Page 01 Oct 3 - The Peninsula...2017/10/03 · by country music star Jason Aldean Sunday night at...

Volume 22 | Number 7303 | 2 RiyalsTuesday 3 October 2017 | 13 Muharram 1439 www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

Barshim shortlisted for IAAF Athlete of the Year award

BoE tells banks to find £4bn of bail-in

debt by 2022

BUSINESS | 23 SPORT | 29

3rd Best News Website in the Middle East

QATAR

121UNDER SIEGE

DAY

ST

Qatar receiving medicines from new marketsFazeena Saleem The Peninsula

Hamad Medical Cor-poration (HMC) has started receiv-ing medicines from several new

international pharmaceutical markets and many interna-tional pharma companies have evinced interest in setting up storage facilities for their med-icines at the Hamad Port.

A senior official of HMC also reassured that the premier healthcare provider in the country has continued availa-bility of medicines and medical supplies in the country, despite the unjust blockade imposed on Qatar by siege countries con-tinues. The Corporate Pharmacy Department at the HMC has communicated with international companies in advance to avoid any shortage of medical supplies pertaining to blockade.

“We have got supplies from several internationally renowned pharmaceutical companies having their man-ufacturing units spread across the world that we can easily

access. The products from the European and Western markets are available as before without any difficulties. Additionally, several products with high quality from Turkey were made available,” Dr Moza Al Hail, Executive Director of Pharmacy at HMC told The Peninsula.

Dr Al Hail further said that HMC has urged international pharmaceutical companies to shift operations to Qatar. Many have shown interest in setting up storage facility (for medi-cines) at the newly-opened Hamad Port.

→ Continued on page 4

HMC has urged international pharmaceutical companies to shift operations to Qatar. Many have shown interest in setting up storage facility (for medicines) at Hamad Port.

Emir condoles with US PresidentQNA & Agencies

Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent yes-terday a cable to US

President Donald Trump, to express his condolences on the victims of the criminal incident that killed and injured dozens of people in Las Vegas city.

Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani, and Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani sent similar cables.

58 dead in gun rampageA suspected “lone wolf” gun-

man sparked the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history when he opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers from the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel, kill-ing at least 58 people and injuring hundreds more, police said yesterday.

More than 22,000 people were attending the performance

by country music star Jason Aldean Sunday night at the Route 91 Harvest Festival when the gunman hammered out a win-dow at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino and began firing with

a cache of weapons. Authorities who stormed the suspect’s room found that he had killed himself. Officials say the suspected gun-man, Stephen Craig Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree from

Mesquite, Nevada, wasn’t on the radar of law enforcement. They think he acted alone but want to talk with his roommate.

→ See also pages 10, 18 & 19

An injured person is tended to at the site of the shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, yesterday.

Ministry eyes South Korean tech for ‘smart farming’Sanaullah Ataullah The Peninsula

In a bid to harvest agro produce round the year in Qatar, the Ministry of Municipality and

Environment is planning to import smart technology from South Korea.

“Under the framework of cooperation between two coun-tries, MoUs are being prepared in the fields of fish-farming and agriculture especially in the sec-tor of smart farming for which South Korea is famous across the world,” said Masud Jarullah Al Marri, Director of Agricultural

Research Department at the Ministry.

Al Marri said that South Korea, which is also very famous in greenhouses, can help Qatar in establishing greenhouse farms which would help farmers tackle Qatar’s warm climate.

Al Marri was speaking at an

event for planting palm trees at the Embassy of South Korea in Doha yesterday. The event was organised by the Agricultural Research Department at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment.

→ Continued on page 4

02 TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017HOME

Minister of Culture and Sports, H E Dr Salah bin Ghanim Al Ali, received at his office Dr Andreas Gurgen, Special Envoy of the Federal Government of Germany for International Cultural Cooperation, and his accompanying delegation. They discussed prospects of cooperation between the two countries in the cultural and sports fields and means of strengthening and developing them. The meeting was attended by Qatar’s Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, H E Sheikh Saud bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani, and Abdul Rahman Al Dosari, Adviser to the Minister’s Office.

The Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr Ahmed bin Hassan Al Hammadi, met with a delegation from the Hague Institute for Global Justice, including Winand Staring, Senior Ambassador at the Institute; Dr Stephen Rapp, a legal expert in the US government and the United Nations; and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Institute Steven van Hoogstraten, in the presence of the Assistant Director of the Diplomatic Institute Nadia Ahmed Al-Shaibi. Dr Al Hammadi thanked the delegation for participating in the seminar on the Gulf crisis, held at the Ministry’s Diplomatic Institute.

Culture Minister meets German special envoy

Foreign Ministry official meets Hague delegation

Emir’s greetings to Guinea PresidentEMIR H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent yester-day a cable of congratulations to President of the Republic of Guinea Professor Alpha Conde on the anniversary of his country’s Independence Day. The Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani greeted Professor Alpha Conde on the occasion, while the Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani sent congratulations to Prime Minister of Guinea Mamady Youla on the anniversary of his country’s Independence Day.

Justice Ministry joins unified govt call centre number (109)QNA

The Ministry of Justice has joined the unified gov-ernment call centre

number (109), keeping up with the State’s strategy for Qatar Digital Government 2020. The Ministry had completed all arrangements related to join-ing the unified call center number in coordination with the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

The unified government call center will respond to pub-lic queries on all issues related to the services provided by the Ministry. The communication service will be provided by the center based on the global standards of call centers and customer services through var-ious channels.

In the current stage, the Ministry of Justice continues to receive public communications on the Ministry’s Hotline (137), which responds to communi-cations through three lines.

The Ministry of Justice welcomes any views or sug-gestions concerning the development of electronic and legal services provided to the public. It receives pub-lic communications through its official website and pages.

Sidi Mohamed The Peninsula

The Emergency Serv-ices Section (999) at the Ministry of Inte-rior has received 1,132,627 calls in the

first half of the current year with an average of 1,88,771 calls per month.

The section is working 24 hours and has a large cadre of police officers and civil servants. The cadre of employees includes translators of several languages such as English, French, Chinese, Filipino, Urdu, and it works round the clock in shifts.

The Ministry said on its offi-cial twitter account that “the average emergency calls which the section receives per day is 6,258, the average calls per hour stands at 261, while the number of calls per minute received by the section is 5.

The section consists of 24 Emergency counters, and can receive 60 emergency calls at the same time. In a day, the number of emergency incom-ing calls varies between 5,000-7,000 calls.

The section receives gen-eral emergency complaints and

different criminal emergency calls, fire emergency calls, and also receives medical emer-gency calls.

It is also monitoring alarm systems, and redirects incom-ing calls reporting accidents to the competent authorities. It uses modern communication, command and control system called C4I.

The deaf people can also benefit from this service, and there is an ‘Emergency Service for the Deaf’ as one of the min-istry services offered by the Ministry is for dealing with deaf and ensure quick response to their calls.

They can communicate with the ‘Emergency Service for the Deaf’ in three ways by calling ‘992’ by using 3G Camera from computer or mobile phone.

This service is available 24 hours and along the week days. The Ministry has advised peo-ple to benefit from this service and use it only for its purpose which is emergency cases. Also telling the service complete address including home number, building number, zone, and street number helps authorities to reach in proper time.

MoI emergency section receives 1,132,627 calls

IAEA appreciates Qatar’s donationfor laboratories Vienna

QNA

Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),

Yukiya Amano, expressed his deep appreciation for the con-tribution of the State of Qatar and some of the Agency’s mem-ber States to the financing of the renovation of the IAEA labora-tories at €30m.

At the opening ceremony of the IAEA new laboratories, Amano said that the donation enabled the Agency to renew its laboratories and thereby assist its member States to benefit from nuclear science and

technology to combat insect pests that spread deadly diseases such as malaria, destroy agricul-tural crops and livestock and

endanger public health.The ceremony was attended

by Qatar’s Ambassador to the Republic of Austria and its

Permanent Representative to the United Nations and International Organizations in Vienna Sheikh Ali bin Jassim Al Thani.

HBKU lecture on Qatar’spolicy on peace & justiceThe Peninsula

Hamad Bin Khalifa Univer-sity (HBKU) successfully hosted a public lecture

titled ‘Qatar’s International Posi-tioning on Peace and Justice” yesterday at the HBKU Student Center. The lecture was one of several events that aim to pro-vide community members with an open space for constructive dialogue and discussion on the blockade of Qatar.

By facilitating such discus-sions, the HBKU is actively contributing to developing thought leadership and fulfilling its mission as a leading global university that values the pursuit of truth and knowledge.

Yesterday’s event was held in conjunction with The Hague Institute for Global Justice to examine various legal dimen-sions of the blockade. Steven van Hoogstraten, interim CEO, and Dr. Stephen J Rapp, non-resident fellow from The Hague Institute for Global Justice were invited to provide their exper-tise on international law and dispute resolution, Law of the Sea, aviation law, and interna-tional human rights.

On October 17, HBKU is inviting Dr Hassan Hakimian, Director of the London Middle East Institute and visiting pro-fessor at HBKU’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, to give a lecture titled “Do Eco-nomic Sanctions Work?” at the

Qatar National Convention Centre. Dr. Hakimian is a widely published author on the region’s economic dynamics, with a spe-cial focus on Iran, human capital, availability of resources, and complexities within exist-ing labor markets across the wider Arab world.

The lecture will highlight the historical experiences of this region when it comes to eco-nomic sanctions, and will provide analysis to reflect critically on recent developments. Dr Hak-imian will also spend time examining the possible motiva-tions behind the adopted measures by the blockading countries, and will offer his views on the effectiveness of such sanc-tions in the Qatari context.

On October 23, a panel dis-cussion on the impact and prospects for Qatar after the blockade will be held by HBKU’s College of Islamic Stud-ies. The panel has a roster of highly distinguished scholars from leading local and interna-tional institutions with wide-ranging specializations, encompassing fields such as international law, sociology, security studies, and more. They will discuss the dynamics of the blockade against Qatar by investigating its political, eco-nomic, legal, and social aspects to provide audiences with a comprehensive picture of the current situation and potential policy outcomes for the future.

The Peninsula

The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs has released the new Hijri calendar of

the year 1439 whch is being dis-tributed free. The Ministry has handed over the printed stocks of the calendars to Sheikh Ali bin Abdullah Al Thani library at Ghu-wailina to distribute it to imams of various mosques and the gen-eral public.

The new Hijri calendar

includes climatic conditions for every month in addition to prayer timings. It also includes some Hadiths which warn peo-ple against ‘Bidaa’.

The Hijri calendar which is issued by the Ministry helps peo-ple remember the times of prayers and also tells about the importance of time which should not be wasted. The calendar con-sists of many other things like telling people of some important events in the Islamic history.

Awqaf Ministry releasescalendar for new Hijri year

Officials at the opening ceremony of IAEA’s new laboratories.

áMhó

dG áæjó

e

‹

GhõdG â

«bƒàd

ÉH

2

018 /

201

7 `` `g

1439

��

��

��

��

��

��

äÉ°SGQódGh çƒëÑdG IQGOEG OGóYEG �� !"#�$��%��&��'(�)�*��+��,-

�2018 / 2017 `` `g1439��.��

‹GhõdG â«bƒàdÉHáMhódG áæjóe

��

��

&�-5�6:��;��6��!��<�= >"��?��@:�

��

� �!��"�#��$�%!�� "&�&'(�� )*+�#

��

��,-��)*��.�/��0',��

� )*+�-��/��,,��1%,��

��.�&�-5�6:��;��6��!��<�= >"��?��@:��,#�,��A�B�CD��!��F�&��<@�&��+��6

(+974) 44447022 : ¢ùcÉa ` (+974) 44700619��893 : Ü . ¢U ` áMhódG ` ô£bE-Mail : [email protected]

The new Hijri calendar being distributed by the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs.

03TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017 HOME

Irfan BukhariThe Peninsula

Ashghal President Dr Saad bin Ahmed bin Ibrahim Al Mohan-nadi has said that that Ashghal is seek-

ing to increase its reliance on local products to encourage local manufacturing.

“We seek to increase reliance on local products in implement-ing our projects in line with supporting local manufacturing strategy,” Al Mohannadi said while inaugurating Elan Signage factory.

Ashghal President further said that Elan Signage factory will contribute to supplying Ash-ghal’s current and future road projects signage demand, The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) posted on its twitter account.

Abdul Aziz bin Nasser Al Khalifa, the Chairman of Elan Group and CEO of Qatar Devel-opment Bank and Jaber Abdullah Al Ansari, Elan Group CEO were also present at the inauguration ceremony of Elan Signage fac-tory at the the Industrial Area, said a statement.

Elan Signage factory is spe-cialized in the production of high-quality traffic and road signs, which are designed and manufactured in accordance with the highest international standards.

Spreading over an area of 12,000 square meters with a total production capacity of about 200,000 signs per year, the fac-tory is equipped with a highly advanced automated production line, which uses the latest tech-nologies to produce signs with very durable aluminium and steel, and high-quality silk screen

and digital printing to deliver highly reflective signs.

To promote and support local manufacturing, the Public Works Authority (Ashghal) had also launched the “Ta’heel” initiative in partnership with Qatar Devel-opment Bank (QDB) in July this year to qualify and accredit Qatari factories.

The “Ta’heel” initiative aims at giving the factories an oppor-tunity to participate in the implementation of Ashghal’s projects, through enlistment of Qatari manufacturers in the authority’s approved supply chain, in addition to accrediting local industrial products that meet the technical requirements, specifications, and the standard quality levels.

Elan Signage is operated by a Joint Venture between Elan Group and VIS Mobility, the lead-ing Italian company in the design and manufacturing of road and rail signs, and mobility infra-structure with over 50 years of expertise working with interna-tional clients. VIS Mobility operates the factory and provides high-quality signs to supply development projects across the

country and meet growing local demand.

Commenting on the inaugu-ration, Elan Group CEO Jaber Abdullah Al Ansari said: “We were determined to establish this factory to strengthen the local production of road and direc-tional signs of various types. The urge to establish this factory was to meet the increasing demand

generated by the multiple infra-structure and development projects across the country ahead of the World Cup 2022”.

Al Ansari noted that the future plans of Elan Signage factory are not limited to supplying the local market, but also include the export of these Qatari products world-wide. “We are keen to produce traffic and road signs of various

types in line with international standards as we plan to export our products to foreign markets. We are confident that our products have all the specifications that will make them desirable and required in the markets and global projects. Moreover, the factory is charac-terised by its flexibility increase its production capacity to meet grow-ing demand,” Al Ansari explained.

Ashghal to rely more on local productsSignage factory

Elan Signage factory will contribute to supplying Ashghal’s current and future road projects signage demand.

Ashghal launched Ta’heel initiative in partnership with Qatar Development Bank (QDB) in July.

The Peninsula

The Ministry of Municipal-ity and Environment has launched a month-long

campaign to promote the local products.

Under the initiative, the Min-istry, represented by the Public Relations and Communication Department in collaboration with an advertising company “WASEL for Sustainable and

Environment-Friendly Adver-tising Solutions” will install billboards across the country to educate people about Qatari products, said a release.

The move is a part of a national campaign to support Qatari product, said public rela-tion officer at the Ministry. The month-long campaign aims at educating the public on the impor-tance of buying local products to support the national economy.

The campaign comes within the efforts made by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment in various fields that serve the community and provide all kinds of support for national projects of various kinds, in order to achieve self-sufficiency by encouraging the private sector to contribute to the development plan of the state, said the officer.

“Supporting local products means supporting national

economy and it is a responsibility of all to participate in this cam-paign, said the officer,” said Mohamad Al Bushri, CEO of WASEL for Sustainable and Envi-ronment-Friendly Advertising Solutions.

Al Bushri said that the time came to change the purchasing habits of all residing in Qatar - citizens or expatriates by focusing on made-in Qatar prod-ucts while shopping.

Ministry’s month-long campaign to promote products of Qatar

A promotion by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment.

Ooredoo launches advertising campaign

The Peninsula

As part of its contin-uous efforts to make the internet

accessible and enjoyable for everyone, Ooredoo yesterday launched a new advertising cam-paign designed to encourage customers across its footprint to take advantage of the company’s superfast net-work and the great variety of ‘tailor-made’ plans it offers to cater to their daily needs.

Customers in both mature and emerging markets increasingly demand speed, reliability, and affordability from their mobile network pro-viders, and Ooredoo’s ‘Enjoy The Internet’ cam-paign is intended to help customers better use the network to their own spe-cific purposes, based on their own specific person-alities and usage patterns.

T h e c a m p a i g n includes a fun and invit-ing video featuring Khalid Jassim, Hanan Al Emadi and Meshaal Al Nuaimi, and showcases just a few of the many ways the

Qatar Airways and HMC host blood donation campaignThe Peninsula

As part of its commitment to support the local community and its

responsibility as a global cor-porate citizen, Qatar Airways hosted a blood donation cam-paign at its headquarters for its employees and their families.

The blood donation drive, a collaboration between the award-winning airline and Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), was hosted on Septem-ber 28 at Qatar Airways’ headquarters in Doha to help increase the blood supply in Qatar.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, Akbar Al Baker, said: “As the national carrier of the State of Qatar, it is our respon-sibility to support our local community and those in need.

By hosting this initiative, we hope to raise awareness and educate our staff on the numer-ous benefits of donating blood. We are proud to host such an event at our corporate head-quarters, which highlights the many ways we can all make an important contribution to our local community via this wor-thy cause.”

Blood donation offers many benefits to both the donor and the recipient. While the donee

receives the specific blood type they need to recover from ill-ness or injury, the donor also benefits from the process, as donating blood is believed to help in lowering the risk of car-diovascular diseases as well as certain forms of cancer.

The national carrier of Qatar is one of the fastest-growing air-lines operating one of the youngest fleets in the world.

Now in its twentieth year of operation, Qatar Airways has a modern fleet of 200 aircraft fly-ing to business and leisure destinations across six continents.

Qatar Airways will be add-ing flights to many more exciting destinations to its net-work in 2017 and 2018, including Canberra, Australia; Chiang Mai, Thailand and Chit-tagong, Bangladesh, to name a few.

Ashghal President Dr Saad bin Ahmed bin Ibrahim Al Mohannadi; Abdul Aziz bin Nasser Al Khalifa, the Chairman of Elan Group and CEO of Qatar Development Bank, and Jaber Abdullah Al Ansari, Elan Group CEO, inaugurating the Elan Signage factory in the Industrial Area.

The blood donation drive was hosted on September 28 at Qatar Airways’ headquarters in Doha to help increase the blood supply in Qatar.

Qatar Airways and Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) officials pose for a group picture.

internet helps everyone stay connected and up-to-date with the people, places, and passions they love.

Ooredoo has also cre-ated a dedicated microsite (enjoytheinternet.com) that contains an interactive quiz designed to reveal to par-ticipants which ‘internet personality’ they have. Depending on the results, new and existing custom-ers will be able to find out which Ooredoo plan suits them best.


Al Daayen Municipality has opened a branch office at Doha Festival City to provide services to the people. The office will remain open from 9am to 3pm from Sunday to Thursday.

The Peninsula

Fifty One East, Qatar’s favorite department store, and Sony Middle

East and Africa have announced that consumers can now purchase the 55’’, 65’’ and 77” BRAVIA OLED TV A1. The highly-anticipated TV is avail-able at the Fifty One East store located in Al Maha Center on Salwa Road, branches of FNAC in Lagoona Mall and Doha Fes-tival City and Virgin Megastore in Villaggio, Landmark and Doha Festival City, as well as major retailers in Qatar.

Sony Corporation has recently reported a 180.5% growth in global operating income for the first quarter of 2017. Supporting Sony’s growth strategy and overall operating income success, Fifty One East has continued its heritage of providing excellent local in-store presence, generating the largest sales and market share growth in the Middle East and North Africa region. Fifty One East holds a time-honored rela-tionship with Sony that spans more than 60 years and the lat-est announcement of the BRAVIA OLED TV A1 is part of its management team’s commit-ment to build-on and implement Sony’s regional strategic objec-tives, enhancing the brand’s decades long leadership posi-tion in Qatar.

The BRAVIA OLED TV A1 series offers a unique combina-tion of the superior picture quality of OLED powered by Sony’s 4K HDR Processor X1™ Extreme, the world’s first Acous-tic Surface™ sound system, and one slate design which trans-lates to an edge-to-edge stand-less form factor. With over 8 million self-illuminating pixels, the BRAVIA OLED A1 series brings a significantly enriched visual experience with

unprecedented black levels, rich and lifelike color, dynamic con-trast, blur-less image and a wide viewing angle. The 4K HDR Processor X1 Extreme extends the capability of OLED to deliver an exquisite 4K HDR picture.

Sony was the first to bring OLED to the market in 2007 with the XEL-1, an 11-inch TV display that was an outstand-ing achievement for its time. Sony has continued manufac-turing award winning OLED displays for professional broadcast and video

production. First Implementation of

Acoustic Surface Sound Technology

Taking advantage of the OLED’s backlight-less structure, Sony developed a new Acous-tic Surface sound technology

which emits superior, powerful sound from the screen itself. Thanks to the ingenious design, the entire screen resonates with rich sound, enabling a unifica-tion of picture and audio unattainable by conventional TVs. Unlike conventional LED where the sound emanates from the bottom or sides, the A1 series enables a fusion of image and sound, with voices appearing to come directly from the charac-ters speaking and explosions coming directly from the screen.

Unique One Slate DesignThe Acoustic Surface tech-

nology makes possible the edge-to-edge design of the A1 series by doing away with conventional speakers usually located to the sides or below the TV. The A1’s one slate design eliminates any visible stand or speakers, leaving nothing to distract from the superior image.

Unmatched Contrast and Clarity

The new premium BRA-VIA OLED line of televisions support HDR (High Dynamic Range) which reproduces dra-matic contrast with rich, brilliant color. Sony’s 4K HDR Processor X1 Extreme advanced image engine fur-ther improves color accuracy, contrast and clarity and sup-ports HDR10, HLGi, and Dolby Vision™1 for viewing the growing library of HDR con-tent. The power of the 4K HDR Processor X1 Extreme also ena-bles non-HDR content to be improved to near 4K HDR quality with object-based HDR Remaster technology.

QNA

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ), represented by the Legal and Judicial Studies Centre, and QatarDebate Center

have signed a Memorandum of Understating (MoU) for joint cooperation in the fields of train-ing, legal education, legal skills development and the dissemi-nation of legal knowledge.

The MoU, signed by Execu-tive-Director of QatarDebate Center, Dr. Hayat Abdullah Al Maarafi, and Director of the Legal and Judicial Studies Center, Fatima Abdulaziz Bilal, aims at establishing cooperation in all legal, academic and professional fields to prepare and qualify legal

persons and members of judicial bodies for legal work.

In accordance with the agreement, the two parties shall e x c h a n g e d o c u m e n t s ,

publications, scientific journals and other means that may con-tribute to the development of legal knowledge and skills, as well as the legal and judicial training programmes adopted by the two parties, in addition to organising seminars, debates and workshops on subjects of mutual interest.

In a press conference held on the occasion, Dr Hayat Al Maarafi said that the MoU will establish a fruitful cooperation in support-ing legal and judicial staff members of the Ministry of Jus-tice, providing them will training on debate skills and enhancing their research, knowledge and dialogue abilities. In addition, the youth in QatarDebate will have the opportunity to benefit from

the expertise of jurists and judges, field training and bene-fit from the legal library.

For her part, Fatima Bilal said that the Legal and Judicial Stud-ies Center aims at improving the

level of legal and judicial train-ing in the country. Therefore, it is important to learn the art of the debate by adopting new training programmes that were not previously proposed in order

to support and develop the skill of dialogue and debate in legal work, which is the main target of the joint cooperation between the Ministry of Justice and QatarDebate Center.

QatarDebate Center and Justice Ministry sign MoU

Cooperation

Joint cooperation in the fields of training, legal education, legal skills development and dissemination of legal knowledge.

Legal and Judicial Studies Center aims at improving legal and judicial training in the country.

Fifty One East & Sony launch BRAVIA OLED TV A1

Continued from Page 1The event was organised

in collaboration with the Embassy of South Korea.

Park Heung Kyeong, the Korean Ambassador to Qatar and Masud Jarullah Al Marri, Director of Agricultural Research Department at the Ministry planted three species of palm fruit trees – Khalas, Khanizi and Barhi at the premise of the Korean embassy during the event.

“On this occasion, the Min-istry initiated to gift three species of palm trees – long life, fruit

trees as symbolic for strong and fruitful relations between two countries,” said Al Marri. Al Marri said that representatives from Korean embassy have been participating in the events of the Ministry especially to local fresh dates-festival.

“Many meetings between technical teams of two coun-tries in various sectors including economy, agriculture, industry and trade are sched-uled to be held in November in Korea,” said Al Marri. A high level meeting chaired by the Minister of Energy and Indus-try will be held in Doha in

December to boost the cooper-ation between two countries. Park Heung Kyeong, the Korean Ambassador to Qatar,

appreciated the Ministry for the gifts of palm trees and expected further strengthening in the relations.

Qatar receiving medicinesfrom new markets

Continued from page 1According to her, the Drug Sup-

ply Unit and the Corporate Pharmacy Department at HMC spared no efforts to preemptively store and maintain the normal sup-ply of medications and other pharmaceutical products despite the existing challenges. “The HMC Corporate Pharmacy department’s long-standing experience and proactive leadership qualities allowed a smooth transition in the current situation and ensured the continuous availability of medica-tions from reputed alternative

sources. Hence, we have succeeded in achieving our goal without com-promising both quantity and quality of the medicines and medical sup-plies provided to the patients,” she said.

“I would like to stress that the conditions imposed on us have not affected our operational or technical skills, and we have made sure that there is continued availability of all essential medicines and medical sup-plies needed by patients in all our hospitals, including emergency drugs, medications used in chronic diseases and light-state medicines,” she added.

Executive-Director of QatarDebate Center, Dr. Hayat Abdullah Al Maarafi, and Director of the Legal and Judicial Studies Center, Fatima Abdulaziz Bilal at a press conference.

Park Heung Kyeong, South Korean Ambassador to Qatar, and Masud Jarullah Al Marri, Director of Agricultural Research Department, planting palm trees at the permises of the Korean embassy in Qatar.

Sony Corporation has recently reported a 180.5% growth in global operating income for the first quar-ter of 2017. Supporting Sony’s growth strategy and overall operating income success, Fifty One East has continued its heritage of providing excellent local in-store presence, generating the largest sales and market share growth in the Middle East and North Africa region. Fifty One East holds a time-honored relationship with Sony that spans more than 60 years and the latest announcement of the BRAVIA OLED TV A1 is part of its management team’s com-mitment to build-on and implement Sony’s regional strategic objectives, enhancing the brand’s decades long leadership position in Qatar.

Ministry eyes South Korea tech for smart farming

BRAVIA OLED Television Models and Suggested Retail Prices (55”, 65” and 77’’)

Product Suggested Retail Prices in QATAR

KD-55A1 QAR 12,999

KD-65A1 QAR 16,999

KD-77A1 QAR 59,999

Municipality office at Doha Festival City


The Peninsula

Ahead of the World Mental Health Day on October 10, the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and

other health organisations are celebrating the World Mental Health Day with the theme “Mental Health in the Workplace”.

MoPH has also encouraged all organisations across Qatar to mark this important day. The Ministry of Public Health along with key health partners Hamad Medical Corporation, Primary Health Care Corporation and Sidra Medical and Research Center will each internally host activities to highlight the impor-tance of promoting good mental health and wellbeing in the

workplace, said a statement. To mark this day, The Min-

istry of Public Health will utilize the Wheel of Wellbeing (WOW) framework and activities, based on Positive Psychology, to pro-mote mental health and wellbeing at work.

This will also help with the ongoing promotion of good men-tal health, resilience and stress management across organisa-tions. MoPH Mental Health and Wellbeing Champions will run activities around the six domains of WOW, which include

promotion of physical activities, strong social connections, ongo-ing learning, taking notice, spirituality and looking after the environment. Information resources about managing stress, tips for mental wellbeing and details of services available in Qatar will be shared on the day.

MoPH encourages all organ-isations across Qatar to plan similar activities within their own workplaces in celebration of this day and to acknowledge this important occasion.

Activities can range from:

providing employees with infor-mation on how they can support self-care, wellbeing and work-life balance; empower individuals and employees to take actions that promote men-tal health resilience; address the negative attitudes and prejudices associated with mental illness in the workplace and promote employment practices that sup-port good mental health and wellbeing.

Sheikh. Dr. Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani, Director of the Public Health Department at MoPH stated, “Mental Health and Wellbeing is one of the priority areas in the Qatar Public Health Strategy 2017-2022, with the main focus of encouraging peo-ple to speak openly about mental health and to seek help as early as possible.”

“The Ministry of Public Health’s ‘Healthy Workplace Program’ complements this years’ theme of World Mental Health Day by focusing on men-tal health and well-being at work and valuing the dual relationship between an individual’s mental health and their workplace,” he added.

The Acting Executive Direc-tor of the National Mental Health Program at MoPH Susan Clelland added, “The mental health objec-tives of the Public Health Strategy have been designed to complement and build on the Qatar National Mental Health Strategy (QNMHS) launched in December 2013. QNMHS identi-fies workplaces as one of the priority settings for effective mental health programs to raise awareness about Mental Health

and Wellbeing and lessen the likelihood of mental illness developing at work. The goal is for workplaces to promote good mental health and help create healthy, safe working environments”.

She concluded that if organ-izations wanted more information on common mental health conditions and how to support staff wellbeing they can contact the National Mental Health Program ([email protected]) based at the Min-istry of Public Health.

The World Federation of Mental Health celebrated the first World Mental Health Day in 10 October 1992 and is observed on 10 October every year with the aim to raise awareness and mobilize support for mental health issues around the world.

Organisations urged to keep workers mentally fit The Ministry of Public Health encouraged all organisations across Qatar to plan activities within their own workplaces in celebration of the World Mental Health Day with the theme “Mental Health in the Workplace”.

The Peninsula

The need for collaboration across all sectors in build-ing a research and

innovation ecosystem capable of meeting the challenges Qatar faces has been highlighted to sci-ence and technology leaders by Qatar Foundation Research and Development (QF R&D) at a high-level international gathering in Japan.

A QF R&D delegation is cur-rently participating in the Science and Technology in Society (STS) Forum’s 14th Annual Meeting in Kyoto which is taking place until today. The event has brought together heads of state; govern-ment ministers and diplomats; and prominent figures in academia, industry, and policy-making, in order to provide a long-term, century-spanning per-spective on how scientific and

technological advancements will shape and define the future of humankind. The STS Forum has been attended by a number of dignitaries, including Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan and Hon-orary Chairman of the STS Forum, and around 1,000 delegates. Min-ister of Education and Higher Education H E Dr. Mohammed bin Abdul Wahed Al Hammadi, par-ticipated in the STS Forum’s 14th Science and Technology Minis-ters’ Roundtable on ‘Society 5.0’, the concept of a human-centred society that capitalises on tech-nologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, robotics, and Big Data.

Speaking at a session titled, ‘Collaboration Among Academia, Industries, and Government’, Dr. Hamad Al Ibrahim, Executive Vice-President, QF R&D, outlined to the audience how the ongoing blockade by neighbouring

countries has provided fresh impetus for the nation’s research and innovation efforts.

“This situation has given us incentive to reflect on our progress towards building a sus-tainable, diversified economy, to analyse how we can become more resilient through develop-ing our own capacity across many areas and sectors, and to ensure that we are the drivers of our own destiny,” he said.

“Necessity can drive action, change, and progress in a research and innovation ecosys-tem, if it is built on collaboration, synergy, and a vision that all sec-tors share. Fostering such an ecosystem in Qatar is central to the work of QF R&D.

“The challenges now faced by Qatar have brought us together, increased our awareness of the need to build our resilience, and inspired us to respond positively

and with purpose. This mindset will continue to define Qatar’s research and innovation ecosys-tem, which has no boundaries, only horizons.”

Dr. Al Ibrahim outlined to del-egates how the National Priorities Research Program of Qatar National Research Fund, part of QF R&D, is supporting projects that address Qatar’s key chal-lenges and encouraging private sector collaboration through co-funding opportunities, and how QF R&D’s Hotspot Analysis allows research and innovation stake-holders to focus on technology areas which have the highest commercialisation potential. He also explained how the pro-grammes of Qatar Science & Technology Park, part of QF R&D – such as its Product Develop-ment Fund and Tech Venture Fund – are enabling startups and SMEs to develop innovation that

meets the needs of the local mar-ket. QF R&D also participated in the Forum’s seventh Funding Agency Presidents’ Meeting, where representatives from 27 countries and one international

organisation discussed mutual interests, issues, challenges, and opportunities to enhance co-operation between research funding agencies around the world.

QF R&D highlights innovative projects at forum

Dr. Hamad Al Ibrahim, Executive Vice-President, QF R&D, and Lim Chuan Poh, Chairman, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore, at the STS Forum’s 14th Annual Meeting in Japan.

The Peninsula

Members of the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) team

joined key education-focused meetings held on the occasion of the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 72) in New York last week.

WISE members met with various education stakeholder partners and took part in gath-erings for the Global Goals Week 2017, hosted on the sidelines of the UNGA 72. The members attended public and private events on education in emer-gencies, financing education, and the role of innovation in education.

The WISE team also pre-sented its work at a roundtable discussion on how creating a global ecosystem for education could help achieve the sustain-able development goal on quality and inclusive education for all (SDG4), part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Devel-opment. Key education stakeholders attending included: Teach for All, Brookings Insti-tution, Asia Society, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Results for Development, J-PAL, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Save the Children, UNICEF, and World Bank, among others.

The roundtable concluded with plans for the group to reconvene at the WISE 2017, taking place in Doha November 14 – 16, to continue the discus-sion and for the launch of a key initiative.

The roundtable was

followed by a public event on ‘What Global Education Can Learn from Public Health: Strengthening a Global Ecosys-tem to Achieve Quality Education for All’. The discus-sion brought to light what education advocates and prac-titioners can learn from the successes and challenges of their health sector colleagues. Speak-ers called for greater investment in public schools to support the global ecosystem for building local capacity and knowledge sharing across borders.

Speakers included Dolores Dickson, Executive Director of Camfed Ghana; J Puckett, Sen-ior Partner and Managing Director of the BCG; Tony Jack-son, Director of the Center for Global Education at Asia Soci-ety; Alice Albright, CEO of the Global Partnership for Educa-tion; Wendy Kopp, CEO and

Co-founder of Teach For All and Ju-Ho Lee, Education Commis-sioner and former Minister of Education of the Republic of Korea.

The WISE team presented its work on global education mapping, and considered the challenges and opportunities in efforts to advance the frame-work among global priorities.

Elyas Felfoul (pictured), Director, Policy Development and Partnerships at WISE, said, “We look forward to welcoming this very productive and dynamic group of education change-makers to WISE in Doha in November for the launch of our mapping platform, and to continue our productive talks on this exciting movement for strengthening of the global education ecosystem.” WISE is an initiative of Qatar Foundation.

WISE team presents work at UNGA 72 meet in New York

Elyas Felfoul, Director, Policy Development and Partnerships at WISE, at the key education-focused meeting held on the occasion of the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 72) in New York last week.


The Peninsula

Qatari students are show-ing increasingly strong interest in the University

of Calgary in Qatar (UCQ)’s Master of Nursing program where they make up 34 percent of the student body.

The campus welcomed its new and returning nursing stu-dents at its annual welcome event. Enrolment at UCQ remains steady this term with 115 new undergraduate and 13 new graduate students, bring-ing the total of UCQ students to 447. The welcome event included welcoming remarks from UCQ Dean and CEO, Dr. Deborah White, along with Dr. Joanne MacDonald, UCQ’s new Associate Dean of Academics, and Craig Wood, Director of Student Services.

Members of the student organisation, Nursing Students

Society of Qatar (NSSQ), also brought remarks, welcoming their fellow students to another academic year and offering their assistance and encouragement.

“We are honoured to wel-come such an impressive group of new students to the Univer-sity of Calgary in Qatar,” said Dr. White. “Nurses perform a vital role in the healthcare sys-tem of Qatar, and we are very proud of our students and will continue to work with them to achieve their academic and professional goals,” she added.

The UCQ engages individ-uals, families and communities in activities designed to enhance family capacity to attain and improve health. UCQ’s nursing students and graduates practice in the com-munity, in primary health centers, and in acute care hospitals.

More Qatar students keen on UCQ nursing program

The Peninsula

Qatar Red Crescent (QRC) has distributed human-itarian aid to 1,000

Rohingya refugee families in Bangladesh as part of an emergency response cam-paign to the crisis that forced them to flee the Rakhine region of Myanmar to border areas with Bangladesh.

An amount of US $100,000 was approved for a relief project for 300 fami-lies, including distribution of non-food items.

Qatar Red Crescent said yesterday that it distributed and provided urgent needs for shelter, non-food items, health, water and sanitation for these families and vulner-able groups in the affected area, as well as field assess-ments conducted by the relief team that was sent to Bang-ladesh, in cooperation and coordination with represent-atives of the Bangladesh Red Crescent, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Embassy of the State of Qatar to Bang-ladesh and the concerned U n i t e d N a t i o n s organizations.

The representative of the United Nations High Commis-sioner for Refugees (UNHCR) appreciated the efforts of QRC’s initiative for support-ing and relief the Rohingya refugees crisis.

Qatar Red Crescent said that it had signed two Mem-oranda of Understanding (MoU) with the Bangladesh Red Crescent and the Inter-national Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Soci-eties to cooperate in the implementation of joint relief projects in Bangladesh after its team faced challenges there related to communica-tion networks, precipitation, the severity of refugee areas, the limited space allocated for the construction of water and sanitation units, the proxim-ity of groundwater to the surface and the proximity of water sources to sanitation units, which may lead to water pollution and spread of diseases.

The statement reviewed the meetings held by the relief team, which con-firmed the keenness of QRC in the Rohingya issue, and the need to work hard to provide urgent humanitar-ian aid.

QRC aid to Rohingya in Bangladesh

The Peninsula

On the occasion of the UN International Day of Older Persons and as part

of the QFC’s corporate social responsibility initiatives, a number of employees of QFC Regularity Authority, QFCRA, QFBA and QICDRC visited Qatar Foundation’s Centre for Empow-erment and Elderly Care (EHSAN).

Commenting on the visit, Yousef Fakhroo, QFC Authority Chief Marketing Officer, stated, “At the QFC, we have always understood and valued the role senior citizens play in society. We owe so much to our elders who have paved the way for younger generations and continuously spared no effort to build our nation and create a promising future for generations to come.”

Fakhroo continued: “This year’s theme is about tapping the tal-ents, contributions and participation of older persons and this theme fits exactly into what EHSAN does. The elderly

have a wealth of skills and expe-riences, have lived through many situations others cannot even imagine and continue to contrib-ute to the economy and local communities. By visiting EHSAN

our QFC employees gained fur-ther knowledge and understanding into how older people play a vital role in Qatar.”

Mubarak bin Abdul Aziz Al Khalifa, General-Manager of

EHSAN, stated: “We are grateful to the QFC for visiting EHSAN and acknowledging this impor-tant international day. The visit gave the elderly a chance to tell their story, their experiences and personal advice on a number of issues. They are grateful for that opportunity. We hope to build a recurring event and the QFC continues its devotion and ded-ication to the elderly and the community as a whole.”

The Qatar Financial Centre Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme underscores its commitment to its ethical, social and environmental responsibilities. Their mission is to deliver a world class financial services regulatory environment, which also contributes to the economic, environmental, and social well being of Qatar and its people.

QFC employees learn vital role of senior citizens in society

The Peninsula

Qatar’s Al Gannas Society marked its successful par-ticipation at the fifth

international falconry festival which concluded in Morocco yesterday.

The festival was held to cel-ebrate the anniversary of listing falconry on Unesco’s Repre-sentative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Tracing its beginnings thou-sands of years back, falconry was originally a method of obtaining food but has evolved over time now being more asso-ciated with nature conservation, cultural heritage and social engagement present among many countries around the world.

Held from September 29 to

October 2, the festival was organised by the Regional Asso-ciation for Cultural Affairs in El Jadida with the cooperation of the Moroccan Ministry of Culture.

Al Gannas Society Chair-man, Ali bin Khatem Al Mihshadi, said the society par-ticipated at the festival with a special pavilion where there are booklets that explain the objec-tives of the association and its local and international cham-pionships, in addition to its world-leading projects such as the genome falcon project in cooperation with Qatar Univer-sity and Qatar’s International Veterinary Falcon Conference, among others.

Al Mihshadi said Qatar’s participation was praised by all, adding that the Gannas

participation comes within the framework of achieving its objectives in its external partic-ipation that contribute to introducing Qatar and its cul-ture and customs.

The participation also helps to exchange cultures and gain different experiences that will enhance international attention to this inherent human herit-age, he added.

Al Gannas Society Vice-Chairman, Mohammed bin Abdullatif Al Misnad, said that the participation of the society is an opportunity to meet those interested in falconry and that the festival is a chance to inform Moroccans and other partici-pants from around the world of the unique Qatari heritage with regard to falconry and hospitality.

The festival focused on two main objectives namely to honor people in the past who

preserved this traditional her-itage and to crown the efforts of those who brought falconry

to what it is today and working hard to preserve it for future generations, added Al Misnad.

Unique Qatari heritage shared at Morocco Falconry Festival

Ali bin Khatem Al Mihshadi (second left), Chairman of Al Gannas Society, and Mohammed bin Abdullatif Al Misnad (third left), Vice-Chairman of Al Gannas Society, at the fifth international falconry festival which concluded yesterday in Morocco.

Visitors during the celebrations organised by QFC to mark the UN International Day of Older Persons at EHSAN yesterday.

An official of UCQ speaks at the annual welcome event held to welcome its new and returning nursing students.

The Peninsula

Qatar Chamber organised a seminar for represent-atives of government

agencies, businessmen and rep-resentatives of private companies to discuss the facil-itation of customs clearance procedures, shipping and stor-age for importers and companies.

The seminar reviewed the integrated land and sea system developed by the Ministry of Transport and Communications in this context, which was linked to the regulations and policies aimed at promoting economic growth in the country.

The participants made a number of recommendations to

improve the performance of customs clearance, avoid delay, and achieve smoothness in the port, demanding an increase in the number of customs agents, and issuing a procedural guide covering all customs clearance procedures that should be cir-culated to companies.

The participants also called for specifying the fees of the

shipping agencies and extend-ing the working hours in those agencies in order to cover the largest quantities of containers and goods.

They appreciated the meet-ing organised by the Chamber with the officials which contrib-utes to facilitating the movement of importing goods and filling the needs of the local market.

Plea to issue guide covering all customs clearance procedures

Participants during the seminar organised by Qatar Chamber to discuss the facilitation of customs clearance procedures, shipping and storage for importers and companies.

The seminar by Qatar Chamber reviewed the integrated land and sea system developed by the Ministry of Transport and Communications in this context, which was linked to the regulations and policies aimed at promoting economic growth in the country.


The Peninsula

Internationally renowned colorectal cancer experts last week gathered in Doha for the fifth Qatar Colorec-tal Conference, in the

presence of H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, the Minis-ter of Public Health.

The conference hosted by Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), was attended by more than 300 local and international delegates and presented the lat-est findings in the diagnosis, management, and treatment of the disease.

“This annual conference allows our colorectal healthcare specialists to collaborate with international experts from a number of countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Ger-many, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom to discuss prac-tical ways in which we can enhance the quality of our healthcare services to best ben-efit our patients,” said Dr Abdulla Al Ansari, HMC’s Acting Chief Medical Officer.

The three-day conference also helped to raise awareness about colorectal cancer, a some-times non-symptomatic disease, and the availability of screening services in Qatar. The National

Breast and Bowel Cancer Screen-ing Program, Screen for Life, was established by the Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) as an outcome of the National Health Strategy. The programme

is the first of its kind in the region and aims to raise awareness of breast and bowel cancer and to reinforce the importance of early and regular screening.

According to Dr. Mohamed

Abunada, Lead Colorectal Sur-geon at HMC and Chairman of the Conference, colorectal can-cer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in Qatar and a leading cause of cancer-related

deaths in both men and women in the country.

He added that the disease can be caused by a number of factors, including environmen-tal conditions, family history, consumption of high protein and fat-rich foods, alcohol, and smoking.

“Colorectal cancer doesn’t have early warning signs, so it’s important for patients to undergo regular screenings at their des-ignated Primary Health Care Center,” said Dr. Salwa Sayed Ahmad, General and Colorectal Surgeon at HMC.

“As the disease progresses, people may experience blood in their stool, have pain in their belly, constipation or diarrhea, unexplained weight loss, or fatigue. Unfortunately, by the

time these symptoms appear, the disease is more difficult to treat,” he added.

The 5th Qatar Colorectal Conference featured keynote addresses from UK-based Pro-fessors Amjad Parvaiz and Tahseen Qureshi, Dr. Rodrigo Perez from Brazil, Professor Ayman Agha from Germany, Andre D’Hoore from Belgium, Dr. Runjan Chetty from Canada and Professor Frederic Ris from Switzerland.

HE Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, the Minister of Public Health, along with Dr. Abdulla Al Ansari, HMC’s Acting Chief Medical Officer and other mem-bers of HMC’s leadership team, attend the opening ceremony of the 5th Qatar Colorectal Conference.

Global experts share research on colorectal cancer

H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari (second right), Minister of Public Health, along with Dr Abdulla Al Ansari, HMC’s Acting Chief Medical Officer and other members of HMC’s leadership team, attending the opening ceremony of the 5th Qatar Colorectal Conference.

The conference hosted by Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), was attended by more than 300 local and international delegates and presented the latest findings in the diagnosis, management, and treatment of the disease. The three-day conference also helped to raise awareness about colorectal cancer, a sometimes non-symptomatic disease, and the availability of screening services in Qatar.

08 TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017HOME / MIDDLE EAST

The Peninsula

College of the North Atlan-tic - Qatar (CNA-Q) will welcome all teachers and

educators to Unesco -sponsored World Teachers’ Day event, to be held on Thursday, at the Col-lege campus.

World Teachers’ Day is an annual Unesco event celebrated in over 100 countries, which honours the dedication, and commitment of all educators who make a difference in the

lives of students. This year’s theme is “Teaching in Freedom - Empowering Teachers”.

The morning programme is from 9am to 12pm at the Dr. Lat-ifa Al Houty Auditorium. The programme will consist of key-note speaker, Dr. John Fien, Professor of Practice at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.

He will speak on the topic of “Why Excellent Teachers and Trainers are Essential to Achieve High Quality, Relevant and Effec-

tive Schooling for All.” Following the keynote

address, a panel discussion will take place, featuring

post-secondary leaders from Qatar. Simultaneous translation will be provided. The afternoon session will be a hands-on work-shop for K-12 teachers entitled “Exploring Skills in Schools”, which will run from 1:30pm to 4:30pm.

The three-hour workshops will showcase cutting edge prac-tices and technology, and advise educators on how to integrate these tools into their learning environments. Session will be offered in English and in Arabic.

Teachers and educators will be provided certificate of participation.

CNA-Q’s World Teachers’ Day programme is under the purview of the College’s Unesco Chair on Technical and Voca-tional Education and Training (TEVT) and Sustainable Devel-opment, Dr. Rupert Maclean.

CNA-Q hosts the Unesco-Unevoc Centre at its campus, premises and it is a vital link between teacher enrichment and the Unesco mandate in Qatar.

CNA-Q to celebrate World Teachers’ Day on Thursday

The Peninsula

The Qatar General Author-ity for Specification and Standardisation in coop-

eration with the Ministry of Economy and Trade is holding a five day workshop on specifi-cation and standardisation for the employees of the Consumer Protection and Anti-Commer-cial Fraud Department.

The workshop that began on October 1 at the headquarters of the Ministry will end on Octo-ber 5.

The programme aims at building and developing capa-bilities and skills of human cadres and upgrading their tech-nical level to enable them to provide the best services that contribute to the protection of consumer health and safety and environmental safety.

A number of experts and specialists from the various

departments of the Authority will deliver lectures to aware the trainees about the impact of specifications on society and the environment and the legal aspects of the specifications and standard.

The trainees will be also educated about international and Gulf standards, standardi-zation in consumer protection.

The training programme will include a field visit through which the participants will visit the central laboratories at the Authority’s headquarters to know the activities and services provided by the gold and pre-cious metals labs, the industrial calibration lab, the legal calibra-tion laboratory and the electrical laboratory.

Workshop on specification & standardisation

Baghdad

AP

The US-led coalition said yesterday that a service member was killed and

another was wounded the pre-vious day in Iraq when an explosion from a booby-trapped device struck their vehicle.

According to US officials, the service members were both American. The officials were not authorized to discuss the mat-ter publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.

So far, seven American serv-icemen have been killed in Iraq in the fight, including two in the battle to retake the northern city of Mosul. Additionally, a French paratrooper was killed in the fight against IS last month, though officials did not specify

if the individual died in Iraq or Syria. US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in August that more than 1,200 Iraqi forces were killed in the battle for Mosul and more than 6,000 were wounded.

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Haider Al Abadi, declared victory against IS in Mosul. The follow-ing month, the Iraqi military retook the IS-held town of Tal Afar. Iraqi forces, backed by the US-led coalition, are now fight-ing to retake the Islamic State-held town of Hawija, 150 miles (240km) north of Bagh-dad. Hawija is one of the last pockets of IS-held territory in Iraq. Iraqi forces are also fight-ing the extremists in the western province of Anbar where IS launched a counterattack against Iraqi forces holding the

provincial capital of Ramadi last week. The city had been declared “fully liberated” from the group in Feb. 2016.

The US launched military operations against IS in August 2014. IS fighters began growing in power in Iraq in early 2014 in the country’s west and in the summer of 2014 swept across much of the country’s north, capturing a third of Iraq’s terri-tory. Since the beginning of the US campaign against IS in Iraq, the number of US troops in the country has steadily grown.

There are now more US forces in Iraq than any time since the 2011 US withdrawal, marking an intensifying war as Iraqi forces and the US-led coa-lition work to push IS out of the last pockets of territory the extremists control in Iraq.

US-led coalition: Service member dead in explosion in Iraq

QNA

A three-day conference on building engi-neering capabilities, competencies and qualifying them for

the workforce got underway yes-terday with participation of several Arab countries.

The conference, which is being held under the patronage of the Minister of Energy and Industry H E Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada, will discuss a number of topics which include building the engineering capa-bilities and competencies to achieve development, activate the role of engineering and sci-entific societies and higher education institutions to develop and upgrade engineering com-petencies and to benefit from the experiences of Arab engineering entities in qualifying engineers. The conference also aims to acti-vate the role of official and private institutions in develop-ing the engineering capabilities and boost them as well as intro-ducing the effects of modern technology on the engineering field and how it reflects in the labour market and to harmonise between the graduates of higher education and qualifying them for the labour market.

Organised by Qatar Society of Engineers (QSE) in coopera-tion with the Federation of Arab Engineers, the conference is scheduled to review the experi-ences of Arab and non-Arab engineers who have long-term knowledge in their field of spe-cialization, and those from academic institutions, ministries, government bodies and private sector.

Opportunity Speaking at the opening cer-

emony, President of Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) Eng

Essa bin Hilal Al Kuwari said that the conference was an impor-tant opportunity to discuss ways to further improve engineering profession and the challenges facing the Qatari engineer and Arab engineers in general in building their capacities and competencies.

Al Kuwari stressed Qatar’s interest in human being as the country’s most important invest-ment, pointing out that achieving sustainable human development is one of key pillars of the Qatar National Vision 2030, which was launched by Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The focus on human development is also an essential objective within the national development strat-egy, Al Kuwari added.

Kahramaa President said that the Government of the State of Qatar is working to equip the Qatari man with knowledge to be an effective contributor to the economic and social life and a major participant in the compre-hensive development witnessed by the State. To this end, the State has pursued in cooperation with many specialised think tanks in various fields to obtain the lat-est international technologies, as well as by sending many students to distinguished international universities to obtain degrees that would contribute to the growth and development of the country through attracting and sponsoring a group of

outstanding students in high school and technical high schools and qualifying them at the high-est levels in engineering and other disciplines in international universities inside and outside the country, while providing them with full support during their academic studies and grad-uation to qualify them to gain professional and technical knowledge necessary to prepare them for the labor market in Qatar.

Since the Arab countries are in the stage of growth and devel-opment, the biggest support for that is to develop human and technical capacities and raise efficiency, he said, adding that the conference on building engi-n e e r i n g c a p a b i l i t i e s , competencies and qualifying them for the workforce is a strong impetus to the joint work between the Qatari engineers represented in Qatar Society of Engineers and their counterparts in the Federation of Arab Engi-neers. It is a platform for exchanging experiences to work together to achieve the ambitions of the Arab peoples in meeting the desired growth and development.

Challenges Al Kuwari pointed to impor-

tant challenges facing Arab engineers, including the provi-sion of new engineers with an opportunity to engage in work

and gain experience as well as the continuous development of experienced engineers and giv-ing them opportunities for self-development and skills development.

Kahramaa President expressed his confidence that the conference, through its working papers and constructive discus-sions in various aspects, will result in positive outcomes, solu-tions and proposals in favor of the development and building of engineering capabilities, saying that Kahramaa welcomes crea-tive solutions in this field.

Ahmed Jassim Al Jolo, Chair-man of Qatar Society of Engineers (QSE) and head of the Federation of Arab Engineers, said that the theme of building engineering capabilities and competencies and qualifying them for the workforce was selected in view of the great challenges faced by Arab engi-neers in the light of the technological developments and changes taking place in the world, where Arab engineers must address these challenges with confidence and knowledge and know-how.

He stressed that the current mega projects and those that are planned for the future need capable and efficient engineers who possess know-how that

qualify them to plan, design and implement such projects, espe-cially that the Arab world is full of mega projects such as airports, ports, railways, roads, bridges, tunnels, electricity and water networks, construction and maintenance works in many Arab cities.

Eng Al Jolo stressed that the importance of the conference lies in reviewing the experiences of Arab and non-Arab engineers who have long-term knowledge in their field of specialization, and those from academic insti-tutions, ministries, government bodies and private sector.

Head of the Conference and QSE Board Member Abdullah Muhammed Heji Al Baker said that the number of engineers in the State of Qatar reached 47,600 engineers, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Development Planning and Sta-tistics. They work in various fields, he said, adding that the number of Qatari engineers are 2,900 engineers, representing 1.8% of the population of Qatar, a ratio similar to that of Japan.

He pointed out that the Engi-neers Acceptance Committee in Qatar includes many specialties and 31 disciplines and the number of engineers registered in this committee exceeds 13,000 in different disciplines.

31 disciplines Al Baker stressed the impor-

tance of the engineering profession, adding that engineer-ing disciplines have been evolving and there are now 31 engineering disciplines.

He pointed out that the con-ference will discuss how to develop one of the oldest pro-fessions, starting from entering the university until joining the labor market, noting that the lec-tures and meetings of the conference on building engineer-ing capabi l i t ies and competencies and qualifying them for the workforce will begin on Tuesday, with the par-ticipation of 8 Arab countries. More than 20 papers and a dis-cussion session will be held where participants will discuss how to develop the engineering profession and benefit from the experiences and lessons learned by presenting the experiences of Arab countries in this area, he said.

The conference is attended by many Arab engineering syn-dicates and associations such as Order of Engineers and Archi-tects of Lebanon, the Algerian engineers syndicate, Iraqi Engi-neers Union, Palestinian Engineers Syndicate, Oman Soci-ety of Engineers and Kuwait Society of Engineers.

Engineers’ meet to focus on capacity building

Officials during the three-day conference on building engineering capabilities and competencies, yesterday.

The number of engineers in the State of Qatar reached 47,600 engineers, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics. They work in various fields, he said, adding that the number of Qatari engineers are 2,900 engineers, representing 1.8% of the population of Qatar, a ratio similar to that of Japan.

An official at the workshop.

09TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017 MIDDLE EAST

Washington

AP

The alleged mastermind of the 2012 attacks on a US outpost in Benghazi, Libya,

despises America and when his hatred “boiled over,” he organ-ised the strike that killed four Americans, including ambassa-dor Chris Stevens, a government prosecutor told the jury yesterday.

Opening statements began in the case against Ahmed Abu Khattala, whom prosecutors describe as the ringleader of the attacks at a diplomatic com-pound — an attack that became a political flashpoint given its timing weeks before President Barack Obama’s re-election.

It’s one of the most significant terrorism prosecutions in recent years in a US civilian court at a time when the Trump adminis-tration has said terror suspects

are better sent to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

An 18-count indictment against Abu Khattala arises from a burst of violence that began the night of September 11, 2012, at a

State Department compound in Libya’s Benghazi. a rampage prosecutors say was aimed at killing American personnel and plundering maps, documents and other property from the

post. Abu Khattala has pleaded not guilty to his charges, includ-ing murder of an internationally protected person, providing material support to terrorists and destroying US property.

Palestine PM in Gaza amid power switchBeit Hanun

AFP

Palestinian Prime Min-ister Rami Hamdallah arrived in Gaza yester-day for his first visit in two years, saying the

Palestinian Authority would assume control of the strip after a decade of factional strife.

Hamdallah crossed the bor-der with dozens of ministers and officials from the West Bank-based PA into the Hamas-run coastal enclave at around noon.

The Islamists have control-led Gaza since a 2007 split but recently agreed to hand over civilian power to a unity government.

“The government began to exercise its roles in Gaza from today,” Hamdallah said at a press conference at the crossing.

“We return to Gaza again to end the division and achieve unity.”

He was welcomed by thou-sands of Gazans, with hopes that this reconciliation plan can avoid the problems that wrecked sev-eral previous attempts.

Hamdallah’s entry was delayed by around half an hour because of disputes between PA and Hamas security men, a secu-rity source said. Hamas politicians and members of the premier’s Fatah faction greeted Hamdallah on arrival.

He met Hamas’s overall leader Ismail Haniyah and its Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar later yesterday. He is to chair a cabi-net meeting today.

The event is meant to be the first significant step in a transfer of powers. Hamas ousted the PA in 2007 after a near civil war, but recently agreed to dissolve what has been seen as its rival admin-istration and make way for a unity government.

Palestinian President Mah-moud Abbas’s PA is the internationally recognised Pal-estinian government and supposed to steer its people to an independent Palestinian state.

Hamas, blacklisted as a “ter-rorist” group by the European Union and the United States, won a landslide victory in 2006

Palestinian parliamentary elections.

It ousted Fatah from Gaza the following year after wrangling over the formation of a new gov-ernment degenerated into bloody clashes.

Abbas’s limited power has since been confined to the West Bank which is under Israeli mil-itary occupation and located, at

its nearest point, 40 kilometres from the Israel-Gaza border.

The logistics of the visit are themselves an indication of Pal-estinian divisions and challenges.

Arriving by road from Ram-allah, about 70 kilometres away in the West Bank, Hamdallah’s convoy crossed Israel and then transited the fortress-like Erez

crossing into Gaza before passing a Hamas checkpoint.

Hamas last month finally agreed to the PA’s return to Gaza.

The group was squeezed by Abbas, who stopped paying Israel for electricity it supplies to Gaza, resulting in devastating power cuts. For Gaza’s two million res-idents, the hope is to see an

improvement in their miserable living conditions in the over-crowded and impoverished territory.

Battered by three wars with Israel since 2008, Gaza is under Israeli and Egyptian blockade and suffers from severe water and electricity shortages, and economic slump.

Jerusalem

AFP

The top UN envoy for Israeli-Palestinian peace hailed improving

relations between the two major Palestinian factions yesterday, after premier Rami Hamdallah visited Gaza for the first time in two years.

The visit came weeks after an Egypt-brokered deal under which Islamists Hamas, who run the strip, would cede civilian power to Hamdallah’s internationally recognised Palestinian Authority (PA).

Multiple previous recon-ciliation efforts have failed, but the UN envoy for the Mid-dle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, said there were real reasons to believe they could buck the trend.

He pointed to the “real political will” from both Hamas and Fatah which dominates the PA, active Egyptian mediation and the focus on smaller confidence-building measures as reasons to be positive.

“I am carefully optimis-tic, I am not underestimating any of the massive complica-tions and difficulties that can arise along the way,” he said.

“But if the region stays engaged, if Egypt’s role con-tinues and if the political parties themselves continue to show the willingness they are currently showing to work with us on this process, then it can succeed.”

He called for interna-tional governments to back a PA-led government in Gaza financially. “This is an effort to strengthen the forces of moderation in a region that is in the middle of massive turmoil,” he said.

“Returning the govern-ment back to Gaza strengthens the hand of those who want peace and who want to achieve peace between Palestine and Israel.”

Iran sends tanks to border with Iraq’s Kurdish regionErbil

Reuters

Iran deployed a dozen tanks supported by artillery at the border with Iraq’s autono-

mous Kurdish region yesterday, a Kurdish official said, adding that the move was a dangerous escalation in the crisis triggered by Iraqi Kurdistan’s independ-ence vote.

“The tanks can be seen from the Kurdish side,” an official from the Kurdistan Regional Govern-ment (KRG) security council said, adding that the move was a “dan-gerous escalation.” Iraq’s Kurds overwhelmingly voted for inde-pendence in a referendum held one week ago, defying the cen-tral government in Baghdad as well as neighbouring Turkey and Iran, which fear Kurdish separa-tism within their own borders.

The deployment at the Parviz Khan border point yesterday was part of joint military drills con-ducted by the Iranian and the Iraqi armed forces in response to the referendum, state media in Tehran said. The exercises began last Sunday, according to

Iran’s Mehr news agency.Masoud Barzani’s KRG says

it plans to use the referendum’s result as a mandate to negotiate the peaceful secession of the Kurdish region through talks with Baghdad.

But Baghdad has rejected any talks with the KRG over independence. It demanded that the KRG relinquish control over

its external border crossings with Turkey, Iran and Syria. It also demanded the KRG handover its airports to federal control.

When the KRG turned down those demands, Iraq’s central government imposed a ban on international flights to and from the region’s two international airports on Friday.

Iraq’s defence ministry said

on Friday the Iraqi authorities planned to take control of the borders of its autonomous Kurdistan region “in coordina-tion” with Iran and Turkey.

The statement did not give details. Nor did it indicate whether Iraqi forces would move towards the border posts con-trolled by the KRG from the Iranian and Turkish side, or set up checkpoints in the vicinity of these posts in order to control the crossings.

Iranian state television on Saturday quoted a military spokesman as saying Iran and Iraq “agreed on measures to establish border security and receive Iraqi forces that are to be stationed at border posts”.

“We have always respected our borders with our neighbours and any (military) move will be in coordination with Baghdad and our allies,” a senior Iranian official said on condition of anonymity.

Iran has vowed to stand alongside Baghdad in the fallout following the referendum. Allowing Iraq to seize border posts from Kurdish control

would further cement Iran’s stance to renounce dealings with the Kurdistan region in favour of the central government in Baghdad.

Backed by Ankara and Tehran, the Iraqi government has demanded that the Kurdish leadership cancel the result of the referendum or face the pros-pect of sanctions, international isolation and possibly a military intervention.

A small Iraqi force is also deployed on the Turkish side of the border as part of joint drills with the Turkish army.

Iran’s military chief, General Mohammad Baqeri, met Turk-ish Chief of Staff Hulusi Akar in Tehran yesterday.

“Iran and Turkey share the same stance on the referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan and both insist on the sovereignty of Iraq,” Baqeri was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA after his meeting with Akar.

“The armed forces of both countries will increase cooper-ation in training and war games,” he was quoted as saying by Tas-nim news agency.

Hamas’ overall leader Ismail Haniyah (right) shakes hands with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Gaza City yesterday. RIGHT: Hamas’ leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, waves as he arrives for a meeting with Hamdallah.

Hamdallah’s entry was delayed by around half an hour because of disputes between PA and Hamas security men, a security source said. Hamas politicians and members of the premier’s Fatah faction greeted Hamdallah on arrival.

Kurdish Regional President Massoud Barzani (centre) meeting with Kirkuk provincial Governor Najim Al Din Karim (third left) and representatives of Kurdish political parties in Kirkuk.

Trial of Benghazi attack suspect begins

Dubai

Agencies

The Ruler of Oman received Iran’s foreign minister yesterday, the

state news agency ONA reported, in a rare official appearance for the long-time leader. H M Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who is in his late 70s, was pictured in conver-sation with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif at Al Shumoukh fort in the state of Manah, south-west of Oman’s capital, Muscat.

Earlier, Oman’s Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs Yusuf bin Alawi also met with the Iranian Foreign Minister who started a one-day visit to Oman yeterday morning.

A file picture of a burnt car in a building at the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

UN carefully optimistic on Palestinian reconciliation

Oman’s ruler meets Iranian minister

At least fifty-eight people are now known to have been killed and hundreds injured in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. A 64-year-old man armed with more than 10 rifles rained down

gunfire from a 32nd-floor window in the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of 22,000 people at a music festival. America and the world reacted in shock. There were condemnations and outpourings of deep sympathy to the victims and their families from all over the world, from leaders and ordinary men. Questions were asked immediately about the identity of the attacker and his motives. The world has seen plenty of Islamist terrorism and so the first tendency was to suspect their role.

Muslims in US and all over the world can heave a sigh of relief as an FBI official said that there was no known international terror link and the attacker was identified as a white male. The IS claimed responsibility through its website Amaq, saying the gunman was a recent convert to Islam. This shows that while being vigilant, the world needs to be cautious about IS claims. The group claimed a role in the Westminster attacks in March and an exhaustive probe found no link. The group similarly claimed a shooting in a Philippines casino in June, where the attacker was a gambler with debts and a drinking problem. Facing military defeat and loss of

territories in Syria and Iraq, the terrorist group is looking for shootings and bombings everywhere to claim as its own.

It’s time for all Americans to ask the right questions after the Las Vegas shooting. All the US agencies have strenuously worked to root out terrorism after September 11, taking a series of tough and sweeping measures. The latest of these measures is the travel ban imposed

by the Trump administration on some Muslim countries. At the same time, there has been little action to address the issue of gun violence that has become the scourge of American society. Debates about gun control often generate plenty of sound and fury and there has been a general consensus about the dangers of gun ownership but so powerful is the gun lobby led by the National Rifle Association (NRA) that no administration has dared to tighten the gun laws. The latest massacre too will trigger another round of furious debate but everyone knows what to expect. Trump, while condemning the attack in a bland style, has been silent about the larger issue of gun violence. “In moments of tragedy and horror, America comes together as one -- and it always has,” Trump said. But that’s what every nation does.

Trump’s White House bid was eagerly endorsed by the NRA. But it’s time for him to repay his debt to the American public.

10 TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017VIEWS

E S T A B L I S H E D I N 1 9 9 6

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFI

[email protected]

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

[email protected]

Las Vegas massacre

QUOTE OF THE DAY

In moments of tragedy and horror, America comes together as one — and it always has. Our unity cannot be shattered by evil. Our bonds cannot be broken by violence. And though we feel such great anger at the senseless murder of our fellow citizens, it is our love that defines us today — and always will, forever.

Donald TrumpUS President

It’s time for all Americans to ask the right questions about gun violence after the Las Vegas massacre.

Another day, another mass shooting in America. Except this time, the horrific slaughter that unfolded Sun-day night at a concert in Las Vegas is being widely described as the

deadliest one in modern US history. More than 50 people are dead, and more than 200 wounded, after the shooter opened fire on a crowd on the Las Vegas Strip from a 32nd-story hotel window.

The shooter has been identified as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, who is dead and is believed to have taken his own life. He lived in Mesquite, Nevada, which is 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. At least 10 rifles were found in his hotel room.

There is still an enormous amount we don’t know, yet speculation is raging out of control, as always. Here are a few sugges-tions for the debate that is already underway:

There is a right way to “politicise” mass shootings, and a wrong way to politicize them. As of now, the Clark County sheriff says of the shooter: “We have no idea what his belief system was.” Social media is awash in efforts to associate the shooter with one political worldview or another. Please, let’s not do this — even if and when that world-view becomes known.

Such mass killings have all kinds of motives, from mental illness to a desire to emulate and outdo previous rampages. (There is also a related debate over whether ascribing mass shootings to mental illness is sometimes done in ways that end up scape-goating the mentally ill.)

There’s nothing wrong with trying to dis-cern the belief system of mass killers, provided that this is part of a broader effort to learn all we can about the killer; provided that this belief system itself is not reflexively tagged as the cause of the shooting; provided that other causes are given due weight; and provided we don’t use those shootings to tar our ideological opponents and their world-views. We all know what that latter tactic looks like. Let’s not do it.

That said, there is nothing wrong with politicising mass shootings in a different sense: They are the right occasions for intense arguments over how to prevent them in the future. After all, if we aren’t going to talk about what to do about mass slaughter when it happens, when are we going to talk about it?

Treating these massacres as inevitable or beyond the capacity for human problem solving — something that becomes easier when they recede in the news — isn’t an option. However, a major caveat here: We need to keep focused on the crucial distinc-tion between mass shootings and the broader problem of gun violence.

Let’s debate mass shootings and the broader scourge of gun violence as separate but related problems. The difficulty with debating gun violence in the context of mass

Mass shooting: US needs to

address gun violenceGreg Sargent The Washington Post

shootings is that we lose focus on the much broader day-to-day slow burn carnage of gun deaths in America. Mass shootings constitute only a tiny fraction of the gun-violence problem, and if we are going to discuss mass shootings, they raise their own set of distinct issues.

They don’t just occasion an argu-ment over how to prevent mass shooters from getting lethal weaponry. They also encompass arguments over whether we need increased funding into the multiple causes of mass shootings; over how to improve law enforcement efforts to spot would be mass shooters in advance; and over the scandalously substandard response to mental illness in this country.

The broader scourge of gun violence encompasses a host of different, though related, problems, shading into debates about suicide, domestic violence, and questions about how to reasonably reg-

ulate day-to-day access to guns that have little overlap with the mass shootings debate. It is perhaps inevitable, and

in some ways desirable, that we will argue over these issues when a horrify-ingly traumatic event grips the public attention — something that has served as an impetus to reform repeatedly throughout our history. But we have to take enormous care not to let mass shooting dominate and define the larger debate over gun violence, precisely because we need to do a lot more to respond to that latter problem, and to make strong, evidenced-based argu-ments for such a response. This conflation is counterproductive and destructive.

Let’s decouple the argument over the individual gun right from the argu-ment over gun violence. My personal preference is for liberals to acknowl-edge the individual gun right, while making the case that reasonable reforms — such as expanded back-ground checks — can be implemented in ways that are not incompatible with respecting that right. As gun-debate his-torian Adam Winkler has noted, the Second Amendment is not necessarily an obstacle to some of the reforms that are regularly discussed and would prob-ably not be invalidated by the courts on those grounds.

The point is, even if you want gun reforms, that demand does not have to immediately devolve into an insistence that the individual gun right is the prob-lem. Obviously some will often argue, when a given reform is proposed, that it does run afoul of the Second Amend-ment. But the argument that this is wrong as a substantive matter — that the reform in question does not do this — is one that gun reformers need to be prepared to make. It’s a debate they should want to have.

The author writes The Plum Line blog, a

reported opinion blog with a liberal slant —

what you might call “opinionated reporting”

from the left.

Treating these massacres as inevitable or beyond the capacity for human problem solving — something that becomes easier when they recede in the news — isn’t an option. However, a major caveat here: We need to keep focused on the crucial distinction between mass shootings and the broader problem of gun violence.

ED ITOR IAL

Las Vegas police stand guard along the streets outside the festival grounds of the Route 91 Harvest in Las Vegas, Nevada.

11TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017 OPINION

hallowed landmark. In 2015, a hobbyist’s drone landed on the White House lawn.

Awakening to the threat, the Trump admin-istration drafted legislation this year to enhance police powers in tracking civilian drones and their payloads — including by codi-fying the authority to destroy drones in flight that appear menacing. Among the fast-growing number of hobbyists and entrepreneurs who fly drones for fun or profit, many have expressed alarm at the proposed legislation. But perhaps they should take their complaints to Al Qaeda.

The hard fact is that today’s danger will soon be followed by a much larger threat. While Ras-mussen and Wray were on Capitol Hill testifying about the problem of radio-controlled and GPS-directed drones of relatively small size, many of the top scientists in the field of autonomous flight were gathering in Vancouver, BC, to share details of their progress on building entirely self-guided aircraft.

One such scientist shared his concerns with me about where this is headed. He says with con-fidence that off-the-shelf drone technology will move rapidly from grenade-size payloads to car-goes of 10 or 12 pounds. As belt-wearing suicide bombers have shown, a tremendous amount of destruction can be packed into a vessel about that size.

More important, though, is the rapid progress being made toward truly autonomous navigation. Encouraged by Pentagon planners who envision helicopter rescues and resupply missions in com-bat zones that don’t put human crews at risk, the

Will 6.8 million starving Yemenis ever find justice?

The last two decades have seen a signifi-cant expansion of international, regional and domestic accountability mechanisms for an array of international crimes and a variety of forgotten victims. Much of this

activity has been focused on the conduct of senior military and political leaders who control or signifi-cantly contribute to excesses on the battlefield. However, as is becoming clear, this focus does not adequately confront the scale or scope of victims living in the path of armed conflict or under the yoke of brutalising regimes.

This year has seen the resurgence of famine. South Sudan is enduring the first famine to be declared globally for six years. Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen are all on the brink of famine. In each, deliberate political and military action has contrib-uted to the resulting death and injury of thousands of innocent civilians, demanding that serious con-sideration be given to prosecuting those responsible. Yemen is emblematic of the problem and a may provide a backdrop for the development of the potential remedy proffered by a more imagi-native approach to the prosecution of those who engineer, or fail to act to prevent, mass starvation.

Yemen has been described as the “war the world forgot” eclipsed by Syria and complicated by a Saudi-led coalition supported by the United States, the United Kingdomand France. The result-ing humanitarian disaster features a famine of cataclysmic proportions. The word “famine” evokes images of dusty pot-bellied children and the wrath of nature. However, the reality is that this is less nature’s cruelty and more mans: “starvation” often more accurately reflects these wholly human-made and preventable catastrophes, where failed diplo-macy and ostensible military objectives collide.

While perhaps viewed as collateral to the con-flict, political and military actors could have easily predicted this crisis and taken preventative meas-ures to avoid. Yemen is almost entirely dependent upon imports for its staple commodities. Prior to

the conflict, approximately 80-90 percent of food was imported, principally at the Red Sea port of Al Hudaida, which quickly became the epicentre of the fighting. Eventually, coalition forces imposed a UN Security Council-approved blockade on the port in March 2015.

While the blockade contains an exemption for food, little has been done to ensure the continued functioning of the port. For example, the port has been aerially bombed and there are reports that the Houthi rebels have destroyed key infrastructure at the port causing delays in the importation of food with foreseeable and fatal consequences. In addi-tion, food and humanitarian supplies reportedly encounter laborious inspection procedures and, in some cases, are reportedly being withheld or destroyed.

This blockade and the attacks on the port are contributing to, or causing, the famine in Yemen. Some 17 million are food-insecure (defined as inconsistent access to adequate food supplies), and 6.8 million facing famine conditions. Put another way, more people are facing famine than the present population of Kuwait.

Justice demands that a variety of legal avenues be pursued to hold those responsible for a famine accountable. The prohibition of starvation as a method of warfare is criminalised under customary international law governing conflict, the Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute. Despite having these legal facilities available, there have been only two known prosecutions- both domestic

and conducted in absentia — that have entered convictions for starvation as a war crime and a crime against humanity: the first in Croatia and the second in Ethiopia. Given the frequency with which famine occurs as a consequence of conflict, taking such a passive approach to famine does not respect a state’s duty to mount effective prosecutions of serious violations of international humanitarian law.

There have been several steps already taken in considering accountability in Yemen. For example, Yemen’s exiled President Hadi established a National Commission of Inquiry in September 2015 mandated to investigate the alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. However, it failed to obtain the support of all con-cerned parties and was unable to operate in parts of Yemen. In August 2017, an open letter was sent to the UN Human Rights Council with 62 signatories from non-governmental organisations around the world, calling for the creation of an independent body to look into the violations of international human rights and humanitarian laws in Yemen.

Prosecuting famine as a war crime faces distinct and sometimes significant obstacles. First, block-ades that cause starvation are not prohibited so long as their purpose is to achieve, and is propor-tionate to, a military objective. Second, the causal link between action and outcome may not be clear enough to establish beyond reasonable doubt that remote military or political actors are responsible.

Yemen faces both these obstacles. First, the

Two years ago, you would have had a tough time getting a meeting with a junior staffer in Washington to discuss the sub-ject. A year ago, people had

begun furrowing brows. Now, this is Topic A for an entire “community of experts that has emerged inside the fed-eral government,” as National Counterterrorism Center chief Nicholas Rasmussen told a panel of senators Wednesday. “It’s a real problem,” he said.

How real? Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria, using off-the-shelf air-craft modified to drop grenades, have repeatedly menaced US. Special Opera-tions forces. If they can do it in Raqqa, surely someone will try to do it here.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, testifying to the same panel, said the threat is palpable and immediate: “The expectation is it’s coming here imminently.” Drones are “relatively easy to acquire, relatively easy to operate, and quite difficult to disrupt and monitor.”

Most drones on sale in the United States are small, short-range birds aimed at the hobbyist market and unsuited to carrying cargo. But for the price of a flat-screen TV, a would-be terrorist can go online and purchase a commercial model heavy enough to deliver a small package.

You don’t need to be a Hollywood screenwriter to imagine what might come next: A nearly silent, low-alti-tude little helicopter bearing a small bomb or supply of toxic material hums over metal detectors and barri-ers and bodyguards to strike a public gathering or senior official or

The terrorist threat we’re ignoring: Drones

Yemenis infected with cholera receiving treatment at a hospital in Sana’a.

scientists at the Vancouver meeting are well on their way to building drones that fly independently of radio guidance or GPS. These aircraft can “see” and survey terrain to know exactly where they are and steer themselves accord-ingly to avoid traffic, trees and power lines on the way to their destinations.

Or their targets.If you’re excited by the idea of one day stepping into a

personal aircraft, tapping an endpoint into the control panel and whisking to work high above snarled traffic, the promise of truly autonomous flight is exciting. Deep-pocketed innovators such as Google founder Larry Page and Airbus are pursuing the idea of selfflying personal aircraft.

But if you are a counterterrorism expert, this stuff wor-ries you. Our best defenses against terrorist drones fit into three categories. The first is radar, but radar performs poorly against small, low-flying craft. Alternatively, we can jam radio signals, but the autonomous drones now in development won’t need a radio controller. Our third defense is to interrupt GPS. But a drone that can “read” terrain and react to obstacles will be able to fly without such guidance.

“The vehicles we are developing [for the Pentagon] are specifically designed to foil all three prevention systems,” the worried scientist told me.

One thing we know about technology: Today’s improb-able experiment is tomorrow’s inexpensive gadget. You likely have more computing power in your car than NASA had on the space shuttle. If autonomous drones are able to execute complex simulated combat missions today — and they are — you can bet that technology will eventually be widely and cheaply available in smaller forms to ordinary buyers.

And one thing we know about terrorists: They love gadgets. They’ve learned to detonate bombs using cell-phones, toy cars, garage door openers and so on. Once they have access to nearly undetectable flying machines big enough to carry substantial payloads, we can be confi-dent they will try to use them to wreak havoc. Which is a threat worth all the attention the community of experts can give to it.

Perhaps Washington has been slow to see this new threat. But it’s not too late. Yet.

The author writes a twice-weekly column for The Post. He was pre-

viously an editor-at-large for Time Magazine, and is the author of

four books, including “Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and

America’s Most Perilous Year” and “Triangle: The Fire That

Changed America.”

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OFFICETEL: 4455 7741 / 767FAX: +974 4455 7758

MANAGING EDITORTEL: 4462 7505

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORTEL: 4455 7769

LOCAL NEWS SECTION TEL: 4455 7743

BUSINESS NEWS SECTION TEL: 4462 7535

SPORT NEWS SECTION TEL: 4455 7745

ONLINE SECTION TEL: 4462 [email protected]

PUBLIC RELATIONSTEL: 4455 [email protected]

ADVERTISING DEPARTMENTTEL: 4455 7837 / 780FAX: 4455 7870 [email protected]

CLASSIFIED DEPARTMENTTEL: 4455 [email protected]

SUBSCRIPTION & DISTRIBUTIONTEL: 4455 7809 / 839FAX: [email protected]

D-RING ROADPOST BOX: 3488DOHA - [email protected]

All thoughts and views expressed in these columns are those of the writers, not of the newspaper.

All correspondence regarding Views and Opinion pages should be mailed to the [email protected]

blockade is purportedly pursuant to the legitimate military objective of prohibiting the illegal supply of arms to rebel groups like the Houthis. Second, the evidentiary problems of establishing individ-ual criminal responsibility in a country which has always depended, almost entirely, on food imports and has historically endured food insecurity issues are complex. Notwithstanding, amongst the other three famine affected countries, Yemen may offer the clearest set of facts that amount to crimes with which to pursue accountability.

The UN Special Rapporteur has urged the blockade to be lifted in order to prevent starvation. In his view, the blockade was one of the main causes of the humanitarian catastrophe. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the control of food importation into Yemen is being used either intentionally or negligently, as a weapon of war, seemingly by all sides. Those responsible should be held accountable as primary perpetra-tors of, or accessories to, starvation.

Catriona Murdoch is a consultant with

Global Rights Compliance and a mem-

ber of 1 Crown Office Row Chambers

in England. Catriona practices interna-

tional humanitarian and criminal law.

Wayne Jordash QC is a managing

partner of Global Rights Compliance

LLP a human rights and humanitarian

advisory law company specializing in

the reform of national systems of

accountability to ensure complemen-

tarity with international standards.

Prosecuting famine as a war crime faces distinct and sometimes significant obstacles.

Von DrehleThe Washington Post

Awakening to the threat, the Trump administration drafted legislation this year to enhance police powers in tracking civilian drones and their payloads — including by codifying the authority to destroy drones in flight that appear menacing.

Catriona Murdoch &Wayne JordashAl Jazeera

12 TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Dear World: Book by Syrian child survivor relives her traumaBeirut

Reuters

A Syrian girl, whose tweets from war-torn Aleppo captured a worldwide

audience, has written a harrow-ing memoir of life under siege, recalling her terror of daily bom-bardments and her sorrow at being kept out of class.

In “Dear World”, to be pub-lished today, eight-year-old Bana Alabed, who now lives in Turkey, delivers an unadulterated account of war through the eyes of a child.

She writes vividly about the death of her best friend and neighbour Yasmin, killed when a bomb fell near her house.

“Then one of the men lifted

a body out of the rocks, and there was more screaming from Yas-min’s mum. It was Yasmin. She was floppy like she was asleep, and had a lot of blood and dust on her,” Bana writes in the book.

“I couldn’t move or breathe because I was so scared seeing my friend like that.”

Bana drew around 360,000 followers after she joined Twit-ter in September 2016 aged seven, documenting life in her embattled city through tweets and pictures from her @Alabed-Bana handle, an account managed by her mother Fatemah.

Bana drew the attention of some famous Tweeters, includ-ing “Harry Potter” author J K Rowling, who along with her

agent sent the young girl e-books about the famous boy wizard.

But her tweets also sparked controversy after some critics questioned the legitimacy of the account and accused Fatemah of using her daughter for propaganda.

During a ceasefire last December, Bana and her family were evacuated from eastern Aleppo to Turkey, where they were greeted by Turkish Presi-dent Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his palace.

“I am sad because the chil-dren in Syria they don’t have school, they aren’t learning any-thing. They (stay) in their house and are dying every day,” Bana told the Thomson Reuters Foun-dation in an interview from the

capital Ankara. Bana is now in third grade after missing more than a year of school at the height of the bombardment of Aleppo. Her education was patchy even before that, due to the dangers posed by the civil war that erupted when she was a toddler.

“I can go to school now and I am not afraid. It’s not scary,” Bana said in a phone interview.

More than six years of con-flict have forced an estimated 1.7 million children in Syria out of school, according to the United Nations children’s agency Unicef.

In the book, Bana describes the moment a bomb fell near her house, and took her best friend.

“I didn’t cry when I heard the bomb, but I did cry later when

Baba and Mummy decided that I couldn’t go to school anymore. It wasn’t safe because a bomb could fall on the school,” she writes.

The young author wants her book to spotlight the suffering of Syrian children who “deserve life”, she said — insisting on con-ducting the interview in English, first taught to her by her mother and among the subjects she is now studying at school.

Bana said she dreams of returning to Syria and becoming a teacher and doctor so she can both educate and treat children. She also wants Syrian children to keep dreaming.

“I want to say to them: They should be strong and not lose their hope,” she said.

Bomb attacks hit Damascus police station Damascus

AFP

A double suicide bomb attack hit a police station in Syria’s capital Damascus yesterday, state

media said, with a monitor say-ing at least 11 people were killed.

Damascus has been largely insulated from the worst of the violence during the country’s brutal six-year war, but several bomb attacks have shaken the city. Syria’s Interior ministry said two suicide bombers had blown themselves up at the police station in the southern district of Midan, leading to the “deaths of a number of civilians and a number of policemen”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the war, said at least 11 people were killed in the attack, among them six police officers.

The monitor also reported that a car bomb had been det-onated during the attack, but state media made no mention of a third blast.

Interior Minister Moham-med Shaar told reporters that one of the attackers had man-aged to enter the police station and reach the first floor of the

building. State television showed images of damage from inside the building, with a black police uniform shirt covered in dust lying in the rubble of par-tially collapsed walls.

The entire front of one room on the first floor had been blown out by the explosion, and inside what remained, twisted bits of metal were scattered across the rubble.

Policemen carried one body away from the scene wrapped inside a white tarpaulin.

Manal, a 28-year-old teacher living in Midan, said she heard at least two blasts yes-terday afternoon.

“I was coming back from work when I heard the sound of an explosion, it was around 2:30 pm, I didn’t know what it was, and then there was another explosion a few

minutes later and buildings shook,” she said.

“Afterwards I heard gunfire, which usually happens to get people to move out of the way and clear the road so ambulances can get through to retrieve the injured,” she added.

Damascus has also been rocked by occasional bomb blasts throughout the Syrian conflict, including previous attacks on Midan, a middle-class residen-tial and shopping district. In December 2016, three police officers were wounded when a seven-year-old girl walked into the neighbourhood’s police

station wearing an explosive belt that was remotely detonated.

Rebel groups have been gradually expelled from territory in the capital they once held, though they maintain a presence in a handful of positions, includ-ing the Jobar neighbourhood.

They also hold territory in the Eastern Ghouta region outside the capital, and have regularly launched rockets into the city.

More than 330,000 people have been killed in Syria since its conflict began with protests that were met with a harsh govern-ment crackdown.

A wide array of international

players have been drawn in on both sides, with the government relying on allies including Iran, Russia and the powerful Hezbol-lah militia from neighbouring Lebanon.

Ten Hezbollah members were killed yesterday in a sus-pected drone strike in the Badiya desert region in the central prov-ince of Homs, the Observatory reported, revising an earlier toll of at least eight.

The unidentified strike came near the town of Sukhna in a region where Syria’s government and allied fighters are battling the Islamic State jihadist group.

The site of a double suicide bomb attack which hit the Al Midan police station in Syria’s capital Damascus, yesterday. Six of those killed were police officers.

Iran sentences 7 reformists to jail termsTehran

AFP

Seven reformists in Iran including a brother of ex-president Moham-

mad Khatami have been given one-year jail terms and banned from all political and media activity for two years, one said yesterday.

“I can confirm this report but we will have to appeal,” university academic Moham-mad Reza Jalaipour said in a text message. Lawyer Hojat Kermani, quoted by ILNA news agency, named four of the other reformists convicted as ex-deputy parliament speaker Mohammad Reza Khatami, former legislator Mohsen Safaie Farahani, Azar Mansouri, a member of an advisory panel for president Khatami during his 1997-2005 term, and Hossein Kashefi.

Kenyan cops fire tear gas to disperse protestersNairobi

AP

Kenyan police lobbed tear gas and fired shots in the air in Nairobi

and Kisumu yesterday to dis-perse protesters who are demanding a change of lead-ership at the country’s election commission.

In addition to the protests in the capital Nairobi and the opposition stronghold of Kis-umu, in western Kenya, there was a peaceful protest in the coastal city of Mombasa.

The protests were called by the opposition National Super Alliance, whose leader Raila Odinga faces President Uhuru Kenyatta on October 26 in a rerun of the presiden-tial vote.

Kenya’s top court ordered a repeat election after nulli-fying the re-election in August of Kenyatta, citing irregular-ities and illegalities in the vote counting. The court said the election commission had failed to verify the results.

Odinga has said he will not participate in the fresh poll without major reforms to the electoral commission. Kenyatta has said he does not want any changes.

In Kisumu yesterday hun-dreds of protesters chanted “Chiloba must go,” referring to the chairman of the elec-tion commission. Emerging from Kisumu’s Kondele slum, the protesters broke a police barrier and forced their way into the centre of the city, waving placards and twigs and chanting slogans against the election commission. Police responded with tear gas and fired shots in the air.

“Chiloba stole the elec-tions. We cannot let him stay in office,” said protester Cel-estine Owuor in Kisumu.

Chiloba, who is supported by the ruling party, is one of the electoral commission offi-cials the opposition party says must go before the re-run vote is held.

No casualties were reported in the protests yes-terday. Kenyatta said yesterday the protesters’ demands are “unrealistic.”

Speaking at a forum with women leaders at his official residence, State House, Ken-yatta said: “It is very clear they (the opposition) don’t want elections. But I want to tell them today that elections will be held as ordered by the Supreme Court, and the date has been set.”

“Do not paralyse the IEBC,” a statement by diplo-mats said, referring to the election commission.

IS uses Raqqa hospital to thwart forcesRaqqa

Reuters

Raqqa’s hospital, a big complex pocked with bullets holes, whose capture will signal the end of

Islamic State’s crumbling Syrian capital, lies just 200 yards from a front-line base of the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Beyond it, a roundabout where the jihadists once displayed the heads of their enemies, crucified people and held mili-tary parades at the height of their expansion is another strategic prize sought by the US-backed militia alliance.

Commanders directing the battle on the ground say seizing these and a nearby stadium, Islamic State’s last strongholds in the city, could take as little as a week once a final assault begins against just a few hundred remaining militants.

But the ultra-hardline group is hold-ing civilian hostages in the hospital and stadium and using sniper fire, booby traps and tunnels that emerge behind SDF lines to slow the battle.

The SDF faces a tough final showdown with IS which commanders say will end at the hospital, now almost completely surrounded.

“There are many civilians being held. We can’t use heavy weaponry or air strikes around the hospital or stadium, so we’ll encircle them as we advance,” com-mander Haval Gabar said at the front-line base, a home that SDF units captured last week. “The hospital will be the last point (in Raqqa) to be freed,” he said on Satur-day, as bullets coming from the sprawling medical complex whizzed over the base.

The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias dominated by the Kurdish YPG, has been fighting since June to drive Islamic State from Raqqa city, backed by air strikes and special forces from a US-led coalition.

The assault, which YPG officials ini-tially predicted would take weeks, has dragged on as Islamic State bogs down forces with tactics used in other bastions such as Iraq’s Mosul. Senior Kurdish com-manders recently said Raqqa would fall by the end of October.

“Right now there’s no advancing,” Gabar, 25, said. “There have been many attacks from behind us” with militants launching surprise raids from a network of tunnels they dug after marauding through swathes of Syria and Iraq and capturing Raqqa in 2014, he said.

Bana said she dreams of returning to Syria and becoming a teacher and doctor so she can both educate and treat children. She also wants Syrian children to keep dreaming. “I want to say to them: They should be strong and not lose hope,” she said.

Assault claims 11

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the war, said at least 11 people were killed in the attack, among them six police officers.

Teen fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces share a light moment in Raqqa, Syria, yesterday.

13TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017 ASIA

New Delhi

AFP

Ahead of Gujarat polls, the government yesterday night appointed a five-

member Commission headed by Delhi High Court’s retired Chief Justice G. Rohini to exam-ine sub categorisation of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in a bid to ensure that more back-wards among the OBC communities avail the benefits of reservation.

It has been asked to submit its report within 12 weeks.

President Ram Nath Kovind issued the order constituting the Commission under the provi-sions of Article 340 of the Constitution, a decision taken on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, enforcing the spirit of his teachings to achieve social justice, an official release from Ministry of Social, Justice and Empowerment said.

“The President in exercise of the powers conferred by arti-cle 340 of the Constitution appointed a Commission to examine the sub-categorisation of Other Backward Classes.

“This decision, taken on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, reinforces, in the spirit of his teachings, the govern-ment’s efforts to achieve greater social justice and inclusion for all, and specifically members of the Other Backward Classes,” it added.

The Commission will have as its members J K Bajaj, the Director of Centre for Policy Studies, and the Director, Anthropological Survey of India and the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, while Joint Secretary in the Ministry will be its Secretary.

It will examine the extent of inequitable distribution of benefits of reservation among the castes or communities included in the broad category of OBCs with reference to such classes included in the Central List.

It wil also work out the mechanism, criteria, norms and parameters in a scientific approach for sub-categorisation within such OBCs and will take up the exercise of identifying the respective castes or communi-ties or sub-castes or synonyms in the Central List of OBCs and classifying them into their respective sub-categories.

On receipt of its report, the Central government will con-sider ways and means for equitable distribution of the benefits of the reservation in Central government jobs and admission in Central govern-ment institutions amongst all strata of OBCs.

Last month, the govern-ment raised the ‘creamy layer’ ceiling for OBC reservation for securing government jobs to Rs 8 lakh from the existing Rs 6 lakh per year.

New Delhi

IANS

Anti-corruption cru-sader Anna Hazare yesterday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of

failing to keep his promise of creating a corruption-free India and threatened to begin an agi-tation if Modi “did nothing” to enforce the Lokpal Bill.

Hazare, who sat on a one day satyagraha at Rajghat on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s 148th birth anniversary and paid tribute to the Father of the Nation, also wrote a letter to Modi. He said that even after three years in power, the Prime Minister had not enforced the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill, but had instead “hastily” passed amendments to weaken the anti-corruption law.

“I had started a movement for appointing a Lokpal. It is still incomplete. There is a need for another agitation. The govern-ment not only failed to appoint

a Lokpal but has weakened the Act (The Lokpal and Lokayukta Act, 2013),” he told reporters.

Hazare said he would launch the agitation by the end of the year or early next year. “During the agitation no party or its mem-ber would be allowed to sit on stage. If someone wants to join, he can join the people,” he said.

He said that his volunteers will reach Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra to discuss on the course of the movement.

In his letter to Modi, Hazare said that while earlier it was

mandatory for those covered under the Lokpal to disclose their assets as well as the assets of their family members, the amendment passed in July last year exempted the family mem-bers from doing so. He also

accused the Prime Minister of postponing the enforcement of the anti-corruption law by mak-ing “one or the other excuse”.

“It appears you have no intention to bring Lokpal and Lokayukta Act... And that you

don’t want to build a corruption-free India,” Hazare wrote.

Looking at the present situ-ation, it appears that no efforts are being made to end corrup-tion and establish effective democracy in the country.

New Delhi

IANS

Hundreds of journalists yesterday formed human chains at various places

across the country to protest intimidation of the media and the killings of scribes, including the murders of Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru and Shantanu Bhow-mick in Tripura, and to draw attention towards “increasing intolerance against criticism”.

Scores of scribes turned up at the Press Club of India (PCI) here and formed a human chain in the heart of the capital to express their solidarity with their colleagues who were killed in the line of duty.

The protests on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti were organ-ised by various media associations, including the Press Club of India, Federation of

Press Clubs in India, Indian Women’s Press Corps, Press Association, Kerala Union of Working Journalists and Indian Journalists Union.

The trigger for the protests were the killings last month of Lankesh, the editor of

Karnataka-based Lankesh Patrike, who was shot dead at her own doorstep, and Bhowmick, who was abducted and later hacked to death by a tribal group in Tripura while he was covering a fight between two local factions.

Imphal

IANS

Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh yester-d a y n i g h t

inaugurated a night plaza, known as Imphal Evening, in the heart of Imphal city that he said will give people a chance to relax and enjoy.

Inaugurating it he said, “This will give a chance to the people to relish tasty food, enjoy cultural shows, colour-ful dances. They could relax for a few hours. These will be irresistible attraction for tour-ists.” Till recently people preferred to stay indoors after nightfall in the insurgency afflicted border state. The night plaza will be open on Saturdays and Sundays.

Singh said: “There will be strict prohibition and no abuse of intoxicants. It will be a no smoking zone. The govern-ment is trying to give a pleasant chance to spend the weekends to all sections of people after days of hard work.”

Congress MLA K Joykis-han, the party spokesperson, said, “There are illegal drink-ing joints only a few metres away from Imphal Evening. There will be problems when youths under the influence of liquor converge there.”

Hyderabad

IANS

Three persons were killed as heavy rains lashed Hyderabad yesterday,

inundating low-lying areas and throwing normal life out of gear. Heavy downpour, accompanied by thunder-storm for over three hours in the evening, inundated roads, bringing the traffic to a grind-ing halt during the peak hours.

Officials said it was a cloudburst over the city as some areas recorded 7 cm to 12 cm rainfall. Two persons including a child were killed and two injured in a wall col-lapse in Singadikunta area in Banjara Hills.

Jammu

IANS

Two civilians — a 10-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl — were killed and 12

others injured yesterday in Pakistani shelling on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kash-mir’s Poonch district.

“Today at 6.30am Paki-stan violated ceasefire by resorting to border firing with heavy/small weapons in Dig-war and Kerni sector of Poonch,” police said here.

“Firing exchanges stopped from both sides at 11am.” While a 10-year-old boy Asrar Ahmad was killed in Kerni area, a 15-year old girl Yas-mina Akhtar was killed in Digwar area of the LoC.

Police said all the injured have been taken to hospital. The Indian Army retaliated effectively and strongly at both Kerni and Digwar, Defence Ministry sources said.

Bengaluru

IANS

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah yesterday launched the “Mathru

Purna” scheme, which aims to provide nutritious meals to about 1.2 million pregnant women and lactating mothers in the state.

“The scheme aims at reduc-ing under-nutrition among women and children,” the Chief Minister said while announcing

the launch of the scheme here, serving food to pregnant women in the banquet hall of Vidhan Soudha, the state secretariat.

“Besides nutritional supple-ments, counselling and other maternity benefits will also be provided at the Anganwadi cen-tres under the scheme,” Siddaramaiah said. A provision of Rs302 crore has been made by the state government during the 2017-18 financial year for the implementation of the

scheme in all the 30 districts of Karnataka.

“We’ve had phenomenal response from the pilot run of the scheme in four taluks last year, and have decided to roll out the project across the state,” Karnataka state Women and Child Development Minister Umashree said here yesterday. One hot cooked meal consist-ing of rice, dal with leafy vegetables/sambar, a boiled egg/sprouted legumes.

New Delhi

Reuters

Vice President Venkaiah Naidu yesterday unveiled a 1.8 metre-tall

bronze statue of Mahatma Gan-dhi at Rajghat on the occasion of his 148th birth anniversary.

Speaking on the occasion, Naidu said: “We should all strive together to realise the dreams of Gandhiji and usher in ‘Ram Rajya’.”

“Gandhiji’s thoughts are immortal, his wish for Ram Rajya should be properly understood. Ram Rajya means an ideal rule, where there is no fear, hunger, corruption, exploitation or discrimination.

It is our duty at various levels and we must all work for the ideals of Ram Rajya, given to the expectations of Mahatma Gandhi,” Naidu said.

The 1.8-meter-long bronze statue is the first statue at the Rajghat complex. An official statement said the statue of the “champion of country’s inde-pendence” would appeal to a large number of visitors.

“The new statue would offer another spot for them to pay their respect to the great soul,” the statement said Built at a cost of Rs8.73 lakh, the statue, sculpted by renowned artist Ram Sutar, is installed in the parking area of the Rajghat Samadhi Complex.

Enforce Lokpal Bill: Anna Hazare to Modi

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi pays tribute at the Samadhi of Mahatma Gandhi on his 148th birth anniversary, at Rajghat, in Delhi, yesterday.

Scribes protest growing intolerance

Journalists participating in a peace protest near the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Ahmedabad, yesterday.

President appoints commission to examine categorisation of OBCs

Karnataka launches scheme to feed 1.2 million pregnant women

Manipur government encourages night life

3 dead as heavy rain lashes Hyderabad

Two children dead in LoC shelling

Vice-President unveils Gandhi statue at Rajghat

Threatens agitation

“I had started a movement for appointing a Lokpal. It is still incomplete. There is a need for another agitation. The government not only failed to appoint a Lokpal but has weakened the Act,” Hazare said.

Indian Border Security Force along with Indian Air force women personnels riding during the closing ceremony of the Camel Safari expedition at the Wagah Border post yesterday. The first-of-its-kind the all-women camel expedition was flagged off on Independence Day from the Air Force station at Uttarlai in Barmer.

All-women camel expedition

14 TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017ASIA

The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan stations during a port visit to Hong Kong, yesterday.

US carrier in Hong Kong

US, Philippine troops launch military drillsManila

AFP

US and Philippine troops launched new joint counter-terrorism exercises yesterday, days

after President Rodrigo Duterte, a fierce critic of Washington, reversed course in favour of pursuing one of Asia’s oldest military alliances.

Duterte vowed last week to be “friendly” with the United States, in contrast to comments he made a year ago calling joint military exercises a “humilia-tion” and threatening to sever defence ties forged after World War II. The week-long joint operation — another turna-round from Duterte’s initial stand — involves live-fire train-ing, rescues in combat situations, and mass-casualty situations aboard ships, accord-ing to the American side.

The US embassy said the drills “will increase overall US and Philippine readiness, improve bilateral responsive-ness to crises in the region, and further reinforce our illustrious decades-long alliance,” in a statement.

“(The operation) perpetu-ates a long and lasting partnership founded firmly on common heritage between freedom-loving countries,” said P h i l i p p i n e M a r i n e s

spokeswoman Captain Maria Rowena Dalmacio.

About 900 US troops are taking part in the training, to be held in various locations in the northern Philippine region of Luzon, including the former US military base of Clark. The Fil-ipino side did not disclose its numbers.

During a visit to China last October he announced his “sep-aration from the United States” and later explained he was angry at then US president Barack Obama for criticising his centrepiece war on drugs which has since seen thousands killed. However Duterte said last week these comments were “water under the bridge” and thanked the US for helping the Philip-pines fight Islamic militants who occupied parts of the southern city of Marawi on May 23.

Pakistani rangers stand guard on a street ahead of the arrival of former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif to appear before a court in Islamabad, yesterday.

Anti-graft tribunal puts off Sharif indictment for a weekIslamabad

AP

A Pakistani anti-graft tribu-nal yesterday postponed the indictment of former

prime minister Nawaz Sharif for a week after his children, who are co-defendants in the case, failed to appear in court.

Sharif himself did appear in court yesterday amid stepped-up security. It was his second appearance before the same tri-bunal; last week, scores of his supporters, reporters and law-yers swarmed the small court room when he showed up, mak-ing it impossible for the judge to conduct proceeding smoothly. At that point, the frustrated judge ordered Sharif to leave and had his lawyers represent

him the rest of the hearing. The Sharifs are facing the

trial following orders by the country’s Supreme Court after an investigation into documents leaked from a Panama law firm indicated that Sharif and some of his family members had undisclosed assets abroad.

The Supreme Court disqual-ified Sharif from office in July, forcing him to step down — also over undisclosed assets. Sharif has denied any wrongdoing. Sharif and some of his party leaders have been pointing toward ‘hidden hands’ behind his dismissal and spate of cor-ruption cases.

In the development, Judge Mohammad Bashir of the Accountability Court set Oct. 9 for the indictments against

Sharif, his two sons, daughter and son in-law.

According to Mohsin Shahnawaz Ranjha, an attorney and lawmaker from Sharif’s party, his children are currently in London with their ailing mother who is undergoing treat-ment for throat cancer in Britain.

The case against the former prime minister has become the center of much domestic media attention in Pakistan.

For the hearing, paramili-tary rangers took over security around the court complex, bar-ring media, lawyers, Sharif supporters — and even govern-ment ministers from entering. Much to his anger, Interior Min-ister Ahsan Iqbal was also stopped at the gate.

Refugee found dead at Australia camp on PNGSYDNEY: An asylum-seeker being held on one of Austral-ia’s remote Pacific island camps was found dead yesterday, rights groups said, in a suspected sui-cide that has once again thrown Canberra’s treatment of refu-gees into the spotlight.

Australia sends asylum-seekers who try to enter the country by boat to processing facilities on Nauru and on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, with those found to be refugees barred from resettling in Australia.

Conditions in the camps have been widely criticised by refugee advocates and medi-cal professionals, with reports of widespread abuse, self-harm and mental health problems. Sydney-based Ref-ugee Action Coalition said Monday that a 32-year-old Tamil man from Sri Lanka took his own life at a hospital Manus Island, where he was being treated for self-harm. It is the second apparent suicide on the island in the last two months, with an Iranian man found dead in August. “Once again, such tragedy highlights the acute vulnerability of refugees and asylum-seekers under Australia’s ‘offshore process-ing’ approach, and the need for proper care,” the UNHCR said in a statement yesterday.

Most Filipinos believe only poor people die in drug warManila

Reuters

Most Filipinos believe only the poor are killed in their country’s war on

drugs, and want President Rod-rigo Duterte to reveal the identity of alleged narcotics kingpins and charge them in court, a survey released yesterday showed.

The survey of 1,200 Filipinos by Social Weather Stations (SWS) conducted late in June also showed public opinion was split over the validity of police accounts of operations against illegal drugs that resulted in deaths.

More than 3,800 people have been killed during Duterte’s 15-month-old crackdown, all during police operations. Human rights group say the death toll is much higher and the official

figures overlook murders attrib-uted to shadowy vigilantes. Some activists say unknown gunmen have collaborated with police to kill drug dealers and users.

Police and the government vehemently reject those allega-tions and accuse critics of exaggerating the death toll for political gain.

The high death toll in Duterte’s fight against crime and drugs, a key election plank, has stoked international alarm, although domestic polls have shown Filipinos are largely sup-portive of the tough measures.

The crackdown has come under heavy scrutiny of late, prompted largely by the police killing of a 17-year-old student on August 16. Two witnesses on Monday told a senate inquiry they saw police officers kill another teenager arrested

earlier in the same area for rob-bery. In both teen killings, however, police said the victims had violently resisted arrest. A third teenager arrested with the second victim was found dead with 30 stab wounds in a prov-ince about a three-hour drive away from the capital.

Duterte has several times brandished what he called a file on 6,000 alleged druglords at the centre of the country’s trade. In the SWS survey, 74 percent of respondents said they wanted him to make that list public.

The survey also showed 60 percent agreed with the state-ment that only poor drug pushers were killed. Duterte, who enjoys huge support among working class Filipinos, has been angered by critics who characterised his campaign as a war against the poor. The survey also showed

nearly half of respondents were undecided whether police were telling the truth when saying that

drugs war deaths happened only when suspects refused to go quietly.

A witness to a recent teen killing linked to illegal drugs, wearing a sweatshirt and mask, gestures while parents of the killed teenager, wearing bulletproof vests, listen during the Senate investigation in Pasay City, Metro Manila, yesterday.

Tokyo’s Koike faces dilemma ahead of October 22 electionTokyo

Reuters

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has made no secret of her desire to be Japan’s

first female prime minister — she even named her pet terrier “Sori”, Japanese for “premier”.

But Koike, 65, whose fledg-ling Party of Hope poses a growing threat to Prime Minis-ter Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc in an election this month, faces a tough choice: run now for a seat in parliament to become eligi-ble for the top job, or wait and bet her party positions itself to win the next national poll.

Abe called the October 22 poll in hopes his Liberal

Democratic Party-led bloc could keep its majority in the lower house, where it now holds a two-thirds “super majority”, but Koike’s party has upended forecasts.

If Koike resigns as governor little more than a year after defying Abe’s LDP to run suc-cessfully for that post, she would risk a backlash from voters. Waiting might let her best shot at the premiership slip through her fingers.

“If she thinks of the nation, it is important that she boldly announce her candidacy, present her ideas about impor-tant matters ... and debate policies head on,” Abe’s ally, Chief Cabinet Secretary

Yoshihide Suga, told reporters yesterday.

Koike, a media-savvy former LDP member and defence minister, has said she would not resign as governor to run now, especially ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games, which Tokyo will host. But her care-fully phrased remarks have failed to kill speculation that she will run. Candidates must reg-ister on October 10, when the campaign officially starts.

Koike is certain to be watch-ing opinion polls as she weighs her decision. A TV Asahi survey published on Monday showed 72 percent of respondents were negative about her potential candidacy.

Duterte vowed last week to be “friendly” with the United States, in contrast to comments he made a year ago calling joint military exercises a “humiliation” and threatening to sever defence ties forged after World War II.

New Zealand’s ‘kingmaker’ to start talksWELLINGTON: The New Zealand First Party, which emerged as a kingmaker after New Zealand’s election in September, will begin pre-liminary talks with both the ruling National Party and sep-arately with the Labour Party this week, according to a media release.

The statement comes after Prime Minister Bill Eng-lish told media yesterday that he had called New Zealand First leader Winston Peters but he had not picked up. Both parties have since said the two leaders had spoken by telephone. While English’s National Party won a 10-point lead over the opposition Labour Party in the Septem-ber 23 election, neither won enough seats to govern alone and both have been left court-ing the outspoken Peters to form a government.

English’s National Party secured 58 seats, only just short of the 61 seats needed to form a government in New Zealand’s proportional rep-resentation system.

15TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017 ASIA

Myanmar keen to take back Rohingya refugeesDhaka

AFP

A Myanmar minister yesterday proposed taking back hun-dreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims

who fled to Bangladesh after a military crackdown, according to Dhaka’s top diplomat.

But no details of the planned repatriation were given by Bang-ladesh Foreign Minister A H Mahmood Ali, and there was widespread scepticism over whether any of the more than 800,000 Muslim Rohingya now in Bangladesh would return.

More than half a million have arrived over the last five weeks after militant attacks in Myan-mar’s Rakhine state sparked violent reprisals which the UN has said could amount to ethnic cleansing in the Buddhist-dom-inated country.

The talks between Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s Minister of the Office of State Counselor Kyaw Tint Swe came as UN rep-resentatives were given their first access to Rakhine since the trou-ble erupted on August 25.

UN officials, diplomats and aid groups were taken on a one-day visit organised by Myanmar authorities. They were flown by helicopter to Maungdaw, epicen-tre of the violence.

Mahmood Ali held what he

called “friendly” talks in Dhaka with the representative of Myan-mar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi. “Myanmar has made a proposal to take back the Rohingya refugees,” the minister told reporters. “The two sides have agreed to a proposal to set up a joint working group to coor-dinate the repatriation process.”

Suu Kyi, who has been severely criticised for her failure to curb the military crackdown, said last month that Myanmar would take back “verified” refu-gees. This would be done according to criteria agreed in 1993, when tens of thousands of Rohingya were repatriated, she said.

The Bangladesh minister

gave no timeframe for repatria-tion and did not say whether Myanmar would also take back 300,000 Rohingya refugees who fled to Bangladesh during ear-lier violence.

He said refugees would be verified by the joint working group, but without UN involve-ment. “Bangladesh has proposed a bilateral agreement (with Myanmar) to help implement the

repatriation,” he said.There was no immediate

comment from Suu Kyi’s repre-sentative, who was to return to his country on Monday.

Myanmar denies the Rohingya minority citizenship even though many have lived there for generations. It consid-ers the Muslims as illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

Myanmar’s insistence on

verifying the Rohingya could prove a “stumbling block” to repatriation, according to Sha-hab Enam Khan, an international relations specialist at Jahangir-nagar University. “Myanmar has shown good initiative but their proposal is not adequate, partic-ularly the verification is a non-starter,” he said. “The Rohingya fled to Bangladesh without any legal documents and

it is difficult to prove their identity.”

Rohingya who fled to Bang-ladesh rejected the Myanmar proposal as a hoax.

“I’ve been seeing this mock-ery for so long now, I don’t even believe it will ever happen. I’m sure that I am going to die in this country (Bangladesh),” Rohingya elder Abdus Salam said. “We’ve gone through a lot already to come here. The sweetness of the news seems optimistic. Yet I am not sure what’ll happen,” said Suheli Banu, a 30-year-old Rohingya mother.

The refugees are packed into overcrowded UN and makeshift camps along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. Aid groups have warned that epidemics could easily spread in the des-perate conditions.

It remains unclear where the Rohingya would go if they were returned to Myanmar. Many of their villages have been burnt to the ground in the reprisal operations.

In a speech to the UN Gen-eral Assembly last month, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina proposed creat-ing UN-supervised safe zones inside Myanmar. Hasina accused Myanmar authorities of laying landmines on the border to pre-vent the Rohingya from returning and said the UN must find a solu-tion to the crisis.

No details of the planned repatriation were given by Bangladesh Foreign Minister A H Mahmood Ali, and there was widespread scepticism over whether any of the more than 800,000 Muslim Rohingya now in Bangladesh would return.

Rohingya Muslim refugees walk through Balukhali refugee camp yesterday.

Sri Lankan monk among 7 jailed for attack on RohingyaColombo

AP

Sri Lankan authorities have arrested seven people, including at least one Bud-

dhist monk, suspected of storming a United Nations safe house for Rohingya Muslim ref-ugees last week.

Monk Akmeemana Dayar-athana and another suspect were arrested on Monday and ordered to remain behind bars until at least October 9, said police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara. He said the other five suspects were arrested and remanded over the weekend.

They are accused of being among dozens of protesters from Sri Lanka’s majority Buddhist community, including monks, who stormed a safe house on the outskirts of Colombo where 31 Rohingya Muslims who fled

Myanmar, including 17 children, had been living since arriving in the country in April. The monks claimed the refugees were ter-rorists and demanded they be returned to Myanmar, prompt-ing police to move the refugees to another location.

Video posted on Facebook by a nationalist group, the Sin-hala National Movement, shows protesters calling Rohingya “ter-rorists who killed Buddhists in Myanmar” and saying that they can’t live in Sri Lanka.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a news release that it was alarmed by the attack. Sri Lankan government leaders also condemned it, describing it as a “shameful act,” and calling for strong action against the perpetrators.

Sri Lanka Buddhists make up 70 percent of the island’s 20

million people, while Muslims account for 10 percent.

More than half-a-million Rohingya have fled from the region to Bangladesh in just over a month, making it the largest refugee crisis to hit Asia in dec-ades. The latest violence began when a Rohingya insurgent group launched deadly attacks on security posts August 25, prompting Myanmar’s military to launch “clearance operations.”

Rohingya have long faced persecution and discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where the government denies them citizenship and considers them illegal immigrants. Extrem-ist Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka have ties with their counterparts in Myanmar and monks in both countries have been accused of leading attacks on minority Muslims.

Sri Lankan guards escort Buddhist monk Akmeemana Dayarathana (centre) after he was remanded in custody in Colombo yesterday, over his involvement in a violent attack on Rohingya refugees.

Taiwan clash reveals divisions over China’s outreachTAIPEI: Police are looking for a final suspect involved in clashes at a Chinese-organ-ised concert in Taipei between Taiwanese pro-independence protesters and Beijing support-ers that revealed divisions over China’s influence on the self-ruled island.

Beijing insists that Taiwan and the Chinese mainland are part of a single Chinese nation and has vowed to take control of the island by force if neces-sary. It has been stepping up economic and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan’s govern-ment over President Tsai Ing-wen’s refusal to endorse Beijing’s view that both sides belong to “one China.”

The clashes, which injured five at a concert in Taipei, were the latest example of ris-ing tensions. Ties have frayed over Chinese military move-ments near Taiwan, slowing Chinese tourism to the island and the trial of a Taiwanese activist in China on vaguely defined charges of subversion. More than 30 people, mostly students, stormed the Sing! China Music Festival stage on September 24 at National Tai-wan University, city spokesman Liu Yi-ting said.

Some threw eggs at the stage and carried placards calling for “Taiwan independ-ence” and the release of Lee Ming-che, the Taiwanese activist being tried for subver-sion. Some protesters shouted “We are Taiwan National Uni-versity, not China Taiwan University.”

The organisers, including a Shanghai cultural promotion group with a focus on Taiwan, conceived Sing! China as a contest for singers and bands. Performers were from both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Organisers suspended the concert after the protests, but a fight between the protesters and pro-Beijing fans of the event hurt five people, includ-ing four students, leaving one with a broken finger, said Lee Chia-wei, a police detective in the Xinyi District of Taipei.

Women plead not guilty to murdering kin of N Korea leaderShah Alam AFP

Two women pleaded not guilty yesterday to mur-dering the half-brother of

North Korea’s leader at the start of their trial in Malaysia, as pros-ecutors alleged they practised for the assassination before carry-ing it out.

The trial heard dramatic tes-timony from a doctor who described the agonising final moments of Kim Jong-Nam’s life after he was attacked with a deadly nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur airport.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong were arrested just days after the killing of Kim on February 13 as he waited to board a plane to Macau. The women are accused of rubbing toxic VX, a chemical so deadly it is listed as a weapon of mass destruction, on his face.

Kim died an agonising death about 20 minutes after the hit, which was caught on airport CCTV as the VX rapidly shut down his central nervous

system. The defendants — who face death by hanging if con-victed — claim they were duped into believing they were taking part in a prank for a reality TV show and their lawyers have pointed the finger at North Korean agents.

The murder sparked an angry row between Pyongyang, which was accused of master-minding the killing of Kim Jong-Un’s estranged relative, and Malaysia, historically one of Pyongyang’s few allies.

The women arrived at the

heavily guarded High Court in Shah Alam, outside the capital Kuala Lumpur, wearing bullet-proof vests and handcuffs.

The murder charge was read to Aisyah, 25, and Huong, 29, in their native languages and inter-preters indicated they were pleading not guilty.

Opening the prosecution, Muhamad Iskandar Ahmad said the women’s actions showed their “intention to kill” and described how they had prac-tised for the hit before carrying it out for real. The charge sheet accuses the women of killing Kim with four others still at large, who are not named. Four North Korean suspects fled Malaysia on the day of the murder.

The prosecutor said that before the murder Aisyah and Huong had carried out “simula-tions” which were “overseen by the four who are still free”.

The exercises “were a prep-aration by all of them to cause the death of the victim,” he said.

Defence lawyers argued the charge was ambiguous due to the failure to identify the four other

suspects, and urged the court to reveal their identities. Judge Azmi Ariffin refused the request.

The women’s lawyers believe the four unnamed indi-viduals are the main suspects in the murder.

They argue that their clients, who were living precarious existences among Malaysia’s army of migrant workers, are simply the fall guys.

Witness Nik Mohamad Adzrul Ariff, a doctor who was on duty at the airport clinic when Kim was brought in after the attack, described how the vic-tim’s health deteriorated rapidly. “I saw this man clutching his head and his face was very red,” he told the court. “His hands and legs stiffened, his eyes rolled upwards, he was drooling.”

He was given medicine and his condition stabilised but he died in an ambulance en route to hospital. Huong’s family, who followed the start of the trial from Vietnam, said they felt powerless to help her but insisted they still believed she was innocent.

Royal Malaysian Police escort Vietnamese defendant Doan Thi Huong (second left) after her trial at the Shah Alam High Court in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur, yesterday.

16 TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017EUROPE

Performers in traditional Russian costumes sing and dance at a venue of the ‘Golden Autumn’ festival in downtown Moscow, yesterday.

Leftist challenger to Hungary’s PM quitsBudapest

AFP

Hungary’s main leftist party was rocked yes-terday when its

challenger to Prime Minister Viktor Orban at upcoming elec-tions quit over his failure to build a pact with other opposi-tion parties.

“I have resigned as Social-ist Party prime ministerial candidate,” Laszlo Botka said in a letter sent to media.

Since his candidacy was launched last December the 44-year-old, a popular mayor of the southern city of Szeged, had urged other centrist and leftist parties to form a broad anti-Orban front ahead of the

next elections, due to be held by next April.

But Botka admitted on Monday that his effort had “failed” and blasted the other opposition parties for their reluctance to cooperate, call-ing it a “historic crime”.

“The democratic opposition parties do not want to win in 2018... Their goal is just win some seats on the benches of the Orban regime’s parliament,” he said.

Botka also accused Orban’s ruling right-wing Fidesz party of infiltrating the opposition parties including his own in order to block efforts to form alliances. “Opposition unity is what most threatens (their) power,” he said.

Boris and Brexit sour May’s party meetingManchester

Reuters

Besides her own dimin-ished authority, Prime Minister Theresa May has been forced to con-tend with two major

distractions in Manchester that threaten to rip her ruling Conserv-ative Party apart: Brexit and her ambitious foreign minister, Boris Johnson.

Weakened by her bet on a snap election which lost her party its majority in parliament, May had said she wanted to use her party’s annual conference to showcase her pledge to make the economy work for ordinary peo-ple. Even before the conference opened, Johnson, who led the leave campaign in last year’s EU referendum, provoked the ire of cabinet colleagues by repeatedly attempting to portray himself as the champion of a genuine ‘bold Brexit’.

May said her cabinet was united behind her Brexit stance but when asked whether Johnson was unsackable, she laughed and sidestepped the question. Her Finance Minister, Philip Ham-mond, said there were different views on Brexit in the cabinet.

Arriving in Manchester, in northern England, Johnson said with a smile he was right behind May. He later said he was com-pletely loyal to the prime minister and was not seeking to over-shadow her at the conference, where he is popular with many activists.

“I am enjoying the conference very much and the prime minis-ter just gave a great speech to the

business lunch,” Johnson said. When asked if he was seeking to overshadow May, he said: “Abso-lutely not.”

Boris, as he is known in Brit-ain, repeatedly upstaged former prime minister David Cameron at party conferences though after the shock referendum result sank Cameron’s career, Johnson unex-pectedly dropped out of the race to be leader.

May won the leadership and appointed Johnson as her foreign minister, provoking consternation in European capitals who were angry at his rhetoric — including comparing the goals of the EU to those of Adolf Hitler and Napoleon.

The chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Nicky Morgan, said Johnson should be fired if he could not be loyal to May.

“If he can‘t, sort of, keep sch-tum about his own views, if he can’t give up the oxygen of pub-licity, because he will be delighted that everybody is talking about him right now, if he can’t stop set-ting down arbitrary red lines, then

yes, he has to go,” she told the BBC.“And the chief whip, or the

prime minister, has to deliver that message.”

Divisions over Europe, which helped sink the Conservative premierships of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Cam-eron, so dominate the party that almost no new policies have been announced.

Those that have included a pledge to help make graduates with student debt £30 a month better off, a consultation on recy-cling plastic bottles and some money for a railway.

“It’s the pro-Brexit lot versus the anti-Boris lot,” said one Con-servative Party member who asked not to be named. “They’re both positioning to get control of the party machine if something happens to the PM. It’s a very strange atmosphere.” “If we get down to a leadership contest, it will be unlike anything we’ve seen for a long time – both sides will be scrapping to the death,” the mem-ber said.

Many Conservatives privately say they fear a leadership contest would pave the way for an elec-tion victory by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who Hammond cast as a Marxist seeking to impose a socialist fantasy on Britain.

At the opening of the confer-ence at a former railway station, tens of thousands of people marched through Manchester chanting “Bollocks to Brexit” and waving the gold stars of the Euro-pean Union flag.

At the front of the demonstra-tion, a lorry carried a multi-headed chimera with the faces of May and three leading

Brexit campaigners: Johnson; Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Brexit Secretary David Davis. “Brexit is a monstrosity,” a sign read. “Let’s Stop It!”

May, now one of the weakest British leaders of recent times, has just over a year to negotiate the terms of the divorce from the European Union and the outlines of the future relationship before Britain is due to leave in late March 2019. Both sides need an agree-ment to keep trade flowing between the world’s biggest trad-ing bloc and the fifth largest global

economy, though some diehard Brexiteers in her party are calling for her to leave without a deal.

Many business leaders fear a disorderly exit that would weaken the West, imperil Britain’s $2.5 tril-lion economy and undermine London’s position as the only financial centre to rival New York.

“The Conservatives are in trouble and they know it: there is a sense of vacuum at the top and that tends to infect a conference,” Matthew Parris, a columnist and former Conservative lawmaker, said.

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, visit a home near the Conservative Party’s conference in Manchester, yesterday.

Boris Johnson told to ‘shut up’ for going rogue on BrexitLondon

Bloomberg

UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was told to toe the party line on Brexit

policy by Conservative law-makers worried about him overshadowing their annual conference.

The top minister’s latest intervention set out Brexit “red lines” that Prime Minister Theresa May must not cross on the eve of the Tory gathering, putting fellow cabinet members in the uncomfortable position of being asked whether he should be fired for defiance.

May tried on Sunday to laugh off the suggestion that Johnson was “unsackable.”

Yesterday, lawmakers made veiled — and not so veiled — references to his bad behav-iour. John Howell, who represents Johnson’s old con-stituency west of London, said the minister should “keep his bloody mouth shut.”

At a fringe event, Brexit Minister Steve Baker declined to go beyond the positions set out by May, explaining that the code of collective ministerial responsibility hadn’t been sus-pended for conference — “notwithstanding the exam-ple occasionally set by others.”

At the same event, Ashley Fox, a member of the European Parliament, said Brexit talks were not helped by ministers “who should know better.” He explained: “We will get a much better position if, as govern-ment, as a party, we’re entirely united.”

Even before the conference opened, Johnson, who led the leave campaign in last year’s EU referendum, provoked the ire of cabinet colleagues by repeatedly attempting to portray himself as the champion of a genuine ‘bold Brexit’.

Two-thirds of Germans see east-west divisionsBERLIN: Twenty-seven years after German reunification, nearly two-thirds of Germans still see persistent divisions between those in the former communist East and the West, a sort of “Berlin Wall in the head”, a new poll for Bild newspaper showed yesterday.

Conducted by pollster INSA, the survey showed 64.6 percent of those polled believed Germans saw such divisions, compared to 22.9 percent who felt they had been overcome.

The poll — released a day before Germany’s reunifica-tion holiday — showed that 74 percent of Germans in the former East saw the “invisible barrier”, compared to just 62.3 percent of those who lived in the former West Germany.

The lingering divisions became evident in the German national election on Septem-ber 24, in which voters dealt mainstream political parties their biggest defeats in the post-war era, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won 12.6 of the vote and moved into parlia-ment for the first time.

Support for the AfD and its “take your country back” plat-form was particularly strong in eastern Germany, fuelled by anger about Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open the doors to a million mostly Mus-lim migrants in 2015.

Malu Dreyer, the Social Democratic premier of the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, said the election results were a “wake-up call” for the big political parties about the continuing unmet concerns of east Germans.

German parties reject AfD’s candidate for parliamentary postBerlin

Reuters

Three of Germany’s main parties have raised objec-tions to the far-right

Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) candidate for the post of parlia-mentary vice-president, highlighting its political isolation despite a strong showing in the September 24 election.

The anti-immigrant AfD swept into the Bundestag lower house of parliament with 12.6 percent of the vote, making it the third largest parliamentary group. It is the first far-right party to enter the Bundestag since the 1950s.

All parties represented in the Bundestag are entitled to have their own vice-president of the

parliament, who chairs sessions, sets the agenda and calls law-makers to order where necessary. But the candidates need to be approved by an

absolute majority of all sitting lawmakers. The Greens, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the radical Left Party spoke out against the AfD’s nomination

of 75-year-old Albrecht Glaser, who has called Islam a political ideology rather than a religion, and said Muslims should not have the right to freedom of reli-gion as Islam did not respect that freedom.

Their objections demon-strated the difficulties the AfD may face in pushing its agenda — ranging from immigration and an insistence that Islam does not belong in Germany to problems it sees in the euro zone.

The parliamentary vice-presidents are generally elected in the first session of the lower house, which is expected to take place by October 24 at the latest.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc has so far not taken a public position on the

AfD’s choice. Michael Grosse-Broemer, the head of the conservatives’ parliamentary group, declined to comment.

Carsten Schneider, parlia-mentary manager of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), said he did not know Gla-ser personally, did not want to pre-judge him and would seek to clarify with other parliamen-tary groups whether they could get to know Glaser in some for-mat first.

However, Dietmar Bartsch, head of the Left’s parliamentary group, and Cem Ozdemir of the Greens told newspaper Frank-furter Allgemeine Zeitung they would not vote Glaser into the position. “Whoever questions the freedom of religion has disqual-ified themselves,” Ozdemir said.

BERLIN: The head of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) has insisted Angela Merkel’s conservatives must agree policies on immigration limits, pensions and healthcare before they can open coalition negotiations with two other parties. CSU lead-ers — stung by a drop in support of more than 10 percent in the September 24 elections — have redoubled their insistence on a 200,000 per year cap on immigration, a demand that Merkel has rejected, complicating her efforts to form a new government.

CSU leader Horst Seehofer said the conservative allies could not begin negotiating with the environmental Greens and pro-business Free Democrats until the issues were resolved.

Merkel’s allies insist on unity before coalition talks

‘Golden Autumn’ festival in Moscow

17TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017 EUROPE

PERPIGNAN: Millions of vot-ing papers used in Catalonia’s banned independence refer-endum at the weekend were secretly printed in France and then transported over the border, a pro-Catalan activist said yesterday.

“The people who worked on this don’t want to be identified because Spanish judges could try to prosecute them or ask for their extradition,” Jordi Vera from the pro-Catalan group “Oui au Pays Catalan” (Yes to the state of Catalonia) said.

Ballots secretly printed in France

French soldiers patrol in the train station Gare Montparnasse, in Paris, yesterday, as part of the Sentinelle military force security mission.

Security mission

EU leaders call for Catalonia crisis dialogueBrussels

AFP

EU leaders yesterday called for dialogue to solve the crisis over Catalonia’s banned independence referen-

dum and urged an end to violence in a cautious first reaction to a thorny subject for the bloc. Break-ing weeks of virtual silence on the subject after scores were hurt in clashes in Catalonia, the Euro-pean Commission said the referendum was “not legal” under Spanish law and was an “inter-nal matter” for Madrid.

Mweanwhile, The UN rights chief said he was disturbed by the violence during the police crack-down and urged Madrid to investigate any possible miscon-duct. “I am very disturbed by the violence in Catalonia on Sunday... I urge the Spanish authorities to ensure thorough, independent and impartial investigations into all acts of violence,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said in a statement.

“Police responses must at all times be proportionate and necessary.”

France’s President Emmanuel Macron voiced his support for Spain’s “constitutional unity” dur-ing a call with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, his office said in a statement which did not men-tion the weekend violence.

An independent Catalonia would not be part of the EU if it did vote for independence in a legal referendum, European Commission spokesman Marga-ritis Schinas said, and would have to apply if it wanted to join.

“The commission believes that these are times for unity and stability, not divisiveness and fragmentation,” Schinas said in a statement to reporters in Brussels.

“We call on all relevant play-ers to now move very swiftly from confrontation to dialogue. Vio-lence can never be an instrument in politics,” he said.

Schinas said Brussels trusted

in the “leadership of Prime Min-ister Mariano Rajoy to manage this difficult process”.

He would not elaborate when asked repeatedly whether the European Commission con-demned the violence that resulted from a police crackdown on the ballot.

Schinas also said the Euro-pean Commission would not become involved in mediating the problem, despite a call for inter-national mediation by the Catalan leader.

At least 92 people were con-firmed injured out of a total of 844 who needed medical attention, Catalan authorities said.

EU President Donald Tusk said on Twitter that he had used a call with Rajoy to appeal for “finding ways to avoid further escalation and use of force.” And the European Parliament has called an urgent debate on the Catalan crisis for tomorrow, the head of the assembly said.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, the European Commission steadfastly refused to comment in detail on what it called an inter-nal matter.

From Paris to Bratislava, EU members echoed the same phras-ing as they publicly closed ranks

behind Madrid, though in private some diplomats voiced concern at Madrid’s hardline handling of the crisis.

Regional separatist move-ments are a sensitive topic for a number of EU members, includ-ing Romania, Greece, Belgium and Britain.

Echoing Macron’s backing for Madrid, Romania’s foreign min-istry reiterated its support for Spain’s “territorial integrity” and said the “incidents” on Sunday were caused by “failure to respect Spain’s constitutional order” —putting the blame on the separatists’ side.

The images of violence from the weekend have brought a more vocal reaction from lead-ing figures in the European Parliament, who are freer to speak their mind on the issue.

Gianni Pittella, head of the leftwing bloc in the parliament, lamented a “sad day for Spain and

for the whole of Europe”.“The solution can only be a

political response, not a police one,” he said, criticising Rajoy for not doing more to defuse the cri-sis earlier.

Former Belgian prime min-ister and liberal MEP Guy Verhofstadt — parliament’s Brexit negotiator — condemned both the holding of an illegal vote and Madrid’s use of “disproportion-ate violence” to stop it, urging “de-escalation” and a negotiated solution.

Hendrik Vos, a professor of European politics at Belgium’s Ghent University, said that given the EU’s experience in managing international crises — such as the Iran nuclear deal — it would appear “strange” if it did not take a role in mediating between Madrid and Catalonia.

LEFT: The President of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont (right), and Vice-President Oriol Junqueras along with the members of the Catalan government attend a demonstration, supporting Catalonian independence and reacting against Spanish police’s intervention in polling centres, in front of the parliament building, in Barcelona, yesterday. TOP: Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy meets with Spain’s Ciudadanos (Citizens) centrist party leader Albert Rivera at La Moncloa Palace in Madrid. RIGHT: Protesters shout slogans during a demonstration outside the Spanish national police headquarters in Barcelona.

Breaking weeks of virtual silence on the subject after scores were hurt in clashes in Catalonia, the European Commission said the referendum was “not legal” under Spanish law and was an “internal matter” for Madrid.

French MPs to vote on tough anti-terror lawParis

AFP

French lawmakers will vote today on a tough new counter-terrorism law

designed to end the country’s two-year state of emergency which critics say expands police powers at a cost to civil liberties.

The vote comes following a string of attacks in France since 2015 and just two days after more bloodshed in the south-ern port city of Marseille when a suspected Islamist knifeman killed two women.

While Interior Minister Ger-ard Collomb defends the bill as a “lasting response to a lasting threat”, it has come under fire from the French left and human rights groups.

“What makes us angry is that it’s a state of emergency that would become permanent and roll back our freedoms,” said Christine Lazerges, the head of the National Consulta-tive Committee on Human Rights, a state body.

The law, designed to replace the state of emergency that France has been under since the November 2015 Paris attacks, would come into force on November 1 if approved by both houses of parliament.

The lower house will vote

today on the bill which will give authorities the power to place people under house arrest, order house searches and ban public gatherings without the prior approval of a judge.

The state of emergency was meant to be temporary but was extended six times for various reasons, such as the need to protect major sporting and cul-tural events, as well as presidential and parliamentary elections earlier this year.

Bomb forces evacuation of 10,000 in BerlinBERLIN: About 10,000 peo-ple in Berlin were forced to leave their homes yesterday as bomb disposal units pre-pared to defuse an unexploded World War II bomb.

Construction workers found the 250-kilo device earlier in the day, prompting police to seal off the area within a 500-metre radius of the site in west Berlin’s Inns-brucker Platz. Underground and suburban rail traffic was disrupted, and officers went house to house to ensure that the area was cleared before disposal experts moved in.

More than 70 years after the end of the war, unex-ploded ordnance is regularly found buried in Germany.

‘Historic’ win for Socialists in PortugalLisbon

AFP

Portugal’s ruling Socialists made major gains in Sun-day’s municipal elections,

according to near final results. The Socialist Party (PS) won

158 of a total 308 town halls and 38 percent of the vote across the country with only a few munic-ipalities left to be counted, the interior ministry’s website said.

“The Socialist Party had its biggest local election victory in history,” Socialist Prime

Minister Antonio Costa said on Sunday. “The result strengthens the PS and the change we began two years ago,” he said. Costa came to power in 2015 after his party teamed up with the Com-munists and the left bloc.

Opposition leader and former conservative prime min-ister Pedro Passos Coelho said his Social Democratic Party (PSD) had “one of the worst results in its history”.

Alone or leading a coalition, the centre-right party won 96 town halls and nearly 30

percent of the vote, down from 2013 when it lost votes for its austerity policies.

Faced with a defeat described as “humiliating” by local media, Passos Coelho opened the door to resigning.

“I will consider the condi-tions under which I may or may not seek a new mandate to head the PSD,” he said.

The Communists also had a bad day, losing nine municipali-ties to the Socialists, including their stronghold of Almada in the southern suburbs of capital

Lisbon. Incumbent Socialist mayor Fernando Medina was re-elected with 42 percent of the vote.

Former PSD leader Luis Marques Mendes said the par-ty’s losses were “a monumental debacle, which can be explained by the poor choice of candidates and a bad campaign”.

Costa is “one of the great winners” of the elections, Mendes added, because “he has succeeded in creating a positive dynamic with his government’s good results, particularly eco-nomic results”.

PARIS: French investiga-tors probing a knife attack in Marseille at the week-end have not found any link so far between the assail-ant and the Islamic State group, a source close to the case said.

IS’s Amaq propaganda agency claimed that the killer was “from the sol-diers of the Islamic State”.

Top anti-terror prose-cutor Francois Molins also gave new details about the attacker in Paris, saying he had been arrested last week for shoplifting in the western city of Lyon.

No link with IS in Marseille attack

18 TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017AMERICAS

Hundreds of people in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires during a demonstration called to demand information about the whereabouts of Santiago Maldonado, who disappeared on August 1 during a Mapuche protest in the southern province of Chubut, Argentina, yesterday.

Citizens rally for the missing

Washington

AP

President Donald Trump yesterday con-demned the largest mass shooting in modern US history as

an “act of pure evil” and said the nation was “joined together in sadness, shock and grief” after more than 50 people were gunned down in Las Vegas.

Speaking slowly and somb-erly from the White House, Trump declared that the nation would rally together in the face of the latest act of senseless vio-lence. “Our unity cannot be shattered by evil, our bonds can-not be broken by violence,” the president said. “We call upon the bonds that unite us: our faith, our family, and our shared val-ues. We call upon the bonds of citizenship, the ties of commu-nity, and the comfort of our common humanity.”

In the measured statement, Trump did not describe the gun-man in any way or suggest any possible motivation or affilia-tion. He praised the first responders who he said pre-vented further loss of life and said he would visit Las Vegas tomorrow. He offered condo-lences to the families of those killed, saying “We cannot fathom their pain. We cannot imagine their loss.”

“We are praying for you,” he said. “We are here for you.”

He also ordered that the American flag at the White House and at all public build-ings across the nation be flown at half-staff.

Trump spoke hours after a gunman on the 32nd floor of a Vegas Strip casino unleashed a hail of bullets on an outdoor country music festival below. The gunman killed at least 50 people as tens of thousands of concertgoers screamed and ran for their lives.

More than 400 other victims were taken to hospitals, and investigators spent Monday morning combing the debris-strewn concert site along the iconic Vegas Strip. Trump, who

quoted from Scripture and invoked God several times, said he prays for the day when the “innocent are safe from hatred and from fear.”

“At times such as these I know we are searching for some type of meaning in the chaos, some kind of light in the dark-ness. The answers will not come easy,” the president said.

Unlike his predecessor, Barack Obama, who used mass shootings to call for stricter gun control measures, Trump made no mention of firearms restric-tions yesterday. But in the hours after the Las Vegas shooting, the familiar gun control debate emerged, once again breaking down along party lines.

Democratic Sen. Chris Mur-phy of Connecticut said it was time for Congress to end its inaction that followed other major incidents, including the one in Orlando and the 2012 school shooting in his home state. Rep. Seth Moulton of Mas-sachusetts, an Iraq War vet, said he would not participate in a moment of silence for those lost because it “becomes an excuse for inaction.”

Other leading Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, also called for stricter gun control laws while Republicans largely ignored the subject. Both House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch

McConnell offered sympathetic tweets for those lost but made no mention of guns. During the pres-idential campaign, Trump cast himself as an ardent protector of the Second Amendment and pro-claimed that if more “good guys” were armed with firearms there would be fewer gun tragedies. After the Orlando nightclub shooting last year, he suggested that if the club were not a gun-free zone, someone would have been able to stop the bloodshed. “I was obviously talking about additional guards or employees,” he tweeted later.

Trump has long offered strong support for gun rights. He told the National Rifle Associa-tion this year that it had a “true

friend” in the White House and signed a resolution passed by the GOP-led Congress blocking an Obama-era rule designed to keep guns out of the hands of certain mentally disabled people.

Trump has long-standing connections to Las Vegas. He owns a hotel just off the strip, about three miles from the shoot-ing site, and has been supported by some of its biggest casino moguls, including Phil Ruffin and Sheldon Adelson.

SWAT teams using explosives stormed the gunman’s room in the Mandalay Bay hotel and found he had killed himself, authorities said. He had as many as 10 guns with him, including rifles, they said. The gunman was identified

as Stephen Craig Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nevada. He had checked into the hotel room on Thursday, authorities said.

Since Trump’s inauguration, there have been other mass shootings, including one in Texas last month, when a gunman killed eight and was fatally shot by police. But the Las Vegas attack is the deadliest in U.S. history.

The president offered a somber response in June, after a shooting at a shooting at a con-gressional baseball practice that wounded five, including seriously injuring Rep. Steve Scalise. But Trump has drawn criticism for more inflammatory and self-ref-erential reactions to other acts of violence.

‘Act of pure evil’ in Las Vegas: Trump

Havana

AP

Frightening attacks on US personnel in Havana struck the heart of America’s spy

network in Cuba, with intelli-gence operatives among the first and most severely affected victims.

It wasn’t until US spies, posted to the embassy under diplomatic cover, reported hear-ing bizarre sounds and experiencing even stranger physical effects that the United States realised something was wrong, individuals familiar with the situation said.

While the attacks started within days of President Donald Trump’s surprise election in November, the precise timeline remains unclear, including whether intelligence officers were the first victims hit or merely the first victims to report it. The US has called the situa-tion “ongoing.”

To date, the Trump admin-istration largely has described

the 21 victims as US embassy personnel or “members of the diplomatic community.” That description suggested only bona fide diplomats and their family members were struck, with no logical motivation beyond dis-rupting US-Cuban relations.

Behind the scenes, though, investigators immediately started searching for explana-tions in the darker, rougher world of spycraft and counter-espionage, given that so many of the first reported cases involved intelligence workers posted to the US embassy. That revelation, confirmed by a half-dozen officials, adds yet another element of mystery to a year-long saga that the Trump administration says may not be over. The State Department and the CIA declined to comment for this story.

The first disturbing reports of piercing, high-pitched noises and inexplicable ailments pointed to someone deliberately targeting the US government’s intelligence network on the

communist-run island, in what seemed like a bone-chilling escalation of the tit-for-tat spy games that Washington and Havana have waged over the last half century.

But the US soon discovered that actual diplomats at the embassy had also been hit by similar attacks, officials said, fur-ther confounding the search for a culprit and a motive.

Of the 21 confirmed cases, American spies suffered some of the most acute damage, including brain injury and hear-ing loss that has not healed, said several US officials who weren’t authorised to speak publicly on the investigation and demanded anonymity. They heard an unsettling sound inside and in some cases outside their Havana homes, described as similar to loud crickets. Then they fell ill.

Over time, the attacks seemed to evolve.

In many of the more recent cases, victims didn’t hear noises and weren’t aware an attack was occurring, identifying the

symptoms only later. That has raised concerns among investi-gators that the attacks may be getting more sophisticated and harder to detect, individuals briefed on the investigation said.

Though the State Depart-ment has called all the cases “medically confirmed,” several US officials said it’s unclear whether all of the victims’ symp-toms can be conclusively tied to attacks. Considering the deep sense of alarm among Ameri-cans working in the embassy, it’s possible some workers attrib-uted unrelated illnesses to attacks.

Almost nothing about what has transpired in Havana is per-fectly clear. But this is Cuba.

For decades, Washington and Havana pushed their rivalry to unprecedented levels of covert action. The former enemies tracked each other’s personnel, turned each other’s agents and, in the case of the CIA, even mounted a failed attempt to over-throw the Cuban government in the 1961 “Bay of Pigs” invasion.

Bizarre attacks hit US spy network in Cuba

US flags on the grounds of the Washington Monument are lowered to half-staff, yesterday.

NEWS BYTES

Cuba and Bolivia remember Che Guevara 50 years after deathHAVANA: A half-century after his death, Ernesto “Che” Gue-vara will be remembered in ceremonies next week in Cuba and in Bolivia, whose CIA-trained troops sent shockwaves around the world when they executed the Cold War revolu-tionary icon in 1967. In Cuba -- where schoolchildren still begin their day with a raised fist salute and chant “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che” -- President Raul Cas-tro will lead a ceremony at his mausoleum in the central town of Santa Clara. The 86-year-old Castro’s memories will be deeply personal as he fought alongside Che in the Cuban rev-olution led by his brother Fidel that in 1959 overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista. In Bolivia, the army will participate at a public commemoration of his death for the first time. “We want this to be a moment of unity for the Bolivian peo-ple,” said deputy coordination minister Alfredo Rada, saying the context was different from 1967, when staunch anti-com-munist president Rene Barrientos gave the order to execute the wounded Che. Times have changed, and the incumbent President Evo Morales is a fervent admirer of the revolution-ary leader. Che’s four children will attend the memorial ceremony in the South American country, where the guer-rilla leader was executed by a CIA-trained unit of the Bolivian army on October 9, 1967.

Canada defends refugee vetting system after car and knife attackEDMONTON: Canada defended its immigration and refugee vetting system yesterday after a Somali immigrant, who had drawn scrutiny for his alleged extremist views, was charged with attempted murder for a weekend car and knife attack that injured five. Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, 30, is accused of run-ning down a police officer with his car in Edmonton, Alberta, and then stabbing him repeatedly. He then ran down four pedestrians during an attempt to evade capture. He faces 11 charges including five for attempted murder linked to the rampage in the western Canadian city on Saturday night.

Former astronaut becomes Canada’s governor-generalOTTAWA: Former astronaut Julie Payette was installed yes-terday as Canada’s 29th governor general. At 53, she is the fourth woman and third-youngest Canadian to take on the role of vice regal and commander in chief, replacing 76-year-old academic David Johnston. Divorced from fighter test pilot Billie Flynn in 2015, Payette is also only the second Canadian governor general to be single. Payette’s 14-year-old son Lau-rier and fellow astronauts were among the 400 guests in attendance in the Senate chamber for the ceremony. “We are intrinsically bound by the same space-time continuum and are all aboard the same planetary spaceship (Earth),” Payette said in her speech.

More fuel on way to Puerto Ricans; power still down for mostSAN JUAN: Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello reported progress in getting fuel supplies to the island’s 3.4 million inhabitants yesterday as they faced a 13th day largely without power after the US territory was devastated by Hurricane Maria.

US President Donald Trump, who has faced criticism for his administra-tion’s response to the disaster, is scheduled to visit Puerto Rico today, as food and drinking water remain in short supply. Nearly two weeks after the fierc-est hurricane to hit the island in 90 years, some residents got cell phone service back on Sunday. Others gathered at bars for drinking and dancing after a dry law was lifted this weekend. The ramping up of fuel supplies should allow more Puerto Ricans to operate generators and travel more freely where the state of the roads allows.

President Trump praised the first responders who he said prevented further loss of life and said he would visit Las Vegas tomorrow. He offered condolences to the families of those killed, saying “We cannot fathom their pain. We cannot imagine their loss.”

19TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017 AMERICAS

Deadliest shooting in modern US historyAt least 50 people were killed and more than 200 wounded when a gunman opened fire on an outdoor music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in the worst mass shooting in modern US history.Authorities have identified the suspected gunman in the Sunday night shooting as Stephen Paddock. Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said officers confronted Paddock on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino across the street from the concert. Paddock is dead.Previously, the deadliest mass shooting had been an attack at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub that killed 49. Before that, the deadliest shooting in the US was the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, in which a student killed 32 people before killing himself.

Here’s a look at some of the nation’s deadliest rampages since 2012:

- Oct. 1, 2017: A gunman identified by authorities as Stephen Paddock opened fire on an outdoor music festival on the Las Vegas Strip from the 32nd floor of casino, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 200. He died at the scene after officers went into the hotel room he was using.

- June 12, 2016: Gunman Omar Mateen opened fire at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub, killing 49 people. Mateen was later killed in a shootout with police.

— Feb. 25, 2016: Cedric Ford, 38, killed three people and wounded 14 others at a lawnmower factory where he worked in the central Kansas community of Hesston. The local police chief killed him during a shootout with 200 to 300 workers still in the building, authorities said.

— Feb. 20, 2016: Jason Dalton, 45, is accused of randomly shooting and killing six people and severely wounding two others during a series of attacks over several hours in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, area. Authorities say he paused between shootings to make money as an Uber driver. He faces murder and attempted murder charges.

— Dec. 2, 2015: Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, opened fire at a social services center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and wounding more than 20. They fled the scene but died hours later in a shootout with police.

— Oct. 1, 2015: A shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, left 10 people dead and seven wounded. Shooter Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, exchanged gunfire with police, then killed himself.

— June 17, 2015: Dylann Roof, 21, shot and killed nine African-American church members during a Bible study group inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Police contend the attack was racially motivated. Roof has been sentenced to death in the shootings.

— May 23, 2014: A community college student, Elliot Rodger, 22, killed six people and wounded 13 in shooting and stabbing attacks in the area near the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus. Authorities said he apparently shot himself to death after a gunbattle with deputies.

— Sept. 16, 2013: Aaron Alexis, a mentally disturbed civilian contractor, shot 12 people to death at the Washington Navy Yard before he was killed in a police shootout.

— July 26, 2013: Pedro Vargas, 42, went on a shooting rampage at his Hialeah, Florida, apartment building, gunning down six people before officers fatally shot him.

— Dec. 14, 2012: In Newtown, Connecticut, an armed 20-year-old man entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 26 people, including 20 first graders and six adult school staff members. He then killed himself.

— Sept. 27, 2012: In Minnesota’s deadliest workplace rampage, Andrew Engeldinger, who had just been fired, pulled a gun and fatally shot six people, including the company’s founder. He also wounded two others at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis before taking his own life.

— Aug. 5, 2012: In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, 40-year-old gunman Wade Michael Page killed six worshippers at a Sikh Temple before killing himself.

— July 20, 2012: James Holmes, 27, fatally shot 12 people and injured 70 in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

— April 2, 2012: Seven people were killed and three were wounded when a 43-year-old former student opened fire at Oikos University in Oakland, California. One Goh was charged with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, but psychiatric evaluations concluded he suffered from long-term paranoid schizophrenia and was unfit to stand trial.

58 dead in Las Vegas concert shooting

Gunman Paddock was a retired accountant

Las Vegas

AFP & AP

At least 58 people were killed and over 515 injured when a gunman opened fire from a 32nd floor hotel room on a coun-try music concert in Las Vegas, yesterday. Police identified the heavily

armed gunman behind the Sunday night massacre on the Las Vegas Strip — the deadliest mass shoot-ing in modern US history — as a 64-year-old Nevada resident named Stephen Craig Paddock.

Police said Paddock killed himself before a SWAT team breached his room in the Mandalay Bay hotel overlooking the concert venue.

There was no word on a motive for the attack. Aaron Rouse, the FBI agent in charge in Las Vegas, said investigators saw no immediate evidence con-necting it to an international terror organization, despite a claim of responsibility from the Islamic State (IS) group. Mayor Carolyn Goodman said the attack was the work of a “crazed lunatic full of hate.”

President Donald Trump denounced what he called “an act of pure evil” and said he would visit

Las Vegas. Trump did not make any mention of the IS claim that one of its “soldiers” who had “con-verted to Islam several months ago” was behind the shooting. IS provided no evidence to back up the claim made by its propaganda outlet Amaq.

Concert-goers screamed and fled in panic as a steady stream of automatic gunfire rang out from the hotel shortly after 10pm local time. Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters that at least

eight rifles were recovered from Paddock’s hotel room. Las Vegas police issued an appeal for blood donations. Paddock resided in a new golf course development in the desert just outside Mesquite, Nevada, around 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. His female companion was initially listed as a per-son of interest by police but they said later she was not believed to be involved. Police said 22,000 fans were attending the concert next to the Mandalay Bay as part of a three-day country music festival known as Route 91 when the gunfire erupted. Witnesses told how Paddock opened fire with an initial long burst, and then appeared to reload as he continued his spree. “We heard (what) sounded like a glass breaking, so you looked around to see what’s going on and then heard a pop, pop, pop,” Monique Dekerf told CNN. “You’d think for a moment okay we’re fine, there’s no more gunfire, then it starts again.”

Her sister Rachel said it sounded like “the shots were coming from the right side... it sounded like they were right beside us too... it was right there.”

Best-selling country singer Jason Aldean was on stage and near the end of his concert when the shooting began. Aldean initially carried on playing when the first crackle of gunfire could be heard but then hurried off the stage once he realized it was a shooting. Robert Hayes, a firefighter from Los Ange-les who was watching near the front of the stage, said he first thought the gunfire was some kind of equipment malfunction. Once he realised what was going on, he joined the first responders, donning one of their vests. Emergency crews used anything to hand as makeshift stretchers, including tables and metal railings normally used to control the crowds, said Hayes.

Las Vegas

AFP

Stephen Craig Paddock (pic-tured), the Las Vegas shooter, was a retired accountant who

lived on a desert golf course in Mes-quite Nevada, with no known history of violence — until he shot dead 50 people in a hail of gunfire from his Las Vegas hotel window.

Paddock’s family was in shock after the 64-year-old sowed terror on the Vegas strip in the worst mass shooting in recent US history, which the Islamic State group early Monday claimed was carried out by one of its “soldiers.” His brother, Eric Paddock, told CBS News his brother was “not an avid gun guy at all.”

“Where the hell did he get automatic weapons? He has no military background or anything like that,” he said. “He’s a guy who lived in a house in Mesquite, drove down and gambled in Las Vegas. He did stuff. Eat burritos.”

Paddock was found dead, apparently of a self-inflicted gun-shot wound, when a police SWAT team burst in to his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel.

The gunman, who photo-graphs showed as greying with a trimmed beard and moustache, was a former accountant and a licensed pilot with no criminal record, according to ABC News. At least eight weapons, including a number of long rifles, were recovered in his hotel room.

Las Vegas police said 50 peo-ple were confirmed dead and

more than 400 people were transported to hospitals in the horrific shooting.

IS’s propaganda outlet Amaq said in online statements the attack was carried out by a “sol-dier” who had “converted to Islam several months ago”. Secu-rity officials earlier said Paddock appeared to have been working alone, and his brother told US media he had no known religious affiliation. “Nothing. No religious affiliation, no political affiliation, he just hung out,” Eric Paddock told CBS. The 55-year-old Pad-dock, who lives in Orlando Florida, told media the family was shocked by the shooting. “It’s like an asteroid just fell on top of our family,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We have no idea how this happened.”

Stephen Paddock also had a hunting license for Alaska, where hunting for big game like elk and bear is popular. According to pub-licly available information, he resided in a new golf course development carved into the desert just outside Mesquite, Nevada on the border with Arizona.

A gunman opened fire at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on Oct. 1, killing scores of people before he was killed by police.

Source: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Las Vegas attack

Route 91 Harvest festivalThe shooting broke out on the last night of the three-day festival, held outside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino

McCarran International Airport

Mandalay Bay

New York-New York hotel

L A S V E G A S

The

Stri

p

DowntownLas Vegas

2 miles

1 km

U.S.Las Vegas

People run from the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after apparent gunfire was heard, in Las Vegas, Nevada, yesterday.

Police identified the heavily armed gunman behind the Sunday night massacre on the Las Vegas Strip — the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history — as a 64-year-old Nevada resident named Stephen Craig Paddock.

Broken windows are seen on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort after a lone gunman opened fired on the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, yesterday.

LAS VEGAS: Investigators have so far found “no connection” between international terrorist groups and a mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed at least 58 peo-ple, an FBI special agent said. The

Islamic State group, through its propaganda arm, had earlier claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming the shooter was a recently converted “soldier.”

“As this event unfolds we

have determined to this point no connection with an inter-national terrorist group,” said Aaron Rouse, the special agent in charge of the Las Vegas office of the FBI.

FBI: ‘No connection’ to terrorism found

20 TUESDAY 3 OCTOBER 2017MORNING BREAK

Giant butterflies (12-metre each), an installation by Chilean Valeria Merino, stand on the shaft of the Entel Tower — a symbol of modernity, communications and concrete of the city — as part of “Hecho en Casa Fest” (Made at Home Festival) in Santiago, yesterday.

Santiago festival

Fazeena Saleem The Peninsula

As a fresh cohort of young innovators prepare to pit their wits in a new series of Qatar Foundation’s (QF’s) Stars of Science TV

programme, all eyes are on three-per-son judging panel which will ultimately decide who’s in and who’s out.

With everything to play for in the ninth season of the Arab world’s number one science and innovation show — entrants compete for a share of $600,000 in prize money – it’s vital to know what makes the jury tick.

So, who exactly are giving the thumbs up or down this season? Series veteran Professor Fouad Mrad, who has been a mainstay on the show since its first season in 2009, is a man who does not mince his words. “My philos-ophy is to push candidates to the next level through critical feedback. Life in the innovation world is difficult and you need a thick skin to persevere. You need to be willing to give your all to succeed,” he told The Peninsula.

Professor Mrad earned a doctoral degree in electrical engineering from the prestigious Purdue University in the US. He works as an Executive Director for ESCWA Regional Center for Technology at the United Nations, where he makes sure policies are in place to support the region’s tech entrepreneurs.

Professor Mrad is no stranger to taking risks. He was internally dis-placed in Lebanon during the country’s civil war, which started in 1975. Dur-ing a time of insecurity, he found sanctuary in education, which he rea-soned, would be his vessel to a better life. After secondary schooling, he landed in Buffalo, New York, thanks to a Hariri Foundation Scholarship.

“This was a life-changing experi-ence. The weather, people, culture, language, and style of education were all very different to what I was used to at home. It took a lot for me to adapt and develop a sense of belonging. I

could have easily given up and gone back after a few months. But I knew that to ensure my family was safe for years to come, I had to be determined. I had to make New York my new home. There was no other way. This journey has clearly influenced my style of feed-back to Stars of Sciences candidates,” says Professor Mrad.

Professor Mrad ’s fellow jury mem-ber, Dr Abdelhamid El Zoheiry, is a mentor to the very core. “I love pro-viding feedback that both educates and entertains. Delivering feedback with humor is actually a tactic – it cuts through the tension and allows you to address a topic head-on. But I never joke with the intention of hurting feelings.”

Dr El Zoheiry is President of the Euro-Mediterranean University in Slovenia and a professor at Cairo University Faculty of Medicine. Dr El Zoheiry’s passion for mentorship grew during his time working with the Egyptian government to encour-age scientific innovation in the country.

“What truly excites me is being a facilitator of ideas for innovators. Just like traditional nested Russian dolls, innovators have ideas within ideas. All they need is a skilled observer to help them open their mind to other possibilities.”

“By motivating their imagination,

I want to encourage them to become serial innovators.” Dr El Zoheiry also looks at his role in the light of closing the gap between men’s and women’s participation in science. Of the 101 shortlisted candidates across eight sea-sons of Stars of Science, so far only seven have been women.

“As culture changes, more women are choosing these fields. As men, we must welcome them in order for us all to prosper. I have a strong feeling that soon, we will have a female winner on Stars of Science,” he said.

While, Dr Khalid Al Ali is the new-est member of the SOS judging panel. Although he will be making his debut on the show, he is a highly experi-enced tech entrepreneur and one of the leading minds behind the crea-tion of QF’s Qatar Science and Technology Park.

Dr Al Ali holds the distinction of being the first Qatari to work at NASA and earn a PhD in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from the pres-tigious University of California, Berkeley. He was in charge of build-ing and launching spacecraft at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the US.

Dr Al Ali credits his meteoric rise to one particular episode from his childhood in Qatar when he met Apollo 14 Commander Alan Shepard, the first American in space, who famously hit

two golf balls on the moon. As a little boy, Dr Al Ali was intrigued and inspired by the astronaut’s stories. The coincidental encounter turned the young Qatari’s world upside down. From then on, he set his gaze to the stars. His life would revolve around one dream – working at NASA to advance humanity’s drive for space exploration.

Following his decade-long tenure at NASA, Dr Al Ali created and partic-ipated in several start-up ventures in Silicon Valley – the most recent of which is Senseta, a world leader in big-data analytics and drone-powered solutions.

His latest foray into the highly competitive startup landscape man-aged to raise more than four million US dollars in its first venture capital funding round. The company devel-ops innovative technology to leverage big data and drone-powered solutions to make cities and information sys-tems safer and smarter.

To budding innovators he says, “Don’t be shy. It’s all right to be ambi-tious. It’s all right to be bold. No country or geographic region has a monopoly on innovation and talent. Most impor-tantly, do not let setbacks discourage you from the path of entrepreneur-ship. Give yourself permission to believe that you can achieve what you set out to do.”

Meet veteran jurors at Stars of Science

Professor Fouad Mrad Dr Khalid Al Ali Dr Abdelhamid El Zoheiry

Johannesburg

AFP

The parents of Reeva Steenkamp, the model shot dead by Oscar Pistorius, expressed outrage yesterday over an upcom-ing US film about how the Paralympic athlete gunned down

their daughter. June and Barry Steenkamp said they were “hor-rified and upset” at reports that the film claimed to tell the story of the 2013 killing from the perspective of Reeva and June, her mother.

The Steenkamps stressed they had not collaborated in the project or knew anything about it being made, and said they were still in mourning for their daughter.

“Any impression that is created that this is June’s view, or that the movie is endorsed by the Steenkamp family, is untrue and incorrect,” they said in a statement. A trailer for the movie — titled “Blade Runner Killer” — was released yesterday, showing Pisto-rius and Steenkamp in bed, having arguments before her death and Pistorius opening fire.

Pistorius, 30, is serving a six-year jail term for murder over the killing of Steenkamp in his house in the South African capital Pretoria in the early hours of Valentine’s Day 2013.

He has always maintained that he mistook her for an intruder when he fired four high-calibre bullets through a locked toilet cubicle. Pistorius became the first double-amputee to race at Olym-pic level when he appeared at the London 2012 games.

In 2016, an appeals court upgraded his manslaughter convic-tion to murder.

The South African state is pushing for a longer sentence, with the case due to be heard in court on November 3.

Pistorius vomited in the dock as details of his girlfriend’s death were examined during his seven-month trial in 2014 that attracted fevered global attention. The film, which stars German model Toni Garrn as Steenkamp, is due to have a TV premiere on the Lifetime network in the US on November 11.

San Francisco IANS

With the wait for n e w A p p l e iPhones and

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 now over, Google is ready to unveil Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones, a smart speaker and a ‘PixelBook’ laptop in the US tomorrow. According to a series of leaks from technology web-sites Droid Life and Android Authority, Google is also likely to launch a new Day-dream VR headset.

Just like last year, Google is expected to launch two Pixels -- Pixel 2 and a larger Pixel 2 XL -- that would directly succeed Google’s existing line-up.

While Pixel 2 XL is rumoured to have a new bezel-less display design, the Pixel 2 might have a similar design to the origi-nal. Pixel is designed by HTC (Google recently bought HTC’s smartphone business) while Pixel XL is made by LG. The new phones would have IP67 water resistance.

According to Android Authority, both phones might come with “squeeze” interaction like HTC “U11”, along with Optical Image Stabilisation for the cam-eras. The smartphones would have single camera and support ‘Portrait Mode’.

Google may also remove the headphone jack in favour of only using

USB-C for a possible addi-tion of stereo speakers.

Just like Amazon which has expanded its smart speaker Echo line, Google is also planning to release a smaller Home model.

9to5Google reported of a larger Google Home “Max” speaker, which might have more “premium” design and stereo sound. Google may also launch a high-end Chromebook called Google Pixelbook. Like the Chromebook Pixel, the Pix-elbook is expected to sell at the ultra-premium end of the Chromebook market, starting at $1,199, with a separate stylus accessory similar to the Apple Pencil that will cost an extra $99, The Verge reported.

Google set to launch Pixel 2, more devices

Victim’s parents horrified by Oscar Pistorius movie

June and Barry Steenkamp, the parents of Reeva Steenkamp, the model shot dead by Oscar Pistorius.

FAJRSHOROOK

04.10 am

05.27 am

ZUHRASR

11.23 am

02.46 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

05.21 pm

06.51 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 03:15 – 15:30 LOW TIDE 08:30 – 22:15

Hazy at first becomes hot day time

with slight dust to blowing dust at

places at times and some clouds.

WEATHER TODAY

Minimum Maximum

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

30oC 40oC

Page 01 Oct 3 - The Peninsula...2017/10/03 · by country music star Jason Aldean Sunday night at...

Documents

Transcript of Page 01 Oct 3 - The Peninsula...2017/10/03 · by country music star Jason Aldean Sunday night at...