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SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016 • 28 MOHARRAM 1438 • Volume 21 • Number 6964 thepeninsulaqatar @peninsulaqatar @peninsula_qatar 2 Riyals

Families who were displaced by the ongoing operation by Iraqi forces against Islamic State group to retake the city of Mosul, gathering in an area near Qayyarah, yesterday. → See also page 3

Displaced families

QNA & AP

DOHA/RIYADH: Qatar yesterday expressed its condemnation and denunciation over the ballistic missile launched by Houthi militias target-ing the Holy city of Makkah.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that launching a missile towards Makkah is a blatant assault on the sanctity of the Islamic holy sites and it represents a provo-cation to the feelings of millions of Muslims around the world.

The Ministry also considered this attack as a clear evidence of the continuation of the Houthi militias’ excesses and their refusal to adhere to the resolutions of the international community and the ongoing efforts to implement the armistice. It also

hampers all efforts to reach a politi-cal solution to the Yemeni crisis.

The statement stressed Qatar ‘s firm position supporting the tireless efforts undertaken by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to promote security and peace as well as to achieve peace in Yemen in accordance with the Gulf initiative, the outputs of the National Dialogue as well as the relevant UN resolutions, including the UNSC Res-olution 2216.

GCC Secretary-General Dr Abdul-latif bin Rashid Al Zayani expressed the strong condemnation of target-ing of Makkah by a ballistic missile launched by the Houthi-Saleh group.

In a statemen, Al Zayani said GCC states consider this brutal assault a provocation to the feelings of Mus-lims and disrespect to the sanctity of Islamic holy sites. He added that the attack is a clear evidence of the

group’s refusal to acknowledge the international community’s will and decisions as well as efforts to enforce the truce in Yemen and reach a polit-ical solution to the crisis there.

“The Iranian regime supports a terrorist group that launched its rockets on Makkah,” Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nay-han wrote on Twitter. “Is this regime Islamic as it claims?”

Yemen’s Shia rebels and their allies fired a ballistic missile deep into Saudi Arabia, an overnight strike that they said had targeted an inter-national airport while the kingdom claimed that it flew towards the holy city of Makkah.

Saudi Arabia said the missile was “intercepted and destroyed” 65km from Makkah, which is home to the Ka’aba that the world’s Muslims pray towards five times a day.

Angry Saudis soon denounced the missile fire online with hashtags questioning the faith of Shia rebels known as Houthis, as other Sunni Arab leaders in the Gulf linked the attack to Shia power Iran.

Invoking Makkah also invigorated support for Saudi Arabia as it leads the stalemated war in the Arab world’s poorest country, as well as turned attention away from those starving under a kingdom-led blockade and the civilians killed in its air strikes.

The Saudi military said the mis-sile, fired on Thursday night from Yemen’s northwestern Saada prov-ince, which borders the kingdom, caused no damage. The Saudi mil-itary has a supply of US-made, surface-to-air Patriot missile bat-teries it previously has fired at Houthi-launched missiles.

The kingdom’s military said in

a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency that it immediately targeted the area where the missile was launched in air strikes.

The Houthis and their allies, including forces loyal to former Yem-eni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have a stockpile of Soviet-era Scud mis-siles and locally designed variants. A Houthi ballistic missile fired ear-lier this month targeted Taif, home to Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd Air Base, which also is near Makkah.

What the missile fired Thursday night targeted, however, quickly became a controversy.

The Houthi-controlled satel-lite news channel Al Masirah said the Yemeni rebels had fired a Vol-cano-1 variant missile at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Air-port, without mentioning Makkah.

The airport is 75km northwest of Makkah.

The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency said the missile “directly hit” the airport and caused mas-sive destruction, though there were no delays or diversions affecting the airport yesterday.

The Saudi military, however, stressed the missile was fired “towards” Makkah, without elabo-rating — the protection of the holy city is a key pillar of the Saudi royal family’s prestige and the country’s national identity.

While analysts suggest Tehran doesn’t have direct control over the Houthis, the US Navy says it is has intercepted Iranian arms heading to the rebels. In Iran, state media reported on the ballistic missile fire citing international reports, without any government comment.

Qatar condemns Houthi missile attack targeting Makkah

By Fazeena Saleem

The Peninsula

DOHA: Incidents of breast cancer among young women is considerably high in Qatar and the region compared to the West, said a senior offi-cial yesterday.

The age of women first experience breast cancer or the disease acquires and develops is around 15 years younger than the West-ern countries, Dr Sheikh Khalid bin Jabor Al Thani, Chairman of Qatar Cancer Society told The Peninsula.

“In the whole GCC the disease is at very younger age than the West. Comparatively speaking the onset age here is between 30 and 45 years, where it is 50 years in the West,” he said speaking on sidelines of the Breast Can-cer Conference.

Breast Cancer Conference ‘Present Stand-ards and New Perspectives’ commenced yesterday in the presence of H E Dr Hanan Al Kuwari, Minister of Public Health, and several other senior officials at the Sheraton Grand Doha Resort & Convention Hotel, Doha.

The conference was organised by the Qatar Cancer Society to coincide with the Breast Can-cer awareness month— October.

It has a special session dedicated to ‘Breast Cancer in Very Young Women.’

“Among all breast cancer patients in Qatar there are a considerable number of younger ones and seeing an increase in these numbers is an alarming situation. Yet the reason behind the condition is yet unknown,” said Dr Al Thani.

“However through awareness on early detection and changing lifestyle habits we hope to control the situation soon,” he added.

More than 2,500 local and international healthcare officials, experts and practition-ers at the Breast Cancer Conference discuss and learn about new prevention, screen-ing, diagnosis, and treatment approaches to breast cancer. “This conference is different from other conferences we had been organ-ising in the past. Here we are looking to learn about new technology and approach for treat-ment,” said Dr Al Thani.

The two-day conference has several work-shops and presentations on different issues related to breast cancer such as Breast cancer and Survivorship, Adjuvant radiotherapy in the

management of breast cancer: rationale, indi-cations and techniques, Optimal treatment of brain metastases in breast cancer : Are we there yet?, New Aspects and Insights in the Pathology

of Breast Cancer and Management of Heredi-tary Breast Cancer.

→ Continued on page 2

More young women in Qatar prone to breast cancer

Bloomberg

DOHA: Qatar Airways said some of the sixty 737 Max jetliners it ordered this month from Boeing Co. are destined for another car-rier the Gulf operator is buying, and that Airbus Group SE still has time to rescue a $6.4bn deal for the competing A320neo model.

“The 737 is for us to grow our narrow-bodies and at the same time for our investment in another carrier,” Chief Executive Officer Akbar Al Baker said in an inter-view, adding that Airbus must prove the troubled Neo’s credentials in-service if he’s to cease cancelling planes as they’re due for hando-ver. Qatar Air has refused to take the revamped A320 after cooling issues with the jet’s Pratt & Whitney engines compromised its perform-ance in hot conditions.

Russia loses election

to UN rights councilUNITED NATIONS: Russia yesterday failed to win reelection at the United Nations Human Rights Council in a vote rights groups said reflected inter-national disapproval of Moscow’s involvement in the war in Syria.

The UN General Assembly elected Hungary and Croatia instead to repre-sent eastern Europe at the 47-nation council, which monitors and investigates rights violations worldwide. The outcome was an upset for Russia, which has been a member for all but one year since the council was set up in 2006. Asked about the defeat, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin quipped: “We need a break.” “Croatia and Hungary fortunately, because of their size, they are not as exposed to the winds of international diplomacy. Russia is quite exposed,” he said. “We have been there a number of years. I am sure next time we are going to get it.” More than 80 human rights and aid organisations had urged UN member-states to vote Russia off the council for its military support of President Bashar Al Assad in Syria’s bloody civil war.

Minister of Public Health H E Dr Hanan Al Kuwari, (centre), Chairman of Qatar Cancer Society, Dr Sheikh Khalid bin Jabor Al Thani (second left), and senior officials during the opening of the Breast Cancer Conference at Sheraton Grand Doha Resort and Convention Hotel, yesterday. Pic: Kammutty V P/The Peninsula

The Peninsula

DOHA: Al Dafna area experi-enced sudden power outage for a few hours due to a fault in the transmission network yesterday.

A Kahramaa team rushed to the affected areas and restored power. “Power has been restored to all affected areas. Contact us on 991 if you are still facing power interruptions on your premises,” Kahramaa tweeted.

Kahramaa first twitted at 6pm yesterday saying “there is fault in the transmission network to Al Dafan area, an emergency team is working to fix the error”. After one hour, another comment posted on the twitter reads “the power sup-ply has been resorted to most of the areas and the work is going on to bring back to the remain-ing areas affected by the outage.

After a while, a final com-ment came saying “power has been restored to all affected areas. Kahramaa has claimed in a recent report that it made remarkable achievements in term of respond-ing and fixing the outage.

Power outage

in Al Dafna area

Opec yet to agree on supply cutVIENNA/DUBAI: Opec officials meeting in Vienna yesterday to work out the details of their plan to reduce oil production had yet to reach agree-ment after hours of talks, amid objections by Iran which has been reluctant to even freeze its output, Opec sources said. The meeting of the High Level Committee is comprised mainly of OPEC governors and national repre-sentatives - officials who report to their respective ministers.

→ See also page 17

Airbus deal not

dead: Qatar Airways

By Raynald C Rivera

The Peninsula

DOHA: The second edition of the Philippine Property and Investment Show –Qatar (PPIS-Q) kicked off yes-terday at The Splash Water Park in Katara.

Organised by the Association of Filipino Real Estate Executives in Qatar (AFREEQ) in cooperation with ALAQAT Events & Advertising com-pany, the two-day expo was officially opened by Charito B Plaza, Director General of Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) and Sharon S Garin , Deputy Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives.

Philippine Ambassador Wilfredo C Santos and AFREEQ Chairman Joseph Timothy Rivera were among those in attendance at the inauguration. PEZA Director General Plaza, Deputy Speaker Garin, Ambassador Santos, Al Nitaq Real Estate Executive Direc-tor Sheikh Abdulla Khalifa Abdulla Al Thani and AFREEQ Chairman Rivera spoke at the opening ceremony.

It was followed by a tour of the various stalls of leading Philippine-based real estate companies and financial entities such as Ayala Land International, Megaworld Interna-tional, Filinvest International, Vista

Land International, SMDC, Rob-inson’s Land, Aboitiz Land, Major Homes, and Century Properties.

The event also featured a lecture on First home buying by property guru Manuel Alleje as well as a sales presentation competition and a char-ity dinner.

Held under the auspices of

Philippine Vice-President Maria Leonor G Robredo, the realty event offers a wide range of investment and business opportunities for Overseas Filipino Workers and potential Qatari investors in the Philippines’ thriving real estate market.

Today will see lectures on Philip-pine retirement, state funding, stock

market investment, foreclosure prop-erties and Housing policies. Among the speakers are Philippine Busi-ness Council-Qatar Chairman Greg Laoyon, AFREEQ Chairman Joseph Timothy Rivera, Bernard Andaluyon of Overseas Filipino Investors and Entre-preneurs Movement, property expert Manuel Alleje and Dr Alvin Abainza.

HOME 02 SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016

Bangladesh’s Ambassador Ashud Ahmed and his wife hosted a dinner for Asian ambassadors and their spouses recently. Ibrahim Yousif Abdullah Fakhro, Director of Department of Protocol, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also attended the gathering.

Bangladesh envoy hosts dinner

Minister of State for Defence Affairs H E Dr Khalid bin Mohammed Al Attiyah, currently on a visit to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, at the headquarters of Pakistani army’s special forces, aeronautical and weapons complexes.

Minister in Pakistan

By Irfan Bukhari

The Peninsula

DOHA: The number of patients suf-fering from food intolerance and allergy is on the rise, becoming a health problem, which medical pro-fessionals blame on the increased presence of pesticides and preserv-atives in our food.

In food allergy, an abnormal immune system triggers the pro-duction of antibodies (IgE) in the human body which rebel against particular food items like gluten, dairy products, seafood etc. Some private clinical labs The Peninsula spoke to said the number of residents visiting them for food allergy tests was on the rise.

Food allergy, either IgE anti-body mediated or delayed non-IgE mediated allergy, are reactions caused by the immune system. Dr Farooq Anwar, a Doha-based fam-ily physician, said that there were many reasons for the growing food intolerance cases. “Mainly, the use

of fertilizers and pesticides is the culprit behind this phenomenon worldwide.”

He said that another factor was change in diet patterns as residents have turned away from traditional food and their kitchens were filled with foreign food-stuff. He said that generally doctors treated such patients according to symptoms but the tests helped in finding the food-trigger in the case of serious food allergy.

He said frozen and processed food was also causing food intoler-ance among consumers.

He said food allergy tests were useful in chronic cases. “Patients must undergo such lab tests under a doctor’s advice and observation. Sometimes they might prove mis-leading,” he added. In such cases, the tests say that one has the allergy to a specific thing while they do not have and it’s called “false positive”.

Discussions with patholo-gists and doctors further reveal that some people experience symptoms of disease after eat-ing certain foods even when these foods are not producing antibodies (IgE) against them and these non-immune reactions are known as food intolerances.

Food intolerance is identical in manifestation to food allergy with the difference that in the former, antibodies are not formed while in the latter they are produced by the body. Food intolerance is much more

common than food allergy and in it the start of symptoms is usually slower, delayed by many hours.

The reason for the rise in food allergy/intolerance patients is not that food outlets are selling expired food or food made in unhygienic condition because the regulatory mechanism is fully functional and strong in Qatar and erring outlets face immediate legal consequences. But this problem is deeper than what human eyes can detect, like additives in preserved food and pesticides-loaded vegetables and fruits.

Dr Yahya Mulikandathil of Hamad Medical Corporation thinks that like food intolerance, food poi-soning cases were also on the rise. “It is due to additives used to pre-serve food stuff,” he said, adding that most of the patients did not visit doc-tors as they were even not aware of the disease.

He stressed on organic farming, noting that pesticides were making food, particularly fruit and vege-tables, unhealthy. “Vegetables and fruits must be washed with plenty of water before consumption,” he advised residents. “Those vegeta-bles which are generally consumed in raw-form need special care like cucumber,” he said.

Dr Mulikandathil said that food poisoning symptoms appeared pri-marily in gastro-intestinal system while in food allergy, patients usu-ally faced skin rashes or difficulty in breathing.

Food intolerance and allergy cases on the riseincreased presence of pesticides and preservatives in food causing health problems.

Philippine property show opens

Charito B Plaza (second left), Director General of Philippine Economic Zone Authority, and Sharon S Garin (third left), Deputy Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives, jointly cut the ribbon to mark the opening of the Philippine Property and Investment Show – Qatar 2016, at The Splash Water Park in Katara. Pic: Baher Amin / The Peninsula

Eid Charity to auction off16 donated vehiclesBy Sanaullah Ataullah

The Peninsula

DOHA: Sheikh Eid Charitable Foundation (Eid Charity) will auc-tion today 16 used vehicles donated to the philanthropic organisation.

Some people (citizens and expatriates) donated their used cars after buying a new one to the char-ity organizations to support needy people in Qatar and other countries.

Eid Charity received 16 used cars in donation recently from people in Qatar to use its reve-nue for paying medical bills of poor patients in the country and dispatching humanitarian aid to Syria, among others.

The donated cars will be auc-tioned today at 3:30pm at the new headquarters of Eid Cahrity in Al Markhiya, an official from Eid Charity told The Peninsula.

The cars include Porsche Cayenne (2006), Nissan Altima (2008), GMC Sierra (2009), Honda City (2004), Chevrolet Traverse (2011), Kia Carnival (2005), Toy-ota VXR (2008), Mitsubishi Lancer (2013), Kia Opirus (2007), GMC Yukon (2002), Nissan Urvan (2008) and (2012), Toyota Hilux (2009), GMC Suburban (2002), Mercedes Benz (2006) and GMC Pickup (1981).

Winners in the auction should pay 10 percent of the bidding price (a minimum of QR1,000) in cash. They have three days from the date of auction to pay the remain-ing amount and take the car. The entry fee is QR500 and is refund-able for those who lose the bids.

The donors have also rec-ommended their preferred charity-heads, including dis-patching humanitarian aid to Syria, paying medical bills of poor patients in Qatar, financing of the food unit of Eid Charity and build-ing mosques, among others.

“This is not the first time we are receiving cars as donations from the people in Qatar,” said an official. “Some four months ago, we auctioned about five cars,” he added.

“People donate their used vehicles like they donate used clothes and shoes. When they buy a new car, they donate the old one. Cars are being donated by citizens and expatriates”, said the official.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar University (QU) Health Clinic will organise its annual flu vaccination campaign on October 31. The campaign aims to increase community awareness on the importance of getting an annual flu vaccine. “By getting an annual flu vaccine, we can minimize the impact of seasonal influenza (flu) on QU members, allowing us to cre-ate a safe learning environment for all,” a press release said.

During this time, the Health Clinic’s medical team will be availa-ble from 8am to 2pm to provide free flu vaccination shots at the Female Health Clinic. The Health Clinic will also provide information leaflets on the importance of flu vaccinations, and staff members will be available to answer the questions or concerns

that QU members may have about flu vaccinations.

Commenting on the event, Health Clinic Head Dr Hafsa Hashad said: “The campaign aligns with QU mission to raising commu-nity awareness on health-related issues and to providing the ulti-mate support to Qatar’s healthcare sector. Millions of people are hos-pitalized each year from the flu, and over 30,000 people die from flu-related problems annually. Getting an annual flu vaccine is the best way to protect against the flu. Flu vaccination can reduce flu illnesses, doctors’ visits, and miss-ing work and school due to the flu, as well as prevent flu-related hospitalizations.”

QU Health Clinic will continue to provide flu vaccinations until June 2017. Qatari ID is required to get the flu vaccination shot.

QU Health Clinic to hold flu vaccination campaign

Experts share experiences

Continued from page 1

Dr Shaikha Abu Shaikha, Cancer Program Manager at the Primary Health Care Corporation, discussed about ‘Breast Cancer Screening in Qatar’ referring to the ‘Screen for Life’ national pro-gramme for detection of bowel and breast cancer.

“Screen for Life in the first year invites Qatari women aged 45-69 without any breast cancer symptoms to undergo screen-ing. And in its second year will expand for Qatari and non-Qatari women,” she said.

“Until now, 4,243 underwent screening for breast cancer and 429 have been referred to the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) for further investigation,” she added.

Also, international experts shared their experiences in breast cancer prevention and early detection. Dr Johannes Sailer, head of radiology at radi-ology centre Vienna Cooperation spoke on ‘Breast Cancer Screen-ing in Austria’ and highlighted the results of the change of screen-ing method ‘referral’ to ‘invitation’ in Austria. He also made a pres-entation on ‘New technologies in Breast imaging.’

Emir’s greetingsDOHA: Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani yesterday sent a cable of congratulations to President of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman, on the occasion of his country’s National Day.

UN chief condolesNEW YORK: Secretary-Gen-eral of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon has extended his con-dolences on the death of the H H the Grandfather Emir Sheikh Kha-lifa bin Hamad Al Thani during his visit to the headquarters of Qatar’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. The UN Sec-retary-General was received by the Permanent Representative of Qatar to the UN, Ambassador Sheikha Alia Ahmed bin Saif Al Thani.

Lukashenko arrives today DOHA: President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko will arrive in Doha today on an official visit.

NU-Q hosts reception to recognise new booksThe Peninsula

DOHA: Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) yesterday hosted a book reception to recognize the recent publication of four books, authored or edited by faculty and staff. The four are Professors Kha-led AL Hroub and Sandra Richards; Associate Dean Klaus Schoenbach and Pamela Erskine-Loftus, direc-tor of the forthcoming Media Majlis at Northwestern University in Qatar.

AL Hroub and Richards are, respectively, Middle East and Afri-can American studies scholars, while Schoenbach is a communication researcher and Erskine-Loftus an authority on museums.

“Our faculty is involved in ongoing research in a variety of dis-ciplines, including media-related issues in the Middle East,” said Everette E. Dennis, dean and CEO. “These four books – all quite dif-ferent in content – continues the Northwestern research tradition of

contributing to the broader discus-sions in an array of disciplines.”

AL-Hroub has published a book of poetry and prose -- The Ink of the Sun (Al-Ahliya, Amman) –that is inspired by his experience as a Palestinian. Richards has co-edited Approaches to Teaching the Plays of August Wilson, which compiles a series of essays that help read-ers make sense of Wilson’s work in relation to movements and cul-tural trends that were widespread at the time.

MIDDLE EAST 03 SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016

AFP

ALEPPO: Syrian opposition fighters made advances yesterday in a major assault on government forces aimed

at breaking a months-long siege of rebel-held districts of the battered city of Aleppo.

Rebel groups including the pow-erful Ahrar Al Sham faction and former Al Qaeda affiliate Fateh Al Sham Front fired waves of rock-ets into government-held western Aleppo, killing at least 15 civilians, a monitor said. The rebels also targeted government positions east of Aleppo city and in the coastal province of Latakia, including the Hmeimim military base used by Russian forces allied with the regime.

The assault comes more than three months into a government siege of eastern Aleppo, where more than 250,000 people live, and sev-eral weeks after the army began an operation to retake the rebel east.

Rebel groups “announce the start of the battle to break the siege of Aleppo”, said Abu Yusef Muhajir, a military commander and spokesman

for Ahrar Al Sham. The assault “will end the regime occupation of west-ern Aleppo and break the siege on the people trapped inside”, he said.

“The breaking of the siege is inevitable,” said Yasser Al Yusef, a member of the political office of the Nureddine Al Zinki rebel group.

“We will protect the civilians and schools and hospitals from Russian attacks and bring our people food and medicine,” he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based moni-tor, said at least 15 civilians, including a woman and two children, had been killed, and more than 100 wounded in rebel fire on western Aleppo.

The monitor reported fierce clashes on multiple fronts on the western and southern outskirts of west Aleppo, with three suicide car bombs targeting a checkpoint in the Dahiyet Al Assad neighbourhood. Fighting is continuing in the area

near a military academy, it said, but had no immediate toll.

A correspondent in east Aleppo said the assault had boosted morale in rebel-held districts, with mosques broadcasting “God is greatest” from loudspeakers.

He said residents burned tyres, sending smoke over the city to pro-vide cover against air attack.

Heavy rain put the fires out but also hampered Russian and Syrian air operations, creating what one rebel dubbed “a divine no-fly zone”.

The Observatory said rebels had also fired dozens of rockets at the Nairab military airport and Aleppo international airport, both east of the city and government-controlled.

Rebels also launched rockets from Idlib province into the govern-ment stronghold of Latakia, killing one person and wounding six.

Rockets struck close to the Hme-imim military airport, as well as near

President Bashar Al Assad’s ancestral village Qardaha, the monitor said.

Syrian state television said “the army has foiled an attempt by terror-ists to attack Aleppo city from several axes with suicide bomb attacks and has inflicted losses on them”.

“Terrorist groups have made no advances and clashes are continu-ing,” it added.

State news agency Sana said government planes were carry-ing out air strikes south and west of Aleppo.

Once Syria’s economic power-house, Aleppo has been ravaged by the conflict that began in March 2011 with anti-government protests and has since killed more than 300,000 people. Aleppo has been divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012, and in September the army announced an operation to recapture the whole city.

Rebels in assault to break Aleppo siege

AFP

QAYYARAH, IRAQ: Militants have killed scores of people and taken tens of thousands to use as human shields in the Mosul area, the United Nations said yesterday, as Iraqi forces tempo-rarily halted their advance on the city.

Thousands of people have fled from areas surrounding Mosul, prompting a warning of “mas-sive displacement” when fighting starts inside the Islamic State jihad-ist group’s last major Iraqi urban stronghold.

IS’ “depraved, cowardly strat-egy is to attempt to use the presence of civilians to render certain points,

areas or military forces immune from military operations,” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN’s High Commis-sioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.

The jihadists are “effectively using tens of thousands of women, men and children as human shields,” he said. The UN human rights office said that credible reports indicate IS has forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and forcibly taken civilians into Mosul, killing those who resist or who were previously mem-bers of Iraqi security forces.

The population of Hamam al-Alil, an IS-held area south of Mosul that is an upcoming target for Iraqi forces, has reportedly nearly trebled, it said.

IS reportedly shot dead 232

people in a single day on Wednes-day, and killed 24 the previous day, the rights office said.

The killings, which the UN said have been “corroborated to the extent possible”, are just the latest in a long list of atrocities committed by the jihadists since they overran swathes of Iraq in 2014. The UN report came as Iraqi forces were temporarily halting their advance on Mosul for a period which the US-led anti-IS coalition said was expected to last “a couple of days.”

“They are pausing and reposi-tioning, refitting and doing some back clearing,” Colonel John Dorrian, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, told Pentagon reporters via video-conference. “We think it will just be

a couple of days and then we are back on the march toward Mosul,” he said.

As Iraqi forces have closed in on Mosul from the north, east and south,

growing numbers of civilians have fled IS-held areas and the impend-ing fighting in territory the jihadists control.

Thousands being used as human shields as Mosul advance pauses

A member of Iraqi forces monitors an area in the town of Hamdaniya, 30km east of Mosul, after they recaptured it from Islamic State (IS) group.

EU’s Mogherini to

visit Tehran and

Riyadh for talks

BRUSSELS: The European Union’s diplomatic chief Federica Mogh-erini will head to Iran and Saudi Arabia for talks on the Syrian con-flict, a statement said yesterday.

Mogherini will visit Tehran today and Riyadh on Monday for “senior level talks” continuing the EU’s “outreach to key actors in the region on the Syrian crisis”, it said.

The diplomatic push comes with no end in sight to a conflict that has aligned regional powers on opposite sides, with Iran back-ing President Bashar Al Assad and Saudi Arabia a key supporter of the rebels fighting to oust him.

Syrian rebels launched a major assault Friday aimed at breaking a months-long siege of opposition-held districts of Aleppo, as regime ally Russia held off on renewed air strikes.

One dead in Cairo blast CAIRO: An Egyptian security official says one person has been killed after an explosive device targeted security forces in east-ern Cairo. The official said in an Interior Ministry statement that a homemade bomb struck a police convoy yesterday near the district of Ain Shams.

No security forces were hurt but two pedestrians were wounded, one of whom died of his wounds at a nearby hospital.

Egypt has been witnessing recurrent violence three years after the military ouster of Islam-ist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. Demonstrations by Morsi’s supporters — many held around Ain Shams University — have largely waned amid a heavy secu-rity clampdown that has killed and injured thousands.

In retaliation, Islamic mil-itants have targeted police and army personnel.

Aleppo has been divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012, and in September the army announced an operation to recapture the whole city.

ASIA / AFRICA04 SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016

Unicef frees 876 children detained by Nigeria army

Reuters

YANGON: Myanmar is investigating the death in custody of a 60-year-old Rohingya Muslim, the office of Pres-ident Htin Kyaw said, as a security sweep in the country’s northwest is increasingly beset by allegations of human rights abuses.

Security forces moved into northern Rakhine State after coordi-nated attacks on three border guard posts on October 9 killed nine police officers.

The sudden escalation of vio-lence in Rakhine state poses a serious challenge to the six-month-old gov-ernment led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who was swept to power in an elec-tion last year but has faced criticism abroad for failing to tackle rights

abuses against the Rohingya and other Muslims.

The government has said some 400 Rohingya militants with links to Islamists overseas were behind this month’s attacks and later clashes in which five soldiers were killed. A group calling itself Al Yakin Muja-hidin claimed responsibility for the attacks in videos posted online.

UN officials are pressuring Myanmar to allow aid and observ-ers into the area, where the majority of residents are stateless Rohingya Muslims.

Residents and human rights cam-paigners say security forces have killed civilians, arbitrarily detained residents, committed rape and burned houses.

Htin Kyaw’s office said via its website that authorities had opened an investigation into the death of

Khawrimular, who was detained on October 14 on suspicion of involve-ment in the earlier attacks along with his three sons and two of his brothers.

Sources in the Maungdaw area of Rakhine said Khawrimular was a community leader and previously worked for international aid organ-isations in the area.

Soldiers interrogated Khawrimu-lar and returned him to Kyeinchain police station, where the suspects were being held, on the morning of October 17, said an official account published in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Thursday.

“On the way back, the suspect grabbed a firearm from a soldier. Responsible personnel managed to subdue Khawrimular, but he lost consciousness as a result,” the report

said, adding that he died on the way to hospital.

Security forces have killed at least 33 alleged attackers since Octo-ber 9 and over 50 people have been arrested. At least two other deaths in custody have been reported.

Eight Rohingya women said this week that they were abused by sol-diers who entered the remote U Shey Kya village to conduct what author-ities called a “clearance operation” on October 19.

The 1.1 million Rohingya living in Rakhine face discrimination, severe restrictions on their movements and access to services, especially since inter-communal violence in 2012 that displaced 125,000 people.

The UN’s human rights envoy on Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, said that she had heard “horrific stories” of abuses in Maungdaw.

AFP

KUALA LUMPU: A spectacular cargo train derailment in Malay-sia yesterday left cars piled up like toys, blocking two busy tracks and stranding thousands of travellers on the country’s busy rail network.

The train’s two engines and 25 empty cement cars were thrown from the tracks along a heavily trav-elled north-south rail corridor in the northern state of Perak, according to a statement by rail operator KTM Berhad.

Remarkably, the only casualties in the accident were the train’s con-ductor and his assistant, who were slightly injured, local media quoted police as saying.

KTM Berhad said two rail lines were blocked by the resulting pile-up of train cars. “Work to clear the

train tracks is going on,” it said, giv-ing no timetable.

However, a KTM spokesman quoted by the New Straits Times said about 12,000 commuters were affected and that some serv-ices would be halted for 48 hours.

KTM’s statement said buses were sent to transport affected travellers.

No cause has yet been given for the incident.

Malaysia has an extensive rail network dating from the British colo-nial era and it remains an important and popular mode of transport for both passengers and cargo.

The intercity railway network in Malaysia consists of two main lines: The KTM West Coast Line between Singapore and Padang Besar, Perlis, on the Malaysian-Thai border, and the KTM East Coast Line between Gemas in Negeri Sembilan and Tumpat in Kelantan.

Ivory Coast to vote on constitution

Reuters

GENEVA: The United Nations has negotiated the release of nearly 900 children detained by Nigeria’s army and security forces after they have retaken land from Boko Haram mil-itants, a senior official said.

The 876 children had been held in the barracks in Maiduguri, Unicef’s Manuel Fontaine said after visiting the northeastern city.

It was not immediately clear how long they had been held, but the

army routinely detains civilians who have been living in areas that had been ruled by the insurgents on sus-picion that they too might be linked to militant activities.

However, rights groups say there is no proper legal process for such civilians, including the chil-dren, since they do not get formally charged and some end up in so-called rehabilitation centres, which the groups say are like prisons.

The United Nations says children should not be detained.

“We fear that there are still kids who are being at least temporar-ily detained because they are being released from Boko Haram areas by the army but then kept for a while,” Fontaine, Unicef’s regional director for Western and Central Africa said.

He give no details of the ages of the children or how long they had been at the barracks - but after Pres-ident Muhammadu Buhari came to power in May 2015, security forces began an offensive, backed by neigh-bouring countries, to retake territory from Boko Haram, meaning at least some of the children could have been held for a year or more.

There was no immediate com-ment from the army. Army officials

say they need to question civilians to establish whether they have any ties with the militant group, which has been trying forseven years to set up an Islamic state.

The security situation remains volatile in northeastern Borno state and its capital Maiduguri because Boko Haram still stages suicide bombings, often using women or teenagers.

Fontaine also said the conflict, which has killed thousands and dis-placed over 2 million, had separated around 20,000 children from their parents, of which 5,000 had since been reunited with their families.

“Once we get children out, there is a major issue of stigmatisation in the communities,” Fontaine said.

“There is a sense that children who have been associated with Boko Haram for a while, could be, and in some cases we have some evidence, are rejected by community and peo-ple around them.”

“This was also a problem for the girls freed from the town of Chibok.”

Nigeria this month negotiated, with the help of Switzerland, the release of 21 of more than 200 girls Boko Haram kidnapped in April 2014.

AFP

ABIDJAN: Ivory Coast heads to the polls tomorrow for a referendum on a new constitution their presi-dent insists will heal a nation beset by violent turmoil, but which the opposition says is dangerously anti-democratic.

Given that President Alassane Ouattara’s political foes have called for a boycott, the draft basic law is almost certain to garner a majority “yes” vote.

What is less likely is massive voter turnout: while Ivory Coast’s political class has been heatedly debating the draft, ordinary citi-zens have shown considerably less enthusiasm, either for or against it.

“Yes to peace, to modernity,” read the government’s campaign posters displayed across the West African state.

But last week’s suspension of two

opposition newspapers and brief detention of several protesting pol-iticians underlines the potential for trouble.

By Ouattara’s telling, the new constitution would do away with the nationalistic concept of “Ivoir-iete”, which roughly translates as “Ivorian-ness”.

It is a key issue in a nation with a population, especially in the north, that includes large numbers of peo-ple with roots in neighbouring states.

The question of who is a “real Ivorian” has contributed to years of unrest, including a coup in 1999, a civil war in 2002 that split the coun-try between its north and south, and a violent post-election crisis in 2011.

As a result of the most recent bloodshed, former president Lau-rent Gbagbo is currently detained by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity.

One of the key changes in the new text is the removal of a clause

stipulating that presidential candi-dates must be born to parents who are Ivorian citizens.

In the past, this clause prevented Ouattara himself, because of his parental links to Burkina Faso, from running for the country’s top office.

He eventually overcame this obstacle through a decree Gbagbo was pressured to sign by the inter-national community.

The proposed new constitution also calls for the creation of the post of vice president, who would appear on the ballot with presiden-tial candidates.

For the government, it would ensure continuity if the head of state dies or is incapacitated. But the opposition sees the change a “mon-archistic tactic”.

If the draft passes into law, Ouat-tara would immediately appoint a vice president, a measure that has sparked speculation he is trying to line up a successor for when his term ends in 2020.

Malaysia cargo train derailment strands thousands

Zuma asks court to

postpone Gupta

report hearing

Reuters

JOHANNESBURG: South African President Jacob Zuma has asked a court to postpone a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, when his application to delay the release of a report over allegations of polit-ical influence by his wealthy friends was due to be heard.

Presidency spokesman Bon-gani Ngqulunga said Zuma’s lawyers wrote to the court on Thursday saying he wanted the investigation to be re-opened so that he could question witnesses himself and give evidence.

The release of the report by the Public Protector, a consti-tutionally mandated anti-graft official, was suspended on Octo-ber 14 by Zuma’s application to the High Court.

Since then, the new Pub-lic Protector, who took office on October 17, has said the investi-gation had been completed by October 14.

Ngqulunga said when Zuma had filed his original application it was not made clear the investi-gation had finished.

“If it is final, then it changes the ball game a little. So the pres-ident now wants the investigation to be re-opened, so that he can answer any questions and make his own representations, before it is finalised,” he said.

Ngqulunga said the decision on whether to delay the hearing had not yet been made by the court.

Govt probes Rohingya’s death in custody during raid

Zimbabwe dam levels at record lows after droughtReuters

HARARE: Zimbabwe’s dam levels have fallen to 42 percent follow-ing a devastating drought that has left millions in need of food aid and local councils rationing water, Vice President Emmerson Mnan-gagwa said yesterday.

Mnangagwa said the last time Zimbabwe experienced such a

severe drought was in 1992, add-ing that the biggest dam in the south of the country was only 9 percent full.

“In Zimbabwe, the drought has resulted in record low dam levels, with the national average dam level being 42 percent at a time of the year when it is usu-ally 50 percent,” Mnangagwa said. “Ground water levels have also not been spared.”

People hold a banner for the liberation of former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo, in Abidjan, during a demonstration against the upcoming vote for a new constitution tomorrow.

A cargo train after it derailed along a heavily travelled north-south rail corridor in the northern state of Perak, Malaysia, yesterday.

Bangladesh arrests 900 in

bid to save ‘favourite’ fishAFP

DHAKA: Bangladesh has arrested more than 900 fishermen and deployed the army to patrol its waterways after introducing a tem-porary ban on catching hilsa in an effort to save the hugely popular fish.

Some 60 percent of the world’s hilsa are caught in Bangladesh, but indiscriminate fishing has depleted much of the stock, driving up prices and putting the fish beyond the reach of the poor.

Anyone caught catching hilsa faces at least a year in jail under a 22-day ban that began on October

12 this year, the start of the breed-ing season.

Armed forces have been deployed to patrol 7,000 sq km of rivers, estuaries and sea declared a breeding sanctuary.

“We are patrolling the rivers day and night. It’s like a curfew,” fisheries department official Iqbal Hossain said from the coastal river district of Patuakhali.

“One mother (hilsa) can lay two million eggs per year. So one can easily understand how big the production will be if the protection drive is successful,” said Hossain.

Hilsa is the most sought-after delicacy for 160 million Bang-ladeshis and another 90 million Bengalis who live in eastern India.

We fear that there are still kids who are being at least temporarily detained because they are being released from Boko Haram areas by army but then kept for a while: Official

ASIA / PHILIPPINES 05SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016

Chinese vessels ‘no longer’ at disputed shoal

Reuters

MANILA: Chinese ships are no longer at the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea and Philippine boats can resume fishing, the Philip-pine defence minister said yesterday, calling the Chinese departure a “wel-come development”.

Philippine fishermen could access the shoal unimpeded for

the first time in four years, Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana (pic-tured) said, capping off a startling turnaround in ties since his country rattled China in 2013 by challenging its maritime claims at an interna-tional tribunal.

The departure of the Chinese coastguard comes after President Rodrigo Duterte’s high-profile visit to Beijing and follows his repeated requests for China to end its blockade of the shoal, a tranquil lagoon rich in fish stocks.

“Since three days ago there are no longer Chinese ships, coastguard or navy, in the Scarborough area,” Lorenzana said.

“If the Chinese ships have left then it means our fishermen can resume fishing in the area.”

Though the Scarborough Shoal is comprised of only a few rocks poking above the sea some 124 nautical miles

off the Philippine mainland, it is sym-bolic of the country’s efforts to assert its maritime sovereignty claims.

Lorenzana did not explain the circumstances of the Chinese ves-sels leaving the shoal, which was the centrepiece of a case Manila filed in 2013 at the Permanent Court of Arbi-tration in the Hague.

Asked yesterday about the return

of Philippine fishermen to the shoal, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang made no mention of a coast-guard withdrawal.

The two countries “were able to work together on issues regarding the South China Sea and appropriately resolve disputes,” Lu said.

The Hague court in July declared that despite the Scarborough Shoal being located within the Philippines’ 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone, no one country had sovereign rights to it, so that all claimants may fish there.

PEACE OVERTURESChina has refused to recognise

the case or the award, which also invalidated the nine-dash line on Chinese maps denoting its claims to most of the South China Sea.

China seized Scarborough Shoal - claimed by Beijing as Huangyan

island and by Manila as Panatag - in 2012.

The previous administration’s pursuit of the case infuriated China, but it appears to have changed its stance since Duterte took office and started praising Beijing, often in the same sentences as his perplexing verbal attacks on longtime ally the United States.

Reuters exclusively reported on the eve of Duterte’s visit to China that Beijing would consider granting Phil-ippine fishermen conditional access to the shoal.

An end to the standoff over the shoal is still a complex and poten-tially combustible issue for both countries.

Some Philippine commenta-tors say Manila may object to any reference to its fishermen being “per-mitted” by China to return, while Beijing might be wary of appearing

to be softening its position on what it calls “indisputable” sovereignty.

There was some confusion about the situation at sea, however, with a Philippine military spokesman ear-lier saying Chinese vessels were “still there”. Some fishermen familiar with the area said the same.

Duterte’s spokesman, Ernesto Abella, offered no comment on whether the two sides had reached agreement.

“All I can say, at this stage, it has been observed there are no longer Chinese coastguard in the area,” he said.

China’s Lu hailed Duterte’s recent visit as a success and said both coun-tries were able to discuss the South China Sea impasse.

“It is completely possible that the bilateral relationship can recover.”

“I can tell you that the two sides are in communication.”

Philippine mayor

dead in clash with

anti-drug police

Reuters

MANILA: A mayor on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s wanted list for alleged drugs links was killed along with nine of his guards in a shootout yesterday, police said.

The 10 men succumbed to their wounds en route to hospi-tal, police said, having opened fire on officers who tried to stop their two vehicles at a checkpoint in Duterte’s troubled home prov-ince of Mindanao before dawn.

“It was a legitimate police operation,” said Bernard Tayong of the North Cotabato police office, adding that no officers were hurt but a police vehicle was riddled with bullets.

“We have information the mayor and his men were trans-porting drugs so we tried to intercept them but they chose to shoot it out,” he added.

The killing of Samsudin Dimaukom, a powerful mayor, took place far from his town of Datu Saudi Ampatuan.

It came as police shift tactics in the controversial war on drugs by focusing on politicians, offi-cials, celebrities and high-ranking army and police suspected of involvement in the trade.

BANGKOK: A teacher was killed in a drive-by shooting yesterday in Thailand’s far south, police said.

Yesterday, suspected militants opened fire on two civil servants who teach state-funded edu-cation programmes for adults in Pattani province, a local police officer said.

“One victim died instantly at the attack site,” said Noppasit Temongla, an officer from Mayo district.

The 49-year-old teacher, identified as Sunisa Boonyen, was driv-ing to an event when two men on a motorcycle fired on her car, said Noppasit.

Teacher shot

dead in Pattani

province

Rescuers scour

jungle for missing

Aussie hiker

KUALA LUMPUR: An Aus-tralian hiker missing for more than a week in remote Malaysian jungle is at the centre of a major search, rescuers said.

Andrew Gaskell, 26, set off alone into the rug-ged Mulu National Park on Borneo island on October 20, local fire and rescue chief Zulbada Alior said.

“A local friend of Gaskell lodged a missing persons report on Octo-ber 26. We immediately launched a rescue opera-tion,” he said.

Zulbada said a total of 22 officers -- park rang-ers, police and fire and rescue officers -- were involved in the search.

Filipinos freed by Somali pirates back homeAFP

MANILA: Five Filipino fishermen released after being held hostage by Somali pirates for nearly five years broke down as they were reu-nited with their families yesterday, recounting beatings and abuse.

The seafarers, among 26 hos-tages freed from the crew of Naham 3 seized south of the Seychelles in March 2012, alternated between tears and laughter as they embraced their

loved ones on arrival back in Manila. “I am so happy. This is what I

had been praying for every night: to be with my family this Christmas,” Arnel Balbero, 33, said.

“Just to be with my family, even if we have nothing, even if we have only little to eat, I am already happy.”

His sister, Lilia, trembled at the sight of her brother. “It’s like a mir-acle. We never lost hope he would be freed,” she said.

The Naham 3’s crew, which also included seafarers from China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and

Taiwan, endured the second long-est hostage-taking ever by Somali pirates.

The Filipinos, most of them from poor farming families, arrived back on a flight from Kenya along with four Cambodian seafarers.

Balbero’s cousin and fellow ex-hostage, Elmer, said the Somali pirates had cared little about the health of their captives.

“We asked the pirates for med-icine but they did not give us any. Instead they said, ‘Where is your money?’”

The captives also said they suf-fered beatings at the hands of the pirates.

“In our first week, they called it our introduction. They used bam-boo to beat us”, said Arnel Balbero yesterday.

To survive, the Filipinos did chores for their captors, washing their clothes and even their weapons.

“We took it as a chance to also wash. We couldn’t take a bath often because they only gave us a litre of water each day,” Elmer Balbero, 37, said.

Reuters

BANGKOK: Thailand’s Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn will fly overseas and return home next month, three senior military sources with knowledge of the matter said, two weeks after the death of his father, the revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

The departure comes during a timeframe the military govern-ment had identified for the prince to ascend the throne, with Prime Min-ister Prayuth Chan-ocha saying last week it could be within seven to 15 days of the king’s death, or even later.

The coronation of the crown prince, however, cannot take place until after the king’s royal crema-tion, in a year’s time.

“The prince will leave Thailand this evening (yesterday) to attend to personal business and will return next month in time to preside over an official engagement,” said a sen-ior military source who declined to be identified.

The prince has spent much of his adult life abroad.

His departure could trigger market jitters and fuel speculation about complications in the succes-sion, said a senior market analyst who is based in Singapore, but declined to be identified.

Thailand’s crown prince

to fly abroad: Sources

Some 1,250 students from the Assumption College hold cards to form an image of Thailand’s late king Bhumibol Adulyadej, in his honour, in Bangkok, yesterday.

Malaysia to buy navy vessels from ChinaReuters

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will sign a contract to purchase Litto-ral Mission Ships from China when Prime Minister Najib Razak visits Beijing next week, according to a Facebook posting by the country’s Ministry of Defence.

The text of a speech to be delivered by Malaysian defence minister Hishammuddin Hus-sein was posted on Facebook on

Tuesday, but was later removed after Reuters asked a defence min-istry spokesman for comment.

The purchase of the patrol vessels, if it proceeds, would be Malaysia’s first significant defence deal with China and comes amid rising tensions in the South China Sea and as the United States and China compete for influence in the region.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said yesterday he was “unclear on the specifics of the situation”. But responding

to a question, he noted China and Malaysia “continue to cooperate and communicate regularly across all spheres”.

Malaysia’s ties with the US became strained after the Depart-ment of Justice filed lawsuits linked to a money-laundering investigation at state fund 1Malay-sia Development Berhad (1MDB), which Najib founded and had overseen as chairman of its advi-sory council.

Najib is travelling to China next Sunday for a week-long visit.

Myanmar confirms first Zika infectionAFP & Reuters

YANGON: Myanmar has detected its first Zika infection with state media reporting yesterday that a pregnant foreign woman had been diagnosed with the mosquito-borne virus.

The World Health Organization warned earlier this month that Zika was likely to spread throughout Asia after being detected in 70 countries worldwide, including at least 19 in the Asia Pacific region.

While the virus linked to birth defects has been present in South-east Asia for years, there has been an uptick in the number of recorded

cases in the region in recent months.“Authorities confirmed the

infection in the 32-year-old foreign woman yesterday following a lab-oratory test,” the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported, adding that she was in Yangon, the country’s largest city.

The report cited the health and sports ministry as saying it was the country’s “first case of Zika infec-tion”. It was not immediately clear if the woman was a tourist.

Zika causes only mild symptoms in most people, including fever, sore eyes and a rash.

But pregnant women with the virus risk giving birth to babies with microcephaly -- a deformation that

leads to abnormally small brains and heads.

A WHO report released this month warned the Asia Pacific region is likely to see “new cases and possibly new outbreaks of Zika”.

It said the virus is “highly likely to further spread in the region” which includes China, Japan, Aus-tralia, most Southeast Asian nations and the Pacific islands.

At least 400 Zika cases have been detected in Singapore, while Thailand last month reported its first cases of Zika-linked microcephaly in two babies.

There is no cure or vaccine for the virus.

Defence secretary confirmed that Philippine fishermen could now access the disputed shoal.

Secretary of Foreign Affairs Perfecto Yasay welcomes three of the Filipino seafarers who were released from captivity from Somali pirates upon their arrival at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Pasay City, Metro Manila, yesterday.

Delay pregnancy

due to Zika: Govt

NAYPYITAW: Myanmar govern-ment said yesterday it will advise women in Yangon to avoid getting pregnant in the next six months to protect them from the Zika virus after the first case was confirmed.

“The Ministry of Health will issue a statement soon advising married women in Yangon to avoid having pregnancies in six months,” Ministry director general Soe Lwin Nyein said.

PAKISTAN06 SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016

Reuters

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani opposi-tion leader Imran Khan accused the government of placing him under virtual house arrest in Islamabad yesterday as his supporters in nearby Rawalpindi fought running battles with the police.

Police tear-gassed and baton-charged the rock-throwing protesters in Rawalpindi, 20 km from Islama-bad, as both sides prepared for his plan to shut down the capital next week to try to force Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to resign.

There was no immediate report of injuries and the violence eased as darkness fell, but a handful of protesters defying a ban on public gatherings continued to clash with police.

Police also fired tear gas and briefly clashed with protesters near

Khan’s house in Islamabad.The protests added to rising polit-

ical tension ahead of Khan’s vow to lock down the capital on Wednesday to try to force Sharif to quit because of corruption allegations.

The political strife has come at an awkward time for Sharif, as rela-tions between his ruling PML-N party and the powerful military have been strained by a newspaper leak about a security meeting that angered army officials.

Khan, a former cricket hero, told reporters outside his home that he had been placed “under almost house arrest” by scores of police officers stationed around his home in Islamabad.

He said he had cancelled plans to attend a rally by a political ally in Rawalpindi and urged supporters to instead focus on the mass protests on Wednesday.

“To all my activists, you have to prepare for Nov. 2, you have to escape capture,” he said.

Khan called for nationwide pro-tests yesterday after 38 activists from his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party were arrested a day ear-lier during a raid by baton-wielding police on an indoor youth rally in Islamabad.

Police said the rally contravened a city order issued hours earlier that banned all public gatherings in

Islamabad and Rawalpindi ahead of next week’s protests.

Khan, who led a weeks-long occupation that paralysed the gov-ernment quarter of Islamabad in 2014 after rejecting Sharif’s decisive election win, has vowed to contest orders banning public gatherings in court.

Sheikh Rashid, a Khan ally from the Awami Muslim League (AML) party, cancelled the planned rally but joined his supporters in the streets of Rawalpindi.

TV footage showed the portly AML leader being ferried to the rally on the back of a motorbike through the side streets of Rawalpindi.He then climbed on top of a van, shook his fist in the air to supporters and dared police to arrest him.

Police said they did not have orders for his arrest.

Authorities blocked main roads leading to the Rawalpindi rally with shipping containers and obstructed the rally site with trucks and con-tainers, keeping PTI supporters from gathering there en masse.

A PTI source told Reuters the party’s rally planned for today in Islamabad was also likely to be called off.

Islamabad Deputy Commis-sioner Mushtaq Ahmed said Khan’s party would need official permis-sion, in the form of a so-called “No

Objection Certificate” (NOC), to host any events, including Wednesday’s shutdown strike.

“You need an NOC for anything - whether it’s a media function or a marriage function. Even for a birth-day party of more than five people, you need an NOC,” he said. Khan has said next week’s protests would bring a million people onto the streets and sit-ins would force the closure of schools, public offices and the main international airport.

Khan’s latest challenge to Sharif’s

government is based on leaked doc-uments from the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm that appear to show that his daughter and two sons owned offshore holding companies registered in the British Virgin Islands. Sharif’s family denies wrongdoing. Holding offshore com-panies is not illegal in Pakistan, but Khan has implied the money was gained by corruption.

He admitted in May that he used an offshore company himself to legally avoid paying British tax on a

London property sale.The ruling party has dismissed

Khan’s shutdown plan as a desperate move by a politician whose popular-ity is waning ahead of the next general election, likely to be held in May 2018.

“Pakistan is going towards becoming a developed country, and the opposition is worried that if this system of development con-tinues until 2018, then by then their politics will be finished,” Sharif told a gathering of party workers yesterday.

Khan ‘under house arrest’; supporters clash with police

AFP

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan yesterday accused India of killing three civil-ians and wounding several others in cross-border fire, as tensions soar in disputed Kashmir.

The incident occurred in Nakyal sector, near the frontier dividing Indian-held Kashmir from Pakistan›s Punjab province, Pakistani officials said.

“At least three people including a

women and a girl were killed and five others injured when Indian troops opened fire across the border near Nakyal sector on the Line of Control, the de facto border between India and Pakistan,” district administra-tion official Adnan Khursheed said.

Zeeshan Nisar, an administration official in Nakyal confirmed the inci-dent, adding that a seven-year-old girl was among the dead.

A doctor at the hospital in Naki-yal sector put the number of injured slightly higher at seven.

“Three of the injured are in

critical condition while four injured are stable,” Muhammad Nasrullah said.

A local resident of the area said mortar shells had hit a house where a wedding ceremony was taking place.

“A wedding ceremony was going on in a house when mortar shells hit them,” Muhammad Naseer said.

Sazia Bibi, one of the injured said she was outside the house to fetch water when pieces of mortor shell hit her.

The latest violence comes after New Delhi announced Thursday it

was expelling a Pakistani visa official for suspected spying, with Islamabad responding by saying it would send back an Indian diplomat in an appar-ent tit-for-tat move.

Relations between the two coun-tries have plummeted in recent months, with India blaming Paki-stani militants for a September raid on an army base in its part of dis-puted Kashmir that killed 19 soldiers.

India said it responded by carrying out strikes across the heav-ily-militarised border, although Islamabad denies these took place.

Tensions were already high before the attack, with deadly vio-lence over the death on July 8 of a popular militant leader.

Nearly 90 people, most of them young protesters, have been killed in clashes with security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir since then.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from Britain in 1947. Both claim the territory in full and have fought two wars over the mountainous region.

Reuters

JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN: An air strike in Afghanistan yesterday hit the home of a Taliban com-mander in the eastern province of Nangarhar and caused several civil-ian casualties, government and insurgent spokesmen said.

The strike targeted the home of Mawlawi Mohammad Alam, a Tal-iban commander in the Sherzad district, said Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial gover-nor, adding that there were casualties but he could not confirm numbers.

A police official said the strike was carried out by an unmanned aircraft and killed four people

inside the house. A dozen wounded civilians, among them seven chil-dren and five women, were taken to the local hospital, said Najibullah Kamawal, the director of provincial health services, four of them in crit-ical condition.

US forces had carried out a strike in Sherzad yesterday in defence of “friendly forces”, a spokesman for the NATO-led Resolute Support mis-sion said in Kabul, the capital, but gave no details. Reports of civilian casualties would be investigated, he added.

“We take all allegations of civil-ian casualties seriously and will work with our Afghan partners to review all related material,” Briga-dier General Charles Cleveland said

in an emailed statement.In a statement, the Taliban said

American and Afghan forces had carried out a ground attack on Mohammad Alam’s home, followed by an airstrike, in which two civil-ians were killed and more than 30 wounded.

The United States has unleashed many raids against Islamic State and al Qaeda militants in eastern Afghanistan, most recently on Sun-day, when officials said two al Qaeda leaders were killed in the neighbour-ing province of Kunar.

However, new combat rules issued this year have also given US commanders greater scope to attack Taliban militants, pushing up the number of airstrikes sharply.

Both sides prepare for plan to shut down the capital next week to try to force Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to resign.

Protesters of Pakistan Tehreek Insaaf (Movement for Justice) party throw stones towards policemen during a protest in Rawalpindi, yesterday.

Three civilians dead in Indian cross-border fire: Officials Pakistan forces kill militants linked topolice attackAFP

QUETTA, PAKISTAN: Pakistani security forces raided a compound in the country’s troubled south-west and killed four militants linked to an attack on a police academy earlier in the week, offi-cials said yesterday.

The raid in Quetta, the cap-ital of strife-riven Balochistan province, was carried out late Thursday following an intelligence tip-off about the presence of fight-ers from the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militant group.

“A team of anti-terrorist force (ATF) raided the compound and killed four militants after an exchange of gunfire,” a sen-ior local police official Abdullah Afridi said.

Speaking off the record, a police official said the militants belonged to the LeJ -- a faction of which claimed it had worked with the Islamic State group to carry out the Monday night raid that killed 61 people, the deadliest assault on a security installation in Pakistan›s history.

IS had previously also claimed the raid and released photos of the fighters involved, one of whom bore a strong resemblance to a attacker who was killed by secu-rity forces in the assault.

The extent of any material support to local groups from IS remains unclear, but affiliation with the notoriously brutal outfit brings the promise of a far higher profile. The Balochistan govern-ment has also formed a joint investigation team (JIT) compris-ing officials from the army, police and intelligence agencies to probe Monday›s attack.

Pakistan has been battling a homegrown Islamist insurgency since shortly after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, though overall levels of violence have dropped following a series of militatry offensives in the coun-try’s western tribal regions.

Monday night’s raid though served as a grim reminder that militant groups are still able to carry out major assaults from time to time.

The emergence of IS in Paki-stan is seen as a major blow to the country’s long-running efforts to quell the insurgency, and comes as the group’s key rival Al Qaeda is losing strength in what was once its “home ground”.

Air strike causes several civilian casualties in Afghanistan

A boy wounded in an air strike receives treatment at a hospital in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, yesterday.

The party’s over: Sindh province goes dryInternews

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court decision to revoke all wine shop licences across the southeastern Pakistani province is being met with gloom from consumers who fear the move will only lead to high prices as liquour sales in the black mar-ket will spike.

Health concerns have also been raised as curtailment of easy access to liquour is likely to boost the use of moonshine, especially among those who cannot afford smug-gled alcohol. The excise minister reveals that his department gener-ates around Rs4.5bn annually from the 120 wine shops operating in the province. “This amount is generated through excise duty and annual licence renewal fee,” he explained.

The move also affects hotels with bars in Karachi as they are supplied liquour from wine shops. A senior official in the excise and taxation department, requesting anonymity, said that the govern-ment is already contemplating to get a stay order or challenge the deci-sion in the apex court.

“Huge revenue is generated from the liquour business, which will be a great loss to the govern-ment,” said the official.

The court decision also did not go well with owners of wine shops who said the move will lead to a rise in the use of spurious liq-uour- known as ‘koopi’ or ‘tharra’. Pardeep Kumar, who operates a wine shop in Mirpurkhas, believes it will not be possible for the gov-ernment to stop the sale of liquor.

“I just want to know what action the government has taken against the use of heroin and hashish, which are

banned,” he said, adding that with this decision, only the smuggling of alco-hol will be promoted as the “drinkers will continue to drink.”

Meanwhile, Hindu lawmakers have welcomed the decision. The parliamentary leader of the Paki-stan Muslim League-F in the Sindh Assembly, Nand Kumar, said the use of alcohol is not allowed in their religion as well.

“I request the government to keep an eye on the use of spuri-ous liquour, which runs under the supervision of excise officials and police,” he claimed.

Pitamber Sewani, a former rul-ing party legislator, was of the view that no merit is followed in doling out wine shop licences as only the influential can acquire them. “Min-isters’ top priority is to get licences of wine shops,” he claimed, alleg-ing that a former provincial excise minister has now established a liq-uour factory in the suburban areas of Karachi. In Hyderabad, the excise and police personnel had sealed all the ten wine shops by the afternoon in light of court orders. An owner of a wine shop in the city taluka, who requested anonymity, said his shop was sealed with the existing stock still inside.

“Although we respect the court and are complying with the order, one wonders what good will come from closing the shops when the liquour factories will continue operating,” he observed. A regu-lar liquour consumer expressed skepticism over the complete imple-mentation of the order. “Now we will get less for more (money),” he quipped. Several policemen said enforcing a ban on moonshine has eluded the force despite the tragic incidents caused by it.

INDIA 07SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016

IANS

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court yesterday rapped the Centre for sit-ting over the top court collegium’s recommendations on appointment of judges to various High Courts, prompting the opposition to attack the Narendra Modi government for what it said was deliberate weak-ening of the country’s democratic institutions.

A bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur, Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice L Nageswara Rao observed

that the government’s inaction amounted to paralysing and lock-ing out the judiciary.

“We had a situation when there were judges but no courtrooms; today, we have courtrooms but no judges... it is not anybody’s ego but the institution that suffers,” the Chief Justice of India (CJI) said as he asked Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi to play a constructive role in the capac-ity of the leader of the Bar.

The CJI’s observations were ech-oed by former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee and a former apex court judge. “If we don’t appoint judges in time, justice will inevitably be

delayed. It will be denied actu-ally. There is no justification on the government’s part for this delay,”Sorabjee said.

“I think the Chief Justice is absolutely justified in expressing his indignation at the delay in the appointment of the judges by the government after the collegium has cleared the names,” he added.

Former Supreme Court Judge Ashok Ganguly said if the courts can-not redress people’s grievances due to lack of judges, then “it creates a cri-sis”. “On an average, most high courts are working with 30 to 40 per cent vacancies. It is a great impediment in

the administration of justice. Even if all the vacancies are filled, that will not be adequate. It is an institutional deadlock,” Ganguly said.

On the political front, the Con-gress mounted a bitter attack on the Narendra Modi government, accusing it of systematically and deliberately weakening the country’s democratic institutions, including the judiciary.

“During the last two-and-a-half-years of its rule, this government has been systematically and deliberately weakening the democratic institu-tions, including the judiciary,” said Congress spokesman and senior law-yer Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

“We condemn this government›s attempt to erode and undermine another pillar of our democracy. Now, we are seeing its attempt to demean, control or embarrass the judiciary. It is sad that the issue of Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) is being used by the government as an instrument of blackmail,” he said.Janata Dal-United spokesman KC Tyagi said the delay in the appointment of judges was an attack on the institution of judiciary.

“They are attacking the judici-ary. This is not for the firt time that the Chief Justice has expressed his displeasure over the delay in judicial appointments,” Tyagi said.

SC slams centre on judges’ appointmentA bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur, Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice L Nageswara Rao observed that the government’s inaction amounted to paralysing and locking out the judiciary.

Border Security Force (BSF) troopers place a national flag on the coffin of their fallen colleague, who died after shelling across the border between India and Pakistan, during a wreath laying ceremony at their headquarters on the outskirts of Jammu, yesterday. At least 15 Pakistan troopers were killed and 20 others injured in retaliatory shelling and firing by the BSF.

Funeral ceremony

New Delhi to

install roadside

air purifiers NEW DELHI: Delhi’s gov-ernment announced yesterday that it will install air purifiers and a mist-making device at major road intersec-tions in the Indian capital to curb choking levels of pollution.

Delhi has been shrouded in a toxic soup as residents gear up for the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, which is marked by ear-splitting fireworks that leave days of dark smoke in its wake.

“We are planning to install air purifiers at five major intersections in Delhi to reduce pollution levels,” Delhi health minis-ter Satyendra Jain said at a press conference.

Man held for

planting bomb

in Allahabad HCALLAHABAD: One person was arrested for plant-ing a ‘tiffin bomb’ in the premises of Allahabad High Court here yesterday, police said.

The accused has been identified as San-tosh Kumar Agrahari and he has admitted to plant-ing the bomb. He told the police during question-ing that he had planted the bomb in anger as his services had not been made permanent despite his working for the last 14 years. The suspicious packet was spotted by a passerby who immedi-ately informed the police. The bag and the tiffin contained concrete, ‘sutli’ bombs, some explosive material and pellets, an official said.

Odisha to enact

pay commission

recommendations

BHUBANESWAR: The Odi-sha government yesterday announced that it will implement the 7th central pay commission recom-mendations in the state.

The state government would set up a fitment committee, which would work out the modali-ties for implementation of the recommendations. “I am happy to announce that the state govern-ment will implement the 7th Pay Commission rec-ommendations. A fitment committee is formed for working out the modali-ties. This will benefit the state government employ-ees and pensioners,” CM Naveen Patnaik said.

IANS

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Commis-sion for Women (DCW) yesterday accused its newly appointed Mem-ber Secretary of stopping the salaries of the contractual staff and said this could derail the women’s body. DCW Chairperson Swati Mali-wal dubbed as illegal the October 7 appointment by Delhi’s Lt. Gover-nor Najeeb Jung of Alka Diwan as a Member Secretary in the DCW, as per the information available.

“New Member Secretary appointment not as per DCW Act. She’s a serving government officer and works part time in the DCW. Disobeys decisions of DCW, attacks autonomy of DCW,” Maliwal tweeted.

She said the staff of the Commission worked “round the clock” even on Saturdays to help women and girls in distress. “Not paying them salary on Diwali is inhuman.”

The Aam Aadmi Party’s Maliwal attacked the central government and said it was not allowing the DCW to work as it was doing “good work”. “Stop abuses, not salaries,” she said. “Worried 181, Rape Crisis Cell of DCW may soon stop as staff may leave. Fifty-two staff get less than `25,000. Member Secretary refus-ing to advertise posts also.”

Maliwal said she was sad that on the one hand, crimes against women and girls were rising in Delhi and on the other hand “certain vested inter-ests” were targeting the autonomy of the Commission by appointing Diwan.

IANS

NEW DELHI: Three more birds died due to suspected bird flu here yes-terday, prompting the authorities to shut down a park in Paschim Vihar in west Delhi.

In a major relief, Delhi Animal Husbandry Minister Gopal Rai said that no trace of avian influenza has been found in the chicken samples taken from the Ghazipur poultry market.

Yesterday, two birds died at the District Park in Paschim Vihar. Another bird died at the lake near Shakti Sthal, taking the total count of dead birds to over 75 so far.

Rai said that Delhi government decided to shut down the Paschim

Vihar park to deter spread of H5N8 avian influenza virus.

Earlier, the government shut down Delhi Zoo, the Hauz Khas Deer Park and a lake near Shakti Sthal, the memorial to Indira Gandhi, after birds there began dying of bird flu.

On the Ghazipur poultry mar-ket, Rai said «The reports have come from the lab and it is a relief that chicken being sold at Ghazipur ‹murga mandi› (poultry market) is not contaminated by H5N8 virus.»

A rapid response team consti-tuted by the Delhi government had collected eight samples from live birds in the Ghazipur poultry mar-ket on October 22. The samples were sent to the central lab in Bhopal which had earlier confirmed pres-ence of H5N8 virus in birds that had died at Delhi Zoo.

Yesterday, Rai chaired a meet-ing of the 23-member coordination committee and asked all agencies having any water bodies under their jurisdiction to maintain strict vigil.

“Action will be taken if there is any lapse on their part,” Rai said.

The minister has ordered all gov-ernment departments to spread lime powder around every water body. He also ordered them to spray anti-virus Sodium Hypochlorite on birds where they usually gather.

The first bird deaths were reported at Delhi Zoo, followed by Deer Park and the lake near Shakti Sthal. Samples sent to the central lab in Bhopal confirmed presence of H5N8 avian influenza virus.

Unlike the H5N1 virus, the H5N8 strain does not pose much risk to humans, according to experts.

A salesman shows gold bangles to a customer at a jewellery showroom during Dhanteras, a Hindu festival, in Kolkata, yesterday.

Festive sale

IANS

CHENNAI: Indian space agency ISRO is aiming for a world record by putting into orbit 83 satellites -- two Indian and 81 foreign -- on a single rocket in early 2017, a top official of Antrix Corporation said.

He said the company’s order book stands at `500 crore while negotiations are on for launch order for another `500 crore.

“During the first quarter of 2017 we plan to launch a single rocket carrying 83 satellites. Most for-eign satellites are nano satellites,” Rakesh Sasibhushan, Chairman-cum-Managing Director of Antrix Corporation said.

Antrix Corporation is the commercial arm of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). He said all the 83 satellites will be put in a single orbit and hence there will not be any switching off and on of

the rocket. The major challenge for the proposed mission is to hold the rocket in the same orbit till all the satellites are ejected. He said ISRO will use its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle XL (PSLV-XL) rocket vari-ant for the record launch.

For ISRO, launch of multiple sat-ellites at one go is not a new thing as it has done it several times in the past. According to Sasibhushan, the total payload/weight carried off into space by the PSLV-XL rocket will be around 1,600 kg.

Citing non-disclosure agree-ments, Sasibhushan declined to name the clients whose satel-lites ISRO will put into orbit. He said some satellites belong to cli-ents whose satellites ISRO put into orbit in the past. Meanwhile, ISRO is conducting high-altitude tests with its own cryogenic engine that is expected to power the heavier rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mk III (GSLV Mk III).

Avian flu: Three more birds dead

ISRO aims world record

by launching 83 satellites

New appointee stops

salary, says Maliwal

IANS

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The opposition parties have slammed the Pinarayi Vijayan government for, what they called, its “inaction against the stray dog menace” in the state, which has claimed at least 10 lives so far.

Besides the deaths, over a lakh people have been reportedly bitten by the strays in the past one year across Kerala.

Moving leave for an adjourn-ment motion, Indian Union Muslim League legislator PK Basheer from the opposition ranks in a beautifully presented speech, laced with his characteristic humour, slammed the government and Local Self Govern-ment Minister KT Jaleel for inaction on the menace of stray dogs. “Ani-mal birth control measures is not

the proper action...the only action required is killing of stray dogs. Today it›s like police arrive on the scene in a flash when people kill a dog, while if a murder takes place, they take their own sweet time,” Basheer said.

“What is this? People are losing patience as the government is not acting. A probe should also be con-ducted into the activities of the “dog lovers”, who have taken this issue in a big way. Where do they get the money to employ highly-paid law-yers?” said Basheer.

Most of the legislators speak-ing on the issue slammed Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi for her statement that all those who kill dogs and those who instigate others to do this should be charged under Kerala Anti-Social Activities (Pre-vention) Act (KAPA).

Opposition slams Kerala

govt for dog menace

VIEWS08 SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016

Iraqi forces have temporarily halted their advance on Mosul to consolidate their gains. The US-led coalition has been making significant progress since the assault started a few days. The coalition progress was expected for three reasons -- this assault was well-planned, it’s led

by a coalition of forces including Iraqi and US forces and third, the local opposition to IS is very strong and many have joined the operation, due to the atrocities committed by the terrorists.

The assault is likely to cause more casualties, especially among the innocent civilians. Reports say IS militants have abducted tens of thousands of men, women and children from areas around Mosul and are using them as human shields in strategic sites against advancing troops. The coalition will have to plan their next steps with extreme caution to avoid mass casualties, even if that involves delaying the operation for a few or several days. Also, hundreds of thousands of people

will be affected. The International Organization for Migration said that as of Thursday, 15,804 people had been displaced since the operation began on October 17, the vast majority in the Mosul region.

The IS side has diminished considerably. Washington estimates that there are between 3,500 and 5,000 IS fighters in Mosul and as many as 2,000 more in the surrounding areas. And Iraqi forces have closed in on Mosul from the north, east and south. The Mosul operation is certain to end with the defeat of the terrorists, but the biggest challenge for Iraqi and the US forces would be to prevent the militants from escaping to Syria

and other Arab and even Western countries to launch attacks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday called for cooperation to prevent IS fighters leaving Mosul and heading to Syria. The IS is a common enemy, and all sides need to look at the idea of cooperation to destroy this terrorist network.

The Iraqi government must also try not to hurt sectarian sentiments in the current operation. According to reports, Iraqi Shia militias backed by Iran are likely to soon join the fight against IS on a new front west of Mosul. This is a sensitive move and will alarm Turkey, the US and some Arab states. The entry of Shias will give a sectarian colour to the fight which the Iraqi government must avoid.

Mosul is Sunni-dominated, and Sunnis are feeling estranged and left out due to discrimination by the Shia-led government in Baghdad. Mosul must be given more autonomy and representation in the central government to bring Sunnis to the mainstream.

Mosul operation

Iraqi government must proceed cautiously in its Mosul offensive to avoid hurting sectarian sentiments.

Quote of the day

ISIL’s depraved, cowardly strategy is to attempt to use the presence of civilians to render certain points, effectively using tens of thousands of women, men and children as human shields.

Zeid Ra’ad Al HusseinUN High Commissioner forHuman Rights

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Back in March, when the US elections still seemed far away - back before anyone had heard the name

Fancy Bear and before every-one knew John Podesta’s risotto secrets - I was in Moscow talking to a Russian who had previously worked in the Kremlin. Over the course of a wide-ranging con-versation, it became clear that we agreed on one key charac-teristic of Vladimir Putin. He called it the “Putin Paradox” and defined it thus: The Russian president’s tactical instincts for how to seize an opportunity are so brilliant, and yet the strategic outcomes are almost invariably disastrous. Seven months later, the saga of Russian meddling in America’s presidential election has managed to illustrate the “Putin Paradox” perfectly.

There can be little serious debate at this point that Mos-cow is indeed meddling. Despite Donald Trump’s skepticism, the US intelligence community has collectively blamed Russia for the hack of Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails, which were released by the website WikiLe-aks, and the hack of the Democratic National Committee. In addition to this more hands-on interference, Russia’s foreign-lan-guage state media, notably the RT television network and Sputnik press agency, consistently push a partisan, anti-Clinton line and spread claims of election rigging and other shenanigans. (This is tame, by the way, in comparison with the over-the-top rhetoric of Russian TV host and propa-gandist Dmitry Kiselyov, who claimed the US establishment might kill Trump rather than let him become president - but such bombast is intended for domestic consumption and not to influ-ence the US vote.) There are also concerns, still unproven, that Russians could hack electronic voting systems on Election Day.

And yet, for all this effort, what has been achieved? There

have been some successes - but they seem likely to come at a very high cost.

The success of Russia’s intervention must be measured relative to its goals. Although a Trump victory seems increas-ingly unlikely, there’s little reason to think that’s what the Kremlin ever really wanted. The Repub-lican nominee may seem like something of a fellow traveller now - it was noticeable that even during the third debate he batted away opportunities to distance himself from Putin - but he would be an unpredictable president. Putin has gotten used to operating as the wildest man on the geopo-litical stage; a Trump presidency might severely cramp his style and his strategic calculations.

Rather, the aim of all of Rus-sia’s election interference was to do two things. First, to weaken Clinton, such that on her inau-guration she would be too busy coping with a disgruntled Dem-ocratic left, an embittered Republican right, and a divided country in between to devote energy to confronting and top-pling Putin. It is too early to be sure, but if anything, the hacks actually seem to be doing the unthinkable and bringing Democrats and mainstream Republicans together in their shared anger at Moscow.

Second, by undermining the very legitimacy of US democ-racy, Russia’s hacking sought to weaken US legitimacy abroad, dismay its friends, and provide fuel for a global propaganda campaign that, at its heart, tries to convince people not that the Russian system is better than the rest, so much that it isn’t any worse. That propaganda has res-onated somewhat, but it is hard to demonstrate that anything the Russians are doing is more dam-aging than the Trump campaign itself.

But just like the Crimean annexation, the Donbass adven-ture, and the Syrian intervention (where Putin backed away from an early withdrawal, leav-ing him stuck in yet another open-ended war), today’s Rus-sian achievement is poised to become tomorrow’s debilitating disaster. Russians who chortled at the original WikiLeaks reve-lations and felt sly satisfaction at the havoc created by “their” hack-ers are now expressing concerns about possible US retaliation and, more importantly, what this will mean for future Russo-American relations. As one bitterly grum-bled, “Let’s get used to sanctions until we’re in the grave.”

Clinton is no friend of Putin’s.

But she is a pragmatic operator less interested in starting new crusades than clearing up old conflicts; had Putin waited until her inauguration and offered some kind of deal on Syria, maybe even Ukraine, it seems likely that she would at least have consid-ered it. With his smear-and-leak antics, though, Putin appears to have managed to convince Clin-ton and those around her that the Kremlin represents a clear and present danger to American democracy and Western unity. As a Washington insider put it to me, “Expect now to see Putin’s nightmares” - maybe even that long-rumoured quiet support for regime change in Russia - “come true once Hillary’s in the Oval Office.”

In Moscow, the realization is growing that a few months of schadenfreude during the US presidential campaign are not going to be worth the likely fallout. The foreign-policy elite fear that Washington is prepar-ing to call Moscow’s bluffs in the Middle East and Europe and also push harder on a wavering European Union to maintain and even step up pressure on Russia. The political and business elite are concerned that even if the United States does not actively push for regime change, it will clamp down all the more tightly on their opportunities to travel abroad and invest.

One senior parliamentary aide recently expressed to me the worry that “Russia is becoming the new South Africa,” referring to the 30-year era of boycotts and sanctions that isolated that country when it was still white-ruled and characterized by apartheid.

Even the spooks who orches-trated all this have their qualms. Putin’s patronage and his enthu-siasm for their ability to stir up trouble abroad have served them very well until now. However, their methods and capabilities are now coming under a scrutiny unseen since the Cold War, and a new US retaliatory strategy seems to be taking shape. An analyst close to the Russian intelligence community expressed a real worry, for example, that cyber-espionage capabilities, “which could have been real assets, were wasted on emails full of gossip.”

To understand why Putin’s American adventure has gone so badly wrong - and to understand why it illustrates so well this idea of a “Putin Paradox” - it helps to look at it in the context of how the Russian president likes to operate. Putin is a sort of improv player on the world stage, riffing off current

events and others’ concerns. In particular, he has for some time engaged in what I’ve called “troll geopolitics,” which involves dra-matic stunts that cross all sorts of lines and generate plenty of breathless press coverage along the away.

Examples of this sort of trolling include rhetorical and gestural displays like sending long-range bombers to skirt Nato airspace and, recently, deploying nuclear-capable missiles to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. These are relatively meaningless - but do attract alarmed atten-tion from the West. At other times, his trolling can take a much more serious, and risky, form. The intervention in Syria was meant to prop up one of Russia’s last allies and serve as a brazen response to Washington’s efforts diplomatically to isolate Moscow. But it has also increased the odds of two nuclear powers coming into direct military conflict.

As for the meddling in Ameri-ca’s elections, it may have started as the more inconsequential sort of trolling, but when Putin suc-cumbed to his usual tendency to double down in the heat of the moment, it became a more con-sequential intervention - an overt challenge to the very integrity of US democracy.

For Putin, the temptation to meddle in America’s domestic politics must have been irresist-ible. Massive and diffuse political machines, especially those rely-ing heavily on volunteers, are by their nature insecure, easy targets for Russia’s extensive, aggressive, and active intelligence services. And America’s increasingly bitter and divided political landscape produced an exceedingly hostile presidential campaign that max-imized the impact of strategic leaks and other “active measures” - as the Russian spooks call polit-ical operations.

The opportunist in Putin spotted the weaknesses within the US political system this elec-tion and seized the moment with glee, and American democracy has indeed suffered. But Putin has also managed to make Russia’s role so evident that it demands some kind of US response.

The Kremlin’s problem, among others, is that Putin the Opportunist is consumed by the moment. He is focused on what he can accomplish tomorrow, with-out necessarily thinking through to what the consequences may be the day after. He also too easily assumes that he will remain in control of what he started; this, too, is something we’ve seen before.

Putin’s chaos strategy is coming back to bite him

By Mark Galeotti

The Washington Post

OPINION 09SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016

Hillary holds lead, but pollsters say job is harder

By Scott Malone

Reuters

Many opinion polls show Dem-ocrat Hillary Clinton leading Republican Donald Trump in a tight race for the November

8 US presidential election, but any one of four factors may make the outcome harder to predict.

Among the challenges for pollsters: The historic unpopularity of both candidates, the potential Election Day voter response to the polls themselves, the growing aban-donment of landlines for cellphones, and the rise of online polling.

Some high-profile stumbles world-wide - including opinion polls that missed Colombia’s October 2 rejection of a peace deal - underscore how technological, social and cultural shifts have made polling more difficult than ever.

An average of polls compiled by Real-ClearPolitics.com shows former Secretary of State Clinton beating Trump, a business-man, by 5.4 percentage points. Highlighting the difficulties, the range varies from plus-13 for Clinton to a straight tie. Trump has said the election is rigged against him and this week, in a interview, he accused media organizations of tilting the polls deliber-ately, but he has yet to offer any widely accepted evidence to back up these claims.

Voter turnout in the last few presiden-tial elections has been about 60 percent. But given both candidates’ low overall pop-ularity, turnout this year may fall to as low as 52 percent, said Cliff Zukin, a profes-sor emeritus of political science at New Jersey’s Rutgers University and a former president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

That makes it hard to guess who might stay home.

“It’s always been difficult to simulate a likely electorate and I think that’s harder to do in 2016,” Zukin said.

A second pitfall is the effect of the poll-ing itself on voters. Sociologists believe polls can weaken projected winners by making

their supporters more confident of the out-come and, therefore, less likely to vote.

The percentage of Trump supporters who expect him to win has dropped to 49 percent in a poll conducted from Oct. 20-24, down from 74 percent from Septem-ber 16-20. Clinton supporters’ confidence rose at the same time.

If that leads to a higher turnout of Trump supporters than of Clinton supporters, it might affect the election outcome.

Pollsters caution, however, that the effect of polls on the electorate can only go so far.

“If it were showing Clinton up by 2 points, then it’s certainly possible that it would be within the margin of error that Trump might win,” said Douglas Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

“But if you’re finding that all of these high-quality polls are showing Clinton con-sistently ahead, then I think you can trust them,” he said.

One of the biggest factors in polling today is the prevalence of cellphones. About half of Americans have only a cellphone

and no landline, according to Federal Com-munications Commission data, more than double the number who were wireless-only in 2010.

This makes it harder and more expen-sive for pollsters to gather a truly random sample of opinions because US law prohib-its computerized auto-dialing (also known as robocalls) to cellphones and there is no central directory for cellphones.

Polling cellphones can costs 30 to 50 percent more than polling land lines due to requirements that the numbers be dialed manually, according to Pew Research Center estimates. This has led polling outfits to generally rely on lower sample sizes to come up with results.

Calls to cellphones are also more eas-ily screened by their users, and as a result pollsters say they connect with just 10 per-cent of people they try to contact, down from 80 percent a few decades ago.

But Courtney Kennedy, director of survey research at Pew said, “In terms of data, the quality is better.” Many respond-ents on cellphones are young and racially

diverse, she said.Others, such as Reuters/Ipsos, con-

duct surveys online. This allows them to reach large numbers of people at lower cost. But because participants are volun-teers in many cases, rather than selected at random, segments of the electorate may be left out.

The lower or skewed response in both cellphone and online polls can pose a chal-lenge with pollsters having to adjust results to match the real world. To accomplish this, they weight more heavily the opin-ions of types of voters under-represented in their surveys.

Pollsters use population statistics, expe-rience and intuition to do this. For instance, if the proportion of men who respond to a survey is lower than their proportion of the overall population, the pollster will adjust the finding to try to even that out.

“Then you’ve built in an assumption that the males that didn’t respond are like the males that responded. And that’s an unknowable fact,” said Robert Groves, provost of Georgetown University, a social

statistician and author of seven books on polling who served as director of the US Census Bureau from 2009 through 2012.

But such modelling can work well in some cases.

A study by Columbia University statisti-cians, published in 2014 in the International Journal of Forecasting, showed that a poll of users of Microsoft Corp’s Xbox gaming system could be used to accurately pre-dict the election’s outcome.

The gamers were far younger, whiter and more male than the US electorate and predicted a sweeping victory for Repub-lican Mitt Romney in 2012. But when the results were weighted according to voters who turned out in 2008, they predicted President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election.

Getting the weightings right this time could be a tougher job because Trump has attracted many supporters who histori-cally have voted erratically, or not at all.

“We can’t apply 2008 and 2012 mod-els to 2016,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University.

Some high-profile stumbles worldwide - including opinion polls that missed Colombia’s October 2 rejection of a peace deal - underscore how technological, social and cultural shifts have made polling more difficult than ever.

US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton greeting students during a homecoming rehearsal at the North Carolina A&T university in Greensboro, North Carolina, yesterday.

Abbas faces transition pressure in Fatah

By Jonathan Ferziger

Bloomberg

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas must start preparing for a leadership transition when the

Fatah movement that rules the West Bank holds its first congress in seven years in late November, a senior group official says.

“Now Abu Mazen is 81 years old, and we do need a transition period,” said Jibril Rajoub, deputy secretary of Fatah’s central committee, using Abbas’s nickname. Abbas “has to play

a godfather role in this next period,” he said in an interview in his office outside Jerusalem.

Decisions made at the Ramallah conference will have implications not only for Fatah and its bitter rival Pal-estinian Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, but also for peacemaking with Israel and for the foreign donor coun-tries that provide most of the Palestinian Authority’s budget.

While more than 1,000 Fatah mem-bers have been invited to convene at the end of November to pick the par-ty’s leadership for the next five years, that’s only about a third of the number that attended the 2009 meeting. The restricted list strengthens Abbas’s hand over the outcomes, said Jehad Harb, a researcher at the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.

Abbas is under pressure from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Arab countries to pick a successor and assure a peaceful transition when he leaves the stage, he said. Limiting the number of Fatah activists attending will give

Abbas “the ability to manage the par-ty’s agenda and most importantly, to control the elections of the central com-mittee,” Harb said.

Abbas, the long-time deputy to Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, became Pal-estinian Authority president in January 2005 for what was supposed to be a

four-year term, but subsequent elec-tions were never held.

Considered a relative moderate in Palestinian politics, Abbas has gener-ally eschewed violence but in recent years has refused to negotiate with Israel unless its government halts set-tlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Critics in Israel

say Abbas lacks the courage to make the compromises needed to secure a peace deal.

Palestinian law specifies that a new president be chosen by popular elec-tion, but an agreement to hold a ballot has eluded Hamas and Fatah since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007. The PLO, the umbrella group that signed agreements with Israel establishing the Palestinian Authority, could argue it has the status to override the Basic Law and name a successor. That makes next month’s leadership conference of Fatah, the main PLO faction, even more consequential.

‘One-Man Show’Rajoub says he doesn’t aspire to suc-

ceed Abbas and Arafat as “a patriarch,” preferring to focus on holding his post in Fatah and maybe “taking the helm” of the party. Others would lead the PLO and the PA. “The future regime cannot be a one-man show,” he said.

In and out of Israeli prisons dur-ing the 1970s and 1980s for militant activity -- he learned fluent Hebrew in jail -- Rajoub became head of the

Preventive Security Force in the West Bank after the Palestinian Authority was formed in 1994, later becoming Arafat’s national security adviser.

Rajoub challenged the exiled Mohammed Dahlan to return for the Fatah conference and prove his popu-larity if he wants to succeed Abbas. In 2014, Dahlan was convicted in absen-tia of “defaming Abbas” and sentenced to two years in prison, making it dan-gerous for him to return while Abbas remains in power. Dahlan denies any wrongdoing.

“We will give him all the guaran-tees” to return without being arrested, Rajoub said, though he added Dah-lan ultimately would have to appear in court to face the charges.

Separately, Rajoub -- who also serves as president of the Palestinian Football Association and the Palestine Olympic Committee -- said he plans to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne if soccer’s glo-bal governing body doesn’t suspend six Israeli teams based in West Bank settlements.

All thoughts and views expressed in these columns are those of the writers, not of the newspaper.All correspondence regarding Views and Opinion pages should be mailed to the Editor-in-Chief.

Abbas is under pressure from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Arab countries to pick a successor and assure a peaceful transition when he leaves the stage, he said. Limiting the number of Fatah activists attending will give Abbas “the ability to manage the party’s agenda and most importantly, to control the elections of the central committee,” says said Jehad Harb, a researcher at the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.

EUROPE10 SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016

The court said it would defer to English courts on issue of whether the British government has the right to invoke Article 50 to leave the bloc, without backing of the parliament.

Ukrainian servicemen fire a BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher system during military exercises near the village of Divychky in Kiev region, Ukraine, yesterday.

Weapon power

A woman folds a blanket in a shelter in Camerino, central Italy, yesterday after two earthquakes hit the areas of Macerata, Visso and Ussita.

Under quake’s shadow

Reuters

BELFAST: Northern Ireland’s High Court yesterday rejected an attempt to block Britain’s exit from the European Union, saying neither the province’s parliament nor laws could override a decision by British government.

But it said it would defer to Eng-lish courts on wider issue of whether the British government has the right to invoke Article 50 of EU Lisbon Treaty

to leave the bloc, without explicit backing of British parliament.

Prime Minister Theresa May wel-comed the ruling, with a spokesman saying it would allow the British government “to proceed to trigger Article 50 as planned”.

One of the plaintiffs, human rights activists Raymond McCord, said he would appeal against the rul-ing in the Supreme Court, Britain’s highest judicial body.

The case is the first judgment in legal disputes around Brexit that are being closely watched by politi-cians and markets. A case in London will rule on whether May can use the government’s “royal prerogative” power to trigger Article 50 without consulting parliament.

“The fact that the government has won in the Northern Ireland case could be seen to indicate that its pre-rogative power is holding up pretty well,” said Stephen Tierney, director of the Edinburgh Centre for Consti-tutional Law.

“I would personally be surprised if the High Court in England reached a different conclusion,” he said.

There are fears that Brexit could undermine a 1998 peace deal, the

Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of bloodshed in the province, and could lead to the reintroduction of unpopular controls on the border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member.

But justice Paul Maguire said it was “not viable” that Northern Ire-land should overrule the 52 percent of the United Kingdom as a whole that voted in favour of leaving.

The regional parliament would have a say on legislation passed to enact Britain’s exit, but the trig-gering of Article 50 itself was not a “devolved matter”.

“The UK Parliament has retained to itself the ability to legislate for NI without the need to resort to any special procedure,” Maguire said.

The arguments about May’s rights to trigger Article 50 “have been held over pending the outcome of the English litigation”, he added.

Rights activist Raymond McCord told journalists the ruling was a set-back and he would continue to fight Brexit. “I believe what we are doing is correct. Fifty-six percent of the people of this country (Northern Ireland) voted to remain.”

A group of politicians and rights

Sweden rejects

Assange’s plea

to suspend

arrest warrant

AFP

STOCKHOLM: The Swedish pros-ecutor’s office yesterday said it has rejected WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s request to temporarily suspend an arrest warrant so he could leave Ecuadorian embassy in London and attend a funeral.

“Julian Assange has requested that the Swedish prosecutor should grant him leave from detention order and European arrest warrant in to go to a funeral,” the prosecu-tor’s office said.

The prosecutor dismissed Assange’s request, saying Swed-ish law does not allow permission or exemption to a court decision on issuing of a European arrest warrant. The prosecutor’s office did not specify whose funeral Assange wanted to attend or where it would be held.

The 45-year-old Australian is holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London since June 2012, seeking refuge there after exhausting all his legal options in Britain against extradition to Sweden.

Assange has refused to travel to Sweden for questioning over abuse allegations, which he denies, due to concerns he would then be extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks’ release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In September, a Swedish appeals court ruled against his request to lift the arrest warrant, the eighth straight time a Swed-ish court has ruled against him.

AFP

WARSAW: Poland’s foreign min-ister yesterday said his rightwing government rejects the EU execu-tive’s recommendations regarding how to solve a constitutional crisis that has raised concerns.

“We don’t agree with one-sided interpretation made by the Euro-pean Commission,” Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said.

The populist Law and Justice (PiS) government pushed through controversial changes to Poland’s constitutional court’s decision-making rules soon after sweeping to power a year ago.

The reforms have alarmed the European Union and triggered

a string of street protests, with the opposition claiming they are intended to paralyse the court and undermine democracy.

In July, the European Commis-sion handed Warsaw a three-month deadline to reverse changes to top court—by publishing and imple-menting court rulings—or face sanctions for breaching EU norms on the rule of law and democracy.

Poland’s foreign ministry called commission’s recommendations “groundless.” “We regret to note that the commission recommendation is an expression of incomplete knowl-edge about how the legal system and the Constitutional Tribunal operate in Poland,” the ministry said.

Warsaw did not make public its response to commission, which local media said spanned a dozen pages.

Reuters

CALAIS: Dozens of youngsters woke under watchful eyes of French riot police yesterday after a chilly night outdoors near “Jungle” migrant camp in Calais, as Paris and London squab-bled over their fate and of hundreds more bent on getting to Britain.

Charity workers offered them food and warm drinks, telling jour-nalists the youngsters were a small sample of scores of minors who are in limbo since the evacuation this week

of the camp, now being demolished.The vast site on sandy scrubland,

a symbol of Europe’s fraught efforts to deal with a record influx of refu-gees, was evacuated this week before bulldozers moved in to flatten it.

Government officials in the region say that more than 6,000 people had been moved out of the squalid, ramshackle camp and trans-ferred to towns throughout France.

But concern has switched to upwards of a thousand isolated minors who have been put in large container-box shelters nearby or have simply not signalled their

existence. Many want just one thing — transfer to Britain, which is almost visible across the sea from Calais.

In a statement, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he was “surprised” by declarations by British opposite number Amber Rudd and was counting on London to honour an obligation to take minors from Calais.

Rudd appeared to have raised eyebrows when she said France must protect migrant children still in Cal-ais and suggested at least some of them should remain in France rather than be moved to Britain, which is

obliged under EU law to reunite minors with family there.

According to a spokesman at her ministry, Rudd said: “Any child either not eligible or not in secure area of camp should be cared for and safe-guarded by the French authorities.

“We understand that specialist facilities have been made available elsewhere in France to ensure this happens,” she added in comments that refer to accommodation France has opened up to rehouse those who agreed to leave the Jungle.

A joint statement by Cazeneuve and France’s housing minister said

France hoped Britain would “quickly execute its responsibilities to take in these minors, who hope to come to the United Kingdom. This is the best way to give them the protection they are due.”

The French statement followed media reports of unsupervised chil-dren sleeping rough around the port town since the clearance operation was launched, even though some 1,451 minors have been housed sep-arately near the camp.

France says Britain has so far accepted 274 children from among this group.

AFP

THE HAGUE: Dutch Prime Minis-ter Mark Rutte yesterday appealed to opposition parties to help find a com-promise over amending a EU-Ukraine treaty, rejected by voters in April, or risk seeing key cooperation pact fail.

If no solution is found, Rutte warned his government would have no choice but to propose a law perhaps as soon as tomorrow with-drawing country’s support for the accord between Kiev and the EU.

“In the interests of our coun-try, I call on all of those who feel

responsible to find a solution,” Rutte told journalists.

The Netherlands is the only member of EU yet to ratify the accord, which aims to nudge Ukraine closer to Europe and away from the orbit of former Soviet master Russia.

Rejecting the agreement “will lead to greater instability and a sug-gestion of a divided Europe,” Rutte said, highlighting need for a united front on issues such as war in Syria.

He has been walking a political tightrope since the April 6 refer-endum—organised by eurosceptic groups—in which 60 percent of vot-ers rejected the accord, despite a very low voter turnout.

But he is in a Catch-22 situation having failed to convince opposi-tion parties to back his proposals to amend the accord by adding a mili-tary “opt-out” clause and guarantees of no EU membership for Ukraine.

The opposition wants him to nego-tiate with Brussels first and bring back an amended treaty for debate.

But Rutte said Brussels first wants assurances the accord will be passed by Dutch parliament before asking other member states to accept any proposed changes. His coalition government needs 38 votes in the 76-seat upper house of parliament for the accord to be ratified, but he only has 21 votes so far.

Victims’ rights campaigner Raymond McCord (second right) leaves the High Court in Belfast after attending the ruling in a legal challenge against Brexit, yesterday.

Northern Ireland court rejects Brexit challenge

groups who launched a parallel case that was merged with McCord’s said they were “deeply disappointed” by the rejection of their case, but had not yet decided whether to appeal.

Northern Ireland’s Irish national-ist party Sinn Fein said it would study the judgment carefully and explore

every legal and political option to ensure the remain vote was respected.

The ruling may have implications for Scotland, whose government argues it should have a say on Brexit because it too voted to remain in the EU.

Nicola Sturgeon, who heads the devolved Scottish government, has

said it would be an act of “consti-tutional vandalism” to try to ignore Scotland’s voice.

Her party has drawn up draft leg-islation on a second referendum on independence from the UK, which it says is an option to protect Scotland’s position within the EU.

Poland rejects EU

demands on court crisis

France & Britain feud over young ‘Jungle’ migrants

Dutch PM urges opposition to support EU-Ukraine treaty

AMERICAS 11SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016

A health ministry worker fumigates a house to kill mosquitoes during a campaign against dengue and chikungunya and to prevent Zika infection in Managua, Nicaragua, yesterday.

Fighting the menace

The 12-hour work stoppage was mostly ineffective, with public transport in the capital running and businesses and factories operating at near-normal levels.

AP

CARACAS: Some stores were closed and traffic was lighter but for the most part residents of Venezuela’s capital ignored calls to stay home yesterday to protest President Nico-las Maduro, handing a rare victory to the embattled socialist leader.

The opposition has been stepping up its campaign to force Maduro from office after authorities canceled a recall referendum seeking his removal.

But the 12-hour work stoppage, announced by the opposition during demonstrations across the country,

was mostly ineffective, with public transport in the capital running and businesses and factories operating at near-normal levels.

“This is a message to the right-wing leaders: Your strike has failed,” said Tareck El Aissami, the pro-gov-ernment governor of Aragua state. “Nobody is going to support a coup.”

Senior officials have threat-ened to expropriate businesses that close and major employers insisted the work stoppage was a grassroots protest, not a lockout aimed at sabo-taging the already crippled economy.

Some Venezuelans said they couldn’t afford to stay home.

In the opposition’s stronghold of eastern Caracas, young mothers and the elderly standing in a two-hour-long line for food said that Friday was the only day they could hunt for groceries thanks to a rationing system put in place earlier this year that restricts shopping to one day per work week at supermarkets selling food at subsidised prices. “If I don’t shop, I can’t eat tonight,” said Gipssy Bracho, a 59-year-old retiree.

The stoppage recalled opposition tactics used in 2002 ahead of a coup against then President Hugo Chavez.

But while Chavez is still mostly revered, his hand-picked successor

is widely unpopular. Polls show three out of four Venezuelans want Maduro out of office this year, blaming him for the worst economic crisis in decades.

The opposition has called for a march on the presidential palace in the heart of the city on Thursday if the government doesn’t reverse its decision to block the recall effort. It’s also holding a symbolic “political trial” in congress, accusing Maduro of trampling on the constitution and installing a dictatorship.

The government has responded to strike with a mix of threats and appeals to its base among Venezuela’s workers.

Powerful socialist leader Dios-dado Cabello warned that businesses participating in the strike would be expropriated by workers and the mil-itary. As if to underscore the risk of reprisals, heavily armed agents from the Sebin political police have been parked since Thursday outside the offices and mansion of Lorenzo Men-doza, the head of Polar, the nation’s largest food manufacturer, who took part in Wednesday’s march.

Andres Garban, an employee in Polar’s legal department, said he and many of his colleagues came to work against their wishes to protect their jobs.

“They think they own Venezuela,” said Garban, staring at the police

adjacent to a bewerage factory that has been idled for months due to a lack of dollars to purchase imported barley. “I would’ve like to have exer-cised my civic rights but thanks to the intimidation I had no choice but

to come to work.”On Thursday, Maduro announced

he was raising minimum wage by 40 percent, his fourth such hike this year.

Economists however say infla-tion, which International Monetary

Fund forecasts will soar to four digits next year, is running even faster, and the currency’s slide on widely used black market has depressed value of minimum salary to just around $90 a month.

Colombia’s ELN

rebels to free

hostage once

peace talks begin

Reuters

BOGOTA: Colombia’s Marxist rebel group, the National Libera-tion Army, will free a key hostage once delayed peace talks with the government begin, a commander said yesterday, challenging Bogo-ta’s demand it would not sit down at the negotiating table until the man is freed.

Peace talks between the gov-ernment of President Juan Manuel Santos and the group, known as the ELN, were set to open on Thurs-day in Quito, Ecuador, but Santos called off the ceremony pending the release of former legislator Odin Sanchez, held since April.

The release of Sanchez — the most well-known of potential remaining hostages — is a long-standing government condition for beginning talks with the group.

“The commitment was that the liberation would take place in course of the first round of nego-tiations,” ELN negotiator Pablo Beltran said in comments posted to ELN’s Twitter account. “A date was not set.” “That’s our commit-ment and we will follow through,” Beltran said.

The ELN negotiator’s com-ments seemed to contradict earlier reports that Sanchez’s release was already under way.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which will facil-itate Sanchez’s release, said early yesterday that protocols were in motion.

The head of the government negotiating team, Juan Camilo Restrepo, also said the operation had begun.

AP

BOSTON: The government has issued new rules meant to help students get their federal loans erased in cases involving fraud and misconduct by their schools.

Federal education officials have been working to create a more detailed system for students to file claims since the Education Depart-ment received thousands of claims from former students of now-defunct Corinthian Colleges chain, which closed or sold all of its campuses last year amid allegations of fraud.

The process had previously been

guided by rules from 1995 that pro-vided little detail about when and how students could submit claims, and how the department should resolve them.

New rules announced by the department yesterday will clarify that students are eligible to have loans erased if their college misrepresents quality of its programmes or success of students; if the college breaks a “con-tractual promise” with its students; and if a state or federal court rules that the loan should be forgiven.

The rules also put colleges financially on the hook for repay-ing the loans instead of taxpayers, and ban schools from forcing stu-dents to sign agreements saying

they won’t sue over misconduct.“Today’s regulations build on that

progress by ensuring students who are lied to and mistreated by their school get relief they are owed, and schools that harm students are held responsible for their behaviour,” Edu-cation Secretary John B. King Jr. said. .

Among other changes, the rules also create a process for the Educa-tion Department to forgive loans for groups of students in cases of wide-spread misconduct, even to students who don’t apply for loan forgiveness.

Colleges with many students who fail to repay their loans after gradu-ating will also be required to include a warning in their advertisements.

For-profit colleges have been

lobbying against the rules since they were proposed, describing them as unfair regulation meant to take down their industry.

“This complex and burden-some regulation will crush career education with financial require-ments not imposed on others in higher education — including insti-tutions that have lower graduation rates and higher default rates,” said Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, a for-profit col-lege lobbying group.

Gunderson said his group is still reviewing the rules to “determine our appropriate action.”

The administration of President

Barack Obama has led a crackdown on for-profit colleges accused of mis-conduct. The Corinthian Colleges chain was under heavy pressure from the Education Department when it shut down last year. In that case, more than 15,000 student claims of misconduct have been approved, leading the government to clear $247m in loans.

This year, the ITT Technical Insti-tute, one of the nation’s largest chains of for-profit colleges, shut down, say-ing it couldn’t survive sanctions by the department. The chain had been accused of misleading students about the success of its graduates and was at risk of losing its academic accreditation

AP

MADISON, WISCONSIN: A Uni-versity of Wisconsin-Madison student already accused of abus-ing a woman in his apartment has been charged with abusing four other women since early 2015.

Alec Cook, 20, of Edina, Min-nesota, now faces seven counts of second-degree assault, three counts of third-degree abuse, two counts of strangulation, two counts of false imprisonment and one count of fourth-degree abuse.

The complaint prosecutors filed accuses Cook of assaults dating back to March 2015. Prosecutors said one of the women was assaulted multi-ple times during a ballroom dancing class she was attending with Cook this past spring. Cook’s other accusers are: a woman he met at a party in March 2015; a woman he met in a human class in February; and a woman he met during a psychology class exper-iment in August.

Cook was charged last week with assaulting a woman in his apartment the night of October 12 after the two had studied together.

Media reports of those charges have driven dozens of women to report to police their encoun-ters with Cook. Officers searching Cook’s apartment found a black book listing women he’d met and documenting his “desires” and including the word “kill” without explanation, authorities said.

Dane County Circuit Court Com-missioner Brian Asmus set Cook’s bail at $200,000 cash during a brief hearing. Cook made no statement at the hearing.

His attorneys, Jessa Nicholson and Chris Van Wagner, told report-ers after the proceeding that they believe the ballroom assaults never happened, noting the complaint

didn’t cite any witnesses. The rest of the encounters, they said, were consensual. Van Wagner showed reporters a page from Cook’s book with the word “Killed?” written at the top and said it’s unclear what it means.

He said Cook has been vilified on social media but the prosecu-tion’s case is “just dust.” Women are coming forward because they’ve seen social media postings about Cook and have become frightened, he said. “He’s been painted as the face of evil,” Van Wagner said. “That’s wrong.”

According to the complaint, the accuser from the October 12 inci-dent says she went to his apartment after studying with him at a campus library. She said he assaulted her for two-and-half hours, maintaining what she described as a “death grip” on her arm or body. Cook told police the woman never told him to stop.

Another woman came forward two days after charges were filed in that case. She said she met Cook at her friend’s birthday party in March 2015. Two weeks later she visited his apartment, where he misbehaved with her, then abused her.

The same day that Cook was charged with the October 12 assault, two other women reported being assaulted by him.

One woman told police she was in a ballroom dance class with Cook during the spring 2016 semester. She accused him of repeatedly touching her while they were dancing despite her telling him to stop. The touch-ing occurred 15 to 20 times over the semester, she said.

The class instructor told inves-tigators she got an email from the woman saying she was uncomforta-ble with how Cook touched her. The instructor responded by speaking to the class about appropriate contact during dances. She said no other students complained about Cook.

AP

DENVER: The pilots of a corporate-style jet that crashed at a Colorado mountain airport in 2014 were des-perately battling powerful wind gusts and then began to scream and yell as the plane slammed into the runway, according to a newly released tran-script of the cockpit voice recorder.

The transcript also depicts air traffic controllers trying to warn the pilots to abort the landing sec-onds before the crash, which killed one person.

The National Transportation Safety Board released early yester-day the transcript and other details of the crash at Aspen-Pitkin

County Airport on January 5, 2014.The documents did not discuss

the cause of the crash. That will be part of a final report, which is not expected for several weeks.

The twin-jet Bombardier CL 600 was on a flight to Aspen from Tuc-son, Arizona, with a pilot, a co-pilot and one passenger, who was also a licensed pilot. All were from Mexico and all were in the cockpit.

“(Expletive) winds are screwed,” one person says on the transcript, which was translated from Spanish by safety board investigators. The transcript doesn’t identify which of the three men is speaking.

Later, someone says, “No, no. Careful, careful.”

After rumbling sounds and cock-pit warning tones, an air traffic

controller calls out, “Go around” four times.

“Vamanos, vamanos (Let’s go, let’s go),” someone in the cockpit says.

That is followed by screaming and yelling and a “thunk,” the tran-script says, and then the recording ends. The audio hasn’t been released.

The safety board report said winds were gusting to 25 knots (28 mph) from shifting directions. Depending on the wind direction at the time of the crash, the gusts were above or near the maximums listed in the plane’s manual, the report said.

The report said the pilots were making their second attempt to land when they crashed. They aborted their first attempt a few minutes ear-lier, telling air traffic controllers the

wind was 33 knots (38 mph).The co-pilot, Sergio Carranza

Brabata, was killed. The pilot and a passenger were injured. Authori-ties have identified the survivors as Moises Carranza and Miguel Hen-riqez but have not said who was the passenger.

The report said the man serving as pilot on the flight had only 12 to 14 hours of flying time in a Bombardier CL 600, including training. He had a total of about 17,000 hours flying other aircraft, including much larger Airbus airliners. The co-pilot’s hours in the CL-600 were not listed.

The passenger was an expe-rienced CL 600 pilot and was a friend of the flight crew, and they had invited him along for advice, the report said.

Scant support for strike against Maduro

People walk by closed stores during the 12-hour strike, in Caracas, yesterday.

New rules aim to help students clear loans in cases of fraud

Wisconsin varsity student

accused of more abuses

Crashed jet’s pilots battled with gusts: Transcript

AMERICAS12 SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016

In a letter sent to congressional leaders, FBI Director James Comey said new emails have emerged, prompting the agency to take appropriate investigative steps.

Candles and dove cutouts are seen during a demonstration to protest the violence and murders against women, in Cartagena, Colombia, yesterday.

Concern for women

AP

MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE: The FBI will investigate whether there is classified information in newly discovered emails related to its probe of Hillary Clinton’s pri-vate server, reinjecting one of the most toxic political issues into the

presidential campaign less than two weeks before Election Day.

Donald Trump immediately pounced on the turn of events, seeing an opportunity to press the argument he’s long tried to make against Clin-ton: That she thinks she’s above the law and that she put US security at risk by using her personal email.

The GOP nominee told cheering supporters at his campaign rally he has “great respect” for the fact the FBI and the Department of Justice are now “wiling to have courage to right horrible mistake that they made” in concluding the investigation earlier.

Trump said of Clinton, “We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office. ... This is bigger than Watergate.”

The yesterday afternoon’s disclo-sure raises the possibility of the FBI reopening the criminal investigation involving the Democratic presiden-tial nominee, which the agency said was complete in July.

In a letter sent yesterday to

congressional leaders, FBI Director James Comey said that new emails have emerged, prompting the agency to “take appropriate investigative steps” to review information that flowed through private email sever Clinton used while serving as secretary of state.

Clinton’s email use has been one of the biggest vulnerabilities in her campaign for the White House. Even if she wins, Republicans have vowed the issue will follow her, promising continuing investigations.

Clinton’s campaign didn’t respond to the news. She ignored shouted questions from reporters as she walked off her plane in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

But her campaign was fending off other political problems as well, still trying to dismiss the revelations in thousands of messages stolen from private account of a top Clinton aide, part of a hack the Democratic cam-paign has blamed on the Russians.

Correspondence made pub-lic on Wednesday showed longtime

Bill Clinton aide Doug Band describ-ing overlapping relationships of the Clintons’ global philanthropy and the family’s private enrichment.

“These are illegally stolen docu-ments,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters on her campaign plane. “We’re not going to spend our campaign fighting back what Russians want this to be about.”

So far, the email-related contro-versies haven’t seemed to hurt her campaign in the final weeks.

Recent surveys show Clinton retaining her lead in national polls and making gains in some swing states. Her campaign announced plans to hold a rally in Arizona next Wednesday, a traditionally red state put in play by Trump’s deep unpop-ularity among minority voters, Mormons and business leaders.

Feeling confident, she’s begun focusing on helping Democrats win control of Senate, expand their margin in the House and lay groundwork for future victories in

demographically-shifting states like Arizona. Her campaign will also get a boost from President Barack Obama, who will hold an evening rally in Orlando, a key battleground area of the crucial swing state of Florida.

White House officials say Obama will be travelling to boost Clinton nearly every day until Election Day, reflecting his rising popularity ratings.

Trump, meanwhile, is holding events in New Hampshire, Iowa and Maine, one of two states that split their electoral voters by congres-sional district.

Facing an increasingly narrow path to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, his campaign is shooting for one of the tradition-ally Democratic state’s four electoral votes in the more rural, conservative 2nd District.

His campaign said the billion-aire businessman is plunging an additional $10m of his personal fortune into his presidential bid, after new federal filings that show

Hillary Clinton with an $85m cash advantage in the final stretch.

The latest fundraising records, which cover the first 19 days of the month, show Trump had given only about $33,000 this month — far less than the $2m he typically gives and still $44m short of the $100m he’s repeatedly promised to contribute over the course of the campaign.

Clinton’s campaign and joint accounts with Democrats had $153m in the bank as of last week. That’s more than double the $68m the Republican’s campaign and partnership committees had on hand.

“We are being incredibly efficient with the dollars we have. We’re doing things smarter,” said Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie in a conference call with reporters.

He added, “I obviously want to see more on the air and with our communications, digitally and on tel-evision. That’s where we’re focusing on our final push.”

New FBI probe reinjects Hillary emails into 2016 race

AP

SPRINGFIELD, OHIO: Aiming to deliver a knockout blow to Donald Trump’s staggering presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton turned to popular first lady Michelle Obama to rally voters in North Carolina.

Trump denounced both Hillary and Bill Clinton as creatures of a corrupt political system, who would use another pass at the Oval Office to enrich themselves at the expense of American families. He faces a sizable fundraising deficit that could cripple his last-ditch electoral efforts.

Mrs Obama, one of Clinton’s most effect ive surrogates, passionately touted Clinton’s experience and denounced Trump as too divisive and thin-skinned for the White House.

“We want someone who is a unifying force in this country, someone who sees our differences not as a threat but as a blessing,” Mrs Obama said as she addressed an enthusiastic, 11,000-person crowd in Winston-Salem, one of Clinton’s biggest gatherings of her campaign. Trump often points out that his crowds are generally larger than his rival’s.

Mrs Obama also accused Trump’s campaign of trying to depress voter turnout and panned his provocative assertion that the results of the November 8 contest may be rigged.

“Just for the record, in this country, the United States of America, the voters decide elections,” the first lady said. “They’ve always decided.”

With a lead in polling for weeks, Clinton’s campaign is concerned that her advantage could prompt some of her backers to stay home on Election Day or cast protest votes for a third-party candidate. Nearly all of her recent events have been in states where early voting is already underway, aimed at using the rallies to prompt supporters to bank their votes now.

Trump seized on newly public emails in which longtime Bill Clinton aide Doug Band describes overlapping relationships of the Clintons’ global philanthropy and the family’s private enrichment. The emails were among thousands stolen from the private account of a top Clinton aide, part of a hacking the Democratic campaign has blamed on the Russians.

“Mr. Band cal led the arrangement ‘unorthodox.’ The rest of us call it outright corrupt,” Trump declared during a rally in Springfield, Ohio. “If the Clintons were willing to play this fast and loose with their enterprise when they weren’t in the White House, just imagine what they’ll do in the Oval Office.”

Clinton entered the final stretch of the race with a resounding cash advantage over Trump: As of last week, her campaign and Democratic partners had $153m

No injuries after

Pence plane slides

off runway in NYC

AP

NEW YORK: Republican vice-pres-idential candidate Mike Pence’s campaign plane slid off a runway during a rainstorm at New York’s LaGuardia Airport yesterday, tear-ing up two tracks of concrete before coming to rest on a patch of grass.

When the plane came to a stop, US Secret Service agents rushed from the back of the plane to the front, where Pence was seated, to check on the candidate. He said he was fine, though, and no one had been injured.

“We can see mud on the front windows,” a calm Pence said in the press cabin about a minute after the plane came to rest. Later, Pence tweeted: “So thankful everyone on our plane is safe. Grateful for our first responders & the concern & prayers of so many. Back on the trail tomorrow!”

In Geneva, Ohio, GOP presiden-tial candidate Donald Trump told his supporters Pence had come “pretty close to grave, grave danger.” But, he added: “I just spoke to Mike Pence and he’s fine. Everybody’s fine.”

Democrat Hillary Clinton tweeted: “Glad to hear @mike_pence, his staff, Secret Service, and the crew are all safe.”

The plane was coming to New York from Fort Dodge, Iowa, where it had made a hard landing but stayed on run-way. After a rally in Fort Dodge, Pence’s flight to New York was delayed because of weather. pence spent about 20 min-utes tossing a football with his staff, reporters and Secret Service agents near Iowa runway.

Upon arriving at LaGuardia, after a bumpy approach, the Boeing 737 Eastern Airlines charter landed roughly, making first contact with the runway concrete.

in the bank, more than double what Trump’s side had available.

Following her rally with Mrs. Obama, Clinton greeted students at an early voting site at University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She then dropped in on a homecoming pep rally at nearby North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State Uni-versity, where she was greeted by a DJ blasting hip-hop, a dance troupe, a marching band and deafening cheers at the surprise stop.

Another troublesome sign for Trump: The Republicans’ congres-sional campaign committee has

released a new TV ad that praises a GOP House member who has said Trump has “disqualified himself” to be president. The ad for Representative Robert Dold of Illinois calls him an “independent voice” who has “stood up” to Trump, the first time the com-mittee, which is devoted to electing Republicans to the House, has used a message openly critical of the par-ty’s presidential nominee.

Trump has been repeatedly crit-icised, by Republicans as well as Democrats, for failing to denounce Putin. He’s also refused to say whether he believes Russia is behind

the hacking of Democratic groups, although intelligence agencies have pinned the blame on Moscow.

Earlier in the day, he also repeated his insistence that Captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American soldier killed in Iraq, would be alive if Trump he had been president during the war. Khan’s family is supporting Clinton and has harshly criticised Trump’s calls for temporarily banning Mus-lims from the United States.

Clinton leapt on Trump’s com-ments, declaring: “I don’t understand how anyone would want to rub salt in the wounds of a grieving family.”

Hillary rallies with Michelle as Trump alleges corruption

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and US First Lady Michelle Obama embrace before they address the crowd at a campaign stop in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

AFP

WASHINGTON: US prosecutors said yesterday the sudden death of a former aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a Washington hotel was an accident, and occurred after days of heavy drinking and successive falls.

Mikhail Lesin, 57, a former press minister accused of curtail-ing media freedoms in Russia, was found dead at the Dupont Circle Hotel on November 5, 2015, prompt-ing wild theories of conspiracy over the murky death.

But following a nearly yearlong probe, “the Chief Medical Examiner of District of Columbia has amended Mr Lesin’s manner of death from ‘undetermined’ to ‘accident’ with acute ethanol intoxication as a contributory cause of death,” pros-ecutors said in a statement.

It said the investigation by Washington’s Metropolitan Police

Department and US Attorney’s Office for District of Columbia with assist-ance from the FBI is now closed.

Russian state media reports, cit-ing Lesin’s family, had said he died of a heart attack. Initial US findings appeared to suggest that he was killed.

Lesin’s sudden death triggered a host of conspiracy theories in Russia.

The US Attorney’s Office in Washington said Lesin entered his hotel room for the final time at 10:48 am on November 4, the day before he was found dead, “after days of exces-sive consumption of alcohol.”

“Based on the evidence, including video footage and witness interviews, Mr Lesin... sustained the injuries that resulted in his death while alone in his hotel room,” it added.

“After review of the video foot-age and new evidence developed from the investigation, the Chief Medical Examiner has determined that Lesin died as a result of blunt force injuries to his head, with con-tributing causes being blunt force

injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities and lower extremities, which were induced by falls, with acute ethanol intoxication.”

Lesin helped launch the Russian English-language television network RT and allegedly amassed millions of dollars in assets in Europe and the United States while working for the government, including $28m in real estate in Los Angeles.

Moscow, whose relations with Washington have plummeted over Ukraine and Syria, had intially voiced irritation at the handling of the case, complaining of not receiv-ing detailed information.

Lesin was Russia’s minister of press, television and radio between 1999 and 2004, and later served as a Kremlin aide.

In 2013, he became head of Gazprom-Media Holding, the media arm of state energy giant Gazprom, and oversaw Russia’s top liberal radio station Echo of Moscow. Lesin resigned a year later, citing family reasons.

Former Putin aide’s death ruled accidental in US

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BREAK TIME 17SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER 2016 15

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Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2D/Hindi) 1:30 & 8:45pm

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Ouija: Origin of Evil (2D/Thriller) 5:00 & 11:30pm Boo: A Madea Halloween (2D/Horror) 7:00pmJack Reacher: Never Go Back (2D/Action) 7:00pm

The Accountant (2D/Action) 9:00 &1 1:15pm Hamlit Frazier (2D/Arabic) 9:15pmAe Dil Hai Mushkil (2D/Hindi) 11:00pm

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It’s leisure time

IANS

CANBERRA: Life expectancy in Australia has hit a new high, with babies born in 2015 expected to live two years longer than those born in 2005, according to a report issued yesterday.

The Australian Bureau of Sta-tistics (ABS) report showed that life expectancy had hit 84.5 years for females and 80.4 years for males, but demographics expert Peter McDonald of the University of Melbourne said that the statis-tics assume no improvements in healthcare and were therefore conservative estimates.

“They are not any individu-al’s lifetime; they are just telling you the expectation of life you would get if life expectancy didn’ t change... and for the last 200 years it has been going up,” he said.

ABS Director of Demography Beidar Cho said the life expect-ancy for Australians in 2015 was comparable for other first-world nations. “Babies born today have the highest estimated life expect-ancy ever recorded in Australia,” Cho said in a statement.

“Male life expectancy at birth reached 80.4 years in 2015, increasing from 80.3 in 2014. Female life expectancy also increased to 84.5 years in 2015 from 84.4 in the previous year.”

“For both men and women, Australia has a higher life expect-ancy than similar countries such as Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US.” Meanwhile in 2005, the life expectancy of Australians was at 83.3 years for women and 78.5 years for men.

AFP

TOKYO: A Japanese comedian’s non-sense tune that became an Internet sensation after Justin Bieber recom-mended it has entered the Guinness World Records as the shortest song to break into the Billboard Hot 100.

The video for the 45-second long “Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen” has been viewed more than 67 million times since hitting YouTube in August, going viral after pop giant Bieber tweeted it

as his “favourite video on the Internet”.“I’m surprised by this sudden popu-

larity,” said the 53-year-old comedian, who goes by Pikotaro, just before receiving the award on Friday at a packed press conference.

“Without Justin’s impact, I think only four people would have showed up in this room,” he joked.

Last week, the song entered the US chart at No. 77, marking the first time in 26 years that a Japanese singer made the Billboard Hot 100.

The video features Pikotaro,

dressed in his trademark garish animal print costume, dancing to nonsensical English lyrics such as “I have a pen. I have an apple. Apple pen.”

But despite the global sensation, Pikotaro told reporters that his life had not changed at all since the song became “a worldwide phenomenon” last month. Pikotaro, who revealed he spent only 100,000 yen ($950) to make the video, hopes to do a world tour though doubts the global craze will continue. “I just want to quickly release many fun songs,” he said.

Nonsense tune becomes Guinness record

AP

WELLINGTON: The countries that decide the fate of Antarctica’s waters reached an historic agreement yes-terday to create the world’s largest marine protected area in the ocean next to the frozen continent.

The agreement comes after years of diplomatic wrangling and high-level talks between the US and Russia, which has rejected the idea in the past. Proponents of the reserve say it sets a precedent for multiple countries working together to pro-tect a large swath of ocean, which falls outside any single nation’s jurisdiction.

The agreement covers an area about twice the size of Texas in the Ross Sea.

The deal was clinched after 24 countries and the European Union

met in Hobart, Australia, this week. Decisions on Antarctic fishing require a consensus among the 25 members, a hurdle which has confounded past efforts.

The US and New Zealand have been pushing for a marine reserve for years. They first submitted a joint proposal in 2012, but it was rejected five times before Friday’s agree-ment. Ukraine, China and Russia had expressed concerns in the past, with Russia becoming the final hold-out before the deal was made.

The marine protected area cov-ers 1.6 million square kilometers (617,000 square miles). There will be a blanket ban on commercial fish-ing across about three-quarters of that area. In the remaining ocean zones, some commercial fishing will be allowed.

A small amount of fishing for research purposes will be allowed throughout the protected area.

Several countries fish in the waters surrounding Antarctica for lucrative toothfish, which are often marketed in North America as Chil-ean sea bass.

Evan Bloom, who led the US delegation in Hobart, said that US Secretary of State John Kerry has been a passionate advocate for the reserve and has been pushing for it in high-level talks with Russian leaders, including President Vladimir Putin.

Bloom said he was “thrilled” with the result. “We’ve been working on this for so many years and had so many disappointments trying to get here,” he said. “This is a real win for marine conservation.”

In a statement, Kerry said the agreement “will safeguard one of the last unspoiled ocean wilder-ness areas on the planet — home to unparalleled marine biodiversity and thriving communities of penguins, seals, whales, seabirds, and fish.”

New Zealand’s Foreign Minis-ter Murray McCully said the final agreement included some conces-sions to Russia, including adjusting the reserve’s boundaries and allow-ing a little more commercial fishing outside the no-take zone.

Nevertheless, he said, he was pleasantly surprised that Russia and the US had managed to reach any kind of agreement, given the cur-rent tensions over Syria.

“It goes to demonstrate that you can never jump to conclusions,” he said. “Every now and then you get lucky.” Andrea Kavanagh, who directs Antarctic and Southern Ocean work for The Pew Charitable Trusts, said the environment had become a passion project for Putin’s former chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov.

“We couldn’t be happier about this result,” she said. “This is history. This has never been done before.”

She said she hoped the agreement

represented the first step in what would become a worldwide net-work of marine reserves that would help protect the Earth’s oceans. The

nations are already considering pro-posals for marine protected areas in East Antarctic waters and the Wed-dell Sea.

Countries agree to create world’s largest marine reserve

A minke whale in the Ross Sea in Antarctica.

Reuters

MELBOURNE: An orangutan at Perth Zoo has been named the world’s oldest Sumatran orangutan in captivity by the Guinness Book of World Records, as she celebrated her 60th birthday, a zoo spokes-woman said.

Puan celebrated with a birthday breakfast of rambutans from her childhood home in Malaysia, Perth Zoo spokeswoman Danielle Henry said. She was gifted to the zoo in 1968 by the Sultan of Johor who received some native Australian animals in return.

Perth Zoo is one of the top breeders of oran-gutans and Paun was the start of its breeding programme.

Puan becomes oldest in world

60-year-old ‘Puan’, who has been declared the oldest living Sumatran Orangutan in the world, is seen at Perth Zoo in Western Australia.

IANS

NEW YORK: Yoga offers a promising approach to fight spinal stiffness and reduced mobility that astronauts on long missions in space suffer from, say researchers. Space travel may lead to atrophy of the muscles sup-porting the spine -- which do not return to normal even several weeks after their return to the Earth, the

study found. The results provide new insights into the elevated rates of back pain and spinal disc disease associated with prolonged space-flight, said one of the researchers, Douglas Chang of the University of California - San Diego.

The finding of muscle atrophy suggests possible preventive steps to reduce the spinal effects of space-flight, according to the researchers.

For instance, core-strengthening exercises, like those recommended

for patients with back pain on Earth, might be a useful addition to the astronaut exercise training programme.

Yoga might be another promising approach, especially for addressing spinal stiffness and reduced mobil-ity, the researchers pointed out. For the study, six Nasa crew mem-bers were studied before and after spending four to seven months in “microgravity” conditions on the International Space Station.

Yoga may help astronauts to fight spinal stiffness

Life expectancy

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