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Volume 23 | Number 7568 | 2 RiyalsMonday 25 June 2018 | 11 Shawwal I 1439 www.thepeninsula.qa

URUGUAY VS RUSSIA

5:00PM

SAUDI ARABIA VS EGYPT

5:00PM

SPAIN VS MOROCCO

9:00PM

IRAN VS PORTUGAL

9:00PM

TODAY’S MATCHES

YESTERDAY'S RESULTS

ENGLAND 6 VS PANAMA 1

JAPAN 2 VS SENEGAL 2

POLAND 0 VS COLOMBIA 3

Institute of Criminal Studies, Cybercrime Prosecution open

DOHA: Under the auspices of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani inaugurated yesterday the Institute of Criminal Studies; Cybercrime Prosecution; Money Laundering and Economic Crimes Prosecution; and State Security and Counter-terrorism Prosecution, at the headquarters of Qatar Public Prosecution.

Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani attended the inauguration cer-emony along with a number of Their Excellencies Ministers, heads of diplomatic missions accredited to the State of Qatar and senior officials. Attorney-General H E Dr Ali bin Fetais Al Marri delivered a welcoming speech.

“The opening of the Institute of Criminal Studies, Cybercrime Prosecution, Money Laundering and Economic Crimes Prose-cution, State Security and Coun-terterrorism Prosecution, which is part of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, reflects the support of H H the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and his keenness on the independence of the judi-ciary and separate the authorities,” the Attorney-General said.

“The Institute of Criminal Studies is a specialized institute in the study of forensic science, which prepares the staff of the Public Prosecution through training courses and continuous workshops throughout the year,” he said while talking to reporters on the sidelines of the inauguration.

He also pointed out that the institute will include a statistical centre that will provide accurate statistics on the crimes and their

number, their reasons and sci-entific solutions.

“Despite that Qatar is one of the safest countries in the world in terms of crime rate, it is expected that this institute will make a quantum leap in reducing the crime rate in the country. Qatari doctors and professors in collaboration with expertise from different countries will work at the institute,” Al Marri said.

He said that the prosecution of cybercrime has gained impor-tance and need after the hacking of the Qatar News Agency, stressing that facing such crimes has become necessary.

“We are interested in pre-venting this type of crime because of the spread of the Internet and we are cooperating in this regard with major countries preceded us in technology,” adding that this prosecution will produce specialists in combating crimes, whether elec-

tronic or economic or money laun-dering and terrorism.

He said that the issues of money laundering and economic crimes have become complex and linked in one way or other with terrorism, stressing the impor-tance of having local expertise and specialized agencies to meet the challenges of the future especially as the issues of money laundering and economic and electronic crimes are developing terribly.

Al Marri also appreciated the great cooperation between the Public Prosecution, the Ministry of the Interior and the Central Bank in relation to cybercrime, money laundering and economic crimes, motioning that Qatar has many agreements with most countries of the world and these countries are obliged to provide the necessary information and support in such cases.

In response to a question

about the hacking of the BeIN Sports channels, Al Marri said that no matter how long or short time it takes, BeIN Sports will regain all its rights that have been hacked in unacceptable and illegal ways and punishable by law. He said that the file of the case of “ BeIN Sports” is still open against those who have hacked it.

“Others should know that the world is not a jungle but is gov-erned by strict laws, especially what related to intellectual property rights issues, which are governed by a strict laws.”

About the Compensation Claims Committee, he clarified that the committee was under the presidency of the Public Prose-cution until it completed its first stage related to gathering infor-mation and preparing the files.

→CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

SIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

Advisory Council panel discusses draft law on non-Qataris’ ownership of properties

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Advisory Coun-cil’s Legal and Legislative Affairs Committee held yesterday a meeting within the 46th regular session of the Council under the chair-manship of its rapporteur Nasser bin Rashid Saria Al Kaabi.

During the meeting, the committee completed the dis-cussion on a draft law on the regulation of non-Qataris’ ownership of properties and benefiting from them. The Committee decided to submit its recommendations thereon to the Advisory Council.

HMC’s life support program gets international awardTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Hamad Medical Corpo-ration (HMC) has become the first healthcare organization in the Middle East, Western Asia, and Africa region to receive the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization’s (ELSO) Award for Excellence in Life Support (Gold Level) for its extracor-poreal life support program.

Also called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), the therapy is used as a last resort support system for the lungs or heart and has helped save the lives of around 100 infants, children, and adults in Qatar since first being intro-duced at HMC in 2014.

The Ministry of Public Health commissioned the program in

2013 in response to the MERS-CoV outbreak in the region. The MERS-CoV infection is associated with a high mortality rate due to the rapid onset of severe respi-ratory and renal failure.

Minister of Public Health, H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, congratulated HMC’s ECMO team on the award, noting that the tech-nology is an example of Qatar’s commitment to providing patients with the world’s best care.

“In early 2013, the Ministry facilitated an ECMO partnership between HMC and UK-based Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS as part of our national MERS-CoV preparedness and response plan, and specifically the need to treat patients with severe respiratory illness.

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England storm into last 16 with 6-1 rout of PanamaEngland’s Harry Kane completes his hat-trick by scoring on a penalty against Panama during their World Cup match in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, yesterday. England won the match by 6-1.

→STORY ON PAGE 17

Qatar 11 points up in Most Reputable Countries’ listDOHA: Gaining 11 points in comparison with 2016 ranking, Qatar has been ranked at number 42 among most reputable countries of the world.

→FULL STORY ON PAGE 2

Amir congratulates Erdogan on election victoryTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held a tele-phone conversation with Pres-ident of the Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, last night to congratulate him on his victory in the presidential elec-tions, wishing him continued success and the brotherly people of Turkey further progress and prosperity.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday evening declared victory in Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections.

“Our nation gave me the duty of the presidency and executive power,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul, citing unofficial results, which would make him Turkey’s first leader under a presidential system of government.

He also stated that his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party and the People’s Alliance - an alliance between the AK

Party and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) - also secured a parliamentary majority, according to the unof-ficial results.

Erdogan underlined that ballot security and the freedom to vote were an expression of the power of Turkish democracy. “Turkey gives lessons in democracy to the world with its almost 90 percent voter turnout,” he added.

The Turkish leader called for everyone to leave behind all election campaign arguments, tensions, and resentment to focus on the country’s future.

According to unofficial results, with 96.31 percent of ballots counted, Erdogan got 52.68 percent of the vote.

The AK Party-MHP People’s Alliance also apparently secured a parliamentary majority with a combined vote of 53.69 percent.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has congratulated Pres-ident Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his victory in the June 24 election.

In a phone call to Erdogan, Yildirim offered his best wishes for the new presidential system to be put in place.

World leaders also congrat-ulated President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his election success.

The first congratulation from an EU country came from

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also congratulated Erdogan on his “great success” in the presidential election, according to a statement by the Azerbaijani presidency.

→SEE ALSO PAGE 5

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan casts his vote at a polling station during the parliamentary and presidential elections, at Uskudar district in Istanbul, Turkey, yesterday.

02 MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018HOME

Secondary School Certificate results to be announced tomorrowTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Education and Higher Education will announce tomorrow afternoon the results of the general and specialised Secondary School Certificate for the academic year 2017/2018.

Results will be published on the website https://nateeja.edu.gov.qa/ once they are endorsed by the Minister of Education and Higher Edu-cation, H E Dr Mohammed bin Abdul Wahid Al Hammadi, QNA reported.

A total of 10,240 students performed the second semester examinations for the general and specialised Secondary School Certificates for both male and female students.

Deputy Amir inaugurates Institute of Criminal Studies, Cybercrime Prosecution

Deputy Amir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani inaugurated the Institute of Criminal Studies; Cybercrime Prosecution; Money Laundering and Economic Crimes Prosecution; and State Security and Counter-terrorism Prosecution, at the headquarters of Qatar Public Prosecution, yesterday. Attorney-General H E Dr Ali bin Fetais Al Marri delivered a welcoming speech on this occasion. Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani attended the inauguration ceremony along with a number of Their Excellencies Ministers, heads of diplomatic missions accredited to the State of Qatar and senior officials.

Public Prosecution signs cooperation deal with QFSWSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Public Prosecution signed yesterday a cooperation agreement with Qatar Foundation for Social Work, under which the branch of the AMAN centre was opened within the Public Prosecutor’s Office. The opening came in the framework of the embodiment of the meaning of justice and social protection.

Qatar Foundation for Social Work (QFSW) CEO, Amal Abdullatif Al Mannai, said that the Public Prosecution reflects the meaning of justice and social protection, which is the ultimate goal of the QFSW and the centres under its umbrella. The signing of the Memorandum of Understanding is the result of a natural integration and a true and effective partnership.

She added: “We at QFSW and the centres within its umbrella have taken the professional approach by applying inter-national standards in the protection of women and children.”

Al Mannai called on all partners, whether in the governmental or private sector or civil society, to adopt the scien-tific method based on a systematic vision in the developmental and social work,

which is the essence of Qatar National Vision 2030.

“I am confident that this support will positively reflect on our missions and our

future work, as I said the common goal between us and the Public Prosecution are shared,” she said.

For his part, Mansoor Al Saadi,

Executive Director of Aman Center said: “We are proud and proud of our strong part-nership with the Public Prosecution.” Vio-lence and family rift are present in most societies in the world and Qatari society is among this societies and include various nationalities of the Gulf, Arab and foreign, so this problem, although it is not a phe-nomenon in the state, but it is a reality.

He added that the unjust siege on our beloved country has undoubtedly con-tributed to the increase in cases of violence and family rift. The Center’s statistics for 2017 show that the number of cases of vio-lence and family rift transferred between the centres and the prosecution has exceeded 50 cases of children and women.

About 90 percent of these cases were solved in cooperation between the Family Prosecution and the Aman Center, taking into account the privacy and confidentiality of the family and avoiding the need to go to courts. Al Saadi pointed out that the opening of the branch of Aman Center includes services of providing reception, counselling, social, psychological and legal meetings services, noting that this partnership would not have been possible without the full support of the Public Prosecution and the QFSW.

Ibrahim Abdullah Al Qubaisi (sitting left), the Director of the Judicial Inspection Department at the Public Prosecution, and Amal Abdullatif Al Mannai (sitting right), CEO of QFSW, accompanied by H E Dr Ali bin Fetais Al Marri (left), the Attorney-General, and H E Issa Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi, Minister of Administrative Development and Labour, during the event, yesterday. PIC: BAHER AMIN / THE PENINSULA

Qatar gains 11 points in Most Reputable Countries’ listIRFAN BUKHARI THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Gaining 11 points in comparison with 2016 ranking, Qatar has been ranked at number 42 among most repu-table countries of the world.

According to Reputation Institute’s “The World’s Most Reputable Countries — 2018 Country RepTrack”, Qatar has gained 11 points when compared to 2016 report. In 2016, Qatar’s number was 53 with 46.8 score while in 2018 it improved its position to number 42 with 51.5 scores. Qatar was ranked at number 41 in 2017.

The survey was done in 55 largest

countries by GDP in March, April 2018 involving 58,000 plus individual ratings.

The 2018 Country RepTrack has indi-cated a decline in global reputation across countries. “Underlying feelings of geo-political tension, nationalism, and social unrest have resulted in overall reputation

decline and support,” the report says. The survey report takes many considerations into account to rank countries primarily divided into three types: Appealing Envi-ronment, Advanced Economy and Effective Government.

The ‘appealing environment’ has various considerations like beautiful country, enjoyable country, appealing lifestyle, friendly and welcoming people.

In ‘advanced economy’, high quality products and services; well-known brands; contributor to global culture; technology; well-educated, reliable workforce; and importance given to education are key considerations while through ‘effective government’ the

Reputation Institute has evaluated business environment, institutional environment, social and economic pol-icies, international participation, safety, efficient use of public resources, of the countries.

The top 10 countries include Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Norway, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Japan, Denmark and the Netherlands.

On economic impact of country’s reputation, 2018 Country RepTrack says that 1 point increase in country repu-tation results in 0.9 percent increase in the proportion of tourists per capita while 1 point increase in country repu-tation results in 0.3 percent increase in

export rates. The report further states that the size of country does not guar-antee reputation. “The most reputable countries are not the largest countries by area or by population,” it states.

The survey reveals that country nar-rative is key. “Top countries that com-municate a unique story through inte-grated communications channels earn a strong score on aspects of media and social network attributes. By contrast average countries are weak on the merits media and social network attributes and over 60 percent of respondents are on the fence if they have seen any positive communication regarding the country.”

Institute of Criminal Studies, Cybercrime Prosecution openCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

According to the nature of the committee’s work in the next stage, now its presi-dency shifted to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul-rahman Al Thani, because the next stage will be at the inter-national level.

Commenting on the importance of opening new three public prosecutions, Director-General of Public Security, Staff Major General Saad bin Jassim Al Khulaifi said that “ the three new pros-ecutions will accelerate pro-cedures and make the work more easier.”

HMC’s life support program gets international award

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

“ECMO offers patients the highest level of life support and over the last four years, HMC’s skilled ECMO team has used this technology to treat some of the sickest and most severely traumatized patients. The ELSO award signifies Qatar’s com-mitment to bringing the world’s best tech-nologies and treatments to Qatar and it demonstrates to patients and families a dedication to providing the best care pos-sible,” said Dr Al Kuwari.

HMC’s Director of the Medical Critical Care Division and ECMO Program, Dr. Ibrahim Fawzy Hassan, said in addition to being one of the few healthcare systems in the Middle East region to use ECMO, HMC is also a regional training center for the technology. Last year a group of medical experts in the country developed a first-of-its-kind mannequin to help train

teams on the system. The ECMO simu-lation mannequin was conceptualized, designed, and built in Qatar.

“ECMO is a bridge to recovery for patients with reversible lung and heart failure. The ECMO machine acts as a tem-porary, artificial lung and heart and takes over the work of these organs while the body is allowed to recover with the help of other medical and surgical measures. This technology allows us to provide the highest level of care to patients with complex illnesses,” said Dr. Fawzy,

HMC’s extracorporeal life support program is ranked among the best in the region, a distinction that Dr. Fawzy credits to the ECMO team. He says HMC is honored to receive the prestigious desig-nation that recognizes his team’s expertise in critical care and life support.

“Our extracorporeal life support

program is a model for quality and I am very proud of the commitment of our whole team to ensuring its successful implementation at HMC. It is because of this team effort that we reached such a high level of achievement. This award is an affirmation of the continued hard work that the ECMO team and key support staff

has done, and continues to do daily, to achieve our goal of providing the best pos-sible care to patients. It recognizes the skill and dedication of our multi-disciplinary team of physicians, nurses, perfusionists, respiratory therapists, nutritionists, phar-macists, physiotherapists, and critical care paramedics,” said Dr Fawzy.

Minister of Public Health, H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari, and members of HMC’s ECMO team pose for a group picture.

In 2016, Qatar’s number was

53 with 46.8 score while in

2018 it improved its position

to number 42 with 51.5

scores. Qatar was ranked at

number 41 in 2017.

03MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018 HOME

04 MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018HOME

4th International Day of Yoga celebrated with fervourTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Embassy of India and Indian Sports Centre cele-brated 4th International Day of Yoga on June 23 at Qatar Sports Club. More than 400 enthusiastic Yoga practitioners of various expatriate communities including Ambassadors of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Argentina, Belgium, Vietnam, Korea and Ecuador participated, said a release.

The event started with the video message on 4th Interna-tional Day of Yoga from the Prime Minister of India,

Narendra Modi, highlighting the specialities of yoga and its ben-efits for a long and healthy life.

A video message from Sheikha Athba Al Thani, empha-sizing the importance of yoga in everyone’s life was played before the start of the yoga session. An artistic yoga presentation was demonstrated by Ashish, Bandana and Vikash, which was followed by a session based on the common yoga protocol and comprise of various standing and sitting postures, pranayama and breathing techniques followed by meditation.

P Kumaran, the Ambassador

of India to Qatar, has highlighted about the support of Qatar to the United Nations General Assembly resolution in declaring the Inter-national Day of Yoga and support given by the Ministry of Sports and Culture in conducting Inter-national Day of Qatar at Qatar since its inception from 2015 onwards.

He also emphasized about the importance of yoga for a healthy and active life.

Mohamed Ahmed Al Uthman, Director of Sports Affairs, the Ministry of Sports & Culture, was the Chief Guest of the programme and appreciated

Indian Embassy and the Indian community for their initiative in promoting yoga in Qatar .

The common yoga protocol

session was conducted by Nisha Agrawal explaining the benefits and constraints of each type of yoga. The programme was

compered by Anu Sharma and vote of thanks was given by Nilangshu Dey, the President of Indian Sports Centre.

The participants performing at the International Day of Yoga.

Al Meera to relocate leasing department to Nuaija branchTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Al Meera Consumer Goods Company announced yesterday the relocation of its leasing department from its head office location in West Bay to Al Meera’s Nuaija branch.

The leasing department’s new office is located on the first floor in the Nuaija Mall and is managed by a team of specialist employees, dedicated to the care of the entire estate. The move aims to ease access for those interested in renting a space at any of Al Meera 51 branches across Qatar, and to better serve the existing tenants. The new office opens from 7.30am to 3pm, from Sunday to Thursday.

“The relocated leasing department office will serve as a convenient platform to provide services related to renting shops at Al Meera, all under one roof. The office was selected for its convenient location and will

offer all its facilities to serve the public for every enquiry or suggestion about its services,” Al Meera said in a statement.

The relocation reflects Al Meera’s efforts to continually improve the quality of services to an ever enhancing level while meeting partners’ expectations. Potential tenants for any branch can contact the new Al Meera leasing office for more information or visit the Nuaija branch in person.

A view of the Nuaija branch.

Radisson Blu Hotel, Doha appoints new Executive ChefDOHA: The Radisson Blu Hotel, Doha, an iconic 583-room hotel with 20 food and b e v e r a g e outlets has announced t h e appointment of Kulvinder Singh Chandhok (pictured) as its new Executive Chef. An Indian national with international hospitality expe-rience of more than 30 years has worked for several prestigious hospi-tality brands in the Middle East, Asia and Canada. Chef Chandhok is a graduate of the Oberio School of Hotel Management in New Delhi.

Ambassadors visit Fan Zone at Khalifa International StadiumTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany, Hans-Udo Muzel, visited the Khalifa Inter-national Stadium Fan Zone to watch the German national team’s second group match against Sweden in the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018.

The game took place on Saturday, and was broadcasted at the Khalifa International Stadium Fan Zone, organised by Aspire Zone Foundation in collaboration with the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy.

Thanks to a stunning goal in the last minute of extra time by star midfielder Toni Kroos, the German team were able to keep their hopes alive of reaching the second round of the tournament with a 2-1 victory. Speaking from the sidelines of the match, Muzel, said: “I’d like to extend my thanks to Aspire Zone Foundation for organising this great Fan Zone at Khalifa International Stadium. It’s great to see so many people here watching and enjoying football, because sport brings people together. I look forward to the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar.”

Earlier in the day, the Ambassador for the Republic of Tunisia to Qatar, Salah Al Salhi, accom-panied by Ambassador for the Sultanate of Oman

to Qatar, Najeeb bin Yahya Al Balushi, visited the stadium to watch the afternoon match between Tunisia and Belgium in a game that started at 3pm.

This year’s Fan Zone is sponsored by the SC (Main Partner) and Ooredoo (Main Sponsor), as well as Al Attiya Motors and Trading Co, Mannai Trading CO. WLL (CISCO), Witr Jewellery, Royal Air Maroc (RAM) and Pepsi. The Fan Zone is the ideal location for the country’s football fans to celebrate the most antic-ipated sporting event in the world, to follow World Cup games and keep up-to-date with all the action.

The fans watching Germany vs Sweden match.

Qatar, Cote d’Ivoire discuss bilateral relationsMinister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, met yesterday with the Cote d’Ivoire’s Minister of African Integration and Ivoirians Abroad, Ally Coulibaly. During the meeting, both sides discussed bilateral relations, means of boosting them, enhancing cooperation prospects, and issues of common concern.The meeting was attended by a number of Foreign Ministry officials.

QC rebuilds 250 homes

for poor families in GazaTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Charity’s (QC) office in the Gaza Strip has launched a project to rebuild the homes of poor people, with a generous donation made by the philanthropists of Qatar, in cooperation with the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, benefiting 250 families from different parts of the Gaza Strip.

The project includes rebuilding 250 houses at a cost of QR6.5m to make them usable, which will help preserve the human dignity of the needy families in the Gaza Strip, said a release.

The project aims to improve the living conditions of these families, as they are constantly living in difficult economic and social conditions, and harsh living circumstances.

The project seeks to effec-tively contribute to creating the health environment suitable for the poorest people through the provision of services and relief interventions to rehabilitate the poor’s homes. The project will also help ease the economic and social burdens of poor families and activate the role of interna-tional institutions to contribute to housing projects to serve vul-nerable people.

Mohamed Abu Haloub, director of the QC office in the Gaza Strip, said Qatar Charity,

with the support of the people of Qatar, has been implementing these humanitarian projects for the poor in various governorates of the Gaza Strip to improve their living conditions.

Qatar Charity does not spare any effort to provide safe housing for poor families, Abu Halub added. “We strive to provide a decent life for these families by offering various assistance, whether in cash, in kind, or by building social housing”, Abu Halub said in a statement.

Hassan Khamis, 50, a ben-eficiary of this housing project,

thanked the people of Qatar, saying “I owe them this great kindness. For the first time in my life, I will be able to live in dignity in a decent home after I and my family have suffered from the housing problems throughout my life.”

Last year, Qatar Charity handed over 50 apartments to the poor families in the Gaza Strip, which were destroyed by the war in 2014. The charity also rebuilt the destroyed apart-ments with the support of the Qatari people at a cost of QR8m, in cooperation of the Ministry of Public Works and Housing.

A renovated home under QC project in Gaza.

Zakat Fund provides over QR6m to minors, orphans & widowsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Zakat Fund Department at the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs has provided more than QR6m to the General Authority for Minor’s Affairs, as assistance to minors, orphans and widows who are under the auspices of the authority.

Director of the Zakat Fund Department Jassim

bin Mohammed Al Kubaisi said that the support comes within the framework of the Fund to spend on those in need, as decided by Islamic law, said a release. He stressed the importance of cooper-ating with the General Authority for Minors’ Affairs and providing financial assistance to meet the needs of many families under the auspices of the authority, in the framework of the Fund’s efforts to help all segments of the beneficiaries of Zakat.

05MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018 MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Zimbabwe rules out delaying electionHARARE: Zimbabwe’s presidential spokesman is ruling out an election delay or a state of emergency after an explosion at the president’s campaign rally on Saturday that state media called an assassination attempt. George Charamba told the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper that the historic July 30 vote will go ahead as planned despite the blast that occurred shortly after President Emmerson Mnangagwa addressed a stadium crowd in Bulawayo, an opposition stronghold. At least 49 people, including both of zimbabwe’s vice presidents, were injured in the explosion that Mnangagwa said occurred just “inches” from him. Dramatic footage showed him walking off the stage and into a crowded tent where the blast occurred seconds later, sending up smoke as people screamed and ran for cover.

6 held as death toll rises in Ethiopia attackAddis Ababa: The death toll from a grenade attack on a pro-government rally in Ethiopia’s capital climbed to two yesterday, a cabinet minister said, as police announced arrests over the blast. “I’m so sorry to learn that we have lost another ethiopian victim of yesterday’s attack,” Health Minister Amir Aman tweeted. The blast occurred in a packed public square as ethiopia’s new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was wrapping up a speech before tens of thousands of people. The ensuing chaos injured more than 150 people and marred an event meant to build public support for Abiy’s ambitious reform agenda. State-run Ethiopian News Agency reported police had arrested six people suspected of involvement in the blast, but gave few details.

Israel fires missile near Syria frontierJERUSALEM: The Israeli military says it fired a Patriot missile at an unmanned aircraft that approached its airspace near the Syrian frontier in the Golan Heights. The army said that the missile did not hit the drone, and the aircraft “retreated from the border.” It was not immediately clear who launched the drone, but in February Israel shot down what it said was an iranian drone that entered its airspace. It bombed iranian targets in Syria in response. Syrian troops have launched an offensive against rebel forces in south-western Syria, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel has expressed concerns about iranian troops supporting Syrian Pres-ident Bashar Assad’s forces, and says it will not allow a permanent iranian military presence in Syria.

3 Palestinians injured in Israeli shellingGAZA CITY: At least three Palestinians were injured when Israeli forces attacked a group of civilians in Gaza’s Al Zaytoun neigh-borhood, east of Gaza City. “Three Palestinians were wounded as a result of Israeli targeting of a group of civilians in the eastern Gaza Strip,” said Ashraf Al Qidra, Health Ministry spokesman. The shelling was the third of its kind yesterday, after Israeli aircraft bombed a Hamas military post, in addition to a motorcycle near the Al Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. The Israeli army announced earlier that it had targeted a vehicle in the Gaza Strip allegedly used to fly burning kites towards the Israeli territory surrounding the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan waves to supporters as he leaves his residence in Istanbul, yesterday. RIGHT: AK Party supporters wave flags in front of the party headquarters in Ankara.

World leaders congratulate ErdoganAGENCIES

ANKARA: World leaders are congratulating President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his election success.

Erdogan has claimed victory in critical elections based on unofficial results, securing an executive presi-dency with sweeping powers. Erdogan also declared victory for the People’s Alliance, an elec-toral cooperation between his ruling Justice and Development Party and the small Nationalist Movement Party, saying they had a “parliamentary majority” in the 600-member assembly.

Speaking in a televised remarks from Istanbul, 64-year-old Erdogan said “the nation has entrusted to me the responsi-bility of the presidency and the executive duty.”

Yesterday’s elections are putting into force a stronger presidential system, allowing the president to form the gov-ernment, appoint ministers, vice presidents and top bureaucrats, issue decrees, prepare the budget and impose states of

emergency.The first congratulation from

an EU country came from Hun-garian Prime Minister Victor Orban. Albanian Premier Edi Rama congratulated President Erdogan via a telephone call, which Erdogan received with thanks. In a phone call, Pales-tinian President Mahmoud Abbas also congratulated Erdogan on “the success of the Turkish dem-ocratic process and his victory in the presidential elections,” said the official Palestinian News Agency Wafa. Abbas said: “I wish Turkey more success, progress and stability.”

Erdogan, according to the agency, stressed Turkey’s “con-tinued support” to the Pales-tinian people and “their just cause and their right to freedom and stability.”

Messages of congratulations also came from Greek Foreign Minister Nikolaos Kotzias, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir, Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

Serbian President Ale-ksandar Vucic wished Erdogan success in carrying out his duties.

Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain “extended heartfelt felicitations to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on his victory in the elections”.

Hussain underscored that the large turn-out and the peaceful conduct of the parlia-mentary and presidential elec-tions was a testimony to the strength and vibrancy of Tur-key’s democratic values and institutions. Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo congratulates Turkish President Erdogan on election success.

Bosniak leader Bakir

Izetbegovic telephoned Erdogan to congratulate him on his success in the elections. Erdogan has overseen historic change in turkey since his Islamic-rooted ruling party first came to power in 2002 after years of secular domination. The president has for the last two years ruled under a state of emergency imposed in the wake of the 2016 failed coup. Erdogan, whose mastery of political rhetoric is acknowledged even by critics, has won a dozen elections but campaigned against the backdrop of increasing eco-nomic woes.

ANKARA: Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party has called on all political parties to respect yesterday’s election results. All votes cast in the elections are under AK Party guar-antee, Mahir Unal, AK Party spokesman, told reporters in the capital Ankara. Unal said the security of not only AK Party votes but votes for all political parties was “our honour”. Unal denied rumours of manipulation of election results.

Blaming state institutions Supreme Election Council (YSK) and Anadolu Agency is “a severe provocation”, Unal said, adding it was “not acceptable”. He called on all political party leaders to be “careful and responsible”.

AK Party urges respect for results

Heavy rains in Ahmedabad

06 MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018ASIA

IANS

HYDERABAD: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao yesterday said he was ready to go for early elections and dared the opposition to face the same.

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief, who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 15, said the elections may be advanced.

Rao said the leaders of his party and even people were ready for early elections. He exuded confidence that TRS will win over 100 seats in 119-member state assembly.

Elections to Telangana assembly are scheduled in

April-May next year along with Lok Sabha polls but ever since the TRS chief’s meeting, there have been reports of the polls being advanced.

Modi is understood to have hinted that simultaneous polls to Lok Sabha and state assem-blies of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana could b e c o n d u c t e d b y November-December.

KCR, as Rao is popularly known, held meetings with TRS leaders during last few days to discuss the possibility of early elections and to review the pre-paredness of the party.

Yesterday, KCR formally

admitted former minister Danam Nagender into the TRS. Nagender, who quit the Con-gress two days ago, joined the ruling party along with his fol-lowers. Speaking on the occasion, KCR said all surveys show that TRS will win the next elections as the party was striving to achieve the goal of golden Telangana.

He slammed the opposition parties for criticizing the gov-ernment. Alleging the opposition parties were unable to digest the number of welfare and devel-opment schemes launched by the TRS government during last four years, he challenged them to face the early elections.

IANS

SRINAGAR: Two Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants were killed while another surrendered in a gunfight yesterday in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kulgam district where a civilian was killed and 10 others injured in subsequent street protests.

Police said two LeT militants, including a top commander, were killed while another one

surrendered in Chaddar Motelhama in Qaimoh area.

As the gunfight progressed, civilians poured out of their homes and clashed with the security force in a bid to disrupt the operation, police said.

A civilian, identified as Yawar Ahmad Dar, 27, sustained a gunshot injury in the violence. He was shifted to hospital where doctors declared him dead.

Defence Ministry spokesman

Colonel Rajesh Kalia said here that the terrorists were killed in a joint operation by the Army, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and state police.

Police said the militants fired at a road clearing party of security forces in Chaddar Motelhama in Qaimoh area.

The security forces were car-rying out a highway clearance operation for the forthcoming Amarnath Yatra when they were

fired at by the hiding militants, triggering the encounter, a police officer said.

A youth, injured in clashes with the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag district on Friday, succumbed in a hospital here yesterday, police said. Shahid Nazir Hajam, injured in clashes in Srigufwara area of Anantnag, succumbed in Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) here.

NEW DELHI: Alleging that there was “a complete breakdown of law and order” under the Modi government, the CPI-M said that people’s constitutional rights were being allowed to be violated with impunity.

A CPI-M statement said that this period had seen “unprecedented attacks on people’s livelihood, sharpening of communal polarization accompanied by murderous assaults on Muslims and Dalits, severe undermining of institu-tions of parliamentary democracy and independent constitutional authorities”.

Nepal PM: China visit instrumental in wide-ranging cooperation Kathmandu: Nepali Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli yesterday said that his recent visit to China was instrumental in enhancing bilateral cooperation between the two countries in wide-ranging areas including cross-border railroad connectivity. Oli made the remarks upon his arrival at the Kathmandu International Airport after paying a six-day visit to China that began on June 19, reports Xinhua news agency.

“The two sides discussed deepening friendship, mutual trust and understanding so as to further strengthen the political rela-tionship between Nepal and China,” the Prime Minister said.

The Chinese leadership pledged to extend support to the Nepali government’s endeavours to achieve political stability and eco-nomic prosperity under the slogan of “Prosperous Nepal, Happy Nepali”, according to Oli. He said the two sides chalked out a framework for long-term cooperation in the fields of railroad con-nectivity, energy, transportation, infrastructure development, investment, tourism, and people-to-people contacts under the Belt and Road Initiative.

“Especially, a Memorandum of Understanding on Cross Border Railway signed between the two sides during the visit has paved the way for further enhancing cross-border connectivity between the two countries in the days to come,” the Prime Minister said, referring to the proposed cross-border railway line connecting Nepal’s capital Kathmandu with the Chinese border town of Kerung.

IMPHAL: The Collector of a Manipur district bordering Myanmar yesterday said a part of Indian territory has been encroached upon and he has refused to sign a Survey of India report certifying the location of the pillars demar-cating the border.

Tengnoupal Collector A. Tombikanta said that he is seeking to have the exact locations of the boundary pillars verified following complaints from residents of Kwatha Khunou village that boundary pillar No 81 is located inside the village, three km inside Indian territory. He said that since May 22, the day he was posted to Tengnoupal, he has been under pressure, including from the state Home Department, to sign documents to the effect that there is no dispute over the territory.

IANS

CHENNAI: Even as Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit’s office yesterday warned that anybody trying to overawe the Governor will be dealt with sternly, DMK leader M K Stalin said their protest against Puro-hit’s visits to districts will continue.

In a statement, the Raj Bhavan said the Governor would continue his visits to dis-tricts in the coming months and the Office of Governor was pro-tected under Section 124 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Any attempt to overawe or assault or use criminal force would be dealt with as per the law, it said.

Reacting to the statement, Stalin said the Governor had threatened the DMK and was also indulging in direct politics which was condemnable.

Stalin said the party would continue its protest against Purohit’s visits to districts and meeting the officials there.

The Raj Bhavan statement said: “Whoever, with the intention of inducing or com-pelling the President of India, or the Governor of any State, to exercise or refrain from exer-cising in any manner any of the lawful powers of such President or Governor, assaults or wrong-fully restrains, or attempts wrongfully to restrain, or overawes, by means of criminal force or the show of criminal force, or attempts so to overawe, such President or Governor, shall be punished

with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.”

Referring to a news item that Stalin sought to lay siege to the area around Raj Bhavan to protest against the district visits of Purohit, the statement categorically said that “the Gov-ernor enjoys full authority and freedom to visit any part of the state”. According to Stalin, the Governors of West Bengal or in Madhya Pradesh were not holding any review meetings at the district level.

Claiming a right that was not in existence and issuing a statement on behalf of the Gov-ernor was against the principle of federalism, he said

The Raj Bhavan statement said: “The use of the word ‘review’ by the Leader of the Opposition (Stalin) is an attempt to mislead the people. He is either ignorant of the law or attempting to overawe by threatening to besiege Raj Bhavan or block the roads leading to the Raj Bhavan.”

Telangana CM hints at early polls

People waiting for public transport at a flooded bus stop after heavy rains in Ahmedabad, India, yesterday.

Two LeT militants, one civilian dead in Kashmir gunfight

Sri Lanka probes death of woman on flightCOLOMBO: Police in Sri Lanka yesterday launched a probe into the death of a Pakistani woman onboard a flight which arrived here from Singapore, authorities said. The 86-year-old Pakistani was on a Sri Lankan Airlines flight from Changi Airport in Singapore on Saturday, reports Xinhua news agency. The remains of the victim was taken to the Negombo Hospital for post-mortem, the police said. The victim’s identity has not been revealed.

Sri lanka arrests villagers for killing leopardCOLOMBO: Police in Sri Lanka yesterday arrested two men accused of beating a leopard to death in a “sickening” attack that was captured on film and sparked revulsion. The pair were accused of killing the big cat on Thursday after it attacked nearly a dozen people in a village 330km north of Colombo.

Gruesome images of the leopard, a protected species in sri lanka, being savagely beaten were shared on social media, gen-erating widespread disgust. “It is sickening to see these images,” wildlife deputy minister Palitha Thewarapperuma told parliament as he promised swift action to arrest the perpetrators.

Police said the two men were remanded in custody by a court as investigations continued to track down the others responsible. “We have the two main suspects in custody, but we are looking for 10 others who have aided the killing,” a police spokesman said.

sri lanka’s leopards are on the International Union of Conser-vation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of endangered animals.

Harming leopards in Sri Lanka is punishable by jail terms up to five years. The wild population of leopards on the island is esti-mated at fewer than 1,000. Six people were jailed in March 2016 after posting photos online showing them skinning a sea eagle alive.

AFP

MUMBAI: Furniture giant Ikea is set to open its first store and restaurant in India after years of trying but arguably its most famous item is off the menu — Swedish meatballs.

Ikea, the world’s biggest fur-niture retailer, will next month cut the ribbon on a massive 37,000 sq metre outlet in the southern city of Hyderabad, complete with a 1,000-seater cafeteria. The restaurant will be Ikea’s largest and will cater to local tastes, with religious sen-sitivities in India dictating that beef, staples of Swedish meat-balls, will not be served.

“There will be chicken meat-balls and vegetarian balls,” Patrik Antoni, Ikea’s deputy country manager for India,said during an interview in the Indian financial capital of Mumbai.

“Fifty percent of the food will be Swedish inspired, salmon and shrimp dishes and so on. We’ll also have quite a few Indian dishes like dal makhani, biryani, samosas,” he added.

The Swedish multinational, which revolutionised household

furnishings with its range of affordable ready-to-assemble products, is betting big on India as it seeks new revenues away from its key Western markets.

Ikea plans to invest $1.5bn in Asia’s third-largest economy as it seeks to lure price-sensitive Indians away from satisfying their furniture needs at local, family-run shops.

Ikea has already spent close to $750m procuring sites for four stores, including the Hyderabad one which will open in July on a date that is yet to be announced.

Outlets in Mumbai, Ban-galore and the capital New Delhi will follow, Antoni said, without putting a timescale on them. He added that Ikea will then look at Pune, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Surat and Kolkata.

“We are very bullish and excited about the Indian market. Normally, we would test a market by opening one store but in India, we are going all out and expanding,” said Antoni.

At 37,160 square metres the Hyderabad store will be compa-rable in size to an average Indian shopping mall. It will have 850 employees and is expected to

attract several million visitors a year. As well as its wide range of international items Ikea will also sell goods uniquely suited to the Indian market.

Alongside its popular Billy bookcases and Poang chairs, Ikea will also offer spice boxes and kitchen appliances to make traditional Indian staples such as idlis (rice cakes). “We have done over a thousand home visits and interviewed people to

try to understand their needs, dreams, aspirations and how they feel about their home,” explained Antoni.

More than 1,000 products priced under 200 rupees ($2.94) will be on sale. India, with its abundant supply of cheap labour, is not known for its “DIY” culture so Ikea has teamed up with UrbanClap, an online platform that helps connect handymen with consumers.

The under-construction site of an Ikea store in Hyderabad.

Indian territory encroached upon: Manipur Collector

DMK leader M K Stalin

said the Governor had

threatened the party

and was indulging in

direct politics which

was condemnable. He

said the party would

continue its protest

against Purohit’s visits

to districts and meeting

the officials there.

Ikea bets big on India but keeps meatballs off the menu

TN Governor warns

DMK against bid to

overawe his office

Law and order has broken down under Modi: CPI-M

07MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018 ASIA

Imran Khan, cricketer-turned-opposition leader and head of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), delivers a speech during an election campaign in Mianwali, some 240km southwest of Islamabad, yesterday. Imran Khan kicked off his election campaign by staging a major rally and promising sweeping changes in the country, once his party win the elections. RIGHT: Vendor arranges T-shirts featuring images of Imran Khan.

Proposal to increase electricity tariff

An Afghan woman buys vegetables at a market in Herat.

New Zealand Premier names daughter Neve, leaves hospitalAP

WELLINGTON: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford have named their baby daughter Neve and say they want her to grow up in a world in which she can make choices about her family and career based on what she wants.

Ardern made her first public appearance yes-terday since giving birth to her daughter on Thursday.

She answered a few questions from reporters while holding her baby at Auckland City Hospital before she planned on returning home. She will take six weeks of leave before returning to work.

Ardern is just the second elected world leader to give birth while holding office. Many hope the 37-year-old will become a role model for combining motherhood with political leadership.

She said the couple struggled for months trying to choose a name and decided to wait until the baby was born to figure out which one fitted best. The baby’s full name is Neve Te Aroha Ardern

Gayford. Ardern said Neve means “bright” and “radiant” as well as “snow,” which was fitting because the baby was born on the Southern Hemisphere’s winter solstice. Te Aroha means “love” in New Zea-land’s indigenous Maori language, and Ardern said that name reflected the amount of love and gener-osity that people had shown the couple even before the baby arrived.

She said she hoped that one day having a baby while leading a country would not be seen as a novelty. “So I hope for little girls and boys that actually there’s a future where they can make choices about how they raise their family and what kind of career they have that are based on what they want and what makes them happy,” she said. “Simple.”

She said that having a child would likely make her view the world differently and enhance political views that were already focused on children.

The last leader to give birth while holding office was late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who had Bakhtawar in 1990.

Tough contests expected in July polls in PakistanINTERNEWS

LAHORE: The Chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan, who is yet to win from Lahore despite three attempts, will contest the 2018 polls against PML-N bigwig Khawaja Saad Rafique from NA 131.

Imran contested for the first time from Lahore in 1997 on two seats - the then NA-94 and NA-95 - and lost to PML-N can-didates Tariq Aziz and Nawaz Sharif respectively.

In 2002, Imran contested against Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, his former party stalwart, who was contesting as PML-N candidate from NA-122. Iman lost to him but won from Mianwali.

In 2008, Imran’s PTI boy-cotted the elections, but he faced Ayaz Sadiq again in 2013 from NA-122 and lost after a tough contest.

In 2018, he is now trying his luck from NA-131 but this time against Saad who has not faced defeat since 1997 from this con-stituency. In NA-95 Mianwali, the PTI chief will face PML-N’s Obaidullah Shadi Khel.

The PML-N has so far nom-inated candidates for 116 seats of National Assembly and 192 of the provincial legislature in Punjab where the majority of its nominees will face the PTI representatives as major opponent.

In one of the major contests

to be watched for the PML-N in 2018, Maryam Nawaz, the protégé of deposed prime min-ister Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz, is contesting from NA-125 against PTI’s Dr Yasmeen Rashid who had given tough time to Nawaz in 2013 elections, and then to his wife Kulsoom Nawaz in the 2017 bye-election. In NA-132 Lahore, PML-N’s president Shahbaz Sharif will contest against Mansha Sindhu of PTI.

Another PML-N stalwart Khawaja Asif, who barely escaped disqualification, will face his traditional rival from PTI, Usman Dar, in NA-73 Sialkot. In NA-127 Lahore, veteran PML-N leader Pervaiz Malik will face Jamshed Iqbal Cheema of PTI. In NA-124, Hamza Shahbaz will face PTI’s Nauman Qaiser.

In NA-62 Rawalpindi, an interesting contest will be seen between PML-N’s Daniyal Chaudhry and Awami Muslim

Pakistan Tehreek-

i-Insaf (PTI), chief

Imran Khan, who

is yet to win from

Lahore despite

three attempts, will

contest the 2018

polls against PML-N

bigwig Khawaja Saad

Rafique.

League’s Sheikh Rashid who is to contest against his traditional rival Hanif Abbasi of PML-N from NA-60 Rawalpindi.

In NA-129 Lahore, PML-N’s Sardar Ayaz Sadiq is contesting against PTI’s Abdul Aleem Khan.

Former Prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi will contest from NA-57 Murree, but his rival from PTI is yet to be announced. Similarly, another PML-N stalwart Abid Sher Ali will contest from NA 108 Faisalabad.

Former interior minister Ahsan Iqbal will contest from NA-78 Narowal against PTI’s Abrar-ul-Haq. PML-N’s Rana Sanaullah will face PTI’s Nisar Jatt from NA-106 Faisalabad.

Saad’s brother, Khawaja Salman Rafique, had however lost the election in 2013 but returned to provincial assembly in a bye-poll. He remained the advisor on health to the Punjab chief min-ister till he was not a member of

Provincial assembly, but was made the minister of specialised healthcare after winning the

by-election. PML-N’s Khurram Dastgir Khan is contesting from his ancestral seat NA-81

Gujranwala but PTI is yet to announce its candidate from there.

INTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s former military dictator-turned-poli-tician Pervez Musharraf yesterday clarified that he had not quit politics but had only resigned as chairman of his party, the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML), “after due legal consultation”.

In a video message released by the APML, the former military dictator asked party workers to support the new chairman of the APML, Dr Muhammad Amjad, and Mehreen Malik Adam, the general secretary.

Musharraf said he had a

strong desire to return to the country but had decided to stay away due to three reasons.

“For my return to the country, I required three things: that I should be allowed to take part in the election, that my name should not be placed on the Exit Control List (ECL) and that I should not be arrested,” he said.

Musharraf, who ruled the country from 1999 to 2008 after staging a military coup as an army chief, asked his party can-didates to go into the elections with full zeal. “Good times will come and we will then decide accordingly,” he said.

He said there were certain rumours circulating after his res-ignation as party chairperson, which is why he had to “per-sonally explain in this regard.”

The self-exiled former mil-itary dictator said the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had issued a decision regarding the disqual-ification of Khawaja Asif that was nullified by the Supreme Court.

“I was also disqualified by a high court bench from con-testing the elections but the Supreme Court did not nullify the decision like it did in Khawaja Asif’s case,” he regretted.

Pervez Musharraf says he’s still in politics

IANS

DA NANG, Vietnam: World leaders and officials from over 100 nations, including India, top heads of UN agencies and multi-lateral financial institutions, scientists and activists gathered in this Vietnamese city on Sunday for the Global Envi-ronment Facility’s (GEF) Assembly to tackle global climate change challenges.

One of the most significant global gatherings of the year on

the environment, the assembly, which will see high-level plenary sessions June 27-28, follows a record $4.1bn replenishment by governments of the GEF’s trust fund and is testament to its growing influence in bringing about sustainable development around the world.

India, among the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change, is both a donor and a recipient of GEF, an inter-national partnership of 183 countries.

GEF CEO and Chairperson Naoko Ishii called the assembly, held every four years, “a unique opportunity to help make a safer, more secure and more liveable planet”.

“Business as usual will guar-antee disaster; incremental change will not suffice. The only solution is transformational change. We need to transform food, urban and energy systems and move to a circular economy.

“We need to act swiftly and at scale — and that’s just what

the GEF intends to do,” she said in a statement.

The plenary sessions, to be opened by Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc address on June 27, will cover the state of the global environment, the ambition needed to help transform the systems that support how we live, how we eat, how we move and how we produce and consume, and how the implementation of GEF-7 (the new four-year investment cycle) can contribute to the nec-

essary systems change.Heads of island nations vul-

nerable to rising sea levels caused by melting ice, like the Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine and Guyana President David Granger, will speak at plenary sessions as will former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and former Costa Rican President Jose Maria Figueres.

Nearly 30 countries last month jointly pledged $4.1bn to the GEF for its GEF-7 to better protect the future of the planet

and human well-being. India is among the largest recipients of climate change assistance.

GEF supports the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme to undertake capacity-building in a wide range of areas in India, including climate change adap-tation, sustainable land and eco-system management, biodi-versity conservation and rural livelihoods. India is one the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases after the US and China.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern holds her baby daugther Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford outside the hospital in Auckland, yesterday.

Kabul: Three militants have been killed and three others wounded as a clash flared up between police and Taliban group in the northern Kunduz province yesterday.

The fighting, according to head of the provincial council of Kunduz, Mohammad Yusuf Ayubi, erupted after Taliban insurgents attacked a security checkpoint in Juma Bazaar area of Chardara district Sunday morning and police returned fire, killing three insurgents on the spot and injuring three others.

World gathers to tackle climate change challenges

Three Taliban militants dead in clashes

Two police constables have been killed and two others injured in the firefight, the official said. Parts of Kunduz

province, including Chardara district, have been the scene of Taliban-led militancy over the past few years.

INTERNEWS

KARACHI: The Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA-G) of Pakistan has recommended the power regulatory authority to increase elec-tricity tariff by Rs1.32 per unit for consumers, aimed at recovering Rs78.66bn from next month.

The state-owned power

purchasing agency made the recommendation to adjust fuel charges in the tariff for the power produced and sold to the consumers nationwide, except for K-Electric consumers, in May 2018.

In this regard, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has scheduled to hear stakeholders on Wednesday (June 27) to decide

whether the recommendation for the upward adjustment is justified.

The agency argued the fuel cost in the tariff has increased to Rs6.61 per kilowatt hour over the reference fuel cost of Rs5.29 in the approved tariff for con-sumers of the state-owned dis-tribution companies for 2015-16, according to Nepra’s notification.

If we allow the

use of chemical

weapons to be

normalised,

they will not

be confined

to distant

battlefields.

What happened

in Salisbury or

Kuala Lumpur

International

Airport could

have happened

anywhere.

THE WASHINGTON POST

08 MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018VIEWS

OPCW should be allowed to identify perpetrators of chemical weapon attacks

Like architecture and art, the value of some international agreements lies in the eye of the beholder. But no-one

would seriously question the worth of the global ban on chemical weapons.

Today 192 countries have put aside their other differ-ences and chosen to be parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which prohibits the production, use and stockpiling of these horri-fying instru-ments of death.

We may find it impos-sible to abolish war, but we can at least agree to spare humanity from the unspeakable

effects of these munitions.This universal consensus on the

moral abhorrence of chemical weapons reflects the tragic expe-rience of many countries. Chemical weapons were used in France and Belgium during the First World War;

they inflicted appalling suffering in Morocco in the 1920s, Ethiopia in the 1930s, China in the 1940s and Iran and Iraq in the 1980s.

This litany – by no means com-plete – was supposed to come to an end, once and for all, when the CWC entered into force in 1997. Yet since then, chemical weapons have been employed all over again in Syria and Iraq. A nerve agent was used to carry out an assassination at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia in 2017. Another category of nerve agent was employed in the British cathedral city of Salisbury in March.

It would be idle to pretend that these outrages make no difference to the integrity of the CWC. They all rep-resent breaches of the global prohi-bition on chemical weapons that every country wishes to preserve.

Hence the need for a special session of the Conference of State Parties to the CWC that will take place in The Hague on 26 and 27 June. The aim is to reinforce the international ban and strengthen the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which serves as the implementing arm of the Convention.

At the moment, the OPCW does not have a mandate to say who carried out chemical weapon attacks in Syria. Its experts can report what happened when and where, but they do not identify the perpetrator.

The international community lost that ability last November when the Security Council failed to renew the mandate of a Joint Investigative Mechanism comprised of the OPCW and the United Nations. This body had previously attributed four chemical weapon attacks to the Assad regime in Syria and two to Daesh.

Since then, the OPCW has found that chemical weapons were employed in Syria in Lataminah (March 2017) and Saraqib (February

2018). But the crucial question of who was responsible has been left unanswered.

How are we to preserve what we all believed was a universal taboo on the use of chemical weapons if the OPCW does not identify the offenders? The present situation indulges a fiction that chemical weapons descend from the sky of their own volition, without any agent or perpetrator.

If this anomaly is allowed to persist then any state or terrorist might use chemical weapons, safe in the knowledge that the OPCW will not identify them. The danger is that the taboo will transfer from employing these munitions to naming those responsible.

The best response would be to make full use of the provisions already in the CWC, which allow the OPCW to say not just whether chemical weapons were used but by whom.

I hope that the special session will give the OPCW a mandate to develop new proposals on how to identify any breaches of the Convention.

This is not a question of taking sides in some global confrontation; rather this is a simple choice over whether to uphold the prohibition on a terrible category of weapon or allow this ban to fade into irrelevance, posing a grave and growing risk to every country.

If we allow the use of chemical weapons to be normalised, they will not be confined to distant battlefields. What happened in Salisbury or Kuala Lumpur International Airport could have happened anywhere.

We all share an interest in pre-serving and enforcing a prohibition on which our safety depends. And we cannot do that unless the OPCW is allowed to name an offender.

The writer is British Foreign Secretary

BORIS JOHNSON

QUOTE OF THE DAY

This is a political crisis we are going through. Let’s seek

efficacy because we are guarantors of

the cohesion of our countries and of our

people.

Emmanuel Macron

French President

Trump’s humanitarian crisis

Imagine what it would be like to have your son or daughter yanked from your arms. To have no idea where they have been taken. Or

how they are faring. To have to face the possibility even of never seeing your child again. Those are things too awful to contemplate. But today in the United States, they are the all-too-cruel realities for hundreds upon hun-dreds of parents who have been caught up in President Donald Trump’s heedless decision to separate families.

It has become clear in the days since Trump signed an executive order supposedly barring the routine practice of taking children from parents who illegally cross the border from Mexico that the chaos - and anguish - continue. Many of the 2,500 childrenseparated from their parents since the administration started implementing its zero-tolerance policy in the spring remain in shelters and foster homes all over the country.

Some are of very young. Exactly where and under what conditions the children are being held is not clear since officials have largely refused to share information. They also have allowed little access to the facilities, even for lawmakers and local officials.

They appear to have devoted little thought or effort to reunifying families, a process that even under the best of circumstances has legal and logistical challenges. “It’s just a total labyrinth,” a Texas attorney told The Post’s Kevin Sieff. One legal aid organization is rep-resenting more than 300 parents but has been able to locate only two children. The Los Angeles Times detailed the story of a man sent back to Guatemala without his 6-year-old daughter, who remains at an undis-closed shelter in New York, crying con-stantly, according to social workers.

A federal public defender in El Paso wrote in The Post about a judge who was incredulous that a jail system that gives you a receipt when it takes your wallet gives you nothing - “not even a slip of paper” - when it takes

your children. Said another attorney, “Either the government wasn’t thinking at all about how they were going to put these families back together, or they decided they just didn’t care.”

We actually think it is both. Con-sider: a president who tweets about immigrants who “infest” the country and about “phony stories of sadness and grief.” Consider: an attorney general now saying they “never really intended” to separate families after he explicitly warned immigrants not to come if they didn’t want to be sepa-rated from their children. Consider: an administration that has repeatedly sabotaged efforts to protect the hun-dreds of thousands of “dreamers” who were brought illegally to the United States as children.

“Republicans should stop wasting their time on immigration,” Trump said in a Friday tweet advocating that Congress wait until after November elections. He would rather preserve the election issue so he can continue fearmongering.

Qatar is the

world’s largest

emerging market

listed in the

global indices

in the region,

and the second

largest exchange

market in the

Middle East

in terms of its

capital.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

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

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

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Qatar’s investment incentives

Qatar’s dynamic capital market is set to attract more investment helped by new incentives set to be rolled out soon. These steps will not increase

funds to the country but will also send the message to the global investors that Qatar is attractive investment destination.

Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) is planning to launch series of investors’ friendly measures. Rashid Ali Al Man-soori, CEO of QSE recently told QNA that QSE is planning to launch more ETFs as it is one of the most popular products among investors both domestically and abroad. The Exchange is working to create an incubator to achieve sustainability and growth of family businesses.

According to Al Mansoori, the exchange is working to activate the single window mechanism for listing, develop the licensing mechanism for intermediaries in cooperation with the Qatar Financial Markets Authority, and also try to develop the services so that there is one venue that the investor reaches and gets his job done quickly.

The QSE is also planning to launch a trading platform for small and medium enterprises.

Taking investors’ friendly measure is not a new news, Qatar has taken many such steps in the past.

On March 4, the Exchange announced details of exchange traded funds (ETFs) which was Qatar’s first listed ETF on the QSE and the largest in the Gulf. At the end of the same month, the QSE witnessed the listing of Al Rayan Qatar ETF. It is one of the largest Islamic funds traded in the Middle East and emerging countries and the second largest Islamic fund in the world.

Qatar is the world’s largest emerging market listed in the global indices in the region, and the second

largest exchange market in the Middle East in terms of its capital.

To boost attractiveness of investment in the stock market, the QSE has also urged listed companies to raise foreign ownership limits in their shares to 49 percent instead of 25 percent. Many listed companies have already responded positively by increasing non-Qatari ownership limit. The decisions by the listed com-panies to raise foreign ownership limits have had a pos-itive impact on the performance of the market. Qatar has a strong and diversified investment climate sup-ported by a set of financial and regulatory laws that makes country as the one of the best countries for global investors.

These decisions support the openness of the Qatari economy and make it more competitive and fastest growing in the region.

A file picture shows the participants of the Green and Sustainable Chemistry workshop.

09MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018 OPINION

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Brexit leaves ferry to Ireland inuncertain waters

Should Kim Jong-Un trust Trump?

JULIEN LAGACHE AFP

SEYED MOSTAFA KHOSHCHESHM AL JAZEERA

The Carlingford ferry, which connects Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland, was launched one year ago but is

already facing an uncertain future with a solution to the post-Brexit border problem still to be found.

The service has proved popular with commuters looking for a speedy crossing to work, but the potential imposition of time-consuming customs checks means it may be increasingly reliant on an underde-veloped tourism sector.

The project was ten years in the making when Britain voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, but despite the setback, Frazer Ferries, which operates the service, has vowed to plough on. “There is no clearly defined endgame for Brexit yet and we don’t know what it will ultimately look like, but we do feel very con-fident that we will adapt,” Paul O’Sullivan, director of Frazer Ferries, said.

Barry Gardener and his wife Rita were among those at Carlingford quay on a cool and calm weekday morning, waiting with two other vehicles to

board the ferry. The couple were travelling from Drogheda, 65 kilo-metres (40 miles) to the south, for a day’s shopping in Newcastle, across the border in Northern Ireland.

“I decided to take her out of the country,” joked the mischievous 70-year-old, as his wife laughed, holding onto his arm. The service, which can accomodate 10 cars, runs every 30 minutes across the Car-lingford lough, an inlet of the Irish Sea that separates the two countries.

There are no checks on the border between the British province of Northern Ireland and its southern neighbour, as both are currently members of the European Union and share the same customs rules.

But EU and British negotiators are so-far stumped on how to maintain the open border post-Brexit.

The quiet region around the lough is renowned for its idyllic, moun-tainous scenery, but remains isolated, and is more than 20km from the M1 motorway linking Dublin to Belfast.

“A lot of people didn’t know this part of the world existed,” said Geoffrey Chestnutt, owner of a holiday resort on the Northern Irish coast, noting that the ferry had boosted business.

“They would have travelled directly from Newry (in Northern Ireland) to Newcastle, just missing it out,” added the 40-year-old. “It’s a good thing for both sides of the lough”. In addition to the 17 jobs directly created by the service, it also has the potential to provide a broader boost to the economy, said O’Sullivan.

The operator said a fishery based in the Northern Ireland coastal town

of Kilkeel had been in touch about the possibility of making deliveries to the south. “The ferry would obviously cut a 30 mile journey down to a couple of miles,” he said, explaining that the boat takes quarter-of-an-hour, compared with more than an hour by road.

Ticket-seller Nora McKee, wrapped up in her blue raincoat emblazoned with the company logo, said that “most of our commuters are from the north side -- a whole lot is travelling through to Dublin for work.” But the return of a physical border could spell an end to the shortened journey for professional clientele.

The ferry is already trying to increase its tourist numbers, but the holidaymakers are still few and far between, according to the mousta-chioed Brian Mac An Bhaird, who blames a lack of investment.

“Look at today, this is the middle of the summer... there are no people. Where are the tourists?” asked the 71-year-old retiree, noting that “you can’t even get a sandwich here”.

Paddy Malone, from the regional chamber of commerce, said Car-lingford was hit particularly hard by the Troubles, and has “been neglected” since peace was achieved.

He partly blames authorities south of the border, whom he said “feel that if they get people up to the border, half of the money will be spent on the other side”.

Malone believes the area has “huge potential if we can manage Brexit”, but admitted that uncertainty hung over the border region and the future of the ferry.

Denuclearisation is an essential requirement for global peace and security, but it doesn’t seem likely to

happen any time soon.Global efforts, including interna-

tional treaties such as the Non-Prolif-eration Treaty (NPT), have failed not only to lead to a drastic reduction in the number of nuclear weapons but also to stop proliferation.

The recent statements and actions of US President Donald Trump have contributed to this reality.

In his first official phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump called the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) signed less than a decade ago a “bad deal”, provoking speculation on whether he intended to cancel it. Then, in Feb-ruary this year, his administration announced that it was going to allocate $11bln in the 2019 budget to modernise the US nuclear arsenal.

In May, after months of threats and hostility, Trump decided to pull out of the JCPOA - Joint Comprehensive Plan

of Action - a non-proliferation agreement concluded with Iran, despite the protests of his European allies.

Despite his questionable com-mitment to non-proliferation, in June, the US president embarked on a long process to negotiate the denucleari-sation of North Korea. He met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Sin-gapore and, of course, did not hesitate to make grand declarations and take credit for an historic “breakthrough”.

But does he really think that North Korea did not watch closely what hap-pened with Iran? And does he expect Pyongyang to actually trust him, given the track record of his and previous US administrations?

A glance at so-called denucleari-sation efforts reveals that the US has long been exercising double standards when dealing with different states. Otherwise, why would Washington not ask Israel to open its clandestine nuclear weapons programme to inter-national monitoring and inspection?

Israel is not even a signatory to the NPT or any other international agreement or pact that brings its nuclear under-takings under scrutiny. It has always been at war with its neighbours and has been mas-sacring Palestinians for seven decades now. It is currently believed to be in possession of several hundred nuclear warheads.

Iran, on the other hand, has not attacked another country in its recent history and has been under a record number of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

While the US has shown an encouraging silence on Israel’s military nuclear capability that has, one way or another, persuaded the country to con-tinue developing its atomic arsenal, it has put intensifying pressures on Tehran over alleged nuclear prolifer-ation plans.

When Iran finally negotiated a deal to lift some of the pressure, the US found it hard to keep to its commit-ments. Despite claims that Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, was seeking a win-win deal for all parties involved, Washington started violating the agreement right from the start.

First, in December 2015, just months after the signing of the JCPOA, Obama started implementing a law which prevented foreign citizens who have been to Iran from entering the US without a visa, which went against the principles of the deal. Then, a year later, Obama allowed the Iran Sanction Act to become a law - again in flagrant violation of the JCPOA’s provisions.

Then Washington’s closest ally, the UK, also reneged on its promise and obligation to supply yellowcake to Iran.

That Trump eventually discarded an internationally-endorsed nuclear deal without the other side committing a single violation perhaps should not come as a surprise to us.

After all, Trump is a true manifes-tation of Washington’s maximalist approach to foreign policy - in both relations and deals - which entails receiving all the benefits and granting no concessions.

A brief look at his administration’s list of 12 demands from Tehran, issued after withdrawing from the nuclear deal, shows his appetite for cata-strophic success in diplomacy.

This has been undoubtedly taken into consideration by the North Koreans.

Trump’s whimsical decision to kill the Iran nuclear deal adds to a long list of cases which show that international respect for non-proliferation as a crucial requirement for the promotion of global peace and stability fails to cross the boundary of words at UN-related summits or scholarly events.

In this sense, it is important to note that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un is stepping into protracted talks with the US after having witnessed its dis-loyalty to a hard-negotiated nuclear deal with Iran.

There might have been big words and promises made at the Singapore meeting, but Kim is not naive. Undoubtedly, it is clear to him that the US - like other nuclear powers - pushes for denuclearisation and non-proliferation in order to wear out its perceived adversaries and not because its leadership is truly committed to achieving a nuclear-free world.

n fact, North Korea itself has a long history of being let down by successive US administrations - most recently by the Clinton administration and its

Malone believes

the area has “huge

potential if we can

manage Brexit”,

but admitted that

uncertainty hung

over the border

region and the

future of the ferry.

six-party talks that amounted to nothing in the end.

By cancelling war games with South Korea, Trump is perhaps hoping that Pyongyang will recip-rocate with some major con-cession. But confidence-building doesn’t happen with a single gesture and a Trump-style charm offensive.

US foreign policy is seriously lacking in trustworthiness and credibility on the international scene and Trump is the last person in the world that can fix that.

Kim knows, probably better than anyone else, that once he drops his trump card, he will be left with no other means to prevent the US from pursuing regime change in his country.

The truth is, the White House and the Pentagon have never dropped their commitment to the Paul Wolfowitz Doctrine. Con-tainment followed by bullying and pressure through sanctions, threats and excessive use of force to undermine so-called rogue states and eventually enforce regime change in them has always been the main, or rather, the only agenda of successive US administrations.

Holding a deterrent force is the only means to resist US plots and hostile agendas based on its pro-found belief in the “rule of the jungle”.

And if nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles are your only deterrent, you would be a fool to give it up for a dubious deal, especially if the other side is as untrustworthy as Washington.

And Kim Jong-un probably knows this all too well.

10 MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018ASIA / EUROPE

Singapore spent $12m on US-North Korea summit AFP

SINGAPORE: Singapore said yesterday it spent Sg$16.3m ($12m) on the historic US-North Korea summit, adding it was less than initially anticipated after some in the city-state complained about the high cost.

US President Donald Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong-Un met in Singapore on June 12 for talks aimed at ending a tense nuclear standoff.

The meeting was the cul-mination of a rapid detente between Pyongyang and Wash-ington and saw Kim commit to working towards denucleari-sation, although critics noted the summit agreement was vague and non-binding.

Singapore, an affluent financial hub, was seen as a good choice for the summit due to its warm ties with both the US and North Korea, and rep-utation for strict order.

But some Singaporeans thought welcoming the mer-curial leaders was more an annoyance than an honour, particularly when Prime Min-ister Lee Hsien Loong estimated the tiny state would have to shell out Sg$20m ($14.7m) to host the meeting.

However in the end, the cost incurred by the gov-ernment was about Sg$16.3m, the biggest part of which was

spent on security, said a Min-istry of Foreign Affairs spokesman in a statement.

It noted that Singapore had “supported the international efforts to achieve peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula”.

Tightly-controlled Sin-gapore rolled out a massive security operation for the meeting, deploying thousands of police, setting up road-blocks and banning flares and loud-hailers near summit venues to prevent protests.

As well as the security oper-ation, the Singapore gov-ernment footed the bill for the delegation from the sanctions-hit North, including Kim’s stay at the luxury St Regis hotel, according to the BBC.

They would have also had to pay a substantial amount for facilities for the huge number of journalists that covered the summit.

Indonesia identifies location of sunken ferryREUTERS

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s search and rescue team has located the sunken ferry in Sumatra’s Lake Toba, an official said yesterday, after the vessel sank in a bad weather nearly a week ago with almost 200 people on board.

The hydrographic survey “identified” the ferry 450 metres (1,476 feet) deep in the water, not far from where it sank on Monday, said Nanang Henky Suharto, an Executive Director at PT Mahakarya Geo Survey, a firm involved in the search.

“We have found the sus-pected position”, Suharto said after the survey located a structure underwater similar to the build of the boat.

Suharto added that further investigation by deploying underwater drones will be required to confirm the findings.

“Due to the depth, divers cannot be deployed,” he said. Divers, going down a maximum 40 metres, could do little in the volcanic lake that has never been properly surveyed.

In 2014, an AirAsia flight carrying 162 people crashed in

the Java Sea. But the plane was in water only about 50 metres deep and was found within days.

Three people have been confirmed dead and 18 people were rescued after the 15-tonne wooden boat went down in Indonesia’s deadliest ferry dis-aster for nearly a decade.

Some 192 people are missing, most believed to be trapped inside the boat as it slipped beneath the waves. An official with search and rescue agency (Basarnas) said raising the ship would be required to recover the bodies.

A search and rescue helicopter taking part in the search for a ferry that sank earlier this week in Lake Toba at Tigaras port, Simalungun, North Sumatra, Indonesia.

Singapore, an

affluent financial hub,

was seen as a good

choice for the summit

due to its warm ties

with both the US and

North Korea, and

reputation for strict

order.

AP

BANGKOK: Thailand’s capital has hosted the Indian film industry’s biggest annual event, with awards given to top Bollywood actors and movies, and dazzling performances by Indian artists.

The International Indian Film Academy Awards has been held in cities around the world since its inception in

2000 to celebrate the Hindi-language film industry globally.

This year’s three-day extravaganza, which ran on Friday through Sunday in Bangkok, witnessed the star-studded presentation of awards to Bollywood’s out-standing films and performers of 2017. Past editions of the IIFA Awards were held in

places including New York, Toronto, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Dubai.

The highly acclaimed actress Rekha was among the participants this year. The 64-year-old star is known as Bollywood’s timeless beauty and has acted in more than 180 films in a career spanning over 50 years.

Bangkok hosts Indian film industry’s biggest annual event

Bollywood performers present an opening number during the IIFA Awards of the 19th International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) festival at the Siam Niramit Theatre in Bangkok, yesterday.

Migration fight erodes support for German conservativesREUTERS

BERLIN: Divisions in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc have weakened public support for her “grand coalition” and pushed the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to its highest ratings, a poll published yesterday showed.

The poll conducted by Emnid for the Bild am Sonntag news-paper showed Merkel’s

conservative bloc at 31 percent, down two percentage points from the previous poll.

Merkel’s conservatives are embroiled in an internal dispute over whether to turn back migrants at the German border who have registered elsewhere in the European Union.

The issue has divided the longtime conservative allies and poses the most serious challenge yet to Merkel’s leadership, raising questions about a possible collapse

of her right-centre coalition a little more than 100 days after it took office.

Interior Minister Horst See-hofer, leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), pre-paring for regional elections in Bavaria in October, has threatened to defy Merkel’s wishes and order police to turn back asylum seekers unless she secures a broader EU deal on distributing migrants more evenly.

The centre-left Social

Democrats, junior partner in the ruling coalition, remained unchanged at 18 percent in the new poll.

The far-right AfD, by contrast, gained one percentage point to poll at 16 percent, its highest rating in an Emnid poll, the newspaper said.

Boris Pistorius, Interior Min-ister of the northern state of Lower Saxony, accused the Bavarian con-servatives of exaggerating the extent of the migration problems

and adopting AfD campaign slogans ahead of the Bavarian regional election.

“We don’t have a mass stampede at the border at the moment,” the Social Democratic (SPD) politician told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. “Copying AfD slogans will only strengthen the right-wing populists.” Markus Soeder, a top CSU leader and Bavaria’s premier, plans to carry out the electoral campaign in Bavaria without involving Merkel,

a first in the 70-year history of the CSU, according to the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

Soeder told hundreds of sup-porters at a political event yes-terday that his party wanted a complete shift in Germany’s migraiton policies, including better border protections.

Emnid asked 2,336 people between June 14-20 which party they would support if a national election occurred the following Sunday.

Russia to extradite Brazilian robbery suspectREUTERS

MOSCOW: A Brazilian man detained at a World Cup match will be held in Russia before his extradition to face charges of robbing post offices in Brazil, a Russian court ruled yesterday.

Rodrigo Denardi Vicentini was picked up on an interna-tional arrest warrant after watching his country beat Costa Rica 2-0 in St Petersburg on Friday. He is wanted back home for a series of gang robberies tar-geting post offices last year, according to local Russian court documents.

St Petersburg’s Petrograd district court said it would now hold Vicentini for up to two months as part of the extradition request.

“(He) explained to the court that he was not guilty of anything, that the police were treating him well, asked to be let go, insisted he knew nothing about the charges and that probably everything that had happened was a mistake,” the court said in a statement.

Russian online news outlet Fontanka earlier reported that Vicentini had been identified at the match by Interpol, who worked with Russian and Brazilian police to single him out in the crowd.

Police chose to wait until after the game to detain him, Fontanka reported, so as not to alarm or aggravate other fans in the stands.

Top Merkel’s aide rejects conservative critique of euro reformsREUTERS

BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s agreement with French President Emmanuel Macron on euro zone reforms does not violate the coalition agreement, as some Bavarian conservatives have claimed, a top aide to the German leader said.

Chancellery Minister Helge Braun underscored Germany’s determination to maintain control and avoid turning the euro zone into a “debt union” in a letter to lawmakers from the parties in the ruling “grand coalition.” Merkel, already locked in an escalating showdown with allies in the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) over migration, has come under additional fire from CSU leader Horst Seehofer for not coordinating her euro zone agreement with his party.

In the June 22 letter, Braun said Merkel’s agreement to form a euro zone budget was in line with budgetary provi-sions included in the German coalition agreement signed in February.

“Liability and control, soli-darity and responsibility” will remain key precepts for the

euro zone, Braun told law-makers in the letter, ahead of meeting of the coalition parties tomorrow.

Braun said former Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had negotiated a road map for a European banking union in June 2016 that requires banks to reduce the risks on their balance sheets before any broader European system was put in place. “On the basis of this guideline, we have now agreed with France to continue working to reduce risks,” he said.

Only when these efforts were deemed sufficient would a credit line be implemented for the European Stability Mech-anism that could be used by the European resolution fund, he said.

Braun said Germany had prevailed in its negotiations with France to ensure that aid to euro zone states should only be possible under strict condi-tions, and that the German par-liament would continue to par-ticipate in the process.

“Every member state remains responsible for its public finances and the nec-essary reforms for growth and competitiveness,” Braun wrote.

AP

BERLIN: Twenty-five people were injured, four of them severely, when an explosion destroyed an apartment building in the western German city of Wuppertal, police said yesterday.

Police said the explosion rocked the several-storey building shortly before mid-night on Saturday with a large bang, scaring people in sur-rounding homes so much they ran out into the street in a panic. The detonation was so severe it destroyed the building’s attic and the top three floors, the German news agency dpa reported.

Fire then broke out in several different parts of the apartment building and fire-fighters had trouble dousing the flames because parts of the building kept collapsing. They were able to rescue four severely injured from inside the building and sent them to the hospital. Another 21 people were slightly injured and treated by emergency staff at the scene.

Police said they were in the dark about the cause of the explosion, dpa reported.

25 injured in building explosion in Germany

11MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018 EUROPE

EU leaders back migrant reception centres in N Africa, Balkans AP

BRUSSELS: The idea of screening Europe-bound asylum-seekers in North Africa and the Balkans gained support from several European Union leaders yesterday as tensions over how best to handle new arrivals threatened to undermine the bloc’s unity.

At emergency talks in Brussels, a group of 16 countries led by France and Germany were thrashing out who should take responsibility for the thousands of migrants landing primarily in Italy, Greece and Spain, how long they should take care of them and how much their European partners should do to help out.

Failure to agree on how to deal with the challenge of migration threatens the EU’s border-free travel area, one of the biggest accomplishments in the bloc’s 60-year history.

The number of people arriving in Europe has dropped significantly this year — the UN’s refugee agency forecasts around 80,000 people will enter by sea in 2018 if current trends continue - but the EU’s political turmoil o v e r t h e t o p i c

has soared. Anti-migrant parties - and governments in Hungary and Italy - have been fomenting public fears of foreigners and have won support doing so.

Encouraged by a deal with Turkey that has slashed migrant arrivals from there by 97 percent since 2015 - when hundreds of thousands of people entered, mostly migrants fleeing war in Syria and Iraq - the 28-nation EU is ready to greenlight plans to set up screening centres in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Niger and Tunisia.

Plans to set up migrant reception centres in Albania are also under discussion.

French President Emmanuel Macron said “the method that we are going to adopt” would involve “working together vis a vis the countries of transit and origin outside the European Union.” He mentioned Libya - the main jumping off point for countries bound for Europe - other African

countries and the Balkans.Noting that migrant arrivals

have dropped significantly, Macron said: “it’s a political crisis that Europe and the European Union is mostly living today.”

The prime ministers of Denmark, Belgium and Luxem-bourg also backed the idea of outsourcing the effort to tame migration, although they empha-sized the need to respect inter-national law.

The International Organi-sation for Migration and the UNHCR are cautious about setting up “hotspots” outside of Europe to filter people fleeing violence at home from those trying to get to the continent to improve their lives economically. No country has so far agreed to host any screening centres, according to the EU’s top migration official.

It’s also unclear how much the effort would cost, but the EU-Turkey deal has so far cost more than ¤3bn ($3.5bn).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is battling a domestic political crisis with her coalition partners over migration, played down hopes that a full EU summit starting on Thursday will

clinch any comprehensive agreement on how to deal with migration.

Merkel instead is pushing for

bilateral and trilateral deals to cope with short-term migration pressures. EU nations, Merkel said, have to see “how can we

help each other without always having to wait for all 28, but by thinking what’s important to whom.”

UK euro-sceptics urge PM May to prepare for ‘no deal’ BrexitAP

LONDON: Pro-Brexit politicians and business figures have urged British Prime Minister Theresa May to be ready to walk away from the European Union without a trade agreement, despite warnings from major manufacturers that a “no deal” Brexit would be an economic disaster.

In an open letter, 60 law-makers, economists and business chiefs accused the EU of being “intransigent” in divorce talks and said Britain should threaten to withhold the £39bn ($52bn) divorce bill it has already agreed to pay.

The letter released yes-terday by Economists for Free Trade was signed by prominent supporters of a “hard Brexit,” including ex-U.K. Treasury chief Nigel Lawson, Conservative lawmakers John Redwood and Peter Bone, and Tim Martin, chairman of the Wetherspoons pub chain.

They urged UK authorities “to accelerate their preparations for ‘no deal’ and a move to a World Trade Deal under WTO rules.”

That would mean tariffs and other trade barriers between Britain and the EU, and many businesses say it would severely harm the UK economy. Airbus, Siemens and BMW have all warned recently that leaving the EU without a free-trade deal would hurt British businesses and cost jobs. Airbus alone employs nearly 14,000 workers in the UK.

Health Secretary Jeremy

Hunt said the warnings from businesses were “inappropriate” and undermined chances of getting a “clean Brexit.” “The more that we undermine Theresa May, the more likely we are to end up with ‘a fudge,’ which would be an absolute dis-aster for everyone,” he told the BBC.

May’s Conservative gov-ernment is divided between Brexit-backing ministers calling for a clean break so that Britain can strike new trade deals around the world, and those

who want to stay closely aligned to the EU, Britain’s biggest trading partner.

Hunt urged people to unite behind the prime minister, saying she would mix “cautious pragmatism” with a determi-nation to fulfil voters’ decision to leave the EU.

On Saturday, however, tens of thousands of anti-Brexit pro-testers marched in London to demand a new referendum on leaving the EU as Britain marked the second anniversary of its 2016 vote to quit the bloc.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) is welcomed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker ahead of a summit at EU headquarters in Brussels, yesterday.

EU supporters, calling on the government to give Britons a vote on the final Brexit deal, carry an effigy of Britain’s Prime Minister, Theresa May, as they participate in the ‘People’s Vote’ march in central London, yesterday.

Spain committed to European migration solutionREUTERS

BARCELONA: Spain is committed to a joint European response to illegal migration, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a newspaper interview published yesterday, hours before EU leaders meet in Brussels for an informal summit on the issue.

Sanchez pushed migration up the agenda shortly after he took office earlier this month by accepting the Aquarius, an NGO boat carrying 629 migrants that was blocked from docking in Italy and Malta, sparking an international crisis over how the EU deals with illegal immigration.

“There cannot be a uni-lateral response. With the Aquarius we made a gesture of solidarity but a humanitarian crisis is one thing and migration policy another. And that migration policy must have a joint, European response,” Sanchez told El Pais.

The current crisis over migration policy can be traced, in part, back to a lack of European “solidarity” with countries such as Italy that have borne the brunt of illegal immi-gration, Sanchez said.

On Saturday, a day after the interview was conducted, Sanchez met his French coun-terpart Emmanuel Macron in Paris, where both leaders showed support for a plan to process asylum applicants in

closed centres on European soil.Sanchez also outlined his

legislative agenda in his first newspaper interview since taking office following a dra-matic ouster of conservative former PM Mariano Rajoy.

Sanchez, whose Socialists have only 84 seats in a 350-seat parliament and may struggle to overturn whole legislation passed by the previous gov-ernment, suggested reforming previous laws and introducing new legislation to protect vul-nerable workers.

In particular, he referred to workers in food delivery company Deliveroo and those in the so-called “gig economy”.

Spain would increase social security contributions to fund the struggling pension system, Sanchez said.

Among other policies dis-cussed were a proposal to introduce euthanasia by 2020, measures to tackle the gender pay gap and the removal of the remains of former dictator Francisco Franco from a Civil War memorial site near Madrid.

Sanchez, who is due to meet Catalan leader Quim Torra on July 9, said his administration would seek to reduce tensions with the restive region, fol-lowing a failed secession attempt last year. Sanchez said jailed separatist leaders cur-rently awaiting trial in Madrid on charges related to the failed breakaway would be moved to facilities in Catalonia.

Attack on Roma camp in Ukraine leaves one deadAFP

KIEV: Masked assailants have attacked a Roma camp in western Ukraine, killing one person and injuring four others including a child, police said yesterday.

The incident follows a series of attacks on Roma com-munities in Ukraine’s capital Kiev and in the cities of Lviv and Ternopil that have been condemned by rights groups.

A group of masked indi-viduals attacked the camp on the outskirts of Lviv late on Saturday with weapons including batons, police spokesman Yaroslav Trakalo

said by phone. A 24-year-old man died from stab wounds and four more people were hospitalised, including a 10-year-old Roma boy and a 30-year-old woman, the police spokesman said.

The boy has already been discharged from hospital.

Police said in a statement that they have already detained seven attackers who are aged 16 and 17 and a 20-year-old organiser and found the knife used in the killing.

It is not yet known whether the attackers are members of radical groups.

Police said they opened a

criminal case over the “delib-erate murder committed by a group of people”.

If convicted, the attackers could face up to 15 years in prison.

The head of Ukraine’s national police Sergiy Knyazev has said attacks on Roma people by radicals have become more frequent recently, the police statement said.

During an incident in Kiev in April a neo-Nazi group burnt down tents of a Roma com-munity and chased women and small children, throwing stones at them and setting off pepper spray.

Police said they had not opened a criminal probe because none of those attacked in Kiev had reported the crime, Ukrainian media reported.

A neo-Nazi group called C14 posted footage showing its members taking part in the Kiev assault on Facebook and promised more attacks.

In mid-June leading rights groups urged Ukraine to inves-tigate attacks and harassment against the Roma minority, slamming “an atmosphere of near total impunity” in the Western-backed nation.

In a joint letter to Kiev authorities, four groups including Human Rights Watch

and Amnesty International condemned what they said was a growing number of attacks by radicals.

“The authorities have so far failed... to respond to most incidents, which has created an atmosphere of near total impunity,” the groups said.

The letter said that several radical groups including C14 and Right Sector had been behind at least two dozen attacks or instances of har-assment this year.

The Council of Europe rights group estimates the number of Roma in Ukraine at some 260,000, out of a popu-lation of around 48.5 million.

Italy criticises Malta over migrant shipREUTERS

MILAN: Italy criticised Malta yesterday over its refusal to take in the Dutch-flagged MV Lifeline ahead of a meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels over the dispute on migration.

Italian Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli criticised Malta on his Facebook page, where he also posted a copy of an official note from Malta saying it would not intervene except to offer emergency services in a few cases.

Italy’s new populist gov-ernment has thrust migration back onto the European Union agenda and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has pledged to no longer let ships offload rescued migrants in the country.

Toninelli said the Lifeline, with over 230 migrants on board, was stationary in the SAR (Search and Rescue) waters off Malta, adding no other country was coordi-nating operations meaning Malta’s responsibilities were greater still.

Malta has previously said the country is not the com-petent authority because initial SAR operations were done by Libya and the ship breached obligations to oblige by Libyan instructions.

REUTERS

PRAGUE: Czech President Milos Zeman said yesterday he may appoint a new two-party cabinet tomorrow or Wednesday following eight months of political instability after last October’s election.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis, leader of the centrist ANO party, has negotiated a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats, and the path to forming a cabinet opened on Friday after a compromise on personnel.

Zeman told daily Blesk in an online interview that he saw no reason for delay after m e e t i n g m i n i s t e r i a l candidates.

The government would have just 93 seats in the 200-seat lower house of parliament.

Czech President may appoint new govt soon

Plans to set up

migrant reception

centres in Albania are

also under discussion.

12 MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018AMERICAS

Over 500 children ‘reunited’ after US border separationsAFP

WASHINGTON: More than 500 children separated from family members under the US “zero tolerance” immigration policy have been reunited, adminis-tration officials say, after confusion followed President Donald Trump’s sudden back-tracking on the practice.

Releasing its first official data since Trump on Wednesday ended the family separations —but without an immediate plan for putting parents and children back together — the Department of Homeland Security said the reunification process “is well coordinated.” It said 522 children separated as part of “zero tol-erance” have been reunited with their families, but another 2,053 separated minors remained in the care of the US Department of Health and Human Services as of Wednesday.

“The United States gov-ernment knows the location of all children in its custody and is working to reunite them with their families,” Homeland Security said in a statement late on Saturday.

Trying to stanch the flow of tens of thousands of migrants

from Central America and Mexico arriving at the southern border every month, Trump in early May had ordered that all adults crossing illegally would be arrested, and their children held separately as a result.

After images of children in chain-link enclosures sparked domestic and global outrage, Trump ended the separation practice but has continued his hardline talk on immigration.

He sees the issue as crucial ahead of midterm congressional elections in November.

“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Trump said yesterday on Twitter. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring

them back from where they came,” said Trump, suggesting they be handled without the due legal process guaranteed for “any person” by the US Constitution.

Nearly all of the arriving families have officially requested asylum. “Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order,” said Trump, who has repeatedly tried to link immigrants with crime.

Fleeing from impoverished Central America, the arrivals say they are seeking a better life and also a refuge from criminal gangs terrorising their region, which has one of the world’s highest murder rates.

Central American migrants deported from the US without their children have spoken of their anguish at seeing families split under the “zero tolerance” approach. Ever Sierra, deported after trying to enter the US, said he planned to try again in a few days. He arrived back in Hon-duras with his eight-month-old daughter’s shoes hanging from his backpack. She was being held in a detention center in McAllen, Texas, along with her mother.

Benjamin Raymundo, a 33-year-old deported back to Guatemala, told AFP he left his

home country in April with his son Roberto, aged five, but the pair were separated when immi-gration officers in California stopped them.

The boy was eventually placed in a relative’s custody.

“It’s a great sadness for me, as if I’ll never see my son again,” Raymondo lamented.

Trump’s former deputy national security advisor, Tom Bossert, said the past week had provided “terrible optics” for the

administration, and “almost from the outset we didn’t have the capacity to detain these parents and children, together or sepa-rately.” Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Bossert predicted that Trump’s executive order ending the family separations will not stand up in court because a judge had ruled in 2015 that even detaining parents and children together is “inhumane.” US law-makers yesterday spoke of the need for a longer-term solution.

But in a poisoned political climate, they have failed to advance either of two Repub-lican immigration bills in the House of Representatives, which the Republicans control along with the Senate.

A hardline proposal was defeated last week, as expected, and a vote on a “compromise” bill between the party’s hard-right and moderate factions has been pushed back, with signs it could not pass.

This file picture shows demonstrators listen to the cries of illegal immigrant children held in a US detention facility after being separated from their parents during a protest against the separation of immigrant families outside the White House in Washington.

DOJ gives Congress new documents on Russian probeAP

WASHINGTON: The Justice Department (DOJ) says it has given House Republicans new classified information related to the Russian investigation after lawmakers had threatened to hold officials in contempt of Congress or even impeach them.

A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan said yes-terday that the department has partially complied with sub-poenas from the House Intelli-gence and Judiciary committees after officials turned over more than a thousand new documents this week.

House Republicans had given the Justice Department and FBI a Friday deadline for all docu-ments, most of which are related to the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation and the handling

of its probe into Democrat Hillary Clinton’s emails. Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said the department asked for more time and they will get it - for now.

“Our efforts have resulted in the committees finally getting access to information that was sought months ago, but some important requests remain to be completed,” Strong said in a statement yesterday. “Additional time has been requested for the outstanding items, and based on our understanding of the process we believe that request is rea-sonable. We expect the department to meet its full obli-gat ions to the two committees.”

The efforts by the Justice Department over the last week to deliver documents to the House Republicans appear to

have at least temporarily dif-fused a monthslong standoff with Congress. Democrats have crit-icised the multiple document requests, charging that they are intended to discredit the department and distract from or even undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties and whether there was obstruction of justice.

In a letter sent to House Intell igence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., late on Friday, the Justice Department said it had that day provided a classified letter to his panel regarding whether the FBI used “confidential human sources” before it officially began its Russia investigation in 2016. Bolstered by President Donald Trump, Nunes has been pressing the department on an informant

who spoke to members of Trump’s campaign as the FBI began to explore the campaign’s ties to Russia. Trump has called the matter “spygate,” though multiple Republicans who have been briefed on the informant have downplayed i ts significance.

The Justice Department’s Acting Assistant Director of con-gressional affairs, Jill Tyson, said Nunes had also asked for tran-scripts of conversations between confidential human sources and Trump campaign officials. She said the department had referred that request to National Intelli-gence Director Dan Coats.

Tyson’s letter said the Department had also given Nunes materials related to the department’s guidelines under the Foreign Intelligence Surveil-lance Act. Republicans have for

months questioned whether the department abused that act when prosecutors and agents in 2016 applied for and received a secret warrant to monitor the communications of Trump cam-paign associate Carter Page.

The department is also working to provide outstanding documents related to former British spy Christopher Steele, Tyson said, and the dossier he compiled of anti-Trump research during the presidential cam-paign. Trump and congressional Republicans have charged that the research in the dossier, paid for by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Com-mittee, was used inappropriately to obtain the warrant on Page.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has backed the document requests, and he led a meeting last week.

Nicaragua clashes leave eight dead including a baby: Report AFP

MANAGUA: At least eight people including a baby were killed when pro-government forces clashed with opponents in Nica-ragua, according to a rights group.

Seven people were killed in the capital Managua and one in Masaya and a baby was among the dead, said Georgina Ruiz, an activist with the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH).

The rights group says more than 200 people have been killed in protests that started just over two months ago demanding Pres-ident Daniel Ortega step down.

Starting after midnight, police and paramilitary forces flooded six neighbourhoods in the east of Managua, as well as the National Autonomous University of Nica-ragua (UNAN) where scores of students are holed up. Among the dead were two students killed in the university area and two minors who died in Managua — a 17-year-old and a baby who was shot in the head.

The baby was killed when his mother was taking him to a babysitter. “He was killed by a police gunshot. I saw them. They were police,” the mother Kenia Navarrete told news channel Cien por Cien Noticias.

The government denied the

charge, saying criminals in the university area were to blame.

UNAN is one of several student protest camps in Managua. About 450 students have been living there under plastic tarp tents and in class buildings, surrounded by empty bottles, old food and used rounds from their homemade mortars. “Ortega’s government continues to repress and kill young people,” CENIDH said on Twitter. According to Alvaro Leiva, Sec-retary of the Nicaraguan

Pro-Human Rights Association, the attack against the university was intended “to plant terror in the population” ahead of a march planned for Saturday afternoon in memory of victims of the violence.

The organisers cancelled the march due to what they branded “indiscriminate” attacks by gov-ernment forces. The organising Civil Alliance opposition called for a 48-hour strike among social sectors and trade unions to press for Ortega’s departure.

A relative mourns for Teiler Lorio Navarrete, who was shot during clashes between anti-government protesters and supporters of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, in Managua, Nicaragua.

AP

MEXICO CITY: It was a signature achievement by the government that took over Mexico five years ago: educa-tional reforms aimed at improving schools, rooting out incompetent teachers and breaking the grip of unions on hiring and firing them.

Now the man favoured to win the presidency July 1 is vowing to scrap them and start over. The education reforms - including teacher testing and merit-based hiring — were hailed by many as a step toward raising student and teacher per-formance and criticised by others as failing to address the root problems of underfunded schools in poor rural hamlets. They still have not been fully implemented.

But leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who holds a commanding lead in polls, says at every opportunity that he will cancel them, then pull together teachers, parents and experts to reach a new con-sensus. Lopez Obrador would not be the first new president to put his own stamp on Mex-ico’s education policy and its

historically underperforming public schools.

A report published this month by the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue said that in Mexico and other Latin American countries, “edu-cation policy planning remains a primarily political activity, rather than one informed by long-term strategic thinking and clear vision based on tech-nical expertise.”

Mexican students score below average in language, math and science. Most who can afford to do so put their children in private schools.

In a statement this month, current Education Secretary Otto Granados Roldan said that the reforms should not be dis-carded because they were improving teacher quality and their impacts should be thor-oughly studied before making changes.

There is one clear political advantage to Lopez Obrador’s position. It might pacify the many teachers who were enraged by measures designed to professionalise them - though it risks alienating voters weary of the teachers’ unions’ disruptive protests.

Top Mexican presidential candidate vows to undo school reform

Two officers wounded in San Diego shoot-outAP

SAN DIEGO: A man opened fire on police and firefighters at a San Diego condominium, wounding two officers and sending bullets into nearby units before he was found dead, authorities said yesterday.

Police Chief David Nisleit said the two male officers were expected to recover, with one in serious condition and the other with less serious injuries, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

“It’s the worst call you can ever get,” Nisleit said. “When you get that call, your stomach just sinks, and you’re just hoping that nobody dies.” He didn’t release the names of the wounded officers, saying one of them has three years of experience on the force and the other has 18.

Three officers had responded to a report of a violent disturbance and knocked on the door. They got no response but smelled what they believed was smoke and called the fire department, police said.

They forced open the door, and “they were met by gunfire,” Nisleit said.

Two officers fired back in a gunbattle that sent bullets into nearby condos. Author-ities evacuated people from the complex and sent in a robot to check on the suspect, whose name wasn’t released.

Police found him dead, but it was not clear if he died in the shootout or killed himself. Nisleit said officers have been called to the condo in the past, but he did not elaborate. Matthew Bezrouch, who lives a few doors down, told the newspaper that he heard at least 20 rounds after officers tried to enter the condo. “It was fast,” Bezrouch said. “They were screaming, ‘Two officers down, bleeding!’ Megan Ashdown, 23, and her boyfriend, William Blood, 24, said they heard 15 or more shots as they watched TV.

“We got in bed, locked the door and turned out the lights,” Ashdown said. “We were too scared to look out the window.” Police later got the couple out.

“We cannot allow all

of these people to

invade our Country.

When somebody

comes in, we must

immediately, with no

Judges or Court Cases,

bring them back from

where they came,”

said Trump.

BUSINESSMonday 25 June 2018

PAGE | 15PAGE | 14Business continuity

meet to focus on risk management

PSE gets approval for short selling

Fitch Ratingsupgrades QIB’srating to stableTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Fitch Ratings has upgraded Qatar Islamic Bank’s (QIB), Qatar’s leading Islamic Bank, outlook to ‘stable’.

The action follows the revision of the Qatari sover-eign’s Outlook to Stable from Negative and affirmation of the country’s Long-Term IDR at ‘AA-’ and reflects Fitch’s view that Qatar has successfully managed the fallout from last year’s rupture of trade, financial and diplomatic relations.

Public sector liquidity injec-tions have stabilised the banking sector and stemmed the outflow of non-domestic funding. The fiscal deficit has narrowed sharply and we expect it to turn into a surplus in 2019. The economy has reconfigured its supply chains and continues to grow at a robust pace, the ratings agency noted.

The government has dem-onstrated a strong commitment to its banks and key public sector companies. The sover-eign’s capacity to support the banking system remains very strong owing to solid sovereign reserves and revenue, mostly from hydrocarbon production, despite lower oil prices.

Earlier this year, Fitch also affirmed QIB’s Long Term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at ‘A’. These ratings of QIB reflect its strong and well-established franchise in Qatar, with a market share of about 11 percent of total banking system

assets at end-2017. It also factors in adequate profitability, sound asset-quality metrics, satisfactory capital ratios and sufficient liquid assets.

“QIB’s business focus in the local market.. We were the first Islamic bank to enter the Qatari market and for more than 3 decades later, we’re still the largest,” said Bassel Gamal, Group Chief Executive Officer for QIB.

“Fitch ratings speak to the strength of Qatar’s economy and of the Islamic banking industry in the country. This latest rating affirms the Bank’s success in pursuing our long-term growth and performance objectives”.

Established in 1982, QIB was the first Islamic Bank in Qatar. Today, it is the second largest Bank, and largest Islamic bank in the country, with a market share above 10 percent in terms of total assets as of year-end 2017.

HSBC Qatar invests in ATM network upgradeTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: HSBC invested in upgrading its ATM network across the country as part of a drive to improve the service offering for customers using direct channels. All ATMs situated in the branches located across Salwa Road, City Center and the main office in Al Matar

street have also been upgraded with newer technologies. .

“Customers are increasingly transacting on direct channels rather than visiting a branch. Our upgraded ATM platform will enhance the customer expe-rience and will make it easier for customers to do multiple trans-actions on ATMs instead of vis-iting the branch for simple

requirements,” said Omar Al Ansari (pictured), Head of Dis-tribution, Retail Banking & Wealth Management.

The investment is part of a wider digitisation strategy at HSBC that aims to apply tech-nology and innovation to banking to make customers’ experiences simpler, better, faster and more secure.

JRE holds key to luxury London property investmentsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: JRE, a leading property service provider in Qatar, has signed a landmark partnership with luxury UK real estate developer Berkeley Group that presents property investors with a unique opportunity to signif-icantly enhance their overseas portfolios through direct access to some of the best properties available in London – consist-ently one of the world’s best performing real estate markets.

The partnership, a first-of-its-kind for Qatar, presents JRE clients and potential investors with exposure to 50 of Berkeley Group’s luxury property devel-opments throughout the British capital city, which has long been an attractive destination for Qataris.

With more than 40 years of high-end, sustainable property development across London and the South of England, Berkeley Group has properties stretching from Central London right across the Greater London area,

meaning JRE clients can select a particular location and receive fast, up-to-date information on opportunities in that area.

Under the terms of the unique partnership, JRE can facilitate interested clients with real-time information and prices on property in London, enabling investors to make quick, well-informed decisions.

As part of its comprehensive client servicing and dedication to offering end-to-end solutions, JRE will connect investors directly with UK tax advisers and property lawyers to ease the process, and support in financing facilities through local and inter-national banks.

“This landmark partnership is a sign of JRE’s rapidly growing reputation and standing inter-national property circles and is yet another example of our com-mitment to servicing our clients with full-spectrum real estate solutions and world-class investment opportunities with guaranteed returns,” Nasser Al- Ansari JRE Chairman said.

“Berkeley Group has been constructing luxury homes, com-munities and neighborhoods throughout London and the South of England for more than 40 years and we are confident of building a long and lasting part-nership with such a well-estab-lished brand in luxury property.”

Commenting on the part-nership, JRE Business Devel-opment Director Mohamed Ibrahim, said: Within our mission to service our clients with premium real estate solutions, we constantly search for new part-nerships and opportunities with established names in the global real estate sector. We recognized Berkeley’s exceptional reputation for luxury properties and their developments within London perfectly align with our client-first approach.”

JRE provides a full spectrum of real estate solutions across res-idential and commercial property sectors in Qatar, and offers premium investment in prime residential markets such as the UK, US and Turkey.

Qatar banks top in GCC real estate lendingSATISH KANADY THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Aggregate credit to the real estate sector disbursed by GCC banks in first quarter of 2018 grew by 3.2 percent on quarter-on-quarter (Q-o-Q) to reach $193.2bn. Qatari banks were the largest contributors in Q1-18, as $3.36bn of incremental credit was disbursed Q-o-Q, followed by Saudi Arabian banks ($1.47bn).

In terms of mortgage lending, value of mortgages disbursed in Dubai declined by 21 percent Q-o-Q to AED30.7bn, while the number of mortgages improved marginally by 1 percent over the period, according to KAMCO Research.

Overall, recorded real estate

sale transactions in the GCC (excluding Bahrain) in Q1- 18 declined Q-o-Q, as total value transacted declined by 37.3 percent to $21.5bn as compared to $34.2bn in Q4-17, according to KAMCO Research estimates. The number of transactions in the region fell by 11.3 percent over the same period to reach 126,854 transactions in Q1-18.

The drop in the region’s

transactions was mainly driven by Saudi Arabia, as transacted value fell by 50 percent Q-o-Q, while transacted value in Dubai

fell by 28 percent as compared to Q4- 17.

Kuwait and Oman were the only markets that witnessed

Q-o-Q growth in transactions in Q1-18.

On the market trends in Qatar, KAMCO analysts noted Residential related transactions contributed to 48 percent of the total number of transactions and 50.8 percent of the value trans-acted in Q1. Citing market data, they said, a flight to quality is evident in the residential market as tenants look to upgrade to better locations as rents have become more affordable. Resi-dential rents continued to decline in the first quarter as per ValuStrat as residential asking rents were down 3 percent on Q-o-Q basis. The fall in rentals is reportedly higher in secondary locations.

The sale transactions in Qatar were down in the first

quarter on quarter-on-quarter basis. Number of transactions in Q1-18 was down 20 percent to 984 transactions, while value transacted declined by 60 percent over the same period to QR4.4bn.

Real Estate equities & REITs in the GCC underperformed the broader market in YTD-18. The slowdown of demand in the sector affected listed equities’ prices, as the Thomson Reuters GCC RE index fell by over 17.7 percent YTD in 2018 as of May-18. Real estate indices in Saudi Arabia were the worst per-formers YTD, as the Real Estate Management & Development index and the REITS index within the country declined by 22.3 percent and 21.2 percent respec-tively YTD as of May-18.

Qatari banks were the

largest contributors

in Q1-18, as $3.36bn

of incremental

credit was disbursed

Q-o-Q, followed by

Saudi Arabian banks

($1.47bn).

Protectionism threatens global growth: BISAFP

GENEVA: A year of “vintage” economic growth could be undone by rising protec-tionism, the Bank of Interna-tional Settlements (BIS) said yesterday, as fears of an all-out global trade war ramp up.

The BIS, the central bank of central banks, credited “a decade of extraordinary mon-etary policy,” for leading the world out of the 2008 financial crisis. That culminated in 2017 with “a vintage year for growth with low inflation,” the BIS said in its Annual Economic Report, which also warned of possible trouble ahead.

“An escalation of protec-tionist measures... could trigger a fresh downturn,” the bank said.

BIS underscored that the consequences could be dev-astating if reciprocal protec-tionist measures undermine overall confidence in the “open multilateral trading system.”

14 MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018BUSINESS

Business continuity meet to focus on risk managementMOHAMMAD SHOEB THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The second edition of the Business Continuity and Resil-ience Conference (BCRC), which is to be held in Doha on November 19, will be discussing the importance of integrating risk management as part of the strategy of local companies.

The conference will give special focus on supply chain management, cyber security and government’s role in achieving the business continuity and resil-ience for Qatar.

The high-profile event will be held under the patronage of the Minister of Economy and Commerce, H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani,

The Conference is organised by Silah for Marketing and Exhi-bition with Qatari Businessmen Association as the Strategic Partner and Business Continuity Institute in UK and bci Qatar Forum as the Professional Devel-opment Partners. This is after the success of the first Conference “Business Continuity ... stability and achievements” which was held in December 2017.

The announcement was made at the press conference held on Sunday, June 24, 2018, attended by Abdullatif Ali Al Yafei, Chairman of Qatar Business Continuity Forum and

Conference President, as well as Salah Mohammed Al Jaidah and Saud Omar Al Mana, repre-senting the Qatari Businessmen Association (Strategic Partner).

“The first edition of the con-ference last year offered many Qatari companies to share their experience about how they managed to overcome the

impact of the blockade by having a proper risk management or business continuity management as part of the system of their organisations, and remained resilient and stable,” Al Yafei told The Peninsula on the sidelines of the press conference.

He added: “This year we will be discussing some of the

recommendations that came from the previous edition with special focus on supply chain management, cyber security and government’s role in achieving business continuity resilience for the whole country.”

He said that industry experts from different parts of the world, including the UK, will be

highlighting the importance of integrating risk management as part of the strategy of any organisation.

“We cannot have strategy without proper risk management and identifying different possible risk factors, such as natural calamity, cyber attack, explosion or any unprecedented scenarios, and have an alternative business plant to ensure uninterrupted supplies of goods and services,” noted Al Yafei.

He also noted that the second edition builds on the outcomes of the first conference, which adopted a participatory meth-odology by involving the attendant business continuity and resilience specialists in developing a number of recom-mendations in six important areas, namely SMEs, Cyber-security, networking, estab-lishing links among BCR

specialists, supply chain, and finally, the role of the govern-mental sector in supporting business continuity, disaster r e c o v e r y a n d c r i s i s management.

Through experiences that took place during the first con-ference, Al Yafei pointed out, it became evident that there is a need to integrate a capacity-building component in the Business Continuity and Resil-ience sector in Qatar focusing on establishing business community and resilience programmes as well as risk management plans, in addition to participants’ keenness to establish connec-tions and forge relationships among professionals.

The conference will also focus on integrating international best practices, providing prac-tical methods and an opportunity to benefit all participants.

Saud Omar Al Mana (centre), representing the Qatari Businessmen Association; Abdullatif Ali Al Yafei (left) Chairman of Qatar Business Continuity Forum and Conference President; and Salah Mohammad Al Jaidah, member of the Business Committee during a press conference announcing the second edition of BCRC in Doha yesterday. PIC: ABDUL BASIT/THE PENINSULA

Industry experts

from different parts

of the world will

be highlighting

the importance

of integrating risk

management as part

of the strategy of any

organisation, during

the conference.

The second

edition of BCRC

will be held in

Doha on

November 19

QATAR STOCK EXCHANGE

QE Index 9,005.34 0.93 %

QE Total Return Index 15,866.40 0.93 %

QE Al Rayan Islamic

Index - Price 2,195.39 0.47 %

QE Al Rayan Islamic Index 3,562.07 0.47 %

QE All Share Index 2,621.46 1.06 %

QE All Share Banks &

Financial Services 3,170.04 1.15 %

QE All Share Industrials 2,873.69 0.32 %

QE All Share Transportation 1,908.71 0.38 %

QE All Share Real Estate 1,594.41 1.52 %

QE All Share Insurance 3,108.61 1.31 %

QE All Share Telecoms 985.16 1.58 %

QE All Share Consumer

Goods & Services 6,009.77 1.77 %

QE INDICES SUMMARY QE MARKET SUMMARY COMPARISON WORLD STOCK INDICES

GOLD AND SILVER

24-06-2018Index 9,005.34 Change 82.82 % 0.93 YTD% 5.65 Volume 4,572,012 Value (QAR) 156,491,285.87 Trades 1,554 Up 27 | Down 15 | Unchanged 00

21-06-2018Index 8,922.52Change 40.67% 0.46YTD% 4.68Volume 4,965,548Value (QAR) 205,148,721.07Trades 3,248

EXCHANGE RATE

GOLD QR149.5385 per grammeSILVER QR1.9134 per gramme

Index Day’s Close Pt Chg % Chg Year High Year Low

All Ordinaries 6274.6 65.7 1.06 6256.5 5834

Cac 40 Index/D 5402.19 11.56 0.21 5657.44 5038.12

Dj Indu Average 24700.21 -287.26 -1.15 26616.71 21197.08

Hang Seng Inde/D 29696.17 228.02 0.77 33484.08 29129.26

Iseq Overall/D 7105.24 41.48 0.59 7257.41 6410.26

Kse 100 Inx/D 43002.83 -680.01 -1.56 47144.12 40169.62

S&P 500 Index/D 0 0 0 2872.87 2532.69

Currency Buying Selling

US$ QR 3.6305 QR 3.6500

UK QR 4.7726 QR 4.8404

Euro QR 4.1880 QR 4.2477

CA$ QR 2.7143 QR 2.7682

Swiss Fr QR 3.6323 QR 3.6833

Yen QR 0.03281 QR 0.03345

Aus$ QR 2.6674 QR 2.7195

Ind Re QR 0.0530 QR 0.0540

Pak Re QR 0.0296 QR 0.0304

Peso QR 0.0675 QR 0.0689

SL Re QR 0.0226 QR 0.0230

Taka QR 0.0425 QR 0.0437

Nep Re QR 0.0331 QR 0.0338

SA Rand QR 0.2639 QR 0.2691

15MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018 BUSINESS

China cuts some banks’ reserve

requirements to boost lendingREUTERS

BEIJING: China’s central bank said yesterday it would cut the amount of cash that some banks must hold as reserves by 50 basis points (bps), releasing $108bn in liquidity, to accelerate the pace of debt-for-equity swaps and spur lending to smaller firms.

The reserve reduction, the third by the central bank this year, had been widely antici-pated by investors amid con-cerns over market liquidity and a potential economic drag from a trade dispute with the United States.

But the 700 billion yuan ($107.65bn) in liquidity that the central bank said will result from the reduction in reserves was bigger than expected.

Expectations of a cut had risen after the State Council, or cabinet, said on Wednesday monetary policy tools including targeted cuts in banks’ reserve requirement ratios will be deployed to strengthen credit flows to small firms and keep economic growth in a rea-sonable range.

Economists are not ruling out further reserve requirement reductions for the rest of the year as borrowing costs rise due to Beijing’s clamp-down on lev-erage in the financial system, a campaign now in its third year, while uncertainty over Sino-US trade ties persists.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said yesterday that the latest targeted cut in some banks’ reserve requirement ratios (RRRs) - currently 16 percent for large banks and 14

percent for smaller banks - will take effect on July 5.

The PBOC said the cut will release about 500 billion yuan ($77bn) for the country’s five large state banks and 12 national joint-stock commercial banks. Lenders are encouraged to use the money to conduct debt-for-equity swaps.

China’s policymakers have been pushing for debt-for-equity swaps since late 2016 to ease pressure on firms strug-gling with their debts.

The country’s top banks, controlled by the government, have rushed to sign deals with state-owned enterprises to ease their debt burden and give them time to turn around their business and improve their creditworthiness.

The latest RRR cuts will also release about 200 billion yuan in funding for mid-sized and small banks to increase lending to credit-strapped small busi-nesses, the PBOC said.

The combined 700 billion yuan liquidity injection exceeded market expectations of 400 billion yuan. In the PBOC’s last targeted RRR cut in April, 400 billion yuan of net liquidity was released.

The central bank said yes-terday it will keep monetary policy prudent and neutral.

Yesterday’s announcement

followed the worst weekly loss in the Chinese stock market since early February as fears of a full-blown trade war with the United States weighed.

The Chinese yuan on Friday also fell to its lowest versus the dollar in more than five months, though it has remained firm against a basket of trading partners’ currencies, and a sharp depreciation is not in the cards.

The latest RRR cut is set to take effect a day before the United States and China are expected to begin collecting increased tariffs on respective lists of goods.

Fears of a full-scale trade war with Washington have mag-nified concerns about the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy, following weaker-than-expected Chinese growth data for May and as Bei-jing’s financial regulatory crackdown starts to weigh on business activity.

Net exports overall were already a drag on growth in the first quarter after giving an added boost to the Chinese economy last year, highlighting the need for sustained strength in domestic demand if signif-icant new US tariffs are imposed.

Beijing is also likely to back-track on efforts to reduce its reliance on debt if the dispute escalates into an all-out trade war, some economists say.

The weighted average lending rate for non-financial firms, a key indicator reflecting corporate funding costs, rose 22 basis points in the first quarter to 5.96 percent, PBOC data showed. That compared with a total of 47 basis points in 2017.

UK ministers take aim at business over Brexit warningsREUTERS

LONDON: The British government and business leaders clashed in a deepening row over Brexit yesterday after a senior minister accused companies of issuing “completely inappropriate” threats and undermining the prime minister.

Aircraft manufacturer Airbus last week issued its strongest warning over the impact of Britain’s departure from the European Union, saying a withdrawal without a deal would force it to recon-sider its long-term position and put thousands of British jobs at risk.

Other European companies with major operations in Britain have also started to speak out two years on from the Brexit vote, voicing concerns over a lack of clarity on the terms of trade when Britain leaves next March.

“It was completely inappro-priate for businesses to be making these kinds of threats for one very simple reason - we are in an absolutely critical moment in the Brexit discus-sions and what that means is that we need to get behind (Prime Minister) Theresa May,” the health minister Jeremy Hunt told the BBC.

“The more that we undermine Theresa May the more likely we to end up with a fudge which will be absolute disaster for everyone,” he added.

German carmaker BMW

has warned the company would have to make contingency plans within months if the gov-ernment did not soon clarify its post-Brexit position and German industrial group Siemens said it urgently needs clarity on how its operations would have to be organised.

The leaders of five major business lobby groups also warned the prime minister over the weekend that the ongoing uncertainty about Brexit could cost the economy billions of pounds.

However, Paul Drechsler, the president of leading business lobby group the CBI, said Hunt’s criticisms were the “perfect strategy” for discour-aging investment and would make it harder to increase tax revenue to spend on matters such as healthcare.

“The perfect strategy for inhibiting businesses from investing in the UK,” Drechsler said. “This country needs min-isters to be enthusiastic cham-pions of business as found in most other countries.”

The ruling Conservatives have traditionally considered themselves the party of business, advocating free markets, lower taxes and political stability.

But as Britain’s politics become more polarised because of Brexit, many business leaders are feeling alienated by a party that is pushing through policies on trade and immigration that they say will damage their companies.

PSE gets approval for short sellingBLOOMBERG

MANILA: The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has secured approval from regu-lators to introduce short selling, giving investors a tool to hedge risk or boost profit.

“We are optimistic that this facility will lend support to our securities borrowing and lending program and help improve liquidity in our market,” the bourse’s Pres-ident and CEO Ramon Monzon (pictured) said.

Short-selling is the practice of wagering against securities by selling borrowed assets to bet on a decline, hoping to buy them back later and pocket the price difference.

The SEC approval comes at a time when local stocks are under pressure from an exodus of foreign funds and concerns about the nation’s accelerating inflation and peso depreciation against the dollar.

PSE Index closed 0.5 percent lower at 7,063.20 on Friday, the seventh straight day of declines.

The cut will release

about $77bn for the

country’s five large

state banks and 12

national joint-stock

commercial banks.

BREAK TIMEVILLAGGIO & CITY CENTERCROSSWORD NOVO Pearl Qatar

MALL

Note: Programme is subject to change without prior notice.

LANDMARK

ROXY

AL KHOR

ASIAN TOWN

Adrift (2D/Action) 10:00am, 12:00, 2:00, 4:00; 6:00, 8:00 & 10:00 & 11:59pm; Deadpool 2 (2D/Action) 11:00am, 12:30, 2:00, 3:00, 5:00, 8;00, 8:30pm; 9:00 & 11:00pm; The Incredibles 2 (2D/Ani-

mation) 10:00am, 12:30, 3:00, 5:30, 8:00 & 10:30pmLeilet Hana Wa Srour (Arabic) 10:00am, 12:00noon, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00, 10:00 & 11:59pm; Abla Tamtam (2D/Arabic) 10:00am, 2:00, 6;00 & 10:00pm; Hereditary (2D) 12:00, 3:15 & 8:30pmMaya: The Bee 2 (2D) 10:00am, 3:15 & 8:30pm Race 3 (2D/Hindi) 12:00, 5:15 & 10:30pm; Beirut Aka High Wire Act (2D) 10:00am, 12:15, 2:30, 4:45, 7:00, 9:15 & 11:30pm Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 10:00am, 12:00, 12:45, 3:30, 6:00, 6:15, 9:00, 11:45 & 11:59pm; The Incredibles (2D/IMAX) 10:00am & 6:005pm Deadpool 2 (2D/IMAX) 12:30 & 8:30pm Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (3D/IMAX /Action) 3:10, & 11:20pm

Abraham’s Santhathikal (2D/Malayalam) 2:30; 9:15 & 11:15pm; The

Incredibles 2 (2D/Animation) 2:00, 4:15, 6:30pm; Race 3 (Hindi)

2:15; 8:45 & 11:30pm; Jurrasic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action)

5:00, 9:15 & 11:30pm; Din Mohabbat In (2D/Urdu) 5:00pm; Abla

Tamtam (2D/Arabic) 7:30pm; Beirut (2D/Thriller) 7:15pm; Adrift

(2D/Action) 9:15 & 11:30pm

ROYAL PLAZA

Abraham’s Santhathikal (2D/Malayalam) 2:15, 5:00; 8:45 & 11:30pm; A Woman In The Time Of Blockage - Qatari (2D) 4:30 & 7:30p,; Race 3

(Hindi) 2:15; 8:45 & 11:00pm; The Incredibles 2 (2D/Animation) 2:30, 4:45 & 7:00pm; Maya: The Bee 2 (2D/Animation) 4:30pm; Jurrasic

World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 6:15 & 11:30pm; Abla Tamtam

(2D/Arabic) 7:30pm; Adrift (2D/Action) 9:15pm; Beirut (2D/Thriller) 9:30pm.

The Incredibles 2 (2D/Animation) 2:30; 5:00 & 7:15pm; Abraham’s San-

thathikal (2D/Malayalam) 2:00; 6:00 & 11:30pm; Race 3 (2D/Hindi)

2:00, 8:30 & 11:15pm; A Woman In The Time Of Blockage - Qatari (2D)

9:00pm; Maya: The Bee 2 (2D/Animation) 4:15pm; Adrift (2D/Action)

9:30pm; Jurrasic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 4:45 & 11:00pm; Beirut (2D/Thriller) 7:00pm; Leilet Hana Wa Srour (2D/Arabic) 9:00pm

Abraham’s Santhathikal (2D/Malayalam) 12:00, 12:30, 2:15, 3:15, 5:00, 5:45, 6:00, 7:45, 8:45, 10:30, 11:00, 11:30pm 1:15am, 1:45am & 2:00am; Race 3 (Hindi) 6:00 & 11:30pm, B-Tech (Malayalam) 3:15pm & 08:30pmTik Tik Tik (Tamil) 1:00, 3:30 & 9:00pm

Abraham’s Santhathikal (2D/Malayalam) 11:30am, 2:30; 5:30, 8:30 & 11:30pmRace 3 (Hindi) 11:30am, 5:15, & 11:00pmThe Incredibles 2 (2D/Animation) 10;30am, 3:45 & 6:15pmJurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 2:40, 7:30, 10:10, 7:00, 9:40; 10:30pm.Tik Tik Tik (Tamil) 12:30; 3:10; 5;50 & 9;00pm

Abraham’s Santhathikal (2D/Malayalam) 12:30, 3:30; 6:30 & 9:30pm; Adrift (2D/Action) 12:30; 5;30; 2:40 & 4:50pmThe Incredibles 2 (2D/Animation) 12:30, 3;00, 5:30 & 8:00pmJurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 10:30am, 4:30 & 10:10pm Tik Tik Tik (Tamil) 1:00, 3:30 & 9:00pm

Abrahaminte Santhathikal is a Indian Malayalam-language action crime thriller film directed by debutant Shaji Padoor and written by Haneef Adeni.

FLIK Mirqab

ABRAHAM’S SANTHATHIKAL

Adrift (2D/Action) 11:20 am; 07:05 pm; 12:20 amThe Incredibles 2 (2D/Animation) 12:10, 2:35, 4:40 & 6:05Dead Pool 2 (2D/Action 11:50am, 4:50, 6:45, 8:309:50 & 11:35pmMaya The Bee 11:20am, 1:10, 2:55 & 5:00pmJurrasic World: Fallen Kingdom (2D/Action) 1:05, 2:15, 3:35, 7:15, 9:05, 10:50pm & 12:15am

16 MONDAY 25 JUNE 2018MORNING BREAK

HIGH TIDE 01:30 – 16:15 LOW TIDE 08:45 – 22:30

Hot daytime with slight dust at places

daytime.

WEATHER TODAY

Courtesy: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum 33oC 43oC

FAJR

SHOROOK

03. 15 AM

04. 45 AM

11. 36 AM

02. 59 PM

06. 30 PM

08. 00 PM

ZUHR

ASR

MAGHRIB

ISHA

PRAYER TIMINGS Fan zone at Katara adds thrill to Drive-Thru FestivalAMNA PERVAIZ RAO THE PENINSULA

DOHA: An open-air fan zone facility located at Katara Cultural Village behind Katara Beach Club is pulling huge crowds to Drive-Thru Festival during match hours.

Featuring more than 40 food stalls and trucks at Drive-Thru Festival host hundreds of cars during live streaming of FIFA World Cup Russia 2018.

The stalls have been arranged in a circular manner making it easy for motorists to visit the stalls, order and have their food delivered right to them in their vehicles without leaving the comfort of their cars.

A giant screen has been installed at the far end of the venue where football matches are being shown live, while in the middle of the venue is a stage where Arabic music is played by a local Oud artistes.

The visitors enjoy their snacks and coffee at Katara while watching their favourite teams playing sensational football matches.

Abdul Rehman, an Egyptian res-ident at Katara told The Peninsula: “This concept is more attractive than other fan zones in Doha. Our kids enjoy

in the park while we take pleasure in watching match in car. We tune-in to radio channel and enjoy live com-mentary as well.”

“This concept of Drive-Thru Fes-tival makes it easy for us as parents. We can sit comfortably in our car, place an order and munch our snacks

in our comfort zones,” he added. Another visitor said that she was

enjoying the matches daily with her kids as she lived nearby. Sarah H. Frank, an Australian expatriate said: “I live in the Zigzag building nearby, it is a part of my routine to come to Katara for evening walks along my

kids. Now we have the facility of watching live matches here, we grab our picnic basket and come and enjoy fresh air and matches almost daily.”

There is a whole lot of food and beverages in wide varieties that can be purchased at the festival such as pizzas, sandwiches, shawarmas, cakes, wraps, noodles, pastries, artisanal, burgers, pancakes, cupcakes, muffins, fresh juices and shakes among others.

Several salesmen at different vendors claimed an increase in sales during World Cup matches live streaming. A waiter at Cup of Joe said: “During Ramadan, Drive-Thru Fes-tival was filled with hundreds of cars. Since World Cup started we have been witnessing double the crowd which we used to see earlier. Qatari cus-tomers love to watch matches in open-air environment.”

Famous restaurants in Katara have also participated in the festival offering their bestsellers. Whereas few cus-tomers come and enjoy their favourite brand coffee and sweet dishes.

A customer at Sky Coffee stall said: “Sky Coffee offers two types of drinks; hot and cold. We enjoy the cold selection during summers. Their Spanish latte is our favourite one.”

The open-air fan zone located at Katara Cultural Village behind Katara Beach Club, attracts huge crowds. PIC: AMNA PERVAIZ RAO / THE PENINSULA

A Facebook panel is seen during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, in Cannes.

As Facebook ages, teens look elsewhereAFP

SAN FRANCISCO: Manon, 17, has a Facebook account but to connect with her friends she turns to other social networks like Instagram or Snapchat. “I don’t use it to post status updates or personal information,” the San Francisco teen says.

Manon maintains her Facebook account to be able to stay in touch with the large number of users on the huge social network and as a “gateway” to log into other apps.

“But to communicate with my friends, it’s Snapchat,” the high schooler said.

“Everyone says Facebook is out of date. I think it’s because all the parents are on Facebook.” As Facebook has grown into a network of more than two billion people glo-bally it has lost its lustre for younger users who made up a core base.

While Facebook has become one of the world’s most valuable and powerful companies, it’s no longer seen as a cool destination for teens, who are turning to Snapchat and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

According to a Pew Research Center survey this year, 51 percent of US teens ages 13 to 17 use Facebook, compared with 72 percent for Instagram and 69 percent who are on Snapchat. The survey found 85

percent used the Google video sharing service YouTube.

The landscape has shifted since a 2014-15 Pew survey which found Facebook leading other social net-works with 71 percent of the teen segment.

“The social media environment among teens is quite different from what it was just three years ago,” said Pew researcher Monica Anderson.

“Back then, teens’ social media use mostly revolved around Facebook. Today, their habits revolve less around a single platform.” The breakup of teens and Facebook was occurring before the latest scandals which have hit Facebook over hijacked user data and propagation of misinformation.

According to a Forrester Research survey 34 percent of US online youth view Facebook “as a website for old people and parents.” “US online

youth regard Facebook as utility, while other networks that deliver niche value steal attention from Face-book’s broad platform,” said For-rester’s Anjali Lai in a research note. “Established social networks face an image problem.”

A separate report by the research firm eMarketer came to a similar con-clusion, estimating that Facebook would lose some two million US users under age 24 this year.

Facebook remains king of the social media space and is still growing, though more slowly than in past years. Its profit in the first quarter of 2018 jumped 63 percent from a year ago to $5bn, and total revenues increased 49 percent to $11.97bn. And the California company has been moving to become more diversified, with its “family” of apps that include Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, and virtual reality

gear from its Oculus division.To connect with younger audi-

ences, Facebook has launched a parentally controlled Messenger Kids app for those too young to have their own Facebook account, and recently expanded that to Peru and Canada.

Facebook is also moving to chal-lenge YouTube, and potentially other services like Netflix, with original video on its own platform and on Instagram, which now has one billion users. With 2.2 billion users, Facebook still has a big lead over Snapchat, with 191 million users at the end of March, and Twitter with 336 million.

“Snapchat has a lot of growing to do before it can really be a huge chal-lenger to Facebook,” said Debra Wil-liamson, social media analyst at eMarketer.

But the trends show services like Instagram and Snapchat — which has grown beyond its original offering of disappearing messages — have become the new, cool place for young smartphone users.

With Snapchat, “you can add ani-mation, special effects, that’s what’s interesting for my generation,” said 16-year-old Charlotte, another San Francisco high school student.

Manon said she also likes Instagram because it is “more about creativity, people who make music or photography can post what they do.”

QU Health students engage in IPE activityTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: A total of 148 students and 16 faculty from Qatar University (QU) Health (colleges of Health Sciences (CHS), Medicine (CMED), and Pharmacy (CPH)) recently participated in Inter-professional Education (IPE) activity on “Antimicrobial Stew-ardship”. Organised by QU Health Inter professional Education Committee (IPEC), the event aimed to introduce students to the concept of antimi-crobial stewardship.

The event’s program featured dis-cussions focused on the issue of anti-microbial resistance to highlight the ongoing problem of antibiotics no longer being active against certain infections. The theory and ideal model on an effective antimicrobial stew-ardship team were then summarised to show to students how different health care professionals can work together for a common goal.

This concept also got students thinking about teamwork before they were presented with a patient case. The main activity was then going through a patient case about a 51-year-old previously healthy male, who was admitted to the emergency department of Hamad General Hospital with fever,

chills, shortness of breath and pro-ductive cough. The patient was diag-nosed with pneumonia and the stu-dents had to follow him during his three-day admission in the hospital by sharing the different health care per-spective on the case and making a shared decision together.

QU Health IPEC Chair and CPH Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, Dr Alla El Awaisi, said: “We are proud of having another successful academic year for IPE with a total of seven IPE events related to the curricula engaging 831 students and over 100 facilitators and two extra curricula IPE event. I greatly appreciate the great support and commitment from IPEC members and all the facilitators who were and still instrumental to the program success and passionate to graduate health care students who are equipped with the skills and professional attitude and worked collaboratively to help advance clinical practice and patient care in the State of Qatar.”

CPH Assistant Professor and lead facilitator for the event, Dr Shane Pawluk, said: “The importance of proper antimicrobial use and stew-ardship IPE event was a collaborative endeavour achieved through the inter-professional work of several different

colleges and faculty within QU. Stu-dents gained an appreciation from their fellow colleagues that will no doubt have a positive impact on their careers as health care professionals in the future.”

Third-year Human Nutrition Student Shayma Al Bakri said: “This IPE activity was a very beneficial opportunity to work with students from other health care professions. It showed us how our future profession would be and that we need cooper-ation with each other in order to come up with the best appropriate treatment for patients.”

Second-year medical student Ali Al Maraghi said: “The IPE made me realize that each health care profes-sional is just another step towards a

more satisfied and healthier patient.”Third-year pharmacy student

Iqrah Qurishi said: “Without a health care team, we will not be able to target the bacterial defences and provide the best treatment given that our goal is the optimal treatment of the patient with the best use of available resources.”

Third-year biomedical student Maha Al Qeraiwi said: “The IPE activity was a good experience to meet other students from different fields who are interested in the same topic. This helped me in learning more about anti-biotic stewardship through case dis-cussion involving different profes-sional perspectives and using teamwork approach to solving clinical problems.”

The participants at the IPE event.

‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ feasts on $150m openingLOS ANGELES: Dinosaurs are ruling the box office again.

“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” topped estimates to devour $150m from 4,475 locations this weekend. While it fell short of its predecessors’ record-shattering $208.8m launch, the dinosaur sequel is off to a mighty start. “Fallen Kingdom” has already amassed $711.5m worldwide, including $561.5m overseas.

“Fallen Kingdom” easily lead the weekend as the lone wide release, though “Incredibles 2” enjoyed a heroic second weekend. The Disney Pixar sequel picked up another $80m, bringing its domestic total to $350.3m. The superhero tentpole, directed by Brad Bird, launched with $182.7m, making it the best opening for an animated feature and the eighth-biggest debut of all time.

“Incredibles 2” also earned $56.8m overseas, taking the international tally to $134.6m. With a global total of $485m, “Incredibles 2” has already surpassed the entire run of the original film, “The Incredibles.” “Ocean’s 8” has crossed a major milestone of its own — in its third weekend, the female-led spinoff hot the $100m mark in North America. The Warner Bros. film pocketed $11.6m.

Rounding out the top five is Ryan Reynolds’ “Deadpool 2” with $5.2m.