Djokovic downs veteran Stepanek to reach semis

BUSINESS | 17 SPORT | 24

Tender for HIA’s expansion project this year

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has received a message from President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro, pertaining to bilateral relations and means of boosting and developing them. The message was handed over by Venezuelan Vice-President for Political Sovereignty, Peace & Security, and Minister of the People's Power for Foreign Affairs, Delcy Rodriguez Gomez, during her meeting with the Emir at Emiri Diwan, yesterday.

Emir receives message from Venezuelan President

Mohammad Shoeb The Peninsula

The Hamad Interna-tional Airport (HIA) yesterday entered the elite category of glo-bal airports becoming

the sixth airport in the world to receive the ‘5-Star Airport’ des-ignation by Skytrax, the London-based aviation institute, an internationally reputable rat-ing agency of airports and airlines.

This makes HIA the first ever airport in the Middle East to earn

this acclaimed title. The prestig-ious 5-Star Airport rating is awarded to airports achieving the highest, overall Quality Performance.

The 5-Star Airport rating recognises those airports pro-viding excellent facilities for customers combined with high quality airport staff service. Air-port Quality ranking covers frontline areas for departures, arrival and transfer, including airport facilities, customer serv-ice, security, immigration, shop outlets and food and beverage facilities.

The highest rating – five stars – has previously only been awarded to five other airports worldwide: Singapore, Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo-Haneda and Munich.

This recognition is particu-larly timely as it comes after a year of reaching a number of strategic milestones at HIA, including the introduction of its iBeacon enabled mobile app, the launch of the Smart Airport fea-tures in the terminal, the operation of the dual passenger train shuttle to concourses D and E and the opening of mul-tiple duty free stores.

Moreover, HIA has contin-ued to work closely with Qatar Museums adding multiple inter-national and local art installations across the terminal.

→ Continued on page 2

The Peninsula

Prime Minister of the Syr-ian Opposition's Interim government Dr Jawad Abu

Hatab yesterday praised the Qatari role in supporting the Syrian revolution since it began in 2011.

Abu Hatab also praised Qatar's influential role in pro-viding all kinds of aid to the Syrian people, particularly in health, education and food.

Speaking at a press

conference held in the Syrian embassy in Doha, Abu Hatab reviewed his government's achievements. He said that his administration was in contact with Qatari charity bodies to organise the aid works inside Syria and move the work from the stage of relief to different development projects financing small enterprises owned by Syr-ian families.

The Prime Minister said he was part of the delegation that met with the Foreign Minister

H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, along with General Coordinator of the High Negotiations Commit-tee Dr Riad Hijab and President of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces Anas Al Abdah.

Abu Hatab described the meeting as successful saying a number of subjects related to Syria and the region were discussed.

→ Continued on page 2

HIA becomes world's

sixth 5-Star Airport

Abu Dhabi levies fee on expat tenants to boost revenuesABU DHABI: The emirate of Abu Dhabi has imposed a fee on expa-triates renting homes there as it seeks to increase state revenues that have fallen due to low crude prices. The municipal fee, equiv-alent to 3 percent of a tenant’s annual rent, will take effect retroactively from February 2016, the Abu Dhabi Department of Municipal Affairs & Transport said yesterday.

Last January the largest member of the United Arab Emirates hiked water and electricity charges, and in July the International Monetary Fund estimated the government would run a fiscal def-icit of 6.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2016.

Authorities decided on the fee last year but delayed its intro-duction because procedures to implement it were not yet in place. The department did not say how much the measure, from which UAE nationals are exempt, would raise. Neighbouring Dubai, the financial hub of the UAE, charges tenants a 5 percent municipal-ity fee. The emirates do not levy income tax.

Two dead as blast hits Turkey's IzmirIZMIR: Suspected Kurdish militants yesterday opened fire at police who stopped them at a checkpoint in the western city of Izmir before detonating their explosives-laden vehicle, the province's governor said. A policeman and a courthouse employee were killed in the attack while two assailants were shot dead.

Governor Erol Ayyildiz said preliminary indications pointed to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has carried out a string of attacks in the past year and a half, mainly targeting Tur-key's security forces. Islamic State militants have also carried several deadly attacks in the country. "The information so far sug-gests it is the PKK. Such a conclusion was reached after we assessed the attack and ID'd the people," Ayyildiz said. The governor did not refer to earlier reports that a third attacker was on the run.

Meanwhile, Turkish prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 380 businessmen accused of providing financial support to the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of orchestrating July’s failed coup, media reports said. Anadolu news agency said prosecutors had also issued demands for searches of the suspects’ homes and offices. → See also page 3

Huda N V The Peninsula

Showcasing honey from local farms, a three- day ‘Honey Festival’ opened at the win-

ter vegetable market in Al Mazrouah Yard in Umm Salal, yesterday. The annual event, organised by Ministry of Munic-ipality and Environment, attracted both beekeepers and honey-lovers to purchase a vari-ety of locally produced honey.

The festival is a part of national honey bee project, that aims to promote indigenous honey production by providing financial and technical support to farmers. It will be followed by similar events at the Al Khor-Dakhira yard and Al Wakrah yard winter markets over the next two weekends.

“The festival this year has more farmers and we have seen an increase in number of partic-ipants and visitors. Some 16 local farms and four companies are participating in the festival, which provides an opportunity to introduce the national project to farmers,” said Yousuf Al Khu-laifi, Director, Agricultural Affairs Department at the ministry.

Local honey is becoming popular , with increased number of takers , as it is trusted by

people for its quality and purity. Honey is classified according to the flower from which the bees extract nectar. The colour and flavour of the honey are deter-mined by the type of plants visited by the bees. It can be either mono-floral , coming from a single type of flower or poly-floral.

Different varieties of locally

produced honey are on sale at the venue.

The most popular honey in Qatar is that produced by bees that collect nectar from the Sidra trees. Locally produced honey is considered to be of high qual-ity with medicinal value. The taste of Sidra honey is consid-ered to be a true luxury and it is often described as rich and

unforgettable. Poly-floral honey is also available in the market.

Since the launch of the national project in 2012, the ministry has set up a programme to support and popularise bee farming. From 30 farms in 2012, the number of farms increased to 50 in 2014 and there are some 130 farms in honey production currently, according to experts.

“The project aims to support farms producing honey and many farms have doubled their output over the past years, with support from the ministry. We also have experts to assist farmers in every phase of honey production who train workers and follow-up honey production with routine farm visits,” Al Khulaifi said.

“This season, we have 4000 kg of honey locally produced, which is unique compared to the size of quantities imported from abroad. The ministry is provid-ing guidance and training to farmers on the best methods for the production of honey, and this year we have also included packaging training so that the honey can be marketed locally in best possible way,” he said.

The festival at Al Mazrouah Yard will close tomorrow. Al Khor-Dakhira yard will host the honey festival from January 12 to 14 and Al Wakrah yard from January 19 to 21.

Festival abuzz with honey lovers & beekeepers

This makes HIA the first ever airport in the Middle East to earn this acclaimed title. The prestigious 5-Star Airport rating is awarded to airports achieving the highest overall Quality Performance.

Qatar's support to Syrian revolution hailed

Akbar Al Baker (right), Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, and Engineer Badr Mohammed Al Meer, COO of Hamad International Airport (HIA), with the 5-Star Airport Skytrax certificate at HIA, yesterday. → See also page 17

Yousuf Al Khulaifi, Director, Agricultural Affairs Department, visiting a honey stall at the winter vegetable market in Al Mazrouah Yard, in Umm Salal, yesterday.

Volume 21 | Number 7033 | 2 RiyalsFriday 6 January 2017 | 8 Rabia II 1438

02 FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017HOME

Palm trees on the Corniche Road swaying in the strong wind yesterday. Pic: Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula

Swaying in the breeze

Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani with UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, yesterday. They discussed bilateral relations and means to promote them.

PM meets UK Chancellor of the ExchequerSchoolchildren flock to Mahaseel Festival Raynald C Rivera The Peninsula

More than 1,100 stu-d e n t s f r o m various schools have visited the i n a u g u r a l

Mahaseel Festival in the past two days, say organisers.

Through exhibitions and workshops, the festival provided student visitors real-life learn-ing on farming and the importance of the country’s agricultural sector. Apart from getting a glimpse of the range of vegetables and fruits cultivated in Qatar, the students learned about the process of growing them and the different food pro-duction industries linked to them.

Specific facts about the veg-etables displayed around the festival venue raised awareness

among the young visitors about the benefits of eating healthy food as they visited 34 stalls sell-ing local farm products.

Students and teachers who came to the first edition of the festival appreciated the valua-ble opportunity to connect educational curriculum with actual learning.

The festival also features student-based activities such as basket decoration competition which runs daily at 5pm, cart decoration competition for 10 local schools and art workshops.

Doha Modern Indian School,

Qatar Academy, Pakistan Inter-national School and Lebanese School were among the schools that visited the festival.

Kuwait Ambassador Hafeez Mohammed Al Ajmi, Ecuador Ambassador Kaplan Abi Saab and Georgia ambassador Ekat-erine Meiering-Mikadze were among the envoys who paid a visit to the festival yesterday.

More than 22 Qatari farms are participating at the inaugu-ral festival. They sell fresh fruits and vegetables, honey, poultry, meat and dairy at lower prices, in addition to a wide variety of flowering plants such as tulip, chrysanthemum, daisy, sun-flower, gladiola, daffodil and petunia spread around the fes-tival venue.

The festival also features an exhibition on date palms which raises awareness on the impor-tance of the date palm industry.

Qatari women and house-wives share expertise with visitors on how to make deli-cious local dishes using chicken, poultry, and available milk products at the festival’s local food zone.

There is also a weekly con-test entitled “Colour the Sketch” which is open to the public and in which a QR200 worth of pur-chasing coupons are at stake.

Mahaseel (Harvest) Festival is organised by Katara in collab-oration with the Agricultural Affairs Department at the Min-istry of Municipality and Environment to support Qatari farmers and promote local produce.

Students visiting Mahaseel Festival attend a session on growing flowering plants, yesterday.

New guideline issued for legal and judicial training The Peninsula

The Ministry of Justice has issued a guideline for legal and judicial training pro-

grammes to be carried out in 2017.

The training guideline coin-cides with the launch of training programme for assistants of judges and prosecution. It will be implemented by the Center of Legal and Judicial Studies (CLJS) of the Ministry.

"Training is part of the gov-ernment policy to invest in Qatari manpower and we look forward to see all Qataris con-cerned benefiting from the training opportunities offered by CLJS," said the Minister of

Justice, H E Dr Hassan bin Lah-dan Saqr Al Mohannadi, in his introduction to the training guideline. "Our aim is to Qatarise all professions in the legal sector and develop distinct Qatari legal jurisprudence in order to achieve the Qatar National Vision 2030," added the minister.

There are some changes in this year's training plan, he said, pointing out that the changes include starting the courses with the beginning of the new year concurrently with the state fis-cal year and giving more attention to practical aspects and use of Arabic language as medium of instruction.

The training guide was

prepared in coordination with different government bodies concerned to make the training outputs match actual needs, said Fatima Abdulaziz Bilal, Direc-tor of CLJS.

The guideline highlighted in detail the training programmes of 2017, which includes training programmes of assistants of judges and prosecutions, new candidates, training pro-grammes for new lawyers who are under practical training in addition to the sixth compulsory training course for judges and the seventh compulsory train-ing programme for lawyers under training and the 15th training programme for legal professionals.

HIA more than exceeds passenger expectations: Al BakerContinued from page 1

Akbar Al Baker, Qatar Air-ways Group Chief Executive, said: “Hamad International Air-port was designed and built in the modern era, taking into account what passengers want most - convenience and service. HIA more than exceeds passen-ger expectations by providing what passengers want in an environment that is beautiful, thoughtful and welcoming."

Al Baker said that HIA’s suc-cess is apparent in the fact that it is now at capacity, and the third phase of its development is highly anticipated.

"The airport serves more than 30 million passengers every year, and will grow to 50 million, yet each passenger can design their own experience at the airport, whether it is shopping in the world-class Qatar Duty Free pre-mium stores, relaxing in one of

its 12 lounges, resting comforta-bly in the Airport Hotel or using one of the many amenities at the Vitality Spa including the squash courts and the swimming pool. The airport experience is designed to be as memorable as the journey," he added.

Badr Mohammed Al Meer, Chief Operating Officer of HIA, said: “Joining the elite of airports and being the first airport in the Middle East to earn five stars

from Skytrax is an honour, and a direct result of the thousands of people who ensure HIA oper-ates smoothly every day, every flight. No matter how long our guests are with us, we strive to make their journey flawless and memorable. This acknowledge-ment is highly gratifying and will continue to motivate us to cre-ate an exceptional experience for everyone.”

Edward Plaisted, CEO of

Skytrax, said: “We extend our congratulations to HIA for achieving this 5-Star Airport rec-ognition, as well as being the first airport in the Middle East to gain this status. This accolade brings the challenge that 5-Star Airports find their customers become ever more demanding, and we have every confidence that HIA will continue to both maintain and improve standards as we move forward into 2017”.

Interim govt sets up medical school in Syria

Continued from page 1The Prime Minister of the

Syrian Opposition's Interim government, Dr Jawad Abu Hatab, also highlighted that there are more than 1,700 organisations operating in Syria. He, however, noted that there was a huge waste of resources and efforts because of lack of coordination between these organisations which are not working under a unified vision. Some areas lack aid, he added, pointing out that his government is cur-rently working on that aspect to help those organisations become more efficient and effective.

He highlighted his govern-ment's strong ties with Jordan and Turkey and expressed hope that relation with these coun-tries would help his government gain control over the Syrian borders.

Abu Jawad said that his government's work on the ground has gathered the sup-port of 80 per cent of the Syrian military factions.

He added that one of the

reasons for the government's popularity is that all its work is self-funded and provides serv-ices to the people through local councils and civil society organisations.

The Prime Minister then discussed the efforts of his gov-ernment since he took office five months ago.

He said that they succeeded in protecting the people from collapse as a result of the shell-ing and the Syrian regime's persistence in killing people who demand freedom and dignity.

He added that schools that haven't been hit are still work-ing thanks to the efforts of the opposition government.

Abu Hatab added that they have established a medical school in Aleppo to provide the area with its needs of medical cadres.

He highlighted that there were 100,000 college students that need to complete their education and 50,000 more who have graduated from high school but don't have access to higher education.

Ooredoo Marathon events registration deadline extended The Peninsula

As the countdown begins for the fifth Ooredoo Mar-athon, which will take

place on Friday, January 13, Ooredoo has extended the

events registration deadline. To enable as many people as

possible to take part in the event, registration will now close at 11.59pm tomorrow (online) and at 9pm for Ooredoo Marathon Booth registrations.

People wishing to sign up before the deadline can do so by visiting Marathon.ooredoo.qa or one of the dedicated Ooredoo Marathon booths at City Center or Villaggio Mall.

Marathon Booths will be

open from 9am to 9pm. So far, the company has announced that over 1,200 runners have registered to take part in the annual event, which this year will raise money for the charity Reach Out To Asia.

Municipality received 17,648 requests for pest controlThe Peninsula

INSECT and Rodent Control Unit at the Municipality of Doha received a total of 18,614 requests for fighting different kind of insects and rodents in 2016.

Out of this, 17,648 requests were for pest con-trol, 966 applications were for fighting rodents in addition to 12,535 campaigns, the Municipality said yesterday.

The campaign covered all parts of the municipality including schools where the pest control unit responded to 54 requests and 78 from government administrative buildings.

The unit also responded to 136 requests for dealing with snakes and 22 requests for controlling scorpions.

Gulf Air to start Colombo serviceGULF AIR, Bahrain’s national carrier, yesterday announced that it will launch its first flight to Bandaranaike Inter-national Airport, in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, from January 19 with 5 flights per week.

Farming out

More than 22 Qatari farms are participating at the inaugural festival.

03FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017 MIDDLE EAST

PKK blamed

Izmir governor Erol Ayyildiz said initial evidence suggested the PKK—which has fought a deadly insurgency for over three decades—was behind the attack.

Ankara

AFP

A car bombing blamed on Kurdish militants rocked the Turkish city of Izmir yester-day, killing at least

two people and triggering a deadly shootout, as authorities chased the fugitive killer behind the New Year attack in Istanbul.

Turkey is on edge after the shooting rampage at the Reina club unleashed shortly after rev-ellers rang in 2017 which killed 39 people and was claimed by the Islamic State group.

A top official said gunman may be a Turkic Uighur and sev-eral people of Uighur origin were arrested earlier on Thursday.

Just four days after the night-club carnage, a car bomb exploded outside a courthouse in the Aegean city of Izmir yes-terday afternoon, with authorities blaming the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

A policeman and a court worker, reportedly a bailiff, were killed, Deputy Prime Minister Veysel Kaynak told reporters.

Police battled “terrorists” in a clash which saw two militants killed. Another escaped and is now being pursued, he added.

The usually peaceful port city, Turkey’s third largest metropolis, is gateway to plush beach resorts of Aegean and rarely sees violence on this scale. It is west of PKK’s main theatre in the southeast of the country.

Izmir governor Erol Ayyildiz said that initial evidence suggested the PKK—which has fought a

deadly insurgency for over three decades—was behind the attack.

He said the policeman tried to stop the car before it exploded and the “terrorists” then sought to escape as the explosion went off and the gunfight began. Up to seven people were wounded, he added.

Ayyildiz praised the actions of policeman Fethi Sekin who carried out the control, saying “he was martyred but prevented the loss of many more lives”.

“Looking at the ammunition, it seems the aim was a massive massacre,” said Kaynak. Reports said that two Kalashnikovs, seven rockets and eight grenades were seized.

Turkish authorities mean-while were seeking to close in on the Istanbul club attacker, who slipped into the night after spraying 120 bullets at terrified partygoers celebrating New Year.

Of the 39 dead, 27 were for-eigners including citizens from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq and Morocco.

A top official said the

attacker was likely a Turkic Uighur and reports have indi-cated the authorities are looking into the possible existence of a cell, also including other jihad-ists from Central Asia.

IS took responsibility for the massacre in a statement on Mon-day, the first time it has issued a clear and undisputed claim for a major attack inside Turkey.

The extremist group said it was a response to Ankara’s mil-itary operation against the jihadists in northern Syria, where Turkish armed forces are sup-porting opposition fighters retaking territory from IS.

Kaynak earlier told A Haber

broadcaster that the attacker was “probably” of Uighur origin.

Most Uighurs, an eastern Turkic group, live in the Xinjiang region of China, although there are also significant populations in ex-Soviet Central Asian states.

Previous reports had said the killer could be from Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan.

Kaynak said airports had taken measures to ensure the killer did not flee Turkey and Dogan news agency reported that the authorities also tight-ened land borders.

The agency said checkpoints would be set up to search all vehicles and people leaving the

country at border crossings in Edirne, western Turkey, which has a land border with Greece and Bulgaria.

“The security forces are aware of who the terrorist is. We are also aware of the probable place where he might be,” Kay-nak added, without giving further details.

Kaynak described the mas-sacre as “sophisticated and well planned”, suggesting the gunman is part of a “well formed cell”.

Special forces detained sev-eral people Uighur origin suspected of links with the Istan-bul attack on the outskirts of the city yesterday, Anadolu said.

Damascus

AFP

A major water crisis in Syr-ia’s capital worsened as regime and rebel forces

clashed near its main reservoir yesterday despite a fragile truce that entered its seventh day.

The water from rebel-held Wadi Barada, which supplies four million people in Damas-cus, has been cut since December 22, causing major shortages.

The regime and rebels have traded accusations over respon-sibility. Government forces backed by Lebanon’s Hezbollah group are fighting to recapture the area northwest of Damascus even as a nationwide ceasefire has brought quiet to other parts of Syria in preparation for renewed peace talks.

The truce, brokered by Rus-sia and rebel sponsor Turkey, was meant to pave way for peace negotiations later this month in

the Kazakh capital Astana.The Observatory, a Britain-

based monitor of Syria’s conflict, said pro-regime forces and rebels were locked in ongoing clashes there yesterday.

Damascus residents said they have been forced to buy bottled water at twice its normal price as their supplies have run low. “We used to complain about power cuts, but now we can see

it’s nothing compared to lack of drinkable water. Water is life,” said Faiz, a civil servant.

Riham, 49, of Mashrou Dum-mar district, said she has not been able to bathe or wash her clothes for a week. The water in her own tank had almost run out and she only uses it for absolute necessities.

The public water authority has published daily updates on its Facebook page telling resi-dents where and when water will be distributed.

But locals said the water often fails to arrive and when it does, is undrinkable.

Authorities said they closed several shops for selling drink-ing water at elevated prices.

Mohannad, 53, said he buys drinking water at twice its nor-mal price. A 10-litre bottle that sold for 500 liras ($1/) before the mains water was cut now sells for 1,000 liras.

“It’s an unexpected cost on top

of the fact that living is already expensive,” Mohannad said.

The regime says forces in Wadi Barada include former Al-Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham Front, previously known as Al-Nusra Front, which Moscow and Damascus say is excluded from the ceasefire.

Rebels deny the group is in the area.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the truce was in a “critical phase” with violations on several fronts. But he said fight-ing had eased considerably since the truce came into force.

“Number of casualties has fallen a lot, with only 13 dead in areas covered by the ceasefire since the truce began. That would have been the toll of a single air strike before it came into force.”

French President Francois Hollande yesterday called for respect for the ceasefire, “par-ticularly by the regime” so peace talks could go ahead.

Jerusalem

Reuters

Israeli police yesterday arrested two people for incit-ing violence on social media

against three military judges who convicted a soldier of man-slaughter for shooting dead a wounded Palestinian attacker.

The judges found Sergeant Elor Azaria, 20, guilty of charge on Wednesday, and supporters have set up several Facebook pages urging Israel’s president to pardon him.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also called for a pardon on his Facebook page.

The case has polarised Israel. A military security detail was assigned to the judges on Wednesday, when several

hundred far-right supporters of Azaria clashed with police out-side the Tel Aviv military base as the verdict was being read out.

Attorney-General Avihai Mandelblit later ordered an investigation into incitement to violence by demonstrators who warned they would take retri-bution against military chief Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenkott, who has spoken strongly against Azaria’s actions.

“Inciting language against judges, military officers, law enforcement officials, or any person is unacceptable,” Man-delblit said in a statement.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said officers had arrested a man in Jerusalem and a woman in the southern town of Kiryat Gat whose social media

comments constituted “incite-ment to violence” against the judges.

Ten months ago, Azaria was an army medic serving in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank when two Palestinians stabbed a fellow soldier.

One of the assailants was shot dead by troops. The other, Abd Elfatah Ashareef, 21, was wounded and lay on the ground incapacitated when Azaria shot him in the head with an assault rifle more than 10 minutes after the attack.

Ruling in one of the most polarising cases in Israel’s his-tory, the judges convicted Azaria of manslaughter, saying he acted out of a sense of vengeance and had said after pulling the trigger, “He deserved to die.”

Dubai

AP

B A H R A I N y e s t e r d a y announced that it has restored the power of its domestic spy service to make some arrests, reversing a key reform recommended in wake of the crackdown that followed the country’s 2011 Arab Spring protests.

The decree affecting its National Security Agency comes as Bahrain is in midst of a renewed clampdown on dissent. It also follows an armed assault on a prison that killed a police officer and freed 10 inmates.

The decision came in decree, announced by state-run Bahrain News Agency. It described the decision as mak-ing arrest powers “limited” to terrorism cases, though it was in fact restoring them.

The royal decree was made “in view of high risk of terror crimes, which neces-sitates prompt action to thwart plots, halt their impact, gather evidence and arrest the culprits,” the report said.

However, terrorism alle-gations have been levied against activists and protest-ers in the past.

Asked why the agency needed arrest power, Bah-rain’s government said the kingdom’s “foremost priority is safety and protection of its citizens and residents.”

“The kingdom is fully committed to reform and development, however, as in all countries, laws must be revised and updated given the recent terrorist attack devel-opments in Bahrain,” it said.

Activists warned the move would create an environment that allows security service abuses to flourish.

He faces up to 20 years in prison, although legal experts expect a much lighter term. Sen-tencing is expected in the coming weeks.

The trial has generated debate about whether military is out of touch with a public that has shifted to the right in its atti-tudes toward the Palestinians.

Two dead as blast hits Turkish city of Izmir

A woman reacts as she is given a glass of water near the scene of a car bomb outside the courthouse in Izmir, yesterday.

Ankara

Reuters

Two senior Turkish mili-tary officers were jailed for life yesterday for

involvement in July’s failed coup attempt that killed almost 250 people, marking the first conviction related to the putsch, news agencies said.

The court found a colonel and a major had been assigned duties as provincial com-manders after the intended overthrow of President Recep

Tayyip Erdogan. It described them as members of a network headed by US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused of orchestrating the failed coup.

The court in city of Erzu-rum could not be immediately reached for comment.

The trial marked first time a court had passed sentence over the operation launched in the evening of July 15 and crushed by the morning. Par-liament was bombed and armed clashes resulted in deaths of civilians and soldiers.

Two commanders jailed for life over coup bid

Damascus water crisis grows as fighting threatens truce

Rebel fighters ride on a pick-up truck in the northern Syrian rebel-held town of Al Rai, yesterday.

Bahrain restores arrest powers to spies

Two arrested in Israel for threatening judges in soldier trial: Police

Rajaa and Yousri, parents of Abdul Fatah Al Sharif (portrait) head out into the streets in the West Bank town of Hebron.

04 FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017ISLAM

Mansoor Alam

Respect and honor all human beings irrespective of their reli-gion, color, race, sex, language,

status, property, birth, profession/job and so on (Al Quran-17:70)

- Talk straight, to the point, with-out any ambiguity or deception (Al Quran-33:70)

- Choose best words to speak and say them in the best possible way [Al-Qur’an-17:53, 2:83]

- Always speak the truth. Shun words that are deceitful and ostenta-tious [Al-Qur’an-22:30]

-Say with your mouth what is in your heart [Al-Qur’an-3:167]

- Speak in a civilized manner in a language that is recognized by the soci-ety and is commonly used [Al-Qur’an-4:5]

-When you voice an opinion, be just, even if it is against a relative (Al Quran-6:152)

- If, unintentionally, any misconduct occurs by you, then correct yourself expeditiously(Al Quran-3:134).

-Be moderate in thy pace [Al-Qur’an-31:19]

-Walk with humility and sedate-ness [Al-Qur’an-25:63]

-Keep your gazes lowered devoid of any lecherous leers and salacious stares [Al-Qur’an-24:30-31, 40:19].

- When you hear something mali-cious about someone, keep a favorable

view about him/her until you attain full knowledge about the matter. Consider others innocent until they are proven guilty with solid and truthful evidence [Al-Qur’an-24:12-13]

- Ascertain the truth of any news, lest you smite someone in ignorance and afterwards repent of what you did [Al-Qur’an-49:6]

- The believers are but a single Brotherhood. Live like members of one family, brothers and sisters unto one another [Al-Qur’an-49:10].

- When you meet each other, offer good wishes and blessings for safety. One who conveys to you a message of safety and security and also when a courteous greeting is offered to you, meet it with a greeting still more cour-teous or (at least) of equal courtesy (Al Quran 4:86]

- When you enter your own home or the home of somebody else, com-p l i m e n t t h e i n m a t e s [Al-Qur’an-24:61]

- Treat kindly your parents, rela-tives, the orphans and those who have been left alone in the society (Al Quran-4:36)

- Take care of the needy, the disa-bled, those whose hard earned income is insufficient to meet their needs and those whose businesses have stalled and those who have lost their jobs. (Al Quran-4:36)

- Treat kindly to your related neigh-bours and unrelated neighbours,

companions by your side in public gatherings, or public transportation. (Al Quran-4:36)

- Be generous to the needy way-farer, the homeless son of the street, and the one who reaches you in a des-titute condition (Al Quran-4:36)

- Be nice to people who work under your care. (Al Quran-4:36)

- Cooperate with one another in good deeds and DO NOT cooperate with others in evil and bad matters (Al Quran-5:2)

- You should enjoin right conduct on others but mend your own ways first. Actions speak louder than words. You must first practice good deeds yourself, then preach (Al Quran-2:44)

- Correct yourself and your fami-lies first [before trying to correct others] (Al Quran-66:6)

- Pardon gracefully if anyone among you who commits a bad deed out of ignorance, and then repents and amends (Al Quran-6:54, 3:134)

- Divert and sublimate your anger and potentially virulent emotions to creative energy, and become a source of tranquility and comfort to people (Al Quran-3:134]

- Call people to the Way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful exhor-tation. Reason with them most decently (Al Quran-16:125)

- Leave to themselves those who DO NOT give any importance to the Divine code and have adopted and

consider it as mere play and amuse-ment (Al Quran-6:70)

- In your collective life, make rooms for others (Al Quran-58:11)

- When invited to dine, go at the appointed time. Do not arrive too early to wait for the preparation of meal or linger after eating to engage in boot-less babble. Such things may cause inconvenience to the host (Al Quran-33:53)

- Fulfill your promises and com-mitments (Al Quran-17:34)

- Keep yourself clean, pure (Al Quran-9:108, 4:43, 5:6).

-Dress up in agreeable attire and adorn yourself with exquisite charac-ter from inside out (Al Quran-7:26)

- Seek your provision only by fair endeavor (Al Quran-29/17, 2/188)

- Use of things that produce beauty and elegance is lawful. None can pro-claim them as unlawful. (Al Quran 7:32)

- Always converse in clear, straight-forward and decisive language, which contains no ambiguity: (Al Quran 33:70)

- Use language, which is recognized by society and commonly used. (Al Qur’an 4:5)

- Avoid all absurdities. One of the qualities of the believers has been stated as (Al Quran 23:3)

“They avoid vain talk”. The word “Laghwa” means vain as well as mean-ingless. In Surah Al An’aam (6th Chapter of the Qur’an) it is said: (6:151) this includes all sorts of immodesty — even

an immodest talk as it arouses lewd passions.

- When you go out, DO NOT allow your gaze to become bold and daring. This has been ordained both for men as well as women. Always ponder over things: see, hear, comprehend and then make decisions intellectually. (Al Quran 7:179)

- When you hear a good thing, act upon it; and when you hear an absurd one keep yourself away from it. (Al Quran 2:285)

- When you meet each other, offer good wishes and blessings for safety. Thus it is said: (4:86) “One who conveys to you a message of safety and secu-rity and also when a courteous greeting is offered to you, meet it with a greet-ing still more courteous or (at least) of equal courtesy. When you enter your own house or the house of somebody else, compliment the inmates. (Al Quran 24:61)

- Extend kind and good behavior to your parents, kinsfolk, orphans, neighbors, friends, travelers and those serving under you: (Al Quran 4:36)

- Co-operate with one another in good and virtuous matters consistent with the Divine Laws and DO NOT co-operate in evil and bad matters.”( Al Quran 5:2)

- Observe assembly etiquettes while sitting in and leaving. (Al Quran 58:11)

www.islamcity.org

Quranic guidance for self improvement

Once, while sitting in a pub-lic venue, a young man was seated next to me who behaved quite strangely. He looked unbearably sad and

distraught. He recoiled from everyone around him, as if he thought that eve-ryone was out to cause him injury. It then occurred to me that this young man was closed off to any possibility of pos-itive engagement with others. In order to reach out to this person, you would first have to know how to get through the barriers that he has erected around himself.

There may be a person who you want to do business with, or who you need to cooperate with in some scien-tific project or cultural event. Or you may want to call that person to right-eousness, or protect that person from harm. Or maybe that person may be able to help you in some way and you wish to ask for help. Or maybe you know there is some way you can help that person.

This person you need to engage with on a personal level for one reason or another may be someone who is wealthy, or a great thinker, or highly educated, or dangerously misguided. This person may be many things, but one thing is for certain: before every-thing else, you are dealing with another human being.

At the day of his or her birth, none of those other attributes were in evi-dence. Allah reminds us: “And Allah brought you forth from the wombs of your mothers knowing nothing, and He gave you hearing and sight and hearts that perchance you might give thanks.” (Surah Al Nahl: 78)

Allah Almighty also says: “And behold! You come to us as bare and alone as We created you the first time: you have left behind you all (the favours) which We bestowed on you”

(Surah Al An'am: 94) All human beings share the same

essential qualities. Therefore, any type

of contact or interaction you have with another person which disregards that person’s essential humanity is bound to fail. At the same time, it is good to know that you have a starting point. You are a human being too, so there is so much that you already know about the other person: those essential needs, senti-ments, experiences and feelings that we all share.

This is why Allah, in His wisdom, sent Messengers to humanity from among themselves. Those messengers ate food, walked in the marketplaces, got married, fell ill, and suffered pain like everyone else.

Every person has unique sensitivi-ties that must be respected and idiosyncrasies that must be negotiated. At the same time, everyone deserves to be treated with kindness, respect, and sympathy.

Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "Whoever wishes to be saved from Hell and admitted into Paradise as desired, they should believe in Allah and the Last Day and treat other people the way they themselves would like to be treated." (Muslim)

Here, the Prophet (PBUH) is giving us a beautiful approach for dealing with others. We should always put ourselves in the place of those we are dealing with and then ask ourselves what would make us happy if we were in their place? This is the way the Prophet (PBUH) related to people, and this is the model that we should follow.

For instance, we know that people like to hear good things about them-selves. Everyone has some good qualities, and it is not necessary to flat-ter people with lies in order to say something good about them.

It is also generally good to let peo-ple know that you like them and regard them highly. This should be something we generally feel about all people in principle, since Allah has honoured all human beings and chosen them above His other creations.

Allah says: "Verily we have honored the children of Adam. We carry them on the land and the sea, and have made provision of good things for them, and have preferred them above many of those whom We created with a marked preference. " (Surah Al Isra': 70)

And He says: "We have indeed cre-ated man in the best of forms." (Surah Atthin: 4)

Look at the other person and smile sincerely. Have a pure heart and speak as a friend. Talk about good things in a simple way. Enjoy the conversation.

If you are dealing with people you wish to assist or give charity to, before handing over the money, show them respect. Treat them well and deal with them warmly. Allah says: "A kind word and clemency are better than charity f o l l o w e d b y a b u s e . " (Surah Al Baqarah: 263)

You should be this way with our spouse whom you live all your life, as well as with your children. Our children may have come from us, but we raise them to grow up into independent human beings, accountable directly to

their Lord. You should be this way with your co-workers, colleagues, and neigh-bors. If you have employees working for you, or you are in a position to have servants and drivers in your employ, show them the same respect you show other people. You should truly feel in your heart that if Allah has blessed you in this world to have greater wealth or social status than someone else, that does not mean you are better. Those others who possess less in this world may have greater status with Allah on account of their character or their piety, or some other quality you might be unaware of. Ultimately, they may enjoy a higher status in the eternal abode of Hereafter.

You should approach strangers in the same way. It may be the only time you meet. Leave them with a good impression. Remember, what they think of you personally will also influ-ence their attitudes about the groups and affiliations they identify you with. Make sure the dealings they had with you were happy ones. Do good by them, and who knows how many of Allah's blessings your kindness will

bring you in this world and the next. Make the same positive attitude the

basis for your dealings with those you wish to criticise for their faults or to advise in order to bring them away from their misconduct or guide them to what is right. You should be sincerely concerned for them as people, even if you disagree with them or disapprove of their conduct. You should always have their welfare at heart. Do not engage in making accusations or use insulting words that will ensure your failure to reform their errors even before you begin to try. Ahmad Ibn Hanbal advised: "Rarely will you make someone angry and then find them agreeing with you."

Those of us who wish to engage in teaching people or in calling others to Allah, or who wish to reform society should heed this advice. They need to consider it all the more. They should fol-low the Prophet's (PBUH) guidance and "treat other people the way they them-selves would like to be treated." This is wisdom!

www.islamicstudies.islammessage.com

See others as we see ourselvesThose of us who wish to engage in teaching people or in calling others to Allah, or who wish to reform society should heed this advice. They need to consider it all the more. They should follow the Prophet Muhammad's (peace be upon him) guidance and "treat other people the way they themselves would like to be treated." This is wisdom!

05FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017 ASIA / AFRICA

Mahama urges public to support successorAccra

AFP

Ghana's outgoing pres-ident John Mahama urged his compatri-ots to get behind his successor, Nana

Akufo-Addo, during his last state of the nation address yesterday.

Mahama told parliament in the capital, Accra, that he was happy to step down and let his long-time rival take the helm of one of Africa's most stable democracies.

Akufo-Addo will be inaugu-rated as president tomorrow.

"I stand here today, Mr Speaker, holding the baton of leadership prepared to pass it on with pride, goodwill and deter-mination to Nana Akufo-Addo

and to ask all Ghanaians to cheer him on as he runs his portion of this important relay for Ghana," said Mahama.

Opposition leader Akufo-Addo defeated Mahama in the hotly contested December 7 elections on a platform promis-ing to rejuvenate the economy and stamp out government corruption.

Ghana is a shining example of democracy in a region where dictators have been desperately trying to cling to power.

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has refused to acknowl-edge his defeat in a December 1 election he lost to Adama Bar-row, challenging the result at the Supreme Court.

In Democratic Republic of Congo, where President Joseph Kabila is constitutionally barred

from seeking a third term of office, new elections have been delayed by a year.

In 2015, Mahama was forced to go to the International Mon-etary Fund for a $918-million bailout to try to turn around an economic slump caused in part by ballooning government debt and a crippling power shortage.

But in his speech, 58-year-old Mahama defended his time in office, saying that despite "sailing against strong head-winds", he was able to deliver many infrastructure projects as well as healthcare and water services to millions of people.

"Ghana is entering into an era of power sufficiency," he said. "I took responsibility."

Akufo-Addo, an erudite 72-year-old human rights

lawyer, has pledged to put Ghana "back on the path of progress and prosperity".

In his election manifesto, he laid out a plan to restore economic

stability and encourage invest-ment by slashing corporate tax and abolishing taxes on everything from real estate sales to domestic flight tickets.

Lack of evidence to impeach Park: LawyerSeoul

AFP

The impeachment trial of South Korea's President Park Geun-Hye got under

way yesterday, with her lawyers arguing there is no evidence to back the corruption allegations that threaten to force her from office.

Parliament voted to impeach Park last month over an influ-ence-peddling scandal that has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets every week demanding her removal.

The National Assembly, which must have its vote upheld by the Constitutional Court, accused Park of a "serious breach of the constitution" dur-ing the first full hearing in the impeachment case.

"The court is requested to fire the president so that impaired constitutional order can be restored", said Kwon Seong-Dong, a lawmaker rep-resenting the parliament.

"The president has betrayed

the trust and mandate from the people", he added.

The Constitutional Court's initial hearing on Tuesday was curtailed after Park failed to attend. It decided to proceed

yesterday regardless of whether she was present.

Park's lawyers said there was no proof the president had issued any directive, oral or written, to tell her aides to ensure the

National Pension Fund -- the largest shareholder of one of the two Samsung units -- voted for the merger.

They urged the court to over-turn the impeachment vote,

saying the motion had been based on "likelihood at best" and insisted she be reinstated as president immediately.

"There is no solid evidence to back the impeachment", Park's lawyer Lee Jung-Hwan said.

Park repeatedly denied the corruption allegations in some-times tearful televised addresses, while apologising for lapses.

At a separate criminal court trial yesterday, Choi also repeated her denial of all charges levelled against her.

"I think I was victimised" by groundless allegations, said Choi.

Her lawyers have denied alle-gations Choi was involved in peddling influence or extortion.

In a rare meeting with jour-nalists, the president said on Sunday that she had only sought to listen through Choi to ordi-nary citizens' opinions on her polices and speeches.

She also insisted the dona-tions to the foundations were made voluntarily by companies to help develop the country's cul-ture and sports.

UN presses Congo for rapid action on crisis dealUnited Nations

AFP

THE UN Security Council called for the rapid and com-plete implementation of a deal to end the political crisis in the DR Congo.

In a unanimous vote approving the measure pro-posed by France, the 15 members of the council reaf-firmed the importance of organizing credible elections before the end of the year.

"The Security Council is encouraged by the spirit of flexibility and compromise demonstrated by Congolese political leaders in reaching this agreement, for the stabil-ity, peace, development and consolidation of constitu-tional democracy in the DRC, and calls on all Congolese actors to preserve this spirit in the discussions to come in order to swiftly resolve all pending issues, especially the practical modalities of the inclusive management of the executive during the pre-electoral and electoral period," the UNSC said.

"The Security Council encourages the political par-ties which didn't sign the agreement to do so," it added.

The deal reached on Sat-urday sketches a timetable under which President Joseph Kabila will stay in office before new elections are held.

UN peacekeepers' convoy attacked: Two dead

Sydney

AFP

Australia yesterday rejected claims it tried to "recruit" Indonesia's best soldiers

as Jakarta moved to tone down a rift after military ties were suspended.

Indonesia's military chief General Gatot Nurmantyo said it involved "unethical stuff" which "discredits Indonesia and its military, even the nation's ideology".

"It's about soldiers in the past, East Timor, Papuan inde-pendence and 'Pancasila'," he said, referring to the nation's founding philosophy.

"Every time there is a

training programme -- like recently -- the best five or 10 students would be sent to Aus-tralia. That happened before I was chief so I let that happen".

"Once I became chief com-mander of the national forces, it (the students being sent) did not happen again. They will cer-tainly be recruited."

Australian Defence Minister

Marise Payne denied Canberra had targeted Indonesian soldiers to be potential agents.

"No, that is not the case and it is something which we would not countenance of course".

She added that an investi-gation into teaching materials that sparked the spat was almost complete and the government took the concerns seriously.

Ugandan MPs petition ICC to probe 'genocide'Kampala

Reuters

A group of Ugandan law-makers have sent a petition to the Interna-

tional Criminal Court (ICC) to ask for an investigation into possible atrocities by security forces when they clashed with a tribal militia late last year.

According to an official toll, 62 people were killed in

November when a combined force of soldiers and police officers clashed with a tribal leader's guards in the Rwenzori region near Uganda's western border with the DR Congo.

William Nzoghu, a legisla-tor from the area and one of six members of parliament who sent the petition, said the number of people killed exceeded 200 and that police and the army "jointly

committed a genocide and crimes against humanity".

"We are saying let the ICC come and investigate," he said.

The area, which has been beset by unrest in recent years, often votes for the opposition in general elections.

Critics of the long-standing president, Yoweri Museveni, accuse his government of delib-erately stoking violence in the region as retribution for its

residents' rejection of his rul-ing party candidates.

In an emailed response, the ICC's Office of the Prosecutor said it had received the petition and that it would announce a decision in "due course".

Rights group Amnesty International said that during the clashes several people appeared to have been "sum-marily shot dead and their bodies dumped".

Ghana President John Mahama.

Bangui

AFP

Two Moroccan peacekeepers died after gunmen attacked their convoy in the Central African Republic's (CAR) remote southeast, the UN mission said yesterday.

The attack on Tuesday took place about 60km from the town of Obo, as the troops were escorting a convoy of fuel trucks sent from Zemio, MINUSCA said.

"Two peacekeepers died and two others were injured," it said. "The attackers fled into the bush."

The United Nations Security Council yesterday condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms."

"Attacks targeting peacekeepers may constitute a war crime and reminded all parties of their obligations under international humanitarian law," the UNSC added, urging the Bangui govern-ment "to swiftly investigate this attack and bring the perpetrators to justice."

The Central African Republic is struggling to emerge from a civil war that erupted in 2013 following the overthrow of former president Francois Bozize,a Christian, by rebels from Seleka coalition.

Nine judges of South Korea's Constitutional Court during a hearing on whether to confirm the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, at the court in Seoul, yesterday.

Farewell address

Mahama said that he was happy to step down and let his long-time rival take the helm of one of Africa's most stable democracies.

He also defended his time in office, saying that despite "sailing against strong headwinds", he was able to deliver many infrastructure projects as well as healthcare and water services to millions of people.

Australia denies trying to 'recruit' Indonesian army

Australia's Defence Minister Marise Payne speaks to the media in Sydney, yesterday.

Govt resumes payments to former Niger Delta militantsYenagoa

Reuters

NIGERIA has resumed pay-ments of cash stipends to former militants agreed under a 2009 amnesty in the coun-try's Niger Delta oil hub, a government official said.

The government has been holding talks with militants to end attacks on crude pipelines which reduced Nigeria's out-put by 700,000 barrels a day for several months last year.

Authorities had originally cut the budget for cash pay-ments to militants to end corruption but later resumed payments to stop pipeline attacks crippling vital oil revenues.

"Two months of the ex-militants' stipends were paid yesterday ... The rest of their stipends will be paid later in batches by (central bank) CBN," said Piriye Kiyaramo, an officer in the government's Amnesty Office.

Each former militant is entitled under the amnesty to $206.68 monthly plus job training.

Eric Omare, spokesman for the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), which represents the Delta's biggest ethnic group, said former militants had complained to the region's top negotiator handling talks with the government about payment delays.

President Muhammadu Buhari met Niger Delta lead-ers and representatives for the militants in November to discuss their demands but lit-tle progress has emerged publicly since then.

06 FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017ASIA / PHILIPPINES

NEARLY 480 people died on Thailand's roads over the New Year holiday, official figures showed yesterday, a 25 percent rise over the so-called "seven dangerous days" despite the jun-ta's tough talk on drink driving.

The kingdom has some of the world's most lethal roads, with carnage spiking over the New Year as millions of city workers return to their country homes.

Thailand's junta government has launched repeated crack-downs on drink driving since its 2014 power grab, including approving harsher penalties for offenders and forcing drivers to visit mortuaries holding the bod-ies of accident victims.

But the toll over the last week still soared to 478 -- up from the 380 recorded in 2016, according to the Interior Ministry's disaster prevention department.

NEWS BYTES

Thai New Year road deaths hit 478

Manila

AFP

Russian Marines shat-tered glass bottles with their heads and smashed burning wooden planks

against each other yesterday as part of an eye-catching charm offensive in the Philippines, a traditional US ally.

The camouflage-clad Marines showed off their pistol-shooting, knife-fighting and

martial arts skills to the Filipino public in Manila's central park as part of a "goodwill visit" spearheaded by two warships following Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's announced pivot away from the United States.

As bewildered passers-by watched, the Russian marines smashed boards with their fists, had cinder blocks crushed on their stomachs and endured beatings from flaming planks.

The show culminated with

them smashing glass bottles on their heads without any visible effect.

After the display, eager Fili-pinos rushed to take "selfies" with the beret-wearing Russians.

"The performances were great, the stunts were quite impressive," gushed student Antonio Chua.

Filipinos were also allowed to attend an open house on the submarine-hunter Admiral Trib-uts, one of the two ships making

what was only the Russian Navy's third-ever port call in the Philippines.

Duterte, who calls himself a socialist, has championed a move away from the United States and towards US rivals Russia and China following American criticism of his bloody war on crime that has claimed thousands of lives.

"America has lost," Duterte said on a visit to China in Octo-ber last year.

"I've realigned myself in your

(Chinese) ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world: China, Philippines and Russia. It's the only way."

Russia's ambassador to the Philippines Igor Khovaev said yesterday he expected a planned visit by Duterte to Russia in April or May to be "a milestone".

"It will be a very successful visit that will give a powerful impetus (to our) cooperation in different fields".

Manila

Reuters

An arbitration court ruling that rejected China's claims to the South China

sea and strained Chinese rela-tions with the Philippines will not be on the agenda of this year's Southeast Asian summit, a senior Philippine official said yesterday.

Philippine President Rod-rigo Duterte reiterated last month he wanted to avoid con-frontation with China and saw no need to press Beijing to abide by the July ruling that went in favour of the Philippines.

"The Hague ruling will not be on the agenda in the sense that it's already part of interna-tional law," Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Enrique Man-alo told reporters ahead of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meeting chaired by the Philippines in April.

"So we really can't discuss the ruling. It's there."

The July 2016 ruling

rejected China's territorial claims over much of the South China Sea.

Beijing declared the deci-sion as "null and void", but called on countries involved in the dispute to start talks again to peacefully resolve the issue.

What the 10-member Asean will focus on is the completion of a framework for a code of conduct to ease tension in the disputed waters, Manalo said yesterday.

"We hope we will have a pleasant scenario during our chairmanship. We will talk to China in a way we will put forth our interest just as we expect china will put forth theirs".

Since 2010, China and the Asean have been discussing a set of rules aimed at avoiding conflict. China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 tril-lion in ship-borne trade passes every year.

At the Asean summit last year, China's closest Asean ally, Cambodia, blocked any men-tion of the court ruling against Beijing in a joint statement.

Manila

Reuters

Philippine security forces killed the leader of a militant group support-ing Islamic State in a clash early

yesterday, the country's police chief said, warning against possible retaliation.

President Rodrigo Duterte recently cautioned against IS taking root in the southeast Asian country, saying it needed to avoid "contamination".

"I strongly believe that we have effectively broken the backbone of the militant Ansar Al-Khilafah Philippines (AKP)," Ronald Dela Rosa told a news conference to announce the death of the group's leader, Mohammad Jaafar Maguid (pictured).

Three AKP colleagues of Maguid were also arrested in a police operation shortly after midnight at a resort in the southern province of Sarangani, he added.

"He is the recognized ISIS leader in that area," Dela Rosa said, adding that Maguid, who goes by the alias "Tokboy", was the "most wanted person" in the country's south, sought for his involve-ment in crimes ranging from arson and murder to bombings.

Police recovered two armalite rifles, a hand grenade, and M-16 magazines, from Maguid and the three men, iden-tified as Matahata Dialawe Arboleda, Ismael Sahak, and Morhaban Veloso.

The AKP and the Maute militant group, which has also pledged allegiance

to Islamic State, are among a handful of small groups authorities blame for years of unrest in the Philippine south.

The killing and the arrests would "momentarily weaken" the group, Dela Rosa said, but a new leader could emerge eventually and launch fresh attacks.

"We expect some retaliation from the ISIS-inspired groups," he added. "We should expect, and we should be very vigilant against, this possible retaliation."

Philippine security forces are on full alert ahead of Monday's feast of the Black Nazarene in the capital Manila. It usually draws millions of devotees for a procession through the streets that runs for hours.

Thousands still stranded in floods

Russian marines show skills in Philippines

Militant group leader died in Philippine clash

JAPANESE police said yester-day they were investigating the escape of four dolphins from a park in a Japanese town that has gained international notoriety for staging an annual slaughter of the mammals.

A fisherman in the city of Taiji noticed that four bottlenose dolphins from the facility were swimming outside their netted enclosure in the early morning, police said.

"We are investigating the case on suspicion of criminal damage," a police official said.

He said two of the nets at the DolphinBase park were appar-ently cut with a sharp object, allowing the mammals to escape, before three of them returned to the enclosure of their own volition. A fourth dolphin was swimming nearby.

Dolphins escape from Japan park

Rantau Panjang

AFP

Thousands of people remained stranded in relief centres yesterday

as northeast Malaysia strug-gled to recover from severe flooding and residents raised fears of looting.

But the number of people displaced in the states of Kel-antan and Terengganu fell to about 18,300 from almost 23,000 on Wednesday.

In badly hit Rantau Pan-jang, a Kelantan town bordering Thailand, more than 300 residents sought shelter at a crowded relief centre.

Evacuees said food was sufficient but there were hygiene concerns.

Dustbins were overflow-ing with garbage while families with young children were squeezed into small classrooms. Looking glum, flood victims said they were

worried about future supplies of clean drinking water, loss of income and thieves loot-ing their homes.

Mohamad Nawi Che Mamat, 50, said he had to wade through floodwaters daily from the relief centre to check on his home.

Others who had chosen to remain in their flood-hit homes also expressed frus-tration, saying they have yet to receive aid from the goverment.

S China Sea ruling not on agenda at Asean summit

Diplomacy

The Marines showed off their pistol-shooting, knife-fighting and martial arts skills to the Filipino public as part of a 'goodwill visit'.

Russia's ambassador to the Philippines said she expected a planned visit by Duterte to Russia.

Russian marines show their skills during a demonstration at a park in Manila, yesterday. RIGHT: Members of the Russian Navy show to a visitor how to operate a 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine gun during a public tour onboard the Navy vessel Admiral Tributs docked at the South Harbor, Port Area, in Metro Manila.

A girl stands on a mailbox outside her house in Malaysia's northeastern town of Rantau Panjang, yesterday.

07FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017 PAKISTAN / AFGHANISTAN

Afghan Constitution Anniversary

Pakistan govt frees 218 Indian fishermenKarachi

Reuters

Pakistan began releas-ing 218 Indian fishermen yesterday, police said, the second such gesture in a

month that could begin to ease tension between the neighbours.

The men were arrested more than a year ago, accused of entering Pakistani waters in an area of the Arabian Sea where the border is disputed.

India is also holding Paki-stani fishermen for the same reason, and Pakistan hopes its release will be reciprocated.

"They are being released by the orders of the federal govern-ment," said Ali Hassan Setho, a superintendent of police in the port city of Karachi, where the men are being held.

"They will go via Lahore," he said, referring to the Pakistani city near the main border cross-ing into India.

Relations between nuclear-armed neighbours have been more fraught than usual since a crackdown by Indian security forces on dissent in Indian-con-trolled Kashmir began in July.

Both countries claim the Muslim-majority region in full and rule it in part. India accuses Pakistan of supporting an insur-gency against Indian rule in its part of Kashmir. Pakistan denies that.

In September, militants killed 18 soldiers at an Indian army base in an attack India blamed on Pakistan. Pakistan denied involvement.

Intermittent talks between them on a range of issues, includ-ing their disputed maritime border, have stalled.

In the past, gestures such fishermen releases have helped to improve the atmosphere for a resumption of talks.

Pakistan last released a batch of Indian fishermen on Decem-ber 25.

One of the men being released said it was good to be going home after a year.

"I'm very happy that I'll be reunited with my mother, broth-ers, sisters and my children," the

man who goes by the single name Kamlesh, from India's western state of Gujarat, said.

"I'm excited to think that very soon I'll reach there and see their faces."

Maritime issue

"They are being released by the orders of the federal government": Official

India is also holding Pakistani fishermen for the same reason, and Pakistan hopes its release will be reciprocated.

PML-N scales up drive for graft bill’s clearanceIslamabad

Internews

AS the Supreme Court resumes hearing of the Panamagate case, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has stepped up efforts to have its own graft probe bill passed by the Senate.

The ruling party’s central leadership has instructed its senators - particularly PML-N Chairman and Leader of the House in the Senate Raja Zafarul Haq to reach out to favourable parties to garner their support on the Commis-sion of Inquiry Bill, it was learnt yesterday.

With PML-N lacking numbers in the upper house, the role of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) becomes crucial.

According to sources, while ruling party has not for-mally contacted the MQM leadership, some PML-N law-makers privy to developments in Karachi have ‘personally’ asked senior MQM leaders to support the bill.

The MQM leaders are said to have linked their support to concessions in Karachi in the backdrop of a blanket operation against terrorists and criminal networks.

Sources said the PML-N leadership is not ready to give any concessions in Karachi, suggesting the government may not bring MQM to accept its terms and support the bill.

Sharif orders release of education programme funds

Islamabad

Reuters

The wife of an American author who disappeared on a research trip in

Afghanistan more than two years ago appealed for his free-dom yesterday in a Pakistani newspaper.

Paul Overby, 74, went miss-ing in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province shortly after May 17, 2014, the last contact he had with his family.

He was hoping to interview Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of the Taliban-allied Haqqani militant network, and was trying to cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan's volatile North Waziristan region, according to the Pakistani daily the News.

His wife, Jane Larson, told the newspaper she believed her husband was kidnapped and

she appealed to his captors "to return him as soon as possible and show the mercy of Allah to unite an aging couple who have been apart too long".

Sources in the Taliban and the Haqqani network, how-ever, told the News they were not holding Overby and it was unclear what happened to him.

Overby is the author of 1993's "Holy Blood: An Inside View of the Afghan War", based on his research and travels in Afghanistan during a US-spon-sored "mujahadeen" insurgency against a Soviet-backed government.

Last month, the Taliban released a Haqqani network video of American Caitlan Cole-man and her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, who were abducted in 2012 while on a backpacking trip.

Lahore

Internews

The need for protection and safety arises when the right of equality is sup-

pressed and the disadvantaged struggle to overcome the barri-ers erected by oppressive forces around them, Punjab Province Population Welfare Minister Zakia Shahnawaz said at the launch of the Women Safety Smartphone Application at Alhamra yesterday.

The application, titled PSCA, a project by the Chief Minister’s Special Monitoring Unit (SMU), the Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA) and the Punjab Commis-sion on the Status of Women (PCSW), went live a free down-load yesterday.

It can be downloaded off

Google Playstore, and soon it will be available on Apple Store.

PSCW Chairperson Fauzia Viqar lauded the collaborative effort between the three govern-ment departments, saying the support platforms available to citizens, women in particular, had been integrated into the application.

The interface is simple and user friendly. Once downloaded, the application prompts the user to enter their phone number, enable GPS, residential address and their CNIC (optional).

There are six icons in the app, four of which connect the user to the police, traffic police, fire brigade and health services through the phone number 15.

The fifth connects the user to Rescue-1122 and the sixth icon is titled Women Safety which

acts as a street-harassment reporting tool and incorporates several other services available to women.

The app allows the user to notify the Police Integrated Command, Control and Commu-nication (PPIC3) officials about the location and nature of har-assment. A team of first responders will be dispatched to the location to address the issue at hand.

The app includes PCSW’s helpline, 1043, for people to report emergencies or incidents of harassment and obtain infor-mation regarding legal and other recourse.

Information regarding SMU’s Women-on-Wheels (WoW) ini-tiative is available on the app. The feature also allows WoW graduates to report instances of

harassment while driving motorcycles.

The standout feature, how-ever, is the option to ‘audit’ certain locations in the city and mark them as ‘unsafe’.

The various categories users can audit spaces under include: openness, people, security, walk path, gender usage, feeling and public transport. Users have the option to upload pictures and mark safe routes to travel to par-ticular locations in the city.

Ali Amir, managing director of the PSCA, explained that the initiative was a part of the gov-ernment’s efforts to make cities and public spaces safe for women.

Salman Sufi, who heads the SMU, cautioned users against misreporting harassment and making prank calls.

Islamabad

Internews

Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat of Pakistan’s National

Assembly (lower house) has unanimously approved “The Federal Public Service Commis-sion (Amendment) Bill, 2016” bringing recruitments in civil service in BPS-11 and above within purview of Federal Pub-lic Service Commission (FPSC).

The committee met with Rana Muhammad Hayat Khan in the chair at the Parliament House here on Thursday.

Committee Chairman Rana Muhammad Hayat said that the Federal Public Service Commis-sion should recruit for civil

service in grade-11 and above. He said that Punjab Public Service Commission is recruit-ing for civil service in grade-11 and above.

The additional secretary Establishment Division said that FPSC is already facing many problems and we are against the amendment in the bill relat-ing to recruitment in grade-11. He said the FPSC is also con-ducting recruitments for corporations.

All members of the commit-tee opposed the views of additional secretary and said that no one would point the fin-ger at the politicians or others if the FPSC recruits candidates in grade-11 and above in a transparent manner.

Islamabad

Internews

Displeased with the lack of progress in his education reforms programme,

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has ordered for the imme-diate disbursement of $9.52m for the capital’s government schools.

The planning commission

was directed to release the funds no later than yesterday.

“The matter was discussed on telephone with secretary planning, development and reforms and [the] prime minis-ter’s disappointment in the inordinate delay in [the] release of funds was also brought on record,” read a letter issued to the secretary planning,

development and reform by Fawad Hasan Fawad, secretary to the prime minister.

The letter which is dated Jan-uary 3 said the prime minister has ordered for the Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms to release Rs1bn out of the estimated cost of the project at “Rs2994.353m” immediately and no later than January 5.

According to the letter released, the remaining amount shall be provided in the second half of the current year after the exercise of re-appropriation is completed by the Ministry of Planning.

Officials in the ministry of Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) and the Federal Directorate of

Education (FDE) have said-recently that this is a positive development and that after the funds are received, the process of improving 200 schools will be started.

The FDE is looking after 422 schools, which were to be improved in phases under the prime minister’s reform programme.

Punjab launches women's safety app

Fishermen from India who were held captive for crossing territorial waters wave for a selfie by a policeman after their release, at Cantonment railway station in Karachi, yesterday.

Wife of missing US author makes appeal

Lower House passes Public Service Bill

Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, First Lady Lurra Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, participate in the ceremony of “Celebrating the Anniversary of the Afghan Constitution”, at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, yesterday.

It never comes as a surprise when the Chinese government moves to gag free media or bans a group that is openly critical of the administration. Beijing finds it hard to countenance criticism of

the ruling party, its senior officials or the government. And it shows in the numerous actions the government takes against western media — traditional and online, has journalists shadowed, and cracks down on dissent.

This time the axe has fallen on the New York Times app. Apple has removed the prestigious daily’s English and Chinese language news app from its iTunes store in China. The orders did, of course, emerge from the higher echelons of the government.

The New York Times, which holds the reputation for excellent journalism that is completely unbiased and objective, has its website blocked in China since 2012 when it chronicled the tales of wealthy relatives of then-prime minister Wen Jiabao. The series of articles created an international stir and many Chinese became privy to what was seen as an expose of corruption and nepotism.

Websites of other leading media outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and CNN are already blocked in the east Asian country. So are Google and Facebook.

The New York Times prides itself on the quality of its journalism and is one of the few newspapers in the world that has not fallen prey to

the vagaries of market forces devouring the world of ethical journalism. The paper did some revealing stories on Donald Trump that got the Republican US president-elect’s goat. Now, the soon-to-be US president doesn’t spare a moment before railing against the publication that has shown no remorse in bringing out the chinks in his armour.

The New York Times keeps bringing out critical articles against China that mostly talk about the lack of freedom and government crackdown on civil society groups.

The great firewall of China, as the censorship domain of the Chinese government is fondly called, spares no one. A correspondent of a reputed English news channel based in the West was prevented from entering the home of a municipal election contestant recently by a group of men who seemed intimidating and threatened the news crew, virtually manhandling them.

The action against the app of The New York Times will do no good to China. Even though Beijing may think that it is stonewalling the truth that often seeps into the country from the West, Chinese citizens will definitely come to know the truth one way or the other. In fact, China is harming its reputation by slapping the ban.

08 FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017VIEWS

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App takes the rap

QUOTE OF THE DAY

I hope that we will find a solution that leaves Britain as a partner in a lot of European activities that we need them to be a partner in.

Erna SolbergNorwegian Prime Minister

Banning the New York Times app will do China no good.

In mid-December the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), a campaigning organi-sation in Britain supporting Palestinian issues, filed a claim in England’s High Court challenging regulations issued by

the British government prohibiting local gov-ernment pension schemes from pursuing boycotts, divestment or sanctions (BDS) against foreign nations as part of their invest-ment policies.

It is clear to most observers that these reg-ulations are intended to prevent boycotts of Israel, although they do not state this explicitly.

PSC has argued that the regulations prohibit freedom of expression, are so unclear as to be unlawful, are contrary to European Union law governing pensions, and that cen-tral government has abused its powers to regulate pensions to achieve other, unrelated objectives.

The government must formally respond to PSC’s claims and then the court will decide whether to grant permission for a hearing of the case.

The campaign against BDSIn fact, the pensions regulations are the

latest in a series of measures taken by gov-ernments in Europe and North America to counter BDS, after Israel created a special task force with a budget of around $25.5m in June 2015, to fight the movement worldwide.

In February 2016, the British government issued guidance prohibiting pro-BDS policies in public procurement, reportedly after lob-bying by the Israeli embassy in London.

Meanwhile, the United States has issued a plethora of anti-BDS laws prohibiting state investment in entities that boycott Israel.

France has also used existing hate speech laws to prosecute activists encouraging BDS, and Canada, which signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Israel in 2015 to com-bat BDS, has threatened to use hate speech laws against activists.

Pro-Israeli NGOs in the United Kingdom and the US have promoted legal cases against organisations supporting boycotts of Israel, often claiming that BDS constitutes a form of anti-Jewish discrimination.

The right to freedom of expressionThere is clearly a concerted, official pro-

Israeli campaign to crush BDS. In response, the movement and its supporters have emphasised that BDS advocacy is protected by the right to freedom of expression, just as the campaign against apartheid South Africa was, and a letter signed by some 200 legal experts on December 9, 2016 has affirmed this principle.

Indeed, the right to free speech is an important legal foundation for the movement, which protects advocacy in support of its aims and the rights of persons to engage in boycotts of Israel. Thus, court cases against BDS have been successfully defended by asserting the right to freedom of expression.

What we can legally do against the anti-BDS campaignSalma Karmi-Ayyoub Al Jazeera

In Scotland in 2010, for example, a protest which disrupted a recital of the Jerusalem String Quartet was held to constitute a legitimate exercise in free-dom of expression.

Irrespective of how the movement chooses to fight the campaign against it, the fact remains that BDS has the moral high ground:

its goals are rooted in international law and the achievement of human rights by peaceful means, whereas the cam-paign against it is fighting to eradicate a non-violent movement with humani-tarian aims.

In England in 2013 the University and College Union successfully coun-tered a Jewish member’s claim of racial harassment when a debate for an aca-demic boycott was held to be part of the right to free speech.

In 2016, a pro-Israel NGO’s case against three pro-BDS city councils in Britain was also dismissed on similar grounds.

This is not a complete answer to the threats facing the BDS movement, how-ever, since, firstly, governments determined to pursue a political agenda to stop its activities may simply violate the right to freedom of expression.

An example was the use of the crimi-nal law in France to prosecute 12 activists for calling for a boycott of Israeli goods when such activism should have been protected by the right to free speech.

Laws by state legislatures in the US to divest state funds from entities that support BDS - effectively thereby impos-ing a penalty for the “wrong” political opinion - may also violate constitutional rights to freedom of expression.

Secondly, even when anti-BDS measures that violate free speech can be overturned by courts, they often still have a “chilling effect” on BDS advocacy, for fighting them embroils campaigners in lengthy litigation which drains their emotional and financial resources.

Indeed, the mere threat of legal action can prevent organisations

supporting BDS. For instance, in 2015 the board of the GreenStar Natural Foods Market cooperative in the US reportedly refused to allow its members to vote on boycotting Israeli goods since it feared that approving the boycott could lead to litigation.

Finally, the right to freedom of expression does not give BDS compre-hensive protection. For example, if public bodies in Britain were to imple-ment a blanket boycott of Israeli suppliers in public procurement, they might be considered to be in breach of free trade rules prohibiting discrimina-tion on grounds of nationality, and would not be able to invoke a right to free speech to defend their actions.

The need for a legal strategyAlthough BDS advocacy is solidly

based on the right to freedom of expression, which should continue to be asserted, it is not sufficient on its own to defend the movement. A broader legal strategy is needed here, which should include the following measures.

Firstly, significant resources need to be allocated to provide legal assistance to campaigners and organisations sub-ject to anti-BDS legislation or legal action by pro-Israel groups to help them to defend themselves.

Secondly, initiatives are needed to design and implement BDS policies in ways that do not violate existing laws - particularly where blanket boycotts could breach regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of nationality.

And thirdly, the law should be used to make the case proactively for BDS, rather than simply defend it from attack.

For example, one of the goals of BDS is to persuade governments to ban trade with Israeli settlements, since all states, except Israel, consider settlements illegal. There are good legal arguments that trading with set-tlements is, in itself, illegal and should therefore be prohibited.

Although the BDS movement has put forward some good arguments in this respect, these could be developed fur-ther and promoted more actively.

But in the end, and irrespective of how the movement chooses to fight the campaign against it, the fact remains that BDS has the moral high ground: Its goals are rooted in interna-tional law and the achievement of human rights by peaceful means, whereas the campaign against it is fighting to eradicate a non-violent movement with humanitarian aims.

BDS activists should take courage from this fact and use all legal means to assert their right to engage in BDS advo-cacy and resist the measures trying to suppress them.

The writer is a barrister and legal consultant

for the Palestinian human rights organisa-

tion Al Haq.

Irrespective of how the movement chooses to fight the campaign against it, the fact remains that BDS has the moral high ground: its goals are rooted in international law and the achievement of human rights by peaceful means, whereas the campaign against it is fighting to eradicate a non-violent movement with humanitarian aims.

ED ITOR IAL

09FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017 OPINION

A voter backlash helped send Democrats into the minority in the House in the 2010 midterms, and Republicans have been using the issue to political benefit ever since. In November’s elections, Donald Trump and GOP House and Senate candidates ran on promises to repeal the law and replace it with some-thing better.

Now, Democrats have a chance to fight the messaging war anew, even as they continue to champion the health care law as good policy that’s helped the country. And Republicans, who’ve had political success in attacking the law without offering a unified solution of their own, have a chance to present their ideas and make policy, but risk giving away their political advan-tage if they become the ones voters blame for problems in the health system.

The side that meets the challenge most effec-tively will help determine who prevails in the 2018 midterms, and in the next presidential election four years from now.

On Wednesday, as he unveiled Democrats’ new attack line against the GOP — “Make Amer-ica Sick Again” — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that after the health law passed, voters blamed it for every problem related to health care, “and our Republicans colleagues and their message machine did it.”

“Now, they’re gonna own it,” Schumer said of the GOP. “And all the problems in the health care system, and there have been many throughout the years, no one has solved all of them, are gonna be on their back.”

Schumer made his comments after Democratic lawmakers met with Obama to discuss combating GOP efforts to undo the law, a new legislative initia-tive which got under way Wednesday with a procedural vote in the Senate.

Obama’s message: Not to cooperate with GOP replacement plans that don’t offer a good solution for the 20 million Americans who gained health coverage under the law.

He advised keeping the focus on those who benefited from the Affordable Care Act, such as people with pre-existing conditions who got cov-erage, and who might be hurt if their coverage were taken away.

And, he took on blame for Democrats’ failure to

Elor Azaria case: No hope of equality before the law

It was the trial almost no one in Israel wanted.Last March, army medic Elor Azaria was filmed firing a bullet into the head of Abed Al Fattah Al Sharif, a 21-year-old Palestinian, as he lay wounded on the ground in the city of Hebron.

After Azaria’s arrest, there was an outpouring of sympathy for the soldier from the Israeli public, poli-ticians and fellow soldiers.

Ordinary Israelis saw him as a victim of bad luck. He was on trial only because his actions had been filmed. Many Israelis felt it could be their own son in the courtroom. The army command feared the trial risked airing the military’s dirty secrets before the watching world. Some even worried the case might lead to a mutiny among the lower ranks, who identi-fied with Azaria.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s govern-ment, meanwhile, worried that the proceedings would force it into an uncomfortable choice between uphold-ing the rule of law and championing the soldier. Nonetheless, military prosecutors had little choice but to indict Azaria after the video footage went viral. Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, told Al Jazeera that the context for the trial was the growing fear in Israel that its soldiers would, one day, face scrutiny from bodies like the Interna-tional Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague.

“In a clear-cut case like this, it is important for Israel to look as though it is taking war crimes seri-ously, otherwise the ICC might itself decide to investigate,” she said. “But the case has caused prob-lems because it has upset right-wing politicians and much of the Israeli public, who expect absolute impunity for soldiers.”

Given that mood, the army quickly dropped an initial charge of murder against Azaria. Instead, pros-ecutors settled for a manslaughter indictment, a decision Sharif’s family denounced this week as a “perversion of justice”.

On Wednesday, Azaria was found guilty of the reduced charge by a military tribunal. The three mili-tary judges ruled: “He opened fire in violation of orders. The terrorist [Sharif] did not pose any threat.”

Azaria’s lawyers announced they would appeal.Although the court is empowered to jail Azaria

for up to 20 years, it is certain to find grounds later this month for awarding a lenient sentence.

The riots outside the court that greeted Azaria’s conviction, and the subsequent decision to issue the judges and prosecutor with bodyguards, will contrib-ute to the pressure on them. Even before the sentencing, politicians, including Netanyahu, launched a campaign to pressure President Reuven Rivlin to pardon the soldier.

Touma-Suleiman said that historical precedents, such as the amnesties given to security officials involved in the Kfar Qassem massacre and the Bus 300 affair, suggested that the campaign stood a good chance of success. “There has been a reign of terror designed to silence anyone who has tried to stand up for human rights and the rule of law in this case,” she said. If the aim of the trial was to demonstrate to the world that Israel holds its soldiers properly to account when they commit crimes, it has probably failed. BTselem, an Israeli human rights group that first publicised the video of the Hebron shooting, said in a statement to Al Jazeera that Azaria’s conviction was “exceptional”. In most cases where soldiers were suspected of executing Palestinians, the group said, there was “routine whitewashing” by the army.

Azaria is, in fact, the first Israeli soldier to be charged with manslaughter since 2004, when a Bedouin sniper was convicted of killing Tom Hurn-dall, a British activist in Gaza.

Yesh Din, another Israeli human rights group, issued a report this week noting that no investigations were conducted into the killing by Israeli soldiers of 76 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank last year. The data, it said, showed an “inability and unwilling-ness” to address unlawful conduct by soldiers.

Adalah, a legal centre for Israel’s Palestinian minority, noted that there had been “zero indictments” in a range of attacks it had identified by Israel that killed Palestinians during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza. Paradoxically, the lesson the army may have learned from Azaria’s trial is the need for even greater secrecy.

Last April, weeks after the Hebron shooting, Israeli security guards shot dead a Palestinian brother and sister at the Qalandiya checkpoint, near Jerusalem. Israeli authorities have repeatedly refused to release footage from the checkpoint’s security cameras. The Haaretz newspaper described the decision in October to drop the investigation, despite clear evidence that Maram and Taha Abu Ismail posed no threat when they were shot, as “an official licence to kill”.

Amid the unconvincing defences offered by Azar-ia’s legal team, one argument hit home: that many cases similar to Azaria’s had been closed, including an investigation into an army colonel, Yisrael Shomer, who was filmed shooting dead a fleeing Pal-estinian teenager in 2015. Azaria, said his defence team, was being singled out.

Azaria’s conviction is also likely to prove ineffec-tive at underscoring to Israeli soldiers the need to abide by Israel’s rules of engagement.

A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) in

September found that 65 percent of Israeli Jews backed Azaria’s execution of Sharif. Among Israelis aged 18 to 24, when many Israelis are serving as conscripts, sup-port for his actions rocketed to 84 percent. The Israeli media has largely sided with Azaria, presenting him as “the child of us all”. Two Israeli publications even selected him as their “man of the year”.

“The attitude of the Israeli public was clear,” Yedidia Stern, a researcher at the IDI, told Al Jazeera. “They thought, “We put him in a uniform, we gave him a gun and we placed him in harm’s way in the occupied territories. He may not be a hero, but he is not a criminal either. He is our boy.”

The popular image of a callow teenager who momentarily lost his bearings in the confusion of Hebron is hard to sustain in the face of his known views. His social media posts reveal a youth who vented ugly, rabidly anti-Arab views even before he joined the army.

During the 2014 Gaza war, Azaria called for every Palestinian in Gaza to be massacred. He also declared his support for the late Meir Kahane, a rabbi whose anti-Arab Kach party was outlawed in 1994 after a follower, Baruch Goldstein, shot 29 Palestini-ans in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque.

During the trial, it emerged that Azaria, like many of the soldiers serving with him, had befriended former Kach leaders among the settlers in Hebron. Every Sabbath, he and other soldiers, including sen-ior commanders, would visit the home of Baruch Marzel, a former disciple of Kahane, for lunch.

A video shows Azaria, after shooting Sharif, walking over to smile with Marzel and shake hands.

Other footage shows another settler, ambulance driver Ofer Ohana, goading the soldiers to execute Sharif when the Palestinian showed signs of life, after earlier being critically wounded during a knife attack on a checkpoint.

Ohana can be seen kicking a knife closer to Sharif after his execution by Azaria, presumably to help create a justification for the killing. A report pub-lished this month by military prosecutors found that it was routine for soldiers and settlers to tamper with evidence at sites where Palestinians had been shot. Efforts to investigate were often rendered futile as a result. Human Rights Watch has noted that, in the months before the Hebron shooting, senior govern-ment ministers and security officials had repeatedly called for a “shoot-to-kill” policy against Palestinian attackers, even when they posed no threat.

Separately, both the Sephardic chief rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, and the army’s chief rabbi, Eyal Karim, have called for the execution of Palestinians suspected of attacks.

But more significantly, senior military figures broke ranks during the trial to voice support for extrajudicial executions, indicating that officers in the field may be regularly turning a blind eye to crimes like Azaria’s. Uzi Dayan, a former deputy chief of staff, testified in Azaria’s defence. He declared that he had personally covered up for his own soldiers

The messaging battle is on over repealing and replacing Presi-dent Barack Obama’s health care law, and the balance of power in Washington may be at stake.

Democrats believe they already lost the public opinion fight over the law once, when they pushed through the Affordable Care Act in the first place, and Republicans grabbed hold of the issue to drive Demo-crats into the minority. Democrats are determined that this time, they’ll come out on top.

For their part, Republicans are pain-fully aware that they’re embarking upon the task of repealing and replacing the complex law at their peril. If Democrats get their way, the GOP will own every problem and complication that results from the rework, and there are certain to be many.

For both sides, the repeal-and-replace fight represents a risky and unexpected do-

over nearly seven years after Democratic majorities in the House and Senate passed the law on a party-line vote.

Health care battle could decide balance of powersell the public on a law that by some measures has achieved its goals.

“I will take the responsibility for not having fully communicated with the American people for why this is an extraordinary victory for them,” Obama said. Even as Obama huddled with Democrats, Vice President-elect Mike Pence was meeting with Republicans across the Capitol, emerging to offer assurances that Republicans would make good on their repeated promises to repeal the law.

“The American people know who owns Obamacare. It’s the first half of the title. It is Obama and the party of Obama,” Pence insisted. “What President-elect Trump and I and the leaders in the Congress are determined to do is to keep faith with the American people.”

Inside the meeting with House Republicans, Pence offered a more urgent message, advising Republicans to “go back to districts and lay the predicate that the Democrats own this thing,” said GOP Rep. Dave Brat of Virginia.

Trump himself castigated Democrats on the issue over Twitter, while offering notes of caution to his own party, writing Thursday, “The Democrats, lead (sic) by head clown Chuck Schumer, know how bad ObamaCare is and what a mess they are in. ... time for Republicans & Demo-crats to get together and come up with a healthcare plan that really works.”

Some Republicans are painfully aware that their own political fortunes could be at risk if they fumble the issue.

“I’m here because of Obamacare,” said GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, crediting the issue with his victory in 2012. And now, Cramer says, he risks los-ing his seat over Obamacare, “if we let our voters down in places like North Dakota by not acting deci-sively and swiftly.”

Yet for now, even as they move toward repealing the law as early as next month, Republicans don’t have a replacement plan, or even a timeline for offering one. There’s likely to be a years long transition period between the repeal and the replacement, but many House Republi-cans, who stand for re-election every two years, believe it’s urgent to get the replacement done before the 2018 mid-terms, or risk voter wrath.

“If it hasn’t been done by the 2018s, it’s like, ‘What are you doing?’” said GOP Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada. “If after five years of Republicans saying it sucks, we don’t do a good job of transitioning and replacing, then Katy bar the door.”

The writer is a AP congressional correspondent.

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when they killed Palestinians with-out justification. In one case he cited, his troops had shot dead five Pales-tinians returning home from work. He had blocked an investigation. Such matters should not be aired in public, he added. Speaking more generally about extrajudicial execu-tions, he said: “I’ve ordered to kill terrorists just because they’re terror-ists, regardless of their condition, whether they are dangerous or not.”

Another general, Shmuel Zakai, who commanded Israeli forces in Gaza, told the court he found Azar-ia’s behaviour “reasonable”. He said: “I did not see anything unu-sual in this conduct.”

Sari Bashi, HRW’s advocacy director in Israel and Palestine, told Al Jazeera: “ Azaria’s actions didn’t take place in a vacuum. Senior politi-cians and security officials effectively egged him on.” Touma-Suleiman pointed to the stark contrast between Azaria’s trial and that of Ahmed Manasra, a 13-year-old Pal-estinian who was jailed for 12 years in an adult prison in November.

An Israeli military court found the child guilty of attempted mur-der, even though the judge accepted Manasra had stabbed no one in an attack in Jerusalem in 2015. His older cousin, who was shot dead at the scene, had been responsible for stabbing two Israelis.

“Manasra is a child, but the mil-itary court system dealt with him far more harshly than it has a sol-dier like Azaria,” she said. “When the occupier is judge and jury, there is no hope of equality before the law or of justice.”

Erica WernerAP

Jonathan Cook Al Jazeera

Azaria’s actions didn’t take place in a vacuum. Senior politicians and security officials effectively egged him on. Sari Bashi, HRW’s advocacy director

There’s likely to be a year long transition period between the repeal and the replacement, but many House Republicans, who stand for re-election every two years, believe it’s urgent to get the replacement done before the 2018 midterms, or risk voter wrath.

10 FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017INDIA

Tibetan Spiritual Leader The Dalai Lama looks on as Buddhist monks work on a traditional painting during a special religious prayer during the Kalachakra event at Bodhgaya, yesterday.

Kalachakra eventNote ban may 'slow down economy' New Delhi IANS

Demonetisation may lead to a tempo-rary slowdown in the economy, President Pranab

Mukherjee (pictured) said yesterday.

"Demonetisation, while immobilising black money and fighting corruption, may lead to temporary slowdown of the economy," the President said in a video address to the Gov-ernors of states and Lt. Governors of Union Territories. "We all will have to be extra careful to alleviate the suffer-ings of the poor, which might become unavoidable for the expected progress in the long term," he added.

Delivering his New Year address through video to the serving Governors and Lt. Gov-ernors, President Mukherjee said: "While I appreciate the thrust on transition from enti-tlement approach to an entrepreneurial one for poverty alleviation, I am not too sure that the poor can wait that long."

"They need to get succour here and now, so that they can also participate actively in the national march towards a future devoid of hunger, unem-ployment and exploitation."

"The recent package announced by the Prime Min-ister will provide some relief," Mukherjee added.

Talking about the upcom-ing elections to assemblies in five states and the likely polit-ical slugfest which may disturb the social harmony, he said: "At times, harmony may be put to

test by vested interests. Com-munal tensions may rear their ugly head."

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that seeking votes on the basis of religion, race, caste or language of a can-didate or a rival or of the voters is illegal.

Asking the Governors and Lt. Governors to look at social problems affecting millions in our farms and factories, he said: "This should receive your focused attention."

Calling the year gone by as an "year of mixed fortunes", he said the economy is perform-ing well, overcoming the weak global economic trends.

"The GDP growth of 7.2 per cent in the first-half of 2016-17 — same as that of the last year — is a pointer to the fact that our economic recovery has been on solid grounds."

CBI to probe 'unnecessary' purchase of aircraft by Air IndiaNew Delhi IANS

The Supreme Court asked the CBI to look into the allega-tion of "unnecessary"

purchase of 111 aircraft and leas-ing of some other by Air India between 2004 and 2008 when the Congress-led UPA was in office costing Rs67,000crore to the exchequer.

The allegations, made by NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation, include allotment of bilateral routes to private airlines at the expense of the national carrier.

The allegations by the CPIL also include an aborted order for the porches of biometric passen-ger identification system allegedly at an inflated price.

Nationalist Congress Party leader Praful Patel was the Civil Aviation Minister when the air-craft were purchased and taken

on lease. Noting that most of the allegations in the petition by the CPIL have resulted in adverse comments by the CAG/PAC, the bench of Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, Justice N V Ram-ana and Justice D Y Chandrachud said: "... the CBI shall take into consideration all the allegations made in the pleadings of the instant petition, and take a call thereon, based on the evidence collected."

The CBI is already investigat-ing into the allegations and had registered case on February 27, 2013. Having asked the CBI to look into the allegations, the court in its order said: "As and when the final determination is rendered, whether to initiate criminal pro-ceedings or otherwise, it shall be open to the aggrieved party (if any), to take recourse to the rem-edies available to it, in consonance with law."

Disposing of the PIL, the

court said: "We hope and expect, that the CBI will adhere to the time frame indicated to us, namely, June, 2017.

Opposing the plea by the CPIL, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told the court that most of the allegations made in the PIL have resulted in adverse com-ments by the CAG and later by the Public Accounts Committee in 2014 which was then headed by the BJP's Murli Manohar Joshi.

He also informed the court that following adverse observa-tions by the PAC, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has submitted a detailed response on January 19, 2015. The Ministry on May 3, 2016 gave further response in wake of more queries from the PAC. The court was informed that the PAC report was proposed to be laid before the Parliament in its win-ter session which ended in logjam on account protests by opposi-tion on demonetisations.

SC rejects plea for CBI probe into death ofJayalalithaa

THE Supreme Court yester-day rejected a plea by expelled AIADMK MP Sasikala Pushpa and an NGO seeking CBI or a judicial probe into the death of late Tamil Nadu Chief Min-ister J Jayalalithaa (pictured).

Dismissing the pleas, the bench of Justice Pinaki Chan-dra Ghose and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman said that they were not inclined to entertain the plea as a simi-lar matter was already pending before the Madras High Court.

"We are not inclined to entertain the matter as a sim-ilar one is already pending before the Madras High Court. The petitions are dismissed," the court said.

A petition on the same lines was filed by Tamil Nadu Telugu Yuva Sakthi.

Sasikala Pushpa had sought direction to the cen-tral government, the Tamil Nadu government and the Apollo Hospital — where the late leader was treated - to give to the court in a sealed cover the report on the ail-ment of the departed leader and the line of treatment.

She had contended that everything about Jayalalith-aa's treatment was kept guarded and not made public.

"Demonetisation, while immobilising black money and fighting corruption, may lead to temporary slowdown of the economy."

Four arrested in Bengaluru New Year's day molestationBengaluru

IANS

Four youths, including two delivery boys, were arrested for allegedly

molesting and groping a young woman on New Year Day here, Bengaluru Police Commissioner Praveen Sood said yesterday.

The four were identified as Ayyappa, Leno, Somashekar and Sudhesh. They are in the age group of 19-24 years.

"We are on the lookout for two more of their accomplices as six men planned the heinous incident after stalking the vic-tim that night," Sood told reporters.

Ayyappa is the main accused who groped the victim while Leno molested her soon after forcing her to sit on the scooter.

"We have also recovered the scooter on which the two rode towards the victim and attempted to abduct her while their other accomplices were watching them from a distance." Pleading with mediapersons not to ask for any information about the victim as she had been trau-matised, Sood said though the accused were from the same locality (Kammanahalli), the vic-tim did not know them as she was new to the city, having come only a week ago.

"Ayyappa, 19, is a delivery

boy, Leno is a college student, Somashekar is a driver and Sudesh is another delivery boy," said Sood. The accused would be produced before a court today for four-five day police custody to interrogate them.

They have been charged with wrongful restraint, assault or criminal force on a woman with intent to outrage her mod-esty and criminal act, Sood said.

Thanking resident Prashant Francis for giving a video foot-age of the incident, captured by a CCTV he had installed at his home, Sood said the police did not waste time in registering an FIR suo moto as they had cred-ible evidence of the crime.

Sikh devotees light candles on occasion of the 350th birth anniversary of the 10th Sikh Guru Gobind Singh at the Sikh Shrine Golden Temple in Amritsar, yesterday.

Sikh celebrations

Opposition parties meet EC, demand budget after electionsNew Delhi IANS

Contending that the presen-tation of the Union Budget ahead of assembly elec-

tions in five states will give an unfair advantage to the BJP and its allies, seven opposition par-ties yesterday approached the Election Commission to demand the fiscal exercise be deferred till after March 8.

Instead of usual February 28, the budget this year is scheduled to be presented on February 1, only days before the assembly

elections go underway in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur between Feb-ruary 4 and March 8.

A delegation comprising leaders of the Congress, Trina-mool Congress, Janata Dal-United, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal and the DMK met Chief Election Commissioner Syed Nasim Ahmad Zaidi here yesterday.

While the Communist Party of India-Marxist did not joint the delegation, party General Secre-tary Sitaram Yechury expressed

his reservation on the matter and hoped the Election Commission and the President will take note and "reverse" the decision on the budget.

Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad told the media here: "We told the EC that allowing the gov-ernment to present the Budget ahead of polls will give unfair advantage to the BJP and its allies and how the exercise can be used to influence voters."

"The EC gave us all a patient hearing," said Azad.

As for the government's unwillingness to move the budget

presentation date, Azad said", "If they don't accept our demand, it means they don't want polls to be fair. Then it is not democracy. Democracy requires all parties to have a level playing field."

Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member Derek O'Brien hoped that the Election Commis-sion will address their concerns.

"There is enough time to present the Budget after March 8. That is the fair way to do it. Not only the EC has to be fair, but it has to be seen to be fair. We are optimistic," said O'Brien.

Paramilitary forces patrol along a road in Amritsar yesterday as part of election security.

A man dressed as one of the Three Kings greets children during the Epiphany Parade in Gijon, Spain, yesterday.

Epiphany Parade in Spain

Snow covers autumn leaves hanging on a branch in Dresden, eastern Germany, yesterday.

Stalk-ing snow

11FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017 EUROPE

Athens

AFP

Greek anti-terrorist police yesterday recaptured a female member of a far-left group that has claimed

a string of attacks, who had been on the run for over four years.

Police launched a dawn raid on a flat in Athens and detained Paula Roupa from the now-defunct Revolutionary Struggle, a group that has claimed bomb attacks and assassination attempts against police and politicians.

Reports said the 48-year-old Roupa surrendered without a struggle, while a local told Greek media she had been staying at the house in eastern Athens dis-trict of Ilioupoli for around two years. “She had never caused a problem,” said the man, whose sister lives in the building.

A local butcher who wit-nessed the raid said: “Around 30 masked anti-terror police entered the house...using crow-bars to open the door.”

In a separate operation, police also detained a 25-year-old woman who they said was “aiding” Roupa.

Roupa and her co-leader and

companion Nikos Maziotis were arrested together in 2010. They were conditionally released from detention pending trial in 2011 and subsequently disappeared.

Maziotis was caught in 2014 in the capital after a shootout with police. Two years later, Roupa unsuccessfully tried to spring him from prison using a hijacked helicopter.

The couple have a six-year-old son who was born in an Athens hospital a few months after his parents were imprisoned in 2010. The boy, who was with his mother yesterday, has been assigned to a police minors unit under supervi-sion of a prosecutor.

Revolutionary Struggle, which first emerged in 2003, was once deemed by authorities to be the country’s most dangerous far-left organisation.

The US put a bounty on the group after it fired a rocket at the US embassy in Athens in 2007.

No one was injured in the attack.Police yesterday said Roupa

has also been linked to a bank

heist at an Athens hospital in 2015. She has been handed a

50-year prison sentence over the

group’s activities up to 2010, and an additional 11-year sentence over the Bank of Greece blast.

London

Reuters

LEADING Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, who has said he wants to be a bridge between the British government and the new US administration, will attend US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration later this month.

Farage, who will attend the event as a guest of Missis-sippi Governor Phil Bryant, spoke at a Trump rally in Mis-sissippi during the US presidential campaign and was the first British politician to meet the President-elect after his victory, ahead of Prime Minister Theresa May.

Farage spent decades campaigning for Britain to leave the EU and helped to force then Prime Minister David Cameron to call the June 2016 referendum.

Trump has said Farage would be great as Britain’s envoy to Washington, but the British government has dis-missed the suggestion.

Asked if he would be attending Trump’s inaugura-tion on January 20, Farage told Sky News: “I certainly am, I can’t wait.”

“The governor of Missis-sippi has invited me and I’m there for a few days and it’s going to be a great, historic event. In America they’ve had a political revolution and it’s complete; the problem in Brit-ain is our revolution is not complete because the same people are still in charge.”

Paris

AFP

A former prime minister of Kosovo, Ramush Harad-inaj, was arrested in

France in response to an inter-national arrest warrant for war crimes filed by Serbia.

Haradinaj—who has been twice tried and acquitted—is a former leader of paramilitaries who fought for Kosovo, a pre-dominantly ethnic Albanian province of Serbia, to gain independence.

He was arrested on his arrival from the Kosovo capital Pristina at Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg airport, sources said.

The French judicial author-ities will now examine the Serbian request, they said.

In Pristina, Kosovo’s justice

minister Dhurata Hoxha, con-firmed Haradinaj, 48, had been detained. “We will take every step to ensure that Haradinaj is released as soon as possible,” Hoxha said.

The 1998-99 Kosovo con-flict was the last war of breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

It culminated in a Nato bombing campaign against Ser-bia and, in 2008, in Kosovo’s independence, which is still not recognised by Belgrade.

Haradinaj, a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army dur-ing the war, became prime minister in 2004 but stepped down after over three months to face 37 charges of war crimes at International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He was acquitted in 2008, and again in a partial retrial in 2012.

Seeon, Germany

Reuters

Britain lacks experience in international negotiations due to its long membership

of the European Union and this can slow talks, the prime minis-ter of non-EU Norway said, adding that she feared “a very hard Brexit”.

British Prime Minister Theresa May intends to launch by the end of March the two-year process of negotiating to leave the EU. They are expected to be some of the most complicated international talks Britain has

engaged in since World War II.Norwegian Prime Minister

Erna Solberg said she hoped Britain would be able to negoti-ate an agreement that keeps it very close to the EU but said it would be a difficult task.

“And we do feel that some-times when we are discussing with Britain, that their speed is limited by the fact that it is such a long time since they have negotiated” alone on such issues, she said while attending a meeting of Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU)in southern Germany.

“I fear a very hard Brexit but I hope we will find a better

solution,” she added.Though not in the EU, Norway

is a member of the bloc’s single market and allows free movement for EU workers. It also contributes to the EU budget and participates in Europe’s open-border Schen-gen agreement.

Some Britons favour a Nor-way-style close relationship with the EU after Brexit. Others argue for a ‘hard Brexit’ that would take Britain out of both the sin-gle market and the bloc’s customs union.

Britain has never joined the Schengen scheme.

Prime Minister May has so

far said little publicly about her negotiating position, arguing that to do so would weaken London’s hand in the talks.

In a move that highlighted tensions at the heart of the British government over how to handle Brexit, Britain’s ambassador to the EU, Ivan Rogers, resigned this week. In his letter of resignation he also referred to a lack of nego-tiating experience within the British civil service.

“Serious multilateral nego-tiating experience is in short supply in Whitehall, and that is not the case in the (European) Commission or in the (Euro-

pean) Council,” he wrote.The Commission in Brussels

handles trade and some other negotiations on behalf of the EU’s member states. Britain joined the bloc in 1973.

Solberg said it would be very hard for Britain to accept the EU’s “four freedoms” - of move-ment of goods, capital, people, and services - without having a vote in the EU Council.

“I hope that we will find a solution that leaves Britain as a partner in a lot of the European activities that we need them to be a partner in,” the Norwegian leader added.

Brussels

Reuters

Human rights and trans-p a r e n c y g r o u p s yesterday urged Euro-

pean Union lawmakers to reject promotion of Germany’s Com-missioner to head of human resources at the EU executive over remarks they view as “rac-ist and homophobic”.

The campaign groups pro-tested after Guenther Oettinger, the current Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, called Chinese people “slit-eyes” - comments for which he has apologised.

Commission President

Jean-Claude Juncker announced Oettinger’s appointment to a new role as Commissioner for the Budget and Human Resources in October and his confirmation hearing is due in the European Parliament on Jan. 9.

“Oettinger has made racist and homophobic remarks on sev-eral occasions in the past,” the groups wrote in an open letter.

“It is more vital to have a strong and credible commitment from European Commission to counter discrimination and act for equality for all.”

Oettinger apologised in November for the remarks which he acknowledged were “some-what sloppy” and had “hurt”

people, after China’s foreign min-istry condemned his comments.

Ten organisations including Transparency International EU signed the letter.

The groups also question Oettinger’s independence from corporate interests, particularly after trips he made to Budapest on a private jet belonging to a German businessman close to the Kremlin.

Some EU lawmakers and non-governmental organisa-tions have called for Oettinger’s resignation, and a number of EU parliamentarians have warned they could try to block the Ger-man during confirmation hearings for his new role.

Greece captures fugitive far-left militant

Member of the militant Revolutionary Struggle group Paula Roupa (centre) is escorted by anti-terrorist police officers during her transfer in a court in Athens, yesterday.

Former Kosovo PM arrested in France

Nigel Farage to attend Trump inauguration

UK lacks negotiating experience: Norway PM

Rights groups oppose German EU Commissioner’s promotion

In law's clutches

Police launched a dawn raid on a flat in Athens and detained Paula Roupa from the now-defunct Revolutionary Struggle, a group that has claimed bomb attacks and assassination attempts against police and politicians.

12 FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017AMERICAS

Washington

AFP

US spy chiefs said yesterday hacking of Democratic Party computers was just one part of a multi-

faceted campaign by Russia to disrupt the American presiden-tial election.

In a closely-watched Senate hearing, top intelligence officials presented a united front as they reiterated their conclusion that Moscow interfered with last year’s campaign and that its cyber-med-dling poses a “major threat” to the United States—findings that Pres-ident-elect Donald Trump has so far refused to accept.

“This was a multifaceted campaign. So the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate

hearing.While Trump continues to

question evidence of Russian meddling, Clapper, National Security Agency chief Michael Rogers and Marcel Lettre, undersecretary of defence for intelligence, told the committee they are convinced that Moscow is aggressively targeting the United States in offensive cyber-

space activities.“We assess that only Russia’s

senior-most officials could have authorised the recent election-focused data thefts and disclosures,” they said in a joint statement to Senate Armed Forces Committee.

“Russia is a full-scope cyber actor that poses a major threat to US government, military, dip-lomatic, commercial and critical infrastructure and key resource networks,” they said.

In the first public hearing dealing with Russia’s alleged interference since the allega-tions first came out in October, Clapper said such cyber threats are “challenging public trust and confidence in information, serv-ices and institutions.”

“Russia has clearly assumed an even more aggressive cyber posture by increasing cyber espionage operations, leaking data stolen from these opera-tions and targeting critical

Washington

AFP

US President Barack Obama (pictured) acclaimed his outgoing administration’s

accomplishments yesterday in a letter to American people defending a legacy on health care and other issues that his succes-sor Donald Trump has vowed to dismantle.

The White House released the president’s letter along with reports from each of his cabinet

secretaries describing the progress made since Obama took office eight years ago with the

world’s largest economy spiral-ling towards depression.

“As I prepare to pass the baton and do my part as a pri-vate citizen, I’m proud to say that we have laid a new foundation for America,” he said.

He cited the turn-around in the US economy, the scaled back military operations in Afghani-stan and Iraq, a sharply reduced dependence on foreign oil, and the Paris climate agreement as among his administration’s important accomplishments.

But near the top of his list was the Affordable Care Act, the signature health care reform that Democrat Obama prizes and Republican Trump has vowed to ditch.

Obama has launched a part-ing offensive to try to save it, making a rare visit to Congress on Wednesday to rally Democrats for what is shaping up as first major fight of the next administration.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence made his own trip to Cap-itol Hill to strategise with

Republicans, who control the House and Senate and will have White House as well once Trump takes office on January 20.

Trump himself has cautioned against over-hasty action.

“Republicans must be careful that Dems own failed ObamaCare disaster,” Trump said on Twitter, warning Republicans to allow it to “fall of its own weight”.

In his letter, Obama argued the US has “begun the long task of reversing inequality”. “What won’t help is taking health care

away from 30 million Americans, most of them white and work-ing class; denying overtime pay to workers, most of whom have more than earned it; or privatis-ing Medicare and Social Security and letting Wall Street regulate itself again—none of which mid-dle-class Americans voted for.”

Obama’s reforms came under fire during the presidential cam-paign as insurance premiums rose and some major insurers backed out of the state markets created under the law.

infrastructure systems,” he said.Trump will be briefed today by

heads of the CIA, FBI and DNI on evidence behind their conclusion on Russia election interference. And a declassified version of a report produced for White House on the case is expected to be released next week.

Without naming Trump,

Clapper said he had fielded many queries from international col-leagues over recent “disparagement” of intelligence community. “Public trust and con-fidence in intelligence community is crucial,” he said. Asked about Assange’s credibility, Clapper said his publication of leaked materi-als had “put people at risk.”

The three spy chiefs also said despite having agreed in 2015 to halt its own cyber attacks on the US government and companies, China also continues such activ-ities, albeit it at a lower level. “Beijing continues to conduct cyber espionage against the US govern-ment, our allies, and US companies,” they said.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (left) and House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, speak about cybersecurity during news conference on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, yesterday.

Bogota

Reuters

A UN mission supervising demobilisation of Colombia’s Marxist FARC rebels fired four staff yesterday after they were seen dancing with guer-rilla fighters at a New Year celebration.

A video, which shows men clad in blue UN jackets swaying to a salsa rhythm with female rebels, created controversy questioning neu-trality of the UN observers, where the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are demobilising after a half-century war.

The UN mission, which is to collect FARC weapons and supervise more than two dozen camps, has come under fire from right-wing oppo-nents of the peace process.

The government of Pres-ident Juan Manuel Santos, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for FARC deal, also said the dancing jeopardised UN neutrality.

“The UN Mission in Colombia has taken the deci-sion to dismiss from service three observers present on the occasion and their direct supervisor,” the organisation said in a statement yester-day, without naming the four.

“The mission reiterates its determination to verify with total impartiality the commit-ments of both parties to the ceasefire and laying down of arms.”

Colombia’s ambassador to the UN, Maria Emma Mejia, said the incident was a source of “great worry and surprise.”

Caracas

AFP

Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro named an ex-security minister yesterday

as his vice-president, who would become head of state if Maduro were removed from office this year as the opposition demands.

Maduro told a televised cab-inet meeting that he had named to the post Tareck El Aissami, 42, a powerful state governor who cracked down on drug gangs in his time as a minister.

Currently governor of state of Aragua, El Aissami served as junior security minister and later

interior and justice minister under Maduro’s late predeces-sor Hugo Chavez.

“I have appointed Tareck El Aissami executive vice-president of the republic so that he can take up the role from 2017 to 2018 with his youth, experience, commitment and courage,” Maduro said.

The center-right opposition has been demanding a popular vote on removing Maduro from office. It blames him for an eco-nomic crisis that has prompted shortages of food and medicine and deadly riots.

The opposition has missed the deadline for sparking fresh

elections by a referendum before Maduro’s term ends in 2019, however.

Under constitutional rules, if Maduro lost a referendum held after January 10 this year, he could pass power to his hand-picked vice-president.

El Aissami replaces Aristob-ulo Isturiz, 70, who has been Maduro’s vice-president since January 2016.

The MUD opposition coali-tion is scheduled to announce its latest plans when its lawmakers gather in the legislature today.

It has not said whether it will resume its fraught drive for a ref-erendum against Maduro.

The MUD alleges that Maduro controls the Supreme Court and electoral board through his allies. Maduro also has the public backing of the mil-itary high command.

Some opposition leaders sat down in late 2016 to talks with Maduro’s government.

Others branded the dialogue a ploy to defuse protests against the government and its “Bolivar-ian revolution” launched by Chavez.

The opposition walked out of the talks last month, accusing the government of breaking its promises.

Maduro has refused to allow

any vote on his leadership and stuck to his defiant line.

He said “2017 will be the first year of the recovery and the expansion of the Bolivarian rev-olution on all fronts.”

El Aissami, of Syrian and Lebanese ancestry, is a senior member of Maduro’s United Venezuelan Socialist Party.

In 2012 he became governor of Aragua, considered the most dangerous state in a South Amer-ican country plagued by violence.

“I told him, Tareck, get to work day and night working for the security of the people,” Maduro said yesterday.

Xalapa, Mexico

AP

Protests over a sharp fuel price hike erupted into looting of gas stations and

stores in various parts of Mexico yesterday, with dozens of busi-nesses reportedly sacked.

Protesters also continued to block highways, burn tyres and seize gas stations, snarling traf-fic and jeopardising fuel supplies across the country.

The National Association of Self-Service and Department Stores of Mexico said in a state-ment that 79 stores had been looted and 170 were closed or blockaded in central Mexico, including the capital.

The unrest “resulting in theft of merchandise put at risk the lives of clients and workers in the stores, primarily in Mexico

State, Michoacan, Hidalgo and Mexico City,” the statement said.

In the Gulf coast city of Ver-acruz, 50 establishments including convenience stores, supermarkets and big-box out-lets suffered looting, according to a preliminary count by the local chamber of commerce.

Store guards were overrun by crowds who carried off cloth-ing, food, washing machines, televisions, DVD players and refrigerators.

Extra police patrols were deployed, and at least 14 people were detained, the state govern-ment reported. At one supermarket officers fired into the air to disperse the multitudes.

Earlier in the day, President Enrique Pena Nieto took to the airwaves to defend his unpopu-lar petrol deregulation measure that resulted in price hikes of up

to 20 percent over the weekend.

The increases took effect as the government ends regulated prices for petrol and diesel, which it says represented sub-sidies that unduly benefited wealthier Mexicans.

The change boosted the average price for a litre of pre-mium petrol to 17.79 pesos (about 90 cents). That makes 4 litres, or about a gallon, equal to nearly as much as Mexico’s just raised minimum wage for a day’s work — 80 pesos (about $4).

Pena Nieto said he would try to help groups hit hard by the increases, in an apparent refer-ence to bus, truck and taxi drivers.

“I understand the anger and irritation felt by the general public,” Pena Nieto said, say-ing that “this is an action that

Obama defends legacy in letter to American people

'Multifaceted' Russian bid to disrupt polls: Spy chiefs

Senate hearing

“This was a multifaceted campaign. So the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate hearing.

Four UN peace observers fired for dancing with FARC rebels

Venezuela president names new potential successor

Unrest over Mexico fuel price hike erupts into looting

People pick up toys as they loot a store during a protest in the port of Veracruz, Mexico, yesterday.

nobody would want to take.”“If this decision had not been

taken, the effects and conse-quences would have been far more painful,” he added.

The farm activist group El Barzon said that even with tax breaks or government support for truck drivers, “the wave of

anger and discontent among Mexicans cannot be held back.”

The state-owned oil com-pany Pemex said that blockades of fuel terminals in the states of Chihuahua, Morelos and Durango had caused a “critical situation” in distributing fuel to gas stations there.

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08:00 News

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15:00 World War One

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23:00 Indian Hospital

08:30 Catching

Monsters

09:20 Deadliest

Catch

10:10 Kings Of The

Wild

11:00 Venom

Hunters

11:50 Mega Trains

12:40 Curiosity: Volcano

Time Bomb

13:30 Fast N' Loud

14:20 Biketacular

15:10 Street

Outlaws

16:00 Edge Of

Alaska

16:50 Edge Of

Alaska

21:00 Fast N' Loud

21:50 Misfit Garage

22:40 Street Outlaws

23:30 Curiosity: Volcano

Time Bomb

01:10 Fast N' Loud

02:00 Misfit Garage

11:05 Tanked

12:00 America's Cutest

Pets

12:55 Bondi Vet

13:20 Bondi Vet

13:50 Wildest Islands

Of Indonesia

14:45 Gator Boys

15:40 Mutant Planet

16:35 Tanked

17:30 Extinct Or Alive:

The Tasmanian

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18:25 Big Fish Man

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21:10 Tigress Blood

22:05 Mutant Planet

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00:50 Big Fish Man

01:45 Bondi Vet

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02:40 Big Fish Man

08:30 Shark

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10:10 Swamp

People: Swamp

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21:50 Pirate Treasure

Of The Knights

Templar

22:40 Forged In Fire

23:30 Mountain Men -

Closest Calls

00:20 Pirate Treasure

Of The Knights

Templar

Conceptis Sudoku: Conceptis Sudoku is a number-

placing puzzle based on a 9×9 grid. The object is to

place the numbers 1 to 9 in the empty squares so

that each row, each column and each 3×3 box

contains the same number only once.

C. Hoard (5)

C. Waterway (5)

C. Perimeter of a circle (13)

C. Ascended (7)

C. Prairie wolf (6)

C. Brusque (4)

D. Vanquish (6)

E. Boundary of a

surface (4)

E. Spooky (5)

E. Concluded (5)

E. Foe (5)

F. Barriers (6)

G. Yawned (5)

L. Terse (7)

L. Restricted (7)

M. Repair (4)

M. Planet (7)

M. Shooting star (6)

N. Maritime (8)

O. Peculiar (3)

O. Poem (3)

P. Gambit (4)

R. Lets go (8)

R. Cures (8)

R. Deplorable (13)

R. Lived (7)

S. Postpone (7)

T. Holidaymakers (8)

CROSSWORD

CONCEPTIS SUDOKU

Yesterday's answer

NOVO

MALL

LANDMARK

ROYAL PLAZA

ASIAN TOWN

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Assassin’s Creed (Action) 2D 10:00am, 12:15, 2:30, 4:45, 7:00, 7:30, 9:15, 11:30pm3D 12:45, 5:15 & 9:45pm The Great Wall (2D/Action) 10:30am, 12:30, 2:45, 3:00, 5:00, 7:15, 7:30, 9:30, 9:35, 11:45pm & 12:00midnight Moana (2D/Animation) 10:30am, 12:45, 3:00 & 5:15pmOzzy: Fast & Furry (2D/Animation) 10:15am, 12:15, 2:15 & 4:15pm The Founder (2D/Biographical) 6:15, 8:45 & 11:15pm Florence Foster Jenkins (2D/Biographical) 10:00am, 2:50, 7:30pm & 12:10pm La La Land (2D/Musical) 12:10, 5:00 & 9:40pm Snow White’s New Adventure (2D/Animation) 10:30am, 12:30, 2:10 & 4:50pm Passengers (2D/Drama) 6:10, 8:30 & 11:00pm Sing (2D/Animation) 10:00am, 12:00noon, ,2:00, 4:00 & 6:00pm February (2D/Thriller) 8:00, 10:00 & 11:55pm Snow Queen 3: Fire And Ice (2D/Action) 10:40am, 12:30, 2:20, 4:10 & 6:00pm Level Up (2D/Thriller) 7:50, 9:40 & 11:30pmThe Great Wall (3D IMAX/Action) 11:15am, 1:25, 3:35, 5:45, 7:55, 10:05pm & 12:15am

Snow White’s New Adventure (2D/Animation) 2:00, 4:30 & 6:30pmAssassin’g Creed (2D/Action) 3:30pm Ozzy: Fast & Furry (2D/Animation) 2:45 & 5:30pmFlorence Foster Jenkins (2D/Biographical) 4:30pm Level Up (2D/Thriller) 6:00pmThe Founder (2D/Biographical) 2:30 & 11:30pm Sardar Saab (2D/Punjabi) 7:15pm Al Maa Wa Al Khoudra (2D/Arabic) 7:30 & 9:30pm Dangal (2D/Hindi) 8:00 & 11:00pm The Great Wall (2D/Action) 9:30 & 11:30pm

Moana (2D/Animation) 2:30pm The Founder (2D/Biographical) 2:30 & 11:30pmSnow White’s New Adventure (2D/Animation) 3:00 & 4:30pm Ozzy: Fast & Furry (2D/Animation) 4:00 & 6:00pmLevel Up (2D/Thriller) 4:30 & 11:30pmAssassin’g Creed(2D/Action) 5:30pm Florence Foster Jenkins(2D/Biographical) 7:30pmDangal (2D/Hindi) 6:00pm The Great Wall (2D/Action) 9:00 & 11:00pm Al Maa Wa Al Khoudra (2D/Arabic) 7:15 & 9:30pm Sardar Saab (2D/Punjabi) 9:15pm

Snow White’s New Adventure (2D/Animation) 2:30, 4:00 & 5:30pmThe Great Wall (2D/Action) 2:30, 9:30 & 11:30pm Ozzy: Fast & Furry (2D/Animation) 3:00 & 5:15pm The Founder (2D/Biographical) 4:30 & 8:45pm Level Up (2D/Thriller) 7:15pm Florence Foster Jenkins (2D/Biographical) 6:30pm Sardar Saab (2D/Punjabi) 9:15pmAl Maa Wa Al Khoudra (2D/Arabic) 7:30 & 11:00pm Dangal (2D/Hindi) 10:45pm

Dangal (Hindi) 2:45, 6:00, 9:15pm & 12:30am Katapana (Malayalam) 12:30, 3:15 & 8:30pmOru Muthasi Gadha (Malayalam) 12:30, 3:30, 6:30, 9:30, 11:15pm & 12:30am 10 Kalapanakal 12:30, 3:00, 5:30, 8:00, 10:30pm & 01:00am Oru Mukham 6:00pm

AL KHORThe Great Wall (Action) 12:15, 2:30, 4:45, 7:00, 9:15 & 11:30pm

Dangal (Hindi) 11:00am, 2:00, 5:00, 8:00 & 11:00pm

Sing (Animation) 12:00noon, 4:30 & 9:00pm Moana (Animation) 2:15, 6:45 & 11:15pm

Snow White (2D/Animation) 2:00, 4:00 & 6:00pm Sardar Saab (Punjabi) 2:00, 5:00, 8:00 & 11:00pm The Great Wall (Action) 2:00, 4:15, 6:30, 8:45 & 11:00pm Dangal (Hindi) 2:00, 5:30, 9:00pm & 12:30am Level Up (2D/Thriller) 8:00 & 10:00pm

16 FRIDAY 6 JANUARY 2017MORNING BREAK

Ducks are pictured on a frozen pond in Hede-Bazouges, western France, yesterday.

Out in the freeze

Five-month-old baby elephant Fah Jam swims during a hydrotherapy treatment as part of a lengthy rehabilitation process to heal her injured front left foot at a rehabilitation centre in Pattaya, Thailand, yesterday.

Water therapy

Global warming

The Arctic was the region showing the sharpest rise in temperatures, while many other areas of the globe, including parts of Africa and Asia, also suffered unusual heat.

FAJRSHOROOK

04.59 am

06.21 am

ZUHRASR

11.40 am

02.39 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

05.01 pm

06.31 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

Oslo

Reuters

Last year was the hottest on record by a wide margin, with temperatures creeping close to a ceiling set by almost 200 nations for lim-

iting global warming, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said yesterday.

The data are the first of the New Year to confirm many projections that 2016 will exceed 2015 as the warmest since reliable records began in the 19th century, it said in a report.

The Arctic was the region show-ing the sharpest rise in temperatures, while many other areas of the globe, including parts of Africa and Asia, also suffered unusual heat, it said.

A few parts of South America and Antarctica were cooler than normal.

Global surface temperatures in 2016 averaged 14.8 degrees Celsius (58.64°F), or 1.3C (2.3F) higher than estimated before the Industrial Revo-lution ushered in wide use of fossil fuels, the EU body said.

In 2015, almost 200 nations agreed at a summit in Paris to limit global warming to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial times while pursuing efforts to hold the rise to 1.5C as part

of a sweeping shift away from fossil fuels towards clean energy.

Temperatures last year broke a 2015 record by almost 0.2C (0.36F), Copernicus said, boosted by a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and by a natural El Nino weather event in the Pacific Ocean, which releases heat to the atmosphere.

In February 2016 alone, tempera-tures were 1.5C above pre-industrial times, the study said. Rising heat is blamed for stoking wildfires, heat waves, droughts, floods and more powerful downpours that disrupt water and food supplies.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the main authority on global temperatures, compiles data mainly from two US and one British dataset that will be published in coming weeks. It also

uses input from Copernicus.Dick Dee, deputy head of the Coper-

nicus Climate Change Service, said yesterday's data were available quickly because they draw on temperature sta-tions and satellite measurements used to make weather forecasts.

“They’re pretty much in perfect agreement” with the WMO data in areas where measurements overlap, he told reporters. The other datasets used by the WMO are collected from sources that can take more time to compile, including ships, buoys and balloons.

US President-elect Donald Trump has sometimes called man-made cli-mate change a hoax and threatened to “cancel” the Paris agreement. But he has also said he has an open mind and sees “some connectivity” between human activity and and global warming.

Paris

AFP

The hidden danger to wildlife posed by imported consumer goods—an espresso

coffee in Beijing, a tofu salad in Chicago—can now be pin-pointed and measured, researchers said Wednesday.

Crunching huge amounts of data, they unveiled a global “threat map” detailing the impact on endangered species of exports to the United States, China, Japan and the European Union.

To procure beans for that coffee or tofu, for example, for-ests have been cleared in Sumatra, Indonesia and in Bra-zil’s Mato Grosso, adding incrementally to the habitat loss driving dozens of animals and plants towards extinction.

The global supply chain of manufactured goods—from iPhones to Ikea furniture—can also contribute to wildlife decline.

Focusing on nearly 7,000 land and marine species clas-sified as threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the researchers traced “hotspots” of biodiversity loss to hundreds of commodities and their distant markets.

In earlier work, they con-cluded that thirty percent of worldwide species threats are due to international trade.

The new study, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, reveals which

nations’ consumers drive spe-cies loss most. It also suggests where conservation efforts should be focused.

Currently, 90 percent of the more than $6bn (€5.75bn) mobilised each year for species conservation is spent within rich nations where money is raised.

“Yet these countries are rarely where threat hotspots lie,” said senior author Keiichiro Kanemoto, a professor at Shin-shu University in Matsumoto, Japan.

The study provides tools to calculate what percentage of the species threat in one coun-try is due to consumption of goods in another, he told repoters.

About two percent of the total threat to the endangered stub-footed toad in Brazil, for example, can be attributed directly to logging linked to goods exported to the United States.

Timber harvested in Malay-sia and exported mainly to the EU and China has similarly robbed the Asian elephant, the greater spotted eagle and the Sun bear of habitat.

And forests cleared in southern Brazil’s highlands for beef production encroaches on the woolly spider monkey, along with many other species.

“We identified biodiversity threat hotspots that are pre-dominantly driven by just a small number of countries,” Kanemoto told reporters.

London

Reuters

A series of handwritten notes by the late Princess Diana, one

of which reveals that her younger son Prince Harry was constantly in trouble at school, is to be auctioned.

The six notes, which will be sold at Cheffins auction house in Cambridge, were

written to Cyril Dickman who served as chief stew-ard of Buckingham Palace for over 50 years.

Diana’s sons Princes William and Harry feature prominently. One message dated September 20, 1984, five days after Harry’s birth, reads: “William adores his little brother and spends the entire time swamping Harry with an endless supply of

hugs and kisses, hardly let-ting the parents near!...”

“The reaction to one tiny person’s birth has over-whelmed us and I can hardly breathe for the mass of flow-ers that are arriving here!”

Another, dated October 17, 1992 says how both young princes “are well and enjoy-ing boarding school a lot, although Harry is constantly in trouble!”.

Stockholm

AFP

Queen Silvia of Sweden says the royal palace where she resides is haunted, according to a documentary aired on public television yesterday.

“There are small friends... ghosts. They’re all very friendly but you sometimes feel that you’re not completely alone,” Queen Silvia says in the documentary by SVT. “It’s really exciting. But you don’t get scared,” she adds.

Drottningholm Palace, which is on UNESCO world her-itage list, was built in 1600s on Lovon island in Stockholm.

It is the permanent residence of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia, the 73-year-old daughter of a German businessman and a Brazilian woman. They were married 40 years ago, which makes her Sweden’s longest-serv-ing queen. Princess Christina, the king’s sister, backs the claims of the Drottningholm phantoms. “There is much energy in this house. It would be strange if it didn’t take the form of guises,” Christina was quoted as saying the documentary.

World heat shatters records in 2016

How we shop hurts endangered species

Princess Diana notes to former palace steward to be auctioned

Ghosts haunt our palace, says Swedish queen

HIGH TIDE 10:15 LOW TIDE 03:15 - 17:45

Strong wind over most areas. Mild

daytime with slight dust to blowing

dust at places at times.

WEATHER TODAY

Minimum Maximum15oC 22oC