Lekhwiya eye quarters berth in home clash

Deutsche sees Saudi inflows

topping $35bn

Beautifully lit up Katara cheers up the mood of visitors on the third night of the holy month of Ramadan. Pic: Kammutty V P / The Peninsula

Katara lights up for Ramadan

BUSINESS | 21 SPORT | 28

Volume 22 | Number 7177 | 2 RiyalsTuesday 30 May 2017 | 4 Ramadan 1438 www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

3rd Best News Website in the Middle East

RAMADAN TIMINGToday’s Iftar 6:22pmTomorrow’s Imsak 3:06am

The Peninsula

The Ministry of Econ-omy and Commerce, in cooperation with shopping malls and large retail outlets,

has unveiled the “National Product” initiative.

Under this initiative, malls and large retail outlets will clearly display local products and goods bearing the slogan “National Product” to facilitate consumers’ access to these products, said a statement.

“National Product” initiative has been launched under the theme “Together to Support National Products” and aims to support and market national products in the local market as well as to support and ease investors’ access to consumers in addition to opening markets to merchants and investors seek-ing to launch new products.

The National Product ini-tiative builds on the Ministry's efforts to open new markets to investors and support com-petitiveness in the food and consumer goods sector as well as to enhance price com-petitiveness and the availability

of products, which will posi-tively affect the national economy. National products are of high quality and are sold at reasonable prices in addition to the availability of a multitude of products across markets.

The initiative comes within the framework of the ministry’s Ramadan initiatives under the theme #Aqal_Min_Al_Wajeb”, the Arabic for “#The_least_we_can_do”.

The initiative will contrib-ute to the state’s efforts to prioritise national products as part of its strategic plans and the pillars of its economic diversification strategy aimed at achieving the Qatar National Vision 2030.

→ Continued on page 2

The Peninsula

The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC) has awarded the

contract to build the team training sites for the 2022 FIFA World Cup to two specialised Qatari companies. Nakheel Landscapes and Gulf Contract-ing will work with the SC to deliver the training sites to FIFA specifications by 2019, ensuring the highest quality and comfort during training

sessions for all teams at the tournament.

All member associations participating in the first ever FIFA World Cup in the Arab World will be provided with team base training camps for their accommodation and training needs during the tournament. Each team base camp will be paired with training sites for the exclusive use of each participat-ing nation. Some of the chosen locations include the vicinities of Aspire Zone, Qatar University,

Doha Gulf Course, Al Sailiya and the West Bay area, with public sports grounds and parks included in the legacy planning for the facilities.

SC Secretary General Has-san Al Thawadi said: “Team training sites are an essential part of a successful tournament, and we are dedicated to deliv-ering the best quality training sites for an exceptional experi-ence for the teams participating in the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

→ Continued on page 2

Qatari products to be displayed prominently

Two Qatari contractors awarded 2022 training sites contract

QNA

AN OFFICIAL source at Qatar's Foreign Ministry said in response to Amnesty Inter-national's statement, that the State of Qatar extradited the Saudi citizen Mohammed Abdullah Al Otaibi to Saudi Ara-bia last Wednesday on the basis of the judicial cooperation between the two countries. The source said the extradition was also based on legal procedures and regional and international agreements related to the extra-dition of accused persons and criminals.

Super grade petrol & diesel to be cheaperMINISTRY OF ENERGY and Industry yesterday announced to reduce the price of Super grade petrol and diesel by 5 dirhams in June. Super will cost QR1.65 per litre while die-sel will cost QR1.55 per litre. The price of premium grade petrol will remain unchanged at QR1.60 per litre.

Extradition of Saudi citizen as part of international agreements

Malls and large retail outlets will clearly display local products and goods bearing the slogan 'National Product' to facilitate consumers’ access.

02 TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017HOME

A man preparing Harees, a traditional Arabic dish made of wheat and meat, at a house in Doha. Many people go to collect this special dish from Qatari homes. Pic: Salim Matramkot/ The Peninsula

Special Ramadan dishBeggars using social media to solicit almsMohammed Osman The Peninsula

Beggars have begun using n o n - t r a d i t i o n a l approaches to draw pity,

such as social media channels WhatsApp, Twitter and Face-book, said a senior Ministry of Interior official.

Beggars send text or a What-sApp message and claim that they have a relative in critical condition or need help to have a surgery done. The messages are at times associated with pic-tures of patient or elderly to appeal to donors, said Captain Abdullah Saad Al Dawsari, Chairman of the Anti-begging Section at the Department of Search and Follow up of the MoI.

Some beggars also claim they need help to drill water wells or construct schools or hospital or say there is a needy family in an Islamic country where he belongs to or is liv-ing, Al Dawsari shared in the Twitter handle of the Ministry.

Al Dawsari said beggars in the street are mostly seen dur-ing Ramadan to exploit the generosity of people during the holy month.

Qatari law criminalises beg-ging and expatriates caught in the act are referred to the court through the public prosecution, Al Dawsari said, adding that beggars visiting the country or found to have a tourist visa are deported.

For combating begging, the department has established a hotline operating round-the -clock (33618627 or 2347444) or Metrash2, to receive reports of begging. The patrolling police

reach the spot quickly, Captain Al Dawsari said.

Officers from the compe-tent authority monitor locations frequented by beg-gars, such as malls, mosques and markets.

People should send anyone who needs help to the nearest charity office. If one wants to help the needy, they can donate the amount to charity, which is an authorised entity, said Al Dawsari.

Central Municipal Council (CMC) Member Mubarak Fraish said begging takes place through the year but increases during Ramadan.

"Recently, a beggar came to our majlis asking for help. Eve-rybody present took pity and

helped him with cash," said Fraish. He added that beggars can be seen in public areas like malls, in front of mosques and in some streets like the Cor-niche. The CMC member said beggars were employing differ-ent ways like social media, sending messages and pictures while some of them knock on doors or visit people at gatherings.

“Personally, I do not see deportation or punishing beg-gars as a solution especially during the holy month of Ram-adan. Therefore, there is a need for coordination between the authorities and different charities to study the cases before taking legal action,” Fraish said.

He suggested that the com-petent authority should transfer the case to a charity operating in the country to study the case. They (charity officials) can visit the homes of beggars to verify claims.

“But, it does not mean that the authorities concerned over-look monitoring. At the same time, prevention of begging and raising awareness among pub-lic on how to deal with such cases is needed.”

He said that if there were organised begging rackets through visit or tourist visas, the case should be studied; and such visas can even be controlled, especially during Ramadan, Fraish said.

For begging, the Qatari Penal Code stipulates imprison-ment of not less than three months or sending the beggar to 'reformation institutes'. The same punishment applies to electronic begging.

Central Municipal Council Member Mubarak Fraish.

Nakheel Landscapes to build all training site facilitiesContinued from page 1

Awarding two Qatari com-panies the contact to build these facilities is a sign of our commit-ment to encouraging local companies to take part in the first World Cup in the region, leaving a lasting economic legacy for years to come.”

Meanwhile, Engineer Yasir Al Jamal, vice chairman of the Technical Delivery Office at the SC, added: “We’re delighted to begin work on this exciting project, which will guarantee state-of-the-art training facili-ties for all teams that participate in the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Our goal is to offer the visiting teams the ideal conditions so that they can be at their best level during the tournament, while also build-ing facilities which will offer lasting legacy opportunities for the local community.”

“This award comes as an important step towards hosting the first FIFA World Cup in the region, as we have progressed

with six stadiums in main con-tract stage, in addition to Khalifa International Stadium which was completed earlier this month,

and Ras Abu Aboud Stadium which will be awarded in the upcoming months,” added Al Jamal.

Each training site will con-sist of two FIFA-compliant, floodlit, natural grass pitches; ancillary facilities and changing

rooms; team parking areas and spectator areas for public train-ing sessions. The awarded contracts will complete Qatar’s football training facility infra-structure to the level required for the tournament, with the total number of training sites still to be agreed by FIFA.

Nakheel Landscapes will build all the training site facili-ties including site infrastructure, FIFA compliant pitches, as well as completing external works and landscaping. Meanwhile, Gulf Contracting will be in charge of the specialist works for mod-ular, demountable and pre-fabricated buildings to be used as ancillary facilities and changing rooms.

Ghassan Oueijan, managing director of Nakheel Landscapes, said: “On behalf of Nakheel Landscapes’ partners and employees, I would like to thank the SC for giving us this oppor-tunity to deliver such important sports venues that will serve the

Qatari community and will be utilised during the FIFA World Cup. As a local company, we are very proud to be involved in the construction of this prestigious project, and we assure the SC that the training sites will be built to the highest standard within the agreed deadlines.”

Meanwhile, Grahame McCaig, general manager at Gulf Contracting, said: “As a Qatari company, we’re very proud to be associated with the 2022 World Cup. Hence we’re very pleased to have been awarded this prestigious contract by the Supreme Committee for Deliv-ery & Legacy, and will be providing quality facilities which the teams will enjoy utilising during the tournament.”

The training sites for the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar will be delivered through a rollout plan to maximise the contribu-tion of the local private sector and small to medium enterprises.

Social scourge

Officers from the competent authority monitor locations frequented by beggars, such as malls, mosques and markets.

Continued from page 1

National products will con-tribute to the creation of new economic activities and increase the contribution of non-oil sec-tors to GDP as well as the competitiveness of the national economy.

Consumer support for local industries also plays an impor-tant role in increasing the share of national products in the domestic market, enhancing their competitiveness globally and bolstering Qatar's exports.

The "National Product" ini-tiative builds on the Ministry's efforts to open new markets to investors and support compet-itiveness in the food and consumer products sector as well as to enhance the price competitiveness and availabil-ity of products.

Last year, the Ministry abol-ished the monopolies of commercial agents over 35 basic food and consumer products, opening the market to various importers.

The Ministry will also launch new initiatives aimed at bolster-ing partnerships between consumers and merchants such as “Ataa”—Arabic for “Giving” initiative.

The Ministry also launched the "discounted consumer goods" initiative and will unveil the outcome of Al Baraka cor-porate social responsibility programme launched last year, as well as other initiatives to regulate markets and stimulate commercial sectors.

Officials at the signing ceremony for awarding the contracts.

National Product initiative a bid to open new markets

Sidra using IBM solutions for computing and storage The Peninsula

IBM yesterday announced the deployment of its IBM solu-tions as the compute and

storage infrastructure for Sidra Medical and Research Center (Sidra).

Sidra, a groundbreaking hospital, biomedical research and educational institution, chose IBM solutions to manage and store clinical genome sequencing data as well as to provide the organisation’s bio-medical informatics technology infrastructure capabilities that will serve as a national resource. The IBM platform is used for

data management and storage, bioinformatics and High Per-formance Computing (HPC).

One of the first programmes Sidra used the IBM technology platform was for the Qatar Genome Programme (QGP) 1. The QGP is a large national genome medical research project, which aims to develop personalised healthcare thera-pies for the Qatari population.

“Sidra has undertaken to implement personalised medi-cine to better meet the unmet needs of the women and chil-dren in Qatar and beyond. Biomedical informatics plays a central role in bringing this

concept to life,” said Dr Rashid Al Ali, Division Chief of the Bio-medical Informatics Division at Sidra.

“This is why we hired a multidisciplinary team of experts from all over the world, invested in leading technologies and chosen vendors like IBM to help enhance our approach to offering personalised care to the women and children of Qatar. Our implementation of technol-ogies goes beyond meeting Sidra’s needs –as we have the basic building blocks in place to be considered a national resource in the county and build local capacity.”

590 cases treated at HGH on third day of RamadanFazeena Saleem The Peninsula

At least 590 cases were treated at the Emergency Department of Hamad

General Hospital (HGH) on the third day of Ramadan includ-ing those injured in three major traffic accidents, said a senior official.

Other cases treated at the department related to cardiac arrest, stomach ailments, heat related illnesses and minor road accidents, Dr Lubna Ghali

Amin, Consultant at the Emer-gency Department told The Peninsula. The cases were received between 8am and 8pm yesterday.

"There were patients with indigestion and irritable bowel syndrome, gastroenteritis, vomiting and diarrhoea," said Dr Lubna. "There were three major road traffic accident injuries as well as several oth-ers were minor accidents. Some were also treated for cardiac arrest and other emergency cases," she added.

Mobile app for translating Quran into SpanishThe Peninsula

The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs has launched a mobile app

for translation of Holy Quran into Spanish.

The users can also listen to the Holy Quran in the voice of famous recitors. The app can also be downloaded on portable devices like tablets, said Mohamd bin Hamad Al Kuwari, Head of the Mosques Management Department at the Ministry, in a ceremony.

03TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017 HOME

A group of Qatari youth distribute Iftar packs to motorists on the Corniche. Pic: Abdul Basit/ The Peninsula

Generous gesture Katara hosts expo on eight countriesRaynald C Rivera The Peninsula

An exhibition on cul-tures and traditions of eight countries including Saudi Ara-bia, Iraq, Egypt,

India, Morocco, Indonesia, Pal-estine and the Philippines continues to attract crowds at this year’s Ramadan Festival in Katara.

Located at Meerat Ramadan in the southern area of Katara, which is the main festival venue, the exhibition is the main fea-ture of this year’s festival under the theme “Hospitality in vari-ous Muslim nations.”

“It is a good thing that this exhibition has been organised to provide knowledge and understanding of the similari-ties and differences in customs and traditions between these countries especially among the Muslim community,” said Fahed, one of the visitors.

The countries’ historical and

geographical information, images of the most important mosques and tourist attractions, in addition to food served dur-ing the holy month, are among those displayed.

Visitors to the exhibition get information about the Muslim population, historical informa-tion about Islamic discoveries and the impact of Islamic civi-lisation in these countries.

Screens outside the exhibi-tion hall show films on the customs and traditions in the countries.

Around 33 events and 168

lectures and workshops com-prise Ramadan Festival in Katara, making the Cultural Vil-lage a must-visit during the holy month.

“Ramadan and our tradi-tions”, an art exhibition by Qatari artists, is also a crowd-puller at the festival, with paintings and mixed media art-works by Qatari artists, who also conduct live painting.

“The artworks serve dual purpose towards appreciation and awareness of Qatari tradi-tions as seen in the eyes of Qatari artists themselves,” said Mustafa, a festival visitor.

Adjacent to the Qatari art-ists exhibition is the ‘Innovators’s square” where sil-ver and leather goods, wood sculpture, sand art, Garangao bags and other handicraft prod-ucts are sold.

A fine art tent in which painting and craft workshops are being held every day is also a feature at the festival.

At the Katara beachfront, beach volleyball and football games are also ongoing. Also new this year are traditional games including brain-teasers and fun games. Traditional games, comprising brain-teas-ers and fun games as well as FIFA 2017 play station champi-onship will take place in the coming days.

Other festival events and activities include seminars and Islamic lectures organised in cooperation with RAF Founda-tion, Qatar Charity, and the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs.

Due to popular demand, the Holy Quran memorisation com-petition has returned this year.The exhibition on cultures and traditions at Katara.

Cultural festival

The festival on Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, India, Morocco, Indonesia, Palestine and the Philippines informs visitors about the traditions and cultures of the countries.

Customs seize 23kg of marijuana and over 4,700 narcotic tabletsThe Peninsula

Ahmed bin Abdullah Al Jamal, Chairman of the General Authority of Cus-t o m s , h a s

appreciated four employees of Customs at Hamad International Airport and Land Customs Department for seizing a large cache of narcotics.

In different seizures from travellers coming to Doha, a total 23 kilogramme of "mari-juana" and 4,704 narcotic tablets were recovered.

Airport Customs at Hamad International Airport seized marijuana in three "failed attempts".

The drug had been

concealed in various parts of suitcases belonging to passen-gers. On inspection, different quantity of marijuana from 5kg to 10kg was recovered.

One of the customs inspec-tors was able to discover a third seizure through manual inspec-tion device which enabled her to see the details of the bag from the inside and she found during inspection a single piece of mar-ijuana filling the entire bag.

Custom inspectors also seized 4,000 narcotic pills hidden in cans of legal and authorised med-icines inside the bag of a passenger. Separately, Land Cus-toms Department at Abu Samra seized 704 narcotic tablets which were being smuggled into Qatar inside the spare tyre of the car.

Morshid Al Kuwari, Director of Land Customs Department (LCD), said that the competence of the staff was the reason behind the success in controlling the smuggling of narcotics.

Ajab Mansour Al Qahtani, Director of Customs at Hamad International Airport, said that the seizures of such large quan-tity of narcotics by efficient staff would send a message to smug-glers to not attempt smuggling narcotics into Qatar in future.

He said that the marijuana was wrapped in carbon as smugglers thought they would be able to dodge X-ray scanners. He said that the Authority has highly sophisticated inspection devices besides competent inspectors.

04 TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017HOME

Vodafone prepaid customers gifted minutes and dataThe Peninsula

During the holy month of Ramadan, Vodafone is giving their prepaid cus-tomers daily gifts with Happy 123 in

the form of data, local minutes or interna-tional minutes.

To receive their gift, Prepaid customers simply need to dial *123# daily from their mobile and they will be shown the gift that can be availed of before midnight the same day.

The customer just needs to select and accept the offer in the menu which would referesh daily based on their usage.

Vodafone said, “We hope these daily gifts will help our customers stay in contact with their loved ones both in Qatar and abroad during Ramadan, bringing them happiness during this very special month.”

Vodafone Qatar unveiled their Happy Offers platform for prepaid customers in May 2016, a telecom innovation that has proven its success across the wider Vodafone Group.

Happy Offers brings tailored offers to each customer, every day with amazing value across recharge credit, data, local calling and international calling presented in a simple way, and in the customer’s preferred language.

The Peninsula

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment and Tur-key's Ministry of Food,

Agriculture and Livestock recently held a meeting to discuss ways of cooperation in agricul-ture and food sector.

The meeting was attended by Sheikh Dr Faleh bin Nasser Al Thani, Assistant Undersecretary of Agricultural Affairs, Livestock and Fisheries at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment and Managers of agricultural departments in addition to Tur-key’s delegation.

A number of issues were dis-cussed among it enhancing and developing technical cooperation in fields of plant production.

Over 800 join AlUtrujah Holy Qur'an ContestThe Peninsula

The Qur’anic Botanic Gar-den (QBG) has launched the final round of its AlUtrujah Holy Qur’an Contest, which began on

May 28 and will run until June 5 at the Education City Mosque.

The competition encourages the community and school students to memorise the Holy Qur’an, and highlights the Qur’anic verses and stories that focus on botanical terms.

Featuring a series of different categories, the contest is open to both male and female schoolchil-dren in Qatar under 12 years of age, as well as employees and students of Qatar Foundation (QF) and Edu-cation City universities.

The first round of the contest proved extremely popular, with more than 800 contestants taking part across a series of age groups and categories. More than half the contestants qualified for the final round of the contest. A committee from the Ministry of Endowments

and Islamic Affairs will make up the judging panel and will announce three winners from the categories.

Fatima Saleh Al Khulaifi, Project Manager, QBG, said: "The AlUtrujah Holy Qur’an Contest is one of a kind. The contest strives to engage the public, which, in turn, reflects the community role of the Qur’anic Botanic Garden. The com-petition was created following a series of public surveys, and fea-tures public lectures, as well as an exhibition in the halls of the Edu-cation City Mosque of the plants mentioned in the Holy Qur’an and Hadith, including photos, plants, and traditional tools.”

QBG is a member of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF). It aims to encourage social engage-ment and strengthen cultural and conservation awareness in Qatar, supporting QF's commitment to preserving natural resources as well as Arabic and Islamic cultural heritage for current and future generations.

The Turkish delegation visiting a farm in Qatar.

Turkey officials in Qatar discuss farm cooperation

Aspetar starts health campaign for RamadanThe Peninsula

Aspetar – the orthopaedic and sports medicine hospital in Qatar, has launched ‘Healthy Ramadan

with Aspetar Experts' campaign for pro-fessional and recreational athletes on its social media channels. The ‘Healthy Ramadan with Aspetar Experts' initia-tive is being promoted on social media with the hashtag #Healthy_Ramadan.

Aspetar’s campaign aims to encour-age people to remain active and healthy during the Holy Month of Ramadan. The campaign will feature a multidiscipli-nary team of experts in nutrition, psychology, research, and oral health among others.

Through a range of tips and advices captured in short videos, Aspetar’s experts will provide guidance for fast-ing people on a range of topics. These include diet, sleep patterns and optimal exercise times.

The campaign will also draw on the expertise of Aspetar's world-renowned medical professionals, by sharing details of leading research they have produced on the effects of fasting on sports per-formance and overall health. These will

be particularly relevant and useful for athletes preparing for major competi-tions taking place during Ramadan such as the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Champions League 2017.

The campaign follows the success of Aspetar’s innovative awareness initia-tives such as 'Ask the Doctor’ and ‘Beat the Heat’.

The expert video series will be avail-able through Aspetar’s YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram chan-nels. Ramadan-related health topics will also be the focus of the latest edition of Namat magazine, produced by Aspetar and due to be issued soon.

Aspetar produces a wide range of videos designed to encourage people to be active and healthy year-round, fea-turing topics such as useful exercises and common diseases related to sedentary lifestyles.

People who are interested to learn more and benefit from Aspetar’s exper-tise can visit Aspetar’s interactive Namat website www.namat.qa

Namat is a national and regional public health education platform devel-oped by the Exercise Is Medicine Department at Aspetar.

Quran memorisation contest winners awardedThe Peninsula

Doha Academy honoured 52 students for their performance in “The 14th Sheikh Faleh bin Nasser Holy

Quran Memorization Contest”.12 winners received cash prizes, and

40 other participants were given valua-ble gifts for excelling in Quran memorisation and recitation. A total of 163 students from 53 schools in Qatar took part in the contest.

The contest aimed at educating stu-dents about the importance of the Holy Quran, and it also aimed at developing their skills and encouraging them to learn how to recite and memorise the holy book properly.

The honouring ceremony was attended by Sheikha Aisha bint Faleh Al Thani, Chairperson of Al Faleh Holding, under which three branches of Doha Acad-emy fall in addition to AFG College with the University of Aberdeen.

“The contest this year was very com-petitive and the performance of students in reciting and memorising the Holy Quran improved remarkably,” said Sheikha Aisha. “It means the candidates worked hard before participating. All types of schools operating in Qatar including inde-pendent, international and community institutions participated in the contest, which is aimed at creating an opportunity for every school in the country. The par-ents of the students' played a key role in supporting them to participate in the con-test,” said Sheikha Al Thani.

The presence of the famous interna-tionally renowned reciter of the Holy Quran, Mawlana Kurtishi, as a member of the judging panel, made the contest spe-cial this year. Kurtish, a 22-year-old Albanian, grew up in Macedonia. “The con-test encourages the student to adhere to the Holy Quran teachings, said Kurtish at the ceremony. My love for the Holy Quran is inspired by my father who memorised

the holy book completely, he added. Now I am studying in the faculty of

Islamic Studies in Al Qasimia University in Al Sharjah and can speak many languages.

Students compete in the Qur’anic Botanic Garden’s (QBG) AlUtrujah Holy Qur’an Contest.

A winner of the Holy Quran memorisation contest receiving his prize.

05TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017 HOME

NPRP receives 376 research proposalsThe Peninsula

The National Priorities Research Program (NPRP), the flagship funding programme of Qatar Nat ional

Research Fund (QNRF), has attracted 376 proposals for its current cycle.

The 376 research proposals received have come from 16 local submitting institutions, with 343 passing administrative screen-ing to go on to QNRF’s two-tier review process.

The NPRP, now in its tenth annual edition, has recently been re-engineered to place greater focus on research projects that demonstrate the potential to make both a societal and a

tangible economic impact on Qatar without sacrificing either scientific excellence or the advancement of knowledge.

Taking into account Qatar’s capacity for local research and

development, QNRF, a member of Qatar Foundation Research and Development (QF R&D), has revamped the NPRP by introduc-ing the concept of co-funding, stimulating the creation of part-nerships between the academic sector and the commercial end-users of research, and promoting a culture of public-private part-nership in Qatar.

Dr Abdul Sattar Al Taie, Executive Director, QNRF, said, “Even while the NPRP continues to build on the success of the pre-vious ten years, we are constantly striving to innovate faster, cheaper, and smarter. In its updated format, the NPRP is an innovation engine, assessing, developing, and building Qatar’s capabilities to support research

with the potential to make a sub-stantial contribution to the economy. A promising indica-tion of the strong interest shown by the commercial stakeholders, industry and government is that 57 percent of the proposals gen-erated by this fresh approach are supported by a mixture of both local and international co-funding.”

During the first tier of the review process, the technical and scientific merits of each proposal are assessed by up to three inter-national peer reviewers with strong track records in research and an appropriate mix of sci-entific and industrial expertise related to the theme of the pro-posal, generating 1,029 evaluations. A total of 200

top-quality proposals were then judged to be of sufficient merit to be shortlisted and are cur-rent ly undergoing a programmatic review; the sec-ond tier of evaluation. Of those shortlisted, 40 percent were in the field of energy and the envi-ronment; 29 percent in health; 19 percent in information and communication technologies; and 12 percent in social sciences, arts, and humanities. Review panel members, who were drawn predominately from local industrial stakeholders, QF R&D specialists and international experts, will now have the task of selecting the best research projects to be funded.

“The success of the NPRP depends on the calibre of the

proposals submitted, and, in its new phase, the capacity of projects to address Qatar’s national research priorities, taking partner-ships with end-users and the co-funding element into consid-eration,” said Noor Al Merekhi, Director of Programs, QNRF.

Designed to have a wider scope of assessment in terms of the strength of a proposal’s align-ment with the country’s priorities, the programmatic review also takes into account the quality of the collaboration and the co-funding commitment, the potential for a broader impact on Qatar’s commercial market, technology readiness levels, and the past performance and composition of the local research teams.

WCM-Q Grand Rounds explores changing world of medical educationThe Peninsula

The innovations in learning science and technology that are driving changes in med-

ical education were explained at the latest installment of WCM-Q’s Grand Rounds.

Visiting expert Dr Rishi Desai (pictured), clinical instructor at Stanford Univer-sity, said that the digital age has ushered in fundamental changes in the way medical students learn their craft, giving rise to exciting new develop-ments in pedagogical science that medical col-leges must take into account in order to stay relevant.

Dr Desai said that stu-dents have become highly adept at using a wide vari-ety of learning resources in a complementary manner, assimilating information from online videos, tradi-tional and online textbooks and journals, and blogs where fellow students share experiences, among other sources. The largely inde-pendent nature of this form of learning means students are less dependent on tra-d i t i o n a l l e a r n i n g experiences, like lectures, meaning colleges must adapt their programs to m a x i m i z e l e a r n i n g outcomes.

Dr Desai, who is also chief medical officer at a hi-tech online medical learning platform, said: “At many medical colleges it is very common for the attendance at lectures to be as low as 15 or 20 percent, in part because it is simply not a good use of a student’s time to travel halfway across the city to obtain information

they can find online quickly, eas-ily and from high-quality sources. “This doesn’t mean medical colleges are becoming redundant. What it means is that colleges have an opportunity to use technology to make infor-mation acquisition far more efficient, leaving them time to focus on other core learning goals such as skills acquisition, critical thinking, group work, professionalism training, cultural

AAB officials demonstrating anti-counterfeit spare parts at the awareness programme at its main workshop training centre at Street 6 in the Industrial Area.

AAB conducts anti-counterfeit spare parts awareness driveThe Peninsula

Abdullah Abdulghani & Bros Co. W.L.L., (AAB) the sole distributor for Toyota &

Lexus vehicles in Qatar, conducted anti-counterfeit spare parts awareness programme with the slogan ‘Toyota Says No to Coun-terfeit’. The campaign was held at its main workshop training cen-tre at Street 6 in the Industrial Area.

The event is part of AAB’s con-tinuous educational and advocacy programme for customers with the aim of promoting Toyota Gen-uine Parts awareness. Toyota Genuine Parts & Toyota Quality Services are designed with the highest standards in all its proc-esses to keep the Toyota cars

running for years to come. AAB advises all Toyota cus-

tomers to visit the certified Toyota Service Centres and authorised dealers across Qatar for quality service and genuine parts. Non-genuine parts may look like the real thing but they have not been made, selected or approved by the maker of the car and have never been tested as an integral compo-nent of the vehicle by the manufacturer. Non-genuine parts cannot promise the same quality and safety attributes that come with a genuine part.

It was highlighted during the programme that some outlets in Qatar are unauthorised agents ille-gally using the Toyota Genuine Parts Logo without AAB’s approval. AAB is unable to certify

that parts sold through such shops are Toyota Genuine Parts.

In the fight against Counter-feit items, AAB appreciates the initiatives by the Consumer Pro-tection Department including Market Watch and Gulf Consumer Protection Week which high-lighted using Genuine Spare Parts and Products.

As part of the programme, AAB Spare Parts Department organised the Genuine Parts and Counterfeit Exhibition, engine and transmission function demonstra-tion, genuine parts and quality service video presentation at their Service Centre Training Center. Appointed AAB Dealers, selected representatives from government organisations as well as the pub-lic attended the sessions.

The 376 research proposals received have come from 16 local submitting institutions, with 343 passing administrative screening to go on to Qatar National Research Fund’s two-tier review process.

06 TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017HOME

KidZania signs deal with Al Siddiqi RetailThe Peninsula

KidZania and Al Sid-diqi Retail, the owner of “Almota-hajiba”, the leading brand for the design

and production of Abayas, have signed a partnership agreement to support and nurture the spirit of innovation in girls from the age of 7 to 14 years.

The collaboration between KidZania Doha and Almota-hajiba aims to support creativity in children, in addition to pre-serving Qatari heritage and national identity. Activities have been designed to encourage self-confidence and improve cooperation under the supervi-sion of a well-trained team. Girls will be able to apply their

creative designs onto a real Abaya, using fabrics, ornaments and embroidery to create their own, distinctive Abaya to reflect their unique personalities. The girls will then be able to display their designs in a fashion show at the KidZania Doha theatre. It is expected that over 30,000

girls will participate.The partnership between

KidZania Doha and Almota-hajiba is part of KidZania's desire to benefit from the exper-tise and skills of international and local brands to realise its vision of providing a safe and unique edutainment environ-ment across everything they do — including content, activities and values.

Ric Fearnett, Governor of KidZania Doha said: “The part-nership with Almotahajiba is of particular importance as it is a leading Qatari brand that has achieved success on both local and regional level, and which can inspire girls to express themselves. We are in the final stages of preparing for the open-ing of KidZania Doha in 2018 and welcoming children from Qatar and all over the world, and we are proud that we will contribute to the achievement of Qatar National Vision 2030 through the development and empowerment of children."

Hassan Al Siddiqi, board member of Al Siddiqi Holding Group, said:” We are excited about this unique partnership, as it is a significant step towards instilling the values of our cul-ture in the hearts of our children, as well as developing the talents and abilities of our children to achieve a better future. "

KidZania Doha is expected to open its doors in 2018 and it will be located at Aspire Zone in Doha, Qatar, with an expected footprint size of over 5,500 square metres.

Manar Khalifa Al Muraikhi, Director of Community and Public Relations of Ooredoo Qatar, with senior officials from other sponsor organisations.

Ooredoo is sponsor of MOTC, Minister Cup Ramadan Football TournamentThe Peninsula

Ooredoo has been named a sponsor of the Ministry of Transport & Commu-

nications, Minister Cup Ramadan Football Tournament.

The announcement, at a press conference yesterday, was attended by senior officials from Ooredoo and other sponsor organisations.

The tournament, which is being organised by the Ministry of Transportation & Communi-cations (MOTC) , will take part from May 29– June 10, 2017 and

aims to keep sports enthusiasts engaged through the holy month of Ramadan.

Manar Khalifa Al Muraikhi, Director of Community & Public Relations, Ooredoo, said: “On top of our jam-pack CSR schedule, we are proud to help support sporting events such as the ‘Min-istry of Transport & Communications, Minister Cup Ramadan Football Tournament’ this Ramadan. Staying fit and healthy during the summer months is very important and we wish all the teams taking part the best of luck.”

As well as sponsoring the event, Ooredoo will have a ded-icated team enter the tournament and has encouraged its customers to follow the team’s results on its social media pages.

Ooredoo has a long history of supporting footballing events in Qatar. Currently the company is the Official Telecommunica-tion Partner for all Qatar Football Association events until 2018, as the organisations work together to promote football in Qatar in preparation for the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar.

The collaboration between KidZania Doha and Almotahajiba aims to support creativity in children, in addition to preserving Qatari heritage and national identity.

150kg of fish destroyedThe Peninsula

One hundred fifty kilo-grammes

of fish unfit for human consump-tion has been destroyed by health control section at Al Khor & Al Dakhira municipalities.

I n s p e c t o r s also continued inspection raids on commercial complexes to check temperature of refrig-erators and the ways they were storing food. Inspectors also have posted hotline number for the consumers to call in case of any inquiry or complaint.

The campaign aims at increasing health safety level among these institutions due to the high demand in Ram-adan and to be sure they are complying with health regulations and technical specifications. They also gave tips to supermarkets that food should be kept away from any source of pollution and ensure that it was well-cov-ered during its display.

The campaign came in the framework of “Your Health is our Goal” campaign which conducted by the munici-pality and focused on food outlets specially supermarkets.

7th edition of Katara Beach Football Championship kicks offThe Peninsula

The Cultural Village Foun-d a t i o n - K a t a r a i n collaboration with Al-Fur-

jan Football Committee organised the seventh edition of Katara’s Beach Football Cham-pionship, for the seventh consecutive year, on May 28.

The championship saw the participation of 12 teams, all named after the cities and the regions in Qatar. The seventh edition also saw last year’s champions, Al Matar, received the title ‘Katara’s Beach Football Championship’.

The Al-Furjan Football Com-mittee conducted a draw to determine the teams that will face each other.

The draw has put the teams of Sharq, Al-Rifaa, Al-Wajbah and Jou'an in Group A. Group B consisted of Al-Udeid, Katara, Madinet Khalifa, and Umm Al-Afa'ie. Al-Matar, Bin Omran, Al-Hazm, and Ferej Kulaib teams form group C.

The opening of the champi-onship, that kicked off at Katara’s Beach, Gate 4, saw a competitive game between Al-Sharq and Al-Rifaa, resulting in a score of 3-13 for the Al-Rifaa team.

Al Sharq’s players were no match for the Al-Rifaa team, who were relentless in their attack on their opponents’ side of the field. Goals were scored by Salah Al-Khalaqi, Ahmed Mohamed Adam, Hamad Shehab Hamad, Ahmed Mohamed Abderba, and Carlos Porto.

Teams that are scheduled to play today include Al-Matar vs Bin Omran at 9:45pm and Al-Hazm vs Ferej Kulaib at 10:45pm.

The organisation committee has allocated generous prizes for the seventh edition of Katara’s Beach Football Championship. The first-place team will receive

an award cup, gold medals, and a cash prize worth QR50,000. The team taking second place will obtain an award cup, silver medals, and cash prize worth QR40,000.

The third-place winner will get bronze medals and a cash prize of QR20,000. In addition, to the team awards, individual prizes worth QR5,000 each will be distributed to the best goal-keeper, player, and highest scorer of the championship.

It is noteworthy that tourna-ments are scheduled to run daily from 9:45pm until 12:00 mid-night, lasting until June 14.

Officials at the event to announce the partnership.

Teams getting ready for the seventh edition of Katara’s Beach Football Championship.

An inspector checking a fish-selling outlet, where 150kg of fish unfit for consumption has been destroyed.

07TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017 MIDDLE EAST

Israeli minister questioned on graft suspicionsJERUSALEM: Israeli Inte-rior Minister Aryeh Deri and his wife were being questioned by fraud squad detectives yesterday as part of a major corruption investigation, Israeli media reported. Police confirmed an investigation was ongo-ing involving a "public official and his wife," but did not provide further details.

Public radio tweeted that Deri, who was freed in 2002 after 22 months in prison for bribery and fraud, entered the offices of the police serious crimes and fraud unit with his wife Yaffa last morning.

Privately owned Channel 2 television said the couple were being interviewed in separate rooms. Haaretz newspa-per said police were questioning another 14 suspects, including the director general of a gov-ernment ministry.

Baghdad

AFP

Up to 200,000 civilians caught between militants and advancing Iraqi

forces are in grave danger in the final stages of the battle for Mosul, a senior UN official said yesterday.

More than seven months into the massive operation to recapture Mosul from the Islamic State group, Iraqi forces have retaken the city's east and large parts of its western side, but the jihadists are putting up tough resistance in areas they still hold.

"We are deeply concerned that right now, in the last final stages of the campaign to retake Mosul, that the civilians... in (IS) areas are probably at graver risk now than at any other stage of the campaign," Lise Grande, the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, said.

Grande said that the UN esti-mates there are between

180,000 and 200,000 civilians in jihadist-held areas of Mosul, the majority of them in the Old City area.

Iraqi aircraft have dropped leaflets over Mosul calling on civilians to leave and move towards security forces, which may push more civilians to flee.

"In the past several weeks, 160,000 civilians have fled, and our expectation is that, because of this order (from the government), we could be see-ing a similar number of civilians flee in coming days," Grande said.

"Altogether, since the start of Mosul, 760,000 civilians have left their homes, and we are looking at the possibility of another 200,000 civilians leav-ing," she said.

Of the 760,000 civilians who have fled, some 150,000 have since returned home, leav-ing more than 600,000 currently displaced.

According to reports from families who have managed to

flee, conditions in IS-held Mosul are increasingly dire.

"We understand that medi-cines are very scarce, that there are severe shortages of safe drinking water, that there are very limited stocks of food. We also are aware that families which try to escape are often targeted by snipers," Grande said.

"You have an enclosed area, you have fighters which are determined to hold out, the civilians are in many ways trapped in that area, there haven't been resupplies into the Old City for months," she said.

The use of chemical weap-ons in Syria is a red line for France and would result in reprisals, Emmanuel Macron said during his first meeting as president of France with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. "Any use of chemical weapons would results in reprisals and an immediate riposte, at least where France is concerned,"

Baghdad

Reuters

An Iraqi Shia force backed by Iran said it pushed Islamic State (IS) out of a group of villages on

the border with Syria yesterday, potentially reopening a supply route to send Iranian weapons to President Bashar Al Assad.

The manoeuvre could also be the prelude to a connection with the Iranian-backed forces of Assad, although they are yet to reach the Iraqi border from the Syrian side.

Syrian rebel sources have warned of advances by the Syr-ian army and Iranian-backed militia to reach the border.

The territory taken by the Popular Mobilisation Force yesterday is located north of the Islamic State-held town of Baaj.

For Popular Mobilisation, it is a step towards achieving a linkup with Assad forces, giving him a significant advantage in fighting the six-year rebellion against his rule.

But the territory is connected

with land held by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish groups on the Syrian side.

They are more focused on fighting Islamic State than Assad and it is not known whether the Syrian Kurds would allow the Iraqi Shi’ite force to use their ter-ritory to reach Assad’s troops, deployed further south and fur-ther west.

In a statement on its website, Popular Mobilisation described its advance to the border with Syria as “a Ramadan miracle”, referring to the Muslim fasting month which started over the weekend.

Popular Mobilisation is tak-ing part in the U.S-backed Iraqi campaign to defeat Islamic State in the city of Mosul and the sur-rounding province of Nineveh.

Iraqi government armed forces are focusing their effort on dislodging insurgents from the city of Mosul, Islamic State’s de-facto capital in Iraq.

While reporting nominally

to Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government, Popular Mobilisation has Iranian military advisers, one of whom died last week fighting near Baaj.

Iran has helped to train and organise thousands of Shia

militia fighters from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Syrian conflict. Fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah are also working closely with Iranian military commanders in Syria.

Raisi claims voter fraud in Iranian presidential electionTEHRAN: Defeated hardline candidate Ebrahim Raisi has com-plained of voter fraud in Iran’s presidential election and called on the judiciary and the election watchdog to investigate, the semi-official Fars news agency said yesterday.

The allegations, likely to stoke up Raisi’s conservative sup-porters, were among his strongest since losing the bitterly contested May 19 vote to incumbent Hassan Rouhani by a margin of 57 per-cent to 38.

“Tampering with the numbers of people’s participation is inap-propriate. Not sending ballots to centers where the government’s opponent has a chance of getting votes is very inappropriate,” Raisi was quoted as saying.

Agencies

CAIRO: The Egyptian author-ities have sacked a senior security official over last week’s deadly attack on a bus in central Egypt that left 29 Coptic Christians dead.

Last Friday, unidentified gunmen in three pick-up trucks opened fire on a bus carrying a group of Coptic Christians to the Monastery of St. Samuel in Minya prov-ince south of Cairo.

Late Sunday, Interior Minister Magdi Abdel-Ghaf-far sacked Minya’s security chief, Faisal Dweidar, over the attack, a local security official told Anadolu Agency on Monday, requesting ano-nymity due to restrictions on speaking to media. The Daesh terrorist group claimed responsibility for last week’s attack, which prompted the Egyptian military to carry out a series of airstrikes over the weekend against what were described as militant “train-ing camps” in Libya’s eastern city of Derna.

Meanwhile, Egypt's pres-ident has signed into law a contentious new bill to regu-late non-governmental organisations, the official gazette said yesterday, trig-gering fears of an intensified crackdown on civil society.

Authorities have led a brutal crackdown on all forms of opposition, at times target-i n g h u m a n r i g h t s organisations directly, since then army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Sisi approved the law on May 24 after parliament approved it in November last year, the gazette said.

Forces retake IS villages on Syria border

Smoke billows during an ongoing battle by Iraqi forces to retake west Mosul's Al Saha city from Islamic State (IS) group fighters.

The territory taken by the Popular Mobilisation Force yesterday is located north of the Islamic State-held town of Baaj.

Civilians at grave risk in last stages of Mosul battle: UN

Egypt sacks security official over deadly Minya attack

08 TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017AFRICA

Supporters of the Indigenous People of Biafra run with Biafran flags in the Osusu district of Aba, yesterday. The Nigerian civil war's 50th anniversary will be commemorated today. The war was triggered when the Igbo people, the main ethnic group in the southeast, declared an independent breakaway state, the Republic of Biafra.

Civil war anniversary

Abuja

AFP

Nigeria's ailing president was glaringly absent yes-terday as his deputy

marked their two years in power, with no word on the head of state's health three weeks after he went on indefi-nite medical leave.

Muhammadu Buhari and his deputy Yemi Osinbajo were sworn into office on May 29, 2015, two months after secur-ing the first opposition victory against a sitting president in Nigerian history.

But their election pledges to defeat Boko Haram Islamists and tackle endemic corruption have been overshadowed, first by economic recession and increasingly by speculation about Buhari's health.

The 74-year-old former mil-itary ruler spent nearly two months being treated for an undisclosed illness in London in January and February.

He left for a fresh round of treatment in the British capital

on May 7 and has not been heard from or seen since. Rumours swirled that he may send a pre-recorded message to the nation for yesterday's public holiday.

But Osinbajo said only in a speech: "I bring you good wishes from President Muhammadu Buhari, who as we all know is away from the country on med-ical vacation."

He ended by asking for peo-ple's "continued prayers for the restoration to full health and strength and the safe return of our president".

Buhari's health — and his ability to lead — has increasingly overshadowed politics in Nigeria, particularly in the last three weeks because of the lack of update.

Presidential aides told reporters at a briefing in Abuja last week that they would not even answer questions about it.

But Buhari did not attend a G7 summit in Sicily last week, although he was among several African leaders invited. Osinbajo went in his place.

During his time in London

earlier this year, they insisted Buhari was "hale and hearty", despite his increasingly frail appearance, and had to coun-ter rumours he was terminally ill and even dead.

Buhari himself admitted on his return to Abuja in March that he "had never been so sick" and had undergone blood transfu-sions. Since then, he was rarely seen in public, missed a succes-sion of cabinet meetings, Friday prayers and his grandson's wedding.

Aides again insisted he was working from his private resi-dence on doctors' orders.

As well as political uncer-tainty, despite the formal handover of powers to Osinbajo, Buhari's illness has triggered an earlier-than-usual jostling for position for the 2019 election and talk about succession.

May 29 — known as "Democracy Day" for the date civilian rule was restored in Nigeria in 1999 — has typically been used by the government of the day to run through a checklist of its achievements.

Nairobi

AFP

More than a century after a colonial railway gave birth to modern Kenya,

the country is betting on a new Chinese-built route to cement its position as the gateway to East Africa.

The $3.2bn (¤2.8bn) railway linking Nairobi with the port city of Mombasa will tomorrow take its first passengers on the 472km journey, allowing them to skip a hair-raising drive on one of Ken-ya's most dangerous highways.

The railway is the country's biggest infrastructure project since independence, and while it has courted controversy, it is a key selling point for the ruling Jubilee party ahead of August elections.

It is also part of a "master plan" by east African leaders to connect their nations by rail, with the Standard Gauge Rail-way (SGR) planned to eventually link Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, Burundi and Ethiopia.

"There is no country which has ever developed without hav-ing a very robust railway system.

It was long overdue," Kenya's Transport Minister James Mach-aria said.

He said not upgrading the railway in over 100 years "has dragged us backwards in terms of development."

It was on May 30, 1896, that colonial Britain began building a railway from what is today Kenya's coast to improve access to the riches of Uganda, show-ing little interest in the wild land in between.

The railway, steeped in tales of swashbuckling colonial adventure and beloved by tour-ists up until its last, creaking journey in April, is credited with shaping Kenya into its current form.

The capital Nairobi, today a regional hub, was a swampy out-post with no particular attraction until it became the headquarters of Kenya Railways.

The construction of the rail-way is the stuff of legend, with British and Indian workers ter-rorised by a pair of lions said to have devoured some 135 men.

The train was later dubbed the "Lunatic Express".

Some see a touch of folly in

its successor too. In as much as the old line traced the develop-ment of colonial Kenya, the new railway has proven a mirror for modern Kenya: dogged by cor-ruption accusations, battling environmental concerns while trying to position itself as the gateway to east Africa.

The World Bank, and others, warned that building a new rail-way, instead of refurbishing the old one, was by far the most expensive option.

However, the government went ahead with the project, skipping an open tender to make a direct deal with China— whose Export?Import Bank has loaned Kenya 90 percent of the ven-ture's cost. "We should ask: 'Why did you negotiate this badly'?" said Kwame Owino, head of the Nairobi-based Institute of Eco-nomic Affairs.

He points to similar Chinese-built railways in Ethiopia, Tanzania and elsewhere on the continent which cost much less per kilometre.

Macharia dismisses this argument, saying Kenya's SGR could carry more cargo, and passes through trickier terrain.

He said the government expects the railway to boost GDP by 1.5 percent, allowing them to pay back the loan "in about four years".

"I think that is a little bit of wishful thinking," said Owino, questioning assumptions about the volume of cargo available to be carried, while warning high growth rates in east Africa were beginning to moderate.

He said the government, whose debt has doubled in three

years, would be forced to raise taxes to cover the bill.

"My feeling as an economist is that it is going to be a white elephant, but as a taxpayer I hope not," said Owino.

Trucks currently take two days to carry goods from Mom-basa to Nairobi, while the train will take eight hours. Passenger trains will take around five hours. The railway will be man-aged by the Chinese contractor for five years, with 610 Chinese

workers in charge, while Ken-yans are trained to take over.

The railway has also con-cerned environmentalists, as it cuts through a key wildlife migration route.

Ben Okita of Save The Ele-phants said that while underpasses have been built to allow elephants to cross, the cre-ation of an embankment and fencing around the new railway was creating deadly confusion.

Kenya unveils first new railway in a century

Johannesburg

Bloomberg

South African President Jacob Zuma reasserted his control over the ruling African National Congress as a renewed

revolt by some of the party’s most senior leaders fizzled out.

While some members of the ANC’s national executive com-mittee at a weekend meeting supported a call for Zuma to step down, most spoke neither in favour of nor against the motion and emphasised that the party must remained unified, party Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe told reporters yester-day. Zuma survived a similar revolt in November.

“The NEC sought to have a detailed analysis of the conse-quences of removing the president, appreciating that some calls, especially those made by the opposition, are not so much about removing the president but rather dislodging the ANC itself from power,” Mantashe said.

Opposition to Zuma within the ANC’s ranks has mounted since he fired Pravin Gordhan as finance minister and made 19 other changes to the execu-tive on March 31 — a move that sparked public protests and cost the country its investment-grade credit rating. He has clung to office thanks to con-tinued backing from members of the NEC, most of whom he has appointed to jobs in the cabinet and government. Zuma is due to step down as ANC leader in December and as president in 2019.

“The outcome of the NEC meetings shows that Zuma has still clearly got a lot of support and influence,” Abdul Waheed Patel, the managing director of Cape Town-based Ethicore Political Consulting, said by phone. “He is probably going to hang in until December at least and there is a chance he will survive until 2019.”

Zuma has faced allegations

that he’s allowed the Gupta family, who are his friends and in business with his son, to sway his administration’s decisions on contracts and appointments. Zuma and the Guptas deny the allegations.

Mantashe said the ANC favored the establishment “without delay” of a judicial inquiry into the influence of pri-vate business interests over the government, known as “state capture.”

Calls for Zuma to resign accelerated in March last year when the nation’s top court ruled that he “failed to uphold, defend and respect the consti-tution” because he didn’t abide by a directive from the graft ombudsman to repay some of the 215.9m rand ($16.8m) spent upgrading his private home. Discontent with his rule cost the ANC control of Johannesburg, the economic hub, and Preto-ria, the capital, in a municipal vote in August.

The next hurdle Zuma has to overcome will be a no-con-fidence motion called by opposition parties in parlia-ment. The United Democratic Movement has asked the Con-stitutional Court to order a secret ballot, which it hopes will enable ANC lawmakers who occupy 62 percent of the 400 seats in the National Assembly to vote against the president without fear of losing their jobs.

“Regardless of whether a secret ballot is granted or not by the court, ANC deployees as always are expected to vote in line with the decision of the caucus of the ANC,” Mantashe said.

Zuma survives renewed calls to resign

A Chinese worker looking on during the launch of the first batch of Standard Gauge Railway freight locomotives at Mombasa Port, Kenya. Kenyan President will inaugurate tomorrow a new railway line from Nairobi to Mombasa.

Buhari absent on second anniversary as president

Morocco arrests leader of northern protest movementRABAT:Authorities in Morocco yesterday arrested the fugitive leader of a pro-test movement that has shaken the country's north-ern Rif region for months.

The prosecutor of the northern coastal city of Al Hoceima said Nasser Zefzafi, who had been on the run since Friday, had been taken into custody.

He was detained "along with other individuals" and transferred to Casablanca, the prosecutor said in a state-ment, without providing further details of the arrests.

Those detained will be investigated for "undermin-ing the security of the state" and other criminal acts, the prosecutor added.

The Rif region has been shaken by social unrest since the death in October of a fish-monger crushed in a rubbish truck as he protested against the seizure of swordfish caught out of season.

Calls for justice for Mouh-cine Fikri, 31, evolved into a grassroots movement demanding jobs and eco-nomic development, with Zefzafi, himself unemployed, emerging as the leader of the Al Hirak Al Shaabi, or "Pop-ular Movement", based largely in Al Hoceima.

Congo to use Ebola vaccination to fight outbreakKINSHASA: Democratic Republic of Congo’s health ministry has approved the use of a new Ebola vaccine to counter an outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever in its north-east that has killed four people, a spokesman said yesterday.

“The non-objection was given. Now there’s a Medecins Sans Frontiers team that is arriv-ing (in Congo) today to validate the protocol with the technical teams,” Jonathan Simba, a health ministry spokesman, said by telephone. The vaccine, known as rVSV-ZEBOV and developed by Merck , is not yet licensed but was shown to be highly protective against Ebola in clinical trials published last December.

Calls for Zuma to resign accelerated in March last year when the nation’s top court ruled that he “failed to uphold, defend and respect the constitution.

09TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017 ASIA

Members of the Tibetan Youth Congress take part in a protest march near the United Nations office in New Delhi, yesterday. Activists in the Tibetan exile community in India took part in the protest to the United Nations office appealing for a special session on Chinese rule in Tibet, in the light of reports of 150 self-immolations inside Tibet.

Tibetan protest

New DelhiIANS

A countrywide row over the new rules restricting the sale of cattle with Youth Congress activists in

Kerala publicly killing an ox and the state's ruling Left Front hold-ing over 300 "beef festivals" while West Bengal Chief Minis-ter Mamata Banerjee threatened legal measures against the "unconstitutional" provision seemed to force the government to rethink.

As the BJP and others con-demned the acts of Youth Congress and Left workers in Kerala, the Congress suspended its Kannur youth leader Regil Makutty and three others while party Vice President Rahul Gan-dhi condemned the killing of the animal.

In the wake of stiff opposi-tion from some states, including Kerala, to the new rules, the

central government is likely to exempt buffaloes from the 'no slaughter' list, an official said.

"We have received some rep-resentations over the list of animals included (in the new rules). We are working on it," A N Jha, Secretary in the Union Environment Ministry, said.

In a bid to prevent cruelty to animals, the Ministry on May 26 modified rules making it man-datory to ensure that cattle are not bought or sold at cattle mar-kets for slaughtering. The list of

animals includes cows, bulls, buffaloes, heifers, calves as well as camels.

Ever since the notification, there have been widespread pro-tests in various states, especially Kerala, one of the states where cow slaughter is not banned.

Youth Congress activists took to the streets in the state, but caused outrage by publicly slash-ing the head of an ox during one such protest, while the ruling Communist Party of India-Marx-ist held over 300 "beef festivals" where cooked beef was freely served.

With both the main political fronts in Kerala opposing the ban, the state cabinet will on Wednesday announce a date for an all-party meeting to discuss the issue.

"This is a question of liveli-hood for thousands of farmers in the state and has been in prac-tise for ages. We will take up this issue in the cabinet meeting and don't be surprised if Kerala

initiates legal steps against the new law," Agriculture Minister V S Sunilkumar said in Thiru-vananthapuram. Forest and Animal Husbandry Minister P Raju said the new law cannot come into effect in Kerala.

The Bharatiya Janata Party

(BJP) appears to be the only party in Kerala which has accepted the central government's directive on cattle slaughter.

"The new law has been mis-understood by the other parties," BJP state General Secretary K. Surendran said.

State Congress President M M Hassan said: "Today we are observing a black day to protest against the anti-people law of the Centre. But we do not approve of what happened in Kannur. Hence we have suspended them from the party."

Protests may force India to rethink on cattle rules

Protesters shouting slogan against Prime Minister Narender Modi during a demonstration against a ban on the sale of animals for slaughter in Chennai, yesterday.

Stiff opposition

In the wake of stiff opposition from some states, including Kerala, to the new rules, the central government is likely to exempt buffaloes from the 'no slaughter' list, an official said.

NEWS BYTES

NEW DELHI: Lightning strikes and storm-related incidents across India's eastern state of Bihar have killed 29 people and wounded 12 more, officials said yesterday. The deaths took place in villages mainly across the districts of Jamui, Champaran, Vaishali and Samastipur on Sunday, disaster management offi-cial Anirudh Kumar said. "While 24 people died after being struck by lightning, the other five died in accidents like wall collapses," Kumar said from the state capital of Patna. The victims were mainly farmers and homeless people, he added. The twelve wounded were given medical treatment at hospi-tals and discharged, Kumar said. Strong winds also damaged crops and property and state agencies were currently making an assessment of the damage, he added. The storm occurred during the height of summer in India, which has seen soar-ing temperatures across many states ahead of the monsoon season. The region had been hit by similar storms earlier this month, claiming 22 lives.

29 dead in lightning in Bihar

Monsoon to begin in Kerala todayTHIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The southwest monsoon is likely to break over Kerala today, the IMD announced on yes-terday evening. With good rains lashing Kerala yesterday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD), in its evening state-ment, said the present meteorological conditions indicate that conditions are favourable for onset of southwest mon-soon over the state today. The onset of southwest monsoon over Kerala signals the arrival of monsoon over the Indian subcontinent and represents beginning of rainy season in the region. "Simultaneously, the onset is likely over most parts of northeastern states as well. Along with this, condi-tions are also favourable for further advance of southwest monsoon into some more parts of south Arabian Sea, Mal-dives, the Lakshadweep area, most parts of Kerala during next 24 hours," says the statement. The normal monsoon onset over Kerala is June 1 and since 2005, the IMD started to issue operational forecasts for the date.

Gender determination clinic busted

Three held over assault video

NEW DELHI: A team of health officials raided a clinic con-ducting sex determination tests here, police said yesterday. The team of officials first sent a decoy customer to check the sex of her baby at the clinic in Jangpura area of south Delhi, police said. Once the sex determination was done, the team raided the clinic and also found Rs8,800 paid by the woman at the clinic. The ultra sound machine used for sex determination has been sealed and district health offi-cials are in the process of sealing the clinic, police said. "No arrest has been made in the case and we are investigating," said Deputy Commissioner of Police Romil Baaniya.

NEW DELHI: Three men have been arrested after video emerged showing them assaulting two women in broad day-light as a dozen others looked on and ignored their screams for help, police said yesterday. The blurry video aired by Indian television showed the men groping and pushing the women in Uttar Pradesh state as onlookers laughed and filmed the assault, later posting it on social media. The incident took place last week in a remote village in Rampur district when the men surrounded the two women, whose ages and iden-tities have not been revealed. "We have arrested three of the main culprits and expect to get the fourth one shortly," Mohammad Tariq, a senior Rampur police official, told AFP. Police have analysed the footage and concluded there were four main attackers but they would be investigating the oth-ers who gathered to watch, Tariq added. One of the victims told India's NDTV network they begged the men to stop and called for help.

New Delhi

IANS

The Supreme Court yester-day put on hold the operation of a Rajasthan

government order, directing tel-ecom operators to remove their cell towers from within a 500-metre range of jail premises across the state.

A vacation bench of Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Deepak Gupta stayed the order as sen-ior counsel Kapil Sibal told the bench that removal of cell tow-ers would affect 80 lakh people and would have a cascading effect.

Issuing notice to the state

government, the vacation bench gave it four weeks' time to respond to the plea by Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), challenging the May 9 order that asked telecom oper-ators to decommission their towers in the proximity of jails.

The Rajasthan government's order followed a Rajasthan High Court order on April 6 in this regard.

The state government had given service providers 30 days to remove their towers, a period which was ending in early June.

Sibal told the court that even the Department of Telecommu-nications and the government had earlier supported the tele-

com service providers.The apex court bench

directed that no coercive steps should be taken by the authorities.

The COAI told the top court that the high court, when it passed its order, was not told that the August 31, 2012 policy, which barred installation of cell towers within a 500 metre radius of jail premises, was superseded by a February 6, 2017 policy.

The February 6 policy of the state government allowed set-ting up of cell towers not only within 500 metre of jails but also on public and private locations, including parks, playgrounds,

hospitals, schools and govern-m e n t - o w n e d / c o n t r o l l e d buildings and lands under cultivation.

However, this policy was amended saying that the permis-sion for setting up towers should not be given in these areas/ premises if barred by a compe-tent court. This condition was included through an amendment made on February 9.

The mobile service provid-ers had sought direction that they should not be asked to remove the towers nor would the government take steps to seal those or take any coercive steps against the cellular serv-ice providers.

New DelhiIANS

The CBI yesterday regis-tered three cases against unnamed Civil Aviation

Ministry and Air India officials in the issue of purchase of 111 Boeing aircraft worth Rs 70,000 crore and alleged corruption in handing over international air-line routes to private airlines during the UPA regime.

Apart from Civil Aviation Ministry and Air India officials, the Central Bureau of Investi-gation (CBI) has booked some

private unnamed companies in its FIRs lodged under sections of criminal conspiracy and cheating of Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Pre-vention of Corruption Act.

The FIRs do not mention any public official by name but are built around a report by the Comptroller and Auditor Gen-eral submitted to Parliament in 2011 and a subsequent report by the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC).

Both reports pointed out glar-ing gaps in the acquisition process which caused to the national air

carrier to face a financial crunch, a CBI official said. The cases come on the heels of the CBI raiding former Finance Minister P Chidamabram's son Karti in a money laundering case.

The agency took the step on Supreme Court's January 5 order pertaining to the affairs of the Civil Aviation ministry under the previous United Progressive Alliance government. The court has reportedly asked the CBI to complete the probe by June while hearing a public interest litigation filed by activist-law-yer Prashant Bhushan.

SC stays removal of mobile towers near Rajasthan jails

CBI files cases in aircraft purchase matter Himachal CM & wife get bail in assets caseNew DelhiIANS

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, his wife Prati-

bha Singh and seven other accused were granted bail by a court here yesterday in a case of holding disproportion-ate assets. Special Judge Virender Kumar Goyal asked Virbhadra Singh and the other accused to furnish personal bonds of Rs1 lakh each and surety of like amount.

The court also asked them not to leave the country with-out its permission. In his bail plea, the 82-year-old Con-gress leader cited several medical reports to claim he was suffering from serious ailments. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) opposed the bail plea on the ground that Virbhadra Singh may influence witnesses in the case.

"Virbhadra Singh is the king of the state and involved in corrupt practices. His med-ical issues are common and hence the medical ground cited by him should not be considered," the CBI said, adding the probe was still on and giving bail may hamper investigation.

The chargesheet said the Chief Minister was in posses-sion of assets worth Rs 10,30,47,946.40 in his own name as well as in the names of his family members.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s widely reported remark that the European Union cannot completely rely on US and Britain any more points to an emerging shift and dynamics in

US-Europe relations and security cooperation. Her statement, and the message it sends, can be seen as a culmination, in a sense, of the rupture in relations and trust between the EU and the US following Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as US president. The signals were loud and clear from the beginning, and there was worry in Europe about the direction of the new developments. The fact that Merkel, the most powerful leader in Europe, has finally spoken about it is an indication of lack of hope, a feeling that things have reached a cul-de-sac from where there is no turning back. The bruising meetings of Nato and the G7 group of wealthy nations last week were an opportunity to repair the damage, but instead, they proved that the differences were too deep.

Addressing an election rally in Munich, Merkel said that the EU must now be prepared to “take its fate into its own hands”. “The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over. I’ve experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands,” she said in clear and precise words. A new world order is in an embryonic state. The

decades-long post-war western alliance which had defined the world order and formed one of the bedrocks of global security is now under threat. It won’t be a mutual divorce, if it happens, but imposed by one side. Trump believes in upending the existing order and creating a new one in which the US has different priorities and responsibilities, though he is yet to outline the basics of that order. The US president is against the European Union, which is surprising

considering that the EU is a unifying force which has functioned as a positive influence on global events. During his election campaign, Trump frequently questioned the value of the EU, welcomed the Brexit and spoke positively of anti-EU politicians such as the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. This was very clear at the two-day G7 summit in Italy, which pitted Trump against the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan on several issues. While six of the seven renewed their commitment to the 2015 Paris climate accord, Trump said he needed more time to decide. He also criticized the EU for their inadequate contribution to the defence budget.

The EU is capable of taking control of its future if there is a need. But the transatlantic alliance is likely to continue, because that alone serves the interests of both sides.

10 TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017VIEWS

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

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

msalim@pen.com.qa

Creating a new order

QUOTE OF THE DAY

We are deeply concerned that right now, in the last final stages of the campaign to retake Mosul, that the civilians... in (IS) areas are probably at graver risk now than at any other stage of the campaign.

Lise GrandeUN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq

Trump’s election and Brexit have damaged the post-war western alliance.

In recent months, a debate has been brew-ing inside Italy and across the European Unionabout NGOs that operate in the Med-iterranean Sea between the coasts of Sicily and Libyato conduct search and rescue

operations (SAR) to save refugees fleeing Africa - where at least 1300 people have drowned attempting the dangerous journey so far this year, according to the IOM’s Missing Migrants project.

The dispute surrounding SARs started in December last year, after a Financial Times news report alleged that the EU’s border agency, Frontex, had “accused charities oper-ating in the Mediterranean of colluding with people smugglers”. The news report, which was based on leaked memos by the border agency, also suggested that Frontex believes the lights used by rescue boats act “as a beam for the migrants”.

Frontex was quick to distance itself from the news story and deny that their memos ever suggested that the NGOs were “colluding with people smugglers”. But the agency’s denial has not stopped Italian prosecutors and politicians, far-right activists, EU leaders, as well as Fabrice Leggerie, the director of Fron-tex, from continuing to accuse NGOs like Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, or Save the Children who have been operating in the Mediterranean, of playing a role in the refugee crisis.

The arguments currently being made against NGOs and their role in the refugee cri-sis are not only disingenuous, but according to Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch (HRW), are also a “damaging distraction from the real challenges and responsibilities facing not only Italy, but Europe as a whole”.

Sunderland, of course, is right — EU lead-ers and Italian politicians have avoided taking any responsibility for the current crisis in the Mediterranean or the nightmare situation unravelling inside and around Libya, where Sub-saharan migrants have been tortured, abused, killed and are now being sold into slavery in open markets.

While Italian prosecutors accuse NGO workers of colluding with smugglers, Italian politicians such as Interior Minister Marco Minniti have pushed and passed a series of laws making it more difficult for refugees to appeal rejected asylum cases as well as plans to build more detention centres to hold asy-lum seekers throughout the duration of their cases.

Excuses, ExcusesAlthough brief accommodations were

made for Syrian refugees by some EU coun-tries, especially Germany, after millions were displaced as a result of the deadly civil war in the country, the EU has opted to find any rationale, no matter how flimsy and untrue, to reject the claims of asylum seekers.

In March 2016, a leaked EU document was released which described EU plans to deport 80,000 or more Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan.

The leaked document spelled out how the

Who is really responsible for deadly refugee journeys?Mohammed Harun ArsalaiAl Jazeera

EU planned to make aid packages to Afghanistan “migration sensitive”, meaning that aid would be contingent upon the Afghan government’s signing of the Joint Way Forward Agreement - which is illegal according to international law.

“The State Building Contract for EUR 200 million in preparation is intended to be made migration sensitive, probably through one indicator linking it to the government’s policy on migration and

return and possibly to the implementation of the Joint Way Forward,” the document said.

Also within the

leaked document, a narrative was intro-duced where Afghans seeking asylum in Europe were compartmentalised into groups where some were no longer called “refugees”, but referred to as “irregular” or “economic” migrants.

The downgrading of Afghans from “refugee” to “migrant” has allowed for the EU to circumvent international laws regarding the rights of refugees the world over. The change in narrative has loosened restrictions on EU deportations - allowing for quick and easy rejections of asylum cases of not just Afghans, but of Somalians, Eritreans, Nigerians and others as well.

Inter-European ColonialismIn order to stop the flow of migration

from the south to northern Europe, EU leaders have been enforcing “first entry” laws attached to the Dublin Regulations which trap asylum seekers in the first EU country they have entered until their cases are ruled upon. For the most part, this means asylum seekers have been stuck anywhere from six months to sev-eral years in Greece and Italy with little to no support.

Considering that both Italy and Greece are the hardest hit EU countries from the 2007-2008 economic collapse, the two countries have had little power to confront Germany or other northern states, due to heavy reliance on austerity deals and loan forgiveness.

With failing economies, rising unem-ployment and growing anger, the EU has largely managed to avoid the wrath of its southern citizens by trapping asylum seekers in Italy and Greece where right-wing activists and neo-fascists, as well opportunist politicians, have fed and grown off anti-migrant sentiments

rather than challenging EU leadership for what many in the southern states are continuing to call inter-European colonialism.

Manufacturing FascismIn Italy, the charge against NGOs is

being led by the Catania (Sicily) prosecu-tor Carmelo Zuccaro, who despite admitting to having “no evidence” has repeatedly claimed NGOs are in direct contact with traffickers. Italy’s far-right political party Lega Nord, or “Northern League”, as well as the up-and-coming Five Star Movement have backed Zucca-ro’s claims in order to capitalise on anti-immigrant racism inside the coun-try in time for next elections.

In the EU generally, neo-Nazis and far-right groups like the transnational Generation Identitaire (GI) have also used Zuccaro’s argument to increase their numbers and galvanise racists across Europe into taking action. Earlier this month, GI teamed up with white supremacists from Italy, France, Ger-many, Austria, Canada and the United States in an effort to stop Aquarius - a rescue boat used by MSF for SAR opera-tions in the Mediterranean Sea. Alt-right, white supremacist activist and former Rebel Media journalist Lauren Southern lit flares with three others and attempted to block Aquarius from leav-ing the coast of Sicily towards Libya before being briefly detained and released by the Italian coastguard.

The group’s actions have received praise from neo-Nazis and neo-fascists across the globe and they already started to plan their next move against rescue missions at sea.

Nowhere in the arguments of in Ita-ly’s far-right parliamentarians and prosecutors is there any mention of how EU policies and laws have exacerbated the situation. There is no mention of the EU’s role in the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq — or how that has led to the current situation in Syria which has displaced up to five million outside the country.

Also missing from the argument is how Italian officials have held secret meetings in Libya with questionable armed militias to patrol Libya’s southern border. “Securing Libya’s southern bor-der means securing Europe’s southern border”, Minniti said last month after striking a deal with Libyan tribal groups, essentially moving EU borders and bor-der controls well into Africa.

Instead of creating outlandish con-spiracies against NGOs to shore up the support for Europe’s anti-migrant racists and empowering far-right elements, the EU and the Italian government should take a look in the mirror and correct their own actions.

They should start with rebuking US President Donald Trump at the upcom-ing Nato summit in Brussels, where he is expected to ask Nato leaders to commit more troops to combat in Afghanistan — a move which will only cause more waves of refugees to leave the country and start a perilous journey towards Europe.

Instead of creating outlandish conspiracies against NGOs to shore up the support for Europe’s anti-migrant racists and empowering far-right elements, the EU and the Italian government should take a look in the mirror and correct their own actions.

ED ITOR IAL

11TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017 OPINION

have ordered deployment of the missile for combat readiness, saying, “This type of missile should be rapidly mass-produced ... and deployed to military units.” He also said his country would rival the United States in the “diversification and sophistica-tion of its nuclear capability.”

North Korea has the habit of exaggerating its military strength. There are still doubts as to the country’s assertion that its new type of missile has reached a stage of practical use, given the repeated failed launches of that missile. However, there is no denying that the North has advanced its missile technology, and efforts to exercise caution cannot be neglected.

The US military is placing a check on North Korea, using the USS Carl Vinson and Ronald Rea-gan aircraft carriers, with the USS Ronald Reagan’s home port in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture.

The Kim regime probably wants to emphasise its resolve not to succumb to such military pres-sure. China, Russia must join in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bitterly condemned the latest missile

Court says Donald Trump lied about travel ban

In a remarkable 10-to-3 decision, a federal appeals court affirmed the freeze on the second iteration of President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration from six majority Muslim countries. The court said that national security

“is not the true reason” for the order, despite Trump’s insistence to the contrary. It’s extraordinary for a federal court to tell the president directly that he’s lying; I certainly can’t think of any other examples in my lifetime.

The decision and the breakdown of the judges voting against the ban — which includes a Republi-can appointee — presages defeat for the executive order in the US Supreme Court, should the Trump administration decide to seek review there. Faced with this degree of repudiation from the federal judi-ciary, Trump would be well advised not to go to the Supreme Court at all.

The decision for the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals was written by Chief Judge Roger Gregory, who has the distinction of having been appointed to the court first by Bill Clinton, in a recess appointment that would have expired, and then by George W Bush — a reminder of bipartisanship in the judicial nomination process that seems almost inconceivable today.

Gregory’s opinion had three basic parts, of which the middle one was the most important.

First, Gregory found that the plaintiffs in the case had standing to challenge the executive order as a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause. He pointed out that under the “endorsement test” first offered by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor,

the establishment clause is violated when the gov-ernment sends a message to some people that they are insiders, favored members of the political com-munity, or a message to others that they are outsiders, disfavored as citizens.

In O’Connor’s analysis, feelings count. As the 4th Circuit put it in the passage quoted by Gregory, “feel-ings of marginalisation and exclusion are cognizable forms of injury” under the endorsement test. Thus, Muslim plaintiffs who alleged that they experienced a sense of exclusion and harm have the constitu-tional right to bring a lawsuit.

Although the 4th Circuit dissenters objected plau-sibly that this reliance on emotional experience would allow anyone “who develops negative feel-ings” to bring an establishment clause case, their objection isn’t really to Gregory’s reasoning, but to the endorsement test itself. And that’s part of consti-tutional doctrine.

That led Gregory to the heart of his opinion — and the condemnation of Trump as a liar. The strongest legal argument available to the Trump administration was based on a 1972 Supreme Court case called Kleindienst v. Mandel.

In the Mandel case, immigration authorities denied a visa to a Belgian Marxist who had been invited to give lectures in the US The professors who

invited him argued that his exclusion violated the freedom of speech.

The Supreme Court denied the claim, stating that when the executive branch excludes a non citizen from the country “on the basis of a facially legitimate and bona fide reason,” the courts would not “look behind the exercise of that discretion.” That holding looked pretty good for the Trump executive order, which on its face asserts a national security interest in denying visas to people from the six majority Mus-lim countries.

Here’s where the opinion got personal. Gregory acknowledged that the executive order was “facially legitimate.” But, he said, “bona fide” literally means “in good faith.”

And here, he reasoned, the plaintiffs had pro-vided “ample evidence that national security is not the true reason” for the order. That evidence, the court said, came mostly from Trump himself, in the form of his “numerous campaign statements expressing animus towards the Islamic faith.”

This was really the punchline of the opinion: Trump’s own statements show that he lied when he said the purpose of the executive order was national security. Once that conclusion was on the table, Gre-gory easily went on to show that such animus violated the establishment clause by sending a

The North has launched Pukguk-song-2, a new type of intermediate-range missile whose name translates to North Star or Polaris. After flying about

500 kilometers, the missile fell into the Sea of Japan. The latest ballistic missile launch — the 11th of its kind to be con-ducted this year — took place just one week after the preceding one, indicating the rapid pace at which the North is test-firing such missiles.

It is difficult to detect signs of a solid-fuel Pukguksong-2 launch. North Korea’s latest missile test can be viewed as an attempt to show off an improvement in its

surprise attack capability.Regarding Pukguk-

song-2, Kim Jong Un, chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea, is said to

UN must impose more curbs on North Korea soon

Protesters hold signs and march outside the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, in advance of the hearing earlier this month on the Trump administration’s travel ban.

launch, describing it as an attempt to “trample on efforts by the international commu-nity to pursue a peaceful solution and to present a chal-lenge to the world.” He had every reason to single out the North.

At the request of Japan, the United States and South Korea, the UN Security Council will likely convene an emergency meeting. Efforts must be made to work out a new sanctions reso-lution at an early date, thereby increasing joint efforts to place the North under seige.

The Security Council has repeatedly issued a statement aimed at condemning North Korea. Although such nations as Japan and the United States have asserted that additional sanc-tions should be imposed on the North, China and Russia have

remained cautious about this. Therefore, the imposition of even stronger sanctions has not become a reality, which con-sequently has allowed North Korea to carry out provocations.

Japan and the United States have called for taking meas-ures that are more effective than the existing resolutions and have greater influence on North Korea. Such measures include slapping sanctions on Chinese and other banks and companies that conduct transactions with the North, as well as imposing export restrictions on crude oil.

Although China announced a halt in coal imports from North Korea in February, this is hardly enough. As long as China and Russia cannot get the North to restrict its act of violating UN resolutions, they should agree to bolster sanc-tions on the North.

Abe has said he will seek to have North Korea discussed as one of the main issues at this year’s Group of Seven sum-mit meeting of major nations, which will open on Friday in Taormina, Italy, and convey a strong message there.

It is important for Japan and the United States to take the initiative in building a structure by which the international community will press North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile development programmes.

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message to Muslims that they are outsiders in the political community.

The judges who joined Grego-ry’s decision were appointed by Democrats. The three dissents came from Judge Paul Niemeyer, appointed by George H W Bush, and two other George W. Bush nominees. (Two judges, J Harvie Wilkinson III and Allyson Kay Dun-can, recused themselves from the case.) Thus, the breakdown was mostly partisan.

As a result, it’s plausible that Trump might get a few votes for the executive order at the Supreme Court. But he isn’t going to win. Jus-tice Anthony Kennedy will be moved by the argument that the executive order was adopted in bad faith. And even conservative Justice Samuel Alito is likely to be unsym-pathetic, given his strong record as a defender of religious liberty.

Trump’s lawyers should be tell-ing him right now that it would be a mistake for him to seek Supreme Court review.

Not only is he likely to lose, he is likely to lose in a way that under-mines his legitimacy and credibility. But it’s doubtful whether he will lis-ten. If Trump had been listening to his lawyers, he wouldn’t be in the situation he’s in now, where the judiciary is telling him to his face that he has bad faith.

The writer is a Bloomberg view

columnist. He is a professor of constitu-

tional and international law at Harvard

University and was a clerk to US Supreme

Court Justice David Souter.

Noah FeldmanBloomberg

The decision and the breakdown of the judges voting against the ban — which includes a Republican appointee — presages defeat for the executive order in the US Supreme Court, should the Trump administration decide to seek review there. Faced with this degree of repudiation from the federal judiciary, Trump would be well advised not to go to the Supreme Court at all.

The Japan News

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un with his military officers.

North Korea has the habit of exaggerating its military strength. There are still doubts as to the country’s assertion that its new type of missile has reached a stage of practical use, given the repeated failed launches of that missile. However, there is no denying that the North has advanced its missile technology, and efforts to exercise caution cannot be neglected.

Philippine forces make gains in Marawi CityMarawi

AFP

The Philippine military said yesterday it was close to retaking a southern city held for a seventh day by

Islamist militants, as helicopters unleashed more rockets on posi-tions held by the rebels aligned with Islamic State.

The occupation of Marawi city by the Maute, a group hardly heard of a year ago, has become the biggest security challenge of Rodrigo Duterte’s 11-month pres-idency, with gunmen resisting air and ground assaults and control-ling central parts of a city of 200,000 people.

The military said the rebels may be getting help from “sym-pathetic elements” and fighters they had freed from jail during the rampage that started last Tuesday and caught the military by surprise.

“Our ground commanders have assured that the end is

almost there,” military spokes-man Restituto Padilla told reporters. “We’re trying to iso-late all these pockets of resistance.”

More than 100 people have been killed, most of them mili-tants, according to the military, and most of the city’s residents have fled.

The military said the Maute

group was still present in nine of the city’s 96 barangays, or communities.

The Maute’s ability to fight off the military for so long will add to fears that Islamic State’s radical ideology is spreading in the southern Philippines and it could become a haven for mili-tants from Southeast Asia and beyond. Malaysians and Indone-sians were among the rebels killed.

The government believes the Maute carried out their assault before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to capture the atten-tion of Islamic State and earn recognition as a regional affiliate.

According to witnesses, men with black headbands typical of Islamic State have been seen on city streets in recent days. A pho-tograph taken by a resident shows 10 men carrying assault rifles and dressed entirely in black.

A Reuters photographer saw an Islamic State flag in an oil

drum in an abandoned street yesterday, where chickens roamed in front of damaged shops and homes.

Some troops tried to eliminate Maute snipers yesterday as others guarded deserted streets, taken back block by block.

Helicopters circled the lake-side city and smoke poured out of some buildings. Artillery explosions echoed.

Biggest challenge

The occupation of Marawi city by the Maute, a group hardly heard of a year ago, has become the biggest security challenge of Rodrigo Duterte’s 11-month presidency, with gunmen resisting air and ground assaults and controlling central parts of a city of 200,000 people.

Shanghai

AFP

Philippine authorities last week seized more than 600kg of methampheta-

mines in the largest such bust since China launched a crack-down on drug-smuggling in cooperation with the Southeast Asian nation, Chinese customs said yesterday.

China is the main source of methamphetamine consumed in the Philippines, which is caught in the throes of a brutal war on drugs waged by Presi-dent Rodrigo Duterte.

Two people arrested in a May 12 raid on suspected smug-glers told Chinese authorities they hid the drugs in five print-ing machines to smuggle them into the Philippines, customs officials in the coastal city of Xiamen said.

Tipped off by their Chinese counterparts, Philippine offi-cials seized 604kg (1,332 lb) of methamphetamine on May 26, Xiamen Customs said on its website.

“According to the Philip-pines side, this case is the largest drug trafficking bust made by the Philippines since China and the Philippines launched cooperation against cross-border drug smuggling,” the Xiamen officials said in the statement.

“It shows China’s determi-nation to crack down on drug smuggling.”

The Philippines’ Bureau of Customs said in a statement issued last Saturday that it had acted on the intelligence from Chinese customs to seize the drugs in Valenzuela City, about 14 kilometres north of the coun-try’s capital of Manila.

Sydney

Reuters

Australia will send an addi-tional 30 troops to join the Nato-led training and

assistance mission in Afghanistan, bringing its total deployment there to 300, Defence Minister Marise Payne said yesterday.

Nato requested more troops last month as US President Don-ald Trump considers whether to expand the operation by several thousand, 16 years into the seem-ingly intractable war against the Taliban and other Islamist mili-tants. Australia is not a member of Nato but is a staunch US ally and has had troops in Afghanistan since 2002.

“These additional (Australian Defence Force) members will allow Australia to commit addi-tional advisers to further develop the long-term capabilities of the Afghan security forces, as part of

our current train, advise and assist mission,” Payne told a Senate committee.

In February, US General John

Nicholson, the commander of Nato’s Resolute Support mission, requested several thousand more international troops to break a

stalemate against the Taliban, the remnants of al Qaeda, Islamic State and other Islamist groups.

Trump’s administration is yet to respond to the request but has increased bombing missions in Afghanistan.

The Nato force currently stands at about 15,000 troops, including about 8,400 US military personnel.

Meanwhile, A leader of ISIS group was killed with his two fighters in an airstrike conducted by the US forces in eastern Nan-garhar province in Afghanistan.

The provincial police com-mandment in a statement said the US forces carried out an airstrike using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Spina Zhai area of Nazian dis-trict late on Sunday afternoon.

The statement further added that the ISIS leader identified as Asadullah was killed with his two fighters in the airstrike, accord-ing to (Khaama Press).

Australia to deploy more troops in Afghanistan

Around 505kg of seized drugs are seen after they were presented to the media at the National Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Metro Manila, yesterday.

Over 600kg of meth seized in Philippines

Power protests leave 2 dead in Pakistan

Islamabad

Internews

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is learnt to have barred PML-N

lawmakers from going abroad, ensuring the adoption of the Finance Bill. Sources cited strict orders, requiring lawmakers to seek prior per-mission from the party’s top leadership in case there was any ‘grave urgency’ for for-eign travel, the sources said.

Ensuring the maximum presence of the ruling party lawmakers in the National Assembly during the current budget session is seen as an attempt to counter tough opposition in the lower house.

Knowledgeable leaders in PML-N said that the directives had been issued during a meeting of the party’s parlia-mentary party under Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Fri-day just before the announcement of the federal budget on the same day.

Incidentally, the meeting was held before the meeting of the federal cabinet that approved the federal budget on May 26. PML-N insiders said the party leadership was expecting hostile opposition during the budget session coming from mainstream political parties.

Kalutara

AFP

Thousands of Sri Lankan troops battled yesterday to get relief supplies to nearly

half a million people displaced by the island's worst flooding in well over a decade, which has killed 180 people.

The military said a lull in torrential monsoon rains had allowed it to deploy aircraft, boats and ground troops to evacuate people from flooded areas and deliver food and other essentials.

Almost half a million people

have had to abandon their homes after the island suffered its worst flooding in 14 years.

The Disaster Management Centre said 169 people had been confirmed dead, most of them buried by landslides triggered by Friday's intense rains. Another 102 people are listed as missing and 88 are in hospital.

Sri Lanka is regularly hit by flooding at the start of the annual monsoon. But carpenter J H Siripala, who lives in one of the areas worst hit, said he had never seen it this bad.

"I have lived in this area for 27 years and we have gone

through floods, but never expe-rienced this much water," the 62-year said in Kalutara dis-trict on the southwest coast as a navy boat carried him to safety.

"I thought it was my end," he said as he recalled how the water level suddenly rose on Sunday, covering his head, before he was pulled to safety.

Dhanushka Fernando said his house was under eight feet (2.5 metres) of water on Sunday.

"We had floods in 2003 but not this much water," the 28-year-old said.

Peshawar

AFP

Violent protests erupted in Pakistan yesterday as crippling electricity cuts

left hundreds of thousands of people without power in soar-ing temperatures during the first two days of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. At least two person was killed and eight wounded in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after police opened fire on hundreds of peo-ple protesting at the cuts by trying to set a power station ablaze, officials said.

"The protesters first tried to torch the electricity power sta-tion and then they attacked a police station," Zafar Ali Shah, a

senior government official in Malakand district, said, adding that the demonstrators also attacked government buildings, offices and vehicles.

Protesters later blocked a main highway linking Malakand and the Swat valley to the rest of the country, Shah added, say-ing that authorities are negotiating with local leaders to defuse the demonstrations.

In the provincial capital Peshawar some 800 protesters took over two power stations, demanding government employ-ees continue the electricity supply without interruption.

Pakistan has for years been struggling to provide enough power for its nearly 200 million citizens. Its chronic energy cri-sis sees daily power outages

which are amplified in the sum-mer heat. Residents in Peshawar said they face cuts for six to eight hours a day, while rural areas can receive electricity for as lit-tle as three to four hours a day.Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has vowed to solve the crisis by 2018, when elections must be held.

Yesterday he said that "min-imum load-shedding" should be carried out during Ramadan, during which millions of devout Pakistanis abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sun-set. Temperatures in Pakistan touched near-record highs over the weekend. On Sunday angry residents burned tyres in the roads in the sweltering port city of Karachi after a massive power outage in southern Pakistan.

Islamabad

Internews

Pakistan’s Federal Investi-gation Agency (FIA) has arranged training of 12,458

individuals from all walks of life to serve purpose of controlling cyber-crimes during last four years. National Response Cen-tre for Cyber Crimes (NR3C) arranged these trainings on dig-ital forensic comprehension for interpreting forensic reports, evidence extraction methods and laws application to judicial community.

Official sources on Wednes-day said concerned Wing of FIA also registered 894 cases since January 2013, out of which 179

cases were so far decided.During the said period, the

Wing also arrested 689 accused persons who were allegedly involved in cases related to cybercrimes.

The sources while listing measures to control such crimes said technical facilita-tion has been extended through digital forensic analysis, cyber tracking, digital crime investi-gation to local Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) in cases such as murder, rob-bery, extortion and many more.

The other step was techni-cal trainings on cybercrime, digital forensics, information security to LEAs including local police.

Sri Lanka flood toll climbs to 180PML-N lawmakers barred from going abroad

12,458 trained in Pakistan to control cyber crimes

A member of the Afghan security forces escorting alleged Islamic State fighters being presented to the media at the police headquarters in Jalalabad, yesterday.

Activists participating in an anti-martial law protest in front of the Armed Forces of the Philippines headquarters in Manila, yesterday.

12 TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017ASIA

13TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017 ASIA

Cyclone Mora approaches Bangladesh

China to implement cyber law from June 1Beijing

IANS

China's Cyber security Law will take effect on June 1, banning online

service providers from col-lecting and selling users' personal information.

According to the new law that was adopted by China's top legislature in November last year, Internet service pro-viders cannot collect user information that is irrelevant to the services and they should handle such information in line with laws and agreements.

Users now have rights to ask service providers to delete their information if such information is abused, Xinua news agency reported yesterday. The controversial law mandates strict data sur-veillance and storage for firms working in China.

Cyber security manage-ment staff will be required to protect information obtained, and are banned from leaking or selling the information, including privacy and com-mercial secrets. Those who violate the provisions and infringe on personal informa-tion will face hefty fines.

The law also makes it clear that no one can use the Internet to conduct fraud or sell prohibited goods.

Other regualations relat-ing to online news and civilian drones will also come into effect on June 1.

North Korea tests missile in latest provocationSeoul

AFP

North Korea test-fired a missile yesterday which fell provoca-tively close to its neighbour Japan, the

latest in a series of launches that have heightened tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons ambitions.

It was the North's 12th bal-listic missile test this year —carried out in defiance of UN sanction warnings and US threats of possible military action.

The launch went ahead despite tough talk from US Pres-ident Donald Trump, who promised last week at the G7 summit that the "big problem" of North Korea "will be solved".

South Korea's military said the Scud-type missile travelled

for 450km, and Japan said it was estimated to have fallen into its exclusive economic zone, extending 200 nautical miles from the coast. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe swiftly condemned the test — the second time this year that a North Korean missile has fallen close to its shores —vowing concerted action with the US.

"We will never tolerate North

Korea's continued provocations that ignore repeated warnings by the international community," Abe said. "As agreed during the G7 summit, the North Korean problem is the international community's top priority."

The North has been stepping up efforts towards its ultimate goal -- developing an intercon-tinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can deliver a nuclear war-head to the continental US.

Despite Trump's strident warnings of possible military intervention, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said in an interview which aired Sunday before the launch that a war with North Korea would be "catastrophic".

"The North Korean regime has hundreds of artillery cannons and rocket launchers within range of one of the most densely

populated cities on Earth, which is the capital of South Korea," he told CBS News. "This regime is a threat to the region, to Japan, to South Korea. And in the event of war, they would bring danger to

China and to Russia as well."But the bottom line is, it

would be a catastrophic war if this turns into a combat, if we're not able to resolve this situation through diplomatic means."

Mattis declined to say what kind of action from Pyongyang would constitute a "red line" for Washington, saying the admin-istration needs "political manoeuvre room."

Facebook ban of anti-Muslim slur sparks Myanmar outcryYangon

AFP

Myanmar netizens were in uproar yesterday after Facebook seemingly

banned people from posting the word "kalar," often used as a slur against Muslims, at a time of ris-ing Islamophobia in the country.

Facebook is under global pressure to clamp down on hate speech, violent threats or delib-erately misleading information on their platform -- with efforts

showing varying degrees of success.

Dozens of users in Myanmar reported being temporarily barred from the site recently after posting the controversial term kalar, which is frequently used as an insult for the coun-try's embattled Muslim minority.

Some users said they were even blocked after writing other words that include the same sound in the Burmese alphabet, highlighting the difficulties Face-book has monitoring millions of

posts in multiple languages.Aung Kaung Myat said he

had been prevented from liking, posting and sharing content on the site for 24 hours last week for writing about the apparent ban, as had many of his friends.

"It is ridiculous," he said. "I became a victim of it myself when I wrote: 'Facebook is delet-ing the posts that include the word kalar'."

Yarzar Soe-Oo said he was barred on Friday after posting a jokey quip about eating Indian bean soup ("kalar pal hin") while

sitting in a chair ("kalar htaing"). Facebook did not reply to emailed requests for comment while a spokesman for the Myanmar government said it had not pushed for a ban.

Kalar is a deeply controver-sial term in Myanmar, where it is used to refer to foreigners in general but most commonly to describe people of Indian origin and anything relating to their culture.

Over the years it has also been turned into a derogatory slur by Buddhist nationalists

against Muslims.Two angry Facebook users

have responded to the apparent ban by creating an event called "We own Kalar" in protest.

By early afternoon some 1,400 people had said they were interested in attending the gath-ering, scheduled for Wednesday in Yangon.

"Even though no action is taken against fake accounts which share hate speech and spew abuse... action is taken over (words we use every day)," said the organisers.

Yangon

Anatolia

A peace conference to end decades of ethnic conflict in Myanmar ended yes-

terday without reaching a major agreement between the govern-ment and rebels, state-run TV reported. The six-day summit in capital Nay Pyi Taw stumbled over rebels’ calls for greater autonomy amid fears federal-ism could lead to the break up of the country.

Representatives from the government, rebel groups, par-liament and political parties signed an agreement on 37 of 45 proposed federal principles as part of the Union Peace Accord yesterday.

However, presidential

spokesman Zaw Htay said a deal on individual states’ constitu-tions and self-determination

could not be reached unless rebel groups pledged “non-secession from the union”.

“As the issues are set to be discussed in package, we could not go further without any agree-ment on non-secession,” he told reporters at the end of the con-ference. An alliance of seven major rebel groups, including three previously banned from joining the peace talks, walked out of negotiations on Saturday after they were not allowed to present their proposals.

The conflicts, which mostly affect areas in northern Kachin, northeastern Shan and western Rakhine states, have been ongo-ing since independence in 1948. Ethnic groups want a new fed-eral constitution promising autonomy that could be put to a referendum. Myanmar’s earlier federal constitution was replaced by military rule after a 1962 coup.

Myanmar peace talks end with no dealNepal delays key local polls amid political turbulenceKathmandu

AFP

Nepal yesterday post-poned local elections for a second time after fail-

ing to appease ethnic minority groups who threatened to boy-cott the polls. The elections were seen as a key step in a drawn-out peace process after a decade-long civil war which ended in 2006. They were the first local polls in 20 years.

"The government has decided to postpone the second phase of the local polls for 10 days, hoping the agitating par-ties will also take part," senior government minister Ramesh

Lekhak said. The elections were originally supposed to be held on one day. They were split into two rounds following threats of a boycott from the Madhesi, a minority group living along the border with India.

The first round was held in mid-May in three of Nepal's seven provinces, with the remaining round scheduled for June 14.

The Madhesi have long been demanding that Nepal's provincial boundaries be redrawn through an amend-ment to the constitution, and wanted the change pushed through before the local elections.

Nepal announces $12bn budget targetting growthKathmandu

AFP

Nepal's government unveiled it's annual budget yesterday

focused on allocating funds to newly elected local units and sustaining its record high growth rate.

The Maoist finance minis-ter Krishna Bahadur Mahara outlined a $12.38 billion budget, giving resources for federal elections, rebuilding of quake-hit houses and infrastructure development.

"The objective of this budget is implementation of the constitution, achievement of high and inclusive growth, maintain economic stability and increase the reach of people to the services of the government," Mahara said in a televised speech.

The country held the first phase of its local elections -- the first in 20 years -- in mid-May, allowing a key pro-vision of Nepal's post-war constitution, which grants financial autonomy to local governments, to finally be implemented.

The five-year mandate of the last local officials expired in 2002 at the height of the country's dec-ade-long civil war and party-affiliated bureaucrats were left to fill the institutional void. There is huge hope that newly elected local officials will under-mine the culture of graft that has flourished in the last 15 years.

"Enough resources will be provided to local units to undertake development works and provide services... I have provided the resources to local units through financial hando-ver," the finance minister said.

12th test

It was the North's 12th ballistic missile test this year — carried out in defiance of UN sanction warnings and US threats of possible military action.

A television broadcasting news report on North Korea firing a short-range ballistic missile, at a railway station in Seoul, yesterday.

Myanmar's Foreign Minister and State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi attending the closing ceremony of the second session of the Union Peace Conference in Naypyidaw, yesterday.

Bangladeshi villagers evacuating to cyclone shelters in coastal villages in the Cox's Bazar district, yesterday, as Cyclone Mora gradually approaches towards the coastline. Bangladesh has evacuated nearly 300,000 people.

14 TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017EUROPE

Macron holds 'tough talks' with PutinVersailles

AFP

France's President Emmanuel Macron and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin yester-day held their first

meeting since the French leader came to office, with differences on Ukraine and Syria in full view.

Macron welcomed Putin to the splendour of the Versailles Palace outside Paris with a per-functory handshake -- after the 39-year-old made a point of out-lasting US President Donald Trump when they clasped hands at the Nato summit last week.

Putin's visit is the latest test of Macron's diplomatic mettle after the G7 talks in Sicily last week and the Nato summit in Brussels where he turned the tables on Trump by refusing to release the American leader's hand for several seconds during the handshake for the cameras.

"It is essential to talk to Rus-sia because there are many international issues that will not be resolved without a tough exchange with the Russians," Macron said in Sicily.

Russia's powerful ambassa-dor to France, Alexander Orlov, said he hoped the meeting could help turn the page on the fraught relationship between Putin and

Macron's predecessor Francois Hollande.

"Many things in the future will depend on the first meeting," Orlov said.

"It is very important that we begin to dissipate the mistrust that has built up in recent years."

As a candidate, Macron had tough words for Russia, accus-ing it of following a "hybrid strategy combining military intimidation and an information war".

Since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2014, Russia has flexed its muscles with a series of war games involving tens of thousands of troops in areas bor-dering Nato Baltic states.

Macron said that he was "not bothered" by leaders who "think in terms of power ratios", citing Putin as an example along with Trump.

But Macron, who became France's youngest president just three weeks ago, said he does not believe in "the diplomacy of pub-lic invective but in bilateral dialogue".

Macron said he would make "not a single concession" to Rus-sia on the long-running conflict in Ukraine as he and his G7 counterparts said they were pre-pared to strengthen sanctions against Moscow.

Government forces have been battling Moscow-backed insurgents in eastern Ukraine for over three years.

Western powers charge Rus-sia with failing to honour its commitments under the Minsk accords framework for ending the hostilities.

France helped spearhead the sanctions, which have seriously dented EU-Russia trade, with a retaliatory Russian embargo on European agricultural products hurting French farmers.

European Union drafts tougher vehicle approval rules

Cyprus 'very close' to reunification deal: UNAthens

Anatolia

The UN envoy to the divided island of Cyprus said yesterday

that his concerns over the island’s reunification talks have reached a peak.

Speaking after a meeting with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias in Athens, Espen Barth Eide said Cyprus is still "very, very close" to an agreement to reunite the island despite a disagreement in talks last week.

"But I want to share that I am worried. I am more wor-ried than I have been at any time during these last three years that the process is in serious trouble," Eide said.

He said Greek Cypriot

President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci see eye-to-eye on at least five of the six remaining issues. "[But] we still have this issue of secu-rity and guarantees".

The eastern Mediterra-nean island was divided into a Turkish Cypriot state in the north and a Greek Cypriot administration in the south after an Enosis (Union)-inspired 1974 military coup was followed by violence against the island’s Turks, and Turkey’s intervention as a guarantor power.

The reunification talks -- brokered by Eide -- were launched in May 2015 to dis-cuss a permanent settlement for the divided Mediterra-nean island.

Montenegro slams Moscow on MP's arrestPodgorica

AFP

Montenegro protested yesterday at the "unjus-tified" detention of a

pro-Nato MP at a Moscow air-port, the latest in a series of diplomatic disputes between the two countries.

The foreign ministry said in a statement it had summoned

the Russian ambassador to hand him an official protest note over the "inappropriate behaviour of Russian authorities during the unjustified detention" of Mio-drag Vukovic.

Vukovic, a lawmaker from Montenegro's ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, said he was detained Sunday night at Mos-cow's Domodedovo airport and deported the next morning with-

out an official explanation.Parliament speaker Ivan

Brajovic said in a separate state-ment he expected an "official explanation and apology for the indecent treatment" of the MP.

Vukovic said that Russian authorities ordered his deten-tion and deportation because he was allegedly on a list of people from Montenegro who are "not welcome in Russia".

Brussels

AFP

The European Union moved yesterday to crack down on emissions cheating after the

Volkswagen "Dieselgate" scan-dal by giving EU executive more powers to monitor testing and fine automakers.

The European Council of 28 member states overcame the initial objections of Germany

and agreed the broad lines to reform the system for approv-ing vehicles in Europe.

The draft now goes for negotiations with the Commis-sion, the EU executive's arm, and the European Parliament where the auto industry holds a strong influence.

"Above all, the objective is building trust and credibility again in European type-approval system," according to,

Malta's economy minister, Chris Cardona, which holds EU's six-month rotating presidency.

The Dieselgate scandal blew open when Volkswagen admit-ted in September 2015 that it installed software devices in 11 million diesel-engine cars worldwide that reduced emis-sions of harmful nitrogen oxides when it detected the vehicle was undergoing tests.

The draft rules call for

reducing the power of national authorities and empowering the Commission to test and inspect vehicles to ensure compliance with emissions standards and respond to any irregularities.

"This will increase the inde-pendence and quality of the EU type-approval system," the council said in a statement.

"The Commission could also impose fines for infringements on manufacturers and

importers of up to 30,000 euros per non-compliant vehicle".

Under the draft rules, every country will be required to check emissions in one in every 50,000 new vehicles based on real driving conditions.

The commission and mem-ber states have come under fire for allowing automakers to jus-tify a long list of exceptions and loopholes when being checked for pollutants.

Rajoy gets support for new spending planMadrid

AFP

Spain's prime minister, at the head of a minority govern-ment, puts his 2017 budget

to a parliamentary vote this week safe in the knowledge that he finally has the support of a majority of lawmakers.

This gives Mariano Rajoy considerable breathing space until 2019, as if he fails to get the necessary agreements for next year's budget -- due to be nego-tiated in the autumn -- the constitution allows him to sim-ply renew the previous spending plan.

Presented in March after a long delay, the budget boosts social spending and moves away from the austerity that marked years of crisis in a bid to win opposition support, but Rajoy has nevertheless struggled to get a majority.

Over the weekend, though, his government won the support of a lawmaker from the Nueva

Canarias party in the Canary Islands -- the last needed to get a majority of 176 lawmakers to pass the budget through in a vote this week.

After the vote, the text is due to be validated mid-June by the Senate, where Rajoy's conserv-ative Popular Party (PP) has a majority, after which it will

finally be adopted eight months later than usual.

Spain went through a diffi-cult political year in 2016 as two inconclusive general elections left the country without a fully-functioning government for 10 months.

But at the end of October, Rajoy, whose PP came first in

both elections but without a majority, took power again thanks to his rival Socialists who abstained in the obligatory par-liamentary vote that sees a candidate through to the premiership.

But he is now ruling at the head of a minority government, a far cry from his first election in 2011 when the PP got an abso-lute majority.

Adding to this, the Socialists have now re-elected their former, ousted chief Pedro Sanchez as their leader, who has promised to make things diffi-cult for the PP.

As such, the prime minister was forced to battle to earn the support of other parties for the budget.

The centre-right Ciudadanos party pledged its support in exchange for some $4.5bn in social spending, while the PNV Basque nationalist party demanded more rail investment and a tax reform in its northern region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) is welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Versailles Palace, near Paris, yesterday.

Macron's party likely to win French elections Paris

Reuters

FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron's party is expected to win the most votes in June's parlia-mentary election, polls showed yesterday, with Macron also scoring well in terms of general popularity.

The Odoxa poll for France Inter radio and L'Express maga-zine said Macron's start-up Republic on the Move (LREM) party would come top with 29 percent of votes in the June leg-islative election, which takes place in two rounds on June 11 and June 18.

The far-right National Front (FN) was seen in second place with 17% of votes, with the con-servative Republicans party in third on 15% . Far-left politician Jean-Luc Melenchon's party was in fourth place with 14%.

A second poll also confirmed that pattern, with Harris Interac-tive/LCP forecasting that Macron's party would get 31 per-cent of votes in the first round of the June vote, with the FN sec-ond on 19 percent and the Republicans on 18 percent.

It is very important that we begin to dissipate the mistrust that has built up in recent years: Russian envoy

It is essential to talk to Russia because there are many international issues that will not be resolved without a tough exchange with the Russians: Macron

Building trust

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (right) and his Portuguese counterpart Antonio Costa ring the bell of the "MS Douro Elegance" ship, in La Fregeneda, yesterday.

Thousands in Madrid seek job securityMadrid

AFP

TENS of thousands of people rallied in Madrid for a "march of dignity" to demand better wages and job security as Spain's economy improves.

Demonstrators from all over the country marched down Madrid's main avenue, the Gran Via, behind a ban-ner reading "bread, work, homes and equality." Dozens of trade unions and leftwing groups joined the protest.

Organisers put the turn-out at 200,000, while the local prefecture put it at only 6,000.

Labour reforms adopted in 2012 by the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy have helped to spur growth and bring unemployment down from 27 percent at the start of 2013 to 18.7 percent in the first quarter of this year.

Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide (right), meets Greek Foreign Minister, Nikos Kotzias in Athens, yesterday.

15TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017 EUROPE

Swiss motorshow

May to maintain strong ties with EULondon

Reuters

British Prime Minister Theresa May said she wanted to maintain a strong partnership with the European

Union over security and trade after German Chancellor Angela

Merkel suggested the continent could no longer completely rely on Britain.

After a bruising set of meet-ings of G7 wealthy nations and Nato last week, Merkel -- who is seeking re-election in Septem-ber -- suggested on Sunday that Europeans had to take fate into their own hands, prompting

concern in Washington and London.

Asked about the comments, May said it was right for the rest of the bloc to look at its future but made it clear that Britain wanted to remain a key partner.

"We are not leaving Europe. We are leaving the European Union," she told a campaign event in London.

"We continue to want a deep

and special partnership with the remaining 27 countries in the European Union and we will continue to be committed to working with others in Europe both in terms of ... a comprehen-sive free trade agreement but also in terms of our security," she said.

May, who called a snap poll for June 8, has seen her lead fall significantly in the wake of the Manchester attack and a U-turn on plans to charge the elderly more for their care.

She reiterated yesterday that her call for voters to give her a strong mandate and warned of

the dangers of a result which gave no party a majority, saying there could be no delay to a June 19 start to Brexit talks.

"Those negotiations will start just 11 days after polling day and there won't be any putting it off. It won't be possible to stall it," she said.

Protesters march to oppose British Prime Minister Theresa May's commitment to hold a free vote on the repeal of the Hunting Act.

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May attends a campaign event in Twickenham, London, yesterday.

We continue to want a deep and special partnership with the remaining 27 countries in the European Union and we will continue to be committed to working with others in Europe both in terms of ... a comprehensive free trade agreement but also in terms of our security: May

Partnership

Manchester

AFP

Britain's MI5 intelligence service has launched an internal probe into

whether vital clues were missed ahead of the Manchester attack, as the city marked yesterday a week since the carnage that claimed 22 lives.

Manchester City Council called a vigil in the centre of the northwest English city at 2131 GMT -- the exact moment that 22-year-old Salman Abedi det-onated his bomb outside a pop concert by teen idol Ariana Grande in one of Europe's big-gest indoor arenas.

The names of the victims, including six children, were read out in front of the city's town hall earlier on Monday in front of hundreds of people at an annual religious ceremony.

A nearby square that has

been the focus of remembrance was packed with floral tributes and heart-shaped balloons, as well as runners' bibs left by par-ticipants in a half-marathon.

"You tried to destroy us but you've brought us closer

together," read one message of defiance.

Investigators meanwhile pushed ahead with their probe of the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group.

Authorities arrested a

23-year-old man in the south-ern coastal town of Shoreham-by-Sea. That brings the total number of people now

detained on UK soil to 14, all of them men, while Abedi's father and brother have been held in Libya.

Berlin

Reuters

Germany's security ties with the United States are "excellent" and common

interests with Britain mean its departure from the European Union should have as little

impact as possible on security cooperation, Germany's interior minister said.

"I can only say trans-Atlan-tic cooperation is, especially in the security domain, of para-mount significance for our country,"

Interior Minister Thomas de

Maiziere said in a speech yesterday.

"I am confident that the issue of security cooperation will not be among the most difficult issues in the Brexit negotiations," he said.

"A lot unites us here."On Sunday, German

Chancellor Angela Merkel shocked many in Washington and London by saying that Europe must take its fate into its own hands, implying that the United States under President Donald Trump and Britain after its Brexit vote were no longer reliable partners.

MI5 begins internal probe on Manchester attack

German minister lauds security ties with US and UK

Police want details on attacker's suitcase

Bosnia jails officers for raid on bank truckSarajevo

Reuters

A BOSNIAN court jailed four members of a special Bosnian Serb police unit for robbing a bank van of 617,000 Bosnian marka ($350,000) using auto-matic rifles and an anti-tank missile launcher, local media reported yesterday.

The heist occurred in Sep-tember 2015 when heavily-armed robbers held up the vehicle belonging to the Bosnian branch of Italian bank Unicredit on a highway in Bosnia's autonomous Serb Republic. One security guard was wounded.

The Banja Luka district court sentenced three sus-pended special police unit members to 11 years in prison each.

"One of them, Vladan Malic, was found guilty of ini-tiating and organising the heist, detektor.ba publication quoted the chairman of the court's council," Olga Pantic, as saying.

"The fourth member was jailed for nine years. Another three policemen who were also involved in the robbery admitted the crime and tes-tif ied against their accomplices," Pantic said.

Finland leader plans to stand for re-electionHelsinki

AFP

FINNISH President Sauli Niin-isto, a fiercely pro-European conservative, announced yes-terday his plans to stand for re-election in January 2018, where he is seen as a favourite.

Niinisto, 68, was elected to a first term in 2012 at a time when Finland -- which joined the eurozone under his tutelage as finance minister from 1996 to 2003 -- was experiencing a severe eco-nomic crisis.

Thanks to an ongoing austerity programme, the Nordic country emerged from its slump in 2015 and is now experiencing a relative upswing.

Niinisto said that he would not stand as a repre-sentative of his National Coalition Party, but as an independent.

He said that he wanted to be elected under Finland's popular petition system, where any citizen can be a candidate if he or she garners 20,000 signatures, without being a member of a political party.

Hamerton zookeeper dead in tiger attackLondon

AFP

A female zookeeper died yesterday after a tiger entered the enclosure

where she was working in southeast England, with the zoo calling it a "freak accident".

A statement from police in the county of Cambridgeshire said they arrived at the scene of the "serious incident" at Hamer-ton Zoo Park at around 11:15am.

"A tiger had entered an enclosure with a keeper. Sadly the female zookeeper died at the scene.

"At no time did the animal escape from the enclosure. The

incident is not believed to be suspicious," the Cambridgeshire Constabulary said on its Face-book page.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page, the Hamerton Zoo Park said the incident "appears to have been a freak accident" and that a "full inves-tigation is currently under way and we hope that more details can be announced as soon as we are able."

"All our thoughts and sym-pathies are with our colleagues' friends and families at this dreadful time," the zoo said.

"No other animals escaped their enclosures and public safety was never a concern".

London

Reuters

British police released a picture of Manchester bomber Salman Abedi

yesterday that showed him wheeling a blue suitcase on the day of the suicide attack last week, asking the public to come forward with information as their investigation continues.

"We continue to track the final movements of Salman

Abedi and are particularly interested in his whereabouts between 18 and 22 May 2017," Detective Chief Superintend-ent Russ Jackson of the North West Counter Terrorism Unit said in a statement.

"We believe Abedi was in possession of this case in the days before the attack at Man-chester Arena on Monday 22 May. I want to stress that this is a different item than the one he used in the attack," he said.

Flowers placed in tribute to the victims of the May 22 terror attack at the Manchester Arena, in St Ann's Square, yesterday.

Scale models of various types of cars are offered at the Swiss Classic Car vintage automobile fair in Luzern, Switzerland, yesterday.

16 TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017EUROPE

Royals attend seminar

Poland minister misrepresents dispute: EUBrussels

Reuters

THE European Commission, the EU's executive,yesterday accused Polish Foreign Min-ister Witold Waszczykowski of not understanding its role as a dispute over government pressure on Poland's judiciary and state media intensified.

The eurosceptic, nation-alist-minded government in Warsaw has been accused by critics at home, and by some other EU states, of infringing democratic rules.

Waszczykowski has locked horns on multiple occasions with the Commis-sion's deputy head, Frans Timmermans, who says the Polish government's moves to subdue the judiciary and state media violate EU values and laws.

Waszczykowski was quoted as saying over the weekend that Timmermans was waging a "personal cru-sade" against Poland.

But on Monday, in unu-sually direct remarks, Commission spokesman Mar-garitis Schinas said it regretted "that a government minister does not understand the Commission's role, struc-ture and competences".

"The Commission is the guardian of the treaties, of common interests of the 28 member states, and of the rule of law."

Timmermans earlier this month received broad back-ing from other EU states to pursue his efforts with Poland, where the govern-ment of the Law and Justice party says it has a strong mandate to carry out changes.

Plaintiffs drop Brexit reversibility caseDublin

Reuters

Campaigners seeking a ruling on whether Britain's departure from the European Union can be

reversed have dropped the case they brought before the Irish High Court, one of the plaintiffs said yesterday.

The campaigners, who raised $90,000 in the space of 48 hours last December to fund their challenge, brought the case in Ireland in the hope that it would be referred to the Euro-pean Court of Justice (ECJ) for a

definitive ruling.They cited the Irish state's

opposition, the length of time the case would have taken and the potential scale of costs involved as the reasons for pressing on with their challenge.

"With regret, we have agreed between us and with Ireland that the litigation should be discon-tinued," British tax specialist Jolyon Maugham, the lawyer behind the challenge, said in a statement on his website.

Maugham said last month that he expected the case could be referred to Luxembourg by June or July but yesterday said it was unlikely to be heard in

front of the Irish High Court until the autumn, and even then would require a further hearing in the Supreme Court before a referral could be achieved.

A further likely four to eight month wait for the ECJ to hear the challenge meant a decision may not be made much in advance of October 2018 when both the EU and Britain say they hope to have concluded exit negotiations, Maugham said.

He said the costs would not be insignificant and that of the money raised through a a crowdfunding website, a signif-icant portion had already gone towards legal fees. Any

remaining funds will be given to other Brexit-related litigation or to charity.

"Each of the European Coun-cil, Commission and Parliament has said the United Kingdom could withdraw the Article 50 notice (of the EU's Lisbon Treaty) with agreement. There is no doubt this is so," Maugham said.

"Discontinuing leaves open the possibility that the United Kingdom could withdraw the Article 50 notice unilaterally. This may be possible - legal opinions on the question differ - but discontinuing means we cannot know by this route whether it can."

Former Greece prime minister deadAthens

AFP

Former Greek Prime Minis-ter Constantine Mitsotakis, an early proponent of aus-

terity cuts that Greece eventually had to adopt during the eco-nomic crisis, died yesterday aged 98, his family said.

A patriarch of one of Greece's most influential polit-ical families, Mitsotakis quit politics in 2004, aged 85, after

serving as the country's longest-serving parliamentarian.

"He died at 0100 (2200 GMT) surrounded by the people whom he loved and who loved him," a family statement said. It did not indicate the cause of death.

The conservative politician was prime minister from 1990 to 1993 and served without interruption as an MP from 1946 on the ticket of several different parties, except for a ten-year break during and immediately

after Greece's 1967-1974 mili-tary junta.

He was head of the conserv-ative New Democracy party from 1984 to 1993 -- which is today run by his son Kyriakos -- and had epic battles with Andreas Papandreou, head of the socialist party Pasok.

One of Greece's few openly pro-US politicians at the time, Mitsotakis cultivated close ties with the family of former pres-ident George H.W. Bush and

frequently hosted them at his home in Crete.

This did not prevent him from also forging close rela-tions with Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic and sup-porting him during the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

On the domestic front, Mit-sotakis championed a tight budget and privatisations that sparked major union strikes and protests.

Spain arrests 14 over drug traffickingMadrid

Reuters

SPANISH police raided 25 homes, warehouses and gymnasiums and arrested 14 people accused of belonging to a network manufacturing and trafficking performance-enhancing drugs, the interior ministry said yesterday.

"The haul of 3 million doses of 120 different sub-stances and active and inert drug-making ingredients and equipment, was one of the largest in Europe".

The police operation took place in Alicante, Valencia, Val-ladolid and Malaga and began in October 2016 after police detected a wholesale distribu-tion network of manufactured drugs and ingredients.

"During the raids, large amounts of base ingredients and drug-making equipment were uncovered, suggesting at least part of the network was responsible for the man-ufacturing of home-made drugs," the ministry said.

British Airways flight disruption continuesLondon

AFP

Passengers faced a third day of disruption at Heathrow yesterday as the British

Airways cancelled short-haul flights after a global computer crash that unions blamed on the outsourcing of IT services to India.

The embattled airline said it was cancelling 13 short-haul flights from Heathrow Airport, Europe's busiest, but was aim-ing to operate a full long-haul schedule from the hub and was operating a full service from Gat-wick Airport.

Tens of thousands of passen-gers were left stranded over a busy holiday weekend in Britain after BA scrapped hundreds of flights worldwide.

The knock-on effects could continue for several days.

The airline urged passengers on Monday to check their flight status online before travelling to the airport in a bid to avoid scenes seen over the weekend when people camped out at Hea-throw overnight.

BA chief executive Alex Cruz

told the BBC he would not resign over the disruption and said it had nothing to do with cutting costs.

He said it had been caused by a power surge that had "only lasted a few minutes" but the problem was that the back-up system had then not worked properly.

The GMB union, however,

said the disruption "could have all been avoided" if BA had not cut hundreds of IT jobs in Brit-ain and transferred the work to India. The airline said it was making "good progress" on restoring normal service.

"As our IT systems move closer to full operational capac-ity, we will again run a full schedule at Gatwick on Monday

and intend to operate a full long-haul schedule and a high proportion of our short-haul programme at Heathrow," a spokeswoman said.

"We apologise again to cus-tomers for the frustration and inconvenience they are experi-encing and thank them for their continued patience," she said.

Cruz said that 75,000 pas-

sengers had been affected."We know that there have

been holidays interrupted and personal events that have been interrupted and people waiting in queues for a really long time".

"We absolutely profusely apologise for that and we are absolutely committed to provide and abide by the compensation rules that are currently in place."

We have agreed between us and with Ireland that the litigation should be discontinued.Discontinuing leaves open the possibility that the UK could withdraw the Article 50 notice unilaterally. This may be possible but discontinuing means we cannot know by this route whether it can: Lawyer

Lisbon Treaty

FROM LEFT: Denmark's Minister of Foreign Affairs Anders Samuelsen; Sweden's Minister for Enterprise and Innovation Mikael Damberg; Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Crown Princess Mary of Denmark and Prince Daniel of Sweden attending the seminar "Liveable Scandinavia" in Stockholm, Sweden, yesterday.

A display warning passengers to "Expect Disruption" to British Airways flights, is pictured inside Terminal 5 of London's Heathrow Airport, yesterday. RIGHT: Passengers queue inside Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 to check in for their flights.

Chisinau

Reuters

A minister in Moldova's pro-European govern-ment and two of his

deputies resigned yesterday, after their party withdrew from the ruling coalition over the arrest of its deputy chair-man on corruption charges.

While the now two-party coalition retains a de facto majority in the 101-seat par-liament, the Liberal Party's exit threatens more instabil-ity in the ex-Soviet nation, which has seen three govern-ments fall since 2015.

On Friday, the Liberals quit the coalition in protest at the arrest of Chisinau mayor and Liberal deputy chairman, Dorin Chirtoaca, for alleged abuse of office linked to the

distribution of parking con-tracts in the capital.

Yesterday's resignation by Environment Minister Valeriu Munteanu is expected to be followed by the departure from the cabinet of Education Minister Corina Fusu and Gheorghe Brega, a deputy prime minister.

Chirtoaca's defenders say his arrest is politically moti-vated rather than a result of the authorities' desire to crack down on endemic graft.

"This isn't a fight with cor-ruption, but with the Liberal Party," Liberal Party leader Mihai Ghimpu said.

Moldova ranks 123 out of 176 countries on Transpar-ency Internat ional ' s Corruption Perceptions Index and the disappearance of $1bn from the banking sys-tem nearly bankrupted the country, Europe's poorest, in 2015.

Ghimpu said Moscow-backed President Igor Dodon was responsible for orches-trating a campaign against the Liberals, who favour unifica-tion with European Union member Romania.

"I think Dodon will sign their (the ministers') resigna-tion decrees with pleasure".

Dodon won the presiden-tial race in late 2016, reflecting a loss of trust in pro-European leaders in the wake of the billion-dollar banking scandal.

Moldova official's arrest sparks political fightYesterday's resignation by Environment Minister Valeriu Munteanu is expected to be followed by the departure from the cabinet of Education Minister Corina Fusu and Gheorghe Brega, a deputy prime minister.

17TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017 AMERICAS

World War II veteran and Pearl Harbor survivor Armando "Chick" Galella (left) tosses a floral wreath following an annual Memorial Day commemoration ceremony to honour the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the USt Armed Forces, at the Intrepid museum in New York, US, yesterday.

Memorial Day

Washington

AFP

President Donald Trump yesterday condemned as "unacceptable" the stab-

bing deaths of two men who defended two young women being targeted by a suspected white supremacist on a train in Oregon.

"The violent attacks in Port-land on Friday are unacceptable. The victims were standing up to hate and intolerance. Our prayers are w/ them," Trump said on Twitter.

Rick John Best, 53, an army veteran, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, a recent col-lege graduate, died after having

their throats cut on the crowded train. They had come to the defense of two teenage girls, one of them a Muslim wearing a headscarf and the other an African-American.

A third man, 21-year-old Micah David-Cole Fletcher, was wounded and hospitalized.

The attacker, identified as 35-year-old Jeremy Joseph Christian, had been hurling abuse at the teenagers when the men intervened.

The Portland Mercury news-paper said Christian -- who has been charged on two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder -- was a known white supremacist and right-wing extremist.

Trump's message, sent just before he attended a Memorial Day ceremony at the Arlington military cemetery near Wash-ington, came amid rising pressure on the president to con-demn the slayings of the two men, dubbed "heroes" by local media and law enforcement in Portland.

Dan Rather, the former TV news anchor, said on Facebook that the men "were brave Amer-icans who died at the hands of someone who, when all the facts are collected, we may have every right to call a terrorist."

"Their names were Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche and Ricky John Best. One was a recent college graduate. The

other was an army veteran and father of four. I wish we would hear you say these names, or even just tweet them," Rather wrote Sunday in an open letter to the president, which was shared more than 150,000 times.

"This story may not neatly fit into a narrative you pushed on the campaign trail and that has followed you into the White House," Rather said in his post. "They were not killed by an undocumented immigrant or a 'radical Islamic terrorist.'

"They were killed in an act of civic love, facing down a man allegedly spewing hate speech directed at two teenage girls, one of whom was wearing a

hijab," wrote Rather. The Southern Poverty Law

Center, which tracks hate crimes, has noted a sharp rise in the number of both anti-Muslim groups and bias incidents in the past year.

Hillary Clinton, the Demo-cratic candidate who lost to Trump in last year's election, on Sunday condemned the Portland train attack on her own Twitter account. "Heartbreaking. No one should have to endure this rac-ist abuse. No one should have to give their life to stop it."

One of the young women who was targeted in the verbal assault by Christian thanked the two men who lost their lives helping her.

Washington

AFP

A rattled White House braced yesterday for a fresh wave of scru-t i n y i n t h e e v e r - w i d e n i n g

investigation into Russian elec-tion meddling, as President Donald Trump rallied behind his embattled son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner.

The US leader visited Arling-ton National Cemetery to mark Memorial Day, but had to quickly pivot his attention to the Russia scandal after returning to Wash-ington late Saturday from his first international trip since taking office.

The White House has been shaken by an explosive Wash-ington Post report on the eve of his return that said Kushner had met with the Russian

ambassador prior to Trump's inauguration and proposed a secret communications link to the Kremlin.

The talks between Kushner and the Russians, if confirmed, would raise new questions about the Trump team's relationship with Moscow, which US

intelligence agencies say tried to sway the November election in the property tycoon's favor.

Trump has not directly addressed the allegations of the secret line to Moscow, but took to Twitter after his return to Washington to dismiss White House leaks as "fabricated lies" and "fake news."

He declared his "total confi-dence" in Kushner, who boasts an enormous portfolio of domes-t ic and international responsibilities, underscoring his importance as Trump's chief adviser despite having no expe-rience in politics before the 2016 White House race.

"Jared is doing a great job for the country," Trump said in a statement provided late Sunday to the New York Times.

"I have total confidence in him. He is respected by virtually everyone and is working on

programs that will save our country billions of dollars. In addition to that, and perhaps more importantly, he is a very good person."

According to US media, the secret line was never established.

Nevertheless, some critics have called for Kushner's secu-rity clearance to be revoked, while others say he should tem-porarily step aside while his ties to Moscow are being reviewed.

Senior administration offi-cials have brushed off concerns of a back-channel link. National Security Advisor H R McMaster said that generally speaking, "we have back-channel communi-cation with a number of countries... I would not be con-cerned about it."

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly agreed.

"It's both normal in my

opinion and acceptable," he told ABC News on Sunday.

"Any way that you can com-municate with people, particularly organizations that are maybe not particularly friendly to us, is a good thing," he said.

Washington is waiting with bated breath for Senate testi-mony by former FBI director James Comey, who was fired by Trump as he oversaw an inves-tigation into possible collusion between the Republican's cam-paign and Moscow.

The testimony is expected in the coming days, though a time has not been set.

US media have reported that Trump had pressed Comey in meetings and phone calls to pull back on the investigation.

The White House has denied that Trump pressured Comey in any way, though the

FBI director is believed to have written detailed memos on his discussions with the president that indicate the opposite.

Trump spent Sunday meet-ing with attorneys at the White House, presumably to set strat-egy for dealing with the Russia investigation that has largely sidetracked his legislative agenda.

US media said the White House is creating a new rapid-fire communications unit to respond to the controversy, led by Kushner, senior presidential adviser Steve Bannon and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

The wider investigation into Russia's alleged election med-dling is being led by Robert Mueller, a respected former FBI director who was given broad powers to pursue the case as a special counsel.

Kushner probe: White House braces for more scrutinyComey testimony

President Donald Trump rallied behind his embattled son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner.

Washington waiting with bated breath for Senate testimony by former FBI director James Comey.

Immigration opponents in Texas disrupt House sessionAustin

AP

Hundreds of protesters opposing Texas’ tough new anti-“sanctuary

cities” law launched a rau-cous protest from the public gallery in the Texas House yesterday, briefly halting work during the final, largely ceremonial day of the legis-lative session.

Demonstrators wearing red T-shirts reading “Lucha,” or “Fight,” quietly filled hun-dreds of gallery seats as proceedings began. After about 40 minutes, they began to cheer, drowning out the lawmakers below.

Protesters also blew whistles and chanted: “Here to stay!” and “Hey, hey, ho, ho, SB4 has got to go,” refer-ring to the bill that Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law this month.

Some waved banners reading: “See you in court!” Texas’ new law is reminiscent of a 2010 Arizona “show your papers” measure that allowed police to inquire about a per-son’s immigration status during routine interactions such as traffic stops. It was eventually struck down in court.

Under SB4, Texas police chiefs and sheriffs are required — under the threat of jail and removal from office — to com-ply with federal requests to hold criminal suspects for pos-sible deportation.

Police officers also have the option to ask the immi-gration status of anyone they stop.

Thousands of motorcyclists pay tribute to war-dead and veteransWashington

AFP

Tens of thousands of motor-cyclists rumbled through the heart of Washington in

an annual "Rolling Thunder" tribute to US military veterans and war dead.

The cyclists came from across the country, many car-rying or wearing the stars-and-stripes of the Amer-ican flag, as they rolled noisily around the National Mall, the federal capital's grand central esplanade, under the eyes of thousands of spectators.

The Rolling Thunder move-ment was founded in 1988 by a

Vietnam War veteran named Ray Manzo who wanted to draw the attention of both the admin-istration and the broader public to American soldiers missing in Vietnam since that war ended in 1975.

The first edition of the parade drew some 3,000 to 5,000 bik-ers, many of them active military personnel or veterans. But the numbers soared in following years. Organizers estimate that as many as 900,000 people -- cyclists and spectators -- now take part each year.

While attention to Vietnam-era troops still missing in action (MIAs) has waned over the years -- some 1,600 have never been

accounted for -- veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Vietnam, say they often feel isolated and forgotten once they return to civilian life.

And many face the deep frus-trations of dealing with a health-care and social-support system for veterans that has often been criticized as inefficient and sometimes inadequate.

But Rolling Thunder, they say, gives them a sense of soli-darity and a contact with the public that boosts their morale.

"It's very heartwarming to see people supporting military and former military," said Bob Vaillancourt, 50, a veteran who rode his Harley-Davidson.

Tiger Woods arrested in Florida on drug charge Florida

AP

Tiger Woods was arrested early yesterday on a DUI charge in Jupiter, Florida,

and spent nearly four hours in a county jail before he was released.

Woods, the 14-time major champion who ranks second with his 79 career victories on the PGA Tour, has not played for four months. He is out for the rest of the season while he recovers from his fourth back surgery.

Woods was arrested on sus-picion of DUI about 3 a.m. Monday in a suburban area and taken to the Palm Beach County jail, Jupiter Police spokeswoman Kristin Rightler said. He was arrested on Military Trail, south

of Indian Creek Parkway.Jail records show that

41-year-old golf great was booked into Palm Beach County jail at 7:18 a.m. and released on his own recognizance at 10:50 a.m. The jail released a book-ing photo of Woods in a white T-shirt. Rightler said she did not have additional details about the circumstances leading to Woods’ arrest, nor did she have any information about whether the arrest involved drugs or alcohol. She said an arrest report may be available Tuesday.

His agent at Excel Sports, Mark Steinberg, did not imme-diately respond to a voicemail from The Associated Press. PGA Tour spokesman Ty Votaw said the tour would have no comment.

Trump condemns 'unacceptable' fatal Oregon stabbings

Motorcyclists participate in Rolling Thunder, the annual ride around Washington Mall to raise awareness for prisoners of war and soldiers still missing in action in Washington.

18 TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017AMERICAS

Ottawa

Reuters

The newly-elected head of Canada's main opposition party yes-terday hinted at how he will try to defeat

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, branding his rival as an elitist who is out of touch with ordi-nary people.

Andrew Scheer, 38, who unexpectedly eked out a victory on Saturday to lead the right-leaning Conservatives, admitted "we have a lot of work to do". His party trails Trudeau's Liberals by a wide margin ahead of an Octo-ber 2019 election.

"We are not the party of the privileged and the elites," Scheer, a former speaker of the House of Commons, told cheering Con-servative legislators in Ottawa.

"The Liberals can take their cues from the cocktail circuit. We will take ours from the minivans,

the soccer fields, the Legion halls and the grocery stores."

Like Trudeau, Scheer has a sunny public persona and sev-eral young children. His origins are much more humble, though - he grew up as the son of a newspaper librarian, while Tru-deau's father was former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Political analysts say Scheer

has little chance of winning in 2019 unless he can prove the Conservatives would do a better job on the economy, which sta-tistics show is recovering after a long slump caused by low crude prices.

Scheer wants to eliminate Canada's large budget deficit over two years and promises to scrap Trudeau's plans for a

national price on carbon to help fight climate change.

Scheer, a social conservative, won his party's leadership with the support of members who want to reopen the debate on abortion and same-sex marriage, both of which are legal.

Mainstream political parties in Canada tend to steer clear of such issues for fear of losing

votes, so Scheer will have to find a way to keep social conserva-tives on his side.

"Staying united is the only way we will defeat Justin Tru-deau in 2019," he said.

Scheer stresses he has no plans to revisit either abortion or same-sex marriage but says legislators will be allowed to debate what they want.

Canada's Scheer calls Trudeau anout-of-touch elitist

Washington

AP

To the fans watching on ESPN, Nihar Janga’s win last year in the Scripps

National Spelling Bee was a shock: He was only 11 years old, a fifth-grader appearing in the bee for the first time, competing against 8th-graders with deep voices and facial hair.

To the tightknit community of spellers and ex-spellers who track performances leading up to the bee, Nihar was something else: a seasoned competitor with an impressive resume and a threat to win it all.

As the bee has become increasingly difficult, spellers are less likely to come out of nowhere and hoist the trophy. There’s more information available about kids in the bee, and champion spellers have increasingly fit a familiar profile. For them, the bee is an all-consuming, year-round pursuit.

“There’s definitely an estab-lished set of favorites, and as you have more well-known spelling bees to compete in, you have more barometers of how well people are going to do,” said Mitchell Robson, 15, who finished 7th in last year’s bee. “There’s usually one or two people you see coming out of nowhere every

year, but it’s definitely very dif-ficult to have more than that. ... Last year, Nihar Janga definitely did not come of nowhere.”

Nihar was considered a dan-gerous speller because, the previous summer, he had fin-ished second in the North South Foundation spelling bee. The nonprofit foundation hosts national competitions for Indian-Americans in a variety of academic fields. The last 10 National Spelling Bee winners have participated in the founda-tion’s spelling bee, and 17 of the past 21 champions have been Indian-American. Also, three of the nine kids who’ve won the

South Asian Spelling Bee have gone on to win the Scripps bee.

The last dark horse to win was Ansun Sujoe, a co-champion in 2014, the first of three straight years during which the bee ended in a tie. His results in the North South Foundation weren’t impressive, and he didn’t make it past the preliminary rounds in his prior National Spelling Bee appearance.

Two years ago, Vanya Shiv-ashankar and Gokul Venkatachalam easily withstood the pressure of being labeled co-favorites and shared the title. And last year, Nihar was co-champion with Jairam Hathwar,

a polished speller whose older brother shared the title with Ansun in 2014.

Things were different a gen-eration ago, before the internet and before the creation of the North South Foundation and South Asian bees. Lekshmi Nair, who participated in the bee from 1988-1990, said she showed up knowing next to nothing about her fellow spellers.

“There wasn’t this pipeline or anything like that. Really, it was anyone’s guess what could happen,” said Nair, whose 13-year-old daughter, Mira Dedhia, is making her second appearance in the bee this year.

Newly elected Conservative leader Andrew Scheer speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, yesterday.

Trudeau leads

Conservatives trail Trudeau's Liberals by a wide margin ahead of the keenly awaited October 2019 election.

Like Trudeau, Scheer has a sunny public persona and several young children.

National Spelling Bee becoming easier to predict

Dozens of new drug theft cases probedWashington

AP

Federal authorities are investigating dozens of new cases of possible

opioid and other drug theft by employees at Veterans Affairs hospitals, a sign the problem isn’t going away as more pre-scriptions disappear.

Data obtained by The Associated Press show 36 criminal investigations opened by the VA inspector general’s office from Oct. 1 through May 19.

It brings the total number of open criminal cases to 108 involving theft or unauthor-ized drug use. Most of those probes typically lead to crim-inal charges.

The numbers are an increase from a similar period in the previous year.

The VA has pledged “zero tolerance” in drug thefts fol-lowing an AP story in February about a sharp rise in reported cases of stolen or missing drugs at the VA since 2009.

Doctors, nurses or phar-macy staff in the VA’s network of more than 160 medical cent-ers and 1,000 clinics are suspected of siphoning away controlled substances for their own use or street sale — some-times to the harm of patients — or drugs simply vanished without explanation.

Drug thefts are a growing problem at private hospitals as well as the government-run VA as the illegal use of opioids has increased in the United States.

But separate data from the Drug Enforcement Administration obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act show the rate of reported missing drugs at VA health facilities was more than double that of the pri-vate sector.

Maduro blames opposition for retired officer's death

Brasilia

Reuters

Scandal-plagued Brazilian President Michel Temer named a new justice min-

ister, placing a respected legal figure in the position as the leader defends himself against corruption allegations.

The presidential palace gave no reason for naming Torquato Jardim as his new jus-tice minister in a short written statement.

Since March, Jardim was the nation's transparency min-ister, a portfolio created by Temer. Before that, he had served as a justice on Brazil's top electoral court.

Jardim replacea Osmar Ser-raglio, a lawmaker from Temer's own party, who had been in that post for just three months. A source close to Temer told Reu-ters that Serraglio will soon be announced as the new transpar-ency minister.

The Justice Ministry over-sees Brazil's federal police, who along with federal prosecutors are leading massive corruption probes, including the "Car Wash" political graft investiga-tion now looking at Temer.

Carlos Sobral, head of the national association of federal police inspectors, said the abrupt change in ministers was worrying.

"We were surprised with

the news of the change," he said in an emailed statement. "Any changes in the Justice Ministry command create uncertainty and worry about possible inter-ference in the work done by federal police."

Sobral called on Congress to approve a measure pending before the body that would grant autonomy to federal police.

Temer's change in minis-ters came as thousands of protesters gathered on the golden sands of Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro to demand the president's resig-nation and that direct elections be called.

Several of Brazil's most famous actors and musicians led the rally, which despite the star appeal drew a smaller crowd than the 50,000 dem-onstrators organizers expected. Police said they would not divulge an estimate on the number of people present.

Temer has refused to resign and denies any wrongdoing.

Recent polls show that 85 percent asked want a new elec-tion. But it is unlikely to happen as that would require a consti-tutional amendment be passed through Congress, where scores of politicians are under inves-tigation for graft.

If Temer falls from office, the constitition mandates that Congress appoint a new president.

Caracas

AFP

Venezuelan President Nico-las Maduro blamed opposition demonstrators

for the killing of a retired mili-tary officer and called it a hate crime.

The slain 34-year-old retired National Guard lieutenant, who has yet to be identified, was beaten and shot to death by attackers Saturday night in the town of Cabudare in the west-ern state of Lara, prosecutors said.

They did not link the man's death to the wave of sometimes violent anti-government pro-tests that have raged for 58 straight days, with a death toll that now stands at 59.

"It is a hate crime," Maduro said on his weekly program on state-run VTV.

"He was attacked by a group of criminals, killers, violent dem-onstrators who beat him and then finished him off. Is this political opposition? It is crimi-nal terrorism," the president said.

The nationwide demonstra-tions kicked off in late March, with opposition leaders seeking the removal of Venezuela's left-ist president, whose already-low popularity has cratered amid severe shortages of food and medicines, among other eco-nomic woes.

The government also announced the death of a 20-year-old man injured in the abdomen during a protest Sat-urday in the city of Lecheria in the eastern state of Anzoategui.

He belonged to a party led by a jailed opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez.

News reports said the slain officer was taking photos dur-ing a memorial ceremony for someone who died during the protest wave. People interpreted this as spying and began attack-ing him.

Maduro said opposition leaders were complicit in the attack because they did not con-demn it.

But opposition leaders on Saturday did in fact come out against the attack.

Freddy Guevara, deputy speaker of the National Assem-bly, the only government body

in Venezuela that is controlled by the opposition, called it a lynching.

"Pain must not turn us into that which we are fighting," Gue-vara wrote on Twitter.

The opposition said it would step up street rallies aimed at denouncing Maduro's plans to rewrite the constitution with a constituent assembly that side-steps opposition parties.

This body will include members from social sectors such as farmers and workers that are seen as loyal to the president.

The opposition says the con-stituent assembly is a ploy by Maduro to avoid holding early

elections as demanded by the opposition and cling to power.

Meanwhile, the president of Venezuela's opposition-run Congress yesterday accused Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs of "aiding and abetting the country's dictato-rial regime" following a report that it had bought $2.8bn in bonds from the cash-strapped country.

The Wall Street Journal on Sunday said Goldman paid 31 cents on the dollar for bonds issued by state oil company PDVSA that mature in 2022, or around $865m, citing five peo-ple familiar with the transaction.

Scandal-hit Brazilian President picks new justice minister

Opposition activists clash with the riot police during a demonstration against President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas, yesterday.

19TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017 HOME

20 TUESDAY 30 MAY 2017HOME

FAJRSHOROOK

03.16 am

04.44 am

ZUHRASR

11.31 am

02.56 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

06.22 pm

07.52 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 07:45 - 21:00 LOW TIDE 03:45 - 13:15

Strong wind expected at most areas

with poor visibility. Hot daytime with

slight dust to blowing dust at plac-

es daytime.

WEATHER TODAY

Minimum Maximum

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

34oC 44oC

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

LATEST NEWSUPDATE

Doha Festival City holds story-telling eventThe Peninsula

Doha Festival City, the larg-est entertainment, retail and hospitality destination in Qatar, managed and operated by Al-Futtaim

organised its first in-mall activity dur-ing Ramadan, a two-hour traditional story-telling event.

For three days, the children will listen to beautiful tales that was shared by the researcher and the traditional story-teller Um Khalaf at Doha Festi-val City. Families sat together under the magical Centre Court to enjoy and learn more about the month of Ramadan.

Additional fun activities lined up during the next few weeks are:

Decorating Ramadan CookiesBudding bakers will love this event

— children will get to play the expert with their very own chef’s hat and apron, as they decorate cookies in the shape of Ommi Dolls and Camels. They can take their foodie creations home, as long as they don’t eat them first. The event will be on Thursday and Satur-day. The registration timing for the event is 20:30 and the event timing is 21:00 till midnight.

Children between 4 and 12 years old are welcome with free of charge at the Centre Court- Ground floor.

Garangao CelebrationDoha Festival City is honouring the

biggest traditional celebration for chil-dren this Ramadan with a fun-packed Garangao event. First, kids will be given their own mall maps that will give them clues to find and collect candy and nuts all over Doha Festival

City. Get the map and find them quick! They can then also take part in the

Drum Making Workshop, where eve-ryone will have the chance to design and build their own drum, made out of recycled tin containers.

The event will be held on June 9 and the rgistration time is 20:30 and the event timing is 21:00 till midnight. Children between 4 and 12 years old are welcome free of charge and the event will beheld at the Centre Court – Ground Floor.

The Joy of Craft MakingChildren will have the chance to

try their hands at arts and crafts this Ramadan. Whether it’s Prayer Mat Making, Money Box Making, Ommi Doll Colouring and Ramadan Cards, there are four different workshops to take part on June 15 and June 17. The registration timing is at 20:30 and the event timing is 21:00 till midnight at the Centre Court- Ground Floor.

Henna PaintingFor the last five days of Ramadan,

and in celebration of Eid Al Fitr, there will be professional henna artists designing beautiful henna art on guests.

Children will also have the oppor-tunity to handcraft their own henna designs on printed paper.

Being the national bird and sym-bol of culture in the Middle East, guests will also have the chance to have their photo taken with a Falcon at Doha Fes-tival City.

The event will be held on June 22 and June 25 at Centre Court, Monoprix Hypermarket, Entertainment Node & Diamond Node, Ground Floor.

The registration timing is at 20:30 and the event timing is 21:00 till mid-night and the entry is free for children over 3 years old.

Children enjoying the traditional story-telling by Um Khalaf at Doha Festival City.