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Volume 23 | Number 7502 | 2 RiyalsFriday 20 April 2018 | 4 Sha’baan I 1439 www.thepeninsula.qa

Prime Minister receives Qatari innovators

Qatar Airways first in region to offer gate-to-gate Internet on-boardTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Airways is the first airline in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) to provide gate-to-gate internet connectivity on-board, announced the airline yesterday. A decision by Qatar’s Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) will allow the provision of internet service onboard aircraft at all altitudes. Previously, internet connection was only permitted when an aircraft was higher than 3,000 meters above sea level.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, Akbar Al Baker, said: “In another first for the MENA region, Qatar Airways passengers will be able to enjoy uninterrupted internet connectivity from the moment they step on board a Qatar Airways flight.

This is another significant

enhancement to our award-winning levels of service that our passengers around the globe have come to appreciate. We look forward to wel-coming passengers on board and helping them stay connected throughout the flight”.

Approval by the CRA means that Qatar will be the first country in the Middle East and North Africa

region to provide gate-to-gate internet connectivity onboard air-craft. It also reflects CRA’s alignment with Qatar’s high rate of technology adoption across various sectors, particularly those affecting transport and commu-nication that are strategic to Qatar’s future development and economic growth.

Improvements in technology and developments in global tech-nical standards now ensure that on board internet service does not cause harmful interference to either aircraft operations or land-based public mobile networks.

However to avoid any inter-ference to aircraft and land-based mobile services, restrictions still apply to the on board use of mobile GSM services and SMS when the air-craft is below 3,000 meters.

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New mega projects to boost self-sufficiency in food production

Qatar signs agreement with Global Dryland AllianceTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar, represented by the Foreign Ministry, signed yesterday an agreement with Global Dryland Alliance (GDA), making Doha the alliance’s new headquarters.

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, signed the agreement on behalf of the State of Qatar and GDA Exec-utive Director Ambassador Bader Al Dafa signed on behalf of the alliance.

The GDA initiative was put forward by the Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani at a speech he gave at the 68th UN General Assembly in 2013.

GDA aims to provide support to researches and new

innovations of member states and to implement the results. The alliance also aims to provide the best practices that can be shared with dryland countries around the world.

After the signing, Spokes-person of the Foreign Ministry Lolwah AlKhater said the 11-state alliance seeks to achieve food security for dryland coun-tries, which results in further stability and peace around the world, reported QNA.

The GDA also aims to coop-erate with local, regional and international partners to find solutions and spread and implement them in order to face challenges related to agriculture, water and energy in dryland countries, the spokesperson added.

AlKhater said the alliance aims to engage in joint research and technological innovation relevant to the alliance members’ agricultural, water, and energy use needs. It also aims to coordinate with the private sector to implement and spread innovative solutions related to food security, exchange the benefits of new technological and research innovations with least developed dryland countries in an effort to reduce hunger and poverty, she added.

The spokesperson added that some land will be allocated to set up storage for cattle, a farm and laboratory to conduct research on desert and dryland.

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Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani with the Qatari innovators who were awarded gold and silver medals at the International Exhibition of Innovations in Geneva, in Doha yesterday. The Prime Minister stressed the attention the State pays to innovators in different fields and encouraged them towards more creations that promote the country’s direction towards a knowledge-based economy. → REPORT ON PAGE 2

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The self-sufficiency i n l o c a l v e g e t a b l e production stands at 24 percent, 86 percent in dates, and about 50 percent in green fodder, said Sheikh Dr Faleh bin Nasser Al Thani, assistant undersecretary of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment for agri-cultural, livestock and fish-eries affairs.

He said that self-suffi-ciency in milk and dairy products in the country has increased to more than 82 percent, while fresh chicken and eggs cover more than 98 percent and 23 percent respectively of Qatar’s market consumption.

The number of animals for commercial purpose increased to about 1.6 million heads, while self-sufficiency in fish reached about 80 percent.

He was speaking at the end of a two-day seminar on food security.

The event was organised by the ministry in collabo-ration with the committee on following up the implemen-tation of food security pol-icies in the public and private sectors in cooperation with the Swiss Agency for Devel-opment and Cooperation (SDC).

The Minister of Munici-pality and Environment, H E Mohamed bin Abdullah Al Rumaihi, attended the seminar yesterday.

Sheikh Dr Falih bin Nasser Al Thani reaffirmed that the agricultural sector has taken gigantic leaps towards covering the requirements of the local market and raising the self-sufficiency rates in the

Qatari athlete Abderrahaman Samba poses for a photograph after winning the first place in the 400 metres hurdles event at the International Senior Track and Field Championships held in South Africa with a world-leading time of 47.89 seconds.

Prospects for joint cooperation with North Carolina officials discussedTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Minister of Economy and Commerce H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani discussed yesterday means of enhancing joint cooperation with officials in Raleigh, North Carolina, during separate meetings on the sidelines the economic tour of the United States, currently underway in Raleigh.

During his meeting with Will Miller, Deputy Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Commerce , the Minister discussed mech-anisms to develop cooper-ation between the two coun-tries, expand trade exchanges, encourage the private sector to establish joint ventures to benefit from the promising investment opportunities and the excellent business envi-ronment provided by Qatar.

Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al -Thani, also discussed with Chris Chung, CEO of North Caro-linas Economic Development Partnership possibilities of joint cooperation in the eco-nomic, trade and investment fields and ways of developing them, investment incentives and the economic diversifi-cation strategy adopted by Qatar to achieve the Qatar National Vision 2030.

The Minister also met Adrienne Cole, President and CEO of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce to discuss means of developing cooperation between the two countries, expanding trade exchanges and encouraging the private sector to establish joint ventures. The meeting also reviewed the investment incentives and facilities pro-vided by the Qatari economy.

→SEE ALSO PAGE 3

Self-sufficiency in local vege- tables stands at 24%, 86% in dates, & about50% in green fodder.

Self-sufficiency in milk and dairy products has increased to more than 82%, while fresh chicken and eggs cover more than 98% and 23% respectively of Qatar’smarket consumption. Self- sufficiency in fish reachedabout 80%.

A new marketing program for Qatari vegetables was also launched in consumercomplexes with the partici-pation of 105 Qatari farms.

Food Security

agricultural, livestock and fishery sectors despite the unjust siege imposed on the country.

He said that the second Nat ional Development Strategy 2018-2022 has already started.

Al Thani said the state has undertaken a number of initi-atives to boost food security by providing opportunities for private investors in the agricul-tural field by launching four large strategic projects for the production of vegetables over an area of one million square meters per project.

Over the next few years, he added, a number of investment projects will be made available for the production of green fodder with the use of treated wastewater so as to conserve groundwater, while bringing about a large boom in the pro-duction of green fodder.

→CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

02 FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018HOME

PM & Ministers of Liberia review relations of cooperation

Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani with Minister of Labour of the Republic of Liberia, Moses Y Kollie, and Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Varney A Sirleaf, on the occasion of their visit to the country. During the meeting, they reviewed relations of cooperation between the two countries and ways of developing them in various fields.

Al Muraikhi discusses ties with envoys

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, met with Ambassadors of American friendly countries accredited to the State of Qatar. The meeting discussed the developments of the Gulf crisis and enhancing the prospects of cooperation, as well as issues of common concern. The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs also met with Ambassador of Canada to Qatar, Adrian Norfolk.

QA to showcase latest aircraft at Eurasia AirshowTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Airways will be showcasing two of its state-of-the-art aircraft during Eurasia Airshow, which is set to take place in Antalya, Turkey from April 25 to 29. The airline will be displaying the world’s most advanced passenger aircraft, the Airbus A350-1000, featuring the revolutionary Qsuite Business Class seat, Qsuite. Also on display during the airshow will be the Gulfstream G650 ER, a premium Qatar Executive aircraft and industry-leading, long-range business jet.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, Akbar Al Baker, said: “Qatar Airways is delighted to be participating for the first time at this year’s Eurasia Airshow. Visitors from across the world will be able to experience the five-star services and product provided by our airline. Turkey has always been one of our pas-sengers’ preferred destinations, due to its ongoing growth in popularity for both business and leisure travel. As such, we have recently announced a non-stop service to Hatay, which com-menced on April 4. Hatay is our fifth destination within Turkey,

reflecting the close relationship between the State of Qatar and Turkey. We are also tremen-dously excited to be launching a direct service to Antalya and Bodrum in June.”

Qatar Airways currently operates direct flights to Istan-bul’s Sabiha Gökçen Airport twice daily, to Istanbul Atatürk Airport 10 times weekly, to Adana Şakirpaşa Airport three times weekly, a daily service to Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport and three times weekly to Hatay Airport, bringing the total to 37 weekly flights between Doha and Turkey.

QCS launches competition to raise awareness on tobacco dangersTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Cancer Society (QCS) has launched a compe-tition ‘Decide, We are with You,’ which aims to raise awareness about the dangers of tobacco and emphasize the importance of quitting smoking.

The contest also aimed at promoting healthy lifestyle to prevent the habit. The compe-tition is being held as part of the World No Tobacco Day, which falls on May 31, and targets three categories of people school stu-dents, university students and state institutions. The winners will be announced at a ceremony to be held on May 3, and they will receive financial and commem-orative prizes. Topics of the com-petition revolve around harmful effects of tobacco, ways to combat smoking and tobacco, quitting smoking, smoke-free society at the individual level, smoke-free society at the com-munity level and dangers of passive smoking. All entries should be submitted by April 26, at the QCS at Barwa Towers in Al Sadd or email to ntd@qcs.qa.

In the school category, com-pletion will be held in three groups as primary schools, pre-paratory and secondary schools.

State institutions could submit entries on the theme smoking-free institutions and support creating more awareness about the importance of quitting smoking.

Qatar’s natural history discussed at QNLFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

DOHA: How the continuously changing natural environment of Qatar defines its past, present, and future was discussed yesterday during a lecture held at the Qatar National Library (QNL).

Also the groundwater evo-lution in deserts, and how it con-tributes to changing environ-mental and societal factors in desert areas was discussed by Planetary scientist Dr Essam Heggy during the lecture on ‘Understanding Space Explo-ration and the Natural Forces that Shaped the Qatar Peninsula.’

The public lecture concluded a week of events celebrating QNL’s grand opening.

Dr Heggy, a planetary sci-entist at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California, and a ROSETTA co-investigator at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Jet Pro-pulsion Laboratory, discussed how climate evolution has shaped the history of Earth, as

well as that of other planets in the solar system.

He also addressed the unique case of the Qatar Peninsula, with its ever-changing coastlines driven by several active natural forces. According to Dr Heggy, early inhabitants of Qatar would have had an intimate understanding of groundwater and sea levels, dune movements, coral reef evo-lution, and shallow-water nav-igation, and adapted their daily survival in response to the shifts

in each. “Our climate is changing, and the only way to survive it is to understand it,” he said.

Dr Heggy talked about the meaning of Qatar’s flag and the map, and presented his views about the changes in Qatar’s coastline.

He said, “All maps (of Qatar) contain records of some of the most significant climatic changes we have seen. From the maps available in the library (QNL) we can speculate that something very strongly related to climate

change has influenced.” “The climate and envi-

ronment in Qatar have shaped the society. The people of Qatar were able to intuitively com-prehend that the coastline was changing,” he added.

Dr Heggy elaborated how technologies that are being designed to explore water in the solar system benefit from being tested in Earth’s deserts.

He also discuss groundwater evolution in deserts, and how it contributes to changing environ-mental and societal factors in desert areas.

He concluded with an exam-ination of Qatar’s current changing climate, and how understanding and adapting to it will affect the nation’s growth.

Dr Sohair Wastawy, Exec-utive Director, QNL, said that Dr Heggy will be directing the ‘Science Book Forum’ at QNL in September, an initiative to promote reading and exploring scientific issues among the younger generation.

She further said that a forum of scientific debate on ‘Qatar on Maps’ will be held at the QNL on April 29 at 6pm.

QNL Executive Director, Dr Sohair Wastawy (left), with planetary scientist, Dr Essam Heggy, during the lecture held at the QNL yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

Emir condoles with Emir of KuwaitQNA

DOHA: Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani sent yesterday a cable of condolences to Emir of the fraternal State of Kuwait, H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah on the death of Sheikh Fadel Duaij Al Salman Al Sabah. Deputy Emir H H Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Thani and Prime Minister and Interior Minister, H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, also sent cables of condolences to Emir of the fraternal State of Kuwait, H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah on the death of Sheikh Fadel Duaij Al Salman Al Sabah.

Govt encourages innovations: PMTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Prime Minister and Interior Minister, H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, met with the Qatari innovators who were awarded gold and silver medals at the International Exhibition of Inno-vations held in Geneva recently.

He praised the efforts of the Qatari inventors and their achievement in the international scientific forum, which brought together inventors from around the world, reported QNA. He wished them success and further scientific achievements to high-light Qatar’s name in regional

and international forums, adding that the winning inventions con-tribute to improving the quality of life and achieving further eco-nomic and social wellbeing.

The Prime Minister stressed the attention the state pays to innovators and talents in the dif-ferent fields and encouraged them towards more creations that promote the country’s direction towards a knowledge-based economy. The inventors from Qatar Scientific Club were awarded six medals in the exhi-bition; four gold and two silver, in a strong competition with 600 inventors from 40 countries around the world.

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, and GDA Executive Director Ambassador Bader Al Dafa at the signing event.

Qatar and Global Dryland Alliance sign agreement

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

For his part, Ambassador Al Dafa said the alliance is not an alternative for the organisations that work in this field, but com-plements their efforts and will work in full coordination and consultation with them in the area of food security for dryland countries.

Al Dafa added that there is an urgent need to intensify the efforts in developing food security programs, as the world population increases by 200,000 per day, with a gap between consumption and agri-culture investment, as well as climate challenges that impose a difficult reality on dryland countries.

He said that if the alliance’s member states cooperate, chal-lenges and threats may lessen.

He called on the private sector to play its role in projects that develop food security in member states.

The GDA executive director said these challenges are more acute and serious in dryland countries, who are mostly developing with limited means and more vulnerable to hunger and epidemics.

Doha hosted on October 15, 2017 the GDA Founding Con-ference, where the signing of the foundation treaty of the new organisation took place.

The alliance includes dryland countries with common challenges and is open to part-nerships with all countries and multilateral institutions.

It provides a new approach based on the latest innovations in addressing the food security challenges of many countries.

MEC shuts down outlet for selling counterfeit sport gearsDOHA: Ministry of Economy and Commerce under which the Consumer Protection Department falls has shutdown a commercial outlet for showcasing and selling counterfeit sport gears as reputed brand for a month in Suq Al Madina (city market).

The action was taken under intensified inspection drives launched by the Ministry to monitor the markets and business activities to ensure they are complying to the consumer pro-tection law.

The erring outlet was shutdown under the article No. 7 of the law No. 8 of 2008 which required the suppliers and shops to mention the details of the goods on the packet clearly as it should not mislead the customers.

An inspector is putting a sticker announcing the closure of the outlet.

Emir holds talks with PM of EthiopiaDOHA: Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani held a tele-phone conversation with the Prime Minister of the Federal Demo-cratic Republic of Ethiopia, Dr Abiy Ahmed. The Emir congratu-lated Dr Abiy Ahmed on the occasion of assuming his duties, and wished him success. Talks during the call also dealt ways to boost and develop the friendly relations and cooperation between the two countries, in addition to a number of issues of mutual interest.

03FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018 HOME

Qatar signs cooperation protocol with Islamic Conference Youth ForumQNA

BAKU: The Ministry of Culture and Sports signed a cooperation protocol with Islamic Conference Youth Forum for Dialogue and Cooperation (ICYF-DC), which is affiliated with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Minister of Culture and Sports, H E Salah bin Ghanem Al Ali, signed the protocol with ICYF-DC President, Elshad Iskandarov, on the sidelines of the meeting of Their Excel-lencies Ministers of youth and sports of OIC member states as part of the fourth Islamic Con-ference of Youth and Sports Ministers (ICYSM). The event concluded on Thursday and took place in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The cooperation protocol includes organising joint youth activities between both parties to be held in Qatar or any other country, in addition to sup-porting events for Jerusalem, capital of the Islamic youth.

Titled “Solidarity in Action

for Youth Development,” the ICYSM condemned in its final communique the Israeli occu-pation’s obstruction to the Pal-estinians, especially the youth, to build their build their capacity, in addition to the occu-pation’s efforts to undermine the efforts of the State of Palestine in the sports field. It called on youth and sport institutions, Olympic committees and sports federations in member states to

support Palestine’s position in international sports organisa-tions regionally and interna-tionally. This includes providing appropriate support to the program of Jerusalem as Islamic Youth Capital 2018.

The meeting also approved the OIC youth strategy, which prioritises work on enabling youth and investing in their future. The strategy also calls on member states to set policies and mechanisms that ensure youth rights, improve their way of living, economic and social positions, raise their educational and knowledge levels and provide them with opportunities to participate in the decision-making process.

The final communique con-firmed the need for committing to implementing the fourth ICYSM especially with regards to the OIC Youth Strategy and its plan of action while adhering to the policies of openness and close cooperation with the rel-evant global bodies working in the field of youth.

Minister of Culture and Sports, H E Salah bin Ghanem Al Ali, signing the cooperation protocol with ICYF-DC President, Elshad Iskandarov, on the sidelines of the meeting.

Industrial Production index increases by 2% in FebruaryTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Industrial Production index (IPI) for February 2018 increased by 2 percent to 103.9 points compared to February 2017 while it decreased by 2.5 percent compared to January 2018.

The Industrial Production Index consists of three main components: mining with a relative importance of 83.6 percent, manufacturing with a relative importance of 15.2 percent, electricity with a rela-tive importance of 0.7 percent, and water

with a relative importance of 0.5 percent.The index of the mining sector showed a

decrease by 1.9 percent compared to January 2018 as a result of the decrease in the quantities of crude oil and natural gas produced by 1.9 percent, and other mining and quarrying by 3 percent. When compared to the corresponding month of the pre-vious year (February 2017), the IPI of mining increased by 1.4 percent. Manufacturing’s index saw a decrease of 5.3 percent in February 2018 compared to the previous month.

Mega projects to boost self-sufficiency in food productionCONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

The assistant undersecretary pointed out that a new investment project has been launched for fish-eries in floating cages with a capacity of 1,000 tonnes per year. Two other projects are planned for the next few years, while the ministry recently launched an investment project for shrimp farming with an annual capacity of 1,000 tonnes.

Preliminary estimates and fea-sibility studies indicate that the coun-try’s self-sufficiency as a result of these mega-projects will increase to 70 percent of fresh vegetables in two years, 100 percent of dairy products within eight months, 90 percent of eggs within two years, 100 percent fish within two years, and 100 percent of shrimp in two years. A new marketing program for Qatari vegetables was also launched in con-sumer complexes with the partici-pation of 105 Qatari farms.

The assistant undersecretary said that scientific research is the appro-priate tool for the development of the agricultural sector, pointing out

that the ministry is carrying out research on raising agricultural pro-ductivity and evaluating and adopting modern technologies through its relevant departments so as to improve the performance of this vital sector.

At the level of infrastructure, he said, the Aquatic Fisheries and Research Center in Ras Matbakh in Al Khor has been constructed to become one of the important pro-ductive research centers in the field of aquaculture. The designs of the Agricultural Research and Guidance Center in Al Mazroua, with work on the first phase of the project set to start in 2019.

The Animal Production Research Station in Al Shahaniya opened earlier in the month to develop research on animal production and artificial insemination technology, which will increase the animal pro-duction in the country.

Dr. Faleh bin Nasser Al-Thani said the upcoming phase requires intensifying the effort on a technical and legislative level to set quick and

appropriate solutions for challenges facing agriculture. He added that Qatar is following a comprehensive and inclusive approach for sus-tainable development and seeks to integrate government and private sectors to meet the needs of all seg-ments of society.

He stressed on working to activate the cooperation between the ministry and the private sector including local, regional and inter-national institutions, to intensify the efforts for comprehensive devel-opment in the agricultural, economic and social fields.

He said that the Ministry of Municipality and Environment has a great responsibility related to food security and developing natural resources to increase production, to bridge the gap between production and consumption and to increase self sufficiency in vegetables, fish red meat and animal products. This is what the agricultural strategy of Qatar as focused on, all whilst pre-serving the Qatari environment for the future generations and sus-

tainably developing it, he added. SDC’s co-head of the Global

Program Food Security, Simon Zbinden, highlighted the relations between Qatar and Switzerland.

He presented the agricultural conditions and possibilities between both countries in terms of similar-ities and differences. He praised the great development in Qatar’s agri-cultural production despite the ongoing siege. He said he is impressed with the achievements Qatar made over a short period and the significant leaps it took in the many agricultural and food fields on its path to self-sufficiency and in various dimensions, including sustainability.

Zbinden highlighted the need to take in consideration sustainability on the long run, when it comes to implementing food security projects and trade projects. He added that work must be made to decrease the production costs in return for revenue, effectively promote the role of local markets and support the related sectors and local produce.

Qatar Airways first in region to provide gate-to-gate Internet on-board

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1While on board, passengers can continue to enjoy

Qatar Airways’ inflight entertainment system, Oryx One, which offers passengers up to 4,000 enter-tainment options from the latest blockbuster movies, TV box sets, music, games and much more. Pas-sengers flying on Qatar Airways flights served by its B777, B787, A350, A380, and select A320 and A330 aircraft can also stay in touch with their friends and family around the world by using the award-winning airline’s on-board Wi-Fi service.

Qatar Airways operates a modern fleet of more than 200 aircraft to a network of more than 150 key business and leisure destinations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America.

The airline plans a host of exciting new desti-nation launches this year, including London Gatwick and Cardiff, United Kingdom; Tallinn, Estonia; Val-letta, Malta; Cebu and Davao, Philippines; Langkawi, Malaysia; Da Nang, Vietnam; Bodrum and Antalya, Turkey; Mykonos, Greece and Málaga, Spain.

Qatar and US officials discuss cooperationTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Officials from Qatar and the United States reviewed and discussed opportunities for cooperation and joint ventures between the two countries in two sessions held yesterday on the sidelines of the Qatar-US Economic Forum in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The two sessions discussed opportunities for cooperation in the fields of financing , investment, real estate and small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as projects related to Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 World Cup and opportunities and challenges in the tourism, energy and food security sectors.

The first session discussed the opportunities of cooperation and joint ventures between Qatar and the United States in the areas of finance, investment, real estate and small and medium-sized enterprises, where Rashid Ali Al Mansouri, CEO of Qatar Exchange, stressed the importance of the partici-pation of the US investment funds in the Qatar Exchange and its activity in the market.

Al Mansouri pointed out that the Qatar Stock Exchange tar-geted the investment of funds listed recently, and there was interest from US financial insti-tutions and business leaders in the United States to know the stock exchange and how to invest in it, adding that the bourse is trying to attract invest-ments and opportunities by offering opportunities and intro-ducing legislation and the investment environment.

Mohamed Hassan Al Malki, Head of Development and Planning at Economic Zones Corporation (Manateq), said during his speech that the company aims to attract foreign

investments to free zones, noting that it works directly with the Free Zones Authority in this direction.

He outlined privileges that Qatar provides to investors, identifying the target sectors in each economic zone, and the importance of each sector for both the State and the investors.

Abdullah Yaqoub Al Sayed, Director of Project Delivery Department at the Qatari Diar company spoke about the com-pany’s investments inside and outside Qatar, referring to the Washington CityCenter DC project. “The State of Qatar has many projects and opportunities in various sectors, as well as the investment environment and legislation attractive to foreign investments, which is a catalyst for US investors to invest in the State of Qatar,” he added.

Saleh Majid Al Khulaifi, Acting CEO of Qatar Devel-opment Bank (QDB), said that participation in the Qatar-US Economic Forum in Raleigh comes to discuss the devel-opment of joint cooperation between Qatari and US com-panies and the research of exporting some Qatari products in the supply chain, as well as linking small and medium-sized companies in the US with Qatari companies to create partner-ships in Qatar. He pointed out that QDB, which signed two agreements during the eco-nomic tour of the United States, is considering several factors including the localization of businesses and linking SMEs to the labor market as well as job creation, inter-firm cooperation to open manufacturing plat-forms, and provide services in Doha in addition to exporting some products.

At the second session titled “Qatar 2022 World Cup,

Opportunities and Challenges in Tourism, Energy and Food Security,” Abdul Basset Al-Ajji, Director of Business Devel-opment and Investment Pro-motion Department at the Min-istry of Economy and Com-merce, said that the ministry is working to support and promote sectors, which is the gate to the establishment of investments in the State of Qatar .. He pointed out that there was during the past year an initiative to review policies and procedures and to enhance opportunities for investments and investors.

Fahd Al Kuwari, Head of Policy Department at the Min-istry of Energy and Industry, stressed the commitment of the energy sector to the contracts concluded with the countries, noting that the Qatari gas exports reached consumers on time despite the siege imposed on the State. Al Kuwari also said that Qatar encourages new and renewable energy and there is a plan to generate 200 MW of electricity through solar energy.

Nasser Ali Al Muslamani, Director of Planning and Quality Department at the Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) , dis-cussed Qatar’s efforts in devel-oping the tourism sector and opportunities for cooperation to develop the tourism industry during the coming period.

Eng. Ali Al Nemaa, repre-sentative of the Supreme Com-mittee for Delivery & Legacy (SC) gave a presentation on the projects of the Qatar 2022 World Cup and the date of their delivery and designs. Al Nemaa confirmed the readiness and delivery of the stadiums in time to host the World Cup, equipped with all the techniques of cooling and lighting, and the latest technology in the preser-vation of the environment.

Dignitaries at the Qatar-US Economic Forum in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The cooperation protocol includes organising joint youth activities between both parties to be held in Qatar or any other country, in addition to supporting events for Jerusalem, capital of the Islamic youth.

04 FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Smoke billowing over the southern districts of the Syrian capital Damascus, during regime strikes targeting the Islamic State group in the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk, and neighbouring districts, yesterday.

Rebels give up Damascus area town to govt

AP

BEIRUT: The Syrian government took control of a town northeast of Damascus yesterday after rebels evacuated to north Syria - the latest in a string of handovers by rebels to the government.

Residents in the town of Dumayr welcomed security forces into their town in a trium-phant show for the cameras of the state-affiliated Al Ikhbariya TV station.

Waving the national flag, they lifted Al Ikhbariya TV corre-spondent Rabieh Dibeh onto their shoulders and chanted their support for President Bashar Assad, after the last of 5,000 rebels and family members boarded buses and left the town.

There have been several handovers by rebels to the gov-ernment in the capital region fol-lowing a punishing government offensive against the rebellious eastern Ghouta region earlier this year. More than 1,500 civilians were killed in the offensive, which culminated in allegations of a chemical weapons attack on the town of Douma, with reports that more than 40 people were killed.

Rebels surrendered towns across eastern Ghouta as the offensive drove on, giving up control of an area once home to an estimated 400,000 people in

a matter of weeks.The Army of Islam rebels in

Dumayr followed their com-panions belonging to the same group from Douma to Jarablus, a town in north Syria shared between Turkish and Syrian opposition control.

The Syrian government has been following a proven strategy of besieging opposition areas until residents and fighters, des-perate for food, medical treatment and relief, give up and accept government control.

The bruising offensives have displaced hundreds of thousands of residents, and tens of thou-sands more choose to leave to north Syria than to submit again to the government and be con-scripted by the military.

U.N. officials and human rights groups say the strategy and the evacuation arrangements amount to forced population dis-placement, a war crime.

A similar arrangement to have Islamic State militants evacuate their pocket inside the capital appeared to collapse yes-terday. Government forces began bombarding the Hajr al-Aswad neighborhood and Yarmouk Pal-estinian camp inside Damascus only hours after reports surfaced that IS militants would be given two days to leave.

Local opposition activist Sami Dreid, in the nearby Yalda

neighborhood, said the militants were expected to relocate to IS-held territory in the east Syrian desert. He said it was not clear why the deal appeared to have fallen through.

Dumayr, in the Qalamoun mountains, is a short drive away from Douma, the site of the alleged April 7 chemical weapons attack. Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohi-bition of Chemical Weapons were still not able to reach the scene on Thursday, 12 days after the suspected attack.

The attack prompted the United States, France and Britain to strike at suspected Syrian chemical weapons facilities. The three countries said they held

the Syrian government and its ally Russia responsible.

Damascus and Moscow denied responsibility. A UN security team touring the sites of the alleged attack on Tuesday was shot at and subjected to a blast, said OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu. The security team was supposed to give the all-clear for OPCW inspectors to follow, but their visit was put on hold pending the security situation, Uzumcu added.

A UN spokesman said dis-cussions were taking place in the Syrian capital to arrange security to allow OPCW inspectors to visit Douma.

Stephane Dujarric said the

UN did not want to “telegraph” when a UN security team would return, “due to the volatility” of the situation on the ground. Journalists visited Douma a day before the U.N. security team. They were not exposed to any weapons fire.

Associated Press journalists spoke to witnesses who said they were overwhelmed by the smell of chlorine and experi-enced fainting during an April 7 assault.

First responders released videos purporting to show fatal-ities from the attack - lifeless bodies collapsed in an apartment, with foam around their mouths, a sign of asphyxiation.

Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russia hold anti-terrorism conferenceAFP

TEHRAN: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russia held a meeting in Baghdad yesterday of military and security officials to coor-dinate “anti-terrorism” efforts, the Iranian defence ministry said.

“Cooperation in intelli-gence between the four coun-tries for common aims and anti-terrorism missions has been successful in restoring stability and security, and it should form the basis for future cooperation,” Defence Minister General Amir Hatami said in a statement from the Iraqi capital.

The “coalition” had played an “important role in the defeat” of the Islamic State group in both Iraq and Syria, he said.

The meeting came the same day as Iraq said its air force carried out a raid on IS positions in Syria.

Tehran supports the Iraqi government and the Russian-backed regime in Syria in fighting rebel groups and jihadists by sending “military advisers” and “volunteers” from Iran and Afghanistan.

Turkey’s weak opposition scrambles to challenge ErdoganAP

ANKARA: One party leader is in jail. Another doesn’t have a candidate. A third might face eligibility issues for her party. Turkey’s weak opposition is scrambling to mount a meaningful challenge against strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with just nine weeks to prepare for snap elections.

Erdogan set the presidential and par-liamentary elections for June 24, in a move that will usher in a new system cementing the president’s grip on power more than a year ahead of schedule. Turkey is switching from a parliamentary system to an executive presidential system after a narrowly approved referendum last year, in the wake of a failed 2016 coup attempt. The changes take effect with the next election, which had originally been set for November 2019.

The snap elections caught Turkey off guard and come as the opposition is in disarray. Recent changes to the electoral law pushed through by Erdogan’s gov-erning AKP party with the help of the nationalist party make the playing field even more uneven for the opposition, analysts say.

Still, the opposition parties sounded upbeat with the main opposition party’s leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, promising that the June elections would bring “democracy” and “calm,” and Meral Aksener, seen as the strongest candidate against Erdogan,

vowing to send him home to rest after 15 years in power.

Observers say the early elections were called to capitalise on nationalist sentiment running high following a successful mil-itary campaign in Syria that ousted Syrian Kurdish militia from a border region, in a decision fueled by fears of an economic downturn ahead.

Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag compared the opposition to people “caught in a downpour in August, without an umbrella.” Marhir Unal, a senior member of Erdogan’s ruling party, said the latest opinion polls give Erdogan 55.6 percent support - which would allow him to win the presidential election in the first round. But Unal didn’t provide further details about the polls.

The main opposition party, the pro-secular Republican People’s Party has yet to announce its candidate. Its leader, Kilicdaroglu, yesterday didn’t rule out an alliance with parties “that support democracy and oppose a one-man regime.”

The party denied it has been caught by surprise, saying it has several strong can-didates and will nominate one in the next two weeks.

But the person considered the most serious contender against Erdogan so far is Aksener, a popular former interior min-ister who defected from Turkey’s main nationalists and formed her own party.

She has already announced her can-didacy for the presidential race.

Buhari’s remarks on young Nigerians’ work ethic stirs social media stormREUTERS

LAGOS: President Muhammadu Buhari has drawn criticism from social media and the opposition alike for saying many young Nigerians think they need “do nothing” to enjoy free homes, hospitals and schooling because they live in an oil-rich country.

Buhari, who said last week he will run for a second term in elections next February, made the comments in London where he is attending a Com-monwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

“More than 60 percent of the pop-ulation is below the age of 30,” he told

a business forum on Wednesday. “A lot of them haven’t been to school and they are claiming that Nigeria has been an oil producing country, therefore, they should sit and do nothing, and get housing, healthcare, education free.”

This went down badly with the very people the 75-year-old will need if he is to remain leader of Africa’s top oil producer. The median age in the nation of around 190 million people is just 18, according to the United Nations.

His remarks prompted the ironic hashtag #LazyNigerianYouths on Twitter even though Buhari, a former general who was also a military ruler in the 1980s, did not use the word “lazy”.

Kenya suspends land allocation as 9 hurt in attacksREUTERS

NAIROBI: Kenya suspended a land distribution programme yesterday after nine people were shot or attacked with crude weapons in six days, with local officials facing investigation for their role.

Land minister Farida Karoney said deteriorating security forced her, in con-sultation with the interior ministry, to stop the allo-cation of 44,000 acres (17,806 hectares) of land in Mwea about 100kmiles) northeast of the capital Nairobi.

“You can’t settle people when they are fighting,” she said by phone.

“The suspension is just to allow the security agencies to intervene and reduce the temperature there so that the process is finished without loss of lives.”

Conflicts over land are common in Africa, especially where colonial governments evicted indigenous people, leaving newly independent states to resolve disputes between communities with ancestral ties and more recent occupants and buyers.

Ownership of the land in Mwea has been in dispute for decades after people were forced off the land by the British.

The issuance of title deeds since 2016, in a bid to resolve several claims that had been in court, has inflamed tensions.

Rockets hit Libya airport as UN, French officials visit for talksREUTERS

TRIPOLI: Rockets hit Libya’s main airport and damaged a plane as it was waiting to take off early yesterday, a security force said, the same day as the United Nations envoy and France’s ambassador were visiting the capital to discuss a peace plan.

One rocket hit an Airbus 320 and others struck the arrivals hall at Tripoli’s Mitiga airport at around 2 a.m. (midnight GMT), but no one was injured, a spokesman for the Special Deterrence Force (Rada) said.

UN envoy Ghassan Salame

and French ambassador Brigitte Curmi arrived at the same airport - the only one operating in the city. Their offices did not imme-diately release a statement on the attack or say when they landed.

Tripoli has been controlled by a patchwork of armed groups since a 2011 uprising that toppled long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi and splintered the country.

There have been rival govern-ments in Tripoli and the east since 2014, when most diplomatic mis-sions evacuated to neighbouring Tunisia. Armed groups fighting for territory and power have

regularly attacked Tripoli’s transport hubs - undermining the government’s efforts to persuade diplomatic missions to return to the capital. Airlines have also struggled to maintain services and keep the oil-producing country connected to the outside world as attacks damage their planes.

Rada, a security grup that controls the airport alligned to Libya’s internationally recognised government, said the rockets were fired by men loyal to a militia leader known as Bashir “the Cow”, a group it has clashed with before.

France’s Curmi met

representatives of that govenrment in Tripoli at around 9 a.m., and the UN’s Salame held his meeting in the early afternoon.

When asked whether elec-tions would be held this year, Salame said after meeting Foreign Minister Mohamed Taher Siala: “Sure. We promised this the UN Security Council.” He did not elaborate.

The United Nations launched a new round of talks in September in Tunis between the rival fac-tions to prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections in 2018 but divisions have prevented reaching an accord.

People inspect the site after a car bomb hit the convoy of Abdel-Razeq Nathouri, the chief of staff of the eastern Libyan military, outside Benghazi, Libya, yesterday.

The Syrian government has been following a proven strategy of besieging opposition areas until residents and fighters, desperate for food, medical treatment and relief, give up and accept government control.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari (centre), arrives to attend the Queen’s Dinner during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), at Buckingham Palace in London, yesterday.

05FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018 ISLAM

Quran’s amazing description of realities of natureMANSOOR ALAM

The Holy Quran while describing nature’s physical beauty makes certain remarks that bedazzle the

human intellect, leaving it in awe! It says, “We have put shining stars for you in Asma’adunya. In saying this, the Quran implies that there is a world beyond these shining stars. What we usually observe is the nearest sky. We do not know how many cosmic worlds are beyond that. By calling the nearest sky Asma’adunya, the Quran has pointed out deep astronomical facts in just one word. In the period in which the Quran was being revealed, no one knew the astronomical realities.

For example, the Quran uses the term ‘Masaabih’ which means, shining lamps. It is Allah’s Mercy that He has arranged these stars and planets in such a way that they look so beautiful to us. Indeed, humans are amazed at how beautiful they look while shining!

If they were exposed to us as they really are, then we would not be able to sleep at night. The moon’s beauty has remained legendary since the dawn of civilization. To poets and literary lumi-naries, the moon has been serenaded as an object of extraordinary beauty. In fact, the word ‘lunatic’ derived from the world lunar, means an exquisite beauty that drives one mad. Yet when the astro-nauts lifted the veil from its face, the moon looked dreadful to us and was exposed as just a barren desert.

Indeed, it is because of Allah’s Mercy that the veil is not rent asunder from the true nature of the stars. To us, the stars look exquisitely stunning in the open azure sky. For this, we must be thankful to Allah that some realities are better hidden from us for our own good. He is a merciful God indeed!

But humans have made them objects of guesswork and astrology! The Quran states: “And, indeed, We have adorned the skies nearest to the earth with lights, and have made them objects of futile guesses for the evil ones [from among men], and for them have We readied suffering through a blazing flame” (67:5-6).

That is, the evil ones try to con-vince humanity that human destiny is tied to the stars! This was being said at a time when the world was involved in all types of superstitions, idol wor-ships, and star worship. In fact, star worshippers were called Saa-e-bin (2:62) by the Quran. Star worshippers are mentioned in the story of Prophet Ibrahim (peace be upon him).

They worshipped the stars as though they were gods. Even if the stars were not worshiped, stars were taken uni-versally as being linked to human destiny at the time. The Quran states that soothsayers, sorcerers, and wizards used to foretell the future by drawing up horoscopes.

The Quran particularly challenged the Arabs of the era who were deeply steeped in superstitious beliefs. The Quran asserts that those who are engaged in predicting kismet using astrology, are engaged in guesswork and are throwing superstitious arrows into darkness.

The Quran calls them, ‘rajumshay-aatin’. The Quran states that the stars in the sky are to be admired for their beauty, but not to be used for making prophecies. Still, we find astrologers and soothsayers who are engaged in guesswork using these stars. They hold the belief that the human future is tied to them!

Poet Allama Iqbal says:How can astrologer identify your

place in life from looking at the stars?You are dust made fully alive, not

one dependent on the position of stars!

A human worth depends on his

continuing efforts, his persistent struggle to exercise his freedom of choice and his ability to exercise Allah-given rights with deep conviction and steadfastness. But when these are taken away, when these are usurped from him, then what does remain of the human being? Please note the kind of metaphor the Quran uses to describe this: “suffering through a blazing flame” (67:5); for, suffering in hell awaits all who are [thus] bent on blas-pheming against their Sustainer: and how vile a journey’s end (67:6).

Such is their ignominy in this world.

But in the life to come, yet more awesome suffering awaits them (5:33). Please note that the Quran says that such people –like astrologers and those who seek their advice on Taqdir — will suffer ignominy in this world.

A messenger used to be a revolu-tionary personality and his revolution was both all-embracing as well as universal. Vested interest groups, be they religious or temporal, used to get upset at his fair and just holistic reform program because it challenged entrenched elite systems and prevailing false ideologies and beliefs, as Ibrahim (PBUH) did.

Imagine how many different entrenched false ideologies, beliefs, and wrong socioeconomic and political systems that a messenger was to tackle at the same time. Imagine the immensity of revolutionary changes that a mes-senger was to create in the society while facing the intense opposition of the pow-erful forces of status quo?

The Quran presents its claims based on rational evidence and logic and asks its opponents to provide proof of their claims as well: (2:111) – Produce an evi-dence for what you are claiming, if what you say is true! Life’s realities are not decided by good feelings but by knowledge and reason. When the Prophet (PBUH) said: My call is based on firm conviction and reason – then this is meant to refute all those beliefs ideologies that are product of false views and superstitions. May Allah give us the strength to practice this important Sunnah of the Prophet (PBUH).

www.islamcity.org

Significance of the month of Sha’baanThe month of Sha’baan is the

8th month of an Islamic calendar. There are a few

months that hold a superior status as compared to other months and because of this, they are given more value and respect by the Muslims. One of such months is the month of Sha’baan.Sha’baan is considered one of the virtuous months for which we find particular instructions in the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

It is reported that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) used to fast most in the month of Sha’baan except the last few days of the month. Sha’baan is the month that comes immediately before the month of Ramadan.

Sha’baan acts as a con-nection between the two blessed and sacred months of Rajab and Ramadan. Prophet (PBUH) men-tioned in hadith, “Rajab is the month of Allah, Sha’baan is my month and Ramadan is the month of the Nation”.

In this Holy month of Sha’baan actions of the people presented to Allah Almighty. Our beloved Prophet (PBUH) used to fast repeatedly in this month.

Aisha (RA) said: “I never saw the Messenger of Allah fast for a complete month except for Ramadan, and I never saw him do more fasting in any month than he did in Sha`ban” (Al-Bukhari).

In another hadith Prophet (PBUH) said related to the signif-icance of the month of Sha’baan in these words: “People neglect this month which is between Rajab and Ramadan, in this month the actions of the people are pre-sented to Allah; so I like my deeds to be presented while I am fasting”. (Abu Dawood)

The above-mentioned had i t h s o f P r o p h e t Muhammad (PBUH) give the importance of the fasting in the month of Sha’baan. In hadith Prophet (PBUH) described the significance of

worship during midnight and fasting in the day in these words: “When the Middle Night of Sha’baan arrives, you should stand (Praying) in the night and should fast in the day following it” (Ibn Majah).

Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) mentioned in one of His Hadith about the blessings of 15th Sha’baan night, during the night of 15th of Sha’baan, Allah will say “is there any person repenting so that I forgive him, and any person seeking provision so that I provide for him, and any person with distress so that I relieve him, and so on until dawn” (Ibn Majah).

This night should be spent in worship and total submission to Allah Almighty as much as pos-sible. The recitation of the Noble Quran is another form of bene-ficial worship in this night. After performing Salah, or at any other time, one should recite as much of the Holy Quran as one can. The best benefit one can take from the blessings of this night

is by asking Allah sincerely. It is hoped that all our prayers in this night will be accepted by Allah. Dua itself is a form of ibadah or worship, and Allah Almighty rewards the one who recites for asking, in addition to fulfilling his/her needs.

Fasting in the month of Sha’baan gives you a chance to start preparing for the month of Ramadan.

For fasting, you will have to wake up early on Fajr time, and spending a day without eating and drinking, will give you a clear idea of what it would take in order to success-fully spend the blessed month of Ramadan.

May Allah give us the utmost love for such a month that meant so much to our beloved Prophet (PBUH). May He give us the ability to fast abundantly in this month and committing good deeds and Muslim gain countless blessings from Allah Almighty in addition to receiving pardon and forgiveness. Ameen!

The Earth is green and beautiful, and Allah has appointed you his stewards over it. The whole Earth

has been created a place of worship, pure and clean. Whoever plants a tree and dil-igently looks after it until it matures and bears fruit is rewarded. If a Muslim plants a tree or sows a field and humans and beasts and birds eat from it, all of it is love on his part. Here are some beautiful verses from the Holy Quran on the cre-ation of the Earth and its beauty.

1 – Surat Luqman: “Do you not see that Allah (swt) has made what is in the heaven and Earth subservient to you and made complete to you His favours outwardly and inwardly?” [31:20]

2 – Surat Al-Teen: “We have indeed created man in the best of moulds.” [95:4]

3 – Surat Al-Sajdah: “He Who created all things in the best way and He began the creation of man from clay.” [32:7]

4 – Surat Aal Imran: “And to Allah belongs the dominion of the Heaven and Earth, and Allah is over all things. Indeed, in the creation of the heavens

and earth, and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding.” [189-90]

5 – Surat Al-Roum: “Devote thyself single-mindedly to the faith, and thus follow the nature designed by Allah, the nature according to which He has fash-ioned mankind; there is no altering the creation of Allah.” [30:30]

6– Surat Al-An’am: “And there is no animal that walks upon the Earth nor a bird that flies with its two wings but they are like yourselves; We have not neglected anything in the book, and then to their Lord shall they be gathered.” [6:38]

7– Surat Luqman: “He created the heavens without pillars as you see them, and put mountains upon the Earth lest it might convulse with you, and He spread it with animals of all kinds; and We sent down water from the clouds, then caused to grow therein (vegetation) of every noble kind.” [31:10]

8 – Surat Qaf: “And the Earth, We spread it out, and cast therein firmly set mountains and We have made to grow therein of all beautiful kinds; to

give sight and as a reminder to every servant who turns to Allah.” [50:7-8]

9 – Surat Al-Ra’d: “And it is He who spread the Earth and made in it firm mountains and rivers, and of all fruits, he has made in it two kinds; He makes the night cover the day; most surely there are signs in this for a people who reflect.” [13:3]

10– Surat Al-Ra’d: “It is He who shows you the lightning, causing fear and hope and who brings up the heavy cloud. And the thunder declares His glory and His praise, and the angels too for awe of Him; and He sends them thunderbolts and smites with them whom He pleases, yet they dispute con-cerning Allah, and He is mighty in prowess.” [13:13-14]

11– Surat Al-Anbiyya: “Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the Earth were a joined entity, and we separated them and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe?” [21:30]

12 – Surat Al-Anbiyya: “And We made the sky a protected ceiling, but they, from its signs, are turning away.” [21:32]

13– Surat Al-Nahl: “He causes to grow for you thereby herbage, and the olives, and the palm trees, and the grapes, and of all the fruits; most surely there is a sign in this for a people who reflect.” [16:11]

14– Surat Al-Nahl: “And he has made

subservient for you the night and the day and the sun and the moon, and the stars are made subservient by his com-mandment; most surely there are signs in this for a people who ponder.” [16:12]

15 – Surat Al-Nahl: “Eat of all the fruits and walk in the ways of your lord submissively. there comes forth from within it a beverage of many colours, in which there is healing for men; most surely there is a sign in this (life of bees) for a people who reflect.” [16:69]

16 – Surat Al-Ana’m: “And it is He who sends down rain from the sky, and We produce thereby the growth of all things. We produce from it greenery from which We produce grains arranged in layers. And from the palm trees – of its emerging fruit are clusters hanging low. And [We produce] gardens of grapevines and olives and pome-granates, similar yet varied. Look at [each of] its fruit when it yields and [at] its ripening. Indeed in that are signs for a people who believe.” [6:99]

17 – Surat Ghaafir: “It is Allah Who has made for you the earth as a resting place, and the sky as a canopy, and has given you shape and made your shapes beautiful and has provided for you sus-tenance.” [40:64]

18 – Surat Al-Hijr: “And the Earth; we have spread it forth and made in it firm mountains and caused to grow in it every suitable thing.” [15:19]

The beauty of Earth through

18 verses of the Holy Quran

When the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: My call is based on firm conviction and reason — then this is meant to refute all those beliefs and ideologies that are product of false views and superstitions.

06 FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018ASIA

SC trashes plea for SIT probe into Loya’s deathIANS

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court yesterday dismissed peti-tions seeking a SIT probe into the death of Judge B H Loya, who was conducting a trial in the killing of gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh in Gujarat in which now BJP President Amit Shah was an accused.

Holding that there was absolutely no merit in the peti-tions, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A M Khanwilkar and Justice D Y Chandrachud said that Judge Loya met a natural death while in Nagpur.

Dismissing the petitions, the court said: “There is no doubt and it is clear from the state-ments of the judicial officers that Loya died of natural causes.” Three of the judicial officers, the court said, had travelled with Judge Loya by train from Mumbai to Nagpur to attend a wedding reception. They stayed together at Ravi Bhawan, attended the function and during the day they also visited the residences of a few judges.

Sohrabuddin Sheikh was allegedly shot dead in a stage-managed shoot-out. One of the accused was Amit Shah, who was then the Home Minister in Gujarat when the Chief Minister was now Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

After Loya’s death in November 2014, Amit Shah was discharged and the CBI refused to file an appeal against it.

The Supreme Court ruling did nothing to quieten the political temperatures. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came down heavily on Congress President Rahul Gandhi, saying he should apologise to Shah, the country and the judiciary.

BJP spokesman Sambit Patra said all the petitions were polit-ically motivated and were aimed at defaming Amit Shah. Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad echoed the sentiment and said Rahul Gandhi should hang his head in shame.

The Congress retorted that was a “sad letter day” in India’s history and reiterated its demand for a fair investigation into Loya’s “mysterious death”. It listed the chain of events leading to his death.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist demanded that the case be heard by a larger bench and described as “unfor-tunate” the apex court’s rejection of demands for an independent probe into Loya’s death.

The judgment pronounced by Justice Chandrachud took exception to the way the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed and insinuations were made against the committee of admin-istrators of the Bombay High Court and the judges of the Supreme Court in the course of the hearing.

Differences on stand towards Congress dominate CPI-M meetIANS

HYDERABAD: Differences over the issue of elec-toral understanding with the Congress dominated the proceedings of the national conclave of the Communist Party of India-(Marxist yesterday as it began discussion on the draft political resolution. The 22nd party Congress of the CPI-M on the second day took up discussion on two divergent viewpoints.

The draft political resolution, which was cleared by the party’s Central Committee in January and which ruled out alliance with Con-gress, was moved by senior leader Prakash Karat, while General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, who is in favour of electoral understanding with the Con-gress, moved the minority view, which was earlier rejected by the Central Committee.

Yechury told reporters that the Central Com-mittee decided to discuss both the viewpoints in view of the large number of amendments received

from members. “Since there was a difference of opinion on tactical line, the Central Committee felt that both the opinions should be discussed at the Party Congress and come to a collective decision. Once the decision is arrived at after delib-erations, it will be the unified policy decision of the party,” he said.

In a departure from the established procedure, Karat, who is opposed to any electoral under-standing with Congress, moved the political res-olution. Normally, the party General Secretary presents the draft political resolution at the Con-gress, the highest decision making forum.

Denying any differences, Yechury said this was not the first time that the incumbent General Secretary has not moved the political resolution. “Wait. The discussions have just started. Our party has a vibrant inner democracy and will take deci-sions collectively after discussion and debate,” Yechury said when asked what would be his next move if the minority view is rejected.

Delhiites may soon be compensated for power outageIANS

NEW DELHI: Lt Governor Anil Baijal yesterday approved a proposal from the Delhi government to compensate consumers for unscheduled power cuts lasting longer than one hour.

“Approved proposal for issue of policy directions regarding payment of compen-sation to consumers in case of power failure,” Baijal tweeted.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called it an “innovative policy” and said it would make power distribution companies accountable to people.

On Tuesday, Kejriwal had approved the policy to provide compensation to users in case of “unscheduled power cuts by the private power distribution companies” and it was sent to the Lt. Governor for approval.

As per the new policy, in case of an unscheduled power cut, the discoms (power

distribution companies) will have to restore the electricity within one hour. Failure to do so shall result in a penalty of Rs 50 per hour per consumer for the first two hours and Rs 100 per hour per consumer after two hours. The compensation would be provided to consumers in their monthly electricity bills.

In case of a power cut, a consumer has to file a “no current” complaint through SMS, email, phone, mobile application or website, along with name, Consumer Account (CA) number and mobile number. The power distribution company would then attend to the complaint and send a confirmation message to the consumer.

The respective compen-sation amount would be then credited to the CA number auto-matically and a message would be sent to the consumer.

This amount would be then adjusted in the consumer’s monthly electricity bill.

Modi meets Queen Elizabeth II

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is greeted by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II during a private audience at Buckingham Palace in London.

Aung San Suu Kyi in Vietnam for talks

Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi (right) and Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc walk to the meeting room for bilateral talks in Hanoi, Vietnam, yesterday.

Myanmar blocks Rohingya aid despite safe return pledgeANATOLIA

YANGON: Myanmar pledged safe repa-triation of Rohingya from neighbouring Bangladesh as soon as possible despite accusations of activists claiming the government was intentionally blocking aid for refugees facing dire food shortage in Rakhine state.

Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a repatriation deal last November, but

Dhaka claims not a single refugee has returned. The UN maintains the Myanmar government has been unable to assure safe return for the refugees, and remaining houses in entire villages have been razed to the ground in the name of development works.

Yesterday, Myanmar Minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement Win Myat Aye, who recently visited the refugee camps in Bangladesh, said the

government was working hard for the safe, dignified and voluntary return of refugees who provide evidence of origin in the country. “Firstly, we would like to reiterate that we are not accepting those who failed to present required evi-dences,” Win Myat Aye told the media.

About his two-day visit to Bang-ladesh earlier this month, he said he met Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh’s Cox Bazar. “For the repatriation, the first step

for displaced people is to fill the form. But I got surprised that they have not received any form to be filled although we already sent the forms since months ago,” he said.

He claimed all refugees he met in the camps said they wanted to return to Myanmar, but said the problem is citi-zenship. “They told me that they want citizenship when they come back. So, we explained to them about the citi-

zenship verification process,” he said. “We have been preparing for the

safe return for months, and now we are ready. And we would like to start repa-triation as soon as possible as the monsoon is coming,” he said.

However, he admitted that more time would be needed to verify the people as the forms sent back by Bang-ladeshi government had not been filled completely.

Nepal honours first conquest of Everest without bottled oxygenAP

KATHMANDU: Nepal honoured two climbers who were the first to scale Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen 40 years ago. Minister for Tourism Rabindra Adhikari praised the climbers at a ceremony.

Italian Reinhold Messner and Austrian Peter Habeler reached the summit without use of supplementary oxygen, while others on their team used bottled oxygen. Until then, all climbers carried oxygen cyl-inders to aid them at high alti-tudes where oxygen levels are low. Since Everest was first scaled in 1953, thousands of

climbers have reached the summit and hundreds more make attempts every year. This year nearly 350 foreign climbers have already been issued climbing permits. Most climbers still use supplementary oxygen.

Messner has been a strong critic of the large number of people climbing Everest. He sug-gested many years back that Nepal give the mountain a rest to allow it to recover, but Nepal did not listen. “They decided like this, I cannot change it,” he said, while acknowledging that the climbing has been good for Nepal economically because many people stay for weeks and spend large amounts of money.

Holding that there was absolutely no merit in the petitions, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, said that Judge Loya met a natural death while in Nagpur.

Indonesia nabs bootleg booze manufacturerYOGYAKARTA: Police announced the arrest of an alleged boss of an illegal manufacturer of home-made liquor whose lethal mix ended up killing at least 45 people in West Java district of Cicalengka in a week.

An estimated 100 people died in Indonesia this month after consuming toxic liquor.

Speaking at a news con-ference, Deputy National Police Chief Commissioner Gen. Pol. Syafruddin said police arrested the boss of illegal product, Samsudin Simbolon, at his palm oil plantation in southern Sumatra early Wednesday, according to antaranews.com.

Simbolon had allegedly bought his luxury home from the proceeds of his illegal business. Police also detained Simbolon’s wife and his two agents for helping him run the business that had been going on for the last two years.

Police were looking for four other suspects.

5 dead after toxic gas emissions in Sri Lanka factoryCOLOMBO: At least five people were killed by inhaling toxic gas coming out from a rubber factory in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan police said five people were killed and 15 others were hospitalised because of burns and breathing difficulties caused by exposure to toxic gas coming out from a rubber factory outside the capital Colombo.

The police said an employee of the factory had accidentally fallen into a tank containing Ammonia gas outside the factory. He died immediately, while four of his colleagues died while trying to save him because of inhaling toxic gas, and 15 sustained burns and breathing diffi-culties. The factory is located in Horana, 20km south-east of the capital Colombo.

07FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018 ASIA

Prince Charles meets Pakistan’s PM

Britain’s Prince Charles (right) greets Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi at Clarence House in London yesterday on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

Duterte during the National Police chief handover ceremonyPhilippine President Rodrigo Duterte holds a Galil sniper rifle next to outgoing Philippine National Police Chief, Ronald ‘Bato’ Dela Rosa during the National Police chief handover ceremony in Camp Crame, Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, yesterday.

PTI loses majority in KP province assemblyINTERNEWS

PESHAWAR: With just weeks remaining before the term of the assembly expires, PTI announced it would take action against over a dozen provincial lawmakers for allegedly selling their votes in last month’s elec-tions. But in doing so, it has thrown away its simple majority in the legislature in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. Curiously, the oppo-sition in the house says it will not bring a no-confidence motion and seek to capitalise on the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) precarious position, terming such a move pointless.

In a news conference in the federal capital, PTI Chairman Imran Khan announced the names of 18 party lawmakers (including two who had joined it from the Qaumi Watan Party and the rival Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz) and two coa-lition members who had indulged in horse-trading in the recent Senate elections.

Imran said that they had issued show-cause notices to these lawmakers and would even take their alleged dis-loyalty to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for further legal action.

Some PTI lawmakers included in the list, though, have vehemently denied the accusations of horse-trading. Javed Naseem said that the party had first tried to expel him three years ago and it took a court order to reclaim his valid seat. Yasin Khalil refuted the allegations and stated that he had even met with Imran and the K P Chief Minister to convince them that he did not partake in horse-trading.

As a result, the PTI is now only left with just 41 lawmakers of its own, seven from its coa-lition partner, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and an independent member in the 122-member house.

Inauguration of Islamabad airport delayed againINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: The opening of new Islamabad International Airport has been delayed once again but this time at the eleventh hour when the operational prepar-edness was complete and new flight schedule had been announced though the media.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said the facility would now become operational on May 3 as prime minister’s adviser on avi-ation Sardar Mehtab Ahmed wanted more system and equipment testing to achieve com-plete satisfaction. The new airport, built at a cost of Rs105bn, was earlier scheduled to become oper-ational on April 20. Airport is

capable of handling nine million passengers and 50,000 tonnes of cargo every year in its first phase Ahmed expressed his satisfaction during an inspection of the airport, according to a spokesman for the adviser.

“The state-of-the-art system and equipment need to be tested and trialed further to bring it to the level of international standards,” the spokesman said, adding: “Opening of the new airport was rescheduled to do more tests and trials in order to improve reliability and efficiency of systems.” After the rescheduling announcement, a fresh Notam (notice to airmen) was issued by the CAA headquarters, saying “the airport will be operational on May

3, 2018”.The surprising announcement

of rescheduling was made at a press briefing at the new facility by Nadir Shafi Dar, CAA’s director planning, and Syed Aamir Mehmood, director media coor-dination of the CAA. Briefing jour-nalists about features and other facilities at the new airport, Mehmood said the airport was capable of handling nine million passengers and 50,000 tonnes of cargo every year in its first phase. After its expansion, it would be able to serve up to 25m passengers a year by 2025, he added.

“The new airport will become the country’s hub and boost its business and economy. It is expected to provide multiple

direct and indirect jobs and reap enormous economic benefits for the country,” he said, adding that the successful completion of the airport reflected the ability of the CAA to build a world class airport that had become a pride of the country. Metro and private transport will be providing round-the-clock services for public convenience.

Mehmood said it took almost 11 years to build the new airport, adding that its 190,370-square-metre four-level passenger ter-minal building had been designed to facilitate passengers and stake-holders. In reply to a question about security of the airport, he said that since the new airport was located in two districts Attock and

Rawalpindi the issue of responsi-bility of police security had been taken up with the Punjab home department to make a decision which city would handle the security. Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had last Friday paid a surprise visit to the new airport and inspected the terminal building and other facilities and sought a report on the short-comings in two days.

The Prime Minister also visited the domestic arrival lounge and issued some instructions to avi-ation secretary Irfan Elahi after noticing some serious flaws.

He inquired about the cafe-teria for airport employees, including those of the Airport Security Force, CAA and airlines.

Pakistan reducing its dependence on US armsINTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is grad-ually reducing its dependence on American military technology and China is filling the gap, says a report. The long, almost 2,000-word Financial Times report notes that the shift started in the last few months of the Obama administration, when Congress blocked the sale of eight F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.

In Islamabad, this move was seen as a confirmation of Paki-stan’s fear that the United States “could no longer be relied on as their armed forces’ primary source of advanced weapons”, the report adds.

The shift started in the last few months of Obama adminis-tration, when Congress blocked sale of eight F-16s to Islamabad. So, Pakistan shifted its focus from F-16s to the JF-17 fighter jets it is developing with China, and which is catching up with the F-16 in terms of capabilities.

The ban accelerated Paki-stan’s efforts to shift its “military

procurement away from Amer-ican-made weapons towards Chinese ones, or those made domestically with Chinese support. The report also quotes data from the Stockholm Inter-national Peace Research Institute, showing that since 2010, US weapons exports to Pakistan have plummeted from $1bn to just $21m last year.

During the same period, those from China have also fallen, but much more slowly, from $747m to $514m, making China the biggest weapons exporter to

Pakistan. “The shift coincided with Islamabad’s growing sus-picion about the closeness between the US and India, but was accelerated by the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in 2011, which badly damaged relations with the US,” the report added.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend $2bn of mil-itary aid to Pakistan — announced in January —further exacerbated the situation.

Identifying one immediate impact of the move, the FT noted that US officials were “now finding that Islamabad is less responsive than usual” to their requests for support in Afghanistan.

Harrison Akins, a research fellow at the Howard H Baker Jr Centre for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee, said: “The Trump administration’s decision can only push Pakistan further into the arms of Beijing — especially with Pakistan’s shift from US military supplies to Chinese military supplies.”

In Islamabad, this move was seen as a confirmation of Pakistan’s fear that the United States “could no longer be relied on as their armed forces’ primary source of advanced weapons”.

China flies bombers around Taiwan, holds live-fire drillsAFP

BEIJING: Chinese bombers and spy planes have flown around Taiwan, the air force said as Taipei accused Beijing of trying to stoke regional tensions with its military drills.

China sees the democrati-cally-governed island as a ren-egade part of its territory to be brought back into the fold and has not ruled out reunification by force. H-6K bombers, Su-30 and J-11 fighters and reconnais-sance aircraft took part in a

patrol around Taiwan, air force spokesman Shen Jinke told the official Xinhua news agency.

Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Ma Xiaoguang said the exercise served as a warning against those pushing for Tai-wanese independence.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said Thursday multiple Chinese aircraft including bombers and reconnaissance planes were spotted on Wednesday afternoon flying over Miyako Strait — near Japan’s southern Okinawa island — into the

western Pacific before returning to their base via Bashi Channel off southern Taiwan.

“China has deliberately manipulated (the exercise) to pressure and harass Taiwan in an attempt to spark tensions between the two sides and in the region,” Chiu Chui-cheng of Tai-wan’s Mainland Affairs Council told a regular briefing.

“(We) will never bow down to any military threat and incentive.” — Helicopter exer-cises — Chinese combat heli-copters also conducted live-fire

drills with missiles off southeast China, state media said, without confirming whether the exer-cises took place in the sensitive Taiwan Strait. The People’s Lib-eration Army (PLA) exercise took place Wednesday and involved various types of helicopters that tested “all-weather operational capability of the air force at sea,” the official Xinhua news agency said.

State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of helicopters firing missiles at distant objects in the water.

Seoul: Pyongyang removes nuclear sticking pointAP

SEOUL: South Korean President Moon Jae-in said yesterday that his rival, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, isn’t asking for the withdrawal of US troops from the Korean Peninsula as a precon-dition for abandoning his nuclear weapons. If true, this would seem to remove a major sticking point to a potential nuclear disar-mament deal.

North Korea has always linked its pursuit of nuclear weapons to what it calls a “hostile” US policy that is embodied by the 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea, the 50,000 stationed in Japan, and the “nuclear umbrella” security guarantee that Wash-ington offers allies Seoul and Tokyo. Although Moon reported that North Korea isn’t asking for the US troops to leave, he said the North still wants the United States to end its “hostile” policy and offer security guarantees. When North Korea has previ-ously talked about “hostility” it has been linked to the US troops in South Korea.

It won’t be until Moon and Kim meet next week, and then when Kim is to meet US Pres-ident Donald Trump sometime in May or June, that outsiders might know just what North Korea intends. Until then, caution is needed over the statements the

various leaders are using to set up their high-stakes negotiations.

Moon and Kim’s summit on April 27 will be only the third such meeting between the coun-tries’ leaders. Moon, a liberal who is committed to engaging the North despite being forced to take a hard line in the face of repeated North Korean weapons tests last year, is eager to make the summit a success and pave the way for Kim and Trump to settle the deep differences they have over the North’s decades-long pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Many analysts believe that Kim sees the meeting with Trump as a way to bestow legit-imacy on his own leadership and on a nuclear programme that he has built in the face of criticism and crippling sanctions. Many say it is unlikely that the North will trade away its hard-won nuclear weapons without getting what it wants in return. “North Korea is expressing a com-mitment to a complete denu-clearisation,” Moon said during a meeting with the heads of media organisations. “They are not presenting a condition that the US cannot accept, such as the withdrawal of the American troops in South Korea.... North Korea is only talking about the end of a hostile policy against it and then a security guarantee for the country.”

Philippine-US war games to include Japan, AustraliaREUTERS

MANILA: Annual US-Phil-ippine military exercises involving thousands of troops will be expanded for the first time to include other coun-tries, with Japanese and Australian forces invited to join what will be the 34th edition of the war games.

The Philippines and the US have been holding the “Balikatan” (shoulder-to-shoulder) drills annually to test the readiness of their mil-itaries to respond to threats that include natural disasters and militant extremist attacks. The US embassy in Manila said Australia and Japan, two US allies countries with strategic partnerships with the Philippines, would join the exercises.

Qatari Diar is also making many strategic investments all over the world. They have invested around $40bn in 22 countries across five continents.

08 FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018VIEWS

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

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

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Accelerated growth

It’s heartening to note that in the past week many senior officials revealed through media how Qatar as a country, along with its institu-

tions, is witnessing exponential growth. This is a matter of great pride for all citizens

and residents of Qatar as this happened during a time the country was subjected to unjustified blockade by some of the neighbouring countries.

Last week, CEO of Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company (Qatari Diar) said in an interview that 80 per cent work of Lusail City infra-structure projects is complete. Lusail City is a flagship project for Qatar and the stadium for 2022 World Cup final will be located here.

According to Qatari Diar CEO, Nabeel Mohammed Al Buenain, an estimated QR40bn is spent to develop the facilities in Lusail City.

In the beginning of the illegal siege, the block-ading countries thought Qatar market will face an economic squeeze and will face shortage of

construction material, as most of these material came from those countries.

What they didn’t realise is the robust policies and procedures Qatar has in place and quick thinking by the leadership made sure the material needed were pro-cured straight from the source country without any delay.

Anyway, the blockading countries were acting as agents as the source of these materials were other friendly countries. Cutting out the middlemen helped in bringing down the cost of some items.

Logistically, Qatar was well prepared as Hamad Port was ready to receive

cargoes and Qatar Airways flies to all over the globe.

Qatari Diar is also making many strategic investments all over the world. They have invested around $40bn in 22 countries across five continents.

There are investing in three projects in US – CityCenterDC, Conrad in Washington and another in Long Island City. The company has five projects in Britain with a total value of $8.17bn. He pointed out that the company’s investments in Asia and Africa are estimated at $3.72bn and $2.11bn respectively.

The trust in Doha was also evident when dollar bond issued by Qatar topped the Saudi bond issue – both in volume and international credit rating. They came in early thinking to mop up the market, but were in for a surprise as Qatar bond sale was oversubscribed many times over and it had the fourth highest rating by international credit agencies.

This goes on to prove that investors have tre-mendous faith in Qatari economy and Doha has very robust system and practices put in place wel-coming global players to the country.

‘Mission Accomplished’ in Syria is possible

JAMES STAVRIDIS BLOOMBERG

QUOTE OF THE DAY

We see that Astana process is parallel to Geneva process

and foresee that the political process

will continue with the support of the

UN.

Kairat Abdrakhmanov Kazakh Foreign Minister

Health care in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria

Six months after Maria hit, the hurricane’s death toll is still a subject of contro-

versy. After seismic investi-gations by the island’s Center for Investigative Journalism and the New York Times late last year showing that the true death count was probably several times higher than the official toll — more than 1,000 hur-ricane-related deaths, com-pared with the 64 deaths reported at the time — the Puerto Rican government asked a team of experts at George Washington Uni-versity to review the numbers. But insufficient details were collected about causes of death by the island’s Demographic Registry. And as months go by, it becomes harder to trace the families of the deceased and ask

questions about how a death occurred.

These mistakes are symptomatic of a broader trend. Recently, the island’s Institute of Statistics has found itself at the unlikely epicenter of a public outcry, as the cash-strapped local government considers ending the independent agency’s tenure. Now side-lined from participating in Maria’s maligned death count, the institute has his-torically played a critical role in correcting tendencies by local agencies to under-report health risks.

Last month, I traveled to Puerto Rico to get a handle on what doctors are seeing on the island now, six months after the storm. Doctors there say that poor data collection and underre-porting are hiding a health crisis whose true scale eclipses official accounts.

The problems

are particularly acute for chronically ill patients. Wendy Matos, a physician who supervises nearly 470 doctors as the executive director of the University of Puerto Rico’s faculty practice plan, said that her clinics are seeing increases in cardiac arrest and intracranial hem-orrhage (bleeding inside the skull), more waterborne and infectious disease and swelling numbers of suicides since Maria.

Matos, whose doctors comprise the largest network of specialists and subspe-cialists on the island, also said her medical clinics have lost track of what has hap-pened to tens of thousands of patients since the hurricane. From September 1 to December 31, doctors at Matos’s clinics saw nearly 25 percent fewer patients than they had the previous year - just under 91,000, down from about 117,000 patients

in a comparable period in 2016. Some of these high-risk patients have left the island. Others are struggling to access care, immobile or unable to travel the long dis-tance to San Juan on deterio-rating roads. Some have died.

These issues, doctors think, either aren’t fully reflected in data put out by Puerto Rico’s Department of Health, or fail to surface because data on disease and injury isn’t being published at all.

Even before Maria, rural and isolated areas in Puerto Rico didn’t have enough doctors and nurses. Spe-cialists were in short supply. The hurricane has left more patients without care, or waiting longer for care. The island’s Center for Investi-gative Journalism found that after the storm, hospitals’ operational capacity had been overstated by the governor.

I understand what President Donald Trump was trying to express in his now-famous “Mission Accom-plished” tweet Saturday. And in

fairness, in the military we often do use that expression to convey the success of a tactical task.

But he should have understood the echoes of President George W Bush’s appearance under a now-infamous banner on a carrier deck after the invasion of Iraq that turned out to be anything but a mission accomplished. And, unfortunately, the weekend’s air strikes didn’t come near accomplishing the broader strategic mission ahead of us in Syria.

What the strikes (conducted jointly with two other close allies, France and Britain) did do was damage the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons research, production and storage facilities. They were executed flawlessly at the tactical level, and kudos to the operational forces involved, especially the planners at US Central Command in Tampa, Florida (Secretary of Defense Jim Mat-tis’s old command).

But here is what it did not do: totally destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stock-piles; knock out Bashar Al Assad’s ability to produce more nerve agents or rebuild the capability to do so; reduce the

regime’s ability to transport the chemical weapons by road, rail or air; degrade or destroy the means of delivery (Syria’s 250-plane air force); or knock out the govern-ment’s command and control system.

All those actions would have been per-missible under international law. But the US wisely decided to conduct a more measured attack

(although it was roughly double the level of last year’s strike that used only Tom-ahawk missiles). By opting for a rela-tively constrained assault, Mattis and the president chose a course of action that allows further escalation if necessary, had a minimal risk to US personnel, avoided direct confrontation with Russia and minimised collateral damage to

Syrian forces.But the question hangs in the air like

the smoke over the impact zones on Sat-urday morning: What if Assad doesn’t stop? What would the next strike look like, and what are the additional risks?

Operationally, the next logical step in the ladder of escalation would include the following elements:

many more allied participants

possibly two US aircraft carriers in the eastern Mediterranean

portions of the Syrian electric grid and command and control stations

destroy Syrian air defences

the Middle East, Europe and the US con-ducting a multiday campaign with dozens of targets

Special Forces on the ground — focused on the region for battle damage assessment and enabling precision targeting.

This scenario would be much riskier than what we saw this weekend for several reasons.

First, it would put allied air crews in range of Syrian and Russian air defences, potentially leading to pris-oners of war and casualties. Second, it would increase the number of nations involved on the allied side, complicating operations considerably. Third, it would bring to a full halt the (very imperfect) peace negotiations underway. Fourth and most dangerously, it would probably bring the US and Russia into a direct military confrontation — it would be very difficult to avoid some level of Russian collateral damage if the coa-lition chose to go after Syrian airplanes, as they are increasingly intertwined with the Russians.

The US has a handful of strategic objectives in Syria. At the top of the list is

continuing to seize territory from the so-called Islamic State and reduce the ter-rorists’ reach and threat to America. Second is to enforce the important inter-national norm against using weapons of mass destruction.

At the humanitarian level, we should also be doing what we can, over time, to reduce the sheer human misery of Syria, where 500,000 are dead and well over 10 million have been pushed out of their homes. These are real and important strategic objectives.

One hopes Assad got the message and will refrain from using chemical weapons on his own people. But, as the saying goes, hope is not a strategy. An actual strategy would see the US remain engaged in Syria with up to 5,000 troops (currently there are around 2,000 — which is a far, far cry from the 150,000 under my command in Afghanistan just a few years ago). The allies would also push on Russia’s economic weaknesses — Moscow doesn’t have the money to rebuild Syria under Assad — to force real negotiations, under United Nations aus-pices, on a diplomatic resolution. A good model is the Balkans of 20 years ago, when Russia eventually became part of the solution.

The US has to find the balance in Syria between limited hard power (small numbers of ground troops, special forces, offensive cyber, long-range pre-cision strikes) and soft power (diplomacy, economic incentives, coa-lition-building to share costs, strategic messaging). A pair of well-executed air strikes is a long, long way from “mission accomplished.” We’ve got more work to do in Syria.

The author is a Bloomberg columnist. He is a retired US Navy admiral and former military commander of Nato, and dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His most recent book is “Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans.”

MEKELA PANDITHARATNE

What the strikes (conducted jointly with two other close allies, France and Britain) did do was damage the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons research, production and storage facilities. They were executed flawlessly at the tactical level, and kudos to the operational forces involved.

09FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018 OPINION

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Cuba heads towardsa post-Castro future

Yemen: A country wracked by a bloody war

ISHAAN THAROOR THE WASHINGTON POST

AL JAZEERA

It’s an end of an era in Havana. Cuba’s National Assembly con-vened a session that culminates in President Raúl Castro stepping

down from his post in favor of his first vice president, Miguel Diaz-Canel. The move sets the stage for a startling reality: Diaz-Canel has become the first non-Castro to lead the Caribbean nation since Marxist revolutionaries swept to power almost six decades ago.

Castro, 86, will remain head of the country’s Communist Party, although

he is in the twilight of his career. His brother Fidel Castro, architect of the regime that has withstood decades of American blockade, stepped down in his favor in 2008 and died two years ago. And while the ascension of Diaz-Canel — a handpicked successor plucked from the ranks of the Com-munist leadership — has been tele-graphed for months, it still presents a dramatic inflection point.

“For me, not having a Fidel or Raul, it’s almost impossible to conceive of,” Giraldo Baez, a 78-year-old former factory worker, told my colleague Anthony Faiola in Havana. “It’s almost out of my realm of understanding. But even as they go, I feel we still need to follow their ideas.”

Among the hard-bitten Cuban diaspora in the United States, there is little reason to cheer. “Today is a day when the Castro dynasty is appointing a new monarch to commit even more crimes,” said Miguel Saavedra, pres-ident of a group of Cuban exiles in Miami. “The future ahead for the Cuban people is tragic and pathetic while Castro is still in power.”

That’s a line of argument shared by many Republicans in Washington and hawks in the Trump administration. In the space of a year, President Donald Trump has set about reversing the landmark steps toward normalization with Cuba that President Barack Obama had set in motion. Obama had visited Cuba in 2016 and delivered a speech watched by millions. He was followed by myriad US politicians, fashion icons, Wall Street CEOs and business execu-tives, and thousands of tourists - whose

arrival all buoyed Cuba’s fledgling private sector.

But after a mysterious set of “health attacks” on US diplomats, Trump moved to expel Cuban diplomats and withdraw the bulk of US staff in Havana. His administration has also stemmed the flow of American tourists heading to Cuba, limited American investment there and intensified rhetoric against the regime. What hopeful talk there had been of a new chapter in US-Cuba relations was snuffed out as Trump — who only a few years prior seemed interested in expanding his businesses to Cuba — pandered to a vocal but small constit-uency within his own party.

The Cuba skeptics claim that Obama’s opening did little to change the behaviour of the oppressive Cuban regime, but their critics argue that progress would be slow and fitful and that the US hawks cling to an anachro-nistic Cold War mind-set. After all, the United States has few qualms building economic and political ties with Vietnam, another Communist-ruled one-party state that squeezes civil society and jails dissidents.

“These steps loudly signaled the return of Florida’s pro-embargo faction, led by Senator Marco Rubio, at the helm of U S -Cuba policy,” wrote Ted Piccone of the Brookings Institution. “Now, with the appointment of the more hardline John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to top national security positions, we should expect the White House to double down on its first year’s embrace of punitive regime change.”

This uncompromising position has had a chilling effect within Cuba. It also probably offered relief to hard-liners within the Communist Party who were wary of the forces of liberalization that Obama’s opening could unleash. “Cuba and the United States can cooperate and live side by side, respecting their differences,” Castro said last year. “But no one should expect that for this, one should have to make concessions inherent to one’s sovereignty and independence.”

The Cuban government has since stalled its efforts to grow the private sector. “Cuban officials last year put a temporary halt on issuing new licenses for private businesses, arguing that time was needed to ensure that the island’s new crop of entrepreneurs was paying taxes and operating within the law,” Faiola explained. “The freeze was seen as motivated by

influential party officials still highly skeptical of change.”

Diaz-Canel, 57, is from a generation of Cuban politicos who never manned the guerrilla front lines alongside Fidel, Che Guevara or other figures from the halcyon days of revolution. Instead, he cut his political teeth in the 1990s as Cuba reckoned with the economic catastrophe that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is seen as some-thing of a pragmatist and a proponent of new technology. But his assumption of the presidency is also a mark of his closeness to the prevailing order.

Diaz-Canel faces pressure to bolster Cuba’s flagging economy, which can no longer count on being buttressed by Venezuela’s petro-wealth. He may have to spearhead monetary reform and push for further foreign investment, calibrating the imperative for loosening up against the fears of the Communist establishment.

Obama and his lieutenants believed the United States could help coax along these changes. But analysts argue that Trump’s unvarnished hostility to Havana narrows the scope of Diaz-Canel’s possible actions. “The United States and other outside actors will not determine the nature or the timing of these changes,” Marguerite Jimenez wrote in Foreign Affairs last month. “They can, however, create a climate in which reform is easier. Strategies of US engagement that recognise Cuban sov-ereignty and resist calling for regime change will reduce the risks to Díaz-Canel of undertaking more significant changes.”

For three years, Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, has been wracked by a bloody war between the Houthi

rebels and supporters of Yemen’s internationally recognised government.

The Houthis and the Yemeni gov-ernment have battled on and off since 2004, but much of the fighting was confined to the Houthis’ stronghold, northern Yemen’s impoverished Saada province.

In September 2014, the Houthis took control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and proceeded to push south-wards towards the country’s second-biggest city, Aden. In response to the Houthis’ advances, a coalition of Arab

states launched a military campaign in 2015 to defeat the Houthis and restore Yemen’s government.

Here are some key facts about Yemen’s complex war:

Civilian casualties in Yemen are high.

As of March 26, 2018, at least 10,000 Yemenis had been killed by the fighting, with more than 40,000 casualties overall.

Getting accurate information on the death toll is difficult, but Save The Children estimated at least 50,000 children died in 2017, an average of 130 every day.

The United Nations High Commis-sioner for Human Rights, has esti-mated that Saudi-led coalition air attacks caused almost two-thirds of reported civilian deaths, while the

Houthis have been accused of causing mass civilian casu-alties due to their siege of Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city.

Millions of Yemenis have been displaced.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), estimates that more than 3 million Yemenis have fled their homes to elsewhere in the country, and 280,000 have sought asylum in other coun-tries, including Djibouti and Somalia. As reported by Al Jazeera, internally displaced Yemenis often must cope with a lack of food and inadequate shelter. Many Yemenis who have not fled are also suffering, especially those in need of healthcare.

Yemen was ruled for a mil-lennium by Zaydi Shia imams until 1962, and the Houthis

were founded as a Zaydi Shia reviv-alist movement. However, the Houthis have not called for restoring the imamate in Yemen, and religious grievances have not been a major factor in the war. Rather, the Houthis’ demands have been primarily eco-nomic and political in nature.

In 2013, Yemen’s National Dia-logue Conference was launched, and was tasked with writing a new constitution and creating a federal political system. But the Houthis withdrew from the process because it left Yemen’s transitional gov-ernment in place. Further inflaming matters was the fact that two Houthi representatives were assassinated during the conference’s proceedings.

The government’s decision to lift fuel subsidies in July 2014 angered the Yemeni public and sparked massive street protests by Houthi supporters and others, who demanded that the government step down. The Houthis proceeded to take over Sanaa in Sep-tember, forcing the government to flee.

The Houthis were assisted in their advance by former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was over-thrown by protests in 2011, and his supporters.

Al Qaeda and ISIL have spread as a result of the chaos.

Yemen has long been home to an Al Qaeda franchise, regarded as one of the most dangerous branches of the organisation. Yet the armed group was able to expand its footprint in Yemen amid the chaos following the ousting of Saleh in 2011, taking control of territory in southern Yemen.

Since the start of the war last year, Al Qaeda has launched several attacks on Houthi rebels, whom it views as

Diaz-Canel faces pressure to bolster Cuba’s flagging economy, which can no longer count on being buttressed by Venezuela’s petro-wealth. He may have to spearhead monetary reform and push for further foreign investment, calibrating the imperative for loosening up against the fears of the Communist establishment.

infidels. In 2015, Al Qaeda took over Mukalla, a provincial capital and the fifth-largest city in Yemen.

ISIL announced the formation of a wilaya, or state, in Yemen in December 2014. In March 2015, it claimed its first attack in Yemen: suicide bombings in two Sanaa mosques used by Zaydi Shia Muslims, which killed more than 140 people.

Providing aid to civilians in Yemen is very difficult. Across Yemen, aid organisations are facing major obstacles to helping Yemenis in need of food, medicine, and other essentials. The Houthi siege of parts of the city of Taiz has pre-vented critical medical supplies from arriving. In January 2016, a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders was hit by a rocket, killing four people.

As of March 26, 2018, at least 10,000 Yemenis had been killed by the fighting, with more than 40,000 casualties overall. Getting accurate information on the death toll is difficult, but Save The Children estimated at least 50,000 children died in 2017, an average of 130 every day.

Around 15,000 rallied in Paris, according to a count by crowd consultancy Occurence, while police estimated the number at 11,500. The hard-left CGT union, the main organiser, put the crowd at 50,000.

10 FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018EUROPE

An anti-riot police officer kicks a protester during clashes in Paris yesterday, as part of a multi branch day of protest called by French unions CGT and Solidaires against French President’s policies amid a rail strike and spreading student sit-ins. RIGHT: People attend a demonstration in Paris.

Thousands rally in France against Macron’s reformsAFP

PARIS: Tens of thousands of striking rail workers, angry public sector staff and students rallied across France yesterday against President Emmanuel Macron in what trade unions hoped would underline resistance nationwide to his reform efforts.

Under sunny skies, thou-sands marched, chanted and carried anti-Macron banners in Paris as well as other cities such as Lyon and Marseille, but the scale of the protests appeared below expectations.

Around 15,000 rallied in Paris, according to a count by crowd consultancy Occurence, while police estimated the number at 11,500. The hard-left CGT union, the main organiser, put the crowd at 50,000.

“We’re here for public services. We’re ready to continue the whole summer, even into

September and October,” Helene Tricre, a 25-year-old ticket inspector working for the SNCF railway, said at the Paris rally.

The overwhelmingly peaceful march was marred by occasional clashes between police and far-left groups, many of them hooded and masked, who were seen smashing several shop windows.

Rail workers were also car-rying out their fourth wave of

stoppages this month, although the number of strikers was down sharply from the beginning of April. Only one in three high-speed TGV trains was running, but this was higher than three weeks ago when only one in eight went ahead.

Staff at the debt-laden SNCF, a bastion of hard-left trade unionism, are striking every two days out of five against plans by Macron to remove job-for-life guarantees and pension privi-leges for new recruits.

“It’s a critical moment for Emmanuel Macron’s presi-dency,” Stephane Zumsteeg, a public opinion expert from the Ipsos polling group, said.

“Either he shows his ability to reform or he fails, and then it’s difficult to know what he will able to do for the rest of his term.” The CGT union had called for various groups angered by Macron’s one-year presidency — students, public sector

employees, pensioners, rail workers — to come together to resist the 40-year-old centrist.

Some left-wingers are even hoping for a re-run of the huge May 1968 demonstrations by workers and students that shook France half a century ago.

But Macron has vowed to stand firm, claiming a solid mandate from his election last year in which he swept away the traditional parties that governed France for decades.

“I’m doing what I said I would,” he told a television inter-viewer last week. Opinion polls suggest France remains deeply divided about his leadership, despite a sharp fall in unem-ployment and a pick-up in investment thanks to his business-friendly approach since taking power.

An Elabe survey showed Friday that 52 percent of respondents felt his election has proven “a bad thing”.

Another survey found 58 percent were unhappy with his presidency. “People who gen-erally have a good financial and professional situation support Macron, but among those who aren’t so well off, it’s much less,” said Vincent Thibault, a researcher at Elabe.

“He’s really a president facing two Frances,” he said. Leftwing critics accuse Macron of trying to break up public services, citing his pledge to cut 120,000 public sector jobs over his five-year term.

The government points to France’s mounting debt, equiv-alent to nearly 100 percent of GDP, as well as stubborn deficits since the 1970s.

Various groups have staged strikes and demonstrations against Macron over the past year, including a series of mass protests that have drawn hundreds of thousands onto the streets.

Yesterday’s protests included many students who have blocked

access to four of the country’s 70 universities, angered by plans to make admissions more selective.

Protesters at the Nanterre university near Paris, a cradle of the May ‘68 protests, voted yes-terday to maintain their shutdown until May 2.

Even Paris’s prestigious Sci-ences Po college — Macron’s alma mater — remained partially blocked after students staged a sit-in Wednesday against the president’s “dictatorship”.

Despite his difficulties, Macron may take heart from divisions in the labour movement as well as public opinion surveys, which do not show sentiment swinging behind the CGT and the protesters. The more moderate CFDT -- France’s largest union in terms of membership -- rejected the CGT’s call to join Thursday’s protests as well as a combined march for the tradi-tional Labour Day show of strength on May 1.

Nato’s forecourt sculpture, also known as the ‘Nato Star’, is pictured at the new Nato headquarters during a press tour of the facilities as the organisation is moving from its old headquarters to the new building, in Brussels, yesterday.

Nato moves from Cold War bunker to glass and steel palaceAFP

BRUSSELS: With its futuristic curved roof, gleaming walls of glass and steel and host of eco-friendly features, Nato’s new billion-euro Brussels head-quarters is a world away from the drab, low-slung warren of offices reeking of Cold War intrigue that it replaces.

The alliance is almost halfway through its move into the new building, with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expected to shift to his new office at the end of the month and completion due in mid-June in time for July’s summit.

And while the old HQ has seen some of Nato’s most important moments — not least

the United States’ invocation of the alliance’s mutual self-defence pact after the 9/11 attacks — few disagree the time has come for an upgrade.

Stoltenberg’s deputy Rose Gottemoller, the first woman to chair meetings of Nato’s gov-erning North Atlantic Council, said a storm during the winter brought home the urgency of the move. “As I was sitting at my desk I suddenly heard a drip drip drip behind me and there was a big leak in my office,” she told reporters.

“I was moving the printers and so forth around to make sure they didn’t electrocute me as I was sitting at my desk. It is high time to move.” Next Friday’s meeting of Nato foreign ministers

will be the 70th and last such gathering in the old headquarters, which was only meant to be a temporary fix after the alliance moved from Paris but has lasted half a century.

Since then the alliance has expanded from 15 to 29 members and the old building — originally built as a military hospital — has been unable to keep up, with por-takabins thrown up in car parks to house extra office space.

In the bowels of the building, a control room with banks of vintage switches and lights is still used to run the power system, with enormous gener-ators that would look at home in the engine room of an oil tanker on standby in case of failure.

Britain to ban sale of plastic straws to tackle marine wasteAFP

LONDON: Britain yesterday announced plans to ban the sale of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds in England, as part of a push to tackle global marine pollution.

Prime Minister Theresa May said her government will launch a consultation on banning the single-use items later this year, ahead of legis-lation on the issue. The move follows the 2015 introduction of a small charge for carrier bags in most shops, a ban on plastic microbeads and last month’s announcement of plans for consumers to pay a deposit on plastic bottles.

“The UK government is a world leader on this issue, and the British public have shown passion and energy embracing our plastic bag charge and microbead ban,” May said in a statement.

“Today we have put forward ambitious plans to further reduce plastic waste from straws, stirrers and cotton buds.” She added that Britain is “rallying Common-wealth countries to join us in the fight against marine plastics” by making it central to the agenda at a summit of the group London is hosting this week.

“Together we can effect real change so that future gen-erations can enjoy a natural environment that is healthier than we currently find it,” May said. The government will commit £61.4m for global research and to improve waste management in devel-oping countries, she added.

Italy ramps up search for mafia kingpin after dawn bustsAFP

ROME: Italian police arrested the closest aides of Cosa Nostra kingpin Matteo Messina Denaro yesterday, clamping down on a tightknit, family-run clan which has kept the mobster safely hidden over a quarter of a century on the run.

In all, 21 people were arrested in towns near the Sicilian city of Trapani where Denaro’s criminal empire is based, as part of the “Year Zero” police investigation that allowed authorities to uncover a system of paper notes, or “pizzini”, that Denaro uses to give orders to his most faithful associates.

Those include brothers-in-law Gaspare Como and Rosario Allegra, both in custody, who allegedly manage their boss’s most important affairs.

“The Trapani Mafia is (securely) in the hands of fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro and we can say that because its most important members are his own family,” said Pasquale Angelosanto, head of the Italian carabinieri’s ROS special inves-tigative unit. Angelosanto was speaking at a press conference in Sicilian capital Palermo. Palermo’s assistant public prosecutor Paolo Guido said that six of the accused were local Mafia bosses.

Denaro, now 55, vanished in 1993, with the police seeking his arrest on a range of crimes including dozens of murders, and authorities say he has evaded justice by being more “mobile” than others on the lam, who tend to hunker down in hideouts.

“It would be pointless to say

we’re closing in on him. He’s a different type of fugitive to the other big targets, who’ve all been arrested, and that means locating his whereabouts is par-ticularly hard,” said Palermo prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi.

Police also arrested a busi-nessman involved in the online gambling industry, one of Denaro’s suspected income sources.

Police told reporters that despite reports of Cosa Nostra’s decline, the Trapani branch was “particularly lively and active in control of the area” and oper-ating in the longstanding Mafia industries of extorsion, property fraud and clinching public works contracts.

Police said the gang used people apparently above sus-picion to take part in judicial auctions to buy seized assets cheaply and sell them on at a profit. Police also confirmed the existence of a wiretapped recording of one of those arrested praising the notorious January 1996 murder and dis-solving in acid of 14-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo.

The son of Mafia turncoat Santino was kidnapped in 1993 in a vain attempt to stop his father from collaborating with the authorities. “Did he not do the right thing? He did the right thing!” news agency AGI reported the suspect as saying in the recording, apparently referring to the perpetrators.

In another recording, Denaro and his deceased father Francesco, once a local boss, are compared to Padre Pio, a friar who died in 1968 and was subsequently sainted and is revered in Italy.

Queen Elizabeth, who turns 92 tomorrow, welcomed leaders from the 53 Commonwealth nations — mostly former colonies — to Buckingham Palace for two days of talks that will include discussions on trade, marine protection and tackling cyber crime.

11FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018 EUROPE / AMERICAS

Queen puts forward son as next head of CommonwealthAFP

LONDON: Queen Elizabeth II, the Head of the Commonwealth, opened the Commonwealth summit for what may be the last time yesterday voicing hope that her son would be allowed to carry on her role.

Queen Elizabeth, who turns 92 tomorrow, welcomed leaders from the 53 Commonwealth nations — mostly former colonies — to Buckingham Palace for two days of talks that will include dis-cussions on trade, marine pro-tection and tackling cyber crime.

In her opening speech, Queen Elizabeth spoke of her own “extraordinary journey” as head of the Commonwealth, which started under her father King George VI with the London Declaration of 1949.

“It is my sincere wish that the Commonwealth will continue to offer stability and continuity for future generations and will decide that one day, the Prince of Wales should carry on the important work started by my father in 1949,” she said, referring to her son Prince Charles.

Queen Elizabeth, who has been the group’s symbolic fig-urehead since 1952, gave up long-haul travel in support of the

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth applaud at the formal opening of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace in London, Britain, yesterday.

biennial summit in 2013 and the 2020 gathering is set to be held in Malaysia.

On the closing day on Friday, leaders are expected to discuss who should follow Queen Eliz-abeth in the role. The position is not hereditary, but Prince Charles, who is also the heir to the thrones of 16 Commonwealth nations, is expected to get the nod, despite some unease among ardent republicans.

Charles, 69, told Common-wealth leaders the body had been “a fundamental feature of my life for as long as I can remember”. “The modern Com-monwealth has a vital role to play in building bridges between our countries,” he said.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said of Charles: “We are certain that when he will be called upon to do so, he will provide a solid and passionate leadership for our Commonwealth.” British

Prime Minister Theresa May, the summit host, paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth’s service to the Com-monwealth at the opening cer-emony. “You have been the Com-monwealth’s most steadfast and

fervent champion,” May said. “You have seen us through some of our most serious challenges.

“And we commit to sus-taining this Commonwealth, which you have so carefully

nurtured.” A spectacle of pomp and pageantry was staged to welcome the leaders, with a guard of honour and flag bearers greeting arriving dignitaries.

More than 100 troops from the Coldstream Guards were in the honour guard, wearing their famous scarlet tunics and bearskin hats.

Born out of the former British empire, the voluntary organi-sation, covering a third of the world’s population, typically focuses on development and democracy, but is placing greater attention on boosting trade.

During the two days of talks, the group is hoping to agree an ocean governance charter, an agenda for trade and investment, and a declaration on tackling cyber crime.

Given its highly diverse membership, if agreements can be struck within the Common-wealth, they can likely achieve wider support.

At the last Commonwealth summit in 2015, leaders struck a deal on climate change that helped pave the way for the Paris agreement days afterwards.

Today’s sessions take place at Windsor Castle, west of London, where the leaders are left entirely alone to discuss whatever they wish.

UK royal wedding: Biggest security operations beginREUTERS

LONDON: Police in Windsor, where Prince Harry marries American actress Meghan Markle next month, said yesterday that they had begun one of the biggest security oper-ations in their history to ensure the event passes off safely.

Harry, 33, and Markle, 36, will tie the knot on May 19 at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, the home of the prince’s grandmother which dominates the town about 30km west of London.

More than 100,000 visitors are expected to descend on Windsor to celebrate the wedding and police have said that barriers to stop vehicle attacks, armed patrols, and airport-style security would be

deployed to prevent any incident. Specialist explosive detection dogs from Thames Valley Police searched the town yesterday, examining mail boxes, phone booths and drains for signs of potential explosive devices.

“This is a large operation for any police force and one of the biggest I have worked on,” said police search coordinator Andy Turner. “We of course want it to all go smoothly.” Britain is on its second-highest threat level - severe - meaning an attack is considered highly likely. Last year there were five incidents classified as terrorism, in which 36 people were killed.

Police said shops and buildings would be searched in the days leading up to the wedding.

Economic crisis forces slowdown at Venezuela universitiesAFP

CARACAS: Teachers unable to pay the bus fare to get to class, students stuck in long super-market lines in the quest for affordable food: Venezuela’s academics say the deep economic crisis is paralyzing the country’s universities.

Venezuela’s universities have long ranked as among Latin America’s best. But the acute economic and political crisis has forced students to drop out in droves, and teachers are fol-lowing them out of the country.

Last month, the University of Zulia (LUZ) in northwestern city of Maracaibo cut courses to three days a week to try to ease the problems that students,

professors and employees are facing just to turn up each day.

“We are working every day, but we are organizing ourselves so that every teacher, student or employee comes about three times a week,” said Judith Aular, the LUZ’s rector. Lectures and study material are given out over the internet the rest of the time.

It’s an attempt to curb Ven-ezuela’s growing brain-drain, as teachers and students seek to leave the crisis-torn country, said Aular. “We allow teachers to look for another source of income. With what they earn, they can’t support their families.” Universities across the oil-rich Latin American country are facing the same problem.

Since 2016, when the crisis

sparked by the fall in the price of oil began to deepen, 25 percent of teaching staff, and 40 percent of the students at Oriente University in the eastern city of Cumana have packed their bags and emigrated, according to the university’s director Milena Bravo.

The country’s most experi-enced professors, working full time, earn 3.9 million bolivars a month, equivalent to $10 on the black market — only enough at current rates to buy 5kg of meat.

Danilo Fuenmayor, fresh from completing his economics studies at LUZ, said he was relieved that he only had to turn up for lectures three days a week during his last month. “I had to walk 3km because I didn’t have cash for the bus,” he said.

“Fifteen professors have left my faculty, and my tutor’s car has broken down and she can’t have it repaired. Transportation doesn’t work,” the 23-year-old said.

Venezuelans struggle with cash shortages because the gov-ernment can’t print new bills fast enough to keep pace with the world’s highest rate of inflation, estimated to reach a staggering 13,000 percent this year by IMF.

President Nicolas Maduro, whose government is widely blamed for mismanaging the economy after oil prices plum-meted, said new bills will be issued in June that lop three zeroes off current values in a bid to ease pressure on the public.

The crisis is also causing shortages of food, medicine and

essential products like auto-parts, the lack of which has left 80 percent of the bus fleet par-alyzed, according to the public transport union.

Caracas engineering student Daniela Garcia said she often misses classes because she has to join her mother to queue for hours to buy essential foodstuffs in the supermarket. Teachers, too, are struggling, said Amalio Belmonte, head of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV).

UCV, which has 43,000 stu-dents, also plans to reduce classes to three days a week, according to Belmonte. His main problem is a huge budget shortfall, after UCV received only one-third of what he requested for the academic year.

Dozens held in Armenia anti-PM protestsAFP

YEREVAN: Mass anti-government protests in the Armenian capital Yerevan against ex-president Serzh Sark-syan’s election as prime minister entered their seventh day yesterday, with police detaining dozens of demonstrators.

Led by opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan, more than two thousand protesters marched towards government head-quarters in the afternoon where a cabinet meeting was under way. Protesters held up a huge, upside-down official portrait of Sarkisian and shouted anti-gov-ernment slogans.

“Serzh Sarksyan...we came here to tell you that the people

hate you!” Pashinyan shouted.Earlier, several hundred

demonstrators attempted to blockade the entrance to the government building before riot police intervened, arresting dozens and taking them to a local police station.

Protesters have held rallies over recent days to denounce Sarksyan’s efforts to remain in power as prime minister under a new parliamentary system of government.

Parliament elected him on Tuesday to the post of prime min-ister after he served a decade as president. Controversial consti-tutional amendments approved in 2015 have transferred gov-erning powers from the presi-dency to the premier.

“Armenians are ready to fight for their future, we will not stop, our victory is imminent,” 26-year-old protester Misak Mesropyan said at the rally.

Another protester, pensioner Ruben, said: “Protests must con-tinue if we want Serzh (Sarksyan) to finally step down.” The influ-ential head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Garegin II, expressed concern over the political turmoil.

“Inciting hatred and enmity as well as any form of violence are unacceptable,” he said in a statement. New President Armen Sarksyan, who is not related to his predecessor, said in a statement he invited “all parties to start dialogue to find the best way out of the situation”.

No charges in Prince death after two-year investigationAFP

CHASKA: Two years after pop icon Prince died of an overdose, prosecutors said yesterday that they would not file any criminal charges and announced a settlement with a US doctor who prescribed powerful pain-killers for the star.

A prosecutor in Prince’s home state of Minnesota said it remained unclear how the Purple One obtained coun-terfeit pills containing fen-tanyl, an intense opioid, that ultimately killed him.

“The bottom line is we simply do not have sufficient evidence to charge anyone with a crime related to Prince’s death,” Mark Metz, the attorney of Carver County, home to Prince’s Paisley Park estate, told reporters.

After searches, Metz said that Prince had bottles of pills marked with common commercial pain relief labels such as Bayer and Aleve and that the singer thought he was taking Vicodin — but was in fact taking the more potent fen-tanyl instead.

Metz acknowledged that someone gave Prince the counterfeit pills, saying: “There is no doubt that the actions of individuals around Prince will be criticized, ques-tions and judged in the days and weeks to come.” But he added: “Suspicions and innuendo are categorically insufficient to support any criminal charges.”

Prince died on April 21, 2016 at age 57 — stunning fans and bandmates who recall the singer as an outward model of health who rarely drank, ate a veg-etarian diet and would kick out musicians who abused drugs from his studio.

But the pop star — so ver-satile he could literally play guitar blind-folded behind his back — secretly suffered from pain stemming from a hip operation. In his death, Prince became the most famous face of the epidemic of painkiller abuse in the United States.

Last year, more than 42,000 people died and 2.1 million others abused opioids around the country.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry attend the Women’s Empowerment reception hosted by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London yesterday.

Armenian special police forces detain opposition supporters during their anti-government rally in front of the entrance to government headquarters in central Yerevan yesterday.

A stalwart of the ruling Communist Party, Miguel Diaz-Canel was sworn in to replace Raul Castro by the National Assembly in a carefully managed new chapter for the Caribbean island, aimed at preserving the political system.

12 FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2018AMERICAS

Cuba’s new President vows to defend legacy of Castro revolutionREUTERS

HAVANA: Cuba’s new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, began his term yesterday with a promise to defend the socialist revolution led by the Castro brothers since 1959, giving a sober speech that also emphasized the need to modernize the island’s economy.

A stalwart of the ruling Com-munist Party, Diaz-Canel was sworn in to replace Raul Castro by the National Assembly in a carefully managed new chapter for the Caribbean island, aimed at preserving the political system.

“The mandate given by the people to this house is to give continuity to the Cuban revo-lution in a crucial historic moment,” Diaz-Canel, 57, told the assembly in his first speech as president. He delivered a warm homage to 86-year-old Raul Castro, who took office a decade ago as his brother Fidel Castro’s health deteriorated. Fidel Castro died in 2016.

Castro will retain consid-erable clout as the head of the Communist Party until a con-gress in 2021. Diaz-Canel, praising the reforms he ushered in as president, said Castro would remain the leader of the

Cuba’s new President Miguel Diaz-Canel (left, first row) stands with the new members of Cuba’s Council of State after he was formally named President by the National Assembly, in Havana yesterday.

revolution and would be involved in major decisions.

Stepping to the podium for a 90-minute-long parting speech, a relaxed-looking Castro gave the impression he would not quickly fade from sight. He sharply criticized US foreign, trade and immigration policy under President Donald Trump.

“Since the current president arrived in office, there has been a deliberate reversal in the rela-tions between Cuba and the United States, and an aggressive and threatening tone prevails,” Castro said.

Yesterday’s session was held on the 57th anniversary of Cuba’s 1961 defeat of a CIA-backed Cuban exile invasion at the Bay of Pigs, a

victory that Havana celebrates as a symbol of its resistance to “impe-rialist” pressure for change from Washington.

In 2014, Castro and former US President Barack Obama reached a landmark agreement

to renew diplomatic ties and improve relations between the Cold War foes, a detente that led to a rapid increase in US visits and investment on the island.

There has been a renewed chill under Trump, who put a

stop to doing business with some Cuban state-run companies and tightened rules for US visitors. A spate of mystery illnesses among US diplomats in Havana has also undermined trust.

Despite that, Diaz-Canel

praised Castro’s move to renew relations with the United States. He said there would be no com-promise in Cuba’s foreign policy but in a repetition of a long-held stance by Havana, he said he would hold dialogue with anybody who treated Cuba as an equal.

“I take that as a signal that the Cuban leadership still sees value in improving relations, even if they have to wait for the next US president,” said William LeoGrande, co-author of a book on the secret US-Cuba talks that led to detente.

In Washington, a White House official said the Trump administration had no expecta-tions Cuban people would have any greater freedoms under the new “hand-picked” leader, and had no intention of softening its policy toward the island’s government.

Castro spoke highly of Diaz-Canel and gave his blessing to the younger man to take over from him as the powerful head of the Communist Party in three years. He also said the new president could serve two five-year terms, underscoring restrictions Castro imposed on himself after his brother’s decades in power.

SpaceX rocket launchedA SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soaring upward after lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, carrying Nasa’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). TESS will search for planets outside of our solar system..

US to drop curbs on drone tech to boost arms salesAFP

WASHINGTON: The United States dropped some restrictions yesterday on sales of its advanced drones in order to reinforce the armies of its allies and compete with China on the world arms market.

President Donald Trump’s White House announced an update to its policy on arms transfers to promote US exports and jobs, and specifically to loosen the rules on selling unmanned warplanes.

Trump’s chief trade advisor, Peter Navarro, said the move was designed to reverse former

president Barack Obama’s “myopic” decision to limit even US allies’ access to drone technology. Allowing US arms firms to directly market drones instead of forcing foreign customers to apply to the government would, he said, allow them to compete against sales of Chinese “knock-offs”.

“The administration’s UAS export policy will level the playing field by enabling US firms to increase their direct sales to authorized allies and partners,” he said, referring to so-called “Unmanned Aerial Systems”.

Navarro said US weapons and aerospace exports are worth a trillion dollars a year, support

2.5 million well-paid jobs and form a key plank of Trump’s ambition to wipe out America’s trade deficit.

But he said the market for drones alone could grow to $50bn in a decade and that offi-cials are “seeing Chinese replicas of American UAS technology deployed on the runways in the Middle East.” As an example, he cited the Wing Loong 2 medium-altitude, long-endurance drone manufactured by China’s Chengdu Aircraft Group.

This reconnaissance and missile platform was on display to potential clients at the 2017 Paris Air Show but is, he alleged,

“a clear knock-off” of US firm General Atomics’ MQ-9 Reaper.

“The fact is our allies and partners want to buy American,” Navarro said, noting that Trump was putting his “America First” slogan at the heart of arms sales policy. “Partners who procure American weaponry are more capable of fighting alongside us, and are also more capable of pro-tecting themselves with fewer American boots on the ground.”

The United States pioneered the use of unmanned aircraft, some of them flown by pilots half-a-world away through sat-ellite links to a ground station, for spotting missions and missile

strikes. They have been deployed both by the US military in support of overt deployments in the so-called war on terror and by the CIA for covert targeted strikes to kill suspected militants.

Critics of their deployment say that, because they can be used without putting American pilots in harm’s way, they encourage commanders and presidents to resort more easily to lethal force. Despite the accuracy of missiles guided by drone-mounted lasers, hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians have been killed in US strikes in South Asia, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.

At 96, Mexican woman fulfills dream: Going to high schoolAFP

TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ: Guad-alupe Palacios stands out in her high school class in Mexico, and it is not just because of her gray hair, her deeply creased skin or her 96 years.

Palacios, who is seeking to live out her dream of fin-ishing high school by her 100th birthday, is also the most enthusiastic student in the classroom.

“I feel ready to give it my all. Today is a marvelous day,” she said on Monday on her first day of high school in the southern state of Chiapas, wearing the school uniform of a white polo shirt with a black skirt and her own per-sonal touch: a pink sweater.

“Dona Lupita,” as she is affectionately known, was wel-comed with applause from her fellow students at High School Number 2 in the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez, the state capital. She diligently took notes in her chemistry and mathematics classes and even strutted her stuff in a dance class.

Palacios grew up in poverty in an indigenous village and spent her childhood helping her family farm corn and beans instead of going to school. As an adult, she went to work selling chickens at market, married twice and had six children. Along the way, she picked up arithmetic, but never learned to read and write. When she turned 92, she said, she decided it was time, and enrolled in a literacy program. In 2015, she enrolled in a primary school program for adult learners. In less than four years, she completed both primary and middle school.

New US aviation safety inspections after Southwest mishapAFP

NEW YORK: The US Federal Aviation Administration said it is set to issue new guidelines to inspect jet engines like the one that ruptured during a recent Southwest Airlines flight.

Within the next two weeks rules requiring “an ultrasonic inspection of fan blades” of certain jet engines “when they reach a certain number of

takeoffs and landings” will be issued, the FAA said in a late Wednesday statement.

Blades that fail the inspection will have to be replaced, the FAA said. The directive comes after the left engine of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 suddenly blew apart during a Tuesday flight from New York to Dallas. The shrapnel shat-tered a window and depressurized the cabin, partially sucking a woman out of the plane. Fellow

passengers pulled the woman — identified as Jennifer Riordan, 43 — back in, but she later died of her injuries.

Robert Sumwalt, head of the National Transportation Safety Board, said that a first inspection of the Boeing 737’s damaged engine showed that an engine fan blade was missing, apparently broken due to metal fatigue.

The incident damaged the engine external covering, known

as cowling, where several blade fragments were discovered once the plane landed, Sumwalt said. “I’m very concerned about this particular event,” Sumwalt said.

The CFM56-7B jet engine in question, made by CFM Interna-tional — a joint venture of General Electric and France’s Safran — is widely used around the world on Boeing 737s and has a solid record of safety. “If we feel there is a deeper issue, we

have the capability to issue urgent safety recommenda-tions,” Sumwalt added.

Southwest earlier announced extra inspections of the CFM-56 engines in their fleet, which should be completed within 30 days. A similar accident on a Southwest Airlines flight in August 2016 forced the aircraft, also a 737 equipped with the CFM-56 engine, to make an emergency landing in Florida.

Trump heralds ‘revolution’ against California ‘sanctuary’ lawsAFP

LOS ANGELES: San Diego County has joined what US President Donald Trump called on Wednesday a “revolution” against “sanctuary” laws in California that protect undoc-umented migrants.

In a closed-door vote, the Republican-controlled board of supervisors governing San Diego County, which borders Mexico, backed the Trump administra-tion’s federal lawsuit challenging California legislation that restricts local police and businesses from cooperating with immigration authorities.

Trump took to Twitter to praise the news, writing: “There is a Revolution going on in Cali-fornia. Soooo many Sanctuary areas want OUT of this ridic-ulous, crime infested & breeding concept.” The president has repeatedly tried to link immi-gration to crime but immigrant defenders say many are fleeing poverty and violence. Activists accuse authorities of rounding up

longtime residents with families and jobs on minor infractions.

California’s “Jerry Brown is trying to back out of the National Guard at the Border, but the people of the State are not happy”, Trump added, referring to the state’s Democratic governor. “Want Security & Safety NOW!”

After rejecting the Trump administration’s initial proposals for a National Guard mission along the state’s border with Mexico earlier this week, Brown announced that California would mobilize 400 National Guard sol-diers in addition to the 250 already deployed.

The soldiers are tasked with combatting “criminal gangs, human traffickers and illegal firearm and drug smugglers” and will be funded by the federal government, a statement said. The governor’s order “specifies that the Cali-fornia National Guard will not enforce immigration laws or participate in the construction of any new border barrier,” the statement said.

Alabama set to execute inmate aged 83REUTERS

WASHINGTON: Alabama is set to execute an 83-year-old convicted pipe-bomb killer, believed to be the oldest person put to death in the modern era of US capital punishment.

The execution of Walter Moody is planned for 2300 GMT at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. He would be the eighth inmate put to death this year in the United States.

If the execution is carried out, Moody would replace John Nixon, who was 77 when put to death in December 2005 in Mississippi, as the oldest person executed since the US Supreme Court rein-stated the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors US capital punishment.

Moody was convicted of mailing a bomb in 1989 that killed US Circuit Court Judge Robert Vance, 58, and another explosive that killed Georgia civil rights attorney Robert Robinson.

Prosecutors have said Moody sent the bomb to the judge in anger over a 1972 bomb conviction that Moody felt derailed his career, and sent the other to the civil rights lawyer to confuse investigators.

Moody, who has spent more than 20 years on death row, has maintained his inno-cence and his lawyers have not yet used his age in appeals seeking to halt the execution.

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Tyre-flipping competitionCompetitors taking part in a tyre-flipping competition on a glass-bottomed bridge in Pingjiang in China’s central Hunan province.

Facebook to put 1.5 billion users out of reach of new EU privacy lawREUTERS

SAN FRANCISCO: If a new European law restricting what companies can do with people’s online data went into effect, almost 1.9 billion Facebook Inc users around the world would be protected by it. The online social network is making changes that ensure the number will be much smaller.

Facebook members outside the United States and Canada, whether they know it or not, are currently governed by terms of service agreed with the com-pany’s international headquarters in Ireland.

Next month, Facebook is planning to make that the case for only European users, meaning 1.5 billion members in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America will not fall under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which takes effect on May 25.

The previously unreported move, which Facebook confirmed on Tuesday, shows the world’s largest online social network is keen to reduce its exposure to GDPR, which allows European regulators to fine companies for collecting or using personal data without users’ consent.

That removes a huge potential lia-bility for Facebook, as the new EU law allows for fines of up to 4 percent of

global annual revenue for infractions, which in Facebook’s case could mean billions of dollars.

The change comes as Facebook is under scrutiny from regulators and law-makers around the world since disclosing last month that the personal information of millions of users wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cam-bridge Analytica, setting off wider con-cerns about how it handles user data.

The change affects more than 70 percent of Facebook’s 2 billion-plus members. As of December, Facebook had 239 million users in the United States and Canada, 370 million in Europe and 1.52 billion users elsewhere.

Facebook, like many other US tech-nology companies, established an Irish subsidiary in 2008 and took advantage of the country’s low corporate tax rates, routing through it revenue from some advertisers outside North America. The unit is subject to regulations applied by the 28-nation European Union.

Facebook said the latest change does not have tax implications. In a statement, Facebook played down the importance of the terms of service change, saying it plans to make the privacy controls and settings that Europe will get under GDPR available to the rest of the world. “We apply the same privacy protections

everywhere, regardless of whether your agreement is with Facebook Inc or Facebook Ireland,” the company said.

Earlier this month, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told Reuters in an interview that his company would apply the EU law globally “in spirit,” but stopped short of committing to it as the standard for the social network across the world.

In practice, the change means the 1.5 billion affected users will not be able to file complaints with Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner or in Irish courts. Instead they will be governed by more lenient U.S. privacy laws, said Michael Veale, a technology policy researcher at University College London.

Facebook will have more leeway in how it handles data about those users, Veale said. Certain types of data such as browsing history, for instance, are con-sidered personal data under EU law but are not as protected in the United States, he said. The company said its rationale for the change was related to the European Union’s mandated privacy notices, “because EU law requires spe-cific language.” For example, the company said, the new EU law requires specific legal terminology about the legal basis for processing data which does not exist in US law.

Fuzzy crab and shiny-eyed shrimp discovered on Java expeditionAFP

SINGAPORE: A hermit crab, a shiny-eyed shrimp and a crab with fuzzy spines are among over a dozen new species discovered in a deep-sea expedition off the Indonesian island of Java, scientists said.

The team from the National University of Sin-gapore (NUS) and the Indo-nesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) carried out the expe-dition for 14 days between March and early April.

The area covered included a long stretch of the Indian Ocean off Java’s southern coast as well as the Sunda Strait that separates the island from Sumatra.

“This is a part of the Indian Ocean that has been never been sampled for deep-sea animals so we really didn’t know what to find,” said Peter Ng, a crab expert and head of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum at NUS.

“We were very surprised by the findings,” he said yes-terday , adding that the team had expected to discover crea-tures from the Indian Ocean and the surrounding areas already known to scientists. But the discovery of species entirely new to science “tells us that there are things hap-pening in that part of Indonesia that we don’t know,” said Ng, who co-led the expedition.

T h e r e s e a r c h e r s examined 63 sites as they sailed from Jakarta to Cilacap town in southern Java and back. Three new species of spider crabs were discovered during the expedition, the sci-entists said. One of them had a plate protecting its eyes which resembled oversized ears while another was bright orange in colour.

Another discovery was a new species of hermit crab with bright green eyes, according to Indonesian sci-entist Dwi Listyo Rahayu, also a crab expert and the expe-dition’s co-leader. One new species of shrimp had shiny eyes that reflect light, the sci-entists said. Ng said the sci-entists will carry out a detailed study of the more than 12,000 creatures from 800 species they had picked up on the expedition and publish their findings in 2020.

Axe marks the sport as wood-chopping booms in AustraliaAFP

MAJORS CREEK: A flash of metal glinted in the Sydney sunshine as Curtis Bennett took one last swing of his axe and brought it down hard on the log at his feet. The wood split with a loud crack, triggering cheers and thunderous applause for the teenage sensation.

Curtis, 18, is one of the rising stars of Australia’s centuries-old sport of wood-chopping, which is enjoying a renaissance, with more women and children competing in the male-dominated activity.

His proud father Simon Bennett, 52, is revelling in the new-found appeal of the highly physical pastime, which is attracting more women competitors including his 25-year-old daughter Madii. “It’s probably never been as popular as it is at the moment,” he said at his home in Majors Creek, a small village, 300km south of Sydney.

“We have probably one of the best group of young axemen that’s been about for many years... The sport is in a really good spot.” - From survival to sport - The roots of the tradition stem from European set-tlement of the vast island continent some two centuries ago.

Faced with the challenge of having to live in the heavily timbered Australian bush on the east coast, the settlers realised they had to become

apt at wood-chopping to clear land for farming and to build homes. The knowledge of how to wield axes and cross-cut saws was handed down from generation to generation, and it was not long before the survival skill became a competitive game in the young, sporting-mad nation.

As the tale goes, the first recorded wood-chopping contest took place on the southern island state of Tasmania in 1870 when two men in a bar made a £25 bet to see who could fell a tree the fastest.

The sport caught on like wildfire and as contests sprung up across the country, Sydney’s Royal Easter Show — an annual extravaganza show-casing Australia’s rural lifestyle

— introduced wood-chopping in 1899. The events, attracting hun-dreds of contestants from across the globe and thousands of spectators annually, became the “Wimbledon of wood-chopping”, says Sydney show judge Don Brown, a veteran axeman himself.

“We have all the world cham-pions here because we run the world titles here, and so it attracts all the top competitors,” Brown said as his cowboy hat shielded him from the scorching sun at the show. The sport is still mostly family-based, and the Bennetts criss-cross Australia to take part in contests, travelling with some of their 120 axes, several engraved with their surname.

“We design our lives around our sport,” adds Simon — who like Curtis works in the timber industry having followed his father Len into the trade — on how the family fits the many competitions into their calendars.

Pure brute strength is essential for a woodchopper and Len Bennett, 78, who won the world champi-onship in 1975, is more than two metres tall and weighs 150kg.

Simon and Curtis are just under two metres tall, with both towering over Madii. Even for these seasoned lumberjacks, every swing is a major effort. “It’s hard,” Curtis says, as Madii chimes in: “Even now when I pick up an axe I want to start crying because I know how hard it is and just everything hurts in your body when you’re doing it.”

But athleticism is also key, Simon says, adding that wood-chopping is “more technical than golf”. “It is a craft. You can’t just stand up there and chop a piece of wood. “You are swinging an axe on the end of a handle that is 65 centi-metres long and weighs 3.5kg and that’s absolutely razor sharp — sharp beyond most people’s belief.”

The sport’s boom has been helped by increased sponsorship of both male and female competitions worldwide. At this year’s Easter show, there were 69 separate events with Aus$230,000 (US$176,800) in prize money on offer.

Simon Bennett sharpening an axe on their family property in Majors Creek.

Robot assembles IKEA chair frameREUTERS

SINGAPORE: Robots in Singapore have completed a task many humans dread — assembling flat-packed IKEA furniture. Sifting through pages of instructions and a jumble of screws and bolts to build the low-cost Swedish furniture may soon be a thing of the past given advances in technology, say researchers at the city-state’s Nanyang Tech-nological University (NTU).

The scientists spent three years programming the robot — made of arms, grippers, sensors and 3D cameras — which assembled the frame of an IKEA dining chair in around 20 minutes. They say it may not be long before such robots can fully assemble a piece of furniture from a manual, verbal instruction or by just looking at an image of the finished item.

“We have achieved the low level capability to teach the robot ‘how to do it’ and then in the next five to 10 years, high level reasoning - the ‘what to do’ - could be done too,” one of the researchers Quang-Cuong Pham told Reuters. Pham said the team at NTU were looking to work with artificial intelligence experts to try and hone the process.

Cindy Andersen, global business area manager of kitchen and dining at IKEA, told Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper: “It’s interesting to see an example of how robots could potentially contribute to our vision of creating a better everyday life for many people.

“We are very positive about embracing new technology.” Singapore has been pushing businesses to invest in automation and robotics to boost pro-ductivity as it keeps a tight leash on cheap foreign labour. Some restaurants and hotels in the city-state use robots to deliver food to customers and collect used plates and cutlery.

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