meeting in Paris, the Saudi prince had pledged to back the group.

“Your legitimate struggle against the (Iranian) regime will achieve its goal, sooner or later,” al-Faisal, also an ex-am-bassador to Washington and London,

had said in his speech.“I, too, want the fall of the regime,” he

added, Reuters reported. Former IRGC commander also said

Iran holds Saudis accountable for terrorist attacks by the MKO over the past years.

This is the first time a ranking Iranian reads Saudis the Riot act, warning them of not tr ying Tehran’s patience.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have recently

seen themselves in a more direct con-frontation over a number of regional issues, notably the conflicts in Syria and Yemen in which they support opposing sides.

While Saudi Arabia and certain Arab states have been backing the militant groups in Syria who have been fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad since 2011, Iran has been supporting the Syrian government.

TEHRAN — Reaffirming Iran’s support for Iraq, President Hassan Rouhani said

on Monday that Iran will stand beside the Iraqi people and government in fighting terrorism and defending the holy shrines.

During a meeting with Ammar al-Hakim, leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Rouhani also high-lighted the necessity of maintaining unity and boost-ing integrity among the various political and religious groups in Iraq.

He praised efforts being made by the Iraqi religious scholars in strengthening unity among the Iraqis and serving their “national interests”.

Pointing to the need to expand relations between Iran and Iraq, he said, “Expanding, boosting and strength-ening Tehran-Baghdad relations will benefit the people in the two countries and in the region [the Middle East region].”

For his part, Hakim elaborated on the latest devel-opments in Iraq, saying the liberation of Fallujah was a result of “unity” and “coordination” among the Iraqi po-litical and military forces.

On June 17, the Iraqi forces recaptured Fallujah from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The city was occupied by the terrorists in January 2014.

On Sunday the Iraqi political figure also met sepa-rately with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s National Se-curity Council.

In the meeting Shamkhani said Iran will press ahead with its support for Iraq and Syria in their fight against terrorists.

Zarif also insisted on the need for unity between different political and tribal groups in Iraq and co-operation between regional countries to defeat ter-rorism.

The foreign minister added, “The Islamic Republic of Iran will stand beside the Iraqi government and people until the total annihilation of terrorists.”

TEHRAN — Presi-dent Hassan Rouhani

told the visiting Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov on Monday that Tehran is ready to open a new chapter in its rela-tions with Sofia, noting that Bulgaria can act as a bridge between Iran and Europe.

“Bulgaria, as a friendly country, can be one of the gateways to Iran’s relations with Euro-pean countries in all areas,” Rouhani said.

Borissov arrived in Tehran on Monday at the head of an economic and politi-cal delegation. Immediately after his ar-rival Borissov held talks with Iranian First Vice-President Es’haq Jahangiri.

During the meeting Jahangiri said Iran is ready to expand cooperation with Bul-garia given the historical and cultural af-finities between the two countries.

For his part, Prime Minister Borissov said that Bulgaria is determined to ex-pand political, economic and cultural ties with Iran.

‘The will to boost ties’During a joint press conference with

the Bulgarian prime minister, Jahangiri also said that the Iranian and Bulgarian officials are strongly determined to ex-pand ties.

Jahangiri described Borissov’s trip to Tehran as an indication of the two coun-

tries’ will to expand relations.Borissov said that the two countries

have the “political will” to take steps in line with serving the interests of the Bul-

garian and Iranian peoples.He said that he will help resolve bank-

ing problems between Iran and the Euro-pean countries.

The Bulgarian prime minister also in-vited Jahangiri to visit Sofia.

Iran and Bulgaria also signed three mem-orandums of understanding in areas of joint investment, communications, and industry.

The MOUs were inked in the presence of the Iranian first vice president and the Bulgarian prime minister.

‘Support for legitimate governments against terrorism’

Jahangiri also said Iran supports the legitimate governments that are fighting terrorism.

Speaking at the Iran-Bulgaria joint committee meeting, the vice president noted that an international determination is required to fight terrorism. “Today, the people in Iraq, Syria and Libya are fight-ing terrorism and it is essential to support the legal governments of these countries.”

He said while the extremist and terror-ist groups have caused Islamophobia in the world Bulgaria has acted in a way that people with various religions have brotherly relations.

Pointing to the issue of terrorism and its effects on European countries, Boriss-ov also said that reliance on “wisdom” is required to counter terrorism.

Borissov also criticized the policies that have led to war and bloodshed in some countries like Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq.

JULY 12, 2016JULY 12, 20162 I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

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MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS

TEHRAN — Friday prayer leaders from across Iran have praised President Hassan Rouhani’s state-ment on the recent case of inflated salaries as an evidence of the administration’s truthfulness and its resolve in fighting corruption and mending faults, the presidential website reported.

In separate statements on Monday, the clerics thanked Rouhani for his efforts to clarify the eco-nomic status of the administrative body and said his approach to the recent scandal on inflated salaries once again boosted the public trust in his govern-ment.

Friday prayer leaders appreciate Rouhani’s decision on inflated salaries

PRESID

ENT

TSNIM

Iran indicts 4 dual citizens

TEHRAN — Tehran Prosecutor General Abbas Ja-fari Dowlatabadi announced on Monday that four individuals with dual citizenship have been indict-ed, noting that the cases of seven other defendants also accused of involvement in the post-election unrest in 2009 have been sent to the court.

In a meeting with high-ranking judiciary officials in Tehran, Jafari Dowlatabadi said the cases of Naz-anin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (Iranian-British citizen), Homa Hoodfar (Iranian-Canadian), Nazar Zaka (U.S.-Leb-anese) and Siamak Namazi (Iranian-American) have been sent to the court, Tasnim reported.

The prosecutor general added that the same has happened for 7 other defendants charged with involvement in the 2009 riots.

In June, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps branch in southern province of Kerman confirmed that its intelligence department had arrested Zaghari back on April 3.

IR

NA

Russian expert hails Iran’s counter-terrorism efforts

TEHRAN — A former member of the Duma Foreign Affairs Committee said here on Mon-day that Iran has managed to foil foreign ter-rorist plots, the U.S. in particular, over the past four decades.

Talking to IRNA, Simon Bagdasarov said Iran is also considered as a symbol of combat against ter-rorism in the region.

He also described the Islamic Republic as the safest country in the region, underscoring that none of the regional countries but Iran has the ef-fective record of combat against terrorist groups in the Middle East.

The Russian official, now director of the Center for Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, also said that the U.S. is trying to instigate the terrorist elements to create chaos and disturb peace and tranquility in Iran.

While not getting tangible outcomes from its plots against Iran, he said, the U.S. pro-voked the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to wage a war against the Islamic Republic in the 1980.

Thanks to Iran’s valuable achievements in its counter-terrorist efforts in the past four decades, he said, Iran is the forerunner in the fight against terrorism in the region.

MFA

Australian ambassador’s mission ends

TEHRAN — Australian Ambassador to Iran Paul Foley left Iran on Monday after a 3-year mission.

Before leaving, he met with Morteza Sarmadi, the deputy foreign minister, the Foreign Ministry reported.

The sides in particular discussed the Iran nuclear deal, where Foley mentioned that in anticipation of growing trade relations, the Australian embassy has opened a trade office to coordinate the affairs.

ISNA

Rouhani felicitates Mongolia National Day

TEHRAN — In a message on Monday President Hassan Rouhani felicitated his Mongolian coun-terpart Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj on National Day and wished success for the Mongolian people.

Rouhani expressed hope that the two countries’ bilateral relations would be expanded, ISNA report-ed.

The Mongolian national holiday called Naadam is celebrated each year on July 11. Wrestling, horse racing, and archery make up the core activities of the National Day festivals.

Rouhani insists Iran will stand beside Iraq

PM Borissov says Bulgaria firm to increase political, economic ties with Iran

PM Borissov said he will help resolve banking problems between Iran and the European

countries.

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Bulgaria can serve as bridge between Iran and Europe: Rouhani

1 Bahram Qasemi, the Foreign Ministry

spokesman, said, “Iran’s missile capabili-ties, as reiterated numerous times, not only has nothing to do with the JCPOA and nuclear negotiations, but it is neither in breach of the 2231 resolution.”

“As declared repeatedly, our coun-try’s missile capabilities merely fall within the framework of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s legitimate defensive program, and [the missiles] are by no means designed to carry nuclear warheads,” he added.

Just days before the first anniversary of the nuclear agreement between Iran and six global powers, Iran’s missile program has been once more in the spotlight.

In his first bi-annual report to the 15-member Security Council on the im-plementation of remaining sanctions and restrictions, the UN secretary general

had said, “I call upon Iran to refrain from conducting such ballistic missile launches since they have the potential to increase tensions in the region.”

Ban had said Iran’s ballistic missile launches “are not consistent with the constructive spirit” of the nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.

Reuters claimed to have seen a copy of the confidential report.

Also, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had told the parliament on July 5 that mis-sile launches by Iran earlier this year were inconsistent with the 2231 resolution.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Par-liament National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, called the German chancellor ’s remarks “politically motivat-ed” and “unacceptable”.

An unnamed official at the Iranian For-eign Ministry had also pointed to Ban’s

judgment, recommending him not to yield to political strains put on him.

The UN resolution “calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of deliver-ing nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”

In March, the IRGC test-fired two types of Qadr ballistic missiles during the large-scale drills.

The launches were the first ones since the signing of nuclear deal with world powers.

The West’s recent missile grievances have come in for a lot of flak from Iranian officials who deem the concerns as un-warranted because none of the missiles test-fired by were designed to carry nu-clear warheads in the first place.

Commenting on an earlier missile test-firing by Iran, U.S. Secretary of State

John Kerry had said the U.S. and its part-ners were “prepared to work on a new arrangement to find a peaceful solution to these issues.”

However, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mo-hammad Javad Zarif replied that the country’s missile program was not up for negotiation with the U.S.

In March 2016 Zarif said, “We stated when the nuclear deal was approved by the Security Council and during the course of nuclear discussions that we will continue with our defense capabili-ties and that these defense capabilities have nothing to do with nuclear weap-ons.”

In a tweet on April 2, Zarif also said, “If we had missiles during Saddam’s war on us, they may have discouraged or at least reduced his indiscriminate attacks on our civilians.”

Tehran points finger at PJAK over assassination attempt on MP

Iran leaves no trace of Saudis on earth in a fit of pique: IRGC founder

Iran rejects NATO concerns over missile program as ‘baseless’

South Sudan crisis: Renewed fighting in Juba Renewed clashes have broken out in the South Sudanese capital, Juba, despite calls by the United Nations Security Council for rival factions to “urgently end the fighting” that has engulfed the city in recent days.

Hundreds of people, mostly soldiers, have been report-edly killed in the fighting between rival armed groups since Thursday, raising fears of a slide back into all-out conflict in the five-year-old country.

At least 272 people have died, a health ministry source told the Reuters news agency early on Sunday.

The latest bout of violence comes hours after a UN Secu-rity Council emergency meeting said South Sudan’s neigh-bors should also help end the fighting and be prepared to send additional troops to bolster the UN mission in the coun-try (UNMISS).

“The members of the Security Council urged an imme-diate end to the fighting by all concerned and demanded that President Kiir and First Vice President Machar do their utmost to control their respective forces, urgently end the fighting and prevent the spread of violence,” the council said in a statement on Sunday.

Expressing “shock and outrage” at attacks on UN com-pounds, which killed and wounded Chinese and Rwandan peacekeepers, the council also demanded that civilian sites be protected and warned that “attacks against civilians and UN premises and personnel may constitute war crimes”.

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from the UN head-quarters in New York, said delegates expressed “deep con-cern” about the recent upsurge of violence in Juba and dis-cussed ways to make the work of the 14,000 peacekeepers “easier” and “safer”.

More than 1,000 people fled to a UN compound in Juba as heavy fighting broke out, and two UNMISS sites in the capital were hit by small and heavy arms fire, the UN said in a statement.

Following a localized firefight between rival military fac-tions on Thursday night in Juba, major fighting erupted on Friday outside the presidential compound as Kiir was meet-ing with Machar, a former rebel leader and currently first vice president. The fighting quickly spread throughout the city.

An Al Jazeera correspondent who was inside the presi-dential compound during that attack later saw bodies of sol-diers on the lawn and reported that thousands of displaced residents were trying to find safety amid the chaos.

Kiir and Machar both appealed for calm as the fighting engulfed parts of the city, and amid confusion as to whom exactly was responsible.

On Sunday, a day after the country reached its fifth in-dependence anniversary, residents of Juba’s Gudele and Je-bel districts reported heavy gunfire near the barracks where Machar and his troops have their headquarters.

Gunfire was also heard from the area near the airport, which local sources said had closed.

South Sudanese Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth laid the blame for the fighting on opposition forces loyal to the vice president, Machar, while Taban Deng, the minister of mining, called for opposition forces to join a uni-lateral ceasefire.

“Our people have suffered so much, they don’t need any more suffering even for a minute. This is a call to our generals in both armies that they should ceasefire immediately,” Deng said at a news conference in Juba on Sunday.

South Sudan was founded with optimistic celebrations in the capital on July 9, 2011, after it gained independence from Sudan in a referendum that passed with close to 100 percent of the vote.

The country descended into conflict in December 2013 after Kiir accused Machar, his former deputy who he had sacked earlier that year, of plotting a coup.

Civil war broke out when soldiers from Kiir ’s Dinka eth-nic group disarmed and targeted troops of Machar’s Nuer ethnic group. Machar and commanders loyal to him fled to the countryside, and tens of thousands of people died in the conflict that followed. Many starved to death.

A peace agreement signed in August saw Machar rejoin the government and his forces re-enter Juba as the first step toward integration into a national army.

(Source: agencies)

Al-Shabab fighters attack Somali army baseTerrorists from Somalia’s armed group al-Shabab have at-tacked an army base southwest of the capital, Mogadishu, killing at least 10 soldiers, the group and a military officer told the Reuters news agency.

The attackers exploded a car packed with explosives be-fore storming the Lanta Buro base in Lower Shabelle region, some 50km outside Mogadishu, on Monday morning.

“Heavy exchange of gunfire continued for hours,” Major Ahmed Farah told Reuters from the nearby town of Afgooye. At least 12 al-Shabab fighters were killed, he added.

Residents said they heard heavy gunfire and an explosion before the fighters stormed the base.

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Kenya’s cap-ital, Nairobi, said that al-Shabab was claiming that they had killed around 30 soldiers and that they took away with them “one armored ambulance, four other armored vehicles and two military trucks”.

Al-Shabab often launches attacks on Somali security forces, officials and army bases in an effort to topple the government and impose its own brand of government on Somalia.

On Sunday, more than 100 members of al-Shabab raided a police station in northeast Kenya overnight, wounding one officer and making off with arms and ammunition, according to police.

(Source: agencies)

JULY 12, 2016JULY 12, 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

Interior minister Theresa May is set to become Britain’s first woman prime minister since Margaret Thatcher af-ter her only rival abruptly quit the race on Monday, re-moving the need for a drawn-out leadership contest.

May, 59, was left as the only candidate to succeed David Cameron, who announced he was stepping down after Britons voted last month to leave the European Union. Britain’s planned withdrawal has weakened the 28-nation bloc and created huge uncertainty over trade and investment.

May and Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom had been due to contest a ballot of around 150,000 Conservative party members, with the result to be declared by Sept. 9. But Leadsom unexpectedly withdrew on Monday, open-ing the way for May to take over much sooner.

Her victory means that the complex process of extri-cating Britain from the EU will be led by someone who

favored a vote to Remain in last month’s membership referendum.

Leadsom, 53, has never served in cabinet and was barely known to the British public until she emerged as a prominent voice in the successful Leave campaign.

She had been strongly criticized over a newspaper interview in which she appeared to suggest that being a mother meant she had more of a stake in the coun-try’s future than May, who has no children. Some Con-servatives said they were disgusted by the remarks, for which Leadsom later apologized, while others said they showed naivety and a lack of judgment.

May, who has served as interior minister for the past six years, is now set to become Britain’s second female prime minister after Thatcher, although it was not clear exactly how soon that would happen.

Graham Brady, head of the Conservative party com-

mittee in charge of the leadership contest, said there were still constitutional procedures to be observed before her appointment could be confirmed, but he aimed to make a confirmation announcement as soon as possible.

(Source: Reuters)

Police say the “worst” spike in recorded hate crimes in Britain was caused by the EU referendum on June 23.

Recent figures released by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) showed that reports of hate crimes to police increased by 42 percent across Britain in the week before and the week after the vote compared to the same period last year.

In London, police has reportedly recorded an aver-age of three hate crimes an hour since the referendum.

“I believe the referendum debate has led to an in-crease in reporting of hate crime,” Mark Hamilton, the head of the NPCC, said on Monday.

“It is very clear in the last couple of weeks that more people have been aware of experiencing such incidents than we have had before,” he also said.

Hamilton noted that the rise in the offences had a direct link to the Brexit vote.

“Some people took that as a license to behave in a racist or other discriminatory way. We cannot divorce the country’s reaction to the referendum and the in-crease in hate crime reporting,” he added.

The most common of the 3,076 reported offences were mainly “harassment, common assault and other vi-olence” directed against “visible minorities” and people

from eastern Europe, police figures showed.Hundreds of hate crimes were also perpetrated

on social media, with members of the public tell-ing people speaking foreign languages or peo-ple who are not white to “go home” and “leave” Britain.

A number of racist anti-immigrant graffiti were daubed on the walls across the country, including the one on the Polish cultural center in west London.

The government has condemned the offences and pledged to take further measures to tackle them.

(Source: Press TV)

At least two Egyptian police forces have been killed and some others injured in a deadly roadside bomb explosion in the restive Sinai Peninsula.

Local media reports said the roadside bomb went off in the restive province of North Sinai on Monday morning and hit an armored vehicle carrying police per-sonnel.

The victims have been identified as brigadier general Ahmed Kamal Mahmous, 49, and conscript Kirollos Wa-hib Fahmy, 21.

Three other conscripts inside the vehi-

cle were also wounded with shrapnel and taken to a military hospital.

Amaq news agency, which is affiliated to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Le-vant (ISIL/Daesh), said a bomb planted by the terrorist group targeted a police mine clearing vehicle. However, it was not clear whether it was referring to the same incident.

This attack comes a day after the Egyptian soldiers thwarted an ambush on a checkpoint Sunday in the town of Sheikh Zuweid, located in North Sinai Province, killing 14 militants and detaining

a dozen others.Egypt’s military has launched a high-

scale security operation dubbed “Mar-tyr ’s Right,” against the militants’ positions in northern Sinai. The operation began in September 2015 following coordinated terrorist attacks on several army check-points that claimed the lives of 21 soldiers in July 2015.

Over the past several years, Egyptian troops have been engaged in efforts to quell rampant militancy across the Sinai Peninsula.

The battle has led to the deaths of

hundreds of troops and militants, includ-ing those with the Takfiri Velayat Sinai group.

Previously known as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis (Supporters of the Holy House), the outfit has pledged allegiance to the ISIL terrorist group, which is mainly active in Iraq and Syria.

In October 2014, a state of emer-gency was declared across the whole peninsula following a deadly terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 33 sol-diers.

(Source: agencies)

Police in Turkey have arrested seven more suspects in connection with the last month terror attacks in the main airport of the city of Istanbul.

Police on late Sunday arrested the seven suspects pending trial in connec-tion with the attacks which hit the Ataturk International Airport, killing 47 people and leaving more than 200 injured, the state-run Anadolu agency reported on Monday.

Judicial sources said the seven face

charges of “being a member of an armed terrorist group” and “assisting premeditated homicide,” adding that the arrests were ordered by the Ba-kirkoy Criminal Court of Peace in Istan-bul.

Anadolu said the arrests were made following risk analysis and profile assess-ment reports by Istanbul’s anti-terror po-lice.

Turkey has so far arrested 37 people over the attacks on June 28, in which

three foreign nationals opened fire at passengers and detonated their bombs at the international terminal of the air-port.

Officials have blamed the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) ter-rorist group for the attacks although the Takfiri group, which is mainly operating in neighboring Iraq and Syria and has a record of carrying out bombings in Tur-key, has not claimed responsibility for the attacks yet.

Prosecutors have named two of the attackers as Rakim Bulgarov and Vadim Osmanov without elaborating on their nationality.

The attacks come as Turkey itself stands accused of supporting the militant groups fighting against the Syrian government by, among oth-er things, providing them with safety passage to the Arab country via Turk-ish territory.

(Source: agencies)

Theresa May set to replace Cameron as rival quits Britain’s PM race

Worst rise in Britain hate crimes caused by EU referendum: police

Two Egypt policemen killed in Sinai bombing

Turkey charges 7 more over Istanbul airport attacks

United States Pentagon Chief Ashton Carter held talks on Monday in Bagh-dad on the fight against the Islam-ic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) terrorist group and the strategy to recapture Iraq’s second city Mosul from the terrorists.

Carter met with Prime Minister Haid-er al-Abadi and Defence Minister Khalid al-Obeidi, two days after Iraq announced the recapture of a base south of Mosul seen as an important step toward the eventual battle for the city.

Mosul has been under ISIL control since June 2014, when the terrorists overran large parts of Iraq, carrying out atrocities including summary exe-cution-style killings, mass kidnappings and rape.

ISIL also holds territory in neighbor-ing Syria, but has lost significant ground in both countries, and Carter wants to highlight successes, even as the terrorists have struck back with devastating attacks in Iraq and abroad.

The Sunni extremists have carried out bloody attacks against civilians as they lose ground, including a bombing in Baghdad that killed 292 people this month, one of the deadliest to ever hit the country.

“Let me begin... by expressing the condolences of myself and the United States for the terrorist attacks against the people of Iraq in recent weeks,” Carter told Abadi on his fourth visit to the coun-try since becoming defense secretary in 2015.

“You have our sympathy but also it

further strengthens our resolve to help in the defeat of (ISIL), which all of our socie-ties need because all of our societies are subject to attacks.”

“I also want to congratulate you on the string of successes that the Iraqi se-curity forces have had,” said Carter.

The Qayyarah airbase, which Abadi announced on Saturday had been recap-tured, is located 60 kilometers (35 miles) south of Mosul and can serve as a launch pad for future operations to recapture the city.

Ahead of his meetings, Carter told journalists that he would discuss the next moves in the war against the terrorists.

“What I’ll be discussing with Prime Minister Abadi and our commanders there are the next plays in the campaign,

which involve the collapse and control over Mosul,” Carter said aboard a military plane.

The ultimate goal, he added, was “the recapture of all of Iraqi territory by the Iraqi security forces, but of course Mosul is the biggest part of that.”

U.S. defense officials say the cam-paign’s first “10 plays” have been suc-cessfully completed in the U.S.-led coun-ter-ISIL campaign in Iraq and Syria.

These steps include the recapture of several important areas across the two countries, including Ramadi in Iraq and Al-Shadadi, a town in northeastern Syr-ia previously considered a strategic ISIL stronghold.

Carter and President Barack Obama have been criticized for the pace of the

campaign, which began in autumn 2014 and got off to a slow start, particularly in war-torn Syria, where the United States had few assets on the ground to provide targeting information.

The Pentagon has announced a series of measures to speed up the war, includ-ing a revised mission to train anti-ISIL re-bels in northern Syria and extra advisers for Iraqi forces.

Coupled with coalition air support, the results have seen the ISIL terrorist group losing roughly half of its territory in Iraq and about 20 percent of its Syria claim, the Pentagon said.

But the terrorists have struck back against civilians as they lost ground.

On July 3, ISIL carried out the dev-astating bombing targeting shoppers in Baghdad that killed 292, many of whom were burned alive, spark-ing widespread anger among Iraqis, some of whom have accused the gov-ernment of not doing enough to pro-tect them.

Four days later, the terrorists struck a Shia shrine north of the capital, leaving another 40 dead.

Carter was also to meet with U.S. troops, of whom there are now about 4,000 in Iraq, mainly to train local forces.

The Pentagon chief also phoned Mas-sud Barzani, the de facto president of Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

The United States has pledged $415 million to help Kurdish peshmerga fight-ers as they join the fight for Mosul, mov-ing in from the north.

(Source: AFP)

Pentagon chief holds talks in Baghdad on anti-ISIL fight

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4 I 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 yJULY 12, JULY 12, 20162016

Singapore, China main destinations for record Iranian fuel oil exports

Iran Stone Exhibition to host 250 companies

TEHRAN — 8th Iran Stone Exhibi-

tion (IRSE 2016) on natural stones, mine, machinery and equipment will be held at the Tehran Perma-nent International Fairgrounds from July 18 to 21, IRIB news re-ported.

The four-day event will host 210 Iranian and 40 foreign companies from Italy, South Korea, China, Tur-key and some other countries, ac-cording to Hossein Ja’farian, the spokesman of the exhibition.

Building-stone exports at $400m

Also, Malek Rahmati, the secre-tary of Iran Stone Association, put the worth of country’s annual exports of building stones at $400 million.

He said 15 million tons of stones have been produced in Iran over the past four years, creating 380,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Iran holds more than seven percent of the world’s total mineral reserves, in-cluding 60 types of minerals, Rahmati said.

Iran exported a record 1.5 mil-lion tons of fuel oil during the third Iranian calendar month of Khordad (May 21 to June 20), Fars news agen-cy reported.

Mohsen Qamsari, the National Iranian Oil Company’s director for international affairs, commented that fuel oil exports have grown over the past few months, and the coun-try was now exporting almost 10 mil-lion barrels per month.

The cargoes are mostly destined to China and Singapore, he added.

In February, Iran had 1.2 million tons of fuel oil exports that were split between Singapore and Fujai-rah, and 760,000 tons of fuel oil ex-ports in January.

NIOC is understood to have typically produced about 1 million tons of low-density fuel oil each month, including approximate-ly 600,000 tons of its straight-run 280 cSt grade from Bandar Mah-shahr and 400,000 tons of 380 cSt from Bandar Abbas.

(Source: shipandbunker.com)

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The tweet, which read “Working on Top Secret Tesla Masterplan, Part 2 hoping to publish later this week” comes amid inquiries into two crashes of Tesla cars, as well as ongoing questions regarding Musk’s plans to combine his electronic vehicle company, Tesla, with his solar panel maker company SolarCity Corp.

On July 1, a driver of a Tesla Model X in Pennsylvania crashed into a turnpike guard rail. The National High-way Traffic Safety Administration announced last week it is investigating the crash “to determine whether au-tomated functions were in use at the time of the crash.”

Wal-Mart Stores Inc will offer free shipping with no minimum purchase on all online orders for five days starting on July 11, stepping up its battle against Amazon.com Inc’s highly publicized shop-ping event “Prime Day”.

Prime Day is a sales event for members of Ama-zon Prime’s $99 shipping and digital content ser-vice that has turned into a crucial part of the online retailer ’s growth plan. Amazon expects its second annual Prime Day event on July 12, to be bigger than last year.

In 2015, Amazon generated more sales on Prime Day than on Black Friday, a day which officially kicks of the year-end shopping season in the United States.

Russia has offered Indian oil companies a stake in the second phase of Yamal LNG, the biggest project to produce liquefied natural gas in the Arctic.

The offer of stake in JSC Yamal LNG was made when Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan visited St. Petersburg last month, sources privy to the develop-ment said.

Petronet LNG, India’s biggest natural gas importer, is studying the offer, they said adding other state-owned firms like Indian Oil Corp (IOC) may join in later.

Novatek OJSC, Russia’s second-biggest natural gas producer, had in 2013 offered a 9 percent stake in the $27 billion Phase-I of Yamal LNG project to a consortium of Petronet, IOC and ONGC Videsh Ltd.

Tehran, Sofia ink 3 cooperation MOUs 1

Another MOU was signed between Iran’s Deputy Economy Minister Mohammad Khazaei and his Bulgarian counterpart Lyuben Petrov on joint investment.

Petrov also inked the third MOU with Iran’s Deputy Industry Minister Ali Yazdani on cooperation between Iranian and Bulgarian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Gateways for each otherThe Bulgarian prime minister, heading a high-

ranking political-economic delegation, arrived in Tehran on Monday for a two-day visit.

Iran and Bulgaria are situated in geographically strategic regions in Europe and the Middle East respectively. So, they can be gateways for each other ’s markets in the two regions, Borissov said in his meeting with Jahangiri.

He expressed hope that bilateral relations in banking, energy, agriculture, and tourism would be restored to pre-sanction levels.

Expanding energy ties In a Monday meeting, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan

Namdar Zanganeh and Bulgarian Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova conferred on expanding bilateral energy ties through reviving their joint energy committee, Shana news agency reported.

Last week, Iran’s Ambassador to Bulgaria Abdollah Norouzi said entrepreneurs from his country are eyeing

the prospect to open an oil refinery in Bulgaria.Norouzi told Bulgaria’s Evropa TV station that the

Iranian business in general is interested in investing into

the Southeastern European nation's energy sector.This includes oil and exports to the country, he

added.

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Musk hints at top secret Tesla masterplan: tweet

Wal-Mart offers 'free shipping with no minimum' to tackle Amazon's Prime Day

Russia offers Indian firms stake in Yamal LNG project

ECONOMYd e s k

ECONOMYd e s k

Consumer prices ease in China, economic stimulus needed to boost pricesChina’s consumer price inflation fell to near six-month low in June, while producer prices extended their decline, signaling caution that more economic and financial stimuli by the government are required to speed up the economy and help boost price inflation.

The consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.9 percent in June from a year earlier, compared with a 2.0 percent increase in May, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed Sunday. Ac-cording to a Reuters poll of analysts, inflation was expected to witness a 1.8 percent gain.

On the other hand, food prices surged 4.6 percent m/m in June, compared to 5.9 percent m/m in May. Also, prices of China's staple meat pork rose 30.1 percent, compared with a 33.6 percent increase in May.

In addition, the producer price index (PPI) dropped 2.6 percent from a year earlier, extending decline for 51 consecutive months, though it has moderated, suggesting that the strains on compa-nies' profits may be evading. Prices had fallen 2.8 percent in May.

(Source: econotimes.com)

TEHRAN — “After the execution of Iran’s nuclear deal with G5+1 group

in January, 13 international shipping lines have start-ed commuting to the Iranian southern port of Shahid Rajaee,” the CEO of Ports and Maritime Organization (PMO) Mohammad Saied Nejad said on Monday.

“More than $5 billion is invested on improvement of Shahid Rajaee Port,” IRNA quoted Saied Nejad, who is also the deputy transport minister, address-ing a conference on “Belgian Port of Antwerp Day” in Tehran.

Shahid Rajaee, Antwerp sistership MOU concluded

Port of Antwerp’s Managing Director Eddy Bruyn-inckx and the managing director of southern prov-ince of Hormozgan’s Ports and Maritime Department Ebrahim Ideni signed a contract on sistership of Ira-nian port of Shahid Rajaee and Belgian port of Ant-werp on Monday.

The agreement seeks ease of transporting goods between the two countries as well as knowledge transfer.

13 intl. shipping lines call at Iranian port post-sanctions: PMO chief

Boeing exec opposes Iran licenses for others if its deal blockedThe head of Boeing Commercial Airplanes said on Sunday that U.S. suppliers to Europe's Airbus and other plane makers should not be able to get licenses to sell their wares to Iran if Boeing is blocked from completing a $25 billion deal with the country.

The remarks by the Boeing Co. unit's chief executive Ray Conner come as Boeing and others face opposition in Con-gress over the sale of jets under a deal between Iran and world powers to ease sanctions in exchange for curbs on nu-clear activities.

Both Boeing and European rival Airbus have lined up pre-liminary deals to sell or lease over 100 planes to Iran, subject to licenses from the U.S. Treasury for aircraft more than 10 percent of whose components are made in the United States.

The potential sales come at a time when demand for wide-body jets is slowing, a factor which makes the task of ensuring smooth output of the current version of Boeing's 777 jet "a little more challenging", Conner told reporters.

(Source: Reuters)

Iran regains about 80% of its pre-sanctions oil market share: NIOC officialIran has regained about 80 percent of the market share it held before the U.S. and European Union tightened sanctions on its oil industry in 2012, said Mohsen Ghamsari, National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)’s director of international affairs.

The country exports about 2 million barrels of its daily output of 3.8 million, the official added.

Sanctions were eased in January, and Iran plans to double crude exports.

“Our exports peak is above 4 million barrels a day, and we have plans for that and are waiting for the right condi-

tions,” Ghamsari said in an interview in Tehran, without elaborating on the timing for such an increase.

The Persian Gulf nation is seeking more than $100 bil-lion in investment from inter-national partners to upgrade its oil industry and reclaim its position as the second-big-gest producer in the Organi-zation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, after Saudi Arabia. Iran targets 5.8 million barrels a day in combined production of crude and condensates by

2021. It defied skeptics with a 25 percent surge in production so far in 2016 and aims to reach an eight-year high for daily output of 4 million barrels by the end of the year.

Oil market seen stable even as Iran plans to boost crude exports

Elsewhere in his remarks, Ghamsari opined that oil markets will remain stable this year even as Iran plans to keep boosting crude exports to regain the market share it lost due to sanctions.

“The market will stay on its present balance, and a return to prices below $30 a barrel is not very probable, at least in the current year”, he said.

Oil priceBenchmark Brent crude, which averaged more than $99 a

barrel in 2014, tumbled to a 12-year low of about $27 in Janu-ary due to the continued global supply glut. It ended trading in London last week at $46.76 a barrel.

“Our policy is not to stockpile oil in floating offshore stor-age,” Ghamsari said. “In other words, we produce as much as we think the market would absorb.”

Iran is shipping about 25 percent of its exports to European buyers, he said. NIOC is selling bigger volumes in Asia, though it hasn’t increased the number of supply contracts in that region, he said.

“Most of our oil transactions and agreements are long-term-based, leaving a small portion for spot sale,” Ghamsari said. “We are right now in negotiations with many companies, both in Eu-rope and Asia,” he said, without identifying any of them. Iran is taking payments for some sales in euros, he said.

The U.S. still prohibits transactions related to Iran from being conducted in dollars. Even so, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zan-ganeh predicted in June that Iran would sign its first deals with foreign companies within three months. (Source: Bloomberg)

Not even a sharp decline in U.S. oil pro-duction can convince investors that oil prices are ready to rebound.

Stubbornly high U.S. inventories and resurgent output from OPEC, Russia and Canada have prompted money manag-ers to cut bets on rising crude prices to the lowest level in four months. West Texas Intermediate crude fell last week even as U.S. government data showed output slid to the least since May 2014.

U.S. production tumbled 194,000 barrels a day to 8.43 million in the week ended July 1, an Energy Infor-mation Administration report showed. Output has slumped 12 percent from the four-decade peak reached in June 2015. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries boosted produc-tion 0.7 percent to 32.9 million barrels a day in June, according to Bloomberg estimates.

Inventory levelsWTI fell July 7 after the EIA reported

U.S. crude supplies fell a smaller than projected 2.22 million barrels to 524.4 million. Inventories remain at the high-est seasonal level in at least a decade. Crude imports averaged 8 million bar-rels a day in the four weeks ended July 1, up 12 percent from a year earlier.

“While U.S. production looks weak, there’s only been a modest decline in U.S. inventories,” said Tim Evans, an en-ergy analyst at Citi Futures Perspective in New York. “The offsetting factor has been very robust imports.”

Money managers cut net long wa-gers on WTI to the lowest since March in the week ended July 5, according to Commodity Futures Trading Commis-sion data. WTI dropped 2.6 percent to $46.60 a barrel in the report week. Prices on Monday slipped 0.9 percent to $45 at 11:50 a.m. Hong Kong time.

Iranian production has surged 25 percent this year to an average 3.5 million barrels a day, Bloomberg data

show. Iran plans to pump 4 million bar-rels a day by year-end and reach 4.8 million within five years, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said June 3 in Vienna.

Russian gainsRussia exported an average 5.55

million barrels a day in the first half of 2016, up 4.9 percent from last year. It pumped 10.84 million barrels a day last month, up 1.1 percent from a year ear-lier, Energy Ministry data show.

Canadian oil-sands producers are re-storing production after worst wildfires in Alberta history. Suncor Energy Inc. and Syncrude Canada Ltd. are among the producers that have brought back more than a million barrels a day.

Hedge funds’ net-long position in WTI fell by 9,931 futures and options combined to 169,499, the sixth decline in seven weeks, CFTC data showed. Shorts, or bets on falling prices, in-creased 8.4 percent, while longs de-

creased 0.3 percent.In other markets, bullish bets on

Nymex gasoline tumbled 81 percent to 1,484 contracts, the lowest since No-vember. Gasoline futures dropped 5.4 percent. Net long wagers on U.S. ultra-low sulfur diesel rose 35 percent to 17,980 contracts, the highest since July 2014. Futures dipped 1.7 percent.

The decline in U.S. production might end if drillers keep returning rigs to their fields, according to Rob Haworth, a senior investment strategist in Seat-tle at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, which oversees $133 billion of assets. The number of active oil rigs in the U.S. has increased in five of the last six weeks, Baker Hughes Inc. data show.

“You have to be worried about the uptick in the rig count and what that will mean for production,” Haworth said. “If this continues, the decline in output will come to an end.”

(Source: Bloomberg)

Falling U.S. oil output not enticing enough for wary investors

Bulgarian Minister of Transport, Information Technology and Communications Ivaylo Moskovski (R) and Iranian Minister of Communications and Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi signing a cooperation agreement in Tehran on Monday

The Bahamas’ new U.S. travel advisory: Use ‘extreme caution’ around policeOver 90 percent of residents in the Bahamas are black, and Monday is a national holiday, when some travel north from the archipelago to vacation in the United States.

But following deadly police shootings this week of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota — and an ambush of white officers in Texas — the island nation on Friday advised its resi-dents to be extra careful if they choose to do travel here.

The reason: “recent tensions in some American cities over shootings of young black males by police officers.”

It was the kind of advisory that the U.S. government has issued recently for travel under the repressive regime in Laos, or to the developing nation of Nicaragua: watch out for the security situation, and beware of street demonstrations, the State Department warned.

On Friday, however, those red flags were turned around on the United States.

The Bahamian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigra-tion urged its citizens to exercise “appropriate caution” when traveling to the United States, and especially to cities where recent police shootings have occurred.

“Do not get involved in political or other demonstrations under any circumstances and avoid crowds,” the government warned.

The Bahamian government specifically advised its young male citizens to take “extreme caution” with police. “Do not be confrontational and cooperate,” the government warned.

And it was the second summer in a row that foreign trave-lers have received such warnings. Amid riots following police shootings last year, France warned residents against travel to St. Louis, Cleveland and Baltimore.

Canada, Germany and others have in the past also warned their citizens about deadly gun violence when traveling to the United States, but none updated their travel warnings this week.

For its part, the U.S. has its own, albeit more narrow, ad-vice for citizens heading to the Bahamas: don’t patronize “jet-ski rentals on New Providence or Paradise Islands,” the State Department warned this year. The industry is minimally regulated and crimes have occurred at sea.

In its advisory, the Bahamian government published a list of its U.S. consular office locations in case of problems:

“Pay attention to the public notices and news announce-ments in the city that you are visiting,” the advisory said. “Be safe, enjoy the holiday weekend and be sensible.”

(Source: The Washington Post)

The Brussels, Istanbul and Paris terrorism attacks on soft targets and airports are all designed to maximize fear among two target populations: citizens and tourists. Citizens of the places where terrorist at-tacks occur must of course endure daily fear about whether they will become a statistic in the course of going about their daily business. They do not have a short-term choice about where they live and work — but tourists do. Like Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups before them, ISIS is now specifically targeting tourists and their destinations to achieve their objectives.

One need look no further than the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268 (at Sharm el-Sheik) and Egypt Air Flight 804 (from Paris to Cairo, widely believed to have been the result of terrorism) to see what kind of impact acts of terrorism can have on a nation’s tourist industry. In 2010,

the amount of revenue earned by Egypt through tourism was estimated to have been in excess of $12 billion, accounting for 11% of the country’s GDP, more than 14% of its foreign exchange reserves, and attracting nearly 15 million visitors.

In 2015, that figure was already just un-der half of the amount, at $6.1 billion. In the first quarter of 2016, Egypt attracted just over 1 million visitors. Egypt has seen this before, following the Luxor attacks in 1997 and the changes in government during the Arab Awakening. It took the industry many years to recover.

In 2014, a record 37 million tourists vis-ited Turkey, accounting for almost 5% of GDP. As of April of this year, year-on-year tourist arrivals had already fallen by 35% to 2.5 million for the period, the largest drop in 22 years. Visitors from Russia had declined 92% (the result of the fallout from the downing of the Russian military jet earlier in the year), and substantial

drops had been reported from tourists from a variety of (particularly European) nations.

Given the number of terrorist attacks that have already occurred in Turkey this year, the Istanbul airport bombings must be considered the death knell of Turkish tourism for the short-term.

Cost effective terrorismThe sad truth is, terrorism can be

very cost effective. In 2004, for less than $1,000 Al Qaeda bombed Spanish trains and succeeded not only in its ob-jective of punishing the Spanish people and government for their support of the war in Iraq, but also in achieving a Spanish pullout from the American-led coalition forces in Iraq. The added bo-nus was the ability to ultimately change the Spanish government, as the Social-ists were swept to power in the wake of the bombings. By any measure, that is good value for money. The fact that so much can be achieved by spending so little is certainly an incentive for other terrorist groups to want to try to do the same thing.

Spending so little to achieve so much was nothing new for Al Qaeda. It is estimated that for less than half a mil-

lion dollars they achieved all that was 9/11, which resulted in the loss of some 3,000 lives and more than $50 billion in property and related damages. For $74,000 Jemaah Islamiah (an Al Qaeda affiliate) killed more than 200 and tem-porarily ruined the tourist industry in Bali in 2002. Other examples of cost-effective terrorism include: IS spending less than $10,000 to finance the Paris attacks in 2015, resulting in the deaths of more than 130 people; the twin truck bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people in 1998 for $10,000; and, the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 people in 2000 for less than $10,000.

One of the lingering impacts of these attacks was that Al Qaeda and ISIS per-manently raised the price of travel-related security, at great cost in terms of time and effort expended by millions around the world, and the firms that operate those modes of transportation. The cost and resources required to implement airport-style security for trains and buses is sim-ply too prohibitive and unrealistic, which is why they are, and will remain, exposed and targets of at-will attacks.

(Source: International Policy Digest)

HISTORY & HERITAGEh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m JULY 12, 2016JULY 12, 2016 5I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

N E W SSoft targets and tourist terrorism

Complementary Notice (Modification)

Shiraz Urban Railway Organization

Call for Prequalification of EPC+F

Contractors Shiraz Metro Line 2

Following our previous notice regarding Call for Prequalification

Request of EPC+F for Line 2 of Shiraz Metro project in

newspapers and Shiraz Urban Railway Organization website,

the Complementary information are as following:

1- A part of (approximately 40%) Civil works of phase (1) has

been already awarded to an Iranian contractor.

2- Remaining civil works, all E&M works, equipment and

rolling stock needed to operation of Line 2 are included in future

contract. Applicants have a choice to finance all the works

if they could have an agreement with the present contractor

mentioned in article (1)

In addition; the date of documents receptions is extended to

August 9th, 2016.

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By Barton Swaim

JULY 12, JULY 12, 201620166 I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

INTERNATIONAL h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m

America is off the tracks, but the GOP errs in thinking it can right her

Among the most important questions pollsters ask during a presidential campaign is this one: Do you think

the country is on the right track, or the wrong track? The answer respondents give to this question, we’re told, can tell us more about the likely outcome of an upcoming election than any other. The question is based on a metaphor — the metaphor of a “track” or, in

some versions, “direction.” That alone should make us wonder what the question means, exactly, or what we’re assuming when we answer the question on its own terms. “All of us, grave or light,” George Eliot writes in “Middlemarch,” “get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.”

The trouble with accepting the “track” meta-phor is that you begin to think of the nation as having somehow careened off course, and that

it can be put back on track with the right sort of effort. But a nation is not a train or a car. If a nation has gone off course (whatever that might mean), it’s going to stay off course for a long time.

Societal trends, cultural progress or re-gress, major judicial and policy decisions: These things can’t simply be undone. And even in those rare instances when they can be undone in some sense — a court de-cision overturned, a momentarily popular

practice stigmatized — the damage is per-manent; outlooks and habits are forever altered.

American cultureThat’s what many Republicans fail, or

refuse, to understand. They think of the Obama era as, in essence, an aberration that can be corrected with sufficient will-power. I am inclined to agree with these Republicans’ diagnosis, but their prognosis is delusional. 9

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A supporter wears a “Make America Great Again” hat at a campaign rally for Donald Trump.

N E W S I N B R I E F

WORLD ECONOMYh 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 y JULY 12, JULY 12, 20162016 7I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Looking across the world economy, Citigroup global

chief economist Willem Buiter summed up the so-so situation this way: “Nobody

is in a particularly strong, nor as of now, a particularly

weak position.”

Call it the drift economy. The world somehow manages to stay afloat yet doesn’t go much of anywhere very fast.

Supported by a surfeit of central bank liquidity, the world has skirted numerous hazards and grown at a steady, albeit unspectacular, pace since 2010. And it looks set to do it again in the coming year, slowed, though not swamped, by the UK vote to leave the European Union.

Coming after the deepest recession since the Great De-pression, the slow-motion expansion has failed to extinguish the lingering anxiety of consumers and companies scarred by the crisis. That’s led both groups to hold back on their spending, in turn retarding the strength of the upswing.

The question is how long the lackluster status quo can last. Central banks have already pushed monetary policy to its limits, cutting interest rates below zero in some countries and buying up bucket-loads of government bonds.

Populist pressuresPopulist pressures fed by stagnating living standards are

mounting, leading to the June 23 British vote to leave the EU and the rise of the unlikely duo of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as candidates for president in the U.S.

And financial markets appear flummoxed, with falling bond yields signaling escalating angst among investors about the outlook while buoyant stock prices suggest an absence of much concern.

Plodding alongThrough all the ebbs and flows, U.S. gross domestic

product has grown by an average 2.1 percent per year since the recession ended in 2009. That qualifies it as be-ing the slowest expansion of the post-World War II period. But at seven years old and still going, it’s also already the fourth-longest.

Consumers, the bedrock of the economy, are in very good shape, with household net worth near an all-time high when measured against disposable personal income.

Banks are well capitalized and able to withstand a severe contraction in the economy, according to the Fed’s latest round of stress tests released last month.

The UK economy looks likely to turn down early next year as the results of the EU referendum ripple throughout the country, according to economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The rest of the Europe will also take a hit, but keep on growing.

Growth downgradeThe International Monetary Fund on Friday cut its 2017

growth forecast for the euro area to 1.4 percent from the 1.6 percent it predicted in April, citing the UK’s vote. The Wash-ington-based lender sees the region’s economy expanding 1.6 percent in 2016.

Though not stellar, such steady growth would still be a marked improvement from 2012 and 2013, when GDP con-tracted as the region struggled to contain a sovereign debt crisis.

Europe remains saddled with bad bank loans and el-evated unemployment holding back growth. That’s being offset by massive stimulus from the European Central Bank, which the IMF said should be expanded if inflation doesn’t rise.

Asian driftThe sense of drift is also evident in once high-flying

Asia. While it remains the world’s fastest expanding region, weaker demand for its exports, lower commodity prices and China’s slowdown are dragging output down.

Much of the slowdown can be pinned on China where record low interest rates and a large fiscal stimulus have so far struggled to gain traction. Second-quarter GDP, due July 15, is expected to show the economy expanded by 6.6 percent, comfortably inside the government’s target range of 6.5 percent to 7 percent -- but still its weakest since the global financial crisis.

In Japan, where the economy continues to bump along the bottom, authorities are grappling with the fallout from the yen’s almost 20 percent surge against the dollar this year that has piled pressure on the nation’s exporters.

The Bank of Japan is expected by some analysts to un-leash additional stimulus when it meets on July 29 and the government is also planning another round of fiscal stimulus.

Looking across the world economy, Citigroup global chief economist Willem Buiter summed up the so-so situ-ation this way: “Nobody is in a particularly strong, nor as of now, a particularly weak position.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Nowhere fast: drifting world economy skirts worst but still lags EU vote hits UK

households and business morale, London hurt mostBritish consumer spending fell last month, the business out-look darkened by the most in four years and economic activity in London slowed sharply, according to three reports which showed the vote to leave the European Union starting to take a toll.

Figures for June from card company Visa, Lloyds Bank and financial data provider Markit pointed to nervousness among businesses and households in the run-up to the June 23 Brexit referendum and in the days immediately after.

Visa said consumer spending dropped for the second month in a row in June, down by 0.5 percent to leave overall purchases up just 1.4 percent on the year in the three months to June, the weakest inflation-adjusted growth since early 2014.

Markit said businesses had the least positive economic out-look in four years, based on responses collected between June 13 and June 29, with many firms blaming the referendum.

The Bank of England, which meets to set interest rates this week, expects the economy to suffer a material slowdown be-cause of the uncertainty caused by the vote to leave the EU.

(Source: Reuters)

Oil near two-month low on economic woes; drillers adjust to lower pricesOil fell on Monday over signs that U.S. shale drillers have adapted to lower prices and on renewed indications of eco-nomic weakness in Asia.

Brent crude futures were trading at $46.42 per barrel at 0419 GMT, down 34 cents from their last settlement. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was down 37 cents at $45.04 a barrel.

Prices also dipped in physical markets. Iran has set the of-ficial selling price (OSP) of Iranian Light grade for its Asian buyers at $0.45 above the Oman/Dubai average for August, down 40 cents from the previous month, an industry source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Monday.

Traders said the lower prices were a result of Asian refiners beginning to cut crude orders in an adjustment to a sharp rise in crude prices since January, and also to the region's economic slowdown.

Goldman Sachs said that it expected "WTI oil to remain in a range of $45-50 per barrel over the next 12 months".

(Source: Reuters)

M E D I C A Ld e s k

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

H AV E Y O U R S E E D

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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 mJULY 12, JULY 12, 20162016

An Iranian researcher Amin Doust-Moham-madi from Oxford University showed how the natural movement of bacteria could be harnessed to assemble and power micro-scopic ’windfarms’.

The study, published in the journal Sci-ence Advances, uses computer simulations to demonstrate that the chaotic swarming effect of dense active matter such as bac-teria can be organized to turn cylindrical rotors and provide a steady power source.

Researchers say these biologically driven power plants could someday be the microscopic engines for tiny, man-made devices that are self-assembled and self-powered.

Co-author Dr. Tyler Shendruk, from Ox-ford University’s Department of Physics, said: ’Many of society’s energy challenges are on the gigawatt scale, but some are downright microscopic. One potential way to generate tiny amounts of power for mi-cromachines might be to harvest it directly from biological systems such as bacteria suspensions.

Dense bacterial suspensionsDense bacterial suspensions are the

quintessential examples of active fluids that flow spontaneously. While swimming

bacteria are capable of swarming and driving disorganized living flows, they are normally too disordered to extract any useful power from.

But when the Oxford team immersed a lattice of 64 symmetric microrotors into this active fluid, the scientists found that the bacteria spontaneously organized it-

self in such a way that neighboring rotors began to spin in opposite directions -- a simple structural organization reminiscent of a windfarm.

Dr. Shendruk added: The ’amazing thing is that we didn’t have to pre-design microscopic gear-shaped turbines. The rotors just self-assembled into a sort of bacterial windfarm.

When we did the simulation with a single rotor in the bacterial turbulence, it just got kicked around randomly. But when we put an array of rotors in the living fluid, they sudden-ly formed a regular pattern, with neighboring rotors spinning in opposite directions.

Co-author Dr. Amin Doust-Mohamma-di, from Oxford University’s Department of Physics, said: The ’ability to get even a tiny amount of mechanical work from these biological systems is valuable because they do not need an input power and use inter-nal biochemical processes to move around.

’At micro scales, our simulations show that the flow generated by biological as-semblies is capable of reorganizing itself in such a way as to generate a persistent mechanical power for rotating an array of microrotors.’

(Source: ISNA)

Alarms sounded across the world when marine scientists discovered in April that more than 90 percent of the Great Bar-rier Reef, the world’s largest reef, had bleached.

As the scientific community, the Aus-tralian government, and even President Obama placed calls to action to save one of the Earth’s great natural wonders, the death of the country’s other reef, the 1,400-mile Great Southern Reef, went unnoticed.

Nearly all of the kelp forests along about 62 miles of coastline off Western Australia have become extinct following a heat wave in 2011 that killed 43 percent of kelp there, according to a study pub-lished Friday in the journal Science.

And five years later, there are no signs of recovery, said the study’s lead author, Thomas Wernberg of the Uni-versity of Western Australia’s Ocean In-stitute, in a statement.

Expanse of kelp forestsThe extinction of the expanse of kelp

forests in the northwest tip of the reef shows the sensitivity of the ecosystem, and demonstrates how a slight rise in wa-ter temperatures (4 degrees F) can turn an underwater forest, teeming with life, into a desert of turf seaweed.

Because the temperature of the Indian Ocean, the current of which flows south to the Great Southern Reef, is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world’s waters, the demise of the ecosystem also foreshadows the effect a further rise in

water temperatures could have on kelp forests around the world, including in Ja-pan and Europe.

“They have provided alarming and detailed evidence for one of the most dramatic climate-driven ecosystem shifts ever recorded,” Adriana Verges, a marine ecologist at the University of New South Wales, said of the study.

As The Atlantic’s Ed Yong writes, the ocean will only get hotter, and extreme events like the 2011 heat wave will be-come more common. “The kelps will re-cede further southwards until they can’t any more.

Kelps need to fasten themselves to rocks, and at some point, ‘they’ll run out of habitat,’ says Wernberg. ‘There’ll be no rock, just deep water until you get to Ant-arctica. We’ll likely see local extinctions over large areas.”

(Source: The CSM)

Countless attempts have been made to perfect the world's first working "space elevator" - a concept that has emerged since the dawn of the Space Age.

In theory, a functional space elevator would work like this: passengers travel in a vehicle that is tethered to a cable. The ca-ble is attached to a counterweight located in a zero-gravity environment.

Because the technology is rocket-less, passengers would not have to think about the huge amount of combustible fuel that typically propels vehicles into space. The ideal vehicle will ascend or descend as needed with the help of the cable.

So far, no one has successfully tested a fully functional elevator on outer space yet. But that doesn't mean the idea will be laid to rest and forgotten.

Space elevator technologyIn fact, a group of Japanese scientists

from Shizuoka University have designed their own space elevator technology known as Space Tethered Autonomous Robotic Satellite-Cube or STAR-C.

STAR-C is constructed as a micro-satellite that provides a cable connecting our planet to a space station in orbit, high above the atmosphere.

The prototype for STAR-C, which was un-veiled in Japan on June 8, contains an orbiter that weighs 2.66 kilograms (5.86 pounds).

The orbiter is made of two 10-centim-eter (3.9-inch) cubes that are linked to a 100-meter-long (328-foot-long) tether, which is made out of Kevlar, a tough and durable material.

STAR-C will be delivered to the Interna-tional Space Station (ISS) and then released from Kibo, a module owned by the Japa-nese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Once in space, STAR-C's two cubic components will split from each other in order to test the Kevlar tether as they move apart.

The results of this experiment are ex-pected to provide information that will be useful in the improvement of the space el-evator concept, as well as insight on what kind of considerations would have to be made if one were to develop and design a full-scale version of the technology.

Furthermore, the experiment might also contribute data for the develop-ment of technology that could remove and eliminate space debris that is orbiting Earth. The technology produced would possibly include electrodynamic tethers.

(Source: Tech Times)

Japan's space elevator technology will be put to test soon

Death of Australia's other great reef a bad sign for world's kelp forests

Scientist develops method to charge cell phone with bacteria

Researchers say these biologically driven power plants could someday be the microscopic

engines for tiny, man-made devices that are self-assembled and self-powered.

Sesame Once you learn of the health benefits of powerful sesame seeds, you may just find yourself stocking up on this ancient condiment.

1. Full of great protein2. Helps prevent diabetes3. Reduces blood pressure4. Lowers cholesterol5. Good for digestion6. For healthy skin7. Boosts heart health8. Prevents cancer9. Helps lessen anxiety10. Alleviates anemia11. Protects from radiation

damage to DNA12. Relieves arthritis13. Protects your liver 14. Prevents wrinkles15. Encourages bone

health and prevents osteoporosis16. Help your baby’s health17. Good for eye health18. Good for oral health19. Good for respiratory health20. Hair benefits

Enrollment in medicinal plants workshops starts

TEHRAN — Online registration for the third festival of herbal medicine workshops has be-

gun, IRNA reported on Sunday.According to vice president of science and technology affairs, out of

a total 16 specialized workshops in the festival, 9 will be running training courses on the spot, while the remaining will be held elsewhere.

To register for the 9 cost-free workshops, each is set to enroll up to 100 participants, please log on to www.reg.chtm.isti.ir.

Meanwhile, another festival on medicinal plants, student fes-tival, will start off at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Mosalla on Sep-tember 5-8.

Artificial intelligence could help catch Alzheimer's earlyThe devastating neurodegenerative condition Alzheimer's dis-ease is incurable, but with early detection, patients can seek treatments to slow the disease's progression, before some ma-jor symptoms appear. Now, by applying artificial intelligence

algorithms to MRI brain scans, researchers have developed a way to automatically distin-guish between patients with Alzheimer's and two early forms of dementia that can be precursors to the memory-robbing disease.

The researchers, from the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, suggest the approach could eventually al-low automated screening and assisted diagnosis of various forms of dementia, particu-larly in centers that lack experi-

enced neuroradiologists.Additionally, the results, published online July 6 in the journal Radiology, show that the new system was able to classify the form of dementia that patients were suffering from, using previously unseen scans, with up to 90 percent accuracy.

The "potential is the possibility of screening with these tech-niques so people at risk can be intercepted before the disease becomes apparent," said Alle Meije Wink, a senior investigator in the center's radiology and nuclear medicine department.

"I think very few patients at the moment will trust an outcome predicted by a machine," Wink told Live Science. "What I envis-age is a doctor getting a new scan, and as it is loaded, software would be able to say with a certain amount of confidence (that) this is going to be an Alzheimer's patient or (someone with) an-other form of dementia." (Source: Live Science)

Scientists have decided to change how much a kilogram weighsWhat does a kilogram weigh?

Middle school science classes often teach that the unit is based on the weight of water — specifically a cube of water, a tenth of a meter on each side, at just above freezing.

This used to be the case, but it isn’t actually true anymore -- since 1875, the kilogram has been defined by one specific platinum cylinder, known affectionately as “Le Grande K” and of-ficially as the “International Prototype Kilogram,” or IPK. It stands an inch-and-a-half high and wide and is housed in a vault out-side Paris, inside three concentric glass containers to protect it from dust and other weight-altering debris.

Every scale in the world -- even those that measure in pounds -- is ultimately based on the IPK, which was commissioned by the General Conference on Weights and Measures. But the IPK’s uniqueness may be its downfall. The “problem with the kilogram in Paris is that it’s so precious that people don’t want to use it,” said Stephan Schlamminger, a physicist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in an interview with the American Institute of Physics. Even handling the model kilogram with your fingers will leave oil, changing its weight ever so slightly. It’s rarely removed from its enclosure, and never trans-ported to other areas. (Source: Business Insider)

Chemicals in e-cigarette vapor produce short-term signs of potential cardiovascular harm, according to a recently published study that opens up a new front in the vaping debate.

The signs of harm were similar to but lesser than those induced by smoking, according to the study. It compared the effects of smoking and vaping with the same nicotine content on the blood vessels of volun-teer subjects. However, the study didn’t find evidence of actual damage.

Researchers examined a number of markers, including those of oxidative stress, vitamin E levels and nitric oxide bioavailability. They also performed flow-mediated dilata-tion, or FMD, which determines the ability of blood vessels to expand to convey more blood.

Future studies“Our study demonstrates that both cigarettes (and e-

cigarettes) have unfavorable effects on markers of oxida-tive stress and FMD after single use, although e-cigarettes appeared to have a lesser impact,” the study stated. “Future studies are warranted to clarify the chronic vascular effects of E-cigarette smoking.”

The study was conducted in 40 healthy men and women; 20 of them smokers and 20 nonsmokers. It was published in the journal Chest by a team led by Roberto Carnevale of Sapienza University of Rome in Rome, Italy.

So what does that mean for vapers?Those who support e-cigarettes as a tobacco alterna-

tive say the study doesn’t actually demonstrate any danger, especially compared to smoking. And since e-cigarette use

produced a lesser impact, it can be argued that the study supports the use of e-cigarettes over combustible ciga-rettes as a means of harm reduction.

E-cigarettes don’t need to be harmless, just less harm-ful than cigarettes to be a better alternative for smokers who still crave nicotine.E-cigarette skeptics say the study provides a big red flag of a new danger from e-cigarettes.

They say the signs of potential cardiovascular dam-age point to a new factor not sufficiently considered by e-cigarette advocates. Since e-cigarettes became popular scarcely a decade ago, more such unpleasant surprises could be in the offing. For example, some of the flavoring agents used in e-cigarettes haven’t been well-studied for their effects when inhaled.

(Source: Valley News)

Study: Vaping can harm heart

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion (CDC), more than one third of adults in the United States are obese.

Although there is interest in the connection between metabolism and obesity, there is still little known about the extent to which obesity affects metabolism.

There is also little known about whether the develop-ment of obesity may be aggravated if excess fat insulates against heat loss, resulting in a decrease of food burned for body temperature control.

The new study on the insulating effect of obesity, by researchers from Stockholm University in Sweden and the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Ger-many, finds that it is in fact fur, not carrying excess fat that contributes to a warmer body in obese mice.

"Whether an insulating effect of obesity exists is of signif-icance both for humans and for animal models of obesity,"

the research team writes. Body fat functions

The findings from this study are significant for obesity re-searchers to grasp how body fat functions to keep mice warm.

Mice used for metabolic research are frequently accommo-dated in cooler conditions, and almost half of the calories they consume are burned to maintain body temperature.

The team conducted several experiments to observe the way temperature and insulators, such as fat and fur, affect metabolism. The researchers write:

"In contrast to established views, we demonstrate here that at least in mice, obesity is not associated with increased insulation, and obesity thus does not in this way affect the metabolism of mice."

The results reveal that fur is associated with increased insulation, protects against heat loss, and is responsible for almost half of a mouse's insulation.

The findings conclude that obesity of any kind does not increase thermal insulation in mice or aggravate the devel-opment of obesity.

(Source: Medical News Today)

Obesity may not keep body warm, mouse study finds

Bank Shahr Launches “Recommended” Advertising Campaign

Technical issues of Sirjan-Rafsanjan 26-inch pipeline inspected

In line with safe-guarding and pro-

tecting pipelines for transferring prod-ucts and relevant accessories, Bandar Abbas-Rafsanjan 26-inch pipeline, lo-cated at the distance between Sirjan and Rafsanjan Road, was inspected thoroughly.

Head of Technical Inspection De-partment of Iranian Oil Pipelines and Telecommunications Company (IOP-TC) Majid Asadnia announced the above statement and said: “Traffic condition of the route, safety of cath-ode protection stations and fence of

inter-road valves were inspected me-ticulously, based on which, potential of protecting pipeline was also analyzed from the specified and demarcated areas.”

In the end, Head of Technical Inspec-tion Department of Iranian Oil Pipelines and Telecommunications Company (IOPTC) Majid Asadnia added: “The pipelines are inspected continuously which is led to the promotion of safe-ty situation of pipelines for transferring relevant products and also increase of stability and sustainability of transport-ing oil products.”

In order to offer facil-ities to the economic

activists of the country, Bank Shahr em-barked on launching “Recommended” Advertising Campaign in the current year named after “Resistance Economy, Action and Implementation”.

After its successful experiences in advertising campaigns held in previ-ous Iranian calendar year 1394 (ended March 19, 2016) entitled “City Is Not Closed” and also campaign held in current Iranian New Year entitled “Iran Has One City”, the bank has allocated its newest advertising campaign dur-

ing the holy month of Ramadan to the introduction of one of its latest other banking activities.

Accordingly, this type of facilities is offered by the bank particularly for booming businesses, equipping busi-ness offices of economic activities such as lawyers, industrialists, agriculturists, physicians, etc. At the initiative taken by Advertising Department of Communi-cations and Public Relations Dept., the bank has designed the advertising cam-paign entitled “Recommended” with the aim of making addresses of the bank familiar with the design.

ECONOMYd e s k

ECONOMYd e s k

ECONOMYd e s k

ECONOMYd e s k

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

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in al-Quds (Jerusalem), the first such visit in nearly a decade.

Speaking at a news conference on Sunday alongside Netanyahu, Shoukry called for renewed peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials, and warned of the “constant deterioration” of the situation on the ground since the last round of negotiations between the two sides collapsed in April 2014.

“My visit to Israel today is a continu-ation of Egypt’s long-standing sense of responsibility towards peace for itself and all the peoples of the region, particularly the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, who have suffered many decades due to the perpetuation of the conflict between them,” Shoukry, the first Egyptian official to visit Israel since 2007, said.

“The plight of the Palestinian people becomes more arduous every day,” he added. “The dream of peace and security moves further out of the Israeli people’s reach as long as the conflict continues.”

At the press conference, Netanyahu called on Palestinians “to follow the cou-rageous example of Egypt and Jordan and join us for direct negotiations”.

Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab

countries to have signed peace treaties with Israel.

Palestinian leaders say years of direct talks with Israel have not ended the near-ly 50-year occupation of Palestinian ter-ritories, and they have instead chosen to pursue international diplomacy to reach a deal.

On June 29, Shoukry met Palestinian leaders during a visit to the West Bank

city of Ramallah.In 1979, Egypt was the first Arab state

to sign a peace treaty with Israel after years of conflict.

However, relations cooled over Isra-el’s policies towards the Palestinians, and were further soured after the June 2012 election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi as Egyptian president.

After President Mubarak’s was de-

posed in the 2011 Egyptian revolution, protesters stormed Israel’s embassy in that September.

Morsi was, himself deposed in July 2013 by then-army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who was elected Egypt’s president in 2014.

Sisi recently made a high-profile speech calling for a resumption of efforts to bring peace between Israelis and Pal-estinians.

Netanyahu said that he welcomed Sisi’s “recent offer of Egyptian leadership and efforts to advance peace with the Palestinians and a broader peace in our region”.

In April 2016, Israel’s deputy chief of staff spoke of an “unprecedented level of cooperation” with Egypt, mainly regard-ing intelligence-sharing. The two coun-tries share intelligence in a common fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) operating in Egypt’s Sinai desert.

Peace efforts have made no head way since Netanyahu took office in 2009.

Palestinians are seeking the establish-ment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East al-Qudsa as the capital - territories occu-pied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

(Source: agencies)

America is off the tracks, but the GOP errs in thinking it can right her

6 It’s largely true, in my view, that the Obama admin-istration has encouraged American culture’s obsession with identity politics, made an already grossly overregulated and inefficient healthcare market far worse, given new life to dis-credited fiscal policies and practiced a kind of deliberate na-iveté in foreign affairs. But Americans asked for these things, and they would ask for them again if given the chance.

The reality that many Republicans have still not come to terms with is this: that Barack Obama was elected and ree-lected, fair and square, and that the American public knew what it was doing. Those who supported or still support ei-ther Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) or Donald Trump frequently sound as if they think the Obama administration’s policies have been imposed on the U.S. citizenry against its will.

Cruz offered nothing but disdain for voters who didn’t share his worldview; Trump speaks as if the entire Obama administration is so egregiously stupid that it must have been put in place by a foreign power. The idea that it’s possible somehow to unmake the past seven years of policymaking — to reverse it all, to make it not so -- is precisely what appealed to Republican primary voters.

I completely reject the defamatory belief, cherished by many a progressive, that the reason the Republican base de-

tests Obama so deeply is that he is black. I’ve spoken to many, many Republicans about Oba-ma over the past seven years, and not once has the man’s race been even a subtext in the conversation. What has rattled Republicans so badly, rather, is the swiftness with which Amer-ican political culture has moved leftward and the wanton way in which the president and his administration have abetted it.

Many Republican voters simply have not come to terms with this reality. They believe the president has put the na-tion on the “wrong track” and that it can be put back on the

“right track” by some fearless personality whose views are uncompromising and whose regard for contrary opinions is minimal.

America in declineLet me put it in a different, more unpleasant way. Repub-

licans need to acknowledge that America is in decline. It is, by their own criteria. The U.S. economy is fast becoming a European-style regulatory state; neither the country’s polit-ical class nor its voters seem to care that the national debt has reached literally incomprehensible levels; and its cultural arbiters are hopelessly obsessed with microscopic grievances and therapeutic political gestures.

If all this is true, then America is in decline, and there’s noth-ing any politician or political insurgency can do to reverse it.

A republic in decline doesn’t need a leader who will try to force its electorate to be something it isn’t, or who will insult and berate its leaders into doing things differently.

What’s needed, rather, is a president who will behave like an adult -- someone whose words and actions do not rou-tinely contradict each other; someone who will stand against the excesses of modern liberalism without entertaining the vain hope of obliterating it; someone who likes the country as it is, without trying to transform it or make it “great.”

Someone, in short, who can manage the decline of a great nation without making things worse.

(Source: The Washington Post)

Egyptian FM meets Netanyahu in rare Israel visit

JULY 12, 2016

A republic in decline doesn’t need a leader who will try to force its electorate to be something it isn’t, or who will insult and berate its leaders into doing things differently.

A number of seven Iranian airports in ranking 50 airports based in the Mid-

dle East (ME) and African Continent were evaluated in terms of sending and admitting passengers, cargoes and also landing and taking off number of planes.

Given the above issue, Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKIA) stood at 2nd rank in terms of landing and

taking off planes, showing a considerable 16 percent growth in 2015 as compared to the same period last year i.e. 2014.

In international ranking of airports in Middle East and African Continent, airports in Shiraz and Mashhad stood at 3rd and 11th ranks with 15 and 6 percent growth respectively. It should be noted that

Iranian airports based in Kish, Ahvaz and Isfahan stood at 4th rank with three percent (3%) growth while Tabriz Airport stood at 16th rank with one percent growth.

Given the above issue, Mehrabad International Air-port stood at 18th rank with -1 percent growth, the re-port ended.

Industry minister meets BIM CEO and Board members

A couple of days ago, Minister of Industry, Mine and Trade Eng. Mohammad-Reza

Ne’matzadeh met with the Chairman of Board of Directors and Managing Director of Bank of Industry and Mine (BIM) Ali-Ashraf Afkhami as well as other Board members of the bank.

While pointing to the necessity of strengthening basic principles of the industrial development such as setting up basic industries and knowledge and technology-based man-agement in the country, minister of Industry, Mine and Trade praised activities of the Bank in financing petrochemical, steel, cement and power plant industries in recent years especially at the time when the country was experiencing severe and critical sanctions.

As a prime financier of infrastructural projects in the coun-try, the Bank should be supported duly, he said, adding: “Bank of Industry and Mine has taken very important infrastructural measures in the field of industry and mine appropriately.”

Objectives of industrial growth will not be materialized without taking “discipline” into serious consideration, he re-iterated.

Elsewhere in his remarks, he pointed to the significance of demand for industrial sector of the country and stated: “To create economic boom, suitable measures and strategies should be adopted for strengthening demand both in do-mestic and foreign dimensions.”

Turning to the significance of foreign resources for financ-ing industries of the country, he maintained: “To attain suit-able growth in the country, large financial resources should be taken into consideration and for this purpose, financial resources of National development Fund of Iran (NDFI) and Bank of Industry and Mine (BIM) as well as resources of other banks should be used optimally.”

In the end, the industry minister reiterated: “High technical know-how and knowledge coupled with strategic manage-ment in BIM has increased expectations of senior officials of the country from activities of the bank and it is hoped that the bank will witness salient achievements in coming years.”

As the first and leading Iranian bank, Bank Pasargad managed to regis-

ter its trademark in countries as members of MADRID Convention and also some other countries based in five continents.

Senior Advisor to the Managing Director of Bank Pasargad and Public Relations Dept. Manager of the Bank Khosro Rafiei announced the above statement and said: “In an unprecedented and deserved move, the Bank managed to register its trademark in MADRID

Convention and brought about glory for the banking system of the country.”

Moreover, Bank Pasargad had succeeded in receiving SCOOP trademark ® as well as winning globally reg-istered trademark certificate among other international banks, he maintained.

Considering the expansion of scope of activities of the bank in international level, suitable ground has been paved for registering trademark of the bank in interna-tional conventions, providing the possibility of partici-

pating in international markets, fulfilling valuation pro-cess of trademark, receiving pertinent standards as well as preventing probable abuses from trademark of the bank, etc.

Presently, a number of 85 countries including Iran from five continents are considered as active members of MADRID Convention.

It should be noted that Madrid System is a leading and prime solution for registering and managing trade-marks in worldwide.

IKIA wins 2nd rank in landing and taking off flights in ME and African continent

Bank Pasargad trademark registered in MADRID System ECONOMYd e s k

Thousands of Muslim Bosniaks paid respect to 127 vic-tims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre buried in individ-ual graves on Monday in a ceremony avoided by Serbs after survivors said they were not welcome because they denied genocide had occurred.

Nationalist Bosnian Serb forces led by General Rat-ko Mladic executed 8,000 Bosniak men and boys after overrunning Srebrenica near the end of Bosnia’s war 21 years ago and dumped their bodies in pits - Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two.

Serb forces subsequently dug up the bodies and scattered them in a systematic effort to conceal the crime. United Nations war crimes investigators later excavated the mass graves, but over 1,000 bodies are still missing.

Most Serbs, both in Bosnia and Serbia whose

1990s leadership armed and funded Bosnian Serb forces, strongly deny that the massacre was genocide as judged by the UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia.

They dispute the death toll and the official account of what happened, reflecting conflicting narratives about how and why Yugoslavia broke up in bloodshed. That divide continues to hinder reconciliation and stifle Bos-nia’s progress toward integration with Western Europe. The Balkan country today is split into autonomous Serb and Bosniak-Croat entities.

Some Serb officials attended previous burial ceremo-nies but this year was the first time none came after families said that those who deny genocide happened in Srebrenica were not welcome.

Last year’s 20th anniversary was marred when an an-

gry crowd at the ceremony chased away Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, who had enlisted ally Russia to veto a UN resolution that would have condemned the denial of Srebrenica as genocide.

Survivors did not want a possible repeat of any such incidents that would distract attention away from the victims.

Serbian and Bosnian Serb officials bristled at the con-dition for attendance. “That was not genocide and Serbs will never accept that word,” Bosnian Serb President Mi-lorad Dodik said.

Thousands of grieving families stood by green-draped coffins in sweltering mid-summer heat, some kneeling, crying and hugging the caskets before they were lowered into freshly-dug graves.

(Source: Reuters)

Srebrenica buries 127 victims of massacre, Serbs absent over genocide denial

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has admitted that some terrorists entered Europe among the wave of migrants that fled from Syria adding that the refugee flow was used in part to “smuggle terror-ists” on to the continent.

Speaking to supporters of her Chris-tian Democrat Union party in eastern Germany, Merkel admitted that militant groups had smuggled terrorists among those genuinely looking to seek asylum in Europe.

“In part, the refugee flow was even used to smuggle terrorists,” she said, as cited by Reuters.

Merkel’s open-door policy, which was criticized by a significant section of the German population, saw more than 1 million migrants arrive in Germany in 2015, with a number of those originating from Syria.

The announcement from Merkel

comes just over a week after Germany’s spy chief Hans Georg Maassen said the domestic intelligence agency had ob-tained information on 17 ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant/Daesh) ter-rorists who had entered Europe under the guise of refugees.

“There is strong evidence that… 17 people have arrived under ISIL instruc-tions,” Maassen said.

In the same month, a chilling plot emerged, which involved a group of Syrians linked to ISIL terrorist group who wanted to carry out a terror attack in Dusseldorf.

Two members of the four-man group planned to detonate suicide vests in the center of the western German city, while the other members would look to kill as many people in the vicinity with a combi-nation of explosives and gunfire.

Three of the suspects were identified

as 27-year-old Hamza C., 25-year-old Mahood B., and Abd Arahman AK, 31. They were arrested at various locations around Germany. Their plan was re-vealed when a fourth member, 25-year-old Saleh A., handed himself in to police in France in February.

“According to current investigations, the four accused were planning to com-mit an attack in Germany for the foreign terrorist organization Islamic State,” said the prosecutors, as cited by AFP.

The head of Germany’s police trade union, Rainer Wendt, said that budget cuts are potentially making it easier for terrorists to cross into the country amongst the refugee influx because it is impossible to screen all the migrants.

“It would have been useful in the sec-ond half of last year to create conditions for background checks on all people who came to us, in fact, before they traveled

[to Germany]. But that is past history now, as we cannot afford it,” he told the news show SWRinfo.

The German authorities announced in June that they are monitoring 499 ex-tremists who are deemed by the security services to pose a threat. Interior Min-istry spokesman Johannes Dimroth said security agencies had received regular tip-offs about possible Islamic extremists coming to Germany as asylum seekers and were systematically checking those reports. However, placing all migrants un-der suspicion after the arrests would play into ISIL’ hands, Wendt stressed.

“We know since the attacks of Paris and Brussels that ISIL wants to influence the migration debate in Europe and to whip up sentiment against refugees,” Wendt told Reuters. “This is part of their strategy. We must not fall into their trap.”

(Source: RT)

Terrorists smuggled into Europe amid refugee flow: Merkel

Students laugh as they leave school in Bangladesh.

Women, along with different strata of the society, gather in Palestine Square in downtown Tehran to show support for hijab and modesty.

W O M E Nd e s k

W O M E Nd e s k

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

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

W O M E N 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 yJULY 12, 2016JULY 12, 201610

IN FOCUS Mehr/ Leila Ghodratollahi Fard

Women in the northern province of Golestan are harvesting vegetables.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

“There is no greater heaven the heart of a loving mother.”

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Britain to lift ban on women in frontline combat jobsLONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — The British military will end its ban on women serving in combat roles, allowing women to serve in frontline positions for the first time from November, the defense ministry said.

The ministry said the decision follows a health report which evaluated the physi-cal and psychological risks to women of serving in active combat.

Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed the recommendation by military chiefs and said he asked that it be implemented as soon as possible.

“It is vital that our armed forces are world class and reflect the society we live in,” Cameron said in a statement on Friday.

“Lifting this ban is a ma-jor step. It will ensure the armed forces can make the most of all their talent and increase opportunities for women to serve in the full

range of roles.”The decision comes after the United States announced in

December that all combat roles will be opened to women.Women already serve on the frontline for the armed forc-

es of a few developed nations, including Canada and Israel, while India recruited its first female fighter pilots in June.

The Royal Armored Corps (RAC), the British army’s tank and armored vehicle regiments, will be the first to allow women to serve on the frontline in November. Other units will follow over the next three years.

More than 80 percent of jobs across Britain’s armed forces are already open to women, who make up 10 percent of per-sonnel, said the Ministry of Defense.

“By allowing women to serve in all roles, we will truly help to maximize the talent available to the army and make the armed forces a modern employer,” the chief of staff general Sir Nick Carter said.

Plum flummery“This is a delicious fruity mousse with a great plum tang, making good use of pre-stewed plums, especially handy at that time of year when you have too many plums and quite enough jam, thank you very much! The preparation time is mostly waiting time for the mixture to chill sufficiently.”

Ingredients:2 cups plums, pitted and

sliced 1 tablespoon water (op-

tional)1 (.25 ounce) package

unflavored gelatin 1/2 cup hot water 1/2 cup white sugar 2 tablespoons lemon

juice 1/2 cup evaporated milk

Directions:Place the plums into a

saucepan over medium-low heat, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until

the plums are soft, 5 to 10 minutes. If the mixture becomes too thick or starts to burn, add a tablespoon of water. Re-move from heat, and allow to cool.

Dissolve the gelatin in 1/2 cup of hot water in a bowl, and stir in the cooled plums, sugar, and lemon juice. Mix until the gelatin and sugar have dissolved. Chill the plum mixture in refrigerator until it begins to thicken, about 30 minutes. Whip the evaporated milk in a mixing bowl with an electric mixer until thick, then gently spoon the whipped milk into the plum mixture.

Beat again with electric mixer until the dessert is fluffy and well combined. Chill for at least 3 hours before serving.

N E W S

Congress on hijab and modesty held in Tehran

TEHRAN — A congress on

hijab and modesty was held here on Monday with the participation of Basij forces and some other or-ganizations.

The congress was convened on July 11 which is designated National Day of Hijab and Modesty.

July 11 marks the day when some people were martyred while protesting Reza Shah Pahlavi who forced women to remove their hi-jab in Goharshad Aqa Mosque in Mashhad. The incident happened on July 11, 1935.

Minoo Aslani, head of Women’s Basij Organization, told the congress that hijab, as the dress code of modesty, extend to the culture of Iranian people.

Dress code is an important issue which has been greatly emphasized in Islam, IRNA quoted her as saying.

However, today hijab has unfor-tunately lost its color in the society and this is something unusual in the history of the country, she noted.

The religious and revolutionary people of Iran view hijab as one of their cultural identities, Aslani said, adding the Iranian nation, since the beginning of history, have always been pious and observed a kind of modest dress code.

The wearing of hijab by Iranian women has caused many women all around the world to have a tenden-cy toward hijab, however the ene-mies are trying to make the Iranian youths indifferent toward the issue.

TEHRAN — The First International Conference on Women and Urban

Life will be held in Tehran on December 11-12.The conference aims to discuss and analyze challeng-

es about women and urban life, share experience in both national and international level on policies and plans of

action in this regard, and promote an Iranian-Islamic style of urban life for women, Mehr reported on Sunday.

On the sidelines of the event, specialized workshops will be held to get participants acquainted with successful pat-terns of urban life for women across the world, according to the website of the conference.

It should be noted that a selection of articles to be presented in the conference will be published in the Is-lamic World Science Citation Database (ISC) and the en-cyclopedia of civil engineering (Civilica).

To learn more about the conference, simply log on to the website http://www.wulconf.com/.

Leaders and communities must focus on and stand up for the rights of teenage girls, particularly those who are poor, out of school, exploited, or subjected to harm-ful traditional practices, the United Nations has said, marking World Population Day with a call to bolster the success of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by investing in better opportunities for teen girls.

Despite significant gains made in re-ducing poverty and improving opportunity and well-being for many people around the world, hundreds of millions remain desperate for a chance of a better future, said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday in his message on the Day, cele-brated annually on 11 July.

“Among those least served by previous development initiatives are girls, particular-ly those in their formative teenage years,” continued the UN chief, explaining that just when girls should be in school and imag-ining the possibilities ahead, too many are

held back from pursuing their ambitions by social and cultural traps.

While a boy's options and opportuni-ties tend to expand when he becomes an adolescent, those of a girl too often shrink. Moreover, Ban stressed, half of all sexual assaults worldwide are committed against girls aged 15 or younger. In developing countries, one in three girls is married be-fore she reaches 18. And teenage girls are less likely than teenage boys to start or fin-ish secondary school, he added.

Recalling that “leaving no on behind” is a central objective of the 2030 Agenda , which also includes a specific goal to achieve gen-der equality and empower all women and girls, the secretary general urged all govern-ments, businesses and civil society to support and invest in teenage girls.

“Everyone deserves the benefits of eco-nomic growth and social progress. Let us work together to ensure a life of security, dignity and opportunity for all,” he stated.

In his message, UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin said: “When [a teenage girl] has no say in decisions about her educa-tion, health, work or even marital status, she may never realize her full potential or become a positive force for transformation in her home, community and nation.”

Indeed, he explained, in some parts of the world, a girl who reaches puberty is deemed by her family or community as ready for marriage, pregnancy and child-birth. She may be married off and forced to

leave school. She may suffer a debilitating condition, from delivering a child before her body is ready for it. She may be denied her human rights.

“[Yet], when a teenage girl has the pow-er, the means and the information to make her own decisions in life, she is more likely to overcome obstacles that stand between her and a healthy, productive future. This will benefit her, her family and her commu-nity,” said Dr. Osotimehin.

He also stressed that investments are needed to protect their health, including their sexual and reproductive health, to enable them to receive a quality education and to expand economic opportunities, in-cluding those for decent work.

The UNFPA chief underscored that a teenage girl whose rights are respected and who is able to realize her full potential is a girl who is more likely to contribute to the economic and social progress of her community and nation.

(Source: UN News Center)

London, United Kingdom — Under the bright lights of a northeast London school sports hall, a group of Muslim girls sit on wooden benches, awaiting the start of a class.

This would normally be a mandatory physical education session of netball or athletics, but today is different: the stu-dents will be learning fencing.

The girls look curiously at the protective masks and plastic replica swords carefully lined up on the ground.

Then the former Olympic fencer and instructor Linda Strachan blows her whistle and signals for the girls to assemble in front of the equipment.

"En garde," she shouts. The girls quickly grab their swords from the floor and get into attack position, ready to lunge for-ward. "I want you all to make sure you have a firm grip of your swords, and remember to ensure that when you step in front, your arms are at a stretch," Strachan tells them.

Once the beginners are talked through some basic moves, they are divided into pairs and attempt to perform the tech-niques they have learned on their partners.

"When I fence, I take a step forward to lunge at my opponent," 13-year-old Seher Chohan explains. "I also think that it is what you do in life. You step forward to get what you want."

Her classmate Sarah Saeed agrees. "I like fencing because it is different from all the other sports," she says. "It is more about your posture and how you look. It isn't as violent as all the other sports because it's more to do with your mind than your own physical strength. That's one thing I liked about it when we started off the lessons."

Challenging misperceptions Chohan and Saeed belong to the more

experienced group of fencers who have been practicing their skills for a few months and now help out as mentors in the addi-tional series of workshops, as part of the 'Muslim Girls Fence' project launched by the community-based NGO, Maslaha.

In collaboration with British Fencing and Sports England, the project has been successful in challenging the stereotypes of young Muslim women while at the same time changing perceptions of the activity, which is traditionally seen as a white-dom-inated, elite sport.

"A lot of people we have spoken to thought of fencing as an elite sport, most-ly the forte of white men," says Maslaha's project manager, Latifa Akay.

"In simple terms, we are aiming to chal-lenge misperceptions and raise aspirations among young Muslim women, in the light of the complex discrimination experienced by this group on the basis of both faith and gender."

During March, after the initial pilot scheme ended, Maslaha featured portraits of the girls in a special exhibition at the Southbank Centre for the Women of the World Festival in London.

The organization also wanted to reach out to other young girls in schools across England, so the project expanded with more Muslim girls participating in taster sessions.

"It's refreshing when we do fencing be-cause people don't expect it," Chohan says. "If Muslim girls are doing it, it shows that we can do anything because it's at the top of the list of things you wouldn't think a Mus-lim girl could do. Raising awareness about the issue and how many people have sup-ported it really boosts your hope that the stereotypes will change. It's not going to be a picture-perfect world, but we can always aim to make it a better place and less op-pressive and less judgemental."

(Source: aljazeera.com)

Intl. conference on women and urban life slated for December

Stand up for and invest in teenage girls: UN

Muslim girls fence against Islamophobia in the UK

Members of armed services line up for a service to commemorate the 70th anniversary of VJ Day at Horse Guards Parade in London, Britain August 15, 2015.

F O O T B A L L

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 JULY 12, 2016JULY 12, 2016 11I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Cristiano Ronaldo’s tears of sadness turn to joy on Portugal’s greatest night Not for the first time in the evening Cristiano Ronaldo put his hands to his face and struggled to contain the emotion. On this occasion it was overwhelming joy. The Portugal captain, who was cruelly knocked out of this 2016 European Cham-pionship final by a knee injury early in the first half, walked along the touchline to take a moment alone, as the hysteria exploded around him.

Éder had just scored the goal of his life – one of the goals of Portugal’s history – the bench had emptied on to the pitch and the country was set fair for its first ma-jor trophy. After all the semi final misses and the defeat against Greece in the Euro 2004 final – at their champi-onship – it was finally to be Portugal’s time.

Ronaldo would have chosen to act the role of match-winner, of the star, but in the end even he did not seem to care that it was Éder, a substitute, who had con-jured the decisive moment. The striker ’s adaptation to life in the Premier League with Swansea City was so problematic last season that he spent the second half of it on loan at Lille and then joined them permanently. Here he wrote his name into folklore.

Those minutes from Éder’s stunning 25-yard finish to when Mark Clattenburg blew his whistle for the final time at the Stade de France seemed to stretch like an eternity for Portugal. By then Ronaldo appeared to have become the de facto manager, or at least Fernando Santos’s assistant, and he gestured this way and that. All of the Portugal bench did.

When the whistle did sound, the celebrations were fren-zied. There were more tears. Ronaldo celebrated with one member of the staff, at first, as the players streamed on to the field to pile on to Éder. There were the bumps for San-tos – the staunchly pragmatic architect of this triumph – and then there was the sight of Ronaldo, having limped up the steps towards the trophy, hoisting it high into the night sky.

The mind went back to the 2004 final, when a teen-age Ronaldo had been on the losing team and was left distraught. This was atonement for him and his nation. Back then Portugal had wilted under the pressure of being the hosts and favourites. This time it was France who had failed to deliver, despite having had a number of chances during regulation time to have won it. Rui Patrício, the Portugal goalkeeper, was prominent on the list of the heroes.

No country had played more ties at the European Cham-pionship finals than Portugal without winning it – until now. They had lost their previous 10 matches to France, including semi-finals at Euro 1984 and 2000 and at the 2006 World Cup. The revenge tasted impossibly sweet. And what about their record under Santos, who took over in September 2014? He remains undefeated in competitive games, with the number now standing at 14.

Nine of the 10 wins have been by a single goal and that tells a story. This Portugal team, who scraped through to the knockout rounds after finishing third in their group – they have plenty of reason to approve the expanded format of this championship – have not been easy to love. Even Santos had admitted beforehand that they have been the tourna-ment’s “ugly ducking”.

This was no grand spectacle but nobody in the red of Portugal cared. It was an attritional triumph, in which Santos kept things tight at the outset and even tighter after the loss of Ronaldo.

Portugal swarmed into tackles; they worked tirelessly to compress the space between the lines but their technique on the ball ought not to be overlooked. João Mário, the Sporting Lisbon midfielder, once again demonstrated his easy rhythm while Renato Sanches grew into the contest. When Santos withdrew the 18-year-old in the 78th minute, the manager’s craggy features creased into a smile.

Ronaldo could not overcome the effects of the shudder-ing collision with Dimitri Payet on eight minutes, when the France winger had banged into the side of his left knee. It was an emotional scene in the 23rd minute when Ronaldo realised that his final was over.

Sitting on the turf, he removed the captain’s armband and insisted upon wrapping it around Nani’s biceps. He was inconsolable as he was taken from the field on a stretcher; hand across his face to hide the tears.

Santos tried to get Ronaldo’s replacement, Ricardo Quaresma, and the excellent João Mário closer to Nani as the second half wore on and his final change was the introduction of Éder up front; Nani moved out wide and João Mário dropped into midfield. Portugal’s flexibility was plain.

They did not contribute too much in an attacking sense and they rode their luck, not least when Antoine Griezmann headed his gilt-edged 66th-minute chance over the crossbar and André-Pierre Gignac hit a post at the end of regulation time. Patrício was outstanding and he made four saves of the highest order, including two from Moussa Sissoko. He had stretched to keep out Griezmann’s header in the early running.

However, France ran out of ideas – they were eventually stifled – and it was Portugal who found the extra gear in ex-tra-time. Éder worked Hugo Lloris and Raphaël Guerreiro hit the crossbar with a free-kick. The Portugal supporters had brought the noise throughout the occasion and it was this nation of 10m people who could rejoice.

(Source: Guardian)

S P O R T Sd e s k

Raul Lozano satisfied with Iran’s Raul Lozano satisfied with Iran’s World League eliminationWorld League elimination

Iran national team volleyball head coach Raul Lozano says

that he is satisfied with failing to qualify for the final round of FIVB World League due to lack of time left until the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

“We had a great performance at Olym-pic qualification in Japan because we had two month of hard work and focus on Olympics but in the FIVB World League we had big difficul-ties including the long distances and the player’s tiredness,” Lozano said.

“We will do it step by step and will try to be in the top four teams of the group in order to qualify for the next round. In the quarter final stage we will have a tough job ahead as we will most likely face Brazil, USA, Italy or France,” he added.

“I believe it was better for them failing to qualify for the final round of FIVB World League as there is little time to the Olympic Games and we have no time to recover and prepare for Rio,” Lozano added.

Iran has been pitted against London 2012 gold medalist Russia, World Championship 2014 winner Poland, Argentina, Cuba and Egypt in Pool B of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

The Rio 2016 Olympic Games men’s vol-leyball tournament runs from August 6 until August 20.

S P O R T Sd e s k

S P O R T Sd e s k

Iranian international striker Karim Ansar-

ifard, who is currently playing for Greek side FC Panionios, stated that he will stay at the club despite a couple of offers from notable sides.

“I’m going to stay at Panionios. I had a couple of offers but none of them led to a move. I’m happy here and I’m going to make every effort to improve,” Ansarifard said.

Ansarifard, who has still one year left on his contract with Panionios, has been linked with Olympique de Mar-seille, PAOK and AEK.After a poor spell in Osasuna, Ansarifard joined Greek side Panionios last summer and impressed in his first season with the team as he scored 9 goals in 30 appearances.

He has scored 12 goals in 51 caps for Iran national football team.

Iran defeated Hong Kong in straight sets

(25-13, 25-17, 25-15) at the 2016 Asian Men’s U-20 Volleyball Champi-onship on Monday.

The Iranian team had already de-feated Turkmenistan and Qatar 3-0 respectively in Pool B.

The Iranian team is in Pool F along with Sri Lanka, South Korea and Turk-

menistan in next round. The Persians have been scheduled

to start the next stage from Wednes-day.

The competition is being held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan from July 9 to 17.

Top two teams will qualify for the 2017 FIVB Volleyball Men’s U21 World Championship.

Iran routs Hong Kong at Asian U-20 Volleyball Championship

I will stay at Panionios, says Karim Ansarifard

France star Dimitri Payet has insisted that he did not go out to hurt Portugal cap-tain Cristiano Ronaldo during Sunday’s Euro 2016 final.

Ronaldo was forced off in the 25th minute of Portugal’s extra-time win over the hosts after being on the receiving end of a robust early challenge from Payet.

But West Ham playmaker Payet, 29, said after the game that he had noth-ing to apologise for with regard to his eighth-minute tackle on Real Madrid for-ward Ronaldo.

“I came in for a tackle, full stop,” Payet told reporters after Portugal’s 1-0 win at the Stade de France.

“I got the ball back, but if I hurt him it wasn’t intentional -- it’s not in my nature to be a nasty player on the pitch. There’s no question about that.”

Ronaldo tried to continue to play twice after picking up the knee injury but

he was eventually stretchered off. The 31-year-old’s mother tweeted a picture of her son in tears, adding: “I cannot see my son in this way.”

Payet made way for Kingsley Co-man early in the second half and watched from the bench as Eder fired home the only goal of the game in the 109th minute.

(Source: Soccernet)

France forward Dimitri Payet finished Euro 2016 on top of UEFA’s Player Barometer, ahead of teammate Antoine Griezmann and Wales’ Gareth Bale.

UEFA used a specially designed algo-rithm to track players’ form and perfor-mance throughout Euro 2016 and the West Ham man led the ranking before the tournament and after it, despite Por-tugal’s win over France in the final.

Belgium’s Kevin De Bruyne had led the ranking on July 30, but Bale, then Griezmann took over as No. 1 before Payet jumped to the top after the final had been played. De Bruyne eventually finished in fifth place with Toni Kroos of Germany coming in fourth.

Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo finished behind Eden Hazard of Belgium in sixth, while Mesut Ozil, Paul Pogba and Raphael Guerreiro completed the top 10.

Portugal goalkeeper Rui Patricio fin-

ished in 18th place, leapfrogging Germa-ny’s Manuel Neuer to become the best keeper at the tournament.

UEFA’s Player Barometer is not the official announcement of their Player of the Tournament, which has yet to be confirmed after Portugal’s Renato Sanches walked away with the Young Player prize.

(Source: ESPN)

Dimitri Payet beats Antoine Griezmann to top UEFA’s Player Barometer

France’s Dimitri Payet: I did not mean to injure Cristiano Ronaldo

b

No. 18, Bimeh Lane, Nejatollahi St., Tehran, IranP.o. Box: 14155-4843

Zip Code: 1599814713

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Yh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / c u l t u r e

O brother, the world remains with no one. Bind the heart to the Creator, it is enough.

Sadi

Poem of the day

SINCE 1979Prayer Times

TEHRAN — Iranian musician Nader Mashayekhi has been commissioned

by the Berlin State Opera to compose an opera on Nezami Ganjavi (c. 1141-1209 CE), the greatest romantic epic poet in Persian literature who brought a colloquial and realistic style to the Persian epic.

“At present, Iran has received the attention of the world, and there are groups that want to present Iranian culture,” Mashayekhi, the former conductor of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, told the Persian service of ISNA on Monday.

“Therefore, Germany has assigned me the task,” he stated and added that a German orchestra is scheduled to perform the opera in March 2017.

Mashayekhi said that the characters of Nezami’s poems come to life in the opera.

He described Nezami as one of those Persian poets who focused on woman characters. He also referred to Ferdowsi, the composer of the Shahnameh, as another Persian poet who has shown interest in woman characters.

“Ferdowsi saw women as heroes in his poetry, but women in Nezami’s works neatly reflect various characters,” Mashayekhi explained comparing the two poets.

Nezami’s reputation rests on his Khamseh, which was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register list in May 2011.

It is a pentalogy of poems written in Masnavi verse

form (rhymed couplets) and totaling 30,000 couplets.These five poems include the didactic work

Makhzan ol-Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries), three

traditional love stories of Khosrow and Shirin, Leili and Majnun, and Haft Paykar, and the Eskandar-nameh, which records the adventures of Alexander the Great.

TEHRAN — Portuguese version

of “God Has Created You” has recently been published by Iran’s El Faro Children and Young Adults Group in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Written and illustrated by Mehraneh Jandaqi, the book has been published by El Faro’s newly-established office in Sao Paulo, director of the Spanish department of El Faro Farhad Fallah

said in a press release published on Monday.

“This is the first book that our office has officially published in Brazil. The book will be distributed in Islamic centers across Brazil,” he added.

“God has Created You”, has not been published in Persian yet, but its Spanish version has been distributed in different countries across Latin America.

El Faro, which specializes in children’s literature, has published over 50 books by Iranian authors in Spanish and Portuguese. It is affiliated with the Oriental Cultural Foundation (Fundación Cultural Oriente), which is located in the Iranian city of Qom.

Over 100 million children and teens are estimated to live in Latin America, which is home to people who speak Spanish or Portuguese.

TEHRAN — Tehran’s Boom Gallery is once again showcasing Abbas

Kiarostami’s “Four Seasons” in an exhibit, which opened Sunday, to commemorate the filmmaker, who passed away in Paris last week at the age of 76.

Twenty-nine photos from Kiarostami’s series “Snow White”, “Roads”, “Moonlight”, “Doors without Keys”, “The Wall” and “A Window to Life” are on display at the exhibition.

The gallery had previously held the exhibit in February and March 2016. This event is actually a great tribute to the master following the high number of requests made by some artists and Kiarostami’s fans, the gallery said in a press release on Monday.

His “Snow White” series takes the visitors into the heart of winter. “I have taken all these photos in Iran. I have been taking photos of snow over the past 30 years. Sometimes, I have only taken eight photos throughout one winter. So this collection has been formed little by little,” Kiarostami had said about his photos.

But his “A Window into Life” takes one into a new world. “I first began with these windows, some of them were situated in a beautiful wall, and my camera gradually began to distance from the windows and moved toward the walls

and ‘The Wall’ series appeared. The walls belong to the entire world but each one belongs to a specific place,” he had explained.

The digital prints “Doors and Memories” in large sizes are also another highlight of the exhibit.

“’Doors and Memories’ is no doubt the most distinct, challenging photography collection Abbas Kiarostami has ever produced,” art critic Alireza Sami-Azar had written in a note published in the catalogue of the first exhibition.

“The collection comprises simple and somewhat enigmatic pictures of magnificent locked doors often found at the far end of old, dark, dead-end alleyways. These doors only present an unrevealing façade of Iranian houses,” the note added.

Kiarostami had asked his fans to look at his photos if they want to learn about his professional life. “Find me in my photos,” he had once said, “My photos are the source of inspiration for all my films.”

The exhibit will be running for about forty days at the gallery located at No.11, West Armaghan St., Vali-e Asr Ave.

Noon:13:10 Evening: 20:42 Dawn: 4:15 (tomorrow) Sunrise: 5:59 (tomorrow)

PICTURE OF THE DAY Mehr/Masud Saki

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Mehr National Orchestra to highlight Homayun Khorram’s pieces

Poet Mohammad Javad Mohabbat commemorated in Tehran

Iranian calligraphers to raise funds for people with cancer

Iranian-German troupe to stage “The Border” in Germany

TEHRAN – The Mehr National Orchestra is scheduled to per-

form pieces by Homayun Khorram (1930-2013) during concerts, which will be held at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall on July 13 and 14.

Vocalist Vahid Taj will accompany the orchestra that will be conducted by Nasser Izadi.

TEHRAN – Veteran poet Mo-hammad-Javad Mohabbat was

honored for his lifetime achievements during a ceremony in Tehran on Sunday.

Dozens of cultural figures and literati including, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, Alireza Qazveh and Mohammadreza Sangari, attended the ceremony organized by the Owj Arts and Media Organization.

His credits include “Wave of Heavenly Scents”, “Green Memories”, and “The Shower of Words”.

TEHRAN – Iranian calligraphers Ahmad

Ariamanesh and Ahmad Mohammadpur plan to showcase a collection of their works during an exhibition in Tehran to raise funds for people suffering from cancer.

Organized by the Behnam Daheshpour Charity Organization, the exhibition will be held from July 15 to 20 at Behnam Gallery of the organization.

TEHRAN – A troupe composed of Iranian and German actors

will perform a mime entitled “The Border” at the Theater am Neunerplatz in Wurzburg, Germany from July 14 to 24.

The play will be jointly directed by Jafar Mahyari from Iran and Britta Schramm from Germany.

Written by Mahyari, the play tells the story of a conflict between two groups living on different sides of a borderline.

Saeid Abbak and Anahita Safikhani from Iran and Bernd Stollberger and Kristina Forster from Germany are members of the cast.

The troupe performed the play in Tehran during May.

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Mohammad-Javad Mohabbat (C) accepts some gifts while sitting among some of his fellow literati during a ceremony that the Owj Arts and Media Organization organized in Tehran on July 10, 2016 to honor the poet for his lifetime achievements.

N E W S I N B R I E F

Farhad Hassanzadeh nominated for 2018

Hans Christian Andersen Awards

TEHRAN — The Children’s Book Council

of Iran has nominated author Farhad Hassanzadeh to represent the country at the 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Awards, the highest international recognition given to an author and an illustrator of children’s books.

Born 1962 in Abadan, Hassanzadeh has published over 80 books, including “The Backyard”, “The 7th Bench by the Lake”, “Bambak’s Scorpions” and “Watermelon with Love”.

Earlier in May, Hassanzadeh, along with illustrator Pejman Rahimizadeh and children’s literature expert Turan Mirhadi, was nominated for the 2017 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, a prestigious Swedish honor to promote children’s and youths’ literature in the world.

Every other year, the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) presents the Andersen Award to a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children’s literature.

This year, the Hans Christian Andersen Author Award went to Cao Wenxuan from China while Rotraut Susanne Berner from Germany won the Hans Christian Andersen Illustrator Award.

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C U L T U R Ed e s k

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Iranian musician composing opera on Nezami for Germany

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Iranian musician Nader Mashayekhi in an undated photo (Mehr/Mohammad Khodabakhsh)

Portuguese version of “God Has Created You” published in Brazil

“Four Seasons” repeated in memory of Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami (R) speaks to art expert Alireza Sami-Azar (L) and an unidentified person after the opening of the exhibition “Four Seasons” at Boom Gallery in Tehran on January 1, 2016.

(Honaronline/Mehdi Dehruyeh)

Stevie Wonder urges people to choose “Love over Hate”LONDON (AP) — Stevie Wonder urged his fans to choose “love over hate” and expressed dismay over the troubles in the world at a concert devoted to one of his classic albums.

The legend performed Sunday in Hyde Park for the British Summertime Festival. He opened his concert by telling fans he loved them all in these difficult times, and asked them to live in positivity.

“I encourage you to choose love over hate. It’s just that simple. Choose love over hate, right over wrong, kind over meanness. Hope over no hope at all.”

The 66-year-old’s Grammy-winning, 1976 album “Songs in the Key of Life” was the focus of the concert; Wonder played the album in its entirety.

Before launching into the set Wonder went on to say that he was happy that the album was still significant almost forty years on but also unhappy that “the songs and the words that we talk about, those conditions still exist in the world and that hurts my heart.”

He also referenced the Black Lives Matter movement, telling the crowd: “all life does matter, but the reason that I say black lives matter is because we are the original people of this world. So in essence, everyone here has some black in you. You’ve all got some soul in you so stop denying your culture.”

Wonder played for over two hours to a sellout London crowd of 65,000 people, closing this year ’s British Summertime series. The Spanish version of “God Has Created You”