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Volume 23 | Number 7624 | 2 RiyalsMonday 20 August 2018 | 9 Dhul-Hijja I 1439 www.thepeninsula.qa

Eid Mubarak

Aspetar wins best medical project in Asia awardTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Aspetar, Qatar’s ortho-paedic and sports medicine hospital, has won the 6th Sheikh Fahad Hiroshima-Asia Sports Medicine and Science Award, a prestigious award that rolls out every four years on the side-lines of the Asian Games to determine the best medical project in Asia.

Aspetar won the award spe-cifically for the efforts under-taken by the Aspetar Sports Groin Pain Centre (SGPC) during the last four years, which have contributed positively to the sci-entific field of sports medicine

and medical research. Organised on the side-lines

of this year’s Asian Games 2018, the awards ceremony was held yesterday, at the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) General Assembly in Jakarta, Indonesia. It was attended by President of Qatar Olympic Committee H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani, and Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al Sabah, the Assembly’s President.

Hussain Sultan Al Jaber, attended the ceremony as Asp-etar’s representative and received the award on behalf of Mohammed Khalifa Al Suwaidi, the Director General of Aspetar

and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of its parent organisation, Aspire Zone Foundation, who said: “We’re very proud to have received this prestigious award, which is the culmination of the hospital’s efforts over the past years, and testament to the top rank the hospital has risen to since it was launched in 2007. This isn’t the first time Aspetar has won this prestigious award; the hospital won it back in 2014 and 2010, thus showcasing its dominance in the field of sports medicine and science in the Asian continent”.

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H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani,President of QOC, and Hussain Sultan Al Jaber at the ceremony.

Amir to receive well-wishers on Eid Al AdhaTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Amiri Diwan announced yesterday that Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani will receive well-wishers on the occasion of the blessed Eid Al Adha at Al Wajba Palace on the first day of Eid, in the following order:

Immediately after the Eid prayer until 6.30am, H H the Amir will receive Their Excel-lencies Sheikhs, Ministers, the Speaker of the Advisory Council, Ministries’ Under-secretaries, members of the Advisory Council and citizens, QNA reported.

From 6.30am to 6.45am, H H the Amir will receive Their Excellencies heads of diplo-matic missions. From 6.45am to 7am, H H the Amir will receive the armed forces and police officers as well as directors of departments and national institutions. H H the Amir will also receive imme-diately after the Asr prayer to 4.15pm Their Excellencies Sheikhs and citizens.

MoI announces Eid holiday working hours THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Interior (MoI) yesterday announced working hours for its different departments for Eid Adha holidays.

During Eid holidays, starting from yesterday (Sunday, 8 Dhul Hijja 1439) until August 26, (15 Dhul Hijja 1439), the Ministry of Interior (MoI) Departments that serve the public such as General Directorate of Passports, Unified Services Department, General Directorate of Traffic and Criminal Evidences and Information Department will work from 8 am to 12 pm.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Public Health has announced that applications for registration and issuance of birth certificates for new-borns during Eid Al Adha hol-idays will be from 8am to 12pm at Sidra Medicine except for the first day of the Eid as well as Fridays and Saturdays.

QA Cargo to airlift 50 tonnes of aid for Kerala flood victimsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Airways Cargo has announced its relief efforts to deliver urgent aid to Kerala following the devastating flooding in the region. The cargo carrier has expeditiously organised an operation to deliver relief goods to flood-stricken districts including Cochin and Karipur via the airline’s passenger service from Doha to Trivandrum.

Qatar Airways Chief Officer, Cargo, Guillaume Halleux, said: “We have received earnest requests from the Indian community residing in the State of Qatar seeking support to transport relief aid to

Southern Kerala, where many of their families and relatives are affected by the worst flood in a century”.

“Given the devastating situation, we have rapidly activated a humanitarian operation to offer free transportation of relief goods from Doha to Trivandrum on our daily passenger flight. We are expecting to airlift more than 50 tonnes of much-needed relief goods from the operation, which will commence from August 21 to 29. Our prayers and thoughts are with the victims’ families and we hope the region will quickly recover from the disaster,” he added.

→CONTINUED ON PAGE 3Qatar Airways Cargo will airlift more than 50 tonnes of relief goods free of cost.

DFI-supported films win awards at Sarajevo Film FestivalRAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Several films supported by Doha Film Institute (DFI) have won awards at the pres-tigious 24th Sarajevo Film Festival, one of Europe’s largest film events.

The Heart of Sarajevo Best Actor, one of the major awards at the recently concluded fes-tival, went to Leon Leon Lučev, the lead of DFI-backed Serbian film The Load directed by Ognjen

Glavonić. A Qumra project, The Load is based on a true story about Vlada, a truck driver who is tasked with transporting a mysterious load from Kosovo to Belgrade.

Nine Month War, also a Qumra project, took home the Special Jury Prize in the docu-mentary film competition pro-gramme. Helmed by László Csuja, the film is about 24-year-old Jani, who lives in a small town in Ukraine and is fed up with the boring life in his hometown.

In the Work in Progress Awards, Ibrahim, another DFI grantee, bagged the Cinelink Iridium Award. Directed by Lina Alabed, Ibrhim is about the eponymous protagonist, a secret member of the Palestinian Mil-itant Organisation who goes on a mission never to return.

DFI’s participation in this year’s Sarajevo further adds to the pride of Qatar with a total of 19 films supported by DFI in its programming.

Of the 19 films, nine films were

in the Official Selection, while three were showcased as part of the CineLink Co-Production Market and Work in Progress platform. The films are recipients of the Grants Programme, the Qatari Film Fund or past Qumra projects and other development initiatives steered by DFI.

The films in the CineLink Co-Production Market included the DFI Grants recipient Streams by Mehdi Hmili and The Voice of Amirah, a feature narrative by Khalifa Al-Thani. In Work in

Progress was the documentary Ibrahim by Lina Alabed.

Acclaimed films supported by DFI in the in-competition section included Turkish auteur and 2014 Palme D’or winner and Qumra Master Nuri Bilge Cey-lan’s The Wild Pear Tree; Leb-anese filmmaker Nadine Labaki’s Capharnaüm, which won the Jury Prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and Sofia by Meryem Benm’Barek, which won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes 2018.

Among the DFI Grants recipients were compelling documentaries Nine Month War by László Csuja, Of Fathers and Sons by Talal Derki, The Man Who Stole Banksy by Marco Proserpio, The Other Side of Every-thing by Mila Turajlic, Too Late to Die Young by Dominga Sotomayor.

Two films supported by DFI had their special screenings including Wallay by Berni Goldblat and What Comes Around by Reem Saleh.

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Widam ensuressufficient sheepsupply for Eid DOHA: Widam Food Company is providing over 50,000 sacrificial animals to meet the demand from citizens and expatriates during Eid Al Adha. The company has made special arrangement to handle the crowds at abattoirs and outlets.

“Various types of sacrificial animals are available at Widam outlets at reasonable prices. The company is providing over 50,000 sacrificial animals during this Eid,” Abdul Rahman bin Mohammed Al Khayarain, CEO of Widam told The Peninsula.

He said that the company has imported Armenian sheep ahead of Eid this year to increase the variety and is expecting a shipment carrying Sudanese sheep.

“Armenian sheep are of good quality and are similar to some types of Arab sheep which are usually in high demand in the country,” said Al Khayarain.

He added that the sacrificial animals includes Syrian and other types of Arab sheep, Armenian sheep and those taken from local breeding farms.

“The company has coordi-nated with the Ministry of Municipality and Environment to provide more veterinary doctors to check the slaugh-tered animals and has deployed over 350 workers at abattoirs,” said the Chief Exec-utive Officer.

He said that the company is providing more potters to carry the animals and has singed contract with a private security company to handle the crowd at the abattoirs.

“Widam has set up two new outlets for selling sacri-ficial animals at Al Wakra and Al Qatifiya,” said Al Khayarain adding that the company has established a total of eight outlets across the country which open from 5am to 5pm.

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SANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

Over 50,000

sacrificial animals

are being provided

to meet the demand

from citizens and

expatriates. Widam

has imported

Armenian sheep

ahead of Eid this year.

G

w

02 MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2018HOME

Amir greets President of AfghanistanQNA

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent a cable of congratula-tions to the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghan-istan, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, on the occasion of his country’s independence anni-versary. Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani also sent a cable of congratulations to the Pres-ident. Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani also sent a similar cable of congratula-tions to the President.

Many arrested for stealing cables from project and house construction sitesTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The South and Rayyan Security Departments jointly arrested a gang that specialised in the theft of copper and aluminium cables from some project sites and houses under construction.

After Departments received reports of theft copper and aluminum cables from several areas of the country from project sites and houses under construction which have no guard, a special team was formed to search and investigate the places that deal with stolen items. After intensive search and investigation, a number of accused were caught while carrying out robberies.

During the interrogation, one of them confessed and guided the investigation team to one of the garages in the indus-trial zone where they sold the stolen items.

After obtaining the necessary permits from the Public Prosecution, 25 persons of different nationalities were arrested while carrying out the sale and purchase without the permission of the competent authorities in the State.

The accused were referred to the spe-cialised judicial bodies and big quantities of copper cables, aluminium wire, iron and scrap, in addition to the other seizures and

cars used in transporting these loots were seized. The concerned authorities urge

owners of buildings-under-construction to secure their sites properly.

The arrested group with the confiscated items.

Qatar Airways wishes the best to Team QatarTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Airways has extended its best wishes to Team Qatar’s athletes participating in this year’s highly-anticipated global sporting event, the 18th Asian Games Jakarta Palembang 2018, taking place in Jakarta and Palembang, Indonesia, which started yesterday. Qatar’s national carrier is the Prestige Partner and Official Airline of the Asian Games.

More than 220 of Qatar’s most talented athletes flew out of Qatar’s home and hub, Hamad International Airport, on the award-winning airline to gather in Jakarta ahead of Saturday’s opening ceremony, which launched an exciting two-week global competition. Qatar’s national team will compete alongside 44 participating nations in various sports including: shooting, sailing, fencing, bowling, equestrian, archery, gymnastics, tennis, karate, taek-wondo, and many more.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, Akbar Al Baker, said: “Qatar Airways wishes all the tal-ented athletes from Qatar’s National Team the best of luck in the 18th Asian Games Jakarta Palembang 2018. We are extremely proud and excited to watch our nation’s best athletes

compete in this exciting global event, and we look forward to celebrating their success with them. I would also like to extend Qatar Airways’ best wishes to all participating nations”.

“As the Prestige Partner and Official Airline of this world-class sporting event, Qatar Airways welcomes all fans to Jakarta and Palembang, and is proud to unite passengers from around the world through a shared love of sport. We believe in the power of sport and its ability to bring people together, and we will continue to support the unity that it fosters by strengthening our extensive global sporting sponsorship portfolio,” he added.

This is the second time that Qatar Airways has proudly spon-sored the prestigious Asian Games; the award-winning airline was also the Official Airline of the 15th Asian Games

Doha 2006. The national carrier of the State of Qatar welcomed thousands of fans from around the world to Doha, in what was the largest sporting event in the history of Qatar at the time.

The Asian Games is a pan-continental multi-sporting event held every four years, and is the second largest multi-sporting event after the Olympic Games. The award-winning airline

provides triple-daily services to Jakarta, served by a Boeing 787-8 aircraft, featuring 22 seats in Business Class and 232 seats in Economy Class, and triple-daily services to Denpasar, served by a Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, featuring 24 seats in Business Class and 388 seats in Economy Class.

In May 2017, Qatar Airways announced a groundbreaking

sponsorship deal with FIFA, which saw the award-winning airline become the Official Partner and Official Airline of FIFA until 2022. The partnership, one of the biggest sporting spon-sorships in the world, will give Qatar Airways extensive mar-keting and branding rights at the 2022 World Cup Qatar, with an expected audience reach of more than two billion people.

The national team members at the Hamad International Airport before the departure.

Msheireb Museums announces Eid visiting hoursTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Msheireb Museums, the cultural destination at Msheireb Downtown Doha, will open its doors to visitors and guests from the second day of the Eid Al Adha holiday.

Msheireb Museums welcomes visitors, art connoisseurs and researchers of heritage and history starting from Wednesday. The working hours will be from 3pm during Eid.

The museum will be closed on Tuesday, the first day of Eid Al Adha.

Msheireb Museums is a sig-nificant milestone for Msheireb Properties in realising the vision of Msheireb Downtown Doha, Qatar’s first sustainable and smart city regeneration project. The museum celebrates the history of four heritage houses in the heart of Qatar’s old town; Bin Jelmood House (raising awareness of formerly enslaved peoples), Company House (history of Qatar’s petroleum industry), Radwani House (pro-viding insights into Qatari family

life over generations), and Mohammed Bin Jassim Home (a journey through Msheireb dis-trict over time).

Located within the oldest part of the capital, they form an important part of Qatar’s national history. These reconstructed buildings and gallery spaces allow the community to engage in the significant aspects of Qatar’s her-itage and traditions before the country’s rapid economic development.

In line with its mandate, Msheireb Museums has built strong connections and collabo-rations with academic institutions, including universities, colleges, research programmes and exhi-bitions to engage with the museums’ content and offerings. Visitors of the museums have access to the library’s valuable digital resources of Qatar National Library. To promote Qatar tourism, Msheireb Museums also collaborate with Qatar Tourism Authority to provide tour guides with best practices and training to share with international visitors.The visitors at the Bin Jelmood House of the Msheireb Museums.

Qatar Youth Hostels concludes ‘Discover China’ tripDOHA: Qatar Youth Hostels concluded on Sunday their ‘Discover China’ trip, organised in cooperation with Qatar Science Club for eight days.

Discover China trip comes in line with Qatar Youth Hostels vision, which is ‘to give young people the passion towards discovering the world and provide them with a high level of awareness and the ability to interact pos-itively with different civiliza-tions’ as well as its objectives to enhance internal and external tourism among young people. The trip is also within the objectives of Qatar Scientific Club, which seeks to absorb and embrace the Qatari inventors and inventors and to develop their ideas and creations.

Qatar Youth Hostels said in a statement that the par-ticipants were able to visit the most important factories and companies in the cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, which are among the largest economic zones in China.

Discover China trip is the first of its kind to be organized in partnership between Qatar Youth Hostels and Qatar Science Club in the context of joint cooperation between youth centers. Fourteen Qatari young men and women of inventors who have technological ideas and interested in industrialisation benefited from the discovery of the world of the techno-logical industry in China.

More than 220 of

Qatar’s most talented

athletes flew out of

Qatar’s home and hub,

Hamad International

Airport, on the award-

winning airline to

gather in Jakarta.

03MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2018 HOME / MIDDLE EAST

A Palestinian worker displays items sent by mail eight years ago as they reach destination, after Israel allowed the letters and goods into the West Bank from Jordan, where they were being held, Jericho, in the occupied West Bank, yesterday.

Palestinians sort through 8 years of mail held by IsraelAP

WEST BANK: Palestinian postal workers in the West Bank are sifting through eight years’ worth of undelivered mail held by Israel. In recent days the Palestinian postal staff in Jericho has been sorting through tonnes of undelivered mail in a room packed with letters, boxes and even a wheelchair.

Israel has withheld delivery of post shipments to the Pales-tinian territories through its national postal service since 2010. According to Palestinian postage official Ramadan Ghazawi, Israel did not honour a 2008 agreement with the Palestinians to send and receive mail directly through Jordan. Mail was indeed delivered through Jordan but was denied entry by Israel, causing a years-long backlog.

“It was blocked because each time they (Israel) used to give us a reason and an excuse. Once they said the terminal, the building that the post was supposed to arrive to is not ready and once (they said) to wait, they’re expecting a larger checking machine (security scanner),” he said.

Israel says the sides came to an understanding about a year ago on postage delivery but that

it has not yet resulted in a “direct transfer,” according to Cogat, the Israeli defence body respon-sible for Palestinian civilian affairs in the West Bank.

Cogat said in a statement that the one-time release of the ten and a half tonnes of mail was a “gesture.” Jericho resident Rami Baker said ordering goods by mail has been a challenge.

“The problem that I suffer from is that the mail is very delayed. For example, you order something and the website will

tell you it will arrive within 20 to 30 days and after 30 days you get a note that it reached Jeru-salem or Israel. After that, a day or two later, we come and check with the Palestinian post office here in Jericho and they say we did not receive it yet from the Israeli side and this thing takes months,” he said.

The development highlights the tight controls Israel maintains over many aspects — even the mundane like postal delivery — of Palestinian life.

GU-Q students urged to workon improving safety practicesTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Ministers, government officials, ambassadors, industry experts, students, and guests gathered at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) on Thursday to celebrate the inau-gural cohort of students in Geor-getown’s International Executive Master’s in Emergency & Disaster Management. This group of students comprises the first cohort to successfully complete the University’s one-year Exec-utive Master’s degree in Emer-gency & Disaster Management with a focus on the Middle East.

In an impressive display, 11 students showcased what they have learned in the program and their diverse areas of interest in a gallery walk exhibition fea-turing their final thesis projects. Their work highlighted the dire need for qualified personnel to take part in the preparedness, mitigation, and response process for national and regional emer-gencies. The incoming cohort of students, numbering 30, had the valuable opportunity to network

with students in the outgoing cohort, and to prepare for their u p c o m i n g a c a d e m i c experience.

The keynote speaker of this event was Minister of Energy and Industry H E Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada. He highlighted the importance of this program as the first Georgetown professional degree program tailored for the Middle East regional context.

Addressing the graduates, Dr. Al-Sada praised the students for taking the initiative leading the first cohort in Emergency and Disaster Management: “Your

class should take pride in encouraging three times as many students as your group to join the next cohort, and we are very proud of you for initiating this journey of Georgetown University”.

He emphasised the need to continually work on improving safety practices and create a culture of excellence in order to ensure stability in the face of challenges and disasters: “Qatar was well equipped for the blockade and our emergency plans have proven to be inval-uable. Thanks to our prepar-edness, Qatar has managed to weather the storm and continues to gain positive recognition around the world,” he added.

Addressing the students at the ceremony, Kelly Otter, Ph.D., dean of Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies commended their work. “This was a tremendous opportunity to embrace and evaluate the needs of emergency and disaster management professionals in the region. We seek to engage and understand the emerging and

evolving challenges of the day—and to provide an education that rises to the occasion. After seeing your exceptional Capstone pres-entations, I am confident that we’ve been successful,” said Kelly Otter.

“These students come from varying backgrounds and have combined their professional expe-rience with coursework and

hands-on learning to produce their final projects, which we have seen exhibited here,” said Ahmad Dallal, Ph.D., dean of Georgetown University in Qatar. He added: “We are proud to play our part in building Qatar’s knowledge economy and supporting the country’s development and vision for the emergency and disaster management profession”.

In an increasingly complex world that is vulnerable to natural and manmade disasters, particularly in a region suscep-tible to political turmoil, the graduates of this executive mas-ter’s degree program look forward to a rewarding career in emergency and disaster man-agement and to making the Middle East region a safer place.

Minister of Energy and Industry H E Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada looks on as students showcase their work at the Gallery Walk prior to the closing ceremony.

A group of students

comprises the first

cohort to successfully

complete the

University’s one-

year executive

master’s degree in

Emergency & Disaster

Management with a

focus on the Middle

East.

QA Cargo backs relief efforts for Kerala victimsCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

In celebration of Eid al-Adha, Qatar Airways Cargo invites residents of the State of Qatar to generously con-tribute relief aid, including dry food, water, clothing, and medicines to those in need. Each donation is permitted up to 100kg. For shipment booking and enquiries, please contact hotlines +974 4018 1685 or +974 6690 8226.

Much more than just a cargo carrier, Qatar Airways Cargo shares concern for humanitarian crises and has been active in supporting air transportation relief efforts internationally. The cargo carrier delivers air freight to more than 160 destinations worldwide via its Doha hub on more than 200 passenger and freighter aircraft.

DFI-supported films win awards at Sarajevo Film Festival

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

DFI has set a new benchmark highlighting Qatari film talent with seven short films, all made in Qatar, presented as the ‘Shortcuts to Qatar’ segment at the festival. The films included Voices from the Urbanscape by Shaima Al-Tamimi and Mariam Salim; I Have Been Watching You All Along by Rawda Al-Thani, Walls by Nibu Vas-udevan; Embodiment by Khalifa Al-Marri; Treasures of the Past by Rawan Al-Nassiri and Nada Bedair; Our Time is Running Out by Meriem Mesraoua; and 1001 Days by Aisha Al Jaidah.

A still from the film Nine Month War, a Qumra project which took home the Special Jury Prize in the documentary film competition programme of the 24th Sarajevo Film Festival.

Aspetar wins best medical project in Asia awardCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

He added: “This is of course in the interests of the State of Qatar, which, thanks to the efforts of Aspetar and all its local organisations, whose hopes of elevating Qatar’s performance on an interna-tional level, has become a pioneer in a number of fields, particularly sports and medicine, in line with the Qatar National Vision 2030, and the vision of Aspetar and its parent organisation, Aspire Zone Foundation, of becoming a reference in sports excellence by 2020”.

The Olympic Council of Asia chose Aspetar’s Sports Groin Pain Centre (SGPC) as the winner of this award after a rigorous testing process that looked into the Centre’s past achievements, sci-entific research and contributions to

the scientific field. The SGPC aims to become an internationally recognised referral centre for establishing clinical pathways in acute groin pain and injuries.

It does this by collaborating with prominent specialists at the forefront of this specific area of medical expertise, to establish best practice assessment, diagnosis and treatment of this con-dition, which can have extreme consequences for affected athletes.

Aspetar has a mission to support athletes to achieve their best performances and fulfil their sporting potential. It focuses on achieving these aims through the delivery of excellence in sports medicine, physiotherapy, sports science, ortho-paedic surgery and rehabilitation.

Widam ensures sufficient sheep supply for EidCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Widam’s other outlets for selling livestock are located at automated slaughterhouse and abattoir at Abu Hamour Livestock Market, Umm Salal Central Market slaughterhouse, Al Shi-haniya mobile abattoir, Al Khor Slaughterhouse, and Al Shamal Slaughterhouse.

He said that customers prefer buying sacrificial animals at Widam outlets because the company provides animals that meet religious requirements and keeps them under the watch of veterinary doctors.

“Local products are best in quality as the local farms are using good quality fodders and are providing necessary health care services to their animals,” said Al Khayarian. “Following the requests of people, the Company has opened outlets close to the residential areas at Al Shihaniya. A mobile abattoir is being pro-vided to meet the growing

demands to sacrificing animals at the west part of the country,” said Al Khayarain.

He said that large quantity of sacrificial animals are being offered at newly opened outlets at Al Wakra and Al Qatifiya.

“The company has increase the number of employees to cut the waiting time at registration points for subsidised sheep and has provided more potters to carry the sacrificial animals,” said Al Khayarain. “Widam Food Company is operating 35 outlets and nine abattoirs across the country that offer the best services to the customers,” said Al Khayarain.

He said that the source of import for meat and livestock has been diversified to provide more options to the customers and sta-bilise the market. “The company is offering good quality sacrificial animals at competitive prices to win the trust of the customers,” said Al Khayarain.

An outlet for sacrificial animals for Eid Al Adha set up by Widam Food Comany at Al Wakrah behind Woqod Petrol Station. PIC: ABDUL BASIT / THE PENINSULA

04 MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2018MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Iraq Supreme Court ratifies May election resultsREUTERS

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s Supreme Court has ratified the results of the May 12 parliamentary election, its spokesman said yesterday, setting in motion a 90-day constitutional deadline for the winning parties to form a government.

Parliament in June ordered a nationwide manual recount of the results, which were tallied electronically, after a government report said there were widespread violations and blamed the electoral commission.

Yet the recount showed little had changed from the initial results as populist Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr retained his lead, positioning him to play a central role in forming the country’s next government.

“The Federal Supreme Court issued on the afternoon of August 19, 2018, its decision to ratify the names received,” its spokesman Iyas Al Samouk said in a statement.

The ratification makes the results formal and lawmakers now have to gather and elect a speaker, then president and finally a prime minister and cabinet within 90 days.

Iraq sentences 14 to death over Speicher massacreANATOLIA

BAGHDAD: Iraqi judicial authorities have sentenced 14 people to death for involvement in the 2014 mass killing of hundreds of Iraqi air force cadets by IS militants in the northern city of Tikrit.

“The Iraqi judiciary sen-tenced 14 main defendants in the Speicher massacre,” Moen al-Kazemi, the head of a gov-ernment committee on the massacre, said in a statement.

“The trial of the defendants was conducted under Iraq’s anti-terrorism act,” he said.

He said the verdicts are still subject to appeal.

“Families of the victims…have called for accelerating the implementation of the verdict at the earliest possible time,” he said.

Ethiopian President Mulatu Teshome (centre) makes a speech at the opening ceremony of Reppie Waste to Energy plant at Koshe in Addis Ababa, yesterday.

Ethiopia launches 50 MW waste energy plantANATOLIA

ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia yesterday commissioned Africa’s first major waste-to-energy plant designed to dispose three-quarters of the rubbish of capital Addis Ababa and provide energy to 25 percent of the population.

The 50-megawatt plant on the site of Koshe, Ethiopia’s largest rubbish dump, has emerged after the landfill had collapsed on nearby dwellers, killing some 140 people, in March 2017.

Koshe is located in southwest of the metropolis hosting an estimated 5 million population.

President Mulatu Teshome inaugurated the project which he described as a practical dem-onstration of the government’s strategy aimed at reducing pol-lution and realising the huge potential of the country’s renewable energy.

“It is a significant project of garbage disposal, recycling and environmental protection,’’ he added.

Ethiopia invested $96 million in the plant which is constructed by British firm Cam-bridge Industries Limited and China National Electrical Engi-neering Company. It took nearly four years to complete the project which has begun gener-ating 25 Megawatt and it will

reach its potential in the coming years. According to Engineer Samuel Zemichael, a represent-ative of Cambridge Industries, the facility will process 1,400 tonnes of the city’s waste per day.

“It will also generate 185 gigawatt hours of electricity annually which is connected to the national grid.”

“This plant is Africa’s first major waste-to-energy plant and could serve as a benchmark for the region and the continent waste management which requires revolutionary methods,’’ Zemichael added.

The project has created jobs for 1,300 Ethiopians and 286 expatriates.

Graft probe hearings put ANC ‘on trial’BLOOMBERG

JOHANNESBURG: A South African judicial commission investigating the alleged plunder of state funds during former Pres-ident Jacob Zuma’s rule begins public hearings today that could have potentially dire conse-quences for the ruling party.

The probe led by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo will likely implicate a number of the African National Congress’s past and serving leaders in what’s widely become known as state capture — reputational damage it can ill afford as it gears up to contest next year’s elections.

Ex-Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, who now oversees state companies, has said more than 100bn rand ($6.7bn) may have been stolen.

“The ANC will be on trial through this commission,” Ralph Mathekga, a Johannesburg-based independent political analyst, said by phone on Friday. “This commission is likely to reveal the extent to which the ANC as a party has been compromised.” Cyril Ramaphosa won control of the ANC in December and became president two months later after the party forced Zuma to step down following a scandal-marred tenure that lasted almost

nine years and caused it to bleed support. While he’s pledged to clamp down on graft and restore public trust in state institutions as part of a drive to woo $100bn in new investment, law enforcement agencies have been slow in apprehending suspects implicated in the looting. The commission may not unearth a slew of new information and its success will largely depend on whether there is appropriate follow-up by the police and pros-ecutors, according to Ivor Sar-akinsky, academic director at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Governance.

“So much of the information

is already in the public domain,” Sarakinsky said by phone. “The only way that the public is going to accept any government action is when the prosecution entities do their work and they start to see people in court and going to jail for the theft of public finances and the corruption that has taken place.”

The commission had written to Zuma to invite him to testify before it and respond to allega-tions that he directly facilitated business contracts and other favors for the Guptas. Zuma was also asked whether he’d used information he had access to as head of state to enrich himself

and the Guptas, the Johan-nesburg-based Sunday Times said.

Denying Wrongdoing Zuma has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Zuma’s spokesman, Vukile Mathabela, didn’t respond to questions, and his lawyer, Dan Mantsha, could not be reached .

The ruling party said the commission has its full support.

“The ANC views the allega-tions of state capture as extremely serious, as this phenomenon increasingly appears to have par-alysed critical organs of state” and caused the economy to bleed bil-lions of rand, the party said in an emailed statement on Friday.

Syrian youth from the Damascus suburb of Qadam in green and from Binnish in orange gather on the pitch prior to the start of their match during a football tournament in Idlib.

In rebel-held Idlib, displaced Syrians bond through footballAFP

IDLIB: Beyond an olive grove in opposition-held northwestern Syria, rebel fighter Zakaria Abdel-wahhab, 29, dashes across the astroturf towards the football, hoping to score a goal for his lost hometown.

Seven years into the civil war, Abdelwahhab is one of tens of thousands of Syrians who have sought refuge in Idlib province after fleeing other parts of the country. This month, to forget the daily grind and make new friends, he and others formed teams rep-resenting their town of origin for a tournament in the provincial capital. “I took part to relax and to meet and befriend people who left” their hometowns too, says Abdelwahhab, who hails from Madaya in the Damascus countryside.

But “we also want to get to know Idlib people better. Even now, we don’t know many of them,” says the skinny, bearded player, wearing his team’s grey T-shirt and a black cap. “Today, we played against the team of the Banafsij NGO from Idlib and lost really badly — something like

14-3,” he says, laughing. With arrivals from other parts of the country, Idlib’s population has swollen to 2.5 million — around half of them displaced.

The Russia-backed gov-ernment has regained large swathes of the country in the past two years, through a combination of stifling sieges, deadly assaults and negotiated surrenders.

Under these, rebels and family members unwilling to be ruled by the government are bused to areas still under opposition control in the north of the country. This month, those who arrived in Idlib are grouping into small football teams of five players plus a goalkeeper to play each other and sides from their host province.

“No full teams arrived here from their areas, because there are people who died, stayed in regime areas, or left” for other districts, says Abdelwahhab.

He, his wife and son left their home and fruit trees behind in Madaya after enduring a crippling government siege. The last rebels left the town in April last year, after government forces surrounded it completely in 2015.

“We were besieged by death,”

says Abdelwahhab of the siege in which dozens died from acute malnutrition.

In Idlib, Abdelwahhab says he and his family struggle to get by on a stipend of $50 to $60 he receives from time to time from a rebel group.

Since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-gov-ernment protests, the Syrian civil war has killed more than 350,000 people and displaced millions.

Another player, Mohammed Nasser, says he is taking part in the tournament, which is to last until August 25, to find a sense of belonging in internal exile. “Yes, people in Idlib are our people too and they’ve been nothing but good to us, but you still need to feel like you belong,” said Nasser, dressed in an orange T-shirt.

Before being displaced by the conflict, Nasser was a sports coach at an orphanage in his hometown of Western Qalamun outside the capital, he says.

He spent four years in a camp across the border in Lebanon, before last year heading to Idlib, where he says his landlord has generously refused to let him pay rent. In Idlib, “there are more work

opportunities, and when it comes to sports, it’s better for relaxing and having fun than before the displacement,” he says.

But after gains around the capital and in the south this year, President Bashar al-Assad has

threatened to next retake control of Idlib, most of which is held by rebels and militants. In this context, the football tournament is also a message of defiance to the president, Nasser says.

“Despite everything that you

want to do — from bombing to killing to destruction — we’re still living our lives and we’re happy,” he says.

“If he looks at our faces, he’ll find he can’t triumph over this people.”

Pilgrims head

to Mount

Arafat todayAGENCIES

MAKKAH: More than two million Muslims from around the globe started the Haj pilgrimage yesterday.

Wearing the simple white garb of the pilgrim, most of the faithful began moving yes-terday from Makkah to the nearby Mina valley. They will spend the night there in fire-resistant tents.

For the Muslim faithful, Haj retraces the last steps of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and also honours the Prophets Ibrahim and Ishmael. It ends with the Eid Al Adha feast, which is marked by the slaughter of sheep, a tribute to Ibraham’s sacrifice of a lamb.

Today, pilgrims will climb Mount Arafat for the climax of the Haj, praying and reciting the Holy Quran.

The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) delivered his final sermon from Mount Arafat to Muslims who had accompanied him on his final Haj. After sunset, pilgrims head to Muz-dalifah, halfway between Mount Arafat and Mina, where they stay at least until midnight. They gather pebbles to perform the symbolic stoning of the devil on the eve of the Eid Al Adha feast.

Meanwhile, Qatar said yes-terday that its citizens were

unable to take part in Haj pil-grimage to Saudi Arabia.

“There is no chance this year for Qatari citizens and res-idents to travel for Haj,” a gov-ernment official told AFP.

“Registration of pilgrims from the State of Qatar remains closed and residents of Qatar cannot be granted visas as there are no diplomatic missions,” added the official. The Qatari official said the border closure and the lack of diplomatic mis-sions and direct flights between the two countries effectively meant that no Qataris could undertake the pilgrimage.

Abdullah Al Kaabi of Qatar National Human Rights Com-mittee told Reuters that Saudi Arabia had shut down an elec-tronic system used by travel agencies to obtain permits for pilgrims from Qatar.

A Qatari official said

the border closure

and the lack of

diplomatic missions

and direct flights

between the two

countries effectively

meant that no Qataris

could undertake the

pilgrimage.

05MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2018 ASIA

Over 700,000 in relief campsacross Kerala; death toll 370 IANS

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As the rain fury finally abated yesterday, 724,649 people remained in 5,645 camps in Kerala following “one of the worst ever floods” that has left about 370 dead and caused unprecedented destruction.

“Our prime concern was to save lives. It appears it has been met,” Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the media amid signs that the most destructive phase of the floods had ended and that water overflowing numerous towns and villages had started to recede.

“It is perhaps one of the worst ever tragedies. Hence the loss caused is so huge. So we will accept all help,” he said, revealing the extent of a tragedy which has not hit the state since 1924.

But even as Vijayan main-tained that the last stage of rescue act was going on, various WhatsApp groups continued to be flooded with requests for help, especially from Alappuzha.

Yesterday morning, the authorities withdrew the red alert issued in the last of the three districts: Idukki, Ernakulam and Pathanamthitta.

There were only moderate rains in a few districts.

Naturally, with fishermen, NCC, Navy and Air Force con-tinuing to rescue the marooned, yesterday saw the maximum evacuation of people from Chen-gannur, Pandalam, Thiruvalla, several areas in Pathanamthitta district and in Aluva, Angamaly and Paravur in Ernakulam.

The Chief Minister said 22,034 people had been rescued from flooded homes and buildings.

The death toll began on May 29 when Kerala got the first of the monsoon rains. But the bulk of the fatalities were reported

after August 9, when a tragedy of unprecedented proportion gripped the state after sluice gates of several rain-filled dams were opened.

Vijayan said the next task would be to help people get back to normal life.

“Rehabilitation will be done by various agencies,” he said, and pledged that all towns and cities would be cleaned on a war footing.

Vijayan paid special tributes to Kerala’s famed fishermen who played a key role in rescuing hundreds and navigating through dangerous waters.

Every fisherman who took part in the rescue act would be given Rs3,000 each, he said. “We will always be grateful for their support and help.” Students who lost their educational materials and uniforms would get new replacements.

Rains in the catchment areas of the big dams in Idukki district have subsided and the author-ities have shut two of the five floodgates at the Idukki dam. The outflow of water from both the Mullaperiyar and Idukki dams has also reduced.

As a result, the water flow into the Periyar and its tributaries that flow through Ernakulam and Thrissur has come down.

Yesterday, the Kottayam

sector operated special pas-senger trains. The state-run Kerala State Road Transport Corp also restarted operations on the MC Road to Kottayam.

But it is not as if all was going on smoothly.

Health Minister K K Shailaja admitted that although the water level had fallen in many areas, medical facilities might not have reached certain regions due to the magnitude of the crisis.

“This is because medical pro-fessionals found it difficult to reach the affected areas... We need a huge quantity of

medicines. A major health drive is being planned to prevent com-municable diseases,” she said.

And with the water level coming down, it might not be possible to operate the big boats, forcing rescuers to rely on small or rubber boats.

But even as help poured into Kerala from all over the country and abroad, some vendors made a killing because of food shortages. Green chillies, even after police intervention, was selling at Rs400 a kg in Kochi.

Onions, potatoes and cabbage were sold at Rs90 a kg.

The retail cost of rice and sugar shot up by Rs15.

Some people who reached their homes in central Kerala were stunned after seeing mud and dirt accumulated on fur-niture, with practically all their possessions destroyed.

Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said the central assistance of Rs 500 crore was too little. “The Prime Minister should declare this crisis as a national disaster.” The Kerala government has estimated the loss at Rs 19,500 crore.

An aerial view shows partially submerged buidlings at a flooded area in the southern Indian state of Kerala, yesterday.

Militant dies after gunfight with Army in KashmirIANS

SRINAGAR/NEW DELHI: A militant was killed in a gunfight with the Indian Army after an infiltration bid by a group of gunmen was foiled in Jammu and Kashmir yesterday — a day after the new Imran Khan-led government took over in Pakistan and three days after its Army promised to stop any cross-border incursion along the Line of Control (LoC).

According to a Defence Ministry spokesperson, the border gunfight in north Kash-mir’s Uri sector erupted after three to four militants were spotted infiltrating across the de facto border in Baramulla.

“The militant was killed in Kasturi Naar area in Uri sector,” said the spokesperson, Colonel Rajesh Kalia. The operation continued hours after the militant’s killing.

The gunfight came a day after three militants were killed on Saturday on the LoC in after a group of infiltrating militants was challenged by the Army in Tanghdar Sector in Kupwara district, also in north Kashmir.

S i g n i f i c a n t l y , o n Thursday, senior com-manders of the India and Pakistan armies spoke after the two countries celebrated their independence days.

The Director General Mil-itary Operations (DGMO) level talks were held at the behest of Pakistan’s Major General Sahir Shamshad Mirza.

The Pakistani commander promised the his Army “would take prompt action against (any) move of inimical elements in proximity to the LoC and respond to information shared by the Indian side, thereby facil-itating conduct of anti-terrorist operations”, an Indian Army statement said on August 16.

The assurance came after the Indian DGMO Lt Gen Anil Chauhan “emphatically stated that infiltration attempts by terrorists were a major cause of concern and informed the Pakistan (counterpart) that these activities have increased in the areas north of Pir Panjal mountain ranges

4,225 people rescued in flood-hit KodaguIANS

KODAGU: A total of 4,225 marooned people have been rescued so far in Karnataka’s flood-hit Kodagu district even as incessant rains continued to hamper relief work, said an official yesterday.

“Though the intensity of rainfall has reduced, the rainfall remained unabated. As of 3pm, 4,225 people in Kodagu district have been rescued and brought to safety through joint operations by state and central agencies,” a statement from the state disaster management authority said. Of

the rescued, 3,601 are staying in 36 relief shelters in the district.

The unabated rains, leading to flooding and landslips, have claimed eight lives so far in the region, the statement added.

The authorities, however, did not reveal the number of people stranded across the hilly district as communication lines were snapped due to landslides and damage to networks.

Several hundreds are sus-pected to be stranded in the dis-trict’s towns and villages on hilltops, which have been cut off due to landslides and damaged roads.

Located in the Western Ghats mountain ranges, this coffee-growing district, about 270 km from Bengaluru, is the worst-hit due to the south-west monsoon rains since June first week.

About 123 km of roads are estimated to be damaged due to the rains, while more than 800 homes have been destroyed. Most of the district’s arterial roads have been damaged due to landslides, delaying the rescue operations, officials said.

The heavy rains in coastal district of Dakshina Kannada have claimed one life, forcing nearly 800 people to live in

temporary shelters, the statement added.

Over 60 people have been stranded in Mukkodlu village of Kodagu district, but airlifting them has not been possible due to the bad weather, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy had earlier said.

About 50 Dogra Regiment soldiers, 12 expert naval divers, 62 officials from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), 750 fire services officials and Home guards with boats and hundreds of volunteers have been carrying out relief work in the district.

In all, 1,194 specialised

rescuers from state and central agencies are on job.

“Bread and other dry eat-ables and rations have been air-dropped in the inaccessible vil-lages of the district,” the statement said.

The Chief Minister on Sunday toured across the district and visited relief camps and affected villages in the district.

Revenue Minister R V Desh-pande, Public Works Department (PWD) Minister H D Revanna and district in-charge minister Sa Ra Mahesh visited the villages and towns severely affected by the flood.

A livestock vendor (left) holds a goat as a buyer inspects them ahead of the of Eid Al Adha in the old quarters of New Delhi, yesterday.

Preparation for the Festival of Sacrifice

ED to move High Court against tribunal order in Mallya caseIANS

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) will appeal in the Delhi High Court against an appellate tribunal’s order to release flats attached as part of an ED probe against fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya and Karnataka-based UBHL, the agency said yesterday.

The Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) Appellate Tribunal in Delhi on Saturday ordered the release of flats owned by NRI Vivek Mathias and Biocon CMD Kiran Mazumdar Shaw in Kingfisher Towers, a housing project of Mallya in Bengaluru.

“The ED will soon appeal against the tribunal order regarding attachment of United Breweries Holding Limited

(UBHL) assets in (about Rs 9,000 crore) bank fraud case against Kingfisher Airlines Ltd (now defunct) and its owner Vijay Mallya,” an ED statement said.

The ED said “it had attached UBHL’s properties after proper verification”.

During investigation before the attachment, the ED clar-ified, UBHL had stated, with respect to the flats at Kingfisher Towers, that “no sale deed was executed nor registered” with the registrar of properties.

“Thus, all the properties vest with UBHL. Accordingly, the same was attached provi-sionally and the adjudicating authority went through the evi-dences and confirmed provi-sional attachments,” said the statement.

UPA I, II delivered highest decadal growth: ChidambaramIANS

NEW DELHI: Former Union F i n a n c e M i n i s t e r P Chidambaram yesterday said that back series calculation of GDP proved that UPA I and II governments led by the Congress (2004-2014) delivered the highest decadal growth of 8.13 per cent since independence.

He said that there was a

determined effort by the present BJP-led government to run down the record of the Manmohan Singh government through distortions.

The senior Congress leader said that the Modi government, in its fifth year in power, can’t match the average growth rate of UPA-I, but hoped that it could catch up with the average growth rate of the UPA-II regime.

“For the sake of the country, we wish the government well in its fifth year,” he said at a press briefing here.

He said that the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inherited an economy that was on the upswing.

“Unfortunately, after the first two years, the government stumbled and the momentum was lost. The main reasons were

demonetisation, flawed imple-mentation of Goods and Services Tax and tax terrorism,” he added.

Chidambaram said: “The back series data is now available. The numbers prove the dictum that truth cannot be suppressed forever, and that the truth has a way of emerging amid a torrent of lies and distortions.” “Since this government came to power in May 2014, there has been a

determined effort to run down the record of two UPA govern-ments under Dr Manmohan Singh from 2004 to 2014,” he added.

Quoting figures from Ministry of Statistics’ data, Chidambaram said that the Indian economy’s growth under NDA-I government was 5.68 per cent, it was 8.36 per cent during UPA-I, 7.68 per cent in UPA-II and 7.33 per cent growth in NDA-II.

Chief Minister paid

special tributes

to Kerala’s famed

fishermen who

played a key role in

rescuing hundreds and

navigating through

dangerous waters.

Every fisherman who

took part in the rescue

act would be given

Rs3,000 each, he

said. “We will always

be grateful for their

support and help.”

War is real,

present and toxic,

but hope and

determination

are a start to

pushing back. The

book fair and the

cluster of efforts

by young Somali

people to reclaim

the story of their

country are an

unexpected and

welcome knot

of green in the

desert of conflict.

YOMIURI SHIMBUN

06 MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2018VIEWS

War and literature in Mogadishu

There are more trees in Mogadishu than you might expect, at least in August. From above, the city is knots

of green punctured by blue, red and beige roofs rolling into a strip of bright white sand before falling into the sea. In August, the air in the city is cool and a crisp ocean breeze clears the humidity so that it is actually quite pleasant to sit outside in the afternoon, sipping coffee while thinking about the latest cabinet reshuffle. These are things I know because I spent a week in Mogadishu at the fourth edition of the Mogadishu Book Fair, a pioneering event that uses literature to inspire and motivate particularly young people in Somalia’s capital city.

War is a complicated thing, and the war in Somalia is perhaps one of the most complicated. Since the over-throw of the Said Barre administration in 1991, the country has collapsed into ever more complicated cycles of vio-lence and reprisals. The fighting has been attributed to a broad range of political motivations and actors: money, power, ethnicity, clan, respect, territory, history, religion, age, migration - all of which have some explanatory power but clearly not

enough to capture eve-rything. Meanwhile, the killing continues. In the week before the book fair, a car bomb in Mogadishu killed a number of people, while a popular young entre-preneur named Mo Sheikh Ali was assassi-nated in broad daylight.

What does it mean to hold a book fair in

the middle of so much uncertainty?For one, it is a reminder that behind

each number or statistic that we see flashing on our screens every evening when we see news from Afghanistan, Iraq, the Central African Republic or Somalia is a person who had a family, hopes, and dreams - a life. War is dev-astating, not because it destroys econ-omies or fractures political alliances but because it steals people from their

communities and makes it impossible for those who are left behind to live full lives. Events like the book fair allow us to focus on Somali people outside the context of war and to see the people behind the numbers.

The mythology of Somalia has in some ways overgrown the reality of the place, and for outsiders, the nar-rative of violence sprints around the world and punches you in the face long before the kindness and hospi-tality of Somali people has had a chance to put on its shoes. Yet in several important ways, Mogadishu is the same as any other place: filled with people who just want to get on with the business of being alive. The young people at the book fair are so excited to be surrounded by literature - espe-cially in their own language. They are grateful for the handful of outsiders who confront fear to come and speak to them as people rather than subjects of study. And while it is impossible to escape the reality of conflict and inse-curity is a testament to how welcome this event is.

A large part the audience is young and part of a generation that has never known anything but war, and the book fair is one of the many initiatives launched by this generation to define themselves beyond war. Much of this work is being done online as young Somalis take stunning photographs and videos of what is unquestionably a beautiful corner of the world filled with hardworking survivors, show-casing a different side of Somalia. You can almost feel them willing a renais-sance with little more than their drones and DSLRs, fuelled by hope and determination.

The late Mo Sheikh Ali was part of this diffuse movement. He was the leader of the Mogadishu Start-Up Grind, as well as a judge on a televised entrepreneurship competition, the founder of the first florist and the first dry cleaner in Mogadishu since 1991, and a vocal champion of the power of youth to recast the city’s fortunes. He was as far away from the stereotype of the baby-faced militiaman as you

could get. The circumstance of his death underscores both the sense-lessness of war and the perverted logic of the hidden interests destroying anyone who wants things in Somalia to change for the better. And so this book fair, so soon after the young man was killed, is both an emblem of resil-ience as well as a major act of defiance to those interests.

The Mogadishu Book Fair is also a reminder that life persists. War is upheaval and uncertainty but life per-sists because people often don’t have a choice: all human beings suffer from that instinct to keep moving. Despite the perennial threat of random vio-lence, people in Mogadishu still wake up every morning, get dressed and go about their business, because life per-sists. This resilience shouldn’t deter action to stop conflict - the trauma and suffering of war is real. Rather, it is another call back to our shared humanity. With the exception of socio-paths, most of us want the same things - to be able to eat, drink, provide, sing, dance and smile.

Nevertheless, in Mogadishu, the reality of war is never so far away that those attending the book fair can forget it altogether. At eye-level, far below the range of drone photog-raphy, the trees are hidden from the street by thick concrete blast walls. Cars weave through security barriers along pavements patrolled by men in uniform brandishing automatic rifles. Meetings are cancelled because security warnings lead to insur-mountable traffic. A five-minute walk elsewhere is a 30-minute security effort in Mogadishu. There are body scanners at every turn, invasive pat-downs to enter restaurants and coffee shops, and the constant background hum of military helicopters and regular shooting drills.

War is real, present and toxic, but hope and determination are a start to pushing back. The book fair and the cluster of efforts by young Somali people to reclaim the story of their country are an unexpected and welcome knot of green in the desert of conflict.

NANJALA NYABOLA AL JAZEERA

QUOTE OF THE DAY

The conditional ceasefire will start today. We call on

the leadership of the Taliban to welcome

the wishes of Afghans for a long-lasting and

real peace.

Ashraf Ghani

Afghan President

All Japanese govt offices should join hands

Innovation, through which scientific and technological achievements can develop into new industries, is a source of national strength.Cooperation among different fields is

indispensable for technological inno-vation. It is safe to say that the gov-ernment has an important role to assume in building schemes for that endeavour.

The government has established a council for the promotion of an integrated innovation strategy. Chaired by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, the council will serve as a place for relevant organizations seeking to increase their cooperation.

It is reasonable to improve a situation in which too many related organizations have been set up within the government.

In addition to the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, headquarters tied to the fields of space, marine science, health and medicine, information tech-nology and intellectual property have laid down their own plans. Related ministries

and agencies have been competing with each other to advance similar projects.

Artificial intelligence-related policies are the most conspicuous examples. Although the measures are based on the same technology, the organizations, min-istries and agencies are each striving to develop their own utilization of the tech-nology in the fields over which they exercise control. They have been fiercely competing to corral personnel with expertise and acquire budgetary appro-priations. All of this has been too wasteful.

Based on an integrated innovation strategy laid down by the government in June, the new promotion council will select cross-disciplinary themes related to about 10 fields, such as AI, biotechnology and environmental energy. A team will be formed for each theme to tackle related issues.

If there is a lack of coordination among these individual teams, the scheme will come to nothing. It is important for them to closely cooperate with each other in establishing a foothold for technological innovation.

The council attaches importance to promoting the utilization of big data pos-sessed by the government and other organizations. As there have been delays in the use of data across various fields, the council is seeking to facilitate a common base for such utilization.

For example, the Geospatial Infor-mation Authority possesses detailed map information, but it is difficult to use it in evacuation and relief activities in the event of a major disaster. Wide-area observation satellite data has not been sufficiently utilized for such purposes as planting agricultural products and pre-dicting their growth.

This is because there are differences in the formats used in each field to catalog and use data. This can only be described as a waste of data.

In the United States, Google and other giant IT corporations are using the data they have collected and accu-mulated on their own to provide such services as shopping on the internet, automatic translation and auton-omous driving.

The total number

of properties

sold during the

month of June,

across all eight

municipalities

in Qatar,

reached 267,

up 97.8 percent

compared to 135

properties traded

in June 2017

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFIeditorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMEDm.salim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED OSMAN ALI osman@pen.com.qa

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Qatar’s rising real estate

Qatar real estate sector continues to show strong performance. The number of transactions and the value of deals are on rising trajectory. The

number of real estate transactions signed in June 2018 nearly doubled compared to the corresponding month last year.

The total number of properties sold during the month of June, across all eight municipalities in Qatar, reached 267, up 97.8 percent compared to 135 properties traded in June 2017, according to the latest official data released by the Ministry of Development, Planning and Statistics data.

The combined value of real estate transactions signed during the month of June 2018 stood at QR1.33bn.

The real estate sector is expected to grow in the coming years, as the government has taken several measures in the past to boost construction and real estate sector. In December last year, the Cabinet had approved the draft law on regulating non-Qatari own-ership and use of real estate. The rising trend in the real estate sector is in sync with the overall rising trend in

the Qatari economy.According to Qatar

Central Bank (QCB) figures, Qatar’s current account balance recorded a surplus QR23.4bn in 2017, in con-trast to a deficit of QR30.1bn in 2016. The recovery in global energy prices enabled the turnaround in the current account balance and restores back the surplus position that Qatar had maintained for nearly two decades prior to 2016. As a percentage of GDP, the surplus stood at 3.8 percent in 2017 as against a deficit of 5.4 percent in 2016,

Within the current account, the trade (goods) account surplus increased to QR133.7bn in 2017, a sharp increase of 44.8 percent from the surplus of QR92.4bn in 2016.

Increase in trade surplus is followed from a combination of sharp rise in exports and contraction in imports. While exports grew by 17.8 percent to QR245.7bn, driven by hydrocarbon exports, imports declined by 3.7 percent to QR112bn on an annual basis.

The QCB document noted under the ‘portfolio investment’ Qatar saw a net capital inflow of QR33.5bn during 2017, increasing from QR22.1bn during 2016.

With the sustained recovery in energy prices, the share of energy related exports in total exports increased to 84.2 percent during 2017 from 81.6 percent during the previous year. Because of this surge in hydrocarbon exports, total exports as percentage of GDP increased to 40.3 percent during 2017 from 37.6 percent. On the other hand, the overall deficit under non-merchandise heads in 2017 declined by 9.9 percent to QR110.3bn from QR122.5bn.

Imran Khan swept to

power in last month’s

election on a populist

platform vowing to

root out corruption

among a venal elite

and lift people out of

poverty.

Since the end

of the war, both

Koreas have banned

ordinary citizens

from visiting

relatives on the

other side of the

border or contacting

them without

permission. Nearly

20,000 people have

participated in 20

rounds of face-

to-face reunions

since 2000. No one

has had a second

chance to see their

relatives.

07MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2018 OPINION

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‘Dream or reality?’ Koreans to meet afterdecades apart

Imran Khan raises Pakistani hopes sky high

KIM TONG-HYUNG AP

DRAZEN JORGIC & SAAD SAYEED REUTERS

Lee Soo-nam was 8 the last time he saw his older brother. Sixty-eight years ago this month the boy watched,

bewildered, as his 18-year-old brother left their home in Seoul to escape invading North Korean sol-diers who were conscripting young men just weeks after invading South

Korea to start the Korean War.An hour later, his brother, Ri Jong

Song, was snatched up by North Korean soldiers near a bridge across Seoul’s Han River. Lee always assumed Ri died during the three-year war that killed and injured mil-lions before a cease-fire in 1953, but his mother prayed daily for her lost son’s return, giving up only a few years before her death in 1975.

But Ri survived the war, living in North Korea. The brothers, now 76 and 86, will be among hundreds of Koreans who will participate, starting Monday, in a week of temporary reunions of divided families. Many have had no contact with each other since the war cemented the division of the Korean Peninsula into the North and South.

The elderly relatives gathering at North Korea’s scenic Diamond Mountain resort know that, given the fickle nature of ties between the rival Koreas, this could be the last time they see each other before they die.

“I’m nervous. I’m still unsure whether this is a dream or reality. I just want to thank him for staying alive all these years,” Lee said in an interview in his home in Seoul, not far from where he last saw his brother.

Since the end of the war, both Koreas have banned ordinary citizens

from visiting relatives on the other side of the border or contacting them without permission. Nearly 20,000 people have participated in 20 rounds of face-to-face reunions since 2000. No one has had a second chance to see their relatives.

This week’s reunions come after a three-year hiatus during which North Korea tested three nuclear weapons and multiple missiles that demon-strated the potential of striking the continental United States.

At past meetings, elderly relatives - some relying on wheelchairs or walking sticks - have wept, hugged and caressed each other in a rush of emotions. According to Seoul’s Unifi-cation Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, more than 500 sepa-rated South Koreans and their family members will cross the border for two separate rounds of reunions between Aug. 20 and 26.

At Diamond Mountain, Lee expects to meet Ri and his 79-year-old North Korean wife and 50-year-old son. Lee will bring more than a dozen family photos, including a black-and-white picture of Ri in a buzz-cut when he was 16 or 17.

“That’s how I remember him,” Lee said. “I lost a brother and my parents lost a child, but my brother lost his parents, siblings, friends and an entire hometown, and he probably spent his whole life longing for all of those things. It’s heartbreaking to think about.”

The difference in the siblings’ family names is a product of the Korean Peninsula’s division - each country uses different English trans-literation rules, so Lee in the South is spelled Ri in the North.

Many of the South Korean partic-ipants in the reunions will be war refugees who were born in North Korea.

Kim Kwang-ho, 79, was among some 14,000 refugees who were ferried to South Korea by the American freighter SS Meredith Victory in December 1950 in one of the world’s largest humanitarian operations. Also on the ship were the parents of current South Korean Pres-ident Moon Jae-in, who described the evacuation as a “voyage of freedom

and human rights” in a speech in Washington last year.

At the reunions, Kim expects to meet his 78-year-old brother, Kim Kwang Il, and his sister-in-law. Kim has vivid memories of what he described as a beautiful hometown in northern North Korea, where he plowed rice and corn fields with cattle, picked peaches and apricots from trees and spent hours swimming in brooks. He gets emotional when talking about the mother he left behind, who used to cry over the death of his brother during the war.

“I have clear memories of events that happened,” Kim said. “But somehow I can’t remember the faces of my mother and brother.”

Behind the raw emotions, the meetings are tightly coordinated events where participants are closely watched by North Korean officials and dozens of South Korean jour-nalists. As in previous reunions, South Korea’s Red Cross, which organizes the events with its North Korean counterpart, has issued a guidebook telling South Koreans what to do and what not to do.

“Political comments such as crit-icism of the North’s leadership and the state of its economy could put your (North Korean) family members into a difficult situation,” the green book says. “If a North Korean family member sings a propaganda song or makes a political comment, restrain them appropriately by naturally changing the subject of the conversation.”

Lee knows he won’t be able to talk much about what happened when his brother was taken in August 1950. Instead, he plans to share childhood memories, such as when Ri took his younger brothers on a hike on nearby Mount Nam to look at foxes living near an old fortress wall. South Koreans also can’t give their North Korean relatives luxury items because of international sanctions imposed on the North over its nuclear and missile programs, with past cash gifts banned this year to reflect the sanctions, according to a South Korean Red Cross official who didn’t want to be identified, citing office rules.

From creating 10 million jobs to building an Islamic welfare state and restoring Pakistan’s tattered image abroad, new

premier Imran Khan is facing a problem of his own making: runaway expectations raised by his lofty rhetoric.

A cricket legend and firebrand nationalist who is hero-worshipped by supporters, Khan swept to power in last month’s election on a populist platform vowing to root out cor-ruption among a venal elite and lift people out of poverty.

But he inherits control of a volatile nation facing mounting problems at home and abroad, including a looming economic crisis and a fracture with historic ally the United States over Pakistan’s alleged links to militants. Ties are also fraught with neighbours Afghanistan and nuclear-armed rival India.

Opponents in parliament talk of forming a grand coalition against Khan, dubbing him a “puppet” and accusing him of entering into a Faustian Pact with the powerful mil-itary, which has a history of ousting

prime ministers and clashing with civilian governments over control of foreign policy.

Khan denies all accusations that the military covertly helped him win the election.

And in his victory speech, Khan offered an olive branch to India and called for mutually beneficial ties with the United States.

Whether Khan can become the first Pakistani prime minister to com-plete a full five-year term in office will depend on his relationship with influ-ential generals, analysts say.

If his ideas on foreign policy differ from theirs, analysts say Khan would suffer a similar fate to other civilian leaders who have failed to see out their term.

“Then his future will be the same as anybody else’s,” political commen-tator Aamer Ahmed Khan said.

Forced to rely on smaller parties for a razor-thin majority in par-liament, and with the opposition con-trolling the Senate, Khan’s coalition government could struggle to push through legislation without major compromises. An increasingly

assertive judiciary could also hold it back.

Yet the mood in the country is one of unbridled optimism, espe-cially among Khan’s young sup-porters, who believe he can build a corruption-free and prosperous “New Pakistan” for the country’s 208 million people.

“His biggest challenge is managing expectations among his followers and voters because he’s almost promised them the moon,” said Raza Ahmad Rumi, the editor of Pakistan’s Daily Times newspaper.

During Independence Day cele-brations this week, when flag-waving Pakistanis flooded the streets of Islamabad, many voiced confidence that Khan would deliver on promises to build world class hospitals and improve education in a nation where the illiteracy rate hovers above 40 percent.

“I have moved my daughter (from a private) to a government school, because we are confident that Pakistan is going to change,” said Sheikh Farhaj, 40, who volunteered for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party during the elections.

Others were delighted Khan has broken the decades-long dominance of the two dynastic powerhouses, the outgoing Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party of jailed former premier Nawaz Sharif and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) of the Bhutto family.

“We have great expectations from Imran Khan,” said Shah Sultan, 38, a roadside flag seller. “We are lower class people and I voted from Khan because what the politicians have done to our country. They have left it with nothing.”

But Khan’s campaign pledges are likely to be checked by a worsening economic outlook, analysts say, espe-cially his vow to build a welfare state.

The central bank has devalued the rupee four times since December, but the current account deficit is still car-rying the currency towards a crisis, while the fiscal deficit has ballooned to 6.8 percent of GDP.

Economic growth is running at

nearly 6 percent, but given the unsustainability of these deficits it is easy to predict Pakistan’s growth is heading for a fall.

Khan’s government must urgently decide whether to request more loans from China, deepening Islamabad’s economic reliance on its neighbour, or ask the Interna-tional Monetary Fund (IMF) for what would be its 15th bailout since 1980.

Both lenders are likely to ask for more fiscal discipline, requiring drastic spending cuts.

Shafqat Mahmood, Khan’s new education minister, said the eco-nomic woes pose a major problem but the party is determined to deliver a welfare system and enact badly-needed reforms.

“Everyone in the party realises we will have to work overtime to meet these huge expectations,” Mahmood said.

Mahmood said Khan’s image as a politician untainted by corruption could boost faith in the government and convince more people to file taxes in a nation where less than 1 percent of the population pays income tax.

Khan has touted his “100 Day Plan” but many of the reforms PTI is proposing, from turning around loss-making state-run enterprises to reforming the tax collection bureau, will take far longer to accomplish.

Ending government corruption outright, or repatriating plundered wealth, is also unlikely.

“(Khan’s supporters) have a simplistic idea that if there is a clean man on top, the entire machinery becomes clean. That’s never the case anywhere in the world,” said Rumi.

08 MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2018ASIA

Majority of Imran’s ministers, advisers served under MusharrafINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: The newly announced cabinet of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) government contains many experienced politicians, the majority of whom previously held key posts in the regime of former dictator General (Retd) Pervez Musharraf.

As many as 12 members of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s cabinet served under Musharraf. The 21-member cabinet includes a former spokesperson of Mush-arraf, his attorney and several members of his cabinet and core team.

The Cabinet members who served under Musharraf in various capacities include Farogh Naseem, Tariq Bashir Cheema, Ghulam Sarwar Khan, Zubaida Jalal, Fawad Chauhdry, Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Shafqat Mehmood, Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar, Abdul Razak Dawood, Dr Ishrat Hussain and Amin Aslam.

Five of the new cabinet members had served as ministers in past Pakistan People’s Party governments. They include Pervez Khattak, Babar Awan, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Fehmida Mirza and Fawad Chaudhry.

Among the allies of the PTI,

the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has emerged as the biggest beneficiary with two cabinet portfolios, despite having only seven seats in the 342-member National Assembly.

One minister each was appointed from the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, Grand Dem-ocratic Alliance and Awami Muslim League, along with an independent MNA from the tribal districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Only three members of the cabinet are PTI stalwarts who never joined any other party: Asad Umar, Shireen Mazari and Aamir Kiyani.

Here is the brief profile of

some of the cabinet members.Senator Dr Farogh Naseem,

who has been given the important Law and Justice Min-istry, served until recently as Musharraf’s attorney in the infamous treason case. Farogh is regarded as one of the brilliant lawyers of the country.

He holds an LLB degree from the University of Wales and an LLM from the London School of Economics. He also has a PhD in comparative constitutional law from the University of London.

PTI spokesman Fawad Chaudhry, who has been desig-nated as Minister for Information and Broadcasting, served as the

spokesperson of Musharraf before joining PPP in 2012 where he served in the cabinet of two prime ministers, Yousuf Raza Gilani and Raja Pervez Ashraf.

He is the nephew of the late Chaudhry Altaf, a PPP politician who served as the Governor of Punjab from 1993 to 1997.

Shafqat Mehmood, who has been assigned the Federal Edu-cation and National History min-istries, is a seasoned politician. He was a caretaker federal min-ister in 1996-7, and a senator from 1994 to 1999.

Under Musharraf, he was Punjab Information Minister in 1999-2000. Shafqat holds

master’s degrees from Harvard University, the University of Southern California and Punjab University. He was a columnist for The News from 2000 to 2011.

Awami Muslim League chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmad has been named Minister for Railways. He was previously a minister for infor-mation and railways in cabinets working for administrations led by Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf.

Tariq Bashir Cheema has been allotted the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions. He, too, was a staunch supporter of Musharraf and was elected dis-trict Nazim of Bahawalpur during his rule.

Fresh quake jolts Indonesia’s Lombok triggering landslidesAFP

MATARAM: A strong earth-quake rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok yesterday, triggering landslides, damaging buildings and sending people fleeing just two weeks after a tremor killed more than 480 people there.

The 6.3-magnitude quake, centred in East Lombok, struck at a relatively shallow depth of seven kilometres and was felt across the island, officials said.

It was the third major quake in less than a month to rock the island, after deadly tremors on July 29 and August 5 and numerous aftershocks.

“The earthquake caused people to panic and flee their houses,” national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told Metro TV.

“There have been no reports of death or (serious) damage but people are traumatised.” At least one person suffered minor injuries while two more fainted from shock, he added.

Landslides were reported in a national park on Mount Rinjani where hundreds of hikers had been briefly trapped after the quake in late July. The park has been closed since then.

Local disaster mitigation agency spokesman Agung Pramuja said several houses and

other structures in the district of Sembalun, on the slopes of Mount Rinjani, collapsed on Sunday after being damaged by the previous two quakes.

The structures included checkpoints once used by trekkers climbing the mountain, Pramuja said, adding that the exact number of damaged buildings was still being checked.

Residents said the latest earthquake was felt strongly in East Lombok.

“I was driving to deliver aid to evacuees when suddenly the electricity pole was swaying. I realised it was an earthquake.

“People started to scream and cry. They all ran to the

street,” East Lombok resident Agus Salim said.

The tremor was also felt in the island’s capital Mataram and on the neighbouring resort island of Bali.

“Everybody ran outside their house. They’re all gathering in an open field, still terrified,” said Endri Susanto, a children’s rights activist in Mataram.

“People are traumatised by the previous earthquakes and aftershocks never seem to stop.”

The latest tremor comes two weeks after a shallow 6.9-mag-nitude quake on August 5 damaged tens of thousands of homes, mosques and businesses across Lombok.

At least 481 people died and thousands were injured.

The hardest-hit region was in the north of the island, which has suffered hundreds of after-shocks. A week before that quake, a tremor surged through the island and killed 17.

The August 5 quake left more than 350,000 displaced, with many sleeping under tents or tar-paulins near their ruined homes or in evacuation shelters, while makeshift medical facilities were set up to treat the injured.

Badly damaged roads, par-ticularly in the mountainous north of the island, are a headache for relief agencies trying to distribute aid.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani lays wreath at the Independence Monument, in the Ministry of Defence compound on Independence Day yesterday, in Kabul.

Afghans celebrate Independence DayANATOLIA

KABUL: Millions of Afghans marked the country’s 99th Inde-pendence Day with fervour yesterday despite heightened security and swelling militancy.

In downtown Kabul, the main boulevards were deco-rated with the tri-colour Afghan flag and huge posters of former King Amanullah Khan, who was at the helm of affairs in Afghan-istan from 1919 till 1929 when the country regained its sover-eignty over foreign policy from the British who were ruling neighbouring India back then.

The day, August 19, marks the end of British control over the

country’s foreign policy after three Anglo-Afghan Wars of the 19th and 20th centuries that also compelled the then Afghan rulers to acknowledge the Durand Line as a border between Afghanistan and the then British India.

On the eve of the Inde-pendence Day, a rare musical concert was also organised at the Zazai Park of the city with thousands of Kabul residents attending under tight security. Popular singer, Karan Khan, entertained visitors for hours before they were enthralled by spectacular fireworks.

Mohammad Ummar, a father of five children, said he usually does not allow his children to go

out in the evening owing to security concerns, but he relented because of the special day.

“Believe me, it is such a special feeling, I bring my whole family to the concert today in spite of security concerns, the wounded country needs healing. I wish God bring us peace forever,” Ummar said.

President Ashraf Ghani led the main official Independence Day ceremony in Kabul today where he laid a floral wrath on the memorial of the martyrs of the Afghan Independence.

However, not everyone is in a celebratory mood as the country reels from a surging militancy.

PTI’s Usman Buzdar elected Punjab CMINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) Usman Buzdar was yesterday elected Chief Minister of Punjab with the support of 186 MPAs, compared to the 159 backing PML-N’s Hamza Shahbaz Sharif.

Three hundred and forty-five of the total 354 MPAs of the Punjab Assembly had exercised their right to elect a leader of the house.

PPP lawmakers did not cast their votes in the election. At least five out of their seven members in the assembly left the building without casting their votes. One member opted to remain in the assembly, but did not cast his vote when the process began.

The election was held under the ‘division of the house’ system, with supporters of each candidate directed to different chambers and a headcount fol-lowing the ‘division’.

PML-N MPAs had worn black armbands in protest against alleged rigging in the July 25 election. They also registered their protest by chanting slogans.

Buzdar, in his first address to the Punjab Assembly after his election, said those questioning the merit of his nomination should understand that his

belonging to one of the poorest areas of Punjab qualifies him for the post.

“I understand the problems faced by people in those regions because I belong there. That is my merit,” the newly-elected CM said in response to criticism of his capability to lead the house.

Discussing his agenda for the province, Buzdar said: “Our first priority is to bring good governance to Punjab. We will then move on to strengthening our institutions.”

He added: “I am promising today that we will break the status quo. All our MPAs will be empowered and all of them will act like chief ministers in their own areas.”

The defeated candidate, Hamza Shahbaz, while appre-ciating the democratic tran-sition from the PML-N gov-ernment to the PTI government, said, “with a heavy heart, that the government’s mandate is marred by rigging”.

“The Election Commission of Pakistan was extraordinarily empowered. It had enormous powers. The Rs21bn spent on the election was taxpayers’ money. The Results Transmission System did not go down. Actually, it was an ambush on democracy,” he alleged.

Duterte’s daughter reaches out to a MarcosREUTERS

MANILA: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte thinks political dynasties are bad. But the way the prevailing political winds are blowing, it looks like a dynasty of his own might be taking shape.

Nine months away from mid-term elections that could determine the success or failure of his presidency, his daughter, Sara Duterte, is fast emerging as a power-broker who is aiming

to shore up support for his ambi-tious policy agenda, and, say some experts and insiders, his eventual succession.

By his own admission, the 73-year-old president is flagging. On Tuesday, he lamented his uphill struggle to tackle illicit drugs and cut state corruption, predicting that he’ll “hardly make a dent” in his remaining four years in office.

During a ceremony and again at a dinner afterwards, he said he

was tired, exasperated and thinking about quitting, and ended his sombre, one hour, 20 minute speech with: “I’m telling you, I’m ready to step down and retire.”

That contrasts sharply from his 40-year-old daughter, who has started manoeuvring to build alliances and expand her small party in the southern Davao region into a new political jug-gernaut, as fissures appear in her father’s ruling PDP-Laban party.

She was instrumental in

bringing together political factions to stage a dramatic July 23 ousting of divisive Duterte ally Pantaleon Alvarez as lower house speaker, replacing him with veteran Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, 71, a former president with clout and connec-tions to ensure support for Duterte and his agenda.

The move was helped by a relationship developing between Sara Duterte and Imee Marcos, 62, a provincial governor and key figure in the still influential family of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled the Philip-pines for two decades before being ousted in a 1986 uprising.

The two women posed together for pictures last week, each with one hand doing Duterte’s trademark clenched fist, and making a “V” sign synonymous with the rule of Marcos with the other.

Rodrigo Duterte’s rise has been a boon for the Marcos family. Imee Marcos frequently attends his official events and in 2016, Duterte granted her long-standing wish for her father to be buried with military honours at a Manila heroes’ cemetery.

Duterte also said last week that if he steps down, her brother, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, a former senator better known as “Bongbong”, would have been a capable replacement for him.

Marcos Jr came a close second to Leni Robredo, a rival of Duterte, in the 2016 vice presidential election, but he has challenged the result in the Supreme Court.

Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio (left) and Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos gesture during an alliance meeting with local political parties in Paranaque, Metro Manila.

The 6.3-magnitude

quake, centred in East

Lombok, struck at

a relatively shallow

depth and was felt

across the island,

officials said. It was

the third major quake

in less than a month

to rock the island,

after deadly tremors

on July 29 and August

5 and numerous

aftershocks.

09MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2018 EUROPE

‘No progress’ made in Putin-Merkel talksREUTERS

MESEBERG: Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, as well as Iran and a gas pipeline project that has drawn US ire during tough talks outside Berlin that ended with no clearcut progress.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no agreements were reached, but the meeting had simply been intended to “check the watches” after Merkel’s meeting with Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in May.

Ties between the two coun-tries have been strained since Russia’s annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014.

The two leaders both viewed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project as a purely commercial venture, despite persistent fire by the US and Ukrainian govern-ments, Peskov said.

“That’s why it is necessary to take measures against possible non-competitive and illegal

attacks from the third countries in order to complete this project eventually,” he said. It was not immediately clear what such “measures” could entail.

At the start of the talks, Merkel underscored her expec-tation that Ukraine should con-tinue to have a role in gas transit to Europe, and welcomed the start of discussions among the European Union, Ukraine and Russia on that issue.

Putin, speaking at the German government’s Meseburg castle, said such a move had to make sense from a business perspective.

“The main thing is that the Ukrainian transit — which is tra-ditional for us — meets economic

demands,” he said. “Nord Stream 2 is exclusively an economic project.”

The United States is pressing Berlin to halt the pipeline that will carry gas from Russia under the Baltic Sea, arguing it will increase Germany’s dependence on Russia for energy.

Ukraine fears the pipeline will allow Russia to cut it off from the gas transit business, while Germany’s eastern European neighbours worry about Russian encroachment.

Peskov said the threat of pos-sible US sanctions against com-panies involved in the project was not discussed.

Standing beside Putin before the talks, Merkel said both coun-tries — but especially Russia as a permanent member of the UN Security Council — had a respon-sibility to try to solve the ongoing fighting in Ukraine and Syria.

She said she also planned to raise potentially thorny human rights issues with Putin, and discuss bilateral relations.

“I am of the opinion that con-troversial issues can only be

addressed in dialogue and through dialogue,” she said.

Both leaders raised concerns about Syria and the plight of the many refugees created by the seven-year-old war there.

Merkel said it was important to avert a humanitarian crisis in Idlib, Syria and the surrounding region, and said she and Putin had already discussed the issue of constitutional reforms and possible elections when they last met in Sochi in May.

Putin said that everything must be done to help Syrian ref-ugees to return to their country and that Syria needed assistance to rebuild. The two leaders took no questions.

On Ukraine, Merkel said she hoped fresh efforts could be undertaken at the beginning of the new school year to disen-tangle Ukrainian military forces and separatists on the front lines in the Donbass region.

Putin arrived in Germany on

Saturday evening after a stop at in Austria where he danced with Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl at her wedding to entrepreneur Wolfgang Meilinger.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper Germany hoped to “create new momentum” in the Minsk peace process. Sanctions relief for Russia would only be negotiated if the Minsk accord was imple-mented, he added.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands at the German government guesthouse at Meseberg Palace, in Gransee, in Germany, yesterday.

Report finds 840 French bridges at risk of collapseAP

PARIS: An audit commis-sioned by the French government said about 840 French bridges are suffering from serious damage and at risk of collapse in the coming several years.

President Emmanuel Macron’s government had already promised new infra-structure spending, but is coming under new pressure after Tuesday’s bridge col-lapse in neighboring Italy that killed 43 people.

The audit, published yes-terday by the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, said a third of the 12,000 gov-ernment-maintained bridges in France need repairs. About 7 percent, or about 840 bridges, present a “risk of col-lapse” in the coming years if spending is kept at current levels, the audit says.

The audit doesn’t address thousands of other French bridges maintained by private companies or local author-ities, which have seen budget cuts in recent years.

The government released a summary of the audit last month, blaming previous administrations for incon-sistent and inadequate road funding, and saying the growth of traffic and increasing episodes of extreme weather have worsened the problem.

The Transport Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment Sunday.

UK Parliament car crash suspect faces two chargesAP

LONDON: A driver whose car collided with several people before crashing outside Brit-ain’s Parliament has been charged with attempted murder, police in London said yesterday.

The Metropolitan Police force said Salih Khater faces two charges — trying to kill police officers, and trying to kill members of the public.

Three people were injured when Khater, a British citizen originally from Sudan, hit a group of cyclists before

colliding with security outside Parliament on Tuesday. Police say that was an attempt to murder police officers.

One injured person was treated at the scene and two were taken to local hospitals.

The crash came less than 18 months after an attacker plowed a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four people, then fatally stabbed a police officer before being shot dead in a courtyard outside Parliament.

Khater is due to appear in a London court today.

Theresa May could face trouble over Brexit deal: MPREUTERS

LONDON: Prime Minister Theresa May could face trouble getting her Brexit deal approved by the British parliament before exit day unless she changes her proposals, the head of an influ-ential group of pro-Brexit lawmakers said in an interview.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, chair of the European Research Group, a faction within May’s Conserv-ative Party, is strongly opposed to the government’s so-called Chequers plan for Brexit and favours a clean break with the

bloc on March 29 next year.“If she sticks with Chequers,

she will find she has a block of votes against her in the House of Commons,” Rees-Mogg, tipped as a possible successor to May, told The Sunday Times news-paper, describing the Chequers proposals as “surrender” to the EU.

“Of course the Eurosceptics in parliament are not in a majority on all issues, but we will inevitably be in a majority on some of them and that will make the legislation extraordinarily dif-ficult if it is based on Chequers.”

The Chequers plan would keep Britain in a free trade zone with the EU for manufactured and agricultural goods. But some Brexit supporters have said it would mean parts of the British economy would still be subject to rules set in Brussels.

Both London and Brussels say they want to get a divorce deal at the October 18 EU Council, but diplomats think that target date is too optimistic. If May cannot get a deal by October, an agreement could be reached at the December 13/14 EU Council.

Rees-Mogg said letting it run to December would be “very risky”, the newspaper reported, as that would only leave three months to get the deal approved by the British parliament.

That would mean the gov-ernment “must come forward with a deal that Brexiteers like, because otherwise they might find it’s much harder to get through parliament than they think”, he was quoted as saying.

Parliament will have two votes: one on the Brexit deal and one on the Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill.

May is betting that the fear of a so called “no-deal” scenario will push many Conservative and Labour lawmakers to support a deal, but the numbers are tight. In recent votes, the prime min-ister commanded a majority of around six votes on major Brexit issues.

Rees-Mogg said he believed a “Canada-plus” deal, a free trade pact along the lines of the EU’s 2016 agreement with Canada but with deeper ties given Britain’s already closer trading links, could command a majority in parliament.

Merkel and Putin

discussed conflicts in

Ukraine and Syria, as

well as Iran and a gas

pipeline project.

Cyprus hands plane hijacker over to EgyptAP

NICOSIA: An Egyptian man who hijacked a domestic EgyptAir flight in 2016 and ordered it to land in Cyprus has been extradited to his homeland after giving up a drawn-out legal fight, authorities said yesterday.

Seif Eddin Mustafa was transferred to Egyptian custody and flown back to Egypt late Saturday, where prosecutors are investigating the incident.

Cyprus Justice Minister Ionas Nicolaou said that Mus-tafa’s extradition went ahead after he dropped a three-year court battle to avoid extradition.

Mustafa had challenged extradition on the grounds that

he could face torture or an unfair trial in Egypt.

Mustafa hijacked the EgyptAir flight in March 2016 using a fake suicide belt and diverted it to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. A six-hour standoff with Cypriot author-ities on the tarmac of Cyprus’ Larnaca airport ended peace-fully after all 72 passengers and crew were released and Mustafa was arrested.

Mustafa told a Cypriot court that he meant no harm to anyone.

He said he was trying to expose what he called the “fascist regime” of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and to help secure the release of 63 female dissidents being held in Egyptian prisons.

Italy threatens to send migrants ‘back to Libya’AFP

ROME: Italian far-right Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini (pictured) threatened yesterday to send “back to Libya” nearly 180 people stranded for three days on an Italian coastguard ship if the EU did not step in to resolve another migrant row with Malta.

The 177 people have been sat off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa since Thursday after being saved by the coastguard’s Diciotti vessel, and Italy is battling with Malta over who should take them in.

“Either Europe decides to seriously offer Italy some con-crete help, beginning with for example the 180 immigrants on board the Diciotti ship, or we will be forced to do what

will definitively end the human traffickers’ business. That means taking the people saved in the sea back to Libya,” Salvini said in a statement.

Numerous human rights abuses have been reported in detention centres that hold migrants hoping to make the perilous crossing of the Mediter-ranean and arrive in Europe.

The Diciotti has been stood off Lampedusa while Italy’s pop-ulist government, in power since June, demanded that Malta take in the passengers.

Earlier yesterday, the Maltese government, which on

Wednesday allowed 141 migrants aboard the Aquarius vessel to dock after an agreement to distribute them to a number of European countries, underlined its refusal of Italy’s demands.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that the migrants’ boat was not in distress and that they also refused help, while interior minister Michael Far-rugia wrote on Twitter that “the only solution” was for the people, saved in waters between the countries, to be taken to Lampedusa or another Italian port.

World Pipe Band ChampionshipsCompetitors taking part in the World Pipe Band Championships, in Glasgow. The event has been operating regularly since 1930, when the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association was formed. For competitive bands, the title of World Champion is highly coveted, and this event is seen as the culmination of a year’s worth of preparation, rehearsal and practice.

10 MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2018AMERICAS

Brennan considers legal action to keep clearanceAP

WASHINGTON: Former CIA Director John Brennan (pictured) said yesterday that he is consid-ering taking legal action to try to prevent President Donald Trump from stripping other current and former officials’ security clear-ances.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Brennan said he’s been contacted by a number of lawyers about the possibility of an injunction in the wake of Trump’s move to revoke his clearance and threaten nine others who have been critical of the president or are connected to the Russia probe.

“If my clearances and my reputation as I’m being pulled through the mud now, if that’s the price we’re going to pay to

prevent Donald Trump from doing this against other people, to me it’s a small price to pay,” Brennan said. “So I am going to do whatever I can personally to try to prevent these abuses in the future. And if it means going to court, I will do that.”

Brennan, who served in President Barack Obama’s

administration, said that while he’ll fight on behalf of his former CIA colleagues, it’s also up to Congress to put aside politics and step in.

“This is the time that your country is going to rely on you, not to do what is best for your party but what is best for the country,” he said.

Trump yanked Brennan’s

security clearance last week, saying he felt he had to do “something” about the “rigged” probe of Russian election interference.

And he has said he may do the same for nine others, including a Justice Department official whose wife worked for the firm involved in producing a dossier on Trump’s ties to Russia.

An executive order signed in 1995 by President Bill Clinton lays out the process for approving security clearances and describes a detailed revo-cation and appeal procedure.

Former Obama-era CIA Director Leon Panetta, who also served as defense secretary, said yesterday that Trump must abide by the executive order unless he decides to change or cancel it. Speaking on CBS’ “Face the

Nation,” he said Trump’s decision to revoke Brennan’s clearance raises questions about whether he followed due process.

Brennan’s legal warning came as other officials joined the growing chorus of critics — now more than 75 intelligence offi-cials — denouncing Trump’s security clearance threats, saying they have a right to express their views on national security issues without fear of punishment.

Retired Navy Adm Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George W Bush and Obama, likened it to President Richard Nixon’s use of a political enemies list.

Mullen said yesterday that while he doesn’t agree with Brennan’s decision to criticise the president, the former CIA director has the right to freedom

of speech unless he’s revealing classified information.

“It immediately brings back the whole concept of the enemies list,” Mullen said, “and even before that, in the early ‘50s, the McCarthy era, where the admin-istration starts putting together lists of individuals that don’t agree with them and that historically, obviously, has proven incredibly problematic for the country.”

Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin agreed with Trump that Brennan’s com-ments “really did cross a line.”

But, he said, rather than pulling officials’ security clear-ances, Trump should avoid polit-icizing the issue and simply deny them access to classified material.

“I don’t want to see an enemies list,” he said.

Venezuelan migrants attacked in Brazil

Residents of the Brazilian border town of Pacaraima burn tyres and belongings of Venezuelan immigrants after attacking their two main makeshift camps, yesterday.

John Brennan said

that while he’ll fight

on behalf of his former

CIA colleagues, it’s

also up to Congress to

put aside politics and

step in.

‘Congress on track to avoid govt shutdown’BLOOMBERG

WASHINGTON: The US Congress appears to be on track to avoid a government shutdown when the federal fiscal year ends next month, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said.

The US House and Senate are ahead of schedule in writing spending bills needed to keep the government open, Mul-vaney said.

“All signs are good that we’re going to actually get some spending bills passed before the end of the fiscal year.”

President Donald Trump has threatened a shutdown before the November elections if Congress doesn’t fund the

construction of a wall at the Mexican border and enact other immigration reforms.

Without new appropria-tions, the government could close as soon as the fiscal year ends on September 30.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have said they are trying to complete full-year funding bills for most agencies before the start of the next fiscal year and will wait until later to seek $5bn for the wall.

For the budget negotiations, Mulvaney said Trump had made clear to Congressional leaders he doesn’t want another omnibus spending bill and that while he doesn’t want the government to spend so much money.

AP

SACRAMENTO: California lawmakers are abandoning a proposal by Gov Jerry Brown to shield electrical utilities from some financial liability for wild-fires. For now.

There’s not enough time to settle the contentious and complex issues involved before the legislative session ends Aug. 31, Napa Democratic Sen Bill Dodd said.

“It was a tough fight ... so we are pivoting,” said Dodd, co-chairman of the legislative con-ference committee on wildfire preparedness and response.

Brown’s proposal would have let judges decide how much utilities pay when their equipment causes wildfires. It would have softened a legal standard that generally holds them entirely responsible for

the costs of fires triggered by their power lines or other infrastructure.

Current California law holds utilities responsible for damage from fires ignited by their equipment even if they have followed safety rules.

Those who want to change the law fear utilities could go bankrupt or significantly raise prices for California residents as climate change makes wild-fires even more severe.

Lawmakers raised concerns about Brown’s plan at an August 9 hearing on the pro-posal. They said it would give utility companies too much protection without ensuring they safely maintain equipment.

The issue was raised last fall when Pacific Gas and Electric Co launched a lobbying cam-paign with other big utility com-panies to change the system.

California drops wildfireliability protection plan

AP

SAO PAULO: Residents of the Brazilian border town of Pacaraima attacked Venezuelan immigrants yesterday after a local storeowner was robbed, stabbed and beaten in an assault blamed on four migrants, authorities said.

Pacaraima, in the northern jungle state of Roraima, is a major border crossing with Ven-ezuela, where economic and political turmoil has driven tens of thousands to cross into Brazil over the past few years.

After a rally held to protest the attack against the store-owner, groups of residents roamed the town hurling rocks at the immigrants and setting fire to their belongings.

Police said the storeowner, who was beaten and robbed on Friday night, has been

hospitalised and is in stable condition.

The Roraima state gov-ernment estimates that more than 50,000 Venezuelan ref-ugees have crossed the border occupying already existing shelters or sleeping in tents.

The influx was nearly equal to the 10 percent of the total state’s population of 520,000 inhabitants.

Police said that to escape the violence, hundreds of immi-grants crossed the border back into Venezuela.

On a video posted by the G1 news portal a man’s voice is heard shouting “Get out. Get out. Go back to Venezuela.”

Wandenberg Ribeiro Costa, one of the organisers of rally, told said: “we have expelled the Venezuelans.”

Claudio Lamachia, pres-ident of the Brazilian Bar

Association, said in a statement that the violence that took place in Pacaraima “exposed the humanitarian drama afflicting our neighbours ... who are trying to improve their lives and survive.”

“The state of Roraima does not have the conditions to shelter all the immigrants,” he said, adding that close to 800 Venezuelans enter Roraima every day.

Milene de Souza, a volunteer at an evangelical church, said by phone that the situation is desperate.

“The world has to see what is happening here, where no one knows what to do,” she said, adding that every day she helps Venezuelan engineers, doctors, lawyers and other professionals who sleep on the streets “with their diplomas tucked under their pillows.”

Texas beefs up security as school year set to begin

AP

SANTA FE: Students in Santa Fe, Texas, will begin a new school year today with addi-tional security measures in place following a mass shooting in May that left 10 people dead.

The school district had metal detectors installed at entrances and hired five addi-tional police officers, as well as 10 “security assistants” who will monitor hallways throughout the day.

Teachers are receiving training on both trauma support and active shooter situations.

For some students, today will be the first time they’ve been back in class since the shooting rampage, which happened toward the end of the school year.

“We are going to try our best to get it all right on Monday, but I’m sure there will be things we’ll have to go back and tweak to get it right,” school board President J.R. “Rusty” Norman said last week. “But we will get it right.”

The school has also built a new hallway so students and staff won’t need to walk in the art classroom area, where authorities said Dim-itrios Pagourtzis began a rampage that killed eight stu-dents and two teachers. A grand jury has indicted Pagourtzis on capital murder charges, and he remains jailed without bond.

The school said it also hired additional counselors who specialise in trauma to aid students and staff.

Trump supporters during the Trump Unity Bridge float passage, in Hollywood, yesterday. The Trump Unity Float supporters met in Encino (15 miles NW of Hollywood) and caravaned on the 405 freeway, through some beach cities to end up by Trump star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood boulevard.

Mexico probes deaths of over 100 sea turtlesREUTERS

MEXICO CITY: Mexican offi-cials are investigating the recent deaths of more than 100 endangered sea turtles in a sanctuary in the south of the country, the government said.

A total of 113 turtles were found dead between July 24 and August 13 in the Puerto Arista sanctuary in the municipality of Tonala in Chiapas state, according to a statement by the office of the federal attorney for environ-mental protection (PROFEPA).

They comprised 102 olive ridley turtles, six hawksbill, and five belonged to the green turtle species, PROFEPA said. The dead turtles were dis-covered in different parts of the sanctuary across some 30 km of beaches.

DNA request denied in deaths of Colorado mom and kidsAP

FREDERICK: A Colorado judge has denied a request by a defence attorney for a man accused of killing his pregnant wife and two daughters to require a coroner to collect DNA from the necks of the young girls.

The judge said in an order he would not tell the medical examiner’s office involved in the case how to do its job.

Autopsies were com-pleted on Friday on Shanann Watts, 34, and her daughters, 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste. The cause of their deaths has not been made

public. The motion seeking the DNA samples from the girls’ necks suggested that they may have been strangled.

Police arrested Chris Watts, 33, late Wednesday on suspicion of killing his wife and children.

Their bodies were found on Thursday on property owned by Andarko Petroleum, one of Colorado’s largest oil and gas drillers, where Watts worked as an operator.

Court documents filed by defence lawyer James Merson said the girls had been sub-merged in crude oil for four days.

Trump Unity Bridge in Hollywood

16 MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2018MORNING BREAK

HIGH TIDE 13:45 – 22:45 LOW TIDE 05:30 – 20:45

Misty at places by early morning, becomes

hot daytime with slight dust at times.

WEATHER TODAY

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum 32oC 44oC

FAJRSHOROOK

03. 14 AM

04. 44 AM

11. 35 AM

02. 58 PM

06. 28 PM

07. 58 PM

ZUHRASR

MAGHRIBISHA

PRAYER TIMINGSChina to build robots to boost economyAFP

BEIJING: Robots that can diagnose diseases, play badminton and wow audiences with their musical skills are among the machines China hopes could revolutionise its economy, with visitors to a Beijing exhibition offered a glimpse of an automated future.

The popular stars of this year’s World Robot Conference, which ended yesterday, were undoubtedly the small, amateur-made “battle bots” which smashed, hammered and sawed their way through their opponents to a cacophony of cheers and shouts from a rapt audience.

“With this robot, I can fully express myself. I love the sparks,” said Huang Hongsong, one of around a dozen Chinese youths whose creations went head-to-head.

But while the battle bots are designed largely to entertain onlookers, China is deadly serious about riding the robotic wave with an eye on its economy.

Cheap manufacturing propelled the populous giant to become the world’s second largest economy in just a few decades.

But the country’s population is ageing, leaving it facing a double whammy of a worker shortage and increased labour costs as it gets wealthier.

Automated machines offer a pos-sible way out with President Xi Jinping in 2014 calling for a “robot revolution”.

Under the ruling Communist Party’s road map for its industrial future — dubbed “Made in China 2025” — state subsidies are pouring into the sector.

And at the robot show, a vast array of machines demonstrated how tech-nology may eventually replace human workers.

In one corner, a mechanical arm — designed to teach children — painted an elegant Chinese character while a

robotic fish explored its tank and a bat flapped its mechanical wings overhead.

By 2020, China is aiming for half of the industrial robots sold in the country to be made by Chinese com-panies, up from 27 percent currently -- with a target of 70 percent by 2025.

“Robots are the jewel in the crown for the manufacturing industry... a new frontier for our industrial revolution,” said Xin Guobin, China’s vice minister of industry, as he opened the conference.

But it is a delicate balancing act for Chinese policy-makers due to the potential for human job losses — a 2016 World Bank report said automation could threaten up to 77 percent of jobs in China’s current labour market.

Nonetheless a great robotic leap forward has already been made.

China is now the world’s number one market for industrial robots with some 141,000 units sold last year, accounting for a third of global demand, according to the International Federation of Robotics, which says demand could rise an additional 20 percent per year until 2020.

“China has huge opportunities to increase the level of its industrial auto-mation (and) industrial robotisation,” said Karel Eloot, an expert at consul-tancy firm McKinsey.

He notes that China still has huge room for growth given that compet-itors like Japan and Germany have four times the level of robotisation in their factories compared to the Asian giant.

Qu Daokui, president of local firm Siasun, which was showing off a snake-like robot that can operate in narrow passages, said China needs to increase the quality and sophistication of its robots, particularly in the field of AI.

“We used to focus on the accuracy, reliability and speed of robots — now it’s their flexibility, intelligence and adaptability that makes the difference,” he said, adding robots needed to interact and adapt to their environ-ments and “make independent

decisions”. Outside China’s fac-

tories, robots are becoming a more visible presence, deployed in restaurants and banks and even deliv-ering parcels.

China’s iFlytek, a spe-cialist in speech recog-nition systems, presented a new “medical assistant” robot at the Beijing show which it said was able to help identify up to 150 dis-eases and ailments -- even passing a national medical qualification exam with a high score.

The robot, which operated in con-junction with a doctor, asks patients a series of diagnostic questions and can also analyse X-rays.

“It’s already being used in hospitals since March and has made some 4,000 diagnoses,” company president Liu Qingfeng said, adding such a device could be particularly useful for clinics in more remote parts of China.

Chindex, a subsidiary of the

conglomerate Fosun, also distributes the “Da Vinci System” in China, an American built robot with arms and high-tech cameras to aid surgeons in the operating theatre.

“It transcends the limits of the (human) eye,” chief operating officer Liu Yu enthused.

But like the diagnostic robot, it still needs a helping human hand.

“It only helps the doctor, it cannot replace them. It would not be ethical, the human body is still too compli-cated,” he said.

Robot arms playing music at the 2018 World Robot Conference, in Beijing. BELOW: A visitor using a mobile phone to take a picture of a robot at the 2018 World Robot Conference.

Paris offers haven for unwanted goldfishAFP

PARIS: Paris biggest aquarium has created a refuge for goldfish, providing a second life for any unwanted pets who might otherwise find them-selves flushed down the toilet.

The Aquarium de Paris allows the city’s residents to drop off their fish, with the numbers using the service swelling around the time of the long summer holidays.

Instead of facing death in the city’s sewerage system, the rejected goldfish find them-selves given a full medical check up involving antibiotics and anti-parasite treatments.

After a month in quar-antine, during which a minority succumb to the trauma caused by the change in location, they are then released into a giant tank where they go on display to the public.

“Some of them arrive very weak,” said Celine Bezault, who cares for the fish at the giant aquarium complex which is located opposite the Eiffel Tower.

Since it was created two years ago, the goldfish rescue service has been used by

around 50 people a month and the tank now contains about 600 specimens, mostly the classic golden-red version, as well as striped and black ones.

Rather than spending all day banging into the glass of a small bowl, here the fish have space to swim and plenty of company, allowing them to socialise and move around in groups.

Once in the bigger tank, some of the fish undergo a remarkable transformation.

Being confined in a bowl stunts their growth, but the bigger space means some of them will expand to full adult size.

For Alexis Powilewicz, director of the Aquarium, the service is part of efforts to to promote awareness about animal welfare.

Goldfish are domesticated forms of wild carp originally found in east Asia and the practice of keeping them in bowls has existed for hundreds of years. It is thought to have originated in China.

“I think there’s growing awareness that the mis-treatment of animals is a real problem.”

‘Crazy Rich Asians’ tops the Box OfficeBLOOMBERG

WASHINGTON: ‘‘Crazy Rich Asians,’’ the first Hollywood film in almost a quarter century with a largely Asian cast, opened as the No. 1 weekend film in North American theaters, dispensing with last week’s winner “The Meg” and a new Mark Wahlberg picture.

Based on Kevin Kwan’s 2013 novel with the same name, the Warner Bros. romantic comedy collected an estimated $25.2m in US and Canadian theaters, researcher Com-Score Inc. said in an email yesterday. That beat last weekend’s winner, ‘‘The Meg,’’ which landed in second place, and ‘‘Mile 22,’’ an action-thriller starring Wahlberg that opened in third.

Helped by advertising, good reviews and social-media buzz, “Crazy Rich Asians” is performing well above the studio’s early estimate of about $18m for the five days. Minorities including Asians are underrep-resented in front of the camera and behind, and advocacy groups have looked to the film to help break down barriers.

‘‘Crazy Rich Asians’’ stars Constance Wu as Rachel Chu, a Chinese-American economics professor accompanying her boyfriend Nick Young, played by Harry Golding, to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding. Once there, she discovers the family is filthy rich and has to deal with his disapproving mother.

The two-hour film had a production budget of $30m and was expected to take in as much as $25m from Friday until yes-terday for AT&T Inc’s newly acquired Warner Bros division. Critics especially like the

movie, with 92 percent recommending it, according to aggregator RottenTomatoes.com. ‘‘The Joy Luck Club’’ of 1993 was the last English-language Hollywood film that featured an all-Asian cast.

“The Meg,” in its second weekend, col-lected $21.2m while ‘‘Mile 22,’’ from STX Entertainment, pulled in $13.6m. The latter film features Wahlberg as a tough-as-nails CIA officer tasked with smuggling a myste-rious police officer wanted for espionage from an American embassy in Southeast Asia to a safe airfield for extraction. Analysts at

Box Office Pro expected the action film to bring in $18m. The film cost an estimated $35m to make, according to Imdb.com

Critics didn’t like “Mile 22,” with just 22 percent recommending the film, according to RottenTomatoes.com.

The weekend’s other new release, ‘‘Alpha,’’ took in $10.5m, above the $6m predicted by Box Office Mojo. The Studio 8 release features a teenage boy who befriends a wolf to survive in the last Ice Age. The film, which opened in 2,719 theaters, was well-received, with 83 percent of critics recommending it.

FROM LEFT: Steven Yeun; Jae Suh Park; Randall Park; Daniel Dae Kim and Henry Golding during premiere of Warner Bros Pictures’ “Crazy Rich Asians” at TCL Chinese Theater IMAX, in Hollywood, California.

Researchers develop new way to grow blood vesselsIANS

NEW YORK: Researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have developed a clay-based platform to deliver therapeutic proteins to the body to assist with the formation of blood vessels.

The formation of new blood vessels — a process also known as angiogenesis — is one of the major clinical challenges in wound healing and tissue implants.

The technology, detailed in the journal Advanced Biosystems, introduces a new type of two-dimensional clay — also known as nanosil-icates — that delivers multiple specialised pro-teins called growth factors into the body to stim-

ulate new blood vessel formation.“Sustained and prolonged release of physiolog-

ically relevant doses of growth factors are important to avoid problems due to high doses, such as abrupt tissue formation,” said study co-author Akhilesh Gaharwar, Assistant Professor at Texas A&M Uni-versity in the US.

To allow blood vessels time to form, the clay is designed to prolong the release through its high surface area and charged characteristics, he added.

“Clay nanoparticles work like tiny weak magnets that hold the growth factors within the polymeric hydrogels and release very slowly,” Gaharwar said.

By establishing clay nanoparticles as a platform technology for delivering the growth factors, the

research will have a significant impact on designing the next generation of bioactive scaffolds and implants, he added.

The blood vessels are the part of the circulatory system, and microcirculation, that transports blood throughout the human body

There are three major types of blood vessels: the arteries, which carry the blood away from the heart; the capillaries, which enable the actual exchange of water and chemicals between the blood and the tissues; and the veins, which carry blood from the capillaries back toward the hear

A few structures (such as cartilage and the lens of the eye) do not contain blood vessels and are labeled.