W W W . T E H R A N T I M E S . C O M I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

By Aria Moghanloo

16 Pages Price 10,000 Rials 38th year No.12894 Monday AUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 2017 Mordad 16, 1396 Dhi Al Qaeda 14, 1438

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Tehran metro among ITA Tunneling

Awards finalists TEHRAN —Tehran metro line 6 is among

the four finalists at International Tunneling and Underground Space Association (ITA) Tunneling Awards 2017 in the category of ‘major project of the year’.

Tehran metro line 6 is vying against three other major project of Confederation LRT Line in Canada, Delhi Metro Phase 3 Expansion of networks, and Qatar Rail Metro. The winner will receive a 500-mil-lion-euro award. Launched in 2015 by the International Tunneling and Underground Space Association, the first two editions of the ITA Tunneling Awards gathered more than 450 attendees and 200 candidacies.

A few months before the event, the judges have examined the submitted candidacies and selected a list of finalists for each of 9 categories.

The 17-strong expert judging panel, chaired by the ITA President Tarcisio Ce-lestino, has concluded its deliberation and based on the detailed evaluation, 30 en-tries have been chosen as finalists and will participate in the second evaluation stage to determine winners.

From November 13 to 16, the leading international specialists in tunneling indus-try will gather in Paris for the French Tunne-ling and Underground Space Association (AFTES) Congress and on November 15, a one-day event, is dedicated to the pres-entation of the finalists’ projects followed by a banquet and the award ceremony: the ITA Tunneling Awards.

S O C I E T Yd e s k

Syrian troops advance on Dayr al-Zawr after retaking city in HomsSyrian government forces have made “significant progress” in their latest push against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) terrorists in the northern city of Raqqah and are advancing eastwards to the mostly militant-held Dayr al-Zawr Province, a monitoring group says.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Sunday that the pro-Damascus troops were now a few kilometers from Dayr al-Zawr. “There is now just four kilometers between re-gime forces and the town of Madan, which is the last town controlled by ISIL in the Raqqah countryside,” it added.

ISIL controls most of oil-rich Dayr al-Zawr Province, but the terror outfit is under pressure from Syrian forces advancing from the west.

The Syrian soldiers control a pocket of the provincial capital, Dayr al-Zawr, which has been under siege by ISIL for two years.

Dayr al-Zawr is one of the few re-maining areas under the ISIL control as the terrorist group is losing ground in Raqqah, its de facto capital in Syria.

Some 600,000 people are estimat-ed to be living in the ISIL-held parts of the province.

Earlier this week, reports said that the terrorist group had ordered all men between the ages of 20 and 30 in Dayr al-Zawr to refer themselves to ISIL centers for the fight against ad-vancing Syrian forces.

“Anyone who fails to enlist within one week from this announcement will be forcibly de-ployed to the front lines,” the order read.

On Saturday, the Syrian forces managed to wrest control over al-Sukhnah, the last ISIL-held town in the Homs Province.

The recapture of the town opened another route for government troops to advance towards Dayr al-Zawr.

The SOHR said at least 64 ISIL ter-rorists were killed in clashes with the pro-Damascus forces and airstrikes across Syria’s Badia region on Saturday.

Over the past few months, Syrian army soldiers and allied fighters have made sweeping gains against Takfiri elements, which have in turn increased their acts of violence across the country.

(Source: SANA)

Rouhani inauguration shows Iranophilic has won over Iranophobia: Foreign Ministry official

TEHRAN — Irani-an Foreign Ministry

spokesman says President Rouhani’s magnificent inauguration reflected a worldwide trend toward Iranophilia as opposed to Iranophobia.

Rouhani was inaugurated as the 7th president of the Islamic Republic of Iran in a high-profile ceremony on Sat-urday. The ceremony was attended by some 1200 guests, including 700 sen-ior Iranian officials and 500 prominent officials from other countries.

In an editorial in the Shargh news-paper, Bahram Qassemi wrote that the huge turnout in the event proved that the project of Iranophobia has failed.

Iran bears the message of peace, friendship, security, development and prosperity for all nations across the globe, Qassemi said.

Iran would positively respond to any country who extends the hand of friend-ship, he noted in his commentary.

He also said Iran’s presidential elec-tion is a peerless process in the whole world, with three different messages.

“The first [message] is that the president is elected directly by the na-tion’s vote, which is a manifestation of democracy,” he said.

“The second is the endorsement of people’s vote by an Islamic leader, which shows the country’s Islamic nature. And the third is the swearing-in of the presi-dent before (diplomatic) representatives from scores of countries as well as the representatives of the nation (parliamen-tarians), the public opinion and interna-tional institutions, which is a sign that the world confirms and accepts the exist-ence of the Islamic Republic.”

Qassemi noted that with the high turnout, Tehran became the world’s capital of diplomacy and the focal point for the world at large.

“The world views the presidential election and the president-elect with respect and admiration.”

Facing a strong challenge from principlist Ebrahim Raisi at the May 19 presidential election, Rouhani ulti-mately managed to secure more than 23 million (57%) of the votes, winning the election in a landslide.

Keen on boosting bilateral trade and ties, In-dia and Iran have expressed commitment to operationalize the strategic Chabahar Port at the earliest that would contribute to bilateral and regional trade and economic develop-ment.

“Once Chabahar is operationalized, which we are hopeful to be in 12 to 18 months’ time, it will prove to be a gateway to golden opportunities to boost trade and business,” Indian Union Minister Nitin Gadkari told PTI.

Chabahar port, located in the energy-rich Persian Gulf nation’s southern coast, is easily accessed from India’s western coast, bypass-ing Pakistan.

“We are hopeful of ratification of Trilateral Transit and Transport Agreement by Iran and once approvals are given, the work will start,” Gadkari said.

The trilateral pact was inked during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Tehran in May 2016.

The pact envisages establishment of Tran-sit and Transport Corridor between India, Iran and Afghanistan using Chabahar Port as one of the regional hubs for sea transportation in Iran besides multi-modal transport of goods and passengers across the three nations.

As per an MOU signed between the two nations in May last year, India is to equip and operate two berths in Chabahar Port Phase-I with capital investment of $85.21 million.

(Source: PTI)

TEHRAN — A senior lecturer in international relations and Middle East politics says since Donald Trump “is unpredictable it is very hard to foresee” what policies Washington will adopt toward Qatar in the future.

Afshin Shahi, from the University of Brad-ford, says the Qatar crisis showed that “Trump administration is in disarray”.

On June 5 Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain closed land, sea and air routes to Qatar for what they called Doha’s support for extremism. The blockade took place a few days after Trump’s visit to Riyadh.

“In this crisis the U.S. was part of the prob-lem and not the solution,” Shahi tells the Teh-ran Times.

Following is the full text of the interview:

According to its manifest, the (Per-sian) Gulf Cooperation Council is tasked to hold a dispute resolution committee session when a crisis emerges, however until now the council has not held such a meeting to resolve the conflict between Qatar and its larger neighbors. Is it a sign of weakness in the council?

A: GCC as an organization does not have an ability to independently resolve the cur-rent crisis, because it does not function as a supranational entity which can overrule the decisions of its sovereign member states. Or-gans such as the Supreme Council, Ministeri-al Council and Secretariat General constitute the main governing mechanisms of this in-tergovernmental organization. The supreme council is the highest decision-making enti-

ty of the organization, which is made of the heads of the member states. Every state has one vote and decisions on fundamental is-sues need unanimous consent.

Therefore, in the current situation it is not easy to reach a unanimous agreement. Al-though Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain seem to be united against Qatar, both Ku-wait and Oman represent different positions. Even when you look at the history of the organization, it rarely played a meaningful mediating role. Often disputes among the member states have been resolved by per-sonal mediation and not institutional media-tion. For example in the previous GCC crisis in 2014, the Amir of Kuwait was the main force for reconciliation between Qatar and Saudi Arabia and allies. 1 3

India sees Iran’s Chabahar ‘a gateway to golden opportunities’

It’s very hard to foresee unpredictable Trump’s policy toward Qatar: expert

Jap

anTo

day

Japan marks 72nd anniversary of U.S. nuke

attackJapan has marked the 72nd anniversa-ry of the United States’ nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, expressing a desire to lead the world toward the abolition of atomic weapons.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended and spoke at an annual ceremony for the victims of the 1945 nuclear attack at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park near ground zero on Sunday.

He said Tokyo hoped to push for a world without nuclear weapons in a way that was acceptable to all countries.

See page 2

Iran dismisses Israeli claim on Intl. Informatics Olympiad

Croatia to become new buyer of Iranian petrochemicals

Saeid Alihosseini returns to weightlifting after eight years124 15

“Chronicle of a Passion” makes big success at Iran urban film festival 16

High-level meetings in Tehran

President Hassan Rouhani (R) shakes hands with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and Spanish Senate President Pío García-Escudero (L) pose for picture.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (R) in an appearance with Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani (R) meets with Syrian PM Imad Khamis.

Bradford University professor says Qatar crisis showed Trump administration is in ‘disarray’

By Negar Asadi

By Ali Kushki

AUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 2017

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

P O L I T I C S

By Mohammad Homaeifar

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

TEHRAN — Mostafa Mirsalim, who contest-ed the May 19 presidential election, has called on President Rouhani to form his new cabinet by choosing competent people from across the political spectrum.

Removing officials from office due to their political affiliations is a “fatal mistake”, Mirsalim

said in a TV interview on Saturday.Rouhani was sworn in for a second term

on Saturday afternoon after winning the pres-idential election in May. He has two weeks to introduce his cabinet picks to the parliament.

“The appointed ministers should be tol-erant of those executives and experts who are not from their own parties but are worthy

forces,” he noted.Mirsalim, who received 1.17% of the votes

in the election, hailed Rouhani for adopting a moderate path in his first term.

Comparing Rouhani to the late Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mirsalim ex-pressed hope that the re-elected president would persevere in his moderate approach

during the second term and appoint politi-cians from different political backgrounds.

He also suggested, “Those who think they have garnered votes for Rouhani, should let the president use all capacities available in the country.”

“We hope the president would not be pressured by them,” he added.

TEHRAN — Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani

said on Sunday that Tehran will continue supporting Syrian government and people until security prevails in the country.

Speaking in a meeting with Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis in Tehran, Shamkhani also highlighted the impor-tance of inter-Syrian dialogue to reach an agreement.

He noted, “The Western countries take suspicious actions in line with stabilizing terrorism and undermin-ing security in the region instead of fighting terrorist el-ements whose harmful consequences spread terrorism in the world.”

Peace and stability can be restored to the region if finan-cial and arms help to the terrorist is cut, added Shamkhani who was defense minister from 1997 to 2005.

He also described the bombardment of the Syrian

city of Raqqa by U.S. warplanes in which a large number of civilians were killed as “genocide” and a “clear violation of human rights”.

The U.S. and its allies have been bombarding what they call Daesh positions in Syria since September 2014.

According to reports, an airstrike by the U.S.-led coali-tion fighter jets on Saturday left over 40 civilians killed.

For his part, Khamis said a long-lasting peace and se-curity can be reached in Syria if some countries change their approach in supporting terrorism and start real fight against terrorists.

He went on to say that the Damascus government prioritizes political approach to end the long-running conflict in the country.

Khamis also praised Iran’s support for the Syrian government and people.

Larijani says Iran supports SyriansIn a separate meeting with Khamis, Iranian Majlis

Speaker Ali Larijani also said the Islamic Republic has supported and will continue to support the Syrian gov-ernment and people.

He also expressed hope that peace would be estab-lished in the region including Syria soon.

The Syrian prime minister said, “The U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia sowed seed of terrorism and created such a crisis. They seek to destabilize the region, but we will not let them reach their objectives.”

Khamis also said that Iran plays an “effective” role in establishing peace.

He expressed hope that Saudi Arabia would stop co-operating with the U.S. and the Zionist regime of Israel and help restore regional peace.

Mirsalim urges Rouhani to form inclusive cabinet

Iran says to continue backing Syria until security prevails

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Bitaraf likely to head Energy Ministry once more

TEHRAN — Habibollah Bitaraf has been settled as President Hassan

Rouhani’s choice for the post of energy minister, ISNA reported on Sunday.

The news agency quoted an informed source as saying Rouhani will propose Bitaraf for the position to the Majlis.

Bitaraf was energy minister for 8 years during the Mohammad Khatami presidency.

He is a University of Tehran alumnus. During his term as energy minister, many huge national projects such as numerous power plants and dam construction projects were launched.

MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Najafi submits plan as to-be Tehran mayor

TEHRAN — Mohammad Ali Najafi, who is widely expected to win the

post of Tehran mayor, has submitted his plans to new members of the Tehran City Council, a council member said on Sunday.

Speaking to ISNA, Ahmad Masjed Jamei said Najafi’s plan covers a working term of four years.

He said Najafi’s proposal has been titled “Tehran: City of Hope, Participation, and Prosperity”.

Najafi would replace Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who has been mayor for 12 years.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Commander: Iran’s behavior in Persian Gulf in accordance to international law

TEHRAN — The deputy military chief has said Iran would give a tough

response to any hostile move by foreign vessels in the Persian Gulf.

“Iran’s behavior in the Persian Gulf is fully professional and within the framework of international law,” Massoud Jazzayeri told reporters in Tehran on Sunday, Fars reported.

He stated if international law about the peaceful sail of oil tankers and ships are violated, Iranian forces will show response.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Iranian, Azeri clerics meet over common charter

TEHRAN — Senior clerics from Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan convened

a meeting in Tehran on Sunday, where they discussed shared concerns, hoping to arrive at a common charter for future cooperation.

The meeting was attended by Secretary of Proximity of Religions Council Ayatollah Mohsen Araki and Sheikholeslam Shakur Pashazadeh, head of Caucasia Muslims Bureau, Trend reported.

“The step that is being taken today is to initiate religious and social cooperation within the field of Islamic affinity,” Ayatollah Araki said during the meeting.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Navy to be delivered Fateh submarine

TEHRAN — The Iranian Defense Industries Organization is going to

deliver a batch of domestically made Fateh submarines to the Navy, according to Rear Admiral Amir Rastgari, commander of the organization.

Effort is being made to make the delivery fall within the Sacred Defense Week (late September), the official said on Sunday, the official website of the Defense Ministry reported.

He added technical intricacies of the submarine necessitate numerous tests before the delivery.

P O L I T I C Sd e s k

Iran amends gun law, Basij get right to bear

TEHRAN — Iran has made amendments to its gun laws and accordingly three

groups of people get the right to bear arms.The announcement was made on Sunday by Chief of

Police for Discipline Sirus Fathi, who said the first group that can carry guns according to the new amendment are “well-educated Basij members”, ISNA reported.

He added the other two groups that can carry guns are some retired members of armed forces and others who work in their free times in one of the two former organizations.

TEHRAN — On Sunday, senior Iranian officials held a series of meetings with a number of foreign officials who arrived in Tehran to attend the Saturday inau-guration ceremony of President Hassan Rouhani.

Some 1200 guests, including 700 senior Iranian officials and 500 prominent officials from other countries, participated in the in-auguration ceremony on Saturday.

The senior-level meetings in Tehran signify the important status of Iran in a region torn apart by conflicts. Also, par-ticipation of more than a hundred of po-litical figures, including European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, indicates the failure of attempts by cer-tain regional countries to isolate Iran.

Among those who held talks with Rouhani were Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, Lebanese Parliament Speaker with Nabih Berri, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, etc.

In the meeting with Sargsyan, Rou-hani said Iran seeks to expand relations with the neighboring counties, especially Armenia.

“There are many grounds for the two countries to expand ties in areas of econ-omy, culture, transportation, energy and tourism,” Rouhani stated.

He also highlighted the importance of close cooperation among regional countries in fighting terrorism and show-ing vigilance in face of dangers posed by

terrorism.For his part, Sargsyan called for ex-

pansion of relations in various spheres. ‘Celebration of democracy’

During the meeting with Berri, Rou-hani said that Iran and Lebanon have al-ways enjoyed friendly relations.

Berri also called the Rouhani inaugu-ration ceremony a “celebration of de-mocracy” in Iran.

‘Spain, Iran have contributed to global civilization’

Rouhani also told Spanish Senate President Pío García-Escudero that since the July 2015 nuclear agreement went into effect, the necessary conditions have been provided for expansion of econom-ic ties between Iran and European coun-

tries including Spain.“The European Union (EU) played an

effective role in the implementation of BARJAM (the Persian acronym for the nu-clear deal),” he noted, lauding EU’s stance against Washington’s lack of commitment to the nuclear deal.

The president went on to say that Teh-ran-Madrid ties has always been friendly, adding Iran and Spain, as two “friendly” countries, should receive the greatest benefits from the nuclear agreement which went into effect in January 2016.

Rouhani also called for further co-operation between the two countries in tourism industry.

In his turn, García-Escudero congrat-ulated Rouhani for his re-election, saying

the recent election in Iran showed the Iranians once again voted for their presi-dent’s “moderate” approach.

The Spanish official noted that Madrid supports the policies adopted by the Ira-nian administration, saying Spain regards Iran’s regional policies to the benefit of the region.

“Iran and Spain are two countries with ancient history which played effective and important roles in formation of glob-al civilization,” García-Escudero said.

Rouhani also met separately with Chair-man of Belarusian Council of the Republic Mikhail Myasnikovich; King Letsie III of Le-sotho; Prime Minister of Swaziland Barna-bas Sibusiso Dlamini; and President of the National Assembly of Serbia Maja Gojkovic.

First vice president Es’haq Jahangiri also held talks with his Ghanaian counter-part Mahamudu Bawumia. Jahangiri said there is a great potential for Tehran-Accra cooperation bilaterally, regionally and in-ternationally.

The vice president went on to say that Iran is among advanced countries in building dams, railways and highways.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met also separately with a number of visiting foreign officials in-cluding Moldavian President Igor Dodon; South African Minister of State Security David Mahlobo; Italian Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs Vincenzo Amen-dola; and Deputy Speaker of the Bosnian House of Peoples Safet Softic.

High-level meetings in Tehran

TEHRAN — Iran’s recently sworn-in President Hassan Rouhani plans to announce his cabinet on Tuesday, a senior parliamentarian said on Sunday.

“The president will introduce his proposed cabinet on Tuesday,” Behrouz Ne’mati, spokesman for the parliament presiding board, quoted Vice President Es’hagh Jahangiri as having told him on the sidelines of the swearing-in ceremony on Saturday.

Other top government posts are expected to be announced later.

Statutorily, Rouhani has to announce his 18 ministerial picks in a fortnight from inauguration day.

Parliamentary commissions have one week to debate each of the 18 nominees, having the right to summon them for possible disambiguation.

Rouhani will be allowed to defend his reportedly all-male roaster of ministers as well as his programs in two hours and a half followed by comments by opponents and proponents, each five.

In 2013, Rouhani’s nominees for science, education, and sports ministries were turned down by the mainly principlist parliament.

This is unlikely to be the case this time with a majority of representatives leaning toward Rouhani.

Constitutionally enshrined, the president has the authority to appoint acting ministers for a maximum of 90 days until vote of confidence is won for unfilled seats.

The announcement of ministerial shortlist will end weeks of speculation over the cabinet makeup, which will have the task of upgrading relations with the global community including neighboring countries, safeguarding the international nuclear deal with world powers, and shoring up economy.

Rouhani was particularly under pressure by women’s advocacy groups to add female leaders to his male-exclusive minister list.

While officials close to the president have not explicitly explained the absence of women in Rouhani’s cabinet, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said in an interview with ILNA that Rouhani’s staff had not been able to come up with a list of qualified women.

Last week, a group of women gathered in Tehran to protest the absence of women ministers, capping a weeklong social media campaign to raise awareness.

Also, Rouhani, who pledged to continue his policy of moderation during the second term, has been cautioned against including nominees having ties to opposition

leaders held under house arrest since 2009. “Rouhani should keep in mind that Fitnah (sedition) is

the establishment’s redline,” said Mohammad Nabi Habibi, secretary general of the Islamic Coalition Party.

“He shouldn’t give a share to seducers in his cabinet,” he added, a reference to those involved directly or indirectly in the 2009 protests.

In addition, reformist figures, who assert to have played a key role in Rouhani’s victory, have been fighting to add reformist leaders to Rouhani’s list.

Rasoul Montajebnia, a reformist and deputy chairman of the National Trust Party, has warned that absence of reformist figures in the cabinet will have consequences.

“Rouhani should come to us himself as it was the reformist movement that made Rouhani president in in 2013 and 2017.”

“It’s Rouhani’s duty to pay special attention to reformists.” In similar comments, Elaheh Koulaei, a university

professor and a senior member of the Supreme Reformist Council for Policy-making, said: “Reformists were strongly present (in the elections) and should receive an appropriate response in return.”

Only three of the ministers used to be in the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami survived into

Rouhani’s first cabinet. In what seemed to be an implicit reply to cabinet

rumors, Rouhani rejected any partisanship in naming ministerial picks, maintaining: “The approach and thinking that 24 million Iranians voted for should dominate the government.”

Nearly 24 million Iranians voted to keep Rouhani as president in the hard-fought May 19 election.

A cabinet shake-up, however, is unavoidable. While the Rouhani administration could close the nuclear dossier, smoldering for more than a decade, rein in soaring inflation rates, and post unprecedented economic growth, it is fighting to reduce the dole queue.

As well as economic concerns, the country’s relations with Arab states are at a low point. Tehran also frets about the fate of the nuclear deal under the unpredictable Trump administration.

Mohammad Nahavandian, the outgoing presidential chief of staff, predicted that 50 percent of the cabinet would be replaced.

Unconfirmed lists of appointees for top posts in the new administration show ministries of communication, education, economy, justice, defense, energy, science, and industry are to be led by new faces.

Rouhani’s travails to put a cabinet together

Alireza Avaei, Justice

Mohammad Shariatmadari, Trade Ali Khaki Sedigh, Science Abbas Salehi, Culture

Amir Hatami, Defense Ali Zarafshan, Education

Mohammad Nahavandian, Economy Mohammad Javad Azari, Communication Habibollah Bitaraf, Energy

Unconfirmed reports say the incoming Rouhani administration will include nine new ministers.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani (L) and President Hassan Rouhani

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has categorically ruled out the dismantling of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), commonly known as Hashd al-Sha’abi.

Abadi said that the PMU operated under the super-vision of the Iraqi government and religious leadership and was recognized by the state, making it clear that the group would not be dissolved.

Popular Mobilization Units is a group of some 40 militias, which are mainly Shia Muslim groups, but also including Sunni Muslim, Christian, and Izadi individu-als that was formed after the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) Takfiri terrorist group in Iraq in 2014. In the early days of ISIL’s terror campaign, the then-volunteer fighters played a major role in reinforcing the Iraqi army, which had suffered heavy setbacks in the face of lightening advances by the terrorists.

Last November, the Iraqi parliament recognized Popular Mobilization Units as an official force with sim-ilar rights as those of the regular army.

The Popular Mobilization Units forces are now ac-tively cooperating with Iraqi forces in operations to rid the whole country of ISIL elements.

A rare callMeantime, in a Friday address to his supporters in

the capital, Baghdad, Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had said Abadi had to either “integrate into the army the disciplined members” of the PMU or put them under severe government control.

Sadr had also called on Iraqi authorities to “seize the arsenal of all armed groups,” without elaborating further.

Those remarks came a few days after Sadr made a rare visit to Saudi Arabia, where he met with the House of Saud regime’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Sadr ’s office said in a statement later that the Riyadh had agreed to pay Baghdad $10 million as — accord-ing to the office — aid to rebuild Iraq. But it was not

clear whether Sadr and his associates had traveled to Saudi Arabia in a governmental capacity.

The New Arab news website also reported that the Saudis had also awarded special visas to the members of Sadr ’s office for this year ’s Hajj pilgrimage.

(Source: agencies)

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously imposed new sanc-tions on North Korea that could slash by a third the Asian state’s $3 billion annual export revenue over its two interconti-nental ballistic missile tests in July.

The United States-drafted resolution bans North Korean exports of coal, iron, ore, lead, and seafood. It also prohibits countries from increasing the current numbers of North Korean laborers work-ing abroad, bans new joint ventures with North Korea and any new investment in current joint ventures.

“We should not fool ourselves into thinking we have solved the problem. Not even close. The North Korean threat has not left us, it is rapidly growing more dan-gerous,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the council.

“Further action is required. The United States is taking and will continue to take prudent defensive measures to protect ourselves and our allies,” she said. Wash-ington would continue annual joint mil-itary exercises with South Korea, Haley said.

North Korea has accused the United States and South Korea of escalating ten-sions by conducting military drills.

China and Russia slammed U.S. de-ployment of the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) anti-missile de-fense system in South Korea. China’s UN Ambassador Liu Jieyi called for a halt to the deployment and for any equipment in place to be dismantled.

Liu also urged North Korea to “cease taking actions that might further esca-late tensions.”

U.S. President Donald Trump hailed

the vote in a Twitter message on Satur-day evening.

“The United Nations Security Council just voted 15-0 to sanction North Korea. China and Russia voted with us. Very big financial impact!” Trump wrote.

Trump “appreciates China’s and Rus-sia’s cooperation in securing passage” of the resolution, the White House said in a later statement. The U.S. president “will continue to work with allies and partners to increase diplomatic and econom-ic pressure on North Korea to ends its threatening and destabilizing behavior,” it said.

U.S. pressure on China Meantime, Russia’s UN Ambassador

Vassily Nebenzia said he hoped recent remarks by the U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson “were sincere - that the U.S. is not seeking to dismantle the existing situation or to forcibly unite the peninsu-la or to militarily intervene in the coun-try.”

While the Security Council has been divided on how to deal with other inter-national crises like Syria, the 15-mem-ber body has remained relatively united on North Korea. Still, negotiating new measures typically takes months, not weeks.

North Korea has been under UN sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. The new measures came in response to five nu-clear weapons tests and four long-range missile launches.

The United States negotiated with China for a month on the resolution, then expanded negotiations to the full council on Friday.

Washington, frustrated that China has not done more to rein in North Korea, has threatened to exert trade pressure on Beijing and impose sanctions on Chinese firms doing business with Pyongyang.

“We had tough negotiations this week,” Haley told reporters. “I think that the Chinese realized that the United States was going to push, but they re-sponded and we appreciate how they cooperated with us during these nego-tiations.”

Liu, asked about U.S. negotiating pressure, said China has been consistent on trying to achieve denuclearization, peace and stability on the Korean Pen-insula and “to re-launch negotiations to achieve this end.”

He told reporters China was “op-posed to any unilateral sanctions outside the agreed framework set by the UN Se-curity Council resolutions.”

Russia/U.S. cooperation It had been unclear whether strained

U.S.-Russia relations would hamper ne-gotiations on North Korean sanctions. On Wednesday, Washington imposed unilateral sanctions on Moscow to pun-ish Russia over accusations of interfer-ence in the 2016 U.S. presidential elec-tion and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.

“We are not hostages to our relations when we have to work together on is-sues which are far more important,” Rus-sia’s Nebenzia told Reuters.

The new UN resolution adds nine individuals and four entities to the UN blacklist, including North Korea’s primary foreign exchange bank, subjecting them to a global asset freeze and travel ban.

“I would think China and Russia signed

on the sanctions hoping that they would force North Korea back to the negotiat-ing table,” said Thomas Byrne, president of the New York-based Korea Society. “However, North Korea will try to evade the new sanctions.”

The new resolution completely bans North Korean exports of coal. In No-vember, the Security Council capped the North’s coal exports at $400 million annually. China, its largest buyer, halted imports in February.

A UN diplomat said North Korea had been expected to earn an estimated $251 million from iron and iron ore in 2017, $113 million from lead and lead ore, and $295 million from seafood. The diplomat said it was difficult to estimate how much North Korea was earning from sending workers abroad.

A United Nations human rights in-vestigator said in 2015 that North Korea had forced more than 50,000 people to work abroad, mainly in Russia and China, earning between $1.2 billion and $2.3 billion a year for the government.

Joseph DeThomas, a former State Department official who worked as an adviser on Iran sanctions and on pre-vious rounds of North Korea sanctions, said freezing foreign labor would be dif-ficult to enforce.

“Overall I doubt that $1 billion num-ber. I doubt it will hit that hard in terms of economic damage,” he said. “You cannot expect North Korea to buckle for any-thing less than the sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990.”

These sanctions, he said, remain “a very long way” from there.

(Source: Reuters)

AUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 2017 INTERNATIONALI N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Iraqi PM rules out dismantling of Popular Mobilization Units

Double standard decried as Minnesota mosque bombedSocial media users have voiced frustration at what they de-scribed as a double standard after a mosque was bombed in the United States.

The explosion at around 5am local time (09:00 GMT) at the Dar Al Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, caused damage but did not cause any casualties.

Worshippers had been preparing for the dawn prayer when the attack happened.

There were between 15 and 20 people inside the building at the time, according to Star Tribune, a local newspaper.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has sent agents to track down who was behind the attack, which it says was caused by an “Improvised Explosive Device (IED)”.

The mosque, like many others in the U.S., received threats of attack prior to the bombing.

For many the response, or lack of it, revealed a double standard.

Some questioned why the U.S. President Donald Trump failed to respond to what they described as a “terrorist attack” targeting Muslims.

Mark Follman, an editor at the progressive-leaning Mother Jones magazine, said Trump’s silence was due to the target of the attack.

“In normal times, the bombing of a house of worship with an IED would not go unacknowledged by the president of the United States,” he continued, after posting a list of previous attacks committed by far-right attackers that Trump had also not responded to.

Marty Parrish asked: “Did I miss Trump’s statement of con-cern for the victims of this bombing and members of the Mosque?” Adding: “Does he care?”

But Trump was not the sole target of anger, with some rail-ing against the purported lack of media coverage.

Some U.S.-based outlets did publish stories on the attack, but that did not assuage the anger.

A Twitter user named Brown Saraah wrote: “Someone bombed a mosque in Minnesota recently. You probably didn’t hear about this because mainstream media likes to demonize Muslims.”

Activist Simran Jeet Singh accused the media of avoiding the term “terrorism”.

“Are you kidding with this headline right now? Can you not call it terrorism because Muslims were the targets? Why the double-standard?” He said, in response to a New York Times article, which used the term “explosion” to describe the attack.

As with other recent attacks, well-wishers were quick to make donations to the mosque to help it repair damage to the mosque.

By the time of publishing, hundreds of people had donated a total of $12,000 to repair the damage on two fundraising pages.

The latest attack comes amid rising Islamophobic senti-ment.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has said that discrimination against Muslims swelled during the 2016 election campaign and has continued to rise following Trump’s election victory.

The U.S. president campaigned on a platform that prom-ised a blanket ban on Muslims entering the country, as he vowed to closely monitor mosques. (Source: Al Jazeera)

United Nations bans key North Korea exports over missile tests

The Australian government said on Sunday it would deploy its armed forces to assist in recovery efforts af-ter the United States Marine Corps suspended a search for three Marines missing since their aircraft crashed off Australia’s northeast coast a day earlier.

The Marine Corps said earlier they had shifted from a search-and-rescue effort to a recovery operation, which could last several months, and had notified the next-of-kin of the three missing Marines.

“The transition comes after teams led continuous sustained search efforts supported by aircraft and ships,” the III Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Okinawa, Japan, said.

“As the sea state permits, recovery efforts will be conducted to further search, assess and survey the area ...,” they said in a statement.

The U.S. Marines have described the incident involv-ing the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft as a “mishap” and said it was under investigation.

Ospreys have been involved in incidents resulting in deaths or injuries in recent years.

Australian Defense Minister Marise Payne said the Australian government would assist the U.S.-led re-covery effort after what she described as an “extensive search-and-rescue operation” was called off.

“Our thoughts are with all those affected by this tragic event and the Australian Government stands ready to support the U.S. further in any way we can,” she said in a statement.

Payne said a Royal Australian Navy survey ship was en route to the search area. A navy diving team would be sent soon and army aviation assets were “at short

notice readiness to support any further requirements”, she said.

Apart from the three missing Marines, 23 other per-sonnel aboard the aircraft had been rescued. Australian emergency officials said one person had been taken to hospital in Rockhampton in northeastern Queensland state but gave no other details.

“All other personnel are accounted for and safe,” the III Marine Expeditionary Force said on Twitter.

Benign weather The incident happened off the coast of Shoalwater

Bay in Queensland at about 4 p.m. local time on Sat-urday (0600 GMT), the Marine Corps said. They called off the search at about 3 a.m. on Sunday (1700 GMT Saturday).

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology described wind, swell and atmospheric conditions at the time of the in-

cident as “benign”. “There was a light northeasterly wind with high

cloud ... but that would have had no impact whatsoev-er on conditions at the surface,” meteorologist Michael Paech said.

The aircraft that crashed had taken off from the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) amphibious assault ship and was on regular operations when it hit the water, according to the Marines Corps.

The United States President Donald Trump, who was on his first full day of vacation at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, was briefed on the crash by his chief of staff, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, a White House official said.

The Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group was in Australia to participate in joint training maneu-vers involving more than 33,000 U.S. and Australian military personnel, which ended two weeks ago.

The exercises in the Coral Sea included the partici-pation of MV-22 Ospreys practicing the deployment of U.S. Marine reconnaissance teams.

The Osprey, built by Boeing Co and Textron Inc’s Bell Helicopter unit, is designed to take off like a helicopter and rotate its propellers to fly like a plane.

Its development was nearly canceled after the deaths of 23 Marines during flight testing in 2000, but its speed and range have made it very popular in recent years.

In December, the U.S. military grounded its Osprey fleet in Japan after one of the aircraft ditched into the sea, injuring its crew of five, when a hose connected to the aircraft broke during a refueling exercise.

(Source: AP)

Australia sends navy ships, divers after aircraft crash, three U.S. Marines missing

Israelis protest against PM embroiled in graft probesHundreds of Israelis have held a demonstration against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is embroiled in two corruption investigations.

The protest took place outside Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s home in the city of Petah Tikva on Satur-day, marking the 34th such weekly event.

The demonstrators, who accuse Mandelblit of foot-drag-ging on Netanyahu’s probes, chanted slogans such as, “We will put you on trial because the nation doesn’t believe [you].”

Lawyer Sigalit Kesler, who was among those attending the event, said that the premier “must take responsibility… We will not be ruled by a prime minister that is suspected in heavy, heavy criminal charges.”

“All these terrible happenings happened under his re-sponsibility. And I say, if he didn’t know, it’s terrible. If he knew, it’s a disaster,” she added.

A counter-protest was also held nearby, with the partici-pants holding banners in support of Netanyahu’s Likud party.

David Bitan, a member of the Israeli parliament, known as the Knesset, claimed that the demonstrations against Netan-yahu “are not democratic,” adding, “We need to stop these protests, and we will fight them with another protest.”

Police officers were deployed in Petah Tikva to separate the two rival protests and prevent clashes.

In Case 1000, Netanyahu is suspected of having received gifts from businessmen overseas.

He is also being investigated in Case 2000 for an alleged media bribery scheme to help Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper against its competitor Israel Hayom in return for favorable coverage of the prime minister.

Earlier this week, Israeli police confirmed that Netanya-hu was as a suspect in the two inquiries into allegations of “fraud, breach of trust and bribes.”

Ari Harow, a former chief of staff to Netanyahu, also agreed to testify against the prime minister in the cases.

The developments raised speculation that the Israeli pre-mier could be indicted shortly.

Netanyahu, however, referred to the developments as “the inevitable scandal-of-the-week” in a Facebook video posting.

He has denied any wrongdoing and described the accu-sations as a “witch-hunt” designed to force him from office.

No resignation in case of indictmentSeparately on Saturday, Israel’s minister of judicial affairs,

Ayelet Shaked, said that even if Netanyahu was indicted for corruption he would not be forced to step down.

She told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that ministers had to resign in such a situation, but not necessarily prime ministers.

(Source: Press TV)

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

AUGUST 7, AUGUST 7, 201720174 E C O N O M Y

Croatia to become new buyer of Iranian petrochemicals

TEHRAN — Croatia will soon become a customer of Iran’s petrochemical prod-

ucts, Croatian Labor and Pension System Minister Marko Pavic said.

He made the announcement in a meeting in Tehran with Iranian Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare Minister Ali Rabiee, Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture portal reported.

As Rabiee informed, initial agreements in this regard have been made, while talks are being held to facilitate relations in banking, shipping and maritime industries.

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E N E R G Yd e s k

E C O N O M Yd e s k

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N E W S I N B R I E F

TEHRAN — The value of Iranian gas condensate exports in the first four

months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-July 22) fell about $600 million compared to the same period last year.

Iran exported about $2.3 billion worth of gas con-densates in the mentioned time span in comparison to the last year’s $2.9 billion, Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday.

However, exports remained almost unchanged in terms of weight.

During the first four months of the past Iranian cal-endar year, some 5.902 million tons of gas condensates were sent to the destination markets, while the figure stood at 5.640 million tons during the current year’s first four months.

According to the country’s foreign trade statistics, some 37 million tons of goods valued at $13.4 billion were exported to other countries during March-July 2017, a $2.9-billion drop year on year.

Iran exported $16.3 billion worth of goods to the world markets during the last year’s first four months.

Natural-gas condensate is a low-density mixture of hydrocarbon liquids that are present as gaseous com-ponents in the raw natural gas produced from many natural gas fields.

Gas condensate exports fall $600m on year

Indonesian state trading company PT Peru-sahaan Perdagangan Indonesia and Russian state conglomerate Rostec have signed a preliminary deal to trade Sukhoi SU-35 jets for commodities like palm oil and coffee, the Indonesian trade ministry said.

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed in Moscow and further details about the expected deal will be an-nounced in the coming days by the Indone-

sian trade and defense ministers, Indonesian trade ministry official Imam Pambagyo said on Sunday.

“This barter under the supervision of both governments hopefully will soon be realized through the exchange of eleven Sukhoi SU-35s and a number of Indone-sian exports, starting from coffee and tea to palm oil and strategic defense products,” Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita said in a

statement released on Friday. There were no details on the value of the

deal or the quantity of commodities Indo-nesia would potentially ship to Russia. Lukita was in Moscow for an Indonesia-Russia business forum. Russia is currently facing a new round of U.S.-imposed trade sanc-tions, while Indonesia is trying to promote its palm oil products amid threats of a cut in consumption by European Union countries.

Lukita said Indonesia is trying to expand its trade and partnerships with Russia as that country is currently under a trade embargo with the United States and the EU. Indone-sia, which had a $411 million (315.25 million pounds) trade surplus with Russia in 2016, aims to expand its partnership in tourism, education, energy, technology and aviation among others.

(Source: Reuters)

Britain needs to make clear to the European Union that it is prepared to go it alone if it fails to reach a satisfac-tory deal in Brexit talks, former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said.

“If you are going to have any successful negotiation, you have got to have a fall-back position, which the other side understands and believes is credible,” King said in a BBC radio interview to mark 10 years since the start of the global financial crisis.

Britain is due to leave the EU in March 2019 and began its formal exit talks in June.

Initial areas of disagreement include Britain’s financial liabilities, the rights of EU citizens already living in Britain, and border arrangements between the British province of

Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, an EU member.If Britain fails to reach a deal, trade would be governed

by the World Trade Organization, which allows both sides to impose import tariffs and customs checks, and does not replicate existing agreements on sectors such as air-lines and financial services.

On Thursday King’s successor as BoE governor, Mark Carney, said Brexit worries were weighing on business in-vestment and pay decisions, and that sterling’s fall since the June 2016 Brexit vote was to blame for above-target inflation.

In the BBC interview, King said British policymakers had done too little to help people whose skills had be-come uncompetitive because of globalization, adding

that high levels of immigration were partly to blame.“Because we have had very large immigration into

the UK, employers in the UK have stopped investing in skills and training in Britain ... and the same is true in the U.S.,” he said. “These are problems we need to think quite deeply about.”

Restricting migration was a major reason many Britons voted for Brexit. But most British economists say the gains from free trade and EU migration significantly outweigh any costs.

Previous BoE research has found that big increases in migration have a small negative impact on wages, espe-cially for workers in low-skilled service sector jobs.

(Source: Reuters)

It’s been a complicated and contradictory quarter for oil giant British Petroleum. The struggling corporation has failed to reduce debt in the second quarter, with total prof-its falling by 5 percent compared with last year. Despite these lackluster numbers, BP has actually exceeded analysts’ projections by a wide margin, recovering more quickly than expected despite a plethora of project failures and major expenditures.

In response to their failure to decrease or even stabilize their ballooning debt, the company has now slashed its market fore-casts to $50 a barrel over the next five years. This is a considerable cut from their previ-ous projection, which optimistically saw oil returning to $60 a barrel before the end of 2017. While the global market did peak at over $56 a barrel earlier this year, this num-ber has been stymied by high production of shale gas in the U.S. and a global supply glut, bringing prices back below $50.

Part of BP’s woes is their continued and costly struggle to bounce back from 2010’s devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill, on which they’re still making hefty payments. Thanks

in large part to the accident, the company’s debt has now risen to a reported $39.8bn at the end of June as compared to $30.9bn at that time last year.

In addition to the continued financial hardships relating to the Gulf spill, BP re-cently took a huge hit when they cancelled a massive project in Angola, causing their prof-its to plunge by more than 50 percent since the beginning of the year. Profits on a re-placement cost basis dropped from $1.5bn in the first quarter to $684m, but this actually exceeds average analyst expectations, which

hovered around $500m thanks to June’s An-gola fiasco, when BP gave up its 50 percent stake in gas exploration of the coast of the African nation after it was decided to be commercially unattractive.

Despite these major setbacks, BP has a lot of new projects underway, and shares this quarter were actually buoyed by a 10 percent increase in oil and gas production. BP is also trying hard to push into new mar-kets, including an effort to move away from its dependence on fossil fuels in the context of an increasingly unpredictable market that

shows no sign of stabilizing in the future.This initiative has included talks with pro-

ducers of electric vehicles as part of a plan to establish battery re-charging docks at its fuel service stations across the globe. Like many other oil giants, BP is threatened by the looming rise of electric cars and instead of fighting the changing tides, are trying to cash in on the movement. According to industry estimates, demand for some fossil fuels may plateau before 2030.

BP’s case is a prime example of the conflict rocking the entire industry. Across the market, numbers and expectations are low and the future is uncertain. BP isn’t the only oil giant that beat out analyst forecasts this quarter - Total and Royal Dutch Shell also surpassed expectations by a comfort-able margin - showing that the oil industry continues to be marked by uncertainty and volatility that even the experts just can’t get a handle on. In light of this, it’s really no sur-prise that the oil industry is turning more and more to embrace a future where oil be-comes virtually obsolete.

(Source: oilprice.com)

Iran, Ukraine review agro-economic ties

Auto imports rise 55%

TEHRAN — Iran imported 23,000

cars worth 23.96 trillion rials (about $640 million) in the first four months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-July 22, 2017), registering 55 percent rise in number compared to the same period last year, Fars news agency reported.

The automobile industry, the big-gest non-oil sector of the Iranian economy, constituting around 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), boomed over the decade end-ing in 2011 due to government sup-port and the dearth of international competitors in the domestic market.

Iran ranks 18th on the list of the world’s top auto manufacturers.

Global automakers are in a race for new business in Iran following

the nuclear accord between Iran and world powers, which ended eco-nomic sanctions against Iran in ex-change for restrictions on its nuclear program.

Iranian carmakers manufac-tured 1.35 million vehicles in the past Iranian calendar year (March 2016-March 2017), showing 38 per-cent growth compared to its preced-ing year.

TEHRAN — In a Saturday meeting

in Tehran, Iranian Agriculture Minister Mahmoud Hojjati and Ukrainian First Vice Prime Minister Stepan Kubiv dis-cussed ways to expand cooperation in the areas of economy and agriculture.

Naming oil, energy, transit of goods, modern industries, and agricul-ture as the potential fields of coopera-tion between the two countries, Hoj-jati underlined the vitality of boosting mutual banking and trade bonds, IRIB reported.

Kubiv, for his part, said that his country pays a specific attention to the expansion of relations with Iran in energy and food sectors, adding that both countries will make decisions in the near future to ease banking ties.

“Regarding the available infrastruc-

ture for conducting research in Iran, exchanging experience with the coun-try in various sectors such as agricul-ture, livestock, and fishery is of impor-tance for Ukraine,” he said.

The Ukrainian official for his part called for drawing up a roadmap for development of Iran-Ukraine eco-nomic ties, informing that the joint economic committee meeting is to be held in autumn.

Iraq secures $195m Japanese loan for electricity sector Japan has agreed to lend Iraq up to $195 million for a pro-ject to help repair a thermal power station in the southern province of Basra, an Iraqi government statement said on Saturday.

Though Iraq is a major OPEC oil producer, the country faces chronic electricity shortages, with its fragile grid strug-gling to meet demand after years of war, sanctions and ne-glect.

The loan was signed during a visit to Iraq by Japan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kentaro Sonoura, who met Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Saturday, the prime minister of-fice said in a statement.

Iraq needs external financing to plug a budget deficit of approximately 25 trillion Iraqi dinars ($21.44 billion) for this year as it grapples with lower global oil prices and costs as-sociated with the fight against Islamic State.

(Source: Reuters)

UK to conduct electricity survey after Centrica price increaseThe UK government will review ways to bring down electricity prices for households and businesses to levels lower than the rest of Europe after Britain’s biggest power and gas supplier said it would raise costs for the first time in almost four years.

The independent review, led by a one-time adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, will look at the entire electricity supply chain -- from generation to end-user -- to identify ways to keep energy prices “as low as possible,” Business and Energy Secre-tary Greg Clark said in a statement Sunday. The findings will be released at the end of October.

The government action follows Centrica Plc’s announcement on Tuesday that it would raise prices for 3.1 million customers by 12.5 percent next month. 15. Price controls meant its British Gas unit had been “selling electricity at a loss” over the past year, Chief Executive Officer Iain Conn said. The company was the only one of the “big six” UK household energy suppliers to have kept prices stable over the last 12 months.

“The government is upgrading our energy system to make it fit for the future,” Clark said in the statement. “The review will consider how we can take advantage of changes to our power system and new technologies to ensure clean, secure and af-fordable supplies over the coming decades.”

(Source: oilprice.com)

Iranian official notes progress in free trade talks with EAEUIran’s First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri noted the good results of the talks on the creation of the free trade area be-tween the country and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).

The EAEU, comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, is an international organization that encourages regional economic integration through the free movement of goods, services, and people within the union.

In December 2016, president of the EAEU states approved the start of talks to draft an agreement on a free trade area with Iran, Egypt, India and Singapore.

“As part of the negotiations process, we have reached im-portant results over the short term. I hope that we will tackle the rest uncoordinated issues in the near future. I am sure that our meeting will contribute to this,” Jahangiri said during the meeting with Chairman of the Eurasian Economic Com-mission (EEC) Board Tigran Sargsyan, as quoted in a state-ment by the EEC press service.

Sargsyan, in turn, noted that all the EAEU countries were interested in signing the temporary agreement on the free trade area creation with Iran, the statement said. The chair-man of the EEC Board added that in the future, the parties should conclude the more comprehensive agreement than the temporary one which was discussed by both Iranian and EAEU negotiators.

Both Jahangiri and Sargsyan noted the need to accelerate the signing of the agreement and expressed the readiness to support the negotiations process, according to the state-ment.

The parties also noted that the free trade and lifting of the non-tariff barriers would contribute to the increase of the Iran-EAEU turnover level, the document concluded.

The meeting between Jahangiri and Sargsyan took place as part of the latter ’s visit to Iran timed to the inauguration of the county’s reelected President Hassan Rouhani.

In May 2017, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Nebenzya said the negotiations between the EAEU and Iran on a temporary free trade area agreement could be finished by the next EAEU summit, scheduled for October 11.

(Source: Sputnik)

Indonesia, Russia sign MOU to trade palm, coffee for Sukhoi jets

UK needs Brexit fall-back position, says ex-BOE governor King

BP surpasses profit expectations, still wallowing in debt

AUGUST 7, AUGUST 7, 20172017 5I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

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The UN’s listening tour in Libya To piece this country back together and end its role in terror-ism and migration to Europe, the United Nations has sent an envoy to listen to Libyans who want to reconcile. For many nations split apart – or forming – listening is a primary path to a peaceful outcome.

In late July, the United Nations Security Council sent a strong message to the people of the country long called Libya: Please unite again. In 2011, Libyans were split apart by the Arab Spring and the toppling of dictator Muammar Qaddafi. A civil struggle has since raged between regions, tribes, warlords, and terrorist groups. A special UN envoy, Ghassan Salamé, is on a listening tour this August to find Libyans willing to reconcile into a democratic nation-state.

The art of diplomatic listening is a valuable skill these days in a world in which nation-states come and go. This fall, Kurds in Iraq and Catalans in Spain will each hold a referen-dum on whether to declare independence. The world’s new-est nation, South Sudan, is convulsed by fighting. Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, is still not truly sovereign. Scotland may hold another vote on whether to leave Britain. Syria and Yemen, like Libya, fell apart after 2011 and are stuck in warfare. And in Ukraine, the Russian-speaking eastern region seeks a separation by force of arms.

UN’s closest attentionOf all these, Libya now has the UN’s closest attention. This

is in large part because its disintegration is causing big prob-lems elsewhere. Libya has become the main launching pad for African and Arab migrants seeking asylum in Europe. An estimated 530,000 people are waiting to cross the Mediterra-nean Sea and land in Italy. Terrorist groups in Libya have sent suicide bombers to Europe and Egypt. And Libya’s turmoil has spilled over the borders into its North African neighbors.

Like other hot spots, Libya is also ripe for foreign meddling. Russia and Egypt side with the most powerful military leader, Khalifa Haftar, who dominates the eastern region. The West backs Fayez al-Sarraj, who holds the title of prime minister but has little influence outside the old capital, Tripoli. The Gulf states and Turkey, meanwhile, also have a finger in this pie.

To assist the UN effort, French President Emmanuel Ma-cron brought the two Libyan leaders together for talks out-side Paris last month. They forged an agreement to hold elections, perhaps next spring, and to quell the fighting. “The Libyan people need this peace, and the Mediterranean de-serves this peace,” Macron said. “We are directly affected.”

The meeting helped boost the legitimacy of strongman Haftar, a former protégé of Qaddafi. Many people fear he may not be committed to democracy. But as long as he stays within the UN peace process, and outside powers stay united in reuniting Libya, the UN envoy might succeed.

Salamé, like previous mediators in the crisis, must tap into Libya’s traditional methods of peacemaking. For centuries, local tribal sheikhs often applied customary law to resolve disputes within communities and restore relationships. These “wise men” are respected for their listening and find a way to balance inter-ests and renew social harmony. In the absence of state authority, this method has contained much of the fighting since 2011.

Peace and unity cannot be imposed on Libya. But effective listening that finds opportunities for political bonding can work. Statehood comes in many forms these days and seems to be flu-id. But the path to statehood, old or new, must come peacefully.

(Source: The CSM)

Duterte’s lawless regime claims more victimsIn a chilling televised speech last August, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte read aloud the names of 150 politicians, judg-es and law enforcement officials, linking them to alleged drug crimes and asking them to surrender themselves to the national police. Since the announcement, many of the people identified have been removed from their positions, denied government security or imprisoned on drug-related charges without due process. Last Sunday, even more disturbing news emerged: One of the politicians named, Ozamiz Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog Sr., was killed in a police raid, along with his wife and 13 others. Parojinog is the third mayor killed in Duterte’s “drug war,” which has claimed the lives of more than 7,000 Filipinos.

The Philippine National Police alleges that Parojinog was killed after his guards opened fire on officers, who were law-fully enforcing a search warrant. This narrative was called into question when details of the raid surfaced the next day. The raid took place at 2:30 a.m. and coincided with the freezing of all closed-circuit cameras in the vicinity. Parojinog’s daugh-ter, who has been taken into custody on drug and firearm charges, has since accused the police of planting drugs in the home. Given that the two other mayors killed in the drug war were also shot dead by police officers with search warrants, lawmakers and others are right to demand an investigation.

Yet it comes as no surprise that Duterte has brushed aside all criticism of the police. His government has repeatedly come out in favor of extrajudicial executions in the name of law and or-der. The country’s police chief has encouraged vigilante killings, while the solicitor general has promised to “neutralize” official inquiries into police practices. Duterte himself had pledged to execute 100,000 criminals and throw their bodies into Manila Bay. He has also threatened to impose martial law across the country, as he has already done on the island of Mindanao, in-spiring little confidence that he will maintain the rule of law.

Congress can take a stand against Duterte’s assault on basic rights. Sens. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have introduced a bill to restrict the supply of defense equipment to the Philippine National Police, the force that is leading the drug war. This act could be a strong rebuke to Duterte, especially if it is supplemented with calls for an independent UN investigation into the government’s brutal anti-drug campaign.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should deliver this mes-sage personally during his upcoming visit to Manila. Doing so might irritate Duterte, but that would do less lasting harm to U.S.-Philippine relations than would setting aside demo-cratic values for geopolitical convenience. Most Filipinos look on the United States favorably; how long will that last if America finds nothing objectionable in Duterte’s frighten-ingly lawless regime?

(Source: The Washington Post)

By John Lloyd

AUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 20176I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

INTERNATIONAL

The State Department press briefing room has tradi-tionally been the place where the United States gov-ernment has explained and promoted its foreign poli-cy to the world. In six months as secretary of state, Rex Tillerson did not set foot there — until Tuesday, when he popped in to deliver a double-barreled message to North Korea about its rapidly expanding nuclear weapons and missile programs.

First, he asserted, the Trump administration is not seeking regime change in the North. It is, instead, seek-ing a “productive dialogue.” His comments, as surprising as his appearance, represented a sharp departure from the threats and harsh language that have dominated President Trump’s approach — and for a brief moment indicated a possibly productive shift from the tough-guy message that puts the onus on China to bring North Korea in line to a more nuanced, multidimensional ap-proach to a grave and gathering nuclear threat.

But this, we have to keep reminding ourselves, is the Trump administration, and it wasn’t long before any con-fidence that Tillerson was speaking for the president, or that the national security team had agreed on a com-mon strategy that included a diplomatic opening, was called into doubt. Flying to Washington from Europe on Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence rejected the idea of talks with the North Koreans, saying that “engaging North Korea directly” was not presently in the cards.

Security challengesManaging security challenges requires layered ap-

proaches, and it’s not unusual for senior officials to em-phasize different aspects of any given strategy. But the question now is whether there is any strategy at all. Se-verely understaffed in senior security posts, where exper-tise is usually found, and relying instead on officials with little governing experience, like Trump, this administra-tion has struggled to articulate a coherent policy toward the North. Not just ordinary Americans, but America’s allies, have had a hard time understanding where this administration is headed. One can only assume that the North Koreans, isolated from much of the world, are no less confused, greatly raising the risk of misunderstand-ing and miscalculation.

None of this is to excuse North Korea, whose 21 or so

nuclear weapons and aggressive behavior pose a grow-ing menace. And while North Korea has hinted at an interest in talking to the United States — which it views as a threat and is one reason it thinks it needs a nuclear arsenal in the first place — it is not clear if the overtures are serious or a feint to buy time so the North can con-tinue to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the United States.

If there is a plausible way to peacefully address the problem — and there are reasons to question whether that is even possible at this advanced stage — it will not involve bluster like Pence’s. It will have to involve a nuanced combi-nation of pressure — the threat of tougher sanctions, for in-stance — plus a willingness to address North Korea’s fears, not least its fear that the United States and South Korea are together determined to destroy it.

So what did Tillerson put on the table? He reas-sured the North not only that the United States doesn’t seek regime change, but also that it doesn’t seek accelerated reunification of the peninsula or “an

excuse to send our military north of the 38th parallel,” thus putting himself at odds with Mike Pompeo, the CIA director, who has hinted that he wants to see the North Korean government fall.

Tillerson insisted, as previous administrations have, that the North must agree to abandon its nuclear weap-ons before talks are held. That seems like a nonstarter, since no government would surrender its only bargain-ing chip like that. But administration officials have said privately that this does not mean the North Koreans must surrender the weapons, but, as one official said, “take good-faith steps to demonstrate their commitment to denuclearization” in the future, steps that have been explained to officials in the North, through their United Nations mission in New York.

Right now, there is a stalemate, set by years of broken promises and mistrust. Mixed messages from the Trump administration will only make it more difficult to move beyond it.

(Source: The NYT)

Ready to talk to North Korea?

Not just ordinary Americans, but America’s allies, have had a hard time understanding where this administration is headed.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, left, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arriving on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

“We have to understand, that we Euro-peans must fight for our own future and destiny,” said Angela Merkel. This was the German chancellor speaking to a crowd of supporters in May, after a testy few days of a G7 summit that included re-ports in German news media that Donald Trump had called her country “very bad” for selling so many cars to the United States - and which saw the U.S. president emerge as the only G7 dissenter on com-bating climate change.

If her comments were colored with dislike for her fellow leader - she has had a strained, occasionally insulting relation-ship with Trump from their first meeting in March - Merkel was also attempting to turn a bad transatlantic relationship into a win for Europe. It’s a new situation for Europe’s politicians. As the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, Mark Leonard, notes: “Trump is the first American president since the EU was cre-ated not to be in favor of deeper Euro-pean integration.” Merkel’s subtext now is that the Union must come together not with the support of the U.S., but because of its hostility.

She is backed by Emmanuel Macron, the French president who famously took on Trump in the awkward, too-long handshake stakes. As Le Monde wrote, Macron may have “stolen the American president’s monopoly on being unpre-dictable…. [but he] wants to become the European leader of the international po-litical scene. To achieve this, he’ll have to go beyond images and symbols.” That means Macron must, like Canadian pre-mier Justin Trudeau, agree to differ on central issues but smile sweetly in public at the White House occupant.

Does Trump have support in Europe? He does, and it’s a sign of the divisions within Europe that the support is po-tentially quite substantial. Some of that is accidental. When, in February, Trump tweeted that Sweden was the victim of a terror attack, fruit (in his view) of its over-enthusiastic acceptance of tens of thou-sands of migrants, he was widely derided because there had been no such attack. But shortly after, there was. Swedes, in-cluding recent immigrants, began to speak out about running battles between young migrants and the police; Prime Minister Stefan Löfven admitted that “we have challenges, no doubt about that.”

The events have buoyed the far-right Swedish Democrats, who have now over-taken the center-right Moderate Party as the country’s second-largest political group and convinced its leaders that they should consider some cooperation with

the anti-immigration Democrats. Support for Trump is possible else-

where, too. Italy, the one major country in the EU where the general economic upturn hasn’t happened, is also seeing a spike in the popularity of the far right as record numbers of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa come ashore on Italian beaches.

The Italian right, encouraged by the weakening of the center-left government, now looks healthier than it has for five years, with the apparently immortal Silvio Berlusconi (81 next month), still head of the Forza Italia party, among those gain-ing ground.

At the same time, the populist Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo, though suffering defeats in local polls in June, is still polling around 30 percent, slightly ahead of the Democratic Party.

EuroscepticIt too is taking a strong line against im-

migrants, and is increasingly Eurosceptic. Were the right to successfully coalesce its various fragmented groups, it could take over the government after a general election expected next year.

It could also show a welcoming face to the Trump presidency. The U.S. president has long been compared to Berlusconi – both as one who came to politics from

business, proclaiming commercial success as a qualification for high political office, and as one whose media experience (and in Berlusconi’s case ownership) allowed him to speak directly to mass audiences.

Among those European govern-ments which are already squarely in the Trump camp, Poland is the leader. Trump’s speech in Warsaw last month was raptur-ously received by the ruling Law and Jus-tice Party - not surprisingly, since Trump heaped praise on a state and a govern-ment without making any reference to its plans for a virtual takeover of the Polish judiciary. Trump’s own State Department later criticized Warsaw’s move.

Viktor Orban, prime minister of the equally autocratically-governed Hungary, also welcomed Trump’s election. Orban sees him as a fellow Eurosceptic, ready to support strong borders and a block on immigration.

Britain, in the throes of working through the deeply contested Brexit process, now stands to one side of the European Un-ion even as it remains a full member. If Brexit goes ahead - as the government of Prime Minister Theresa May promises it will - the UK will be greatly dependent on the U.S. for a trade deal to compensate for the loss of privileged access to the EU single market.

Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary who charged Trump with “quite stupefy-ing ignorance,” has exchanged pre-election scorn for post-election flattery, while Trump, lauding the “special relationship” between the two countries, has brought great relief to an anxious British cabinet by promising to make a “very big, very powerful” (and very quick) trade deal with the UK.

Europe has no single face to show America. It is divided on issues such as free trade, climate change and NATO. But on others, such as immigration, strong borders, gay and transgender rights, the right is usually in substantial agreement.

While Macron and Merkel, the con-tinent’s two most powerful leaders, op-pose Trump on most things, they need to retain cordial relations with Washington, not least for defense reasons. The two leaders of the EU see in each other an ally for tuning up the sputtering motors of the Union – in the economy, in political heft and in standing in the world. But they have many skeptics and opponents with-in Europe itself, most of who get Trump’s active or passive support. This will be a struggle at once profound and delicate – one which will have large consequences on both sides of the Atlantic for many years to come.

(Source: Reuters)

Europe’s leaders struggle over a Trump strategy

As the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, Mark Leonard, notes: “Trump is the first

American president since the EU was created not to be in favor of deeper European integration.”

ANALYSISAUGUST 7, AUGUST 7, 20172017 7I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

In July, the White House and Pentagon requested authority from Congress to build further “temporary intermediate staging facilities” inside Syria in order to combat ISIS more effectively. This request, it must be noted, comes in the wake of devastating ISIS defeats in Syria, mostly by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allied forces.

Shortly afterward, the Turkish state-owned Anadolu news agency revealed previously unknown details and loca-tions of ten U.S. bases and outposts in northern Syria, several of them with airfields. These are in addition to at least two further U.S. outposts already identified in southern Syria, on the Iraqi border.

When asked about these military bases, a CENTCOM (U.S. Central Com-mand) spokesman told me: “We don’t have bases in Syria. We have soldiers throughout Syria providing train-ing and assist to the SDF (the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces in the north of the country).” How many soldiers? “Roughly 1,200 troops,” says CENTCOM.

Yet when questioned about the in-ternational law grounds for this U.S. military presence inside Syria, CENT-COM didn’t have a response on hand. They referred me to the Office of the Secretary of Defense whose spokes-man obstinately cited U.S. domestic law—an issue quite irrelevant to Syr-ians. He, in turn, referred me to the White House and State Department on the international-law angle. The State Department sent me back to the De-partment of Defense, the White House pointed me in the direction of the Na-tional Security Council (NSC), and the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel blankly ignored my repeated requests.

It isn’t hard to conclude that official Washington simply doesn’t want to an-swer the “international law” question on Syria. To be fair, in December 2016, the Obama administration offered up an assessment on the legalities of the use of force in Syria, but perhaps sub-sequent ground developments—the SAA and its allies defeating ISIS and Al Qaeda left, right, and center—have tightened some lips in the nation’s cap-ital.

The map of U.S. bases in Syria is confusing. For starters, it reveals that many of the US outposts—or “staging facilities”—are nowhere near ISIS-con-trolled areas. This has generated some legitimate suspicion about U.S. mo-tives in Syria, especially since American forces have begun to attack Syrian mil-itary targets with more frequency. This summer saw U.S. strikes against Syrian allied forces, drones, and a fighter jet all in the space of a few weeks. And most memorably, in September 2016, Coalition fighters killed over 100 SAA troops fighting ISIS in Deir Ezzor, pav-ing the way for a brief ISIS takeover of strategic points in the oil-rich province.

It appears that U.S. intentions may go beyond the stated objective of fighting terrorism in Syria—and that Washington’s goals are also territo-rial and political and seek to retain post-conflict zones of influence within the country: in the south, north, and

along the Syrian-Iraqi border.Former Obama White House and

NSC senior legal official Brian Egan believes the coming challenge for U.S. policymakers—in terms of internation-al law—will be to justify clashes with Syrian forces and their allies.

“I think the harder international law question to defend is with respect to use of force against the [Syrian Pres-ident Bashar] al-Assad regime,” warns Egan. “For example, the U.S. strike in response to the [alleged] chemical weapons attack. There’s no self-de-fense justification, there’s no UN Se-curity Council resolution. It’s an open question what the U.S. depends on in terms of international law.”

“Theories that might be applicable against terrorist groups like ISIS don’t appear to apply for U.S. military ops against Syrian forces. The more that U.S. forces are in-theater in Syria, the greater the chance of conflict between the U.S. and Syrian forces, which makes it essential that [this administration] ex-plains its justification for potential op-erations in Syria,” emphasizes Egan.

But it’s not only Syrian forces and military targets that have come under American fire. In a stream of letters to the UN Security Council this year, the Syrian government asserts U.S. air strikes have also “systematically” de-stroyed vital infrastructure and eco-nomic assets throughout the country for months, and complains that the attacks are “being carried out outside the framework of international legality.” The Syrians claim that these infrastruc-ture targets include the Ghalban oil collection branch station, Umar oilfield, wells and facilities, electrical transform-er stations, Tanak oil field and facilities,

Izbah oil field and installations—all in Deir Ezzor governorate—a gas plant and bridges and structures of the Ba-likh Canal in Raqqa, buildings and facilities belonging to the General Es-tablishment of Geology and Mineral Resources in Homs, Furat and Baath Dam facilities, the Euphrates Dam, the Tishrin Dam and their reservoirs, irri-gation and power generation facilities, and many other vital sites across the country.

With U.S. legal arguments support-ing military presence in Syria unravel-ling, the Pentagon’s untenable position has become noticeable, even within its own ranks.

“Here’s the conundrum,” explained U.S. Special Operations Command Chief Army General Raymond Thom-

as to an Aspen gathering last week, in response to a question about whether U.S. forces will stay in Syria, post-ISIS: “We are operating in the sovereign country of Syria. The Russians, their stalwarts, their back-stoppers, have already uninvited the Turks from Syria. We’re a bad day away from the Rus-sians saying, ‘Why are you still in Syria, U.S.?’”

The Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah, and other allied Syrian forces are in Syria legally, at the invitation of the UN-recognized state authority. The

United States and its coalition partners are not.

At the moment, the latter are try-ing hard to ignore that elephant in the room. But as ISIS collapses, the ques-tion “why are you still here?” is going to rise in volume.

When the U.S.-led coalition first launched overt military operations in-side Syria in September 2014, various western governments cited both the recently-passed UNSC Resolution 2249 and Article 51 (Iraq’s invitation for “col-lective self-defense”) as their legal jus-tification for doing so.

Neither of these justifications pro-vided legal grounds for use of force in Syria, however. There are basically only three clear-cut international law justifications for use of force: a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution providing Chapter 7 authority, self-de-fense against an act of aggression by a territorial state, and an invitation by the legitimate authority of a sovereign state for foreign troops to act within its borders—“consent of a territorial state.”

While UNSC Res. 2249 called upon member states to “take all necessary measures” against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, it explicitly stated that any such measures must be “in compliance with international law, in particular with the UN Charter ”—which requires consent of a territorial state, in this case, the Syrian government.

And while Iraq did invite the Coali-tion to militarily engage ISIS within its territory, its “collective self-defense” argument does not justify the use of force inside Syrian territory—because Syria did not attack Iraq.

To make up for the gaping holes in its international-law arguments, the U.S.-led Coalition performed some legal acrobatics. The “unwilling and unable” theory posits that the Coa-lition could engage militarily in Syria because the legitimate government of

Syria was either unable or unwilling (or both) to fight ISIS.

An onslaught of media articles and carefully-framed narratives were em-ployed to set the scene for this theory. Recall, if you will, the slew of articles claiming that ISIS controlled around 50 percent of Syria—areas which were outside of Syrian state control—all meant to guide us to the conclusion that Syria was “unable” to fight ISIS. Or the narratives that insisted, until ground evidence proved otherwise, that the Syrian government aided ISIS, that it never fought the terror group, that it only targeted “moderate re-bels”—all intended to persuade us that Syria was “unwilling” to target ISIS.

In fact, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have fought ISIS through-out this conflict, but were often dis-tracted by more urgent battles against U.S., Turkish, British, French, Saudi, UAE and Qatari-backed Islamist militants in the western corridor of the country, where Syria’s main population and in-frastructure hubs are located. ISIS-con-trolled territories, it should be noted, were mostly in the largely barren, sparsely populated and desert regions in the north-east and east of Syria.

The NATO-Gulf Cooperation Coun-cil strategy appears to ping-pong Syr-ian troops from east to west, north to south, wearing them down, cleverly di-verting them from any battle in which they were making gains. And it was working, until the Russians stepped into the fray in September 2015 and sunk the Coalition’s “unwilling and un-able” theory.

As Major Patrick Walsh, associate professor in the International and Op-erational Law Department at the US Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Virginia, wrote that October:

“The United States and others who are acting in collective defense of Iraq and Turkey are in a precarious position. The international community is call-ing on Russia to stop attacking rebel groups and start attacking ISIS. But if Russia does, and if the Assad govern-ment commits to preventing ISIS from attacking Syria’s neighbors and delivers on that commitment, then the unwill-ing or unable theory for intervention in Syria would no longer apply. Nations would be unable to legally intervene inside Syria against ISIS without the As-sad government’s consent.”

The UK’s leading security and de-fense analyst firm IHT Markit observed in an April 2017 report that during the time period in which ISIS suffered its most crippling defeats, Syrian al-lied forces fought the terror group two and a half times as often as U.S.-backed ones. With the Russian air force providing Syrian allied troops with game-changing air cover, the battle against ISIS and other terror groups began to turn decisively in Syria’s favor. And, with that, out went even the “the-oretical” justification for U.S. military intervention in Syria.

As ISIS and Al Qaeda are beaten back in Syria, the American conversa-tion about what comes next is missing a most critical point. In terms of interna-tional law, Washington has gone rogue in Syria. Will the world take notice?

In a stream of letters to the UN Security Council this year, the Syrian government

asserts U.S. air strikes have also “systematically” destroyed vital infrastructure and economic assets throughout the country

for months

In September 2016, Coalition fighters killed over 100 SAA troops fighting ISIS in Deir Ezzor,

paving the way for a brief ISIS takeover of strategic points in the oil-rich province.

By SHARMINE NARWANI

Is the expanding U.S. military presence in Syria legal? By John Feffer

North Korea san ctions: Isolating the isolated

North Korea has prided itself over the years on remaining relatively detached from the international community.

During the Cold War, for instance, it refused to become a cog in the Soviet trading system that would have relegated it to supplying raw materials to and purchasing finished prod-ucts from the imperial center. Instead, it remained econom-ically independent and invested in manufacturing its own products.

When South Korea decided to tie its own economy to global capitalism, becoming a major exporting power, North Korea kept its distance from international finance. It creat-ed a special economic zone in the northeast of the country, changed its laws to facilitate foreign investment, and organ-ized trade fairs to sell its products to the world’s customers. Eventually, as a result of the collapse of the state distribution system, it even tolerated private markets within the country.

But the regime eyed the free market warily, anxious that it would undermine the authority of the central government. It made accommodations to capitalism, but only on its own terms.

Geopolitically, North Korea has also avoided entangling alliances. It maintains fraternal relations with China but has repeatedly disregarded Chinese advice and bristled at Chi-nese pressure. Ditto with Russia. No country has been al-lowed to impinge on North Korea’s sovereignty.

It’s not that North Korea prefers isolation, but it certain-ly has become accustomed to it. Nor is the country entirely isolated: the elite is aware of the outside world while a good deal of information has leaked to the rest of the population via flash drives and word of mouth.

Given the high degree of comfort that North Korea has with its state of isolation, it’s somewhat odd that the United States can’t think of any other way of dealing with the country than to increase that isolation.

The U.S. Congress has just passed yet another round of economic sanctions against North Korea. The sanctions against Pyongyang will once again attempt to restrict the amount of money flowing into the country by targeting com-panies – primarily Chinese – that are importing North Korean coal or serving as conduits for financial transfers.

Meanwhile, at the UN level, Washington and Beijing are working on another set of sanctions that blacklist additional individuals and companies connected to North Korea’s nu-clear and missile programs.

Despite all these sanctions over the decades, the North Korean economy actually grew last year – by nearly 4 per-cent. International trade grew by 5 percent.

So, sanctions have not changed North Korean behavior – the country just conducted its second successful ICBM test. Nor have sanctions wiped out the North Korean econ-omy or led to the collapse of the North Korean regime.

If sanctions do begin to have some effect on the econo-my – by reducing the amount of money North Korea makes on coal exports, for instance – they won’t likely affect the only North Korean activity that the United States really cares about. As East Asia specialist John Delury has written, “if Kim and his generals have to tighten their belts, the nuclear and missile programs are about the last things they will cut.”

As new sanctions make their way through Congress and the UN, the State Department has joined in the game as well. It has announced that it will no longer allow U.S. tour-ists to visit North Korea. This comes in retaliation for North Korea’s treatment of Otto Warmbier, an American student detained in Pyongyang and only released to come home to die.

Given the relatively few Americans who visit North Korea as tourists, the economic impact of the ban on North Korea will be minimal.

Isolation, meanwhile, works to the benefit of the North Korean authorities. The government in Pyongyang has long argued that the United States in particular is out to crush the North Korean system and its people. It has exploited the “rally around the flag” effect of nationalism to sustain at least grudging support for the North Korean system even as the population loses its reverence for the ruling Kim family. It has turned isolation to its advantage to reduce, though not eliminate, what it believes to be corrupting influences from outside.

North Korea is not Russia or Iran (two other countries against which Congress wants to increase sanctions). Both these other countries are very much dependent on the glob-al economy. Both of these countries have significant mid-dle classes that have grown accustomed to a certain level of international engagement and have demonstrated in the streets in the past when deprived of the benefits of this ac-cess. Nobody is going to show up in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square to protest an economic downturn and demand a change in government.

So, if isolation is not a particularly effective strategy, what might work instead?

The only effective way of changing North Korea’s behavior is to embed it in the international community, subjecting it to international rules and regulations and tying its economy to the global market. Of course, negotiators will present this economic engagement as a quid pro quo for North Korea freezing its nuclear program and imposing a moratorium on missile launches. But the bottom line is that engagement would be more effective than isolation even if U.S. negotia-tors received no guarantees from North Korea in return.

Only through this kind of economic and geopolitical en-gagement will the actual nature of the North Korean system begin to change over time. And only through this kind of engagement will the international community acquire any meaningful leverage over Pyongyang. Indeed, this is what North Korea fears the most: the “poisoned apple” of engage-ment.

The sad truth is that the United States also views engage-ment as poisonous. The short-term challenge, as we all try to prevent war on the Korean peninsula, is to demonstrate that the apple of engagement is a healthy alternative to the junk food of isolationism that the leaderships in Washington and Pyongyang have favored for all too long.

AUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 20178I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

INTERNATIONAL

About two weeks ago, President Trump’s national security team finally presented their long-awaited strategy for Afghanistan. Defense Secretary James Mattis, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and the rest of the National Security Council’s “prin-cipals committee” briefed the president on their new strategy.

Mr. Trump reportedly criticized them harshly and rejected their entire plan because it was a rehash of the way we’ve fought the Afghanistan war, unsuccessfully, for almost 16 years. It reportedly included, for example, a proposal by Gen. Mc-Master for a troop increase with a four-year timeline that the president could promote at an upcoming NATO summit.

Months ago, Mr. Mattis told Congress that we aren’t win-ning in Afghanistan. In fact, we are stuck in a nation-build-ing quagmire imposed by President Bush whose mistake was compounded by President Obama.

Mr. Trump had given Mr. Mattis the authority to decide troop levels in Afghanistan. Plans were being made to send several thousand to join the more than 8,000 already there. That authority apparently has been revoked. The president was considering a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, sending the Pentagon and the Afghan government into panic, and has since withdrawn from withdrawal.

Afghanistan seemed easy at first. We went to war in Oc-tober 2001, and in only a month drove the Taliban out of the capital city of Kabul. But the Taliban have never been defeated. Their attacks continue almost everywhere in Afghanistan and they now reportedly control about half the country.

For 16 years we have been training the Afghan govern-ment how to function and its army how to fight. About eight years ago we even sent thousands of pomegranate trees along with Missouri farmers — national guardsmen — to give Afghanis the incentive to grow something other than opium poppies. Nothing has worked.

Combat deaths in AfghanistanIn 16 years, we have suffered about 2,400 combat

deaths in Afghanistan and spent over $1 trillion. Continuing the nation-building charade will achieve nothing more than to spend more lives and treasure.

Mr. Trump’s idea of simply withdrawing from Afghanistan reflected an understandable frustration with failure but it is mostly wrong.

If we withdraw our forces, Afghanistan would revert quickly to what it was before 9-11. Neither the Taliban nor al Qaeda has been destroyed. ISIS has established large training camps in Afghanistan. (The April use of the “mother of all bombs” in Afghanistan destroyed a large one.) They and other terrorist networks will turn Afghanistan into a safe haven for every ter-

rorist network that wants to commit attacks in the West.Mr. Trump’s generals rose to high rank in the nation-build-

ing era. With the exception of Gen. McMaster, who insists that there is no connection between Islam and terrorism, Mr. Trump’s teams are not ideologically Mr. Obama’s generals. Nevertheless, their thinking is hobbled by long immersion in nation-building and by Mr. Trump’s failure to set a policy goal from which the generals can devise a strategy.

Trump to decide goalsMr. Trump should decide that goal, quickly and clearly, to

include both Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Principal among them is the ideological war that the

extremists have waged against us since bin Laden’s 1996 fatwa published in a London newspaper. Messrs. Bush and Obama refused to fight the ideological war. Mr. Trump will have to face the fact that no matter what else we do, we cannot win in Afghanistan or defeat terrorism anywhere else, unless we defeat the extremists’ ideology.

In late 2009 vice president Joe Biden advocated a “terror overwatch” strategy. His plan would have rejected the troop surge Mr. Obama authorized in favor of increased training of Afghan troops and greater use of drones and Special Forces to strike terrorist targets. Mr. Trump is reportedly considering a version of the Biden idea.

Mr. Biden’s approach had two fatal flaws. First, any use of drones and special forces has to rely on specific, actionable intelligence that is — or was at the time — in short supply. Second, it relied on training of Afghan forces, which had already proven a failure.

If our intelligence is by now so greatly improved and can be sustained by spy satellites and spies on the ground, piec-es of Mr. Biden’s approach could be adapted to a new strat-egy. It would have to be accompanied by more American air power than drones can provide, and the commitment to that strategy would have to be open-ended. Striking targets identified in both Afghanistan and Pakistan would have to be done routinely without restrictive rules of engagement.

That would be the beginning of a strategy which could be completed by a commitment to fighting the ideological war. The commitment would be enormous, proportional to the size of those nations.

It’s questionable whether our air and intelligence forces have the ability to sustain it for long. But it is the sort of risk we will have to take to prevent Afghanistan from being the source of another attack as devastating as 9-11. It’s the best we can do until we defeat the enemy’s ideology. If we don’t, the war will never end.

(Source: The Washington Times)

Stymied in AfghanistanBy Jed Babbin

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“I removed almost all animal-based foods from my diet and replaced them with plant-based superfoods.”

H E A L T HAUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 2017 9I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

By Kara Wahlgren

By Sarah Watts

Around 1 in 5 Americans struggle with knee pain, and it can be frustrating when the usual RICE (rest, ice, compression, and elevation) treatment doesn’t cut it. The following athletes and fitness professionals have been there, but they didn’t give up—and neither should you. Here are their best strategies for managing chronic knee pain while maintaining an active lifestyle.

Targeted exerciseJames Whiteside, a principal dancer

at American Ballet Theater in NYC, spent more than a decade looking for something that would help the chronic pain caused by tendinitis in both knees. Ultimately, what worked was a regimen of exercises like weighted squats, squat jumps, weighted lunges, and weighted quad extensions.

“I love ballet, but it sure does hurt. I’ve found that strengthening my VMO, quads, and glutes has given me more power in my lower body, lessening the tension on my patellar tendons,” he says. “The pain isn’t gone, but it’s much less severe.”

A plant-based dietChris Falcon, a personal trainer

and corrective exercise specialist, tried everything from physical therapy to acupuncture to relieve the pain just above his right patella. “Some of these methods gave me relief momentarily, but none made it go away,” he says. But after seeing a client get pain relief by cutting gluten from her diet, he decided to research the link between nutrition and pain. “That led me to trying to lower the inflammation within my body,” he says.

“I removed almost all animal-based foods from my diet and replaced them with plant-based superfoods,” says Falcon. He also made healthy fats like avocados, coconut oil, olive oil, and flaxseed part of his daily diet.

“Before, I had pain in my right knee that prevented me from doing lunges or squatting more than a few reps at a time,” he says. “After embracing the plant-based diet, I lost 37 pounds and I’m able to run 10 miles with no discomfort.”

Stretching“I’ve struggled with patellar tendinitis

on and off for the past year,” says marathon runner Bekky Zucco. When rest and ice didn’t help the pain subside, she tried a supportive knee strap, which helps relieve her pain while running. “But it doesn’t

prevent pain afterwards,” she adds. “What seems to help is extra stretching of the quads and hamstrings, and some light strength-training exercises like leg raises and squats.”

Foam rollersAfter playing competitive squash in

college, Lucy Arnold dealt with constant pain in her knees. “I’ve had chronic knee pain for a long time, most prominently since I stopped being a college athlete and became a little less active,” she says. Luckily, a few years after she graduated, she met her husband—who happens to be a personal trainer. He helped her strengthen her knees with lateral band walks, squats, and bridges. “He also has me foam rolling, which has been a huge help. I foam roll every night for 20-30 minutes,” she says.

ACL surgery plus extended rehabAfter tearing his ACL during a pickup

basketball game, former college baseball player Josh Watkins had surgery to fix it—but the pain continued for seven years. “I tried running, yoga, massage, and ice with no relief,” he says. When he re-tore his ACL last year, he opted for surgery again—but decided to take the rehab process slower

this time.“I had a full immobile brace for two

months,” he says. “My mentality also changed. I know when to stop, and I didn’t push the rehab too fast. Running still hurts, but now I’m cycling 20 miles almost daily with no pain.”

Knee replacementKittie Weston-Knauer took up BMX

racing in her 40s—and now, at 68, she’s the oldest female competitor in the country. But just a few years ago she could barely get out of bed because her knees were so painful. “I made changes to my riding form to minimize the agonizing pain, but this new form wasn’t efficient for racing,” she says. Realizing her joint pain was holding her back, she decided to get both knees replaced.

“I worked really hard to ensure I recovered,” she says. “About four to six weeks after receiving my knee replacements, I was back on the stationary bike. It hurt, but I was determined to get back to racing. Looking back, I wish I would’ve gotten my replacements much sooner. I’m ecstatic to be back to racing without pain, and I’ll be competing in

the 2017 USA BMX Grand Nationals this November.”

A little bit of everythingEmmy Simpkins, owner of CrossFit

Speakeasy in New Jersey, started having knee pain near the end of her college soccer career and ended up having surgery on both knees to repair fractured patellas. “Doctors and physical therapists said both fractures were due to over-development of my quadriceps, weak hamstrings, and a patella tracking issue,” she says. After the surgeries, she spent time in physical therapy strengthening the surrounding muscles to prevent it from happening again.

“I do cryotherapy, acupuncture, sauna treatments, foam rolling, and static stretching on days that I do not train,” she says. “I feel a combination of all of these things help me in managing my pain. I am squatting more than I have ever squatted. I am running further and faster—and, more importantly, I’m pain-free. I believe surgery might have been avoidable if I had found these recovery and prevention methods beforehand.”

(Source: prevention.com)

7 athletes reveal how they manage chronic knee pain—and still stay active

Health benefits of tea: milking it or not

The idea that milk may diminish the potential heart-health benefits of tea has been a topic of some debate. Lots of us can’t imagine black tea without a little dairy to cut the bitterness. But, according to this research going back to 2007, we might want to at least consider trying, say, a nice cup of green tea sans sugar or cream.

Why? Well to get to the bottom of this issue, last week I spent an afternoon at the Fifth International Scientific Symposium on Tea and Human Health, where I picked the brains of lots of researchers.

Turns out, there seems to be a consensus about one thing: Milk proteins can bind with the beneficial plant compounds known as flavonols in tea. (You may have heard these compounds referred to by specific names such as catechins.) And, according to some scientists, the binding may make it tough for the body to absorb the flavonols and get the health benefits.

There are lots of potential health benefits of tea. Take, for instance, weight maintenance. Rick Hursel of Maastricht University Medical Centre in Holland has published a review study that finds green tea may slightly increase metabolism.

“We’ve shown that green tea is able to increase your energy expenditure, so the amount of calories you burn, and also to increase the amount of fat you are burning,” says Hursel.

Now, before you get too excited, it’s important to point out that the weight loss effects are small — and perhaps only fleeting. But Hursel says the interesting thing is that, in a separate study he published, he found that when milk is added to tea, the metabolic effects are inhibited. “Something happens which we don’t want to happen,” explains Hursel.

This effect has also been observed among scientists who study tea’s influence on blood vessel health. Preliminary studies suggest that flavonols in tea play a role in helping to regulate blood pressure. But, again, the effect seems diminished when milk proteins are present.

Now, not all scientists are convinced that the effects of milk are strong enough to cancel out potential health benefits.

“There’s no convincing evidence that milk is a problem,” says Alan Crozier of the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He explains that teas are loaded with beneficial flavonols, and typically people only add a little milk to a cup of tea.

“The amount of milk is not going to greatly interfere with the way they’re [catechins] absorbed,” says Crozier. Milk proteins may slow down the process, “but there’s no evidence that they cause irreversible binding.” And his hunch is that the milk does not stop the bioactive compounds (catechins) from being absorbed.

There’s another reason some people may avoid milk in their tea. For certified tea sommelier Robert Rex-Waller of the Park Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C., it’s about enjoying the distinct flavors of teas on their own.

Rex-Waller oversees the tea program at the hotel, which serves 50 rare teas from all over the world and showcases the very finest in a glass tea humidor. He’s learned to enjoy the taste of pure, green tea.

“There are some teas where I’d cringe a little if someone poured milk in,” he says.

He suggests that people take a sip first, before adding any milk. But, he says, tea is for enjoyment — people should just prepare their tea the way they like it. “Everyone has their own preferences.”

Green tea sans milk and sugar may be a struggle in our society, which seems to have a communal sweet tooth and a penchant for cream. Even Starbucks serves up a sweetened green tea latte with steamed milk.

So here’s one idea: If you prefer black tea with milk and sugar, drink it with breakfast.

Then, later in the day, try to add in a cup of green tea — nothing added. (Source: npr.org)

You know exercise is good for you, but do you know how good? From boosting your mood to improving your overall life, find out how exercise can improve your life.

Want to feel better, have more energy and even add years to your life? Just exercise.

The health benefits of regular exercise and physical activity are hard to ignore. Everyone benefits from exercise, regardless of age, sex or physical ability.

Need more convincing to get moving? Check out these seven ways exercise can lead to a happier, healthier you.

1. Exercise controls weightExercise can help prevent excess weight gain or help

maintain weight loss. When you engage in physical activity, you burn calories. The more intense the activity, the more calories you burn.

Regular trips to the gym are great, but don’t worry if you can’t find a large chunk of time to exercise every day. To reap the benefits of exercise, just get more active throughout your day — take the stairs instead of the elevator or rev up your household chores. Consistency is key.

2. Exercise combats health conditions and diseases

Worried about heart disease? Hoping to prevent high blood pressure? No matter what your current weight, being active boosts high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or “good,” cholesterol and decreases unhealthy triglycerides. This one-two punch keeps your blood flowing smoothly, which decreases your risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Regular exercise helps prevent or manage a wide range of health problems and concerns, including stroke, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, depression, a

number of types of cancer, arthritis and falls.3. Exercise improves moodNeed an emotional lift? Or need to blow off some

steam after a stressful day? A gym session or brisk 30-minute walk can help. Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed.

You may also feel better about your appearance and yourself when you exercise regularly, which can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem.

4. Exercise boosts energyWinded by grocery shopping or household chores?

Regular physical activity can improve your muscle strength and boost your endurance.

Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues and helps your cardiovascular system work more efficiently. And when your heart and lung health improve, you have more energy to tackle daily chores.

5. Exercise promotes better sleep

Struggling to snooze? Regular physical activity can help you fall asleep faster and deepen your sleep. Just don’t exercise too close to bedtime, or you may be too energized to hit the hay.

6. Exercise can be fun … and social!Exercise and physical activity can be enjoyable. It

gives you a chance to unwind, enjoy the outdoors or simply engage in activities that make you happy. Physical activity can also help you connect with family or friends in a fun social setting.

So, take a dance class, hit the hiking trails or join a soccer team. Find a physical activity you enjoy, and just do it. Bored? Try something new, or do something with friends.

The bottom line on exerciseExercise and physical activity are a great way to feel

better, boost your health and have fun. Aim for at least 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise, or 75 minutes per week of vigorous exercise.

Try to engage in a combination of vigorous and moderate aerobic exercises, such as running, walking or swimming. Squeeze in strength training at least twice per week by lifting free weights, using weight machines or doing body weight exercises.

Space out your activities throughout the week. If you want to lose weight or meet specific fitness goals, you may need to ramp up your exercise efforts.

Remember to check with your doctor before starting a new exercise program, especially if you haven’t exercised for a long time, have chronic health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes or arthritis, or you have any concerns.

(Source: mayoclinic.org)

Sometimes called degenerative joint disease or degenerative arthritis, osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common chronic condition of the joints, affecting approximately 27 million Americans. OA can affect any joint, but it occurs most often in knees, hips, lower back and neck, small joints of the fingers and the bases of the thumb and big toe.

In normal joints, a firm, rubbery material called cartilage covers the end of each bone. Cartilage provides a smooth, gliding surface for joint motion and acts as a cushion between the bones. In OA,

the cartilage breaks down, causing pain, swelling and problems moving the joint. As OA worsens over time, bones may break down and develop growths called spurs. Bits of bone or cartilage may chip off and float around in the joint. In the body, an inflammatory process occurs and cytokines (proteins) and enzymes develop that further damage the cartilage. In the final stages of OA, the cartilage wears away and bone rubs against bone leading to joint damage and more pain.

Who’s affected?Although OA occurs in people of all

ages, osteoarthritis is most common in people older than 65. Common risk factors include increasing age, obesity, previous joint injury, overuse of the joint, weak thigh muscles, and genes.

One in two adults will develop symptoms of knee OA during their lives.

One in four adults will development symptoms of hip OA by age 85.

One in 12 people 60 years or older have hand OA.

Here are ways OA may affect different parts of the body:

Hips. Pain is felt in the groin area or buttocks and sometimes on the inside of the knee or thigh.

Knees. A “grating” or “scraping” sensation occurs when moving the knee.

Fingers. Bony growths (spurs) at the edge of joints can cause fingers to become swollen, tender and red. There may be pain at the base of the thumb.

Feet. Pain and tenderness is felt in the large joint at the base of the big toe. There may be swelling in ankles or toes.

(Source: arthritis.org)

Exercise: Benefits of regular physical activityTo reap the benefits of exercise, just get more active throughout

your day — take the stairs instead of the elevator or rev up

your household chores.

Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that

may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed.

6 ways you can prepare to “age well”You›re probably already doing a lot to ensure that you stay in good health and are able to enjoy your later years: eating right, exercising, getting checkups and screenings as recommended by your doctor. But it also makes sense to have some contingency plans for the bumps in the road that might occur.

1. Adapt your home. Stairs, baths, and kitchens can present hazards for older people. Even if you don›t need to make changes now, do an annual safety review so you can make necessary updates if your needs change.

2. Prevent falls. Falls are a big deal for older people — they often result in fractures that can lead to disability, further health problems, or even death. Safety precautions are important, but so are exercises that can improve balance and strength.

3. Consider your housing options. You might consider investigating naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs). These neighborhoods and housing complexes aren›t developed specifically to serve seniors — and, in fact, tend to host a mix of ages — but because they have plenty of coordinated care and support available, they are senior-friendly.

4. Think ahead about how to get the help you may need. Meal preparation, transportation, home repair, housecleaning, and help with financial tasks such as paying bills might be hired out if you can afford it, or shared among friends and family. Elder services offered in your community might be another option.

5. Plan for emergencies. Who would you call in an emergency? Is there someone who can check in on you regularly? What would you do if you fell and couldn›t reach the phone? Keep emergency numbers near each phone or on speed dial. Carry a cellphone (preferably with large buttons and a bright screen), or consider investing in some type of personal alarm system.

6. Write advance care directives. Advance care directives, such as a living will, durable power of attorney for health care, and health care proxy, allow you to explain the type of medical care you want if you›re too sick, confused, or injured to voice your wishes. Every adult should have these documents. (Source: health.harvard.edu)

What is Osteoarthritis?

By Cherlynn Low

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

T E C H N O L O G Y AUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 2017

Back in June, former Wall Street analyst Gene Munster said that the AR powered Apple Glasses, expected to be launched in 2020, will be bigger than the Apple iP-hone. And that analysis is similar to forecasts made by HoloLens creator Alex Kipman, and Windows Insider Chief Dona Sarkar.

Both agree with Munster that AR smartglasses could soon surpass smartphones as our main go-to technology.Kipman, who created HoloLens, says that the smartphone is already dead and that people just don’t know it yet.

The HoloLens uses a combination of real and virtual worlds to form Mixed Reality. The real world appears as the backdrop in AR (Augmented Reality) while the virtual world obviously appears in Virtual Reality images.

According to Kipman, small smartphone and television screens will be replaced by wearable holographic devic-es like a smartglass screen. Windows Insider Dona Sakar has similar feelings although she is seeing things from the smartphone side. Saying that she loves her Lumia 950 XL, she realizes that a smartphone is just one single category

of a group that encompasses mobile devices. Like Kipman, Sakar sees Microsoft developing a screenless version of a smartphone that takes over for the handset.

Considering that Google Glass was pretty much a consumer failure and that the smartphone still rules the roost, this all seems like science fiction.

But we’ve gone from featurephones to smartphones and are now moving toward AR based smartglasses. As said in the Titanic movie, “It’s a mathematical certainty.”

(Source: windowscentral)

A security researcher who helped curb a global outbreak of the WannaCry ransomware earlier this year has told a court he is not guilty of charges of allegedly creating a notorious banking malware.

Marcus Hutchins, 22, said he was not guilty during a hearing at a Las Vegas court after he was arrested and detained earlier this week.

The news was confirmed by his attorney Adrian Lobo, speaking on Facebook Live to local reporter Christy Wilcox, at the court house.

Hutchins was granted bail on a bond of $30,000 during a hearing at a Las Vegas court.

But he will “not be released today lawyers says could not get bail in time,” according to Wilcox in a tweet.

He will not be allowed access to devices with an internet connection, said Wilcox, and he will be tagged to be monitored at all times.

Hutchins, also known as @MalwareTechBlog, stormed to fame earlier this year after he found a kill switch in the malware, known as WannaCry, amid a global epidemic of ransomware in May.

By registering a domain found in the code, he stopped the spread of the malware.

The Justice Department announced Thursday that it was charging Hutchins with malicious activity, unrelated to the WannaCry cyberattack.

The security researcher, a British native, was arrested shortly before boarding a flight home. He had been attending the Def Con security conference late last month. He was briefly detained in a federal detention facility in Nevada, then later questioned by the FBI at its field office in Las Vegas.

Hutchins was later indicted, along with an unnamed defendant, on six charges relating to allegations that he created the Kronos malware, a trojan that can steal banking usernames and passwords from victims’ computers.

(Source: zdnet)

HoloLens founder and Windows Insider chief say smartglasses will replace smartphones

WannaCry researcher denies creating banking malware at court hearing

Need a new password? Don’t choose one of these 306 million

iOS 11 camera features may include scene recognition

A New York library card is your ticket to stream thousands of movies

Troy Hunt, the security expert behind Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), has released 306 million previous-ly-pwned passwords in a bid to help individuals and companies ramp up their online security. The pass-words have been mined from dozens of data breach-es, and can be downloaded for free.

HIBP lets someone see if their email address has appeared in a breach, but doesn’t reveal the associat-ed password for that particular compromised service. Now, Hunt -- who has written extensively on pass-word protection -- has flipped the model on its head, making passwords searchable without the associated email address or username.

Companies can use the data in their back-end sys-tems to improve password security.

(Source: engadget)

Smartphones may have effectively killed off dedicat-ed point-and-shoot cameras, but Apple is looking to them for inspiration with iOS 11. Developers have dug through beta firmware for the HomePod, and tucked inside the code for Apple’s smart speaker, there are hints that the next version of its mobile OS will feature something called “SmartCam.”

If you’ve ever used a point-and-shoot camera, the fea-ture should sound pretty familiar: different scene modes and photo settings depending on what you’re shooting. So, one each for fireworks, foliage, pets, skies, snow, sports and others, as SlashGear notes. There’s even one for doc-uments.The “smart” in its name suggests that maybe ma-chine learning will play a role here as well, potentially analyz-ing the scene for you and picking the best settings.

(Source: SlashGear)

The New York Public Library is getting ready to give citizens access to Kanopy, a streaming service originally started to let university students access its library of films. Currently, Kanopy has deals with more than 3,000 colleges and universities, and the company has been making partnerships with public libraries as well.

You’ll need to visit a library branch to get a “full access” library card, but once you do you’ll have access to the 30,000 films that Kanopy offers.

Users will be able to view up to 10 movies per month and have three days to finish watching them once they start. Kanopy has iOS, Android and Roku apps and supports Airplay if you want to watch movies on Apple TV.

(Source: Gothamist)

The 2017 lineup of Android Wear watch-es is a techy fashionista’s dream come true. With options from an ever-growing list of designers including Louis Vuitton, Movado, Michael Kors, Kate Spade, Em-porio Armani, Tommy Hilfiger, Google’s smartwatch platform is impressively di-verse. Fossil Group even announced it would offer 300 new smartwatch designs by year’s end, with many of those models running Android Wear. Meanwhile, big tech brands like Motorola and Microsoft have stopped making wearables alto-gether. The fashion industry’s enthusiasm is a lifeline for smartwatches as tech com-panies start deserting them.

There are still a few consumer-elec-tronics brands hanging around, like Hua-wei and LG. But they’re outnumbered by fashion designers offering Android Wear devices in a wide range of styles and pric-es. That variety is by design. David Single-ton, head of Android Wear, told Engadget that his team “set out to create a diverse set of devices.” He believes that watches are too personal for companies to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach.

Instead, Google partnered with nu-merous brands from both tech and fash-ion to produce dozens of options for consumers. In the three years since its birth, the platform has not only acquired an impressive stable of stylish new looks and useful skills, but it has also found an identity. According to Singleton, Android Wear now revolves around the “three pil-lars of what smartwatches are for today -- staying healthy, staying connected and expressing your style.”

That last “pillar” is particularly impor-tant and might explain why tech compa-nies have had trouble gaining traction. “If

you think about a watch — you do pur-chase these products as much for what they say about you and convey about yourself as well as for what they do,” Sin-gleton said. “You choose something you like the look and feel of more than any-thing else,” he added. Early attempts from the likes of Huawei, LG and Moto were ultimately basic, cookie-cutter designs that failed to inspire longing the way a gorgeous timepiece can.

The fashion industry is a more natu-ral fit, with its vastly superior knowledge of premium aesthetics and style. Thanks largely to partnerships with Google, brands with sartorial knowhow launched smartwatch after smartwatch after smartwatch. For the most part, these

companies simply take existing designs and swap out the face for a case that runs Android Wear. It’s not the most creative formula, but it has its appeal.

Designers like Movado, Mont Blanc and LV bring with them ardent brand loy-alists, who are willing to drop thousands of dollars on luxury timepieces. Having a connected option is a bonus these cus-tomers might consider.

Movado’s director of public relations, Heather Cohen Sugarman, said, “If they’re going online and looking for a watch anyway and there you have a beautiful watch and being able to be connected, it’s only a positive thing.”

Despite the combined efforts of all these big companies, wearable sales

continue to slow. Apple still reigns, with the Watch Series 2 being the best-sell-ing wearable last quarter. But Singleton isn’t discouraged. “In our numbers and in our usage, what we’re seeing is that everything is growing,” he said, pointing to holiday seasons as periods of “expo-nential” growth. “Even throughout the year, we see continuous growth and we see that consumers are engaging with the product more and more over time. Every single sign is positive.”

That may be the case for Google, but over at Fitbit, most signs are negative. The company just reported declines in sales and revenue for the second quarter of 2017, compared with the same period last year. Fitbit is preparing to launch its first smartwatch and is banking on that device to boost its overall performance by the end of the year. Even then, it’s pro-jecting a loss for 2017.

There may be some hope yet for wear-ables. According to the latest available IDC data, the worldwide wearables market grew 16.9 percent in the last quarter of 2016 over the year before. The research company ex-pects wearables to continue doing well, thanks to the boost from fashion brands. Jitesh Ubrani, IDC’s senior research an-alyst, wrote in a report that “much of this growth is coming from vendor push rather than consumer demand,” and that “hybrid watches and other fashion accessories with fitness tracking are starting to gain traction, [presenting] an opportunity to sell multiple wearables to a single consumer under the guise of ‘fashion.’ “

In such uncertain times, Android Wear needs all the help it can get, and the fashion community could prove to be a crucial ally.

(Source: Androidwear)

Smartwatches are relying on fashion brands to survive

10 hot titles of IT world

Here are high rated IT titles in the world that reviewed by savvy tech users:

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 to be released on Sep-tember 15th?

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is expected to be introduced on August 23rd but some analysts expect Sammy to launch the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 on September 15th. An accompanying statement made by a South Korean carrier representative overseas reads, “We are going to sell Galaxy Note 8 starting from the 15th of September. Its price has not been set yet.” There is also some speculation that the Galaxy Note 8 will launch at around the same time as the LG V30 does.

a new report suggests Nokia 8 could be the first non-Google smartphone to come with Android O inside.

August will be a hectic month for the smartphone business and a fascinating one for tech-savvy. Google’s Android O launch is just around the corner, and so are two of the most anticipated smartphones of the year: Nokia 8 and Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

The Google Play Store now demotes buggy and battery-draining apps in search results.

The new ranking is mostly influenced by how well an app performs on the devices of users participating in a special, opt-in program, meaning “quality” in this case only refers to a lack of crashes, lag, or excessive battery drain.

Facebook translations are now entirely powered by AI.

Neural networks create much more accurate translations.

Uber said it had taken action to repair faulty cars in Singapore after it was reported the ride-hailing

company rented them out to drivers despite being aware of a recall, and after one caught fire.

‘Anonymous’ browsing data can be easily exposed, researchers reveal.

A journalist and a data scientist secured data from three mil-lion users easily by creating a fake marketing company, and were able to de-anonymise many users

Google says AI better than humans at scrubbing extremist YouTube content.

Company pledges further development to tackle rise of ex-tremist and illicit content and hate speech, but says advanced machine learning is the answer

Google might kill URLs in mobile search and ruin things for everyone.

There’s a chance that webmasters will lose out on traffic from those people who are looking for their sites specifically.

Alphabet Inc’s Google is working with Indonesia to tackle video content deemed to be offensive,

including material that might incite violence or hate speech-Google plans to implement its “Trusted Flagger” program in Indonesia over the next two to three months, Ann Lavin, Google’s director for public policy and government affairs in Southeast Asia and Greater China, told a news conference in Jakarta.

Tesla Inc jumped over 6 percent as its quarterly report fueled bets that its new Model 3 sedan would propel

the luxury electric carmaker into the mainstream.

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Next Apple Watch to gain LTE connectivityThe Apple Watch is about to undergo a drastic change ac-cording to two separate reports published late Friday.

Bloomberg first broke the news that Apple plans on breaking the Apple Watch free from the iPhone by adding an Intel based LTE modem to the watch. Currently, when an Ap-ple Watch user is outside of Wi-Fi coverage and without an iPhone, the Apple Watch is unable to connect to the Internet.

According to the report, Apple intends on introducing the cellular capable watch alongside the three new iPhones this fall. It’s unclear if an additional monthly fee will be required by carriers as is currently the requirement for LTE smart watches.

Shortly after Bloomberg’s story was published, popular Apple blogger John Gruber shared the story, adding “No mention in Businessweek’s report, though, of the all-new form factor that I’ve heard is coming for this year’s new watches.”

This is the first time we’ve heard reports that Apple would change the overall look of its smartwatch. However, we’ve previously heard that Apple was working on a cellular version of the watch, but has had to delay the new model due to battery life concerns.

Battery life is still an issue with a device of this size that’s constantly connected to a network, but perhaps the new form factor will add some room for a bigger battery without significantly increasing the watch size.

Bloomberg’s report indicates the new model will be called Apple Watch Series 3.

(Source: bloomberg)

By Alireza Khorasani

10

The more flame retardants a pregnant woman is ex-posed to, the greater the chances her child will have lower intelligence. A new paper in the journal Environ-mental Health Perspectives calculated that every tenfold increase in exposure to chemicals called polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) was linked to a 3.7 point decline in IQ test scores in children.

This potential effect is significant. By comparison, a tenfold increase in prenatal exposure to lead — a noto-rious neurotoxin — is associated with a 7 point decline in intelligence scores in children.

The new study is a meta-analysis summarizing and evaluating all of the relevant research on the safety of these chemicals. The researchers included 10 studies that show a link between flame retardants and intelli-gence, and analyzed another nine that looked for a connection between the chemicals and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Sufficient proofThese nine papers don’t provide sufficient proof of

a link between exposure to the substances and atten-tion-related problems, says Juleen Lam, an associate re-

search scientist at the University of California-San Fran-cisco and lead author of the paper.

But for flame retardants, which are meant to prevent material from catching on fire, the connection is stark.

The “evidence strongly suggests that PBDEs are dam-aging kids’ intelligence,” Lam says, and thus children should be protected from these substances to “prevent intelligence loss. We’re really seeing this as a wake-up call to policymakers.”

Exactly how PBDEs cause a decline in intelligence is unknown. However, research increasingly suggests they impair the activity of the endocrine system, the body’s delicate system of hormone-producing glands that con-trols everything from daily sleep-wake cycles to sexu-al development. And during pregnancy, the endocrine system has an enormous effect on the development of the fetus’s brain.

High-quality studyThe paper is a “high-quality study that provides the

most robust estimate” of the link between prenatal flame retardant exposure and IQ, says Ami Zota, an environmen-tal health scientist at George Washington University who

studies flame retardants but wasn’t involved in the paper.Several PBDEs — there are many types — have been

banned or phased out in the United States. Arlene Blum, a scientist with the Green Science Policy Institute who wasn’t involved in the study, says most new furniture doesn’t contain these flame retardants, as was once the case. But they aren’t going away.

(Source: Newsweek)

Birds’ feathers, or plumage, are some of the most strikingly variable animal char-acteristics that can be observed by the naked eye. The patterns that we see in birds’ feathers are made up of intricate combinations of mottles, scales, bars, and spots. But, how are these colors and pat-terns made?

We already know why birds have colored feathers. For many birds, plum-age coloration may make them less

visible to predators by helping them to blend in to their surroundings, or more appealing to potential mates by helping them to stand out from their peers.

These aspects are well known. A greater mystery has been how the

patterns are created on a cellular level.Dr. Ismael Galván and his team of ex-

pert researchers studied plumage col-oration to see what types of pigments were present in birds’ complex feather

patterns. Plumage coloration

Plumage coloration mainly happens courtesy of two types of pigments: mel-anins, which produce a range of black, grey, brown, and orange colors, and ca-rotenoids, which are used by specialized feather structures to generate brighter color hues.

Birds cannot produce carotenoids on their own. For feathers with bright colors,

birds must consume food items that con-tain these pigments, and the carotenoids circulate through the bloodstream and to the feather follicles. Birds’ bodies do not have direct cellular control of synthesizing and depositing carotenoids; nor do they have control of the specialized feather structures, which react to the consumed carotenoids with a mechanism that is not regulated by specialized cells.

(Source: EurekAlert)

Five years after touching down on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover mission is still mak-ing big discoveries.

On the night of Aug. 5, 2012, the car-size robot aced a dramatic and harrow-ing landing, settling softly onto the Red Planet’s surface after being lowered on cables by a rocket-powered “sky crane.”

The success of this unprecedented (and seemingly improbable) maneuver sparked eruptions of emotion at mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labora-tory (JPL) in Pasadena, California — and at late-night viewing parties all over the world.

Curiosity landed on Mars at 10:17 P.M. PDT on Aug. 5, that’s 01:17 A.M. EDT on Aug. 6 (0517 GMT), with the signal of its success reaching Earth 14 minutes later after crossing the 154 million miles be-tween Mars and Earth.

Gale CraterWithin weeks of its arrival inside Mars’

96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Cra-ter, Curiosity hit scientific pay dirt, rolling through an ancient streambed where wa-ter once flowed.

And, not long after that, mission sci-entists revealed a bombshell: Billions of years ago, a nearby area known as Yel-lowknife Bay was part of a lake that could have supported microbial life. But that’s not where Curiosity’s story ends. The rov-er has continued to piece together de-

tails about the ancient Gale Crater envi-ronment — work that has led to another exciting find.

“I feel like we’re arriving at a second conclusion from the mission that’s just as powerful as the first, which is that habit-able environments persisted on Mars for at least millions of years,” Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of JPL, told

Space.com.Curiosity worked near its landing site

on Gale’s floor for its first year on Mars. Then, the nuclear-powered rover began a 5-mile (8 km) trek to the towering Mount Sharp, which rises about 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the Red Planet sky from Gale’s center.

The mountain’s foothills had long

been Curiosity’s main science destination, even before the rover’s November 2011 launch. Mission team members wanted the six-wheeled robot to work its way up through Mount Sharp’s lower reaches, studying the rock layers there for clues about Mars’ long-ago transition from a relatively warm and wet world to the cold, arid place it is today.

Numerous rocks studiedAnd that’s what Curiosity has been do-

ing for the past three years. Since arriving at Mount Sharp in September 2014, the robot has climbed about 600 vertical feet (180 meters), drilling, sampling and stud-ying numerous rocks that are part of a geological division that mission scientists call the Murray Formation.

Curiosity found that most of this rock is fine-grained mudstone — classic lake-bed deposits, Vasavada said. Such de-posits on Earth generally take millions of years to accumulate, leading the team to conclude that Gale Crater ’s lake system was long-lasting.

That’s a big deal, because Curiosity’s work at Yellowknife Bay captured just “a snapshot in time,” Vasavada said.

Based on the initial findings, “that lake may only have been around for 100 or 1,000 years at the minimum,” he said. “There was a risk that our habitability discovery only applied to a short amount of time.”

(Source: space.com)

Japanese scientists have invented ice cream that doesn’t meltSome of our most amazing discoveries have been acciden-tal — like, say, electricity — and magic has happened again. Scientists at the Biotherapy Development Research Center in Japan have somehow created ice cream that doesn’t melt.

This miraculous discovery happened when the scientists were testing the polyphenol extracts while trying to make a strawberry dessert that would help strawberry farmers who had seen their crops affected by the earthquake and tsuna-mi in 2011. During the process, a pastry chef got frustrated, saying the extract caused the cream to solidify and remain frozen.

“Polyphenol liquid has properties to make it difficult for water and oil to separate, so a popsicle containing it will be able to retain the original shape of the cream for a longer time than usual, and be hard to melt,” said professor emeritus of pharmacy at Kanazawa University Tomihisa Ota, who de-veloped the popsicles, to Japanese news organization Asahi Shimbun.

Somehow, this glorious invention coming out of a noble experiment makes it even more deliciously exciting.

Sure, part of the long-standing identity of ice cream is that it melts. But think bigger. Apparently, even after a few hours, the ice cream kept its shape. This is leading us to fantasizing about all sorts of amazing realities where we don’t have to eat our ice cream fast before it melts, but rather can savor it all afternoon.

This brilliant discovery, called Kanazawa Ice — (but also known as the “not-melting Popsicles”) — first appeared in the northwestern city of Kanazawa (hence the name) this spring, says Asahi Shimbun, but it can now be found in shops in Osaka and Tokyo.

(Source: Sheknows)

Where is Earth’s missing internal heat?It may not be obvious while lying in the sun on a hot sum-mer’s day, but a considerable amount of heat is also coming from below you – emanating from deep within the Earth. This heat is equivalent to more than three times the total power consumption of the entire world and drives impor-tant geological processes, such as the movement of tectonic plates and the flow of magma near the surface of the Earth. But despite this, where exactly up to half of this heat actually comes from is a mystery.

It is thought that a type of neutrinos – particles with ex-tremely low mass – emitted by radioactive processes in the Earth’s interior may provide important clues to solving this mystery.

The problem is that they are nearly impossible to catch. But in a new paper, published in the journal Nature Commu-nications, we have set out a way to do just that.

The known sources of heat from the Earth’s interior are radioactive decays, and residual heat from when our planet was first formed. The amount of heating from radioactivi-ty, estimated based on measurements of the composition of rock samples, is highly uncertain – accounting for anywhere from 25-90% of the total heat flow.

(Source: IBT)

Perlan 2 glider reaches highest altitude yetAirbus’s Perlan 2 glider flew higher than ever before this week as it ramps up for its attempt to break the high altitude glid-er record later this year. With test pilots Jim Payne, Morgan Sandercock, Tim Gardner, and Miguel Iturmendi aboard, the two-person pressurized sailplane made a series of free flights over El Calafate, Argentina, where it reached a maximum al-titude of 32,500 ft (9,900 m).

The Perlan 2 is an engineless glider designed to break the previous high-altitude record of 50,727 ft (15,416 m) set in 2006 by Einar Enevoldsen and Steve Fossett in Perlan 1. The eventual goal is to be the first engineless fixed-wing aircraft to reach the edge of space at 62 mi (100 km).

To achieve these goals, Perlan 2 has an ultralight construc-tion of only 1,100 lb (500 kg) when empty and a wingspan of 84 ft (27 m) as well as an oxygen breathing system and an emergency recovery parachute. After making initial test flights over Oregon and Nevada, the project moved to Ar-gentina in 2016.

The new season of tests will take advantage of the conflu-ence of Andean winds and the southern polar vortex in the south of Patagonia that generate the world’s highest “strato-spheric mountain waves,” with updrafts potentially capable of sending Perlan 2 to the edge of space.

According to Airbus, the next two months will see the Per-lan team try to exceed the 2006 altitude record while collect-ing scientific data about the atmosphere and high-altitude radiation exposure. Because Perlan 2 has no engine, yet is capable of controlled flight, it has the advantage over both aircraft and balloons in that it can take air samples with less chance of contamination while remaining in a desired loca-tion.

(Source: newatlas.com)

S C I E N C EAUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 2017 11I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Childhood intelligence harmed by flame retardant exposure, study shows

How do birds get their colors?

Bank Melli Iran (BMI) plans to offer high-quality curren-cy services in its electronic banking system, the Public Relations Dept. of the bank reported.

For his part, member of Board of Directors of the bank Gholam-Reza Panahi said: “BMI’s Electronic Bank-ing System dubbed “BAAM” is one of the advanced

services of the bank, tasked with offering rials-based services only.”

In the same direction, the bank plans to define and operate certain currency services in this system, he maintained.

In the end, the Deputy Chief Executive of the bank

for Currency and Intl Affairs stated: “In new service of the bank, suitable ways have been paved for customer in order to have direct access to his banking account similar to the rials-based account, to sell his or her cur-rency according to the market price and/or to buy cur-rency accordingly.”

A consortium of SK Engineering & Construction Com-pany (SKEC) and Oil Design and Construction Compa-ny (ODCC) of Iran has signed an agreement to fund and implement Tabriz Oil Refinery Upgrading Project located in Tabriz, Iran.

The total project value is estimated at 1.6 billion euro including the finance fee. The funding would be provided by the Export-Import Bank of Korea (KEX-IM) as well as the Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (K-Sure) under the framework agreement between Iran and Korea countries. The framework agreement is set to be signed soon.

The consortium has recently completed the detail feasi-bility study of the project and is planning to start basic engi-neering package followed by the EPC phase of the project.

Due to the long distance of Tabriz Refinery from tide waters, transportation of the fuel oil product from Tabriz refinery to export terminals located in south of

Iran is one of the main challenges for NIORDC. In addition, the restrictions imposed by Environ-

mental Agencies for burning fuel oils with high impuri-ties has caused a sharp reduction for fuel oil demand in Iran and worldwide. All these together has made Tabriz Refinery to not be able to operate at its nameplate production capacity. This project not only resolves the abovementioned problems but also improves the re-finery efficiency and profit margin through vacuum res-idue upgrading and producing added value products.

By implementing this project, the fuel oil production will drop from 20% to around 1% of the total refin-ery throughput volume, and added value products like lube oil grade II and III along with Euro V gasoline and diesel fuels are produced.

Gilan Regional Power Company (GRP-CO) won the first place in accurate per-formance index of protective system as compared to the other regional power companies, Public Relations Dept. of the company reported.

For his part, Eng. Hamzeh Isaza-deh Public Relations Dept. Manager

of Gilan Regional Power Company pointed to the winning this top rank and said: “The Company was ranked first in accurate performance index of protective system with attaining 77.96 percent score in the past Ira-nian calendar year in 1395 (ended March 20, 2017).”

Given the above issue, the average mean of total performance of this index in Iran’s power grid stands at 98.82 per-cent, he maintained.

Fortunately, percentage of inci-dent caused by inappropriate regu-lating or designing of protective sys-tem than whole incidents caused by

the inaccurate performance of pro-tective systems as well as percentage of incidents caused by the mistake of human factors have reached to zero level in Gilan Regional Power Com-pany as compared to the other re-gional companies in the country, the report ended.

BMI Plans to Present Currency Services in Its E-Banking System

SKEC of Korea to Fund Tabriz Oil Refinery Upgrading Project

GRPCO Wins 1st Place in Accurate Performance Index of Protective System

NASA’s Curiosity rover is still making big discoveries

Within weeks of its arrival inside Mars’ 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater, Curiosity hit scientific pay dirt, rolling through an ancient

streambed where water once flowed.

large explosion in Zemestanyurt coal mine

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

L I F E & S O C I E T Y AUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 2017

Think about the last time somebody an-noyed you. Maybe your boss shouted at you for something that wasn’t your fault. Did you think something like this?

“She’s so short-tempered.”“She’s just an unreasonable person.”“She can’t control her anger.”If you did, then you could be guilty of

making a fundamental attribution error. What is a fundamental attribu-

tion error?Making a fundamental attribution

error means explaining someone’s be-havior based on internal factors, like personality type, rather than consider-ing how external factors could have in-fluenced their actions.

For example, if a friend fails to com-plete his homework on time, you might think, “It’s because he’s so lazy,’ when in reality, your friend might have been work-ing overtime at his second job, leaving him no time for schoolwork.

To help you become more self-aware, check out this list of situations where you might make fundamental attribution errors:

At work. Especially when we disagree with someone or their behavior damages our own performance.

With family. We might unfairly judge someone’s character because we think we know them so well.

In relationships. Arguments can cause us to make rash assumptions about our

partner’s personality.In public. When we don’t know people

well, it’s easy to judge them without con-sidering the reasons behind their actions.

Here are some examples of funda-mental attribution errors in our daily lives:

Check out the examples of fundamen-tal attribution errors below, and see if you can recognize yourself in any of the sce-narios. If so, don’t worry – it’s 100% pos-sible to change the way you view others.

When someone hurts your feelings. It’s tempting to make big assumptions about someone’s personality when they’ve hurt you. Try to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

When dealing with strangers. We’re quick to make snap judgments, often about people we’ve never even spoken to. Next time you see a parent shout at their child in public, try considering the stress they might be under, instead of in-stantly judging them to be a bad parent.

When arguing with a partner. Funda-mental attribution errors can be really dam-aging to a relationship, and might make your partner feel unfairly criticized. Have you ever been arguing about a relatively small issue, and said something like, “You’re so thoughtless”, or “You never listen to me”? These dramatic statements are rarely true and often make unfair generalizations about your partner’s behavior.

When you disagree with someone. When someone presents a point of view you completely disagree with, it’s easy to think, “He’s so stupid.” However, this kind

of black and white thinking prevents us from being open to new ideas. It’s also unfair to others.

Why do we make fundamental attribution errors?

There’s a key reason that we make fundamental attribution errors about oth-ers, but not about ourselves.

We know the reasons and context be-hind our own behavior, but other peoples’ motivations often remain a mystery. If you are late to a meeting because you’re caring for a sick family member, you’ll probably go easy on yourself. If a coworker is late, you might assume they slept in or couldn’t be bothered to check the time.

Not knowing the true reasons for someone’s actions significantly affects the way we judge them.

How can you catch yourself before making a fundamental attribution error?

Luckily, it’s possible to stop ourselves before we make fundamental attribution errors. This can help us to be more un-derstanding, build better relationships, and feel less hurt by the actions of others.

Next time you catch yourself making a blanket judgment on someone’s person-ality, try the following techniques.

Avoid generalizing someone’s behavior

Try not to use words like, ‘always’ or ‘never’ when describing someone’s be-havior. Instead of saying to your partner, “You never help with the housework,” try saying something like, “You haven’t helped much with the housework this

week.” This feels much fairer and more reasonable.

Look for the best in peopleFundamental attribution errors often

occur because we’re assuming the worst of people. We tend to think that other people are selfish, stupid, or thoughtless, while thinking of ourselves as kind and reasonable. Try to see the best in other people, rather than searching for evi-dence of their flaws.

Make up excuses for peoples’ actions

Put yourself in the other person’s shoes, and see if you can come up for any ex-cuses for their behavior. For example, “She was short with me because she’s tired af-ter caring for a newborn all night,” or “He pushed into the front of the queue because he needs to buy urgent medical supplies.” This exercise helps you to consider all the possible reasons for peoples’ behavior.

Ask the person about their be-havior

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best. Wondering why someone behaved the way they did? Just ask. You might get an answer like, “Sorry, I’d had a long day. I can see that I was wrong.” Be sure to word your question in a constructive, un-derstanding way. Don’t insult the person or make unfair accusations.

How many times have you judged someone unfairly? Use these tips to stop making fundamental attribution errors and start understanding others instead.

(Source: Lifehack)

Many of us make big assumptions about people’s personality without being aware of it

TEHRAN — A blast occurred on Sat-urday night in a coal mine in northern

Iran, leaving one dead and another injured.The explosion rocked Kardar Mine in Chamestan

county, Mazandaran province, at around 10:01 p.m. local time, ISNA quoted Pir Hossein Kolivand, head of Emergency Medical Services Organization as saying.

The incident injured a 22-year-old anonymous af-ghan national and another 21-year-old worker, he said,

adding that both were immediately transferred to the hospital. But, the afghan national died of severe injury later in the hospital.

In a like fatal incident on May 3 a large explosion struck Zemestanyurt coal mine located about 14km outside the town of Azadshahr in Golestan, a prov-ince in northeastern Iran.

35 miners have lost their lives and scores of others were injured in the explosion.

Mine blast in Iran leaves one dead, one injured

By Eloise Best

Soft answer turneth away wrath

Explanation: if you speak softly and meekly to some-one who is angry with you, that person will calm down

For example: It won’t do any good for you to yell at John because he yelled at you. Remember that a soft answer turneth away wrath.

Dine out Meaning: to eat dinner in a restaurant or in some-

one else’s house For example: They would dine out together once

a month.

Bend over backwards Explanation: if you bend over backwards, you

try very hard to do something, especially to please somebody

For example: The manager bent over backwards to try to make Jack stay, but Jack wouldn’t change his mind.

ENGLISH PROVERB PHRASAL VERB ENGLISH IDIOM

ENGLISH IN USE

DOE set to rank ‘green’ universities Iran’s Department of Environment will rank environmentally friendly universities based on international standards in the next Iranian calendar year, starting on March 21.“We’ve overlooked green management for some time but now we are meaning to make up for that,” the DOE chief Masoumeh Ebtekar said.“Nowadays the effectiveness of a government is defined through efforts towards attaining sustainable development goals and the issue that how much these efforts can minimize damages to the environment while undergoing development,” she explained.

رتبه بندى دانشگاه ها در زمينه مديريت سبز از سال آيندهــا شــاخص هاى ســازمان محيــط زيســت از ســال آينــده رتبه بنــدى در زمينــه مديريــت ســبز را ب

ــد. ــام مى ده ــگاه ها انج ــى در دانش جهانرئيــس ســازمان محيــط زيســت معصومــه ابتــكار گفت: متاســفانه امــروز مســاله مديريت ســبز حذف

شــده اســت و بايــد تــالش شــود غفلتــى كــه اتفــاق افتــاده برطرف شــود.وى در ادامــه خاطرنشــان كــرد: امــروزه مــالك كارآمــدى دولت هــا در زمينــه توســعه پايــدار اســت و اينكــه چقــدر مى تــوان توســعه را بــا شــاخص هاى زيســت محيطى همســان كــرد و جلــوى آثــار

تخريبــى بــه محيــط زيســت را گرفــت.

LEARN NEWS TRANSLATIONLEARN NEWS TRANSLATION

Iran dismisses Israeli claim on Intl. Informatics Olympiad

TEHRAN — In response to an Israeli tweet claiming winning four medals at the 29th

International Informatics Olympiad (IOI 2017) in Tehran, the event’s spokesman dismissed claims of awarding any medals to Israeli contestants.

No contestants from the Zionist regime were allowed to participate onsite at IOI 2017. However, according to IOI official website following General Assembly of International

Olympiad in Informatics Israeli students could participate remotely from Russia.

“Students from countries who show hostility towards one another should request offsite participation from IOI Committee,” Hamidreza Azemati told Mehr news agency, explaining, “this [offsite participation] does not concern us and the IOI Committee permission for participating remotely is not official.”

“Generally, such competitions are held onsite and we did not grant any offsite participation permission; any persimmon for offsite participation is given by IOI Committee,” he restated.

“So, we do not award any medals to students who had took part in the competition remotely; [moreover] we refuse to officially recognize the Zionist regime,” Azemati said.

The IOI is an annual competitive programming competition for secondary school students. It is the second largest Olympiad, after International Mathematical Olympiad, in terms of number of participating countries. This year some 300 students from 84 countries from around the world participated in the event held in Tehran from July 28 to August 4.

Iran’s team finished in fourth place after Japan, China, and Russia with one gold medal and three silver medals in IOI 2017.

He’s not a Good Fit A: So, Lauren, I just wanted to talk to you quickly about our new customer support representative, Jason Huntley.B: Sure, what’s up?A: Basically, I’ve got a few concerns about him, and the bottom line is, I don’t think he’s a good fit for our company.B: Okay... what makes you say that? I thought you were pleased with his overall performance. Didn’t you just tell me last week how impressed you were with his attitude?A: Yeah, his attitude is great, but he’s really unreliable. Sometimes he’s really productive, but then other times... take last Tuesday for instance, he was forty-five minutes late for our morning meeting!B: Well, I’m sure he had a perfectly good reason...A: But that’s not the only thing... you know, he really doesn’t have the best work ethic, I’m constantly catching him on MSN and Facebook when he should be talking to clients.B: Yeah, but come on, Geoff, as if you don’t check Facebook at work. Look, you hired this guy, we’ve invested a lot of time and money in his training, so now it’s up to you to coach him. Make it work, Geoff!A: Make it work, Geoff. You would say that, wouldn’t you, he is your cousin; what a jerk, make me hire your stupid, useless, cousin.

Key vocabularyconcern: worrythe bottom line: the most important pointfit: suitableoverall: generalperformance: how well someone does their jobimpress: to make someone feel admiration and respectattitude: the way that you behave towards someone or in a particular situation, especially when this shows how you feelunreliable: not able to be trustedproductive: doing a lot in a short amount of timeperfectly good: having no problems, just finework ethic: a belief in the moral value and importance of workcoach: teach and train someone new skills

Supplementary vocabularypoor judgment: regularly makes bad decisionspoor work ethic: bad attitude to workdependable: able to be trusted and relied upona bad apple: a bad member of a group who makes things more difficult for othersunproductive: not productive, not doing a lot

(Source: irlanguage.com)

L E A R N E N G L I S H

S O C I E T Yd e s k

S O C I E T Yd e s k

S O C I E T Yd e s k

TEHRAN — Results for the top scoring

students in Iran’s university entrance exam, also known as Konkur, in the three main groups of mathematical sciences, experimental sciences, and human sciences along with two other groups of art and foreign languages were announced on Sunday.

Just 8 out of the top 36 students are female. Very much like last year’s results there is no female among the top 10 students admitted for the mathematical sciences. All three top students in foreign languages group are male as well while the three top students in art group are female.

Only one female student is among the top 10 students in experimental sciences group and four females are ranked among the top 10 in human sciences.

Furthermore, 17 top students are from the city of Tehran. The cities of Yazd and Tabriz, each with 4 students, are

other areas with highest number of top scoring students.

According to Sanjesh Organization

(a body charged with Konkur administration) official website, the overall results are scheduled to be announced on Sunday evening.

Starting on Thursday the students have five days to choose the field and university they would like to choose to study and go.

Konkur, is held annually in June or July in Iran and in some other countries as well. Every year the participants sit for the multiple-choice exam to vie to get the best results possible as the seats at tuition free public universities are limited. Based on the figures only 20 percent of the students would manage to win the seats at top charge-free public universities.

This year, 930,208 individuals including 548,434 females and 381,774 males took part in the exam. The figures indicate a major decline in the number of participants since 2008.

12

Konkur top scorers list published

Have an idea?Be in touch!

lifestyle.tehrantimes@gmail.com

Have an idea?

WORLD IN FOCUS 13I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

AUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 2017

An Afghan official says that at least 30 people including women and children have been killed by Taliban fighters in northern Sari Pul province.

Zahir Wahdat, the provincial governor for Sari Pul, said on Sunday that the victims are mostly civilians and some local security forces. The shootings took place on

Saturday morning after the Taliban seized control of the strategic Mirzawalang area in Sayad district.

Wahdat says Afghan forces retreated form the area after they couldn’t gain ground or air support from the central government.

Earlier reports indicated that over a dozen people

had been killed by the Taliban.Qari Yusouf Ahamdi, a Taliban spokesman, claimed

responsibility for the attack, but not the civilian deaths.Ten Taliban fighters were also killed, according to

Zabi Amani, a spokesman for the provincial governor.(Source: AP)

Venezuelan authorities have suppressed a military re-bellion near the central city of Valencia, a ruling official said on Sunday, days after President Nicolas Maduro formed a legislative super-body internationally con-demned as a power grab.

Socialist Party deputy Diosdado Cabello made the announcement shortly after the release of a video showing a group of men in military uniform announcing a rebellion and calling for a broad uprising against Pres-ident Nicolas Maduro.

One witness in the area of a military base in the town of Naguanagua reported hearing gunshots before

dawn, but Cabello said the situation had been brought under control. Officials said the rebels, whom they de-scribed as “terrorists,” were trying to steal weapons and that seven people were detained after the attack on the base.

The Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But government allies were quick to denounce the attack as a right-wing plot aimed at bringing down the “Bolivarian revolution” started nearly 20 years ago by the late Hugo Chavez and car-ried on by his protégé Maduro.

“These attacks, planned by delirious minds in Miami,

only strengthen the morale of our armed forces and the Bolivarian people,” tweeted Socialist Party official Elias Jaua.

On Friday, government allies inaugurated a new leg-islative super-body that the Venezuelan opposition and leaders around the world denounced as a power grab by Maduro.

In Sunday’s video, a man who identified himself as Juan Carlos Caguaripano, a former National Guard cap-tain, said: “We demand the immediate formation of a transition government.” He was flanked by about a doz-en men in military uniforms.

(Source: Daily Star)

1 How do you evaluate the future of the (P)GCC?

A: In recent days Anwar Gargash, the minister of state for foreign affairs in the UAE, stated that “we have to go on without Qatar ”. He viewed the prob-lem with Doha as long term, which could not be re-solved with short-term mediation. He said that along with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, they are formulating a ‘permanent’ policy towards Qatar. Should we take his words seriously, the future of GCC as an organ-ization is bleak. Of course, this is not the first time that there is a major dispute between Qatar and some other GCC member states but the scale of this crisis is unprecedented. Hence the future of GCC, at least in its current shape is in a big question. In 2011, Saudi Arabia proposed to transform the GCC into a “Gulf Union” with tighter economic, political and security coordination in order to counterbalance the role of Iran in the region. In 2014, Khalifa bin Salman Al Khal-ifa, the prime minister of Bahrain, revived the closer integration idea, but in reality very little progress was made. I would say that the current situation and the ongoing crisis in the region has made the idea of a closer union practically impossible. One of the main outcomes of the prolongation of the Qatar crisis could be a permanent transition of GCC. For example Qatar could be permanently expelled which could pave the way for the emergence a new entity. In this situation we will see a closer security, political and economic integration between Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and UAE.

Is there possibility of a Saudi-engineered coup in Doha?

A: Since its independence from London in 1971, there have been a few coups in Qatar with long lasting impact. You have to remember that Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani, the grandfather of the current Amir was toppled in 1995 by his own son, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Shortly after the coup there was a counter-coup against Hamad in 1996 which was unsuccessful.

However, Hamd blamed external powers for trying to overthrow him. During the trial of the plotters, two top officials testified that Bahrain was behind the coup, with Saudi Arabia’s consent.

I think plotting a military coup against the current Amir is not going to be an easy task for many differ-ent reasons. The current rulers are popular and the vast majority of Qatari citizens have benefited from a massive economic transition since 1995. We have to remember that per capita gross domestic product adjusted for purchasing parity has risen to $130,000, the highest in the world, from about $55,000 in 1995. The Qatari people never had it any better. The mili-tary in Qatar is cohesive and loyal. The royal family is united. More importantly, Qatar has been relatively successful to gain international support since the cri-sis began. Qatar has some important supporters in the West and Turkey is already increasing its military presence in the country. Hence a military intervention in any shape or form is going to be too costly for the Saudis and the Emirates. So it remains to be very doubtful.

In the first days of the crisis Donald Trump called Qatar a terrorist supporter. However, later the U.S. changed policy and tried to adopt a mediatory role. What were the reasons for such a policy shift?

A: The Qatar crisis highlighted the fact that when it comes to foreign policy Trump administration is in dis-array. In the early stages of the crisis there was hardly any coordination between the president and the State Department. Hence, we kept hearing conflicting mes-sages from Washington. The State Department adopted

a more rational approach while President Trump used Twitter to blame Qatar which hosts the largest U.S. mil-itary base in the region as the sponsor of terrorism. On June 9 he stood up at the White House and said Qatar had “historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level”. But one can ask why suddenly Trump adopt-ed this radical anti-Qatar approach? I think the close ties between him and Saudi Arabia is an obvious factor but it does not explain the full picture.

Recently, some leaked email correspondence re-vealed that Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador in Washington, is a close friend with Jared Kushner (the son-in-law of the president). Yousef Al Otaiba has been using the influence of Kushner to lobby the politicians to close down the U.S. military base in Qatar. It is not secret that for years the UAE has been interested to upstage Qatar in order to be the host of the largest U.S. military base in the region. Therefore, a crisis like this could help the UAE to reach its long-term security objective. So it was not at all surprising when the recent reports blamed the UAE for faking the news about the comments stated by the Amir of Qatar, which sparked the crisis.

What is more important here than the role of the UAE is the vested interests of some members of the presidential family in the escalation of tension.

Some sources suggest that Kushner tried and failed to secure a $500m loan from a Qatari businessman, before persuading his father-in-law to adopt a hardline approach towards this tiny country.

To what extent Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump (who recently received $100 million from Saudi Arabia and the UAE for her foundation) played a role in this crisis is uncertain. But I cannot assume they did not play any role at all.

We may not have answer for all questions, but it is becoming increasingly clear that in this crisis the U.S. was part of the problem and not the solution.

As the President is unpredictable it is very hard to foresee the future policies of Washington towards Qatar.

Britain is prepared to pay up to 40 billion euros ($47 billion) to the European Union to settle its accounts when it leaves the bloc, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.

It is the first time the British side has put a figure even unofficially on the so-called divorce bill, one of the biggest sticking points in the Brexit negotiations.

However, it falls well short of the $118 billion sum discussed in Brussels.

The newspaper report, based on unnamed government sources, said Britain would pay this only if the Eu-ropean Union agrees to negotiate the financial settlement as part of a future trade deal.

Brussels has said progress must be

made on the divorce bill, as well as the rights of European citizens living in Britain and the Irish border issue, be-fore any talks can start on a free trade agreement.

EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has warned that the trade negotiations, which Britain hopes will start in Octo-ber, may be pushed back to December

because Britain is stalling on the bill, diplomats said last month.

British officials are looking at propos-ing a transition deal where Britain would continue to make net payments to the EU of $12 billion a year for up to three years after it leaves in March 2019, the Telegraph reported.

(Source: AFP)

Myanmar dismisses claims of abuse against Rohingya

A government-appointed commission has cleared Myanmar security forces of systematic rape, murder and arson against Rohingya Muslims, dismissing the United Nations allegations of wide-spread abuses during a recent crack-down.

The commission examined the dead-ly violence which began in northwest-ern Rakhine state in October last year after suspected Rohingya fighters killed nine policemen in coordinated attacks on border guard posts near Bangladesh.

In the ensuing military operation, se-curity forces allegedly shot villagers at random, raped Rohingya women and burned down more than 1,000 houses. Hundreds were killed.

The commission’s findings were re-leased as the government is refusing to allow a three-member UN mission to conduct its own probe into whether the security response amounted to “ethnic cleansing” of the stateless Rohingya mi-nority.

Giving their conclusions on Sunday, the state-backed commission revealed that any “excessive actions” were likely committed by low-rank “individual mem-bers of the security forces”.

“Some incidents [of abuse] appeared to be fabricated ... others had little ev-idence,” the commission said in a press release.

Hundreds of deathsIt also took aim at a detailed report by

the UN’s Human Rights Office released in February this year.

The UN report said it was “very likely” that crimes against humanity had been committed during the crackdown.

“The ‘area clearance operations’ have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths,” the UN’s human rights office said.

Based on interviews with 204 wit-nesses who fled to Bangladesh, the UN alleged Myanmar security forces gang-raped Rohingya women, butchered chil-dren and tortured men.

The government commission refuted the UN findings, saying “no such cases

were uncovered” in its work.It also said the UN report lacked

balance and failed to recognize the gravity of the attacks by Rohingya fighters.

The commission conceded that for-eign media and NGOs (non-govern-mental organization) should have been granted access to the zone during the conflict to dispel “misconceptions”.

HRW: Myanmar’s bullying tacticsMyanmar’s government is facing in-

creasing pressure from human rights campaigners to grant the UN investiga-tors entry to Rakhine state.

The UN team was due to begin its work this month, but Aung San Suu Kyi’s government declined to grant them vi-sas, saying it would “only aggravate” the situation on the ground.

John Fisher, Geneva director of Hu-man Rights Watch (HRW), said on Thurs-day the UN must stand up to “Myanmar’s bullying tactics of threatening visa deni-als”.

“Granting entry to the [UN team] would send a signal that the govern-ment is prepared to work collabora-tively with the international community to help identify perpetrators of serious crimes, and deter future crimes by all parties to Myanmar ’s armed conflicts,” he said.

The Rohingya are reviled in Myanmar and widely seen as illegal immigrants.

Roughly one million of the Muslim group are hemmed into the impover-ished border zone near Bangladesh, which remains locked down and under curfew.

On Friday, up to 50 “warning shots” were fired at a Rohingya village during a raid.

In a separate incident, the bodies of three men and three women bearing machete and gunshot wounds were dis-covered near the Maungdaw township in Rakhine on Thursday.

Last week, seven Buddhists were found dead in the conflict area.

(Source: Al Jazeera)

“Qatar has been relatively successful to gain

international support since it was blockaded by Saudi

Arabia and the UAE.”

Trump eyes top policy aide for communications director roleThe White House may appoint a senior policy adviser with hardline views on immigration, who recently sparred with reporters in a televised briefing, as its new communications director, a senior administration official said on Saturday.

Stephen Miller, a top aide and speechwriter for President Donald Trump, is a candidate to lead the White House’s communi-cations team after a series of personnel changes in the more than six months that Trump has been president.

The official did not say how many people were on the short list but the Axios news site reported on Sat-urday that Miller is not the top contender.

Last week, Trump oust-ed White House communications Chief Anthony Scaramucci over an obscene tirade to a New Yorker magazine writer only 10 days after he was appointed, leaving the position vacant.

Retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, the new chief of staff who sources said was seeking to impose order on a White House riven with factions and backbiting, is said to have recommended the move.

In June, Mike Dubke resigned from the communications director post and since then, there has been a revolving door, with Sean Spicer serving as acting director until Scaramucci was named.

Miller, who has been a top adviser to Trump since the presidential campaign last year, is a former aide to Jeff Ses-sions when he was in the Senate. Sessions is now Trump’s attorney general.

He was one of the authors of Trump’s controversial pro-posed ban on visitors from a half dozen Muslim majority na-tions, which has triggered protests and a slew of legal chal-lenges.

On Thursday, Miller briefed reporters at the White House on Trump’s support for legislation that would overhaul the current immigration system by creating a merit based system for issuing visas, favoring younger immigrants with advanced degrees.

He sparred with a CNN reporter who asked whether such a policy was potentially racist and ran counter to the Ameri-can values, and accused him of having a “cosmopolitan bias.”

(Source: Reuters)

UN condemns Saudi disregard for civilian lives in YemenThe United Nations has strongly condemned the latest Saudi regime airstrikes against Yemen in which at least 12 civilians, including children, lost their lives, stressing that the aerial at-tacks are an example of the “brutality” of Yemen conflict and “disregard” for civilians’ safety.

“All parties to the conflict continue to show a disregard for the protection of civilians and the principle of distinction be-tween civilians and combatants in the conduct of hostilities,” the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen Jamie McGol-drick said on Sunday.

McGoldrick’s remarks came two day after three women and six children from the same family were killed in a Saudi regime airstrike on their home in Yemen’s northwestern prov-ince of Sa’ada.

The head of the local health department, Dr. Abdel-Ilah al-Azzi, said the attack on Friday dawn targeted the family home of Taha al-Dharafi in Mahda district on the southwest-ern outskirts of Sa’ada city, located 240 kilometers north of the capital Sana’a, also left three other people injured.

Three people were also killed in a Saudi regime airstrike on a private vehicle in the same Yemeni province.

Ahmed Ben Lassoued, a spokesman for the United Na-tions Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Yemen, has described the House of Saud regime’s aerial and naval blockade on Yemen as one of the main caus-es of the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, stressing that the measure has disrupted the import and export of food, fuel and medical supplies as well as humanitarian aid.

Last month, the UN announced that more than 17 million people in Yemen are currently food-insecure, of whom 6.8 million are severely food-insecure and in need of immediate aid.

It underscored that Yemen conflict that has left 18.8 mil-lion people in need of assistance, including 10.3 million who require immediate assistance to save or sustain their lives.

The House of Saud regime has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to reinstate Yeme-ni former President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, and to undermine the Ansarullah (Houthi) move-ment. The Riyadh regime has, however, failed to reach its goals despite suffering great expense.

The military aggression has claimed the lives of more than 12,000 people, mostly civilians.

(Source: Press TV)

Taliban kill 30 locals in northern province: Afghan official

Venezuelan authorities crush military rebellion: ruling official

It’s very hard to foresee unpredictable Trump’s policy toward Qatar: expert

Britain prepared to pay 40bn-euro Brexit bill

I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

W O R L D S P O R T AUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 201714

Bayern Munich won a penalty shoot-out against Borussia Dortmund to lift the DFL-Supercup.

Goalkeeper Sven Ulreich made the decisive save in the shoot-out, keeping out Dortmund defender Marc Bartra’s effort after Lukasz Piszczek’s bizarre own goal in the 88th minute had rescued Bayern.

Bayern defender Joshua Kimmich and Dortmund’s Se-bastian Rode both had spot-kicks saved and after Niklas Sule converted in sudden death to make it 5-4 to Carlo Ancelotti’s side, Ulreich emerged as the hero.

Robert Lewandowski had cancelled out Christian Pulisic’s opener for Dortmund before half-time before Pierre-Emer-ick Aubameyang’s cool finish midway through the second period appeared to have sunk Bayern.

But the Bundesliga champions forced a late equalis-er when the ball rebounded off Piszczek after a frantic goalmouth scramble, and then held their nerve in the shoot-out.

Borussia Dortmund midfielder Nuri Sahin said the man-ner of his side’s defeat had left a bitter feeling.

“We started the game very well, then we lost the thread, but we really moved through to the halfway point,” the Tur-key international told Dortmund’s official website.

“The second half then went completely to us. That is why it is very bitter to have lost in the end.”

Fellow countryman and Dortmund goalkeeper Roman Burki agreed his side had dominated after the interval, while Bayern’s late scrambled equaliser was especially gall-ing.

“We should not have let this game go into a penalty

shoot-out. In the second half, only we played,” he said.“This curious goal in the 88th minute is of course very

annoying. It all went very fast, I cannot say exactly what we did wrong. The ball clatters the bar to the line, then it is actually only luck for the Bavarians that the ball goes (in). “

“The video assistant has said that everything was cor-rect, then it will have been the case. But again, we should not have let the game go into the penalty shoot-out.”

Ulreich told his club’s official website: “Of course I’m glad I could help the team in the shoot-out and win the title. We’ve seen some of the Bayern we want to see.

“In the first half we had countless chances we should have exploited. Unfortunately we conceded two goals, we weren’t attentive then.

“But we’ve still won, it’s fantastic, and we have to keep it up. We showed the right attitude today.”

Lewandowski added: “We made a few mistakes but it’s the first match of the season. We have to step it up even more now.

“I’m sure everything will be going perfectly in a few months. We’ll surely be as strong as in the last or the sec-ond-to-last year.”

(Source: Eurosport)

Borussia Dortmund lament lack of luck in penalty loss to Bayern Munich

Wayne Rooney is confident his Manches-ter United goalscoring record will remain intact, saying it would take his former club signing Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi for it to come under threat.

The forward left United to re-join Everton last month, 13 years after initial-ly leaving Goodison Park for Old Trafford as a teenager.

Rooney departed Jose Mourinho’s side as the club’s record goalscorer, with 253 strikes to his name, four more than Bobby Charlton’s previous record.

The 31-year-old believes the rarity of modern players staying at clubs for the long-term means the record he is so proud of remains safe, unless a game-changing talent was to arrive.

Asked if his record would be surpassed, Rooney told reporters: “You never know, if they get someone like Messi or Ronaldo the record might get broken!

“But I think that in football now, play-ers don’t really tend to stay at clubs for that long. The only way I can see it being broken is if someone stays for the same period of time that I did.

“It is fantastic to have left that mark behind. It is a great legacy to have left. I left United with great memories. It was a successful time for the club and it was great for me.

“I loved it there. I loved working with

the players but it was the right time for me to move on and I feel I have certainly made the right decision in coming here.”

Rooney broke the record with a goal against Stoke City in January, the same team he will face when he makes his Premier League return for Everton on Saturday.

“To score that goal against Stoke for United last season was a highlight for me because of what it meant,” he said. “It was a huge moment for me as a player.

“Winning the trophies was great, but it was tough at times because I didn’t feel like I was part of winning the League Cup and Europa League.

(Source: Sun)

Rooney: Man Utd would need Ronaldo or Messi to break my record!

Sebastian Coe, the president of the IAAF, says he will congratulate the new world 100m champion Justin Gatlin if he sees him in London this week – but admits he was far from “eulogistic” to see the twice-banned American sprinter win gold. In what was Bolt’s final individual race before retirement, the 11-time world champion could only take third place, behind Unit-ed States sprinters Gatlin and Christian Coleman.

“Sport rarely settles upon the perfect script. Life’s just not like that,” Coe said. Speaking on BBC 5 Live’s Sportsweek, Coe added: “It’s not the worst result ever. “I’m hardly going to sit here and tell you I’m eulogistic that somebody that has served two bans in our sport would walk off with one of our glittering prizes, but he is eligible to be here.”

Coe said that as head of the IAAF he would have to congratulate Gatlin if their paths crossed in London. “I will say, ’You were eligible to compete here and frank-ly’ - as Usain Bolt said to him last night - ’you have worked hard for what you have achieved’,” Coe said. “I think the journey to that point is not a comfortable one for me.”

Coe stressed the IAAF tried to effec-tively end Gatlin’s career following his second failed drugs test in 2006, only for court action to see his suspension

reduced. “There have been two bans in the past, one which got watered down which made it very difficult for the sec-ond ban,” Coe said. “The second ban we went for an eight-year ban which would have in essence been a life ban - we lost that. So these things are suffused in legality.”

Coe said he was “never going to close the door” on the prospect of life bans for drug offenders, saying “the majority” in athletics would favour them being avail-able as a punishment. “We have tried it, we’ve constantly tried it,” he said. “We’ve lost it in a mixture of courts and particu-larly the Court of Arbitration (for Sport).”

(Source: Guardian)

Justin Gatlin’s 100m win over Usain Bolt ‘not perfect script,’ admits Lord Coe

Verratti: Barca keen, but I’m staying at PSGParis Saint-Germain midfielder Marco Verratti has admitted that there was “something” to the reports linking him with a move to Barcelona, but he has decided to stay in Ligue 1.

The Spanish giants have held a long-standing interest in the Italy international, but the 24-year-old insists that he is happy playing in the French capital.

“Barcelona? There was something, but that was as far as it went,” Verratti told Sky Sport Italia. “We didn’t have any other negotiations.

“I decided to stay on this path and I’m happy for it.”

Verratti also denied that the club’s decision to sign Neymar, who completed his

world-record €222 million move to PSG on Thursday, had influ-enced him at all.

“Did Neymar change my mind? I [decided] way before,” Ver-ratti said. “I never knew that Neymar would come here.”

(Source: Soccernet)

Conte can´t stop Hazard leaving ChelseaChelsea boss Antonio Conte admits he’s powerless to prevent the sale of Eden Hazard should Barcelona come calling for the Belgian star.

Hazard has reportedly been identified as a possible replace-ment for Neymar at Camp Nou, while Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain have also been linked during the close-season.

Conte has already hinted at his displeasure over Nemanja Matic’s departure to Manchester United and is adamant the champions still require strengthening.

While insisting Hazard is happy at Stamford Bridge, the Italian con-ceded any offer for the 26-year-old will rest with the club’s hierarchy.

“I am the coach and I can give my opinion. But the final deci-sion is always the club’s,” Conte said.

“I think these are rumours and Eden is very happy to stay with us, to play with Chelsea and to start the new season.

“We are trying to buy players, not to sell them. Otherwise the number is always less and we are in trouble.”

Hazard will join Tiemoue Bakayoko on the sidelines for the Community Shield clash with Arsenal as he continues his recov-ery from an ankle injury.

Sunday’s match comes just six days before the Blues open their Premier League title defence against Burnley in what Conte believes will be a highly-competitive season.

“In England you win the title and the next season the teams prepare to fight you with all their strength,” he said.

“They go to the transfer market, they try to improve and it is very difficult to repeat the success of the season before.”

(Source: Sky Sports)

Gareth Bale ‘assured of Real Madrid future’Real Madrid winger Gareth Bale has reportedly been assured that he is the future of the club amid reports linking him with a move to Manchester United.

Bale has long been linked with a switch to Old Trafford since his arrival at the Bernabeu, and his future has been cast into fur-

ther doubt by Madrid’s pursuit of AS Monaco winger Kylian Mbappe this summer.

It had been claimed that Madrid would be willing to lose Bale in order to sign Manchester United goal-keeper David de Gea, but the The Guardian reports that Los Blancos still regard the 28-year-old as an indispensa-ble player.

Madrid have reportedly told Bale that they will post-pone their efforts to sign Mbappe until next summer,

when fellow attacker Cristiano Ronaldo will be 33.Bale signed a new contract with the European champions

last Autumn which keeps him at the club until 2022, and despite United’s ongoing interest Madrid will not sanction any sale of the Wales international.

(Source: Independent)

Liverpool “ready to sell Philippe Coutinho to BarcelonaBarcelona hope to complete the signing of Philippe Coutinho this week.

The Spanish giants are armed with a £200million war chest after selling Neymar to Paris Saint-Germain last week.

And having long identified Liverpool midfielder Coutinho as the Brazilian’s successor, Barcelona expect to complete the £120m deal in the coming days.

Reports in Spain claim representatives from the La Liga side have travelled to England three times to meet with Coutinho’s representatives.

The player himself has told Barcelona that he is ready to move, and Liverpool are expected to grant him his wish, as long as they receive a suitable offer.

Coutinho missed Liverpool’s friendly with Athletic Bilbao last night with a sore back.

(Source: Mirror)

A terrible silence met the end of the men›s 100m final at the World Championships in the London Stadium on Sat-urday night. What was supposed to be a night of celebra-tion turned into a night of shame. What was supposed to be a river of gold turned into a track of bitter tears.

Not only was Usain Bolt, the great hero of the sport, denied victory in his final individual race but it was won by the American two-time drugs cheat, Justin Gatlin.

The fans who had packed into the stadium to savor every last moment of this race, hoping for one last sig-nature Bolt moment of celebration, watched in stunned amazement as Gatlin dipped for the line a fraction of a second ahead.

Bolt was third, beaten to the silver medal by the young American Christian Coleman, who had also beat-en him in the semi-final a couple of hours earlier. When the result flashed up on screen, the hush was replaced by booing and then denial. Everyone pretended Bolt had won anyway.

Even Gatlin, the 2004 Olympic men›s 100m champion, knelt before him in theatrical awe of his greatness. Gatlin shushed the crowd but he was roundly booed anyway and it was Bolt who was interviewed trackside and told that the whole stadium loved him. Gatlin celebrated alone.

After the race, the crowd kept being told that Bolt was the savior of the sport but this was the worst possible out-come for a savior.

This was the moment that athletics has been dread-ing. Not because Bolt lost and Gatlin won but because it marked the moment when the sport could no longer shelter beneath the Jamaican›s wings, the moment when the camouflage of the greatest showman it has ever had, was taken away and the sport had to be judged without him.

For all the reforming efforts of Lord Coe, athletics was still not a pretty sight even before Gatlin›s win. Events on Saturday night were speckled with competitors called ‹authorised neutrals›, innocent refugees from Russia›s state-sponsored doping programme that has led to the country›s ongoing suspension. The label makes them sound like extras from Blade Runner.

The crowd here also witnessed another absurdly domi-nant run by Olympic women›s 10,000m gold medallist Al-maz Ayana. It was met with a strange mixture of giddy awe, disbelief and downright cynicism. This is athletics› cursed hinterland, a place where even Bolt›s greatness cannot reach.

Colin Jackson pointed out last week that athletics exist-ed before Bolt. Well, yes, but it was not morally bankrupt in the minds of the public before Bolt. It is now. Especially

now. Especially after the triumph of Gatlin. Bolt was all that stood between athletics and the abyss.

Out of the smoking ruins of athletics, Bolt has emerged to attain a status granted only to a very few in the history of sport.

His breathtaking list of achievements combined with his personal dynamism means he is mentioned in the same breath as Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, Pele and Roger Federer.

What separates them is that the others had rivalries to define their greatness. Bolt has been a one-man band. For him, there has been no Joe Frazier, no Bobby Moore and

no Rafael Nadal. In athletics, there is only Bolt and then there is the void.

Bolt›s importance to the sport in the last decade is all but impossible to overstate. One of the most charismatic athletes the world has ever seen, he has reigned at a time when athletics has been brought to its knees by a long series of doping controversies.

It is perhaps the greatest of Bolt›s triumphs that he dominated his events so completely and still rose above the suspicion that cloaks the rest of his sport. He has been a light in the darkness and now the light has gone.

(Source: Daily Mail)

Bolt beaten in farewell race by drugs cheat Gatlin!

S P O R TAUGUST 7, 2017AUGUST 7, 2017 15I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y

Kazemi wins bronze at Grand Prix Series Mohammad Kazzemi from Iran claimed a bronze medal at the Grand Prix Series in Moscow, Russia, Saturday night.

Three-time world champion and Olympic bronze medalist Kim Tae-hun of South Korea took home the men’s under 58kg crown after opponent Ramnarong Sawekwiharee of Thailand withdrew before the final took place.

Kazemi and Jesus Torto-sa Cabrera from Spain were the recipients of the bronze medals.

All three winners will au-tomatically qualify for the newly established World Taekwondo Grand Slam in Wuxi in China.

The event in the Russian capital - the first Grand Prix competition of the season - will conclude on Sunday.

Iran has participated in the competition with three taek-wondo players.

(Source: Tasnim)

Lewandowski: Bayern Munich will be as strong as everRobert Lewandowski has backed Bayern Munich to be as strong as in recent years once they reach full fitness.

Speaking after the German Super Cup victory against Borussia Dortmund the striker said that Bayern were not at full capacity yet, but he had every hope they would challenge for the Bundesliga and Champi-ons League titles.

“I’m very glad about the victory, it is the first title,” he said. “We turned in a very good display. We made a few mistakes but it is the first match of the season.

“We have to step it up even more now. I’m sure everything will be going perfectly in a few months. We will surely be as strong as in the last or the second-to-last year.

“It was a different kind of preparation for us, but now we had a little more time to train, and I’m very happy that we won the first title.”

Bayern came out on top 5-4 in a penalty shootout thanks to two saves from Sven Ulreich, who was deputis-ing for Manuel Neuer.

Thomas Muller was happy to earn victory over rivals Dortmund but conceded they were lucky to have done so given the circumstances.

“It was a good thing to win again, especially here in Dortmund -- it is about prestige,” he said.

“It was great that Ulle gave us two saves in the penalty shoot-out, but there is always luck involved.”

(Source: ESPN)

Spaniard Marquez seals third MotoGP win in Czech Grand PrixHonda’s reigning MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez won his second consecutive race and third of the season at the Czech Grand Prix on Sunday to extend his lead in the championship as team mate Dani Pedrosa finished second.

With light rain at the Brno circuit, riders started with wet tyres but as the track dried down, Marquez was one of the first to change to slicks and it paid off with the Spaniard gaining a significant lead over his rivals.

“This championship will be long and hard but these 25 points will be important,” said Marquez, who moved 14 points clear at the top.

Yamaha’s Maverick Vinales completed the podium while team mate and veteran Valentino Rossi led the race from the beginning but a delayed bike change cost him as the 38-year-old finished fourth.

“In the first laps it was difficult to make the tyres work. We did a good job and after a tough weekend a podium is a good result,” said Vinales.

Last year ’s winner LCR Honda rider Cal Crutclow com-pleted the top five.

Aprilia Racing’s Aleix Espargaro was docked three places during the race for his involvement in a pit lane incident with Suzuki’s Andrea Iannone.

Marquez has 154 points with Vinales second on 140 followed by Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso, who finished sixth, on 133.

(Source: Reuters)

49ers linebacker Smith out for the seasonSan Francisco 49ers linebacker Malcolm Smith is out for the season with a torn pectoral muscle, the NFL reported on Saturday.

The 28-year-old, Most Valuable Player in the 2014 Su-per Bowl when he was with the Seattle Seahawks, was in-jured in team practice on Saturday and an MRI scan later confirmed the extent of the damage. After playing with the Oakland Raiders for the last two seasons, Smith joined the 49ers in the off-season when he signed a five-year $26.5 million deal.

The 49ers open the new season against the Carolina Pan-thers at Levi’s Stadium on Aug. 10.

(Source: Reuters)

Arsenal have warmed up for the new Premier League season with a penal-ty-shootout victory over Chelsea in the Community Shield.

After goals from Victor Moses and Sead Kolasinac led to the game ending 1-1 after normal time, Thibaut Courtois and Alvaro Morata missed from 12 yards in the resulting shootout to give Arsenal a win they probably deserved.

Arsenal began strongly after the short trip across North London with Danny Welbeck seeing a header comfortably saved by Courtois after meeting a float-ed pass from Granit Xhaka.

Two bookings in quick succession for Cesar Azpilicueta and Hector Bellerin highlighted that neither side were treat-ing the game as a friendly, but chances were few and far between until Arsenal went close midway through the half.

The ball was worked to Alexandre Lacazette just inside the penalty area and

although his curling effort beat Courtois, it struck the post and went clear.

There was a break in play after Per Mertesacker sustained a nasty cut above his eye after being accidentally elbowed by Gary Cahill after losing the ball in the Sun, but it benefited Chelsea who then enjoyed their best period of the opening 45 minutes.

A raking pass from Willian to Pedro set up the Spaniard for a shot on goal, but his strike towards the near top cor-ner was well kept out by former Chelsea stopper Petr Cech.

A minute before the break, Alex Iwo-bi curled the ball straight at Courtois but both teams deserved to go into the changing rooms on level terms after a competitive half.

Straight after the restart, however, Chelsea took the lead through Moses, who converted from close range after reacting quickest to Cahill’s header back

into the penalty area.Moments later, Michy Batshuayi mis-

cued a volley straight at Cech as the Pre-mier League champions looked to seize control but just before the hour mark, Courtois was forced into a brilliant inter-vention to keep out Mohamed Elneny’s driven cross.

Both teams began to make substi-

tutions and that hindered the flow of the game, but Arsenal almost found an equaliser out of nowhere with 15 minutes remaining when the fingertips of Cour-tois tipped a 30-yard strike from Xhaka wide of the post.

However, after Pedro was sent off for a studs-up challenge on Elneny, Arsenal found their leveller from the resulting free kick as Kolasinac headed into the bottom corner from Xhaka’s pass.

Arsenal had the momentum through-out the closing stages, but they were un-able to force more work out of Courtois and both teams were forced to settle for a penalty shootout.

Using the new ‘ABBA’ method, Arse-nal scored each of their four attempts, with Courtois drilling a spot kick over the crossbar and Morata striking the outside of the post to gift Arsene Wenger’s side the win.

(Source: Sports Mole)

Arsenal beat Chelsea on penalties to win Community Shield

BARCELONA have revealed how Neymar has forfeited a bumper loyalty bonus after departing for Paris Saint-Germain in a record-breaking £200million move ahead of schedule.

Neymar has signed a five-year contract with the mega-rich Paris Saint-Germain, becoming the most expensive footballer in history after weeks of speculation.

The 25-year-old Brazilian will reportedly earn £27million net per year, or around £520,000 each week after tax.

But his father Neymar Santos Sr, who has managed his son’s career since his emergence at Santos, will not collect a £23.4m loyalty bonus from Barca as its conditions were not met.

Barca spokesman Josep Vives told Marca: “The club will not pay the bonus to Neymar’s father.

“There were three conditions: the player must not negotiate his departure from the club during the

month before the bonus became payable, he must demonstrate his desire to fulfil his contract, and that we would not pay out the bonus before September 1, to ensure the transfer window was closed.

“Now that we know that none of these three conditions were met, we will not honour that bonus.”

Neymar, who succeeded Paul Pogba as the world’s most valuable player following the Frenchman’s £89m switch to Manchester United last summer, was unveiled at the Parc des Princes on Friday.

And the 25-year-old insisted he had moved to the French capital out of ambition, claiming money was not his sole motivation.

He said: “I wanted something bigger, a bigger challenge. This was about ambition. My heart told me that it was time to sign for Paris St Germain.

“It was the right time to leave Barcelona. I was never motivated by money. I thought above all else about the

happiness of my family, regardless of money.“I’m really sad that some people think this is the

case.”(Source: Express)

LONDON (AP) — Geoffrey Kirui took a quick glance over his shoulder, just to see if his nearest competitor was possibly closing the gap.

Nobody remotely in sight. This was a runaway.Kirui bided his time and saved his strength for a late

surge that helped him win the men’s marathon in con-vincing fashion Sunday at the world championships. He became the fifth Kenyan man to win the marathon title at the worlds.

“This is the best moment of my career, easily,” said Kirui, who also won the Boston Marathon in April.

The 24-year-old Kirui had such a big lead he spent the last part of the race waving to the crowd as he made his way across the finish line on Tower Bridge. He won in 2 hours, 8 minutes, 27 seconds — 1:22 ahead of Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia. Alphonce Simbu of Tanzania

finished third.“I was very, very prepared well for this race,” Kirui

said.That’s why he resisted the temptation to chase af-

ter Tola when the Ethiopian made a move in the latter stages of the race. Kirui was betting that Tola wouldn’t be able to hold that pace to the finish.

He was right. Kirui waited a few more minutes and then reeled in Tola, who was dealing with an injury to his left Achilles tendon. Tola couldn’t follow as Kirui breezed by him.

“I do not feel like I lost the gold medal,” Tola said. “Al-though I was in pain, I was able to finish the marathon.”

Tola earned a bronze in the 10,000 meters at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. He won a marathon in Dubai this season and a half-marathon in Prague.

Barcelona reveal why they refused to pay Neymar his £23m bonus

Kenyan runner Kirui wins men’s marathon title at worlds

S P O R T Sd e s k

Olympiacos striker Karim Ansarifard will return to Panionios in the sum-

mer window. Media reports suggest that the 27-year-old for-

ward will leave Olympiacos in the summer of 2017, most likely on loan.

English Championship side Nottingham Forest had reportedly shown interest in signing Ansarifard.

The 27-year-old Iranian joined Olympiacos from Panio-nios back in January and made some solid performances with their shirt at the domestic competitions and Europa League during the second part of 2016-17 season.

Ansarifard is looking for starting lineup in order to get more first team action in Team Melli in the 2018 World Cup.

He started his playing career at Iran’s Saipa in 2007 and joined Persepolis after five years.

He left Persepolis for Tractor Sazi in the following year and signed a two-year deal with Segunda División’s CA Osasuna in 2014.

The Iranian striker joined Greek top-flight team Pan-ionios in 2015 and scored 14 goals in 44 matches.

On 13 January 2017, Ansarifard signed a 3.5-year contract with Greek giants Olympiacos for a transfer fee of €400,000.

Karim Ansarifard to return to Panionios: Report

S P O R T Sd e s k

Iranian super heavyweight weightlifter Saeid Alihos-

seini returned to the field after eight years suspension.

Alihosseini failed two doping tests, in March 2008 and October 2009. After orig-inally being banned for life his penalty was changed to a 12 year suspension.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport de-creased his lifetime ban for a second doping offense to eight years.

CAS originally barred Saeid Alihosseini from competition until October 2021, when he will be 33, after he tested positive for the anabolic steroid methandienone.

The court eased a lifetime ban imposed by the International Weightlifting Federation because of the circumstances of Alihosseini’s first offense. CAS accepted that a subse-quently banned coach doped unwitting Ira-nian lifters with clenbuterol.

Alihosseini, 29, holds the junior world re-cord for the +105 kg category.

The +105kg weightlifter prepares for the 2017 International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) World Championships in Anaheim, USA, scheduled for Nov. 28 to Dec. 6.

Saeid Alihosseini returns to weightlifting after eight years

“A Streetcar Named Desire” to arrive at Tehran center on Wednesday

Japan keen to become guest of honor at Tehran book fair

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — Veteran musician Lionel Richie, hip-hop star and actor LL Cool J and Cuban-American singer and actress Gloria Estefan will receive the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors this year, CBS network has said.

The 40th Kennedy Center Honors, to air on CBS on Dec. 26, is one of the highest awards in American culture, celebrating lifetime achievements through the performing arts.

Other 2017 honorees are television writer-producer Norman Lear and dancer, choreographer

and actress Carmen de Lavallade.“The Kennedy Center Honors spotlights the

extraordinary careers of five artists whose talent and ingenuity have enriched and shaped cultural life in America,” David M. Rubenstein, chairman of the Kennedy Center, said in a statement.

The awards will be presented at a gala at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center Opera House on Dec. 3, and is expected to be attended by President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — A group of black teenage girls stomp, clap and shout in unison in step dance routines, channeling their anger, frustration and hopes into powerful performances in a new documentary “Step”, out in U.S. theaters this week.

The journey of the founding class of the step troupe at the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women shows the girls’ struggles in the aftermath of protests and rioting in the city where 25-year-old black man Freddie Gray died after suffering a broken neck in a police van in April 2015.

Stepping is not actually a dance,

said Cori Grainger, one of the film’s lead subjects, because it does not use a beat. Instead, “you are the beat, you are the music, you use your hands, you stomp your feet, you clap, it’s spoken word,” Grainger told Reuters.

As the girls juggle their academics with competing in step tournaments, they visit Gray’s memorial where their step coach tells them, “As African American women, we are considered bottom of the barrel.” The visit inspires the girls to perform a Black Lives Matter routine, which they end with their fists in the air, chanting “It could have been us.”

“We began to use step as a platform

to talk about things that were most important to us, so we used our themes to educate people while we entertained them,” Grainger said.

“There are just rampant misunderstandings about the Black Lives Matter movement in this country and seeing these young women stand up and say ‘it could have been me,’ it feels different,” added the film’s director Amanda Lipitz.

The charter school attended by the girls aims for a 100 percent graduation and college acceptance rate, a goal that challenges some of the film’s protagonists.

Grainger hinges her hopes on a full scholarship to Johns Hopkins University as her family struggles financially while another girl, Blessin Giraldo, has to face the consequences of her low grades amid a difficult home life. Tayla Solomon clashes with a mother determined to keep her on the right track.

“I think a common misconception is that urban communities don’t really have kids in them who have big dreams and hopes,” Grainger said.

“So many of us are capable of doing big things, but how can we make a change in the world if we’re never given the experience or the opportunity to?”

TEHRAN — Japanese Ambassador Hiroyasu

Kobayashi has said that his country is eager to attend the Tehran International Book Fair as a guest of honor.

He made the remarks in his meeting with Iran Cultural Fairs Institute (ICFI) director Amir-Masud Shahramnia, the ICFI announced in a press release on Sunday.

Due to the 90th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Iran and Japan, the ambassador said that his country is keen to hold a wide

variety of programs at the Tehran book fair.

He added that his country is willing to attend the cultural event in 2019 or 2020 as its first priorities.

Giving a brief explanation about the previous guest countries of the fair, Shahramnia said that the organizers of the event are ready to provide the facilities for the publishers and writers.

Italy was the guest country of the 30th Tehran International Book Fair in 2017.

TEHRAN — “Chronicle of a Passion”, a drama

by Italian director Fabrizio Cattani, was the big winner of the 6th International Urban Film Festival as it scooped up three awards in various categories including best film at the Iranian event on Saturday.

The film also brought Cattani the award for best director and Valeria Ciangottini the best actress award during the closing ceremony of the festival at Tehran’s Milad Tower.

“Chronicle of a Passion” features a married couple in their sixties who are forced to face the disgrace of tax problems and eviction.

The award for best actor went to Mohsen Tanabandeh from Iran for his role in director Alireza Davudnejad’s “Ferrari”, which also won Kambuzia Partovi the award for best screenwriter.

The best technical achievement award was presented to Dudu Miranda, the photography director of Brazilian filmmaker Ricardo Mehedff’s “Inner Court”.

The jury honored director Mohammad Kart from Iran with its special prize for his latest movie “Avantage”, while cinematographer Mahmud Kalari and veteran actress Jaleh Olov received awards for their lifetime achievements.

The winners in the national competition were also honored.

Director Saeid Rustai’s poverty and drug movie “Life+1 Day” was named best film, while Mohammad-Hossein Mahdavian was picked as best director for his political drama “The Midday Event”.

Partovi also received the award for best screenwriter in the national competition for his collaboration in “Ferrari”.

The best actress award went to Pardis Ahmadieh for her role in “Red Nail

Polish” by Seyyed Jamal Seyyed-Hatami, and Nasser Hashemi won the best actor award for his role in “My Brother Khosro” by Ehsan Beiglari.

Makeup artists Mehrdad Mirkiani

and Abdollah Eskandari shared the best technical achievement award for “Lanturi”.

The festival took place at Tehran’s Mellat Cinema Complex from July 31 to August 5.

TEHRAN — American playwright

Tennessee Williams’ acclaimed play “A Streetcar Named Desire” will be performed by an Iranian troupe at the Niavaran Cultural Center on Wednesday.

Mohsen Hajnoruzi will direct the play translated by Marjan Bakhtminoo.

The play is about Blanche DuBois who travels from the small town of Laurel, Mississippi, to the New Orleans French Quarter to live with her younger, married sister, Stella, and brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski after

the loss of her family home, Belle Reve, to creditors.

“A Streetcar Named Desire” that received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948 is often regarded as among the finest plays of the 20th century, and is considered by many to be Williams’ greatest.

A cast composed of Azita Talebi, Soheil Qannadan, Mehzad Tavakkoli, Mohammad Soltanpur, Fatemeh Shams, Ashkan Kazemi, Mahta Ahmadi, Sadra Mohammadi, Mehdi Sarabi, and Hajnoruzi will stage the play.

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“Chronicle of a Passion” makes big success at Iran urban film festival

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Shorts from Iran receive nominations at Kuala Lumpur festival

Iranian troupe to perform stage adaptation of “Rashomon”in Tehran

TEHRAN — Two Iranian short films have received nominations at the 10th edition of the

International Kuala Lumpur Eco Film Festival.“Save Me”, a joint production of Iran and Malaysia is among

the nominees for the Best Short Film Award, while “Pet Man” by Marzieh Abrarpaidar was nominated for the Best Animation Award.

The festival will be held in the Malaysian capital from October 23 to 29.

TEHRAN — An Iranian troupe will perform a stage adaptation of Japanese writer

Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s 1914 short story “Rashomon” at the Qashqai Hall of Tehran’s City Theater Complex on Monday.

Reza Kuchakzadeh is the director of the play, which is about a righteous samurai, who is fired by his lord. He is faced with the dilemma of choosing between dying of starvation and becoming a thief to survive.

Nazanin Ahmadi and Amir Mohammadi are the main members of the cast for the play.

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Musician Lionel Richie poses for a portrait while promoting his upcoming North American tour in Burbank, California, U.S. June 7, 2017. (Reuters/Mario Anzuoni)

Lionel Richie, Gloria Estefan lead 2017 Kennedy Center honorees

Amir Naderi impressed with screening of “Monte” in his homeland

TEHRAN — The U.S.-based Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi has said that he was impressed by

the Iranian cultural officials’ decision to screen his movie “Monte” in his homeland.

“I’m really happy that ‘Monte’ is on screen in Iran,” Naderi said in a call to his fellow filmmaker Mehrshad Karkhani, the Persian service of ILNA reported on Sunday.

“I would like the younger generation to watch my film,” he noted and added, “The impact of the film on the younger generation is important to me, even if they don’t like it.”

“Monte” is currently on screen at Iran’s Art and Experience Cinemas dedicated to screening art films.

The film is also scheduled to have a special screening at the Film Museum of Iran in Tehran on Monday evening.

Starring Andrea Sartoretti and Claudia Potenza, the 105-minute drama was filmed in Italy in the mountainous regions

of Alto Adige and Friuli.The film tells the story of a man who makes every attempt to

bring the sunlight into his village, where his family is barely able to survive because of the prevailing darkness.

Members of director Mohsen Hajnoruzi’s troupe perform “A Streetcar Named Desire” at Tehran’s Jamshid Mashayekhi Theater on November 2016 ,6. (Tiwall/Reza Javidi)

Japanese Ambassador Hiroyasu Kobayashi (2nd R) and Iran Cultural Fairs Institute (ICFI) director Amir-Masud Shahramnia (2nd L) meet in Tehran.

Director Amir Naderi receives the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award prior the premiere of “Monte” during the 73rd Venice Film Festival at Sala Grande on September 5, 2016 in Venice, Italy. (Getty Images/Andreas Rentz)

Italian filmmaker Fabrizio Cattani accepts his award for “Chronicle of a Passion” during the closing ceremony of the 6th International Urban Film Festival at Tehran’s Milad Tower on August 2017 ,6. International jury members are also seen in the photo.

(Mehr/Mohammad Moheimani)

“Concrete Jungle Book” musical swaps bare necessities for harsh realitiesLONDON (Reuters) — Inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s famous fables, “The Concrete Jungle Book” offers a gritty outlook on life where tigers and forests have been replaced by homeless people and refugees struggling to survive in an urban jungle filled with drugs and knife crime.

The brainchild of British writer-director Dominic Garfield, who also plays the central character Mowgli in the musical, opens on Friday at Edinburgh’s famous Fringe Festival.

“The story of Mowgli, the feral boy trying to make his way in the jungle, we straight away saw a real resemblance in young people trying to find their way on the streets when they are homeless and have difficult housing conditions,” Garfield told Reuters.

To research the show, the cast worked with British homeless charity Centrepoint and talked to young homeless people, some of whom were refugees, about their journeys from places such as war-torn Sudan, to Calais, to London’s streets.

“Step” becomes the voice of black Baltimore teens facing adversity