Volume 23 | Number 7818 | 2 RiyalsSaturday 2 March 2019 | 25 Jumada II 1440 www.thepeninsula.qa

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BUSINESS | 14 SPORT | 18

Barcelona lookto land knock-out blowon Real Madrid

UK to pay Eurotunnel £33m

over no-deal Brexit contracts

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The exhibition aims to gather private institutions at one place to shed light on their activities, and to make them more accessible for various sectors of society. In all, 16 associations are participating in this year’s exhibition.

H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development; and H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani, President of Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC), attended yesterday the second day of the first round of Longines Global Champions Tour organized by Qatar Foundation Al Shaqab over three days, where a host of the world’s best horsemen compete around the world for prize money worth €750,000. �P2

Shiekha Moza attends Longines Global Champions TourFirst annual expo of private associations begins at KataraQNA DOHA

Under the patronage of the Prime Minister and Interior Min-ister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, the first annual exhibition of private associations and institutions began yesterday and will con-tinue for three days in Katara.

Minister of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs H E Yousuf bin Mohamed Al Othman Fakhroo said on the sidelines of his inauguration of the exhibition that it aims to gather private institutions at one place to shed light on their activ-ities, and to make them more accessible for various sectors of society.

The Minister highlighted that the exhibition is part of the min-istry’s efforts in advancing the role of these institutions in society. He pointed out that sup-porting private institutions and their awareness campaigns is one of the roles of the ministry in serving society. He stressed that the second edition of the exhibition will see more pro-grammes in a larger number of fields, as well as an increase in the number of participants.

The Minister said that Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani's Decision No. 13 of 2019 regarding the organiza-tional structure of the ministry came within the framework of continuous improvement of the government’s work, especially after the recent ministerial reshuffle which saw the scrapping of the Ministry of Energy and Industry and the establishment of new institu-tions and authorities.

The Minister added that these changes required the amendment of some of the terms of reference in order to improve governmental per-formance, with some of the most prominent changes for the

Ministry was the transfer of the G o v e r n m e n t H o u s i n g Department from the Ministry of Finance.

The Assistant Undersec-retary for Social Affairs at the Ministry, Ghanem Mubarak Al Kuwari, said that the first annual exhibition of private associations and institutions, organized in cooperation with Qatar Charity and Katara, aims at raising awareness of private organiza-tions and their great role in serving the society. He pointed out that the ministry wanted to establish this exhibition in an open place to reach people in the places they gather, in order to easily introduce them to the activities of these associations.

He added that this year’s exhibition includes 16 associa-tions from the 21 registered in the state in accordance to Law No. 12 of 2004. He also said that the exhibition will help promote the activities of those bodies.

The Director of the Private Associations and Institutions at the Ministry, Naji Abdrabu Al Aji, said that 16 associations are par-ticipating in this year’s exhi-bition. That is in addition to the organizing bodies such as the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs, Qatar Charity, and Katara, he added. He expressed his hope that the exhibition will help showcase the initiatives those associations offer in various fields.

Amir’s Sword Race to start todayQNA / DOHA

Qatar Equestrian Federation and Qatar Endurance Com-mittee will organize today the race for the sword of H H the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, which takes place in Marathon village in Sealine.

A total of 66 horsemen will participate in the race. The dis-tance will be 120km covered over four stages, with the first stage being 40km, the second 35km, third 25km and the fourth 25km. All the participating horses were subjected to veterinary examination earlier. Some of the studs participating this year are Al Shaqab Al Udeid, Al Zubarah, and Al Sadd.

Director of the Qatar Endurance Committee Amer Al Humaidi said the race is seeing unprecedented levels of partic-ipation. He said that the race is one of the most important of the season, stressing that the com-mittee worked hard to ensure its success.

FM meets Senior Advisor to US PresidentQNA / DOHA

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdul-rahman Al Thani met yesterday with Jared Kushner, the Senior Advisor to the US President. Assistant to the US President and Special Representative for International Negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, and US Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, attended the meeting.

The meeting discussed the bilateral relations and ways of supporting and developing them, as well as the develop-ments in the region, especially the efforts of the peace process between Israel and Palestine, in addition to matters of common concern.

Strict criteria in place to allow fee hike in private schoolsSIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education has stressed that there are some strict condi-tions that specify the increase of tuition fees for private schools, most notably the development of the school building, play-grounds and laboratories.

“All schools and kinder-gartens benefit exemption from electricity and water charges by the State but schools also have obligations in terms of building rents, salaries of teachers and other staff, and accommodation provision to teachers,” said Hamad Al Ghali, Director of Private Schools Licensing Department at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

Speaking to Qatar Radio

recently, he also said that the Ministry had received 57 new applications for license to operate private schools during the academic year 2019-2020.

“We have conduced visits to seven schools from these appli-cants including schools for boys, schools for girls and schools that adopt the national curriculum standards,” Al Ghali added.

He explained that there are clear conditions for working staff - academic or non-academic - for private schools where there is a requirement of 10-year experience for the director of the school and a teacher must hold a bachelor’s degree with some specialization.

He stressed that the admin-istration can evaluate a dif-ference between real and fake financial deficit. “Accordingly, we rejected 98 applications for

private schools demanded an increase in fees, pointing out that any school which was making profit and applied for an increase in fees got its request rejected.”

Responding to a question about the delay in paying fees by some students, he said: “We are keen on the interest of stu-dents and a student can not stop attending classes or leave school because of delay in paying fees.”

He added: “The tuition fees are subject to the ministerial decision that stipulates tuition fees are paid at the beginning of each semester and that it is the right of the school.”

“It is also prohibited to prevent a student from attending the class because of delay in payment of fees because depriving students from edu-cation is unacceptable,” he said.

Doha Municipality tops in real estate dealsSACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA

Doha was the most sought after among real estate buyers in 2018. The municipality topped the country in terms of real estate deals last year. Doha wit-nessed real estate deals worth QR10.7bn last year, leaving behind other municipalities by wide margin.

Al Rayyan came second in terms of value of deals while Al Daayen was on the third place.

Al Wakrah, which has undergone remarkable infra-structure development in the past few years, was on the fourth place in terms of real estate deals.

According to the data of the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics, the value of properties sold in Al Rayyan Municipality was QR6.37bn in

2018, while it was QR2.76bn in Al Daayen Municipality. Total value of real estate deals in Al Wakrah Municipality was QR1.84bn in 2018.

“The real estate deals is one of the main gauge of attrac-tiveness of any real estate market. High number of deals demonstrate that Doha is real estate buyer’s favourite property market in Qatar,” a senior official of a real estate company firm told The Peninsula.

“Doha is a prime real estate market in Qatar and properties here command premium com-pared to properties in other municipalities. Even a smaller property here carries higher value than a bigger property in any other municipality. So even if the number of deals in Doha is less than other areas, it comes at the top in terms of total deal value,” he added. �P2

Residency training programs at HMC gain global recognitionFAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

The residency training pro-grams at the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) have signif-icantly improved in the past several years and gained inter-national recognition.

HMC is first healthcare system in the region to achieve prestigious institutional accred-itation by the ACGME-I, the international arm of the Accred-itation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), and 14 of HMC’s residency training programs have suc-cessfully achieved the accred-itation, said Dr Jowhara Al Qahtani, a General Surgery res-ident at HMC.

“The residency training pro-grams have improved a lot, especially in the past four years. The programmes are very com-petitive and meet international standards. High level of medical

competency is reflected in the programs and many from other countries such as Malaysia, Afghanistan, Oman, Kuwait, India and Nepal have joined the HMC for residency training,” she told The Peninsula.

“Residency training is a vital step in a physician’s progression to practice. HMC meets the highest and most rigorous standards in specialized phy-sician training,” said Dr Al Qah-thani, who graduated from Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar class 2013. She was a former res-ident at Maimonides Medical Center in NYC in USA 2014, and a former Academic Chief in 2017.

According to Dr Al Qah-thani, the surgery department at HMC was very welcoming in implementing her experience gained in the US. She also said that HMC’s surgical services and the capacity to serve people have expanded, recently. “The

surgery department at HMC has develop dramatically over the past few years. Hamad General Hospital being the largest hospital in the country, is accommodating increased number of cases, the waiting list has been reduced, more surgeons have been recruited, a surgical centre is under devel-opment,” said Dr Al Qahthani.

“The surgery department has introduced more sub spe-cialities. The new operating theaters have truly transformed and modernized the surgical environment at the country’s busiest academic hospital, pro-viding the latest technologically advanced operating rooms and

surgical equipment,” she added. The opening of the new sur-

gical services facility has signifi-cantly expanded HMC’s surgical services capacity and provided a bespoke complex in which HMC’s expert surgical teams can treat patients using the most techno-logically advanced equipment.

The new 10,000 square meter development features 20 ultramodern surgical theaters, a 19-bed Trauma Intensive Care Unit, a 15-bed Surgical Intensive Care Unit and three hybrid oper-ating rooms that provide state-of-the-art real time imaging through CT, MRI, Brain Lab and Artis Zeego imaging technology.

One of the new operating theaters also features the latest high-tech robotic surgery appa-ratus – the da Vinci Xi surgical robot, which Hamad surgeons use to perform a variety of spe-cialist and general surgeries.

HMC is first healthcare system in the region to achieve prestigious institutional accreditation by the ACGME-I.

H H Sheikha Moza attends Longines Global Champions Tour

02 SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019HOME

Amir sends cable

of congratulations to

President of Senegal

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh

Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani

and Deputy Amir H H Sheikh

Abdullah bin Hamad Al

Thani sent cables of con-

gratulations to President

Macky Sall, on the occasion

of his reelection as President

of the Republic of Senegal.

HH the Amir wished the

Senegalese President suc-

cess, and the Senegalese

people further development

and progress. QNA

OFFICIAL NEWS

Qatar condemns

explosion in

Somalia’s capital

DOHA: The State of Qatar

strongly condemned the

explosion of a car bomb in

the center of Somalia’s cap-

ital Mogadishu, which led

to a number of deaths and

injuries. The Ministry of For-

eign Affairs renewed,in

a statement, Qatar’s firm

stance on rejecting violence

and terrorism regardless of

the motives and causes.

The statement expressed

the condolences of the State

of Qatar to the families of

the victims, the government

and people of Somalia, wish-

ing the injured a speedy

recovery. QNA

Al Jazeera wins RTS AwardTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Al Jazeera’s Asian investi-gative programme 101 East has won a prestigious UK journalism prize – the 2019 Royal Television Society (RTS) Television Journalism Award for Interview of the Year, said a statement.

The award recognises 101 East’s programme ‘Malaysia: Najib Speaks’, in which Al Jazeera’s Mary Ann Jolley gained an exclusive interview with Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak.

It was an extraordinary scoop, given Najib had ordered Jolley to be kicked out of the country three years ago when she was investigating his alleged links to a high-profile murder.

With Najib currently facing more than 40 criminal charges, Jolley gained unrivalled access to

the former leader in his first long-form television interview since his gov-ernment was ousted last year.

In a hard-hitting interview, Jolley questioned Najib about what has been branded the world’s biggest financial scandal, where $4.5bn disappeared from the country’s sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.

Jolley’s incisive ques-tions produced fascinating revelations and high drama, with Najib eventually storming out of the interview. The resulting programme went viral, leading to an avalanche of front-page headlines, news articles, memes and pod-casts. The RTS Awards “rec-ognise creative and excellent journalism” broadcast in the UK, rewarding high quality journalism on important and dramatic stories at home and abroad.

Giles Trendle, Managing

Director of Al Jazeera English, said: “I am delighted that Al Jazeera’s Asian inves-tigative programme 101 East is being recognised by this top award and particularly the forensic interviewing skills of Mary Ann Jolley. Al Jazeera remains committed to producing the highest quality journalism and bringing clarity to the issues that affect the lives of all people.”

Senior 101 East Reporter Mary Ann Jolley said: “I am honoured to receive this award on behalf of Al Jazeera’s 101 East team, which continues to hold the powerful to account in one of the most dynamic regions of the world”.

The awards were announced at a gala cer-emony on February 27 in London and were attended by 101 East’s Senior Reporter Mary Ann Jolley, Producer Sara Yeo and Editor Andy Mees.

QU seminar discusses impact of Iranian Revolution

THE PENINSULA DOHA

A number of experts from within and outside Qatar University (QU) spoke on “The Iranian Revolution in Retrospect: The Internal, Regional and Global Impact” organised by QU’s Gulf Studies Center in cooperation with the Ibn Khaldon Center for Humanities and Social Sciences.

During the seminar experts addressed the changes sparked by the revolution exactly 40 years ago.

Director of the Gulf Studies

Center and Associate Professor in Contemporary History of the Middle East at QU, Dr Mahjoob Zweiri said: “This seminar is important because it discusses a

sensitive and important issue in the Middle East and the world. The Iranian Revolution is con-sidered a major global event, which rattled the world during

the last century, just as the Iraqi invasion did in Kuwait.”

The seminar comes as part of a constructive cooperation between the GSC and the Ibn Khaldon Center in QU, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the start of the war.

Professor of Political Sci-ences at University of Tehran, Nasser Hadian, and Professor at Georgetown University SFS-Qatar, Dr Luciano Zaccara also spoke at the seminar.

Prof Nasser Hadian empha-sised the Iranian Revolutions impact on daily life for Iranians, saying the revolution radically changed people’s lifestyles and introduced what is now called political Islam. He claimed even the West’s attitudes and outlook towards Islam changed, turning critical and analytical.

The lecturer Dr Luciano Zaccara focused on the Iranian regime in terms of democratic aspects and its dedication to the revolution democracy. Zaccara introduced a reading of the election schedule from 1980 to 2017 showing the rise and fall of participation rates and clarified the reasons for that.

The experts at the seminar “The Iranian Revolution in Retrospect: The Internal, Regional and Global Impact” organised by Qatar University’s Gulf Studies Center in cooperation with the Ibn Khaldon Center for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Get connected, get more with ‘beIN ON DEMAND’THE PENINSULA DOHA

beIN, the home of entertainment and sports in the MENA region offers its viewers and fans the chance to access a world of entertainment and exclusive content with beIN ON DEMAND.

Viewers have access to thousands of movies, series, sports and kids content available for free with a click of a button by simply connecting the beIN Set-Top-Box to the internet.

beIN subscribers can also download the newest releases and blockbuster hits, save them to their library and enjoy instant access.

beIN ON DEMAND also features Catch Up TV- ensuring subscribers never have to miss their favourite movies, series or sporting events.

With beIN ON DEMAND, viewers gain access to the action packed beIN store which allows subscribers to buy or rent the latest

titles Hollywood has to offer such as Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, A Star is Born and much more.

To access beIN ON DEMAND, viewers will need to connect their beIN Box to their home internet by cable or Wi-Fi and follow the simple instructions on https://www.bein.net/en/vod/.

Subscribers with the beIN Media server box can connect to the internet instantly.

Those with beIN PVR Plus or PVR boxes need to insert any type of hard drive or USB to be able to download any content available on beIN.

Viewers with the HD Box must update their boxes to the brand new beIN box and enjoy all the world class content that beIN has to offer.

Whether a sports fan or film buff, don’t miss the chance to connect to beIN ON DEMAND and witness the full beIN experience, said a release.

CMU-Q honours 105 students for academic excellenceTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q) recognised 105 students for outstanding academic performance at the Dean’s List ceremony this week. The students earned a place on the Dean’s List for the fall 2018 semester.

Michael Trick, dean of CMU-Q, congratulated the students for their significant achievements, noting that, “dedication and hard work are key not only to achieving academic excellence but also to excelling at any career.”

There are 38 seniors, 27 juniors, 24 sopho-mores, and 16 freshmen on the Dean’s List, repre-senting the five academic programs at CMU-Q: biological sciences, business administration, com-putational biology, computer science and infor-mation systems. Michael Trick, Dean of CMU-Q, addressing the students.

“The Iranian Revolution is considered a major global event, which rattled the world during the last century, just as the Iraqi invasion did in Kuwait,” said Dr Mahjoob Zweiri, Director of the Gulf Studies Center and Associate Professor in Contemporary History of the Middle East at Qatar University.

Chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser; and President of Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC), H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani, during the second day of the first round of Longines Global Champions Tour organised by Qatar Foundation Al Shaqab.

FROM PAGE 1

Doha is home to several famous residential and com-mercial properties such as The Pearl Qatar, Msheireb Downtown Doha, West Bay and has always been favourite among real estate investors.

“Undoubtedly, Doha sits on top in Qatar’s real estate market, but other real estate markets are catching up because of rapid infrastructure development. Areas such as Al Wakrah and Al Daayen are fast developing. They are emerging real estate markets and can provide better returns to real estate investors,” said the official.

Many companies unveiled offers last year to stimulate real estate activity. Rental incentives such as rent-free periods, and rents that are inclusive of utility bills were offered as incentives to attract tenants.

“Overall residential sales activity increased by 11 percent between 2017 and 2018, as pur-chasers take advantage of a fall in values. In the investment market, apartments in The Pearl Qatar are currently selling for prices of between QR12,500 and QR15,000 per sq m with the highest prices typically being achieved in Viva Bahriya,” noted real estate consultancy firm DTZ Qatar in its recent report.

Doha Municipality tops in real estate deals

03SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019 HOME

Qatar’s first female paramedicand ambulance driver feels pride in her jobTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Fathia Zaalani, a paramedic with Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Ambulance Service, says rushing to the scene of a traffic accident, fire, or call from the home of someone who has had a heart attack comes naturally to her. She said being one of the first people on the scene, helping those in need of medical assistance, isn’t just what she does, it is who she is.

A veteran paramedic with nineteen-years of experience is at the headquarters of HMC’s Ambulance Service and said she is proud to hold the titles of Qatar’s first female paramedic and ambulance driver, said a statement by HMC.

“Almost twenty years ago, in 2000, I came to Doha after completing my studies in Tunisia. I joined HMC’s Ambulance Service, becoming the first female para-medic. I later became an assistant critical care paramedic and then my manager suggested I drive the ambulance so I underwent the intensive training nec-essary to acquire this license. Today I’m not only Qatar’s first female paramedic but I’m also the first female ambulance driver in the country,” said Zaalani.

Brendon Morris, Executive Director for the HMC Ambulance Service, said Zaalani is a wonderful example of diversity in the Ambulance Service.

“Worldwide, the paramedic field remains a male-dominated profession. Yet, it is clear from the example of Ms. Zaalani that regardless of gender, para-medics make an enormous contribution to the communities they serve. We are always working to encourage more women to join our service and to help deliver the life-saving care that we provide,” explained Morris.

Zaalani said driving an ambulance is normally a profession reserved for men and while she initially found it challenging to be a woman in the profession, she says racing to the scene to help those most in need is her calling. She is good at her job and being among the first to help those in need is a responsibility she is proud to accept.

“I remember the first time I drove the ambulance. People on the streets were surprised to see me. I could see it in their

eyes. There were a lot of surprised looks and I could see the amazement on the faces of the motorists I shared the roads with. But then I noticed people began saluting me. They were waving and cheering me on,” said Zaalani.

Driving an ambulance is a constant race against time. In addition to excellent driving skills, it requires patience, time management, and problem-solving skills. Zaalani said the experience has made her a better driver and a more capable paramedic.

“I think women are natural problem solvers. We are multitaskers and can make critical decisions under pressure. I think being a paramedic is a career that many

women would excel in. I’m proud of my profession and I encourage any woman or any young girl who is thinking about this career to pursue it,” added Zaalani.

In addition to her responsibilities with the Ambulance Service, Zaalani also works with the National Command Center (NCC), the organization responsible for managing a coordinated response to both local and national emergencies. She is the first woman to join the NCC as a senior supervisor in the Ambulance Service Medical Communication Center, training new supervisors and repre-senting her organization locally and internationally.

Six female QU law students to research on Paris Agreement to enhance Qatar’s NDCsTHE PENINSULA DOHA

Qatar University (QU) continues a tradition of offering innovative research-based courses. The International Investment Law Clinic, which is under the umbrella of the TradeLab clinic, is an example.

Through a combination of practice and theory, it offers a

unique opportunity to analyse thor-oughly trade and investment law and jurisprudence. Highly qualified students work in small groups under the supervision of professors, mentors, and beneficiaries.

The students address specific legal questions related to trade and investment law coming from real clients. Expert-led work-shops on substantive topics related to the projects are

organized. Skills sessions are held to improve legal research, writing, and analysis. At the end of the semester, the group submits a written memo, a poster presentation, and gives an oral presentation of the project.

This semester, Spring 2019, six QU law students are partici-pating in the International Investment Law clinic. The stu-dents will draft a proposal

aiming to improve Qatar’s trade and investment policies in its Nationally Determined Contribu-tions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. This clinic is con-ducted in collaboration with The Graduate Institute, Geneva; and Georgetown University, Wash-ington, DC, and Doha; and funded under a National Priorities Research Program (NPRP) grant.

The project is supervised by

QU Press Founding Director and Oil & Gas Law Professor Talal Al-Emadi, Sir William Blair Chair in Alternative Dispute Resolution and Law Professor Francis Botchway, and Law Clinical Pro-fessor Rafael Brown, from QU College of Law, for the benefi-ciary: the Ministry of Munici-pality and Environment, Office of Undersecretary for Climate Change Affairs.

Italian Navy Frigate Margottini begins four-day visit today

THE PENINSULA DOHA

The Italian FREMM - on her Naval Campaign in Middle East and Arabian Sea – will conduct cooperation activities with the Qatar’s local navy and provide support to national industry.

From today to Tuesday (March 5), the European Multi-Mission Frigate (FREMM) ITS Carlo Margottini will call at Doha, Qatar, sixth stopover of her naval campaign in Middle East and Arabian Sea, aimed at ensuring presence and surveil-lance for the protection of sea lines of communication of national interest.

This campaign is included among the activities conducted in the framework of interna-tional cooperation and dialogue among countries of that area, with which Italy maintains important political, diplomatic, economic and industrial relations.

It is also an important opportunity to promote the national “country system” in an integrated way, assisting and supporting the activities of major representatives of the Italian defence industry, namely Fincantieri, Leonardo, MBDA and Elettronica, whose partnership with the Italian Navy and Defence contributed to the realisation of this initiative.

After her recent stop in Kuwait, the port visit of ITS Margottini at Doha once again shows the Italian Navy’s concern with technological developments as well as its sig-nificant partnerships with the national industry for the design and production of advanced platforms and systems such as the FREMM units.

Fathia Zaalani, the paramedic with HMC’s Ambulance Service.

“Almost twenty years ago, in 2000, I came to Doha after completing my studies in Tunisia. Today I’m not only Qatar’s first female paramedic but I’m also the first female ambulance driver in the country”, says Zaalani.

04 SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Graft accusation piles pressure on Netanyahu as poll loomsREUTERS JERUSALEM

Opposition protesters waved black flags outside Benjamin Netanyahu’s res idence yesterday, sensing vulnerability in the Israeli prime minister weeks before an election where he will face the shadow of corruption charges as well as a surging new rival.

Aiming for a fifth term on April 9 that would make him Israel’s longest-serving premier, Netanyahu is already playing

catch-up. A poll issued yesterday gave his right-wing Likud party 29 seats, behind the 38 predicted for Blue and White, a new cen-trist alliance led by the charis-matic former general Benny Gantz.

That survey was taken before Attorney-General Avichai Man-delblit announced on Thursday that he planned to indict Netanyahu on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Cabinet minister Yuval Steinitz told Israeli radio he was “confident that Netanyahu will

continue being able to contend with pressure of whatever kind”, noting that the previous Likud leader, Ariel Sharon, had won an election in 2003 despite a graft scandal.

But one of the Labour party flag-wavers, Alon Visser, said: “It is a black day for the citizens of Israel. We are all ashamed of our prime minister and we are calling him with one big voice: Please resign from your office.”

Netanyahu is suspected of w r o n g f u l l y a c c e p t i n g

$264,000-worth of gifts from tycoons, and dispensing favours in an attempt to secure positive coverage in a newspaper and on a website.

He denies any wrongdoing, but could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of bribery. However, charges cannot be filed until Netanyahu has been given a chance to address a hearing - which is unlikely to happen before the election.

In the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, social worker Coral Kala, 24, said she had not been

surprised by Mandelblit’s announcement: “I think eve-ryone was expecting this to happen.”

But others echoed the position of Netanyahu, widely known as Bibi, that the political and media elites are against him.

“I think that Bibi did a won-derful job,” said Tzipi Amit, 44, from Petah Tikva.

“All the news and reporters want to hurt him and they are not fair to him... All of us are people, all of us make mistakes.”

Deadly siege inSomalia capitalends, toll 24AP NAIROBI

A nearly day-long siege in the heart of Somalia’s capital ended with all of the Al Shabaab extremist attackers killed, police said yesterday, as the death toll was at 24 and expected to climb.

Capt. Mohamed Hussein said that an operation to clear the besieged buildings had begun, with bodies found. Two of the dead were soldiers, he said.

The overnight attack began with a pair of car bombs exploding in a popular area of Mogadishu where Somalis were relaxing at restaurants and hotels Thursday evening. One went off near the home of appeals court chief Judge Abshir Omar, and security forces fought off gunmen who tried to force their way inside, Hussein said.

At least four gunmen then opened fire at nearby buildings and businesses, sparking clashes with hotel guards, he said. Dozens of cars caught fire along

busy Maka Almukarramah Road.The extremists then holed up

inside buildings, exchanging gunfire with security forces who worked well into Friday to rescue trapped civilians. Police said more than 10 people had been freed since morning.

The Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab, Africa’s deadliest Islamic extremist group, claimed responsibility for the attack and said its target had been the nearby Maka Almukarramah hotel, which is patronised by gov-ernment officials. The extremist group has targeted it multiple

times, killing scores of people.Police said the death toll

could rise. Many victims had hor-rific injuries — some had lost limbs, nurse Sadiya Yusuf at Daru Shifa hospital said — and hospitals were said to be strug-gling to cope with the number of causalities.

Doctors at Erdogan Hospital in Mogadishu said they had received 55 wounded people, with three succumbing to injuries. Many were in critical condition and 15 had undergone

surgeries, said Dr. Ismail Yamas, the hospital manager.

The style of the attack echoed previous ones by Al Shabaab in Mogadishu as well as the attack in January at a luxury hotel complex in the capital of neighboring Kenya that killed 21 people.

The United Nations mission in Somalia and others in the international community quickly condemned the attack, one of the worst in Mogadishu in months.

It came after the US military

carried out a number of deadly airstrikes in recent days against Al Shabaab, considered the deadliest Islamic extremist group in Africa. Al Shabaab opposes Somalia’s federal gov-ernment and wants to impose sharia law.

The US has dramatically increased such airstrikes since President Donald Trump took office. The US military command for the African continent reported carrying out 50 strikes in Somalia in 2018.

Hezbollah rejects UK terrorist group listingAP/BEIRUT

Lebanon’s Hezbollah group strongly rejected the British government’s move to ban it as a terrorist organization, calling it an “insult” to the Lebanese people and evidence of subser-vience to the United States.

In a statement, it stressed that Hezbollah is a “resistance” movement against Israeli occupation but also a political and popular force with representatives in the Lebanese parliament and government.

“The British government by adopting this decision has insulted the feelings, emo-tions and will of the Lebanese people which consider Hez-bollah to be a significant political and popular force and granted it large represen-tation in parliament and in the new government,” the statement said. It was the first comment by the Iran-backed group on Britain’s move earlier this week to ban

Hezbollah as a terrorist group, accusing it of further destabilising the Middle East.

The British government’s decision means being a member of, or inviting support for, Hezbollah will be a criminal offense, carrying a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. Until now, the military wing of the Lebanon-based group has been outlawed in Britain, but not its political arm.

Hezbollah — Arabic for Party of God— is a Shia movement that emerged during the early 1980s to fight Israeli occupation of Lebanon, with financial backing from Iran. The group maintains a formidable military force that rivals the Lebanese army. It is also a powerful political force that takes participated in elec-tions, has members in par-liament and the government, and dominates the country’s politics.The US and others accuse the group of destabi-lizing the region through its military intervention in Syria

on the side of President Bashar Assad’s government. The Hez-bollah statement added that the UK decision is proof that the British government is “merely a puppet” that does the bidding of its American “masters.”

“No country in the world that embraces terrorism, funds and supports it has the right to accuse Hezbollah or any other resistance movement of being terrorist,” it said. The British ban comes as the United States is increasing its pressure on Hezbollah, placing several sets of sanctions on the group and its regional backer, Iran.

Last week, the US ambas-sador to Lebanon described what she labeled as Hezbol-lah’s “growing” role in the new Lebanese Cabinet as a threat to the country’s sta-bility. US officials have also expressed concern that Hez-bollah will exploit the minis-tries it runs to funnel money to fund the group’s operations.

Iraqi Muslims and Yazidis demonstrate in Tahrir Square in central Baghdad yesterday to demand investigations on the mass grave found near the Islamic State group’s last bastion in eastern Syria.

Yazidis freed from IS captivity in Syria, returned to IraqREUTERS SINUNI, IRAQ

A group of Yazidi women and children returned to Iraq from Syria yesterday after more than four years in Islamic State (IS) captivity.

The group includes three women and 18 children, witnesses told Reuters. They were greeted by residents of Sinuni, a Yazidi town north of Sinjar mountain.

The group’s return was con-firmed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) office which helps return missing Yazidis. An

official said his office had helped in efforts to bring the group back home.

The women and children returned to Iraq more than four years after Islamic State militants launched an assault on Sinjar, the Yazidi heartland, on August 3, 2014. The militants shot, beheaded, burned alive or kid-napped more than 9,000 members of the minority religion, in what the United Nations has called a genocidal campaign against them. According to com-munity leaders, more than 3,000 Yazidis remain unaccounted for.

Chlorine was used in Douma: Chemical weapons watchdogAP THE HAGUE

The global chemical weapons watchdog said yesterday it found “reasonable grounds” that chlorine was used as a weapon in an attack on the Syrian town of Douma last year.

The finding was contained in a detailed report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ fact finding mission that investigated the attack on April 7, 2018. Medical workers said at the time that the attack killed more than 40 people.

In a statement, the OPCW said the mission visited Douma, analyzed samples taken from the scene and from people affected, interviewed witnesses and studied toxicological and ballistics analyses.

The data, it said, provided “rea-sonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon” took place.

“This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”

The Fact Finding Mission’s mandate does not include laying blame for the attack.

The United States, Britain and France blamed Syrian government forces for the attack and launched punitive airstrikes. Syria denied responsibility.

Douma was the final target of the government’s sweeping campaign to seize back control of the eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus from rebels after seven years of revolt. Mil-itants gave up the town days after the alleged attack.

The OPCW said the report has been sent to the United Nations Security Council.

Russia, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, also rejected claims that Syria was responsible for the attack and even brought what it called witnesses to The Hague to describe their experiences.

17 Palestinians injured in border clashes with IsraelAFP/GAZA CITY

Israeli troops yesterday shot and wounded 17 Palestinians during a protest on the Gaza-Israel border, where rallies have been held for nearly a year, the enclave’s health ministry said.

A ministry statement reported “17 injuries by the Israeli occupation forces with live ammunition”, without giving details on the condition of those shot. It said that three paramedics and one journalist were hurt by tear gas grenades.

The Israeli army said that troops used live fire “according to the rules of engagement” with violent demonstrators.

The conclusions of a UN probe published on Thursday said Israeli forces responding to protests on the Gaza border had committed “violations of international human rights and humanitarian law”.

“Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity,” said the report, by a commission of inquiry set up by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Protests and clashes began along the Gaza border on March 30 last year. Demonstrators have been calling for Pales-tinian refugees to be allowed to return to their former homes now inside Israel, which Israeli officials say is akin to calling for their country’s destruction.

US strike kills 26 Shabaab fightersAFP/WASHINGTON

The US military has stepped up its air campaign against Al Shabaab militants in Somalia in recent days, with officials yesterday saying another 26 “terrorists” had been killed.

The latest air strike, which occurred in the Hiran region of central Somalia on Thursday, came as violence in the capital Mogadishu flared.

According to US Africa Command (AFRICOM), the strike killed 26 “terrorists.”

I t did not provide further detail but such strikes are usually con-ducted by drones.

The strike brings the toll of Shabaab militants killed in recent days to 81, with 20 killed on February 25, and another 35 killed a day earlier.

Such strikes “maintain pressure on Al Shabaab and disrupt its planning cycle and degrade its ability to mass forces and coordinate attacks against the Somali people,” AFRICOM’s deputy intelligence director Brigadier General Gregory Hadfield said in a statement.

Turkey sentences ex-opposition MP to four years in jailAFP/ANKARA

A Turkish former opposition lawmaker was sentenced to four years and two months in jail yesterday for allegedly helping a group blamed for the 2016 failed coup, local media reported. The Istanbul court found Eren Erdem guilty of “helping an armed terror organ-isation deliberately and will-ingly without being a member”, NTV broadcaster reported.

The former MP for Istanbul from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was arrested last June over his alleged links to the US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen. Turkey accuses Gulen of ordering the 2016 attempted overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, charges denied by the preacher.

The overnight attack began with a pair of car bombs exploding in a popular area of Mogadishu where Somalis were relaxing at restaurants and hotels on Thursday evening.

Damaged vehicles are seen at the scene where a suicide car bomb exploded targeting a Mogadishu hotel in a business center in Maka Al Mukaram street in Mogadishu, Somalia, yesterday.

“I am happy to be back home,” Abhinandan said in his first reaction after stepping into India.

05SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019 ASIA

IANS ATTARI (PUNJAB)

Indian Air Force pilot Wing Com-mander Abhinandan Varthaman, captured by Pakistan two days ago after his MiG-21 crashed in Pakistani territory, returned to India yesterday night.

Dressed in a blue coat, grey trousers and white shirt, he was received by senior Border Security Force officers at 9.21pm at Zero Line that marks the India-Pakistan land border.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah and several Union ministers including Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman welcomed Abhinandan soon after he returned via Wagha border to India. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders took to Twitter to welcome him and hailed his courage and valour.

“Welcome Home Wing Com-mander Abhinandan! The nation is proud of your exemplary courage. Our armed forces are an inspiration for 130 crore Indians. Vande Mataram!” tweeted Modi.

Shah said: “Dear Wing Com-mander Abhinandan, entire nation is proud of your courage and valour. India is glad to have you back. “May you continue to serve the nation and IAF with unparalleled passion and dedi-cation. Best wishes for your bright future.”

“Welcome Home! The entire Nation is proud of Wing Com-mander Abhinandan,” Rajnath Singh said.

Welcome home, Wing Commander Abhinandan: Modi

A man watches live news channels broadcasting images of Indian Air Force Wing Commander pilot Abhinandan Varthaman returning to India from the India-Pakistan Wagah border yesterday. RIGHT: People shout slogans and wave the national flag in Wagah as they wait for Abhinandan’s return.

“Proud of you Wing Com-mander Abhinandan Varthaman. The entire nation appreciates your valour and grit. You held your calm in the face of adversity. You are an inspiration to our youth. Salute. Vande Mataram. Jai Hind,” Sitharaman said.

Union Minister Smriti Irani said: “Salute to India as Abhi-nandan returns to home.”

Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, Ram Vilas Paswan and other leaders also expressed their hap-piness over his return.

The Wing Commander was in Pakistani captivity for over 60 hours before he walked back home and received by senior IAF and security officers. While one BSF officer shook his hand, another put his arm around the pilot to escort him back into India.

“I am happy to be back home,” Abhinandan said in his first

reaction after stepping into India, according to Amritsar Deputy Commissioner, Shivdular Singh Dhillon, who received the IAF pilot along with senior IAF and Border Security Force officers.

Abhinandan was accom-panied from Pakistan side by Group Captain J D Kurian. He was surrounded by armed troopers of the Pakistan Rangers up to the border gate. Pakistani authorities kept delaying his actual return to India through the day for unexplained reasons.

Air Vice Marshall R G K Kapoor told the media that the Wing Commander was “handed to us as per standard operating procedure of the Indian Air Force”. “He will now be taken for a detailed medical check-up. The check-up is mandated particu-larly because the officer has had to eject from an aeroplane which

would have put his entire body under great stress,” Kapoor said.

“IAF is happy to have Abhi-nandan back,” the Air Vice Marshal said. Amritsar Deputy Commissioner Dhillon said that the “happiness in his (Abhinan-dan’s) eyes said it all” upon his return. Dhillon said that there was no particular reason for the delay in IAF pilot’s return.

Earlier, Abhinandan was formally handed over to offi-cials of the Indian High Com-mission at Wagah (in Pakistan) led by Group Captain J D Kurian. He was captured in Pakistan on Wednesday (Feb-ruary 27) after his MIG-21 Bison fighter jet was shot down during an aerial dogfight near the Line of Control (LoC).

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan announced on Thursday that the captured pilot will be

freed as a “goodwill gesture” after New Delhi demanded his unconditional, immediate and unharmed release.

Scores of enthusiastic people carrying tricolour flags, garlands and posters assembled at the Attari Joint Check Post (JCP) to receive the IAF pilot. People started arriving in Attari, around 30km from Amritsar, since 6am. Their numbers swelled to hun-dreds by 10.30am.

“We have come here to welcome our country’s hero back home. We will give him a grand welcome. He showed a lot of bravery in the air combat and even after being captured by the Pakistanis,” Jitender, a resident of Amritsar who arrived here with his friends, said.

The Border Security Force, which mans the JCP and the 553km long International

Border with Pakistan in Punjab at high alert, Punjab Police and other security agencies sta-tioned additional personnel since early morning.

Many people could be seen getting their faces painted with the tricolours. “We are excited to give a hero’s welcome to Abhi-nandan when he returns. We want to take him in a big pro-cession,” Amritsar Deputy Mayor Raman Bakshi said here.

Varthaman will be debriefed by defence and security officials upon his return before being flown to New Delhi from Amritsar.

“Many celebrities and other important people come to Attari border on different occasions. But today, a real hero is coming back. We will give him a a big and warm welcome with dhol and bhangra,” Manjit Singh, who was carrying a dhol, said.

Lok Sabha polls on time, says CECIANS LUCKNOW

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora yesterday said that the ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan will have no bearing on the upcoming general elections in April-May this year.

Talking to reporters at the Yojana Bhawan in the Uttar Pradesh capital, the top poll panel official said: “Elections will be held on time.” When asked about the possible notification of the Lok Sabha poll dates, Arora said the media and the country would come to know of it through the “usual press con-ference”, as is the norm.

In the state capital to assess

the preparedness of Uttar Pradesh — a state which sends 80 members to the Lok Sabha, Arora said that the poll panel is committed to holding a “free, fair, peaceful and transparent polls” and that all steps are being taken to ensure this.

“The Election Commission (EC) has a detailed action plan to address issues put to it,” the CEC said while referring to the various suggestions, problems and issues shared with it during the meetings with state bureau-crats, police officials and repre-sentatives of political parties.

He also trashed the often asked question on the fairness of the electronic voting machines (EVMs). “They are fool-proof, as

has been proved many times in the past,” he added. Arora said that “unfortunately, EVMs have booms like footballs, where eve-ryone is playing to his own”.

EVMs, he added, had been used in various elections, in which one or the other party won. “When the election outcome is not in favour of some, they start raising objections and questions,” he said, adding that the poll panel has gone into the issue and found nothing wrong with the machines.

He also announced that Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) will also be used in the 1,63,331 polling stations of the state during the Lok Sabha elections. A campaign to make people aware of this mechanism

will also be rolled out in Uttar Pradesh and other states to ensure that they have complete understanding, the CEC said.

On being asked about the reaction of the political parties in the state to their reassurances about the credibility of EVMs, the CEC said: “We have made ourselves clear to the best of our ability and hope the message is clear.”

Arora also announced that an App called C-Vigil will be used extensively during the Lok Sabha polls across the nation. This App, which was used successfully in Ben-galuru during the Karnataka Assembly polls last year, aims at providing a platform to the common man to file complaints and even know the action taken thereafter.

Centre defends snooping, citing grave threat to securityIANS NEW DELHI

The Centre yesterday defended its decision to authorise 10 agencies to undertake surveil-lance by intercepting, moni-toring or decrypting any infor-mation generated, transmitted, received or stored in any com-puter under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and inter-ception of messages under the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885.

Citing “grave threat to the country from terrorism, radical-isation, cross border terrorism, cyber crime, organised crime, drug cartels”, the Centre in its affidavit filed in the Supreme Court yesterday said: Though Right to Privacy is a sacred Fun-damental Right, the veil of privacy can be lifted for legit-imate state interest, sovereignty or integrity of India, friendly relations with foreign states or public order.

The list of the grounds justi-fying the surveillance by the state agencies also includes “pre-venting incitement to the com-mission of any cognizable

offence” involving the interest of the state necessitating investigation.

It pointed out that the threat to the country from terrorism, radicalisation, cross border ter-rorism, cyber crime, organised crime, drug cartels could not be “understated or ignored” and a “strong and robust mechanism” for timely and actionable intel-ligence is imperative.

Having justified identifying 10 agencies for undertaking sur-veillance after sanction by the competent authority under Section 69 of the IT Act, 2000 and Section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, the Centre said there was law, rules and that standard operating procedures for undertaking surveillance are followed.

“A well laid down procedure for oversight by a committee headed by the Cabinet Secretary doubtlessly ensures that the pro-visions of law, rules and SOP are adhered to,” the Centre said in its response to a batch of peti-tions which it is seeking to be dismissed as they lack merit.

The Centre has told the court

that provisions under the IT Act and the Telegraph Act itself mandate “self-contained safe-guards to ensure that the funda-mental rights of any citizen either under Article 19(1)(a) or otherwise is not adversely affected”.

The top court has been moved by advocate M L Sharma, NGO People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Trinamool Congress lawmakers Mahua Moitra, Shreya Singhal, Amit Sahini and Internet Freedom Foundation, challenging the constitutional validity of Section 69 of IT Act, 2000 and Section 5(2) of Indian Telegraph Act, 1885.

The petitioners have also challenged the December 20, 2018 Union Home Ministry order permitting surveillance under the IT Act and the Telegraph Act.

Defending the Home Min-istry order, the Centre asserted that in fact it restricts the exercise of powers and removes “possible” vagueness by speci-fying the agencies and organi-sations that alone are authorised to undertake surveillance after approval from the competent authority.

5 security men and a civilian dead in Kupwara operation against militantsIANS SRINAGAR

Five security men were killed and four others injured in an ongoing gunfight yesterday in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara border district. One civilian also died. The sources earlier said that two militants had been killed in the encounter after which searches were launched in Kralgund village.

“During the search oper-ation after the firing exchanges stopped, one of the two mili-tants, presumed dead, stood up and started indiscriminate firing at security forces in which two CRPF troopers, two Army soldiers and one local policemen were killed. The operation is still on,” police said.

Police said bodies of the mil-itants are yet to be recovered. The gunfight occurred in Kralgund village of Langate area in Handwara tehsil of Kupwara district. Information about the militants’ presence was received on Thursday, following which the area was raided.

India’s Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi waves as he attends a public rally in Mumbai, yesterday.

Modi and defence deals take centre stage at Rahul’s ralliesIANS MUMBAI/DHULE

Congress President Rahul Gandhi yesterday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying he has consistently refused to answer pointed ques-tions on high profile defence deals in Parliament.

Gandhi, who kicked off the Congress party’s 2019 Lok Sabha campaign at two public rallies in Dhule and Mumbai, added that he was ready for any public debate on corruption, but the Prime Minister was scared and did not accept the challenge.

Terming the November 2016 demonetisation “a failed exercise”, Gandhi, addressing a huge public rally in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex, said: “You stood in queues outside banks but not industrialists and businessmen like Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi, Lalit Modi or Vijay Mallya, who converted their black money into white from the comforts of their plush homes.”

On the recent border ten-sions, he said Modi always claimed that “India is united”, but did not miss any opportunity to attack the Congress and the opposition, not even at the

inauguration of the National War Museum.

“After the CRPF troopers were martyred and a war-like situation came up, I instructed all Con-gressmen and appealed to the countrymen that nobody should criticise the government and India must stand united at this critical hour,” he said. “We (the Oppo-sition) decided that only after the national crisis gets over will we resume politics. However, the Prime Minister hasn’t given up his PR even for five minutes,” Gandhi thundered.

Addressing another rally in Dhule, Gandhi said that ever since Modi and the BJP took over in 2014, the Prime Minister had been making promises but did nothing to implement them.

Attacking the government on issues of farmers, he said Modi attempted to dilute the Land Acquisition Bill thrice but on all occasions the Congress, despite its small strength in Par-liament, successfully stalled it.

He said the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party were fighting the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in alliance. “The people of Maharashtra will unite and teach a lesson to Modi and the BJP.”

06 SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019ASIA

Islamabad: Pakistan partially re-opened its airspace yesterday, the aviation authority said, after thousands of passengers were left stranded worldwide when Islamabad shut down air travel as tensions with neighbouring

India soared. A spokeswoman for the Civil Aviation Authority said airspace was “partially re-opened”, adding that it would be fully restored by tomorrow.

Authorities have urged pas-sengers to check for more

information with their airlines. Thai Airways cancelled nearly 30 flights, affecting 5,000 pas-sengers. The decision affected services to London, Munich, Paris, Brussels, Milan, Vienna, Stockholm, Zurich, Copenhagen

and Oslo. Singapore Airlines was also forced to divert Europe-bound flights to Mumbai and Dubai to refuel, while a flight to Frankfurt was cancelled. Author-ities said they had allowed some flights to depart on Thursday.

Imran wins world praise

for freeing Indian pilot INTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

Prime Minister Imran Khan is being lauded the world over for his decision to release captured Indian air force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman as a peace gesture to de-escalate tensions with neigh-bouring India.

The premier, in his address to a joint session of Parliament, announced to release Wing Commander Abhinandan as a gesture of peace and goodwill towards India, earning him praise from celebrities, jour-nalists, diplomats and the common public who admired his brave and bold move in the favour of maintaining peace in the region and possibly avoiding an all-out war with India, the consequences of which could be disastrous.

The prime minister’s remarkable generosity quickly

got him trending on social media, with #NobelPeacePrizeForIm-ranKhan becoming the top trend on Pakistani Twitter as people from both sides of the border said they want him to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his exem-plary statesmanship. Twitterati from across the border erupted in appreciation for Prime Min-i s t e r I m r a n K h a n ’ s announcement.

Journalist Barkha Dutt tweeted: “I think we should welcome this gesture from @ImranKhanPTI on the release of

#Abhinandan. The door for de-escalation has been opened. And this is really not the time for dumb and needless gloating by tv anchors.” She added: “Of course India’s key concern remains impunity with which Jaish E Mohammed and Lashkar operate in Pakistan and that has to be pursued firmly. But my view is India proved its point with the #BalakotAirStrike and now, with #Abhinandan coming home, its time to leave fight to diplomats.”

All Parties Hurriyat Con-ference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq wrote: “Welcome decision by Pakistan PM @ImranKhanPTI to release the captive Indian pilot as a peace gesture. Hope better sense pre-vails, the war clouds scatter and the #Kashmir dispute moves towards a peaceful resolution.” Indian photojournalist Smita

Sharma expressed her relief at the news of the Indian pilot’s return and thanked PM Khan.

“Amid all the surround sound and claims of victory by chest thumping scribes, just so relieved to hear that #AbhinandanVar-taman will be back home tomorrow. Thank you @ImranKhanPTI,” Sharma wrote.

Indian defence analyst and former army colonel Ajai Shukla was all praise for the way Pakistan handled the conflict on the “perception” front, terming Islamabad the comprehensive

victor in this regard.“MoD briefing, to announce

release of Wing Comdr Abhi-nandan, has been pre-empted by Imran Khan, who announced it earlier. Now MoD briefing “postponed”.

Whatever happens in real battle, Pakistan has comprehen-sively won the perception war. At every stage, their PR was ahead of ours,” he tweeted in commendation.

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, too, complimented PM Khan,

saying he has “exhibited real statesmanship today”. “Pak PM has exhibited real statesmanship today. It is time for our political leadership to step up and take measures to deescalate the current situation. People of J and K are living under unimaginable duress. How much longer will we suffer for?” she tweeted.

Indian cricketer-turned-pol-itician Navjot Singh Sidhu termed the act “noble” and said that the goodwill gesture “is a cup of joy for a billion people” of India.

The Prime Minister’s remarkable generosity quickly got him trending on social media, with #NobelPeacePrizeForImranKhan becoming the top trend on Pakistani Twitter as people from both sides of the border said they want him to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his exemplary statesmanship.

Activists carry placards during a peace rally in Islamabad yesterday.

Pakistan to lodge ‘eco-terrorism’ complaint against IndiaAFP ISLAMABAD

Pakistan plans to lodge a complaint of “eco-terrorism” against India after airstrikes by New Delhi in Pakistani territory this week damaged dozens of trees, its climate change minister said yesterday.

“Eco-terrorism is exactly what happened,” Malik Amin Aslam said, adding that environ-mental assessments were under way. “We will explore all

appropriate international bodies including UN to raise the issue and lodge the protest,” he said, adding that it was “not a joke”.

Aslam spoke after India claimed to have killed “a very large number” of militants in an air strike carried out near Balakot in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday.

Pakistan rejected the claim as “self serving, reckless and fic-titious”. Residents of the area reported hearing explosions in the night, but said only one

person was injured, and that no infrastructure had been destroyed. A reporter visited the

site where residents and the mil-itary said the strike hit, and saw a crater, two trees snapped in

half, and three mud houses, one of which had a collapsed wall. Aslam said the only damage was

done to the so-called Billion Tree Tsunami, a massive reforestation project launched in 2014.

Aviation authority partially re-opens airspace

Erdogan, Imran discuss issue Ankara: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan discussed on a phone conversation the recent tension between Pakistan and India.

According to a statement issued by the Turkish presidential information office, which was reported by Anadolu News Agency, the latest tension between Pakistan and India and the develop-ments in the region were discussed.

Myanmar officer’s wife dead in pipe bomb blast AFP YANGON

The wife of a Myanmar military officer was killed by a pipe bomb as they moved into a new home in northern Rakhine state, the army said yesterday, as the body count in the troubled region rises with landmines and assas-sinations.

More than 740,000 Rohingya Muslims fled the state after an army crackdown in 2017 but security forces have turned their attention to a well-armed rebel group claiming to rep-resent ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

The Arakan Army (AA) has killed police and soldiers from Myanmar’s powerful military and is believed to be behind attacks targeting officials and security forces.

A homemade pipe bomb filled with steel balls went off in the house of a newlywed major on February 26 in Buthidaung township as he and his wife were unloading furniture to move in. She “died of wounds at the scene”, the statement said, adding that a vehicle delivering

the furniture had been stopped along the way and searched by “six armed group members” in civilian clothes.

No group has claimed responsibility and the Arakan Army could not immediately be reached for comment.

Northern Rakhine state is inaccessible outside of gov-ernment-steered trips and infor-mation is difficult to verify inde-pendently. But the bombing is part of a wave of violence sweeping the northern part of the state in a conflict involving a patchwork of ethnicities and religions.

Three members of the ethnic Daignet minority were found in a ditch with their throats slit last month. Two Myanmar police officers were killed on Wednesday when their convoy hit a landmine and was ambushed by Arakan Army insurgents who fired at the vehicles, according to state media and a police source in Rakhine. Myanmar’s military claims that the Arakan Army marched with Rohingya Muslim militants late last month across the border in Bangladesh.

IMF revives Sri Lanka bailout hit by power struggleAFP COLOMBO

The International Monetary Fund yesterday revived a $1.5bn bailout for Sri Lanka that was suspended over a government power struggle last year that seriously slowed economic growth.

The Washington-based lender said officials visiting Colombo agreed to re-activate the three-year loan, which started in 2016 and spread the instalments over an additional year. “The team reached under-standings at the staff level with the Sri Lankan authorities... to allow more time for the

completion of the economic reform agenda,” the IMF said.

The Fund had been due to release an instalment in October when President Maithripala Sirisena sacked his Prime Min-ister and called fresh elections, triggering a two month power struggle in the island nation.

Because of the crisis, the

economy grew by just 3.0 percent last year, making it the slowest expansion in 17 years, according to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. The IMF said it expected Sri Lanka’s growth to improve to 3.5 percent in 2019.

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court eventually held that Sirisena’s actons were unconstitutional,

allowing Premier Ranil Wick-remesinghe to resume his duties.

Wickremesinghe told par-liament in January that his dis-missal on October 26 was a “coup” and a “death blow” to the economy. The IMF noted that Sri Lanka’s economy was “gradually stabilising after the weak eco-nomic performance in 2018.

Dhaka says no to Myanmar refugeesAFP UNITED NATIONS

Bangladesh told the UN Security Council that it will no longer be able to take in refugees from Myanmar.

Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque told a council meeting that the crisis over the repatri-ation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya sheltering in his country had gone from “bad to

worse” and urged the council to take “decisive” action.

Around 740,000 Muslim Rohingya are living in camps in Bangladesh after they were driven out of Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state during a military campaign in 2017 that the United Nations has described as ethnic cleansing.

“Here, I regret to inform the council that Bangladesh would no longer be in a position to

accommodate more people from Myanmar,” said Haque. Under a deal reached, Myanmar agreed to take back some of the ref-ugees, but the United Nations insists that the safety of the Rohingya be a condition for their return. “Is Bangladesh paying the price for being responsive and responsible in showing empathy to a persecuted minority popu-lation of a neighboring country?” asked the foreign secretary.

Rohingya refugees huddle in a group in Kangar, Malaysia.

INTERNEWS ISLAMABAD

Pakistan has asked Iran to lift restrictions and resume the issuance of transit permits for transportation of Pakistani goods via land route to Russia, Central Asian states and Middle Eastern countries.

Iran had stopped issuing transit permits three to four years ago for Pakistani goods like fodder, wheat straw, carrot and garlic for export through the Islamic republic to Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, Oman and other nations in the region.

Minister for National Food Security and Research Sahibzada Mehboob Sultan took up the matter with Iran A m b a s s a d o r M e h d i Honardoost.

Products from Balochistan had earlier been exported through the shortest land route via Iran, but due to curbs on the issuance of transit permits to Pakistan, the goods exporters were later forced to ship cargo via sea. However, the sea route is expensive and cumbersome, discouraging some exporters.

The Iranian ambassador told the food security minister that he would communicate the request to the quarters con-cerned in Iran. He pointed out that the Iranian supreme leader had directed that “all doors should be open for Pakistan”.

Pakistan and Iran share geographical border which pro-vides an opportunity to trade in agricultural products. There are, however, certain chal-lenges in the way of export and import of agricultural commodities.

Pakistan asks Iran to lift curbs on transit permits

07SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019 ASIA

US vows to defend Philippines if attacked AFP MANILA

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday vowed to defend the Philippines against “armed attack” in the disputed South China Sea, in Washington’s starkest warning yet against Chinese claims to most of the strategic waterway.

Speaking in Manila after meeting with Philippine Pres-ident Rodrigo Duterte, Pompeo said Beijing’s actions in waters also claimed by the Southeast Asian nation and other neigh-bours were a threat.

“China’s island-building and military activities in the South China Sea threaten your sover-eignty, security and therefore economic livelihood, as well as that of the United States,” he said.

“As the South China Sea is part of the Pacific, any armed attack on Philippine forces, air-craft or public vessels in the South China Sea will trigger mutual defence obligations under Article 4 of our Mutual Defence Treaty.”

Pompeo’s comments mark the first time a US official has publicly stated Washington’s commitment to defending its

poorly-armed ally in the flash-point sea.

A 1951 US-Philippine mutual defence treaty committed Manila and its former colonial master to come to each other’s aid in case of “armed attack in the Pacific area”. Philippine troops and fish-ermen have frequently com-plained about harassment by Chinese maritime security forces.

Reacting to Pompeo, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Beijing was committed to keeping peace and stability in the region.

He added that for countries outside the region “such as the United States... it is not necessary to be deliberately provocative, or stir up trouble.” The United

States has said it is not taking sides in the dispute over waters claimed by China, the Philip-pines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.

However, Washington has asserted its right to freely sail over waters through which

trillions of dollars in global trade pass through each year and which reputedly contain vast mineral and oil reserves. The Philippines used to be a staunch critic of China’s claims over the sea. But after his election in 2016 Duterte put the dispute on the

back burner in favour of courting Chinese trade and investment.

He threatened a split with the United States, but relations are being rebuilt under President Donald Trump.

Senior Duterte officials have called for clarification on

whether the US defence pact applies to the maritime row.

But Philippine Foreign Sec-retary Teodoro Locsin said yes-terday that Manila was “very confident” in US backing.

Pompeo also warned the Philippines and other nations against using technology from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.

The Philippines’ Globe Telecom plans to roll out Huawei commercial 5G services this year, while the Duterte government signed a $400m deal for Huawei to install closed-circuit television cameras in two Philippine cities to deter crime.

US officials suspect Beijing could use Huawei’s products to spy on foreign governments. The company denies the allegations. Yesterday, Pompeo said using Huawei technology carried risks. “We want to make sure that the world has their eyes wide open as to the risks of having that technology be part of the infra-structure or backbone or net-works,” Pompeo said.

The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman replied: “The gov-ernment and people of any country probably know better what is good for their country than anyone else”.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (centre) takes a photograph with embassy staff at the US Embassy in Manila, Philippines, yesterday.

Speaking in Manila after meeting with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Pompeo said Beijing’s actions in waters also claimed by the Southeast Asian nation and other neighbours were a threat.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc walk into a meeting room at Government Office in Hanoi, Vietnam, yesterday.

Kim kicks off official Vietnam visitAFP HANOI

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un kicked off an official visit to Vietnam yesterday, three days after arriving in the country for a nuclear summit with US Pres-ident Donald Trump that ended deadlocked.

Kim put aside the troubled negotiations for the pageantry of a formal diplomatic occasion in Hanoi, where — accompanied by his sister and close aide Kim Yo Jong — he was received by Vietnam President and Com-munist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong.

The smiling leader walked before rows of children waving Vietnamese and North Korean flags outside the mustard-yellow colonial-era Presidential Palace, before inspecting an honour guard. The long-isolated North is increasingly seeking to portray itself as a country like any other, and Vietnam is Kim’s fourth foreign destination in less than 12 months, after not leaving his borders for more than six years

following his inheritance of power.

He has travelled to China four times for meetings with President Xi Jinping, walked across the border with South Korea for a summit with

President Moon Jae-in, and went to Singapore for his first summit with Trump. But for protocol purposes Kim’s trips do not rank as state visits, as he is not North Korea’s head of state — his grandfather Kim Il Sung retains

the title of Eternal President even though he died in 1994. Curious onlookers lined the streets yes-terday to catch a glimpse of Kim — the first North Korean leader to visit Vietnam since his grand-father in 1964.

N Korea, US vow to keep talking after summit collapseAFP HANOI

North Korea yesterday promised further negotiations with the US despite a spectacular failure to strike a nuclear deal at their Hanoi summit, with both sides keeping the door of diplomacy open.

The high-stakes second meeting between the North’s leader Kim Jong Un and US Pres-ident Donald Trump broke up in disarray on Thursday, without even a joint statement.

In the aftermath, each sought to blame the other’s intransigence for the deadlock.

Trump insisted Pyongyang wanted all sanctions imposed on it over its banned weapons programmes lifted, and this was a bridge too far.

But in a rare late-night press briefing, the North Korean foreign minister said Pyongyang had only wanted some of the measures eased, and that its proposal to close “all the nuclear production facilities” at its Yongbyon complex was its best and final offer.

Despite the stalemate, the North’s official KCNA news agency reported yesterday that the two leaders had a “con-structive and candid exchange.”

Relations between the two countries — on opposite sides of the technically still-unfinished Korean War — had been “char-acterised by mistrust and antag-onism” for decades, it said.

Despite “inevitable hard-ships and difficulties” on the way to forging a new relationship, KNCA described the Hanoi summit as “successful” and said Kim had promised Trump another encounter.

An unusually downcast Trump told reporters on Thursday that he would “rather do it right than do it fast,” adding: “Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times.” After returning to Washington, the US president tweeted yesterday that his rela-tions with Kim were “very good”.

“We had very substantive negotiations with Kim Jong Un — we know what they want and they know what we must have,” he wrote. Before that date, the measures were largely focused on preventing technology transfers but more recent restrictions apply to several lucrative industries — coal and iron ore, seafood and textiles, among others — in an effort to force concessions from Pyongyang.

Dozens of Rohingya found on Malaysian beachREUTERS KUALA LUMPUR

Thirty-five people, believed to be Rohingya Muslims abandoned at sea, were found safe on a Malaysian beach yesterday, offi-cials said, part of what author-ities fear could be a new wave

of dangerous people smuggling by sea.

In recent months, dozens of Rohingya in Myanmar and Bang-ladesh have boarded boats to try to reach Malaysia, raising worries of a fresh wave of dan-gerous sea voyages after a 2015 crackdown on people smugglers.

Nine children were among the 35 migrants found stranded on a beach in the northern state of Perlis yesterday, Malaysian police said.

Officials were not able to say whether the migrants found on Friday had arrived from Myanmar or Bangladesh.

Vaccine deaths: Manila to charge Sanofi officialsREUTERS MANILA

The Philippine Department of Justice said yesterday it has found probable cause to indict officials from French drug-maker Sanofi and former and current Philippine health offi-cials over 10 deaths it said were linked to use of a dengue vaccine.

It recommended charges be filed in court for multiple counts of reckless imprudence resulting in homicide, due to what it said were procedural lapses and irregularities in implementing a Philippine dengue immunisation pro-gramme using Sanofi’s Dengvaxia. It recommended that six Sanofi officials, mostly country representatives of the firm, and 14 current and former Philippine health officials be charged, including former Health Minister Janette Garin.

Sanofi has repeatedly said Dengvaxia is safe and effective. The drugmaker yesterday rejected the justice depart-ment’s recommendations. The justice department statement did not say Dengvaxia had caused the deaths.

Five years on, fate of missing MH370 remains a mysteryREUTERS KUALA LUMPUR

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 five years ago with 239 people on board remains one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

The Boeing 777 went missing on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

Satellite data analysis showed the plane likely crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, off the coast of western Australia. However, two major searches failed to come up with any significant findings. Malaysia, Australia and China launched an under-water search in a 120,000 sq km area in the southern Indian Ocean based on the satellite data. The search, which cost

about A$200m, was called off after two years in January 2017

with no traces of the plane found. Last year, Malaysia

accepted a “no-cure, no-fee” offer from US exploration firm Ocean Infinity for a three-month search, meaning the company would only get paid if it found the plane.

That search covered 112,000 sq km north of the original target area and also proved fruitless, ending in May 2018. More than 30 pieces of suspected aircraft debris have been collected along the Indian Ocean coastline, but only three wing fragments were confirmed to be from MH370.

Most of the debris were used in drift pattern analysis in the hopes of narrowing down the aircraft’s possible location.

A 495-page report into MH370’s disappearance, pub-lished in July 2018, said the Boeing 777’s controls were likely deliberately manipulated

to take it off course, but inves-tigators could not determine who was responsible. The report also highlighted mistakes made by the Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh City air traffic control centres and issued rec-ommendations to avoid a repeat incident.

Investigators stopped short of offering any conclusions about what happened to MH370, saying that depended on finding the plane’s wreckage.

The Malaysian government has said it will consider resuming the search only when credible new evidence is found.

Families of those onboard the plane have urged author-ities to consider offering a reward, launch a new search, or accept other offers from private companies to find MH370.

Catherine Gang, whose husband Li Zhi was onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, holds a banner as she walks outside Yonghegong Lama Temple after a gathering of family members of the missing passengers in Beijing.

North Korea may have been more willing than most observers expected to offer to disarm much of its nuclear arsenal, but it wanted much more in return - a near-complete end to sanctions - than Washington could offer there and then. The question now is whether Pyongyang will try to hammer out a new deal or return to rocket and nuclear weapons tests, again ramping up the risk of direct conflict on the peninsula.

BLOOMBERG

08 SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019VIEWS

Korea talks failure caps worrying week for world peace

With Russian nuclear threats, India and Pakistan on the brink of all-out war and now US-

North Korea talks breaking down in Vietnam, it has been a messy week for diplomacy. Great powers seem ever more willing to embrace the drama of confrontation over meaningful com-munication - and even when they try, it seems increasingly hard to bring them to a deal.

In Hanoi, the failure of the meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Un appeared to take even the two main participants by surprise. North Korea may have been more willing than most observers expected to offer to disarm much of its nuclear arsenal,

but it wanted much more in return - a near-com-plete end to sanctions - than Wash-ington could offer there and then. The question now is whether Pyongyang will try to hammer out a new deal or return to rocket and nuclear weapons tests, again ramping up the risk of direct conflict on the peninsula.

Nuclear powers India and Pakistan have been taking mil-itary risks on

a scale unseen in decades. An attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir blamed on Pakistan-based militants prompted New Delhi to launch air strikes on its neighbour for the first time since 1971. Even if a degree of calm returns in the coming days, this conflict has moved the boundaries of what both nations expect from future confrontations. That may make them even quicker to attack in future - or keener to find

other routes, including militant attacks and beyond, to needle each other.

Both Russia and China have - in their own very different ways - also become adept at using unconventional, not directly military tactics to get their own way. Cyber attacks, the use pf deniable non-uniformed military forces, building artificial islands or using state-backed corporations to wield power are all much harder for potential foes to manage, particularly an increasingly distracted United States. Last weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin sig-nalled a potential return to Cold War-style atomic brinkmanship, warning that Moscow was ready for another missile crisis if the United States deployed medium-range nuclear missiles to Europe.

In apparent support for that message, Russian television then broadcast a list of Moscow’s top targets in the continental United States in the event of war. Relations between Washington and Beijing have also deteriorated over the last year, fuelled by a trade dispute, regional military posturing and very different visions for the long-term global future.

Almost the only good diplomatic news this week came from the most recent trade talks between the United States and China, with Trump agreeing not to impose a new roster of sanctions. That provides a modest diplomatic opening - provided such progress can be maintained, no easy task with the 2020 US presidential election looming. Beijing also remains cautious. Chinese help was clearly not enough to produce a deal with North Korea on Thursday, despite Pyongyang’s dependence on its northern neighbour.

The result has been a worsening environment for international trust, including when it comes to mankind’s most dangerous weapons. Moscow has long been furious over the upcoming deployment of US antiballistic missile

rockets in Eastern Europe, and the United States has worried for several years that Moscow’s new missile types breach the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty. Still, some fear that Washington’s withdrawal from that agreement may simply make matters worse, setting off a new arms race.

Meanwhile, major powers are clearly already modelling both nuclear and conventional conflict against each other with a level of realism not seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. A poll of US active service members by the “Military Times” newspaper showed a dramatic increase in the proportion who believed the United States could be involved in a major war, perhaps within a year. While worries over North Korea had dramatically fallen since 2017, those over Russia and China rose even more markedly.

For Moscow and Beijing in par-ticular, a core tenet of military strategy is now based around taking advantage of perceived Western weakness, and potential US reluctance to reinforce allies. In January, a former Chinese admiral suggested that in the event of war over Taiwan or the South China Sea, Beijing’s best approach would be to sink two US aircraft carriers. It would be enough, he said, to push the United States out of any conflict. “What America is afraid of most is taking casualties,” Lee Kuan was quoted as saying.

The more likely countries believe they are to win outright, the more likely they are to risk these wars. But there are also dangers to starting much more limited conflicts - such as that between India and Pakistan this week - and trusting they will not run out of control. Couple that with a world in which leaders like Trump and Kim can’t agree on continuing talks through to an already planned lunch, and you have a world growing more worrying by the week.

PETER APPS REUTERS

QUOTE OF THE DAYA disorderly Brexit could

also have significant consequences. All likely

Brexit outcomes will involve net costs for the

UK economy. But the higher the impediments

that arise in the new relationship with Europe,

the higher the cost.

Christine Lagarde IMF Managing Director

How Macron can revive his French revolution

France’s Yellow Vest protest movement seems to be losing steam. Turnout is

diminishing, public support is weakening, and anger has flared over anti-Semitism in its ranks. If the marchers are mostly staying home, though, the problems they identified haven’t gone away. In fact, they could define President Emmanuel Macron’s remaining time in office.

The protesters first took to the streets in November to oppose a proposed fuel tax. As the movement spread, it seemed to give voice to a more general frustration with France’s stagnation and inequalities. While the number of dem-onstrators was never huge - less than 300,000 at their peak - they received wide-spread public backing, a signal that the discontent that once fueled Macron’s rise was only growing.

Now, with the Yellow Vests beset by violence and factionalism, Macron has embarked on a nationwide “listening tour” to hear out their grievances. Once the

talk therapy is done, he’ll need to come up with a coherent response to the movement’s often-con-flicting concerns. His best bet is to follow through on his bold campaign pledges to reinvigorate France’s economy and create opportunities for those left behind.

In doing so, he faces two big challenges.

One is to continue making pro-growth reforms within France’s narrow fiscal constraints. Public spending - which, at 56 percent of gross domestic product, is the highest of any advanced nation - hasn’t declined as Macron promised. On the contrary, it is scheduled to increase more under his five-year term than it did in the previous five years.

Making matters worse, Macron has postponed the fuel tax and offered further concessions to the pro-testers that would add some 10 billion euros ($11.35 billion) to the bloated state budget. That will likely push France’s deficit over the European Union’s mandated limit of 3 percent of gross domestic

product. Splurging on addi-tional benefits won’t help matters.

Instead, Macron’s pri-ority should be removing barriers to job creation and growth. Although he’s made progress by loosening labor-market laws and overhauling the indebted state-run railways, he needs to think more ambitiously. Reducing France’s sky-high non-wage labor costs would remove a significant bar to job creation, for one thing. Easing restrictions on new homes and amending laws that keep people in subsidized housing regardless of need could improve labor mobility without adding to the deficit.

The EU, for its part, should recognize the dif-ference between reform-led debt increases of the kind Macron has proposed - which in the long run should improve France’s finances by boosting growth - and simple prof-ligacy of the sort advocated by Italy’s populist government.

A second challenge for Macron is to make the gov-ernment more responsive

to everyday voters. For all their contradictory demands, one thing the protesters and their sup-porters share is a sense that they’re not being listened to, that Paris is too far removed from the con-cerns of those in the towns and exurbs. Macron is advocating a smaller Par-liament and some propor-tional representation in future elections. He should also consider bolder measures. France’s National Assembly, elected every five years, is an insufficient check on exec-utive power, for instance; introducing midterm elec-tions might bring real accountability.

Macron has never made a secret of what he intended to do. His cam-paign book was titled “Rev-olution,” and he wasn’t exaggerating by much: No amount of tinkering at the edges would fulfill the mission that he set for himself. He should stick to the ambitious agenda that made his candidacy a beacon of much-needed change. France, and the Yellow Vests, would only benefit.

Qatar through its active diplomacy has been hosting such events and these efforts of the State of Qatar exhibit its desire to achieve and maintain global peace, progress and prosperity through discussions and consultations.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

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

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED OSMAN ALI

osman@pen.com.qa

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

EDITORIAL

Parliamentary cooperation

Qatar has made all preparations to organize 140th session of the General Assembly of the Inter-Par-liamentary Union (IPU) through which Qatar will

bring parliamentary delegations together for mutual coop-eration leading to addressing the global problems and challenges for a better tomorrow for everyone.

Qatar through its active diplomacy has been hosting such events and these efforts of the State of Qatar exhibit its desire to achieve and maintain global peace, progress and prosperity through discussions and consultations.

Established in 1889, IPU currently has 178 Member Parliaments and 12 Associate Members and it ‘works closely with the United Nations and other partner organ-izations whose goals’ the IPU shares. More than 6.5 billion of the world’s 7 billion people live in States whose parlia-ments are members of the IPU.

The theme for IPU Assembly in Doha which will be held from April 6 to 10 this year is also very important. The parliamentarians from all over the world will discuss the theme ‘parliaments as platforms to enhance edu-cation for peace, security and the rule of law’.

Speaker of Shura Council, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud recently said that preparations for hosting 140th session of the General Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) were complete.

H E the Speaker of Shura Council was addressing the Ambassadors and Heads of diplomatic missions as part of the ongoing preparations for holding the 140th session of the General Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

He said that the IPU Assembly in Qatar would con-tribute to strengthening inter-national cooperation, establish peace and prosperity worldwide.

“The complicated condi-tions that many regions around the world face today

require a high-level international participation in this year’s general assembly in order to reflect the role of par-liaments in representing the hopes and aspirations of people,” the Speaker said.

Qatar’s hosting IPU General Assembly meetings shows country’s commitment to the importance of multilateral parliamentary work and its significance in developing a system of co-operation that guarantees peace and pros-perity for the people of the world at a time when conflicts have multiplied and generated unprecedented types of suffering. The other day, Speaker of Shura Council, H E Ahmed bin Abdulla bin Zaid Al Mahmoud, also met with Secretary-General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Martin Chungong.

They discussed the final preparations for the 140th Assembly and related meetings of the IPU which will take place in Qatar. Chungong praised the preparations and the keenness of the Shura Council Speaker and the Council officials to make the event successful and to ensure the widest and most universal participation in the event.

US President Donald Trump meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Sofitel Legend Metropole hotel in Hanoi.

Price rises are among voters’ main concerns and gas prices came out top in an opinion poll by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology in October and early November, when Poroshenko slipped from second into third place behind Tymoshenko and Zelenskiy.

09SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019 OPINION

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How a major anti-colonialvictory divided Ethiopia

Subsidy cuts imperil Ukraine leader’s reelection bid

AWOL K ALLO AL JAZEERA

NATALIA ZINETS & MATTHIAS WILLIAMS REUTERS

Yesterday marked the 123rd anniversary of the battle of Adwa in which Ethiopia inflicted a crushing defeat on

Italy’s colonial army. It was a landmark victory that permanently altered the course of Ethiopian and African history. The outcome of the battle was so stunning for Ethiopia

and so humiliating for Italy that, according to the New York Times, even the pope was “greatly dis-turbed”. Adwa is annually commemo-rated as an iconic victory in Ethiopia, but it nevertheless remains a focal point of political and ideological con-testation between various nationalist groups in the country.

For some, it is a momentous event that defined the weight and prestige of Ethiopia on the global stage and stands as a shining example of the endurance and fortitude of the Ethi-opian people to this day. For others, the historic battle is not a “heroic victory” as such, but an unfortunate military achievement that helped Emperor Menelik II consolidate his brutal southward expansion. Still others view Adwa as the very first decisive victory of a black African power against colonialism, and cele-brate it as a critical juncture in black people’s collective struggle against European colonial domination.

In other words, the battle of Adwa is an event that is etched into the con-sciousness of a significant portion of the Ethiopian population, but it does not carry the same meaning for eve-ryone. The contemporary narratives about the battle are largely retro-spective, often reconstructed based on current political and ideological considerations. They aim to control meaning, solidify an ideological position, or simply fit this historical episode into a larger contemporary narrative, and as a result, cannot agree on a single interpretation.

Today, the differences between these multiple interpretations are more obvious, and impactful, than ever before. As Ethiopia seeks to forge a new path forward, it brings existing ideological and political faultlines into a sharp focus, and in the process history in general and Adwa, in par-ticular, are becoming a battleground where multiple forms of power struggles and competing modalities of remembering and forgetting converge.

Collective historical memory is a highly heterogeneous and complex constellation of momentous events, figures, and phenomena that helps a nation define its identity and place in the world. It comprises stories of rev-olutions, wars, victories, defeats, and conquests - events that most pro-foundly affect lives and arouse pas-sions and for that reason shape the political, social, and cultural fabric of a given people. The collective his-torical memory is the repository of a people’s own self-perception, awareness, and beliefs. It is the form-ative ground for societal collective consciousness. But collective memory is not about historical accuracy. It is inevitably selective, idiosyncratic,

mythic, symbolic, and binary (right/wrong, true/false, hero/villain).

In Ethiopia, where the use of history and memory as a weapon of control, subjection, and even liber-ation is ubiquitous, collective memory is always viewed from a combative position. This is particularly true of the Oromo and the Amhara, the two great historical antagonists of the Ethiopian state, who together make up about two-thirds of Ethiopia’s 108 million population. Ethiopian history is the history of many peoples and the history of some is not necessarily the history of others. For example, the history of the Oromos after their fall to Menelik’s nascent empire is not the same as the history of the Amharas who were the victors.

Like every other country, the unity of the Ethiopian state is forged by means of violence - battles, con-quests, plunders, defeats, and vic-tories. The presumed unity of the nations and nationalities that make up the Ethiopian state is born in the fog and frictions of war, in the burning villages, plundered communities, and ravaged fields. Adwa is undoubtedly one of these formative battles, but it is also much more.

Today, if shared history and col-lective memory is serving as a vital battleground between various nation-alist forces, it is because collective national memory, ie, the ideals and values that define the nation, its strengths, viability, and endurance, is not just the foundation of the state’s self-respect and pride but also a critical factor of political mobilisation and organising. The battle over the past is not about the past as such. It is not even about the present. It is about the future.

Ukrainian pensioner Nadiya Ignatiy says she has had the plum and cherry trees in her garden cut down for

firewood since the government raised gas prices late last year.

In next month’s election, she will vote against President Petro Poro-shenko in favour of an opponent who has pledged to restore the gas sub-sidies that were scaled back to secure an international bailout.

“We cleared the garden,” she said in her house in the village of Skry-halivka, 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Kiev. “Not just me, other people are doing it now... previously you could heat with gas but now it’s a problem.” Such frustrations could tip the balance in the March 31 election against Poro-shenko, whose market-oriented reforms have helped stabilise a country battling Russian-backed sep-aratism and encouraged Western investors wary of pervasive corruption.

Poroshenko was elected in 2014 after protests ousted a Kremlin-friendly president and sent the gov-ernment and the West on a collision course with Russia: Russia annexed Crimea and supported the overthrow of government rule in eastern Ukraine.

An influential businessman who had made a fortune from confec-tionery, he pledged to take the ex-Soviet country out of Russia’s orbit and restore control over the east in a matter of weeks. The latter has not happened, but he has overseen an uneasy stalemate with separatist-held

regions and ended a steep recession, with around 3.4 percent growth last year. Living standards, however, have continued to decline. The average monthly wage has dropped the equiv-alent of almost $80 since 2013 and Ukrainians need more than three times as many local hryvnia to buy a dollar as they did then. Inflation peaked at 43 percent in 2015 and the price of a cubic meter of gas is almost 12 times what it was in 2013.

Since the revolution, “nothing has changed substantially for the better,” said Nadiya Yurchenko, 79, who hoped for a higher pension, heating allowance and better healthcare as well as peace with Russia when she voted for Poroshenko in 2014.

Poroshenko won the first round outright in 2014, but many polls have shown the election frontrunner this time to be Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and fiery cam-paigner who compares the gas price rise to “genocide”.

Another candidate who has surged in February is comic actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political novice and largely an unknown quantity.

“For the IMF and most of Ukraine’s western partners, Poro-shenko is a lesser evil, he is an acceptable partner,” said analyst Volodymyr Fesenko. However, “with their requirement for raising the price of gas and utility tariffs, the IMF para-doxically ends up giving political help to those whom it fears”, he said.

Subsidised gas for households is a source of corruption in Ukraine because businesses divert it for their own use to avoid paying market prices, draining money from the state budget. The IMF, which has lent $14.7

billion to Ukraine since April 2014, has made gradually bringing household tariffs in line with market prices a condition for more funding. When gas prices were hiked in November, Poro-shenko said there had been no choice.

“The government was caught between the bad and the very bad, between tariff increases and a blow to macroeconomic stability.” IMF country head Gosta Ljungman has said price controls were ineffective at providing social protection, and led to overconsumption and corruption, while liberalising the market meant richer households paid more, freeing cash for poorer ones.

“The most optimal approach is to give markets the right to determine the price, and then to provide well-focused subsidies to those who need them most,” Ljungman told Ukrainian news site FinClub this month in com-ments his office referred Reuters to.

Government officials were not immediately available to comment on why some of the poorest Ukrainian households were not getting help to adjust to the new prices.

Price rises are among voters’ main concerns and gas prices came out top in an opinion poll by the Kiev Interna-tional Institute of Sociology in October and early November, when Poro-shenko slipped from second into third place behind Tymoshenko and Zel-enskiy. Poroshenko moved back to second place after Ukraine’s Orthodox Church won independence from the Russian Church in January and the government plans pension increases on Friday that his opponents say are designed to bolster his ratings.

But Fesenko said any gains may be offset by the arrival this month of the first higher gas bills and then those for other utilities.

Tymoshenko and other candidates like Yuriy Boyko, a former energy minister popular mainly in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east, have used rising prices to attack the president.

Tempers flared at a lawmakers’ meeting on Monday when Tymoshenko accused Poroshenko and his associates of funnelling money gained from the price rises to offshore bank accounts, an allegation swiftly denied by the leader of Poro-shenko’s faction.

After a Februrary 16 meeting with Tymoshenko, IMF chief Christine Lagarde stressed the urgency for Ukraine to continue reforms and safe-guard its return to economic stability.

Tymoshenko says she wants to keep cooperation with the IMF but change the terms of the deal. She has also promised sharp hikes in salaries and pensions and to change central bank policy to provide cheap loans to small businesses.

Adwa is annually commemorated as an iconic victory in Ethiopia, but it nevertheless remains a focal point of political and ideological contestation between various nationalist groups in the country.

How she would act on those promises if she wins is unclear, but it is enough to make many investors uncomfortable.

Poroshenko helped build foreign direct investment back up to $4.4 billion in 2016, but it fell to $1.87 billion in 2017 amid concern about Ukraine’s finances, far off the $5.46 billion under former pres-ident Victor Yanukovich.

“The threat that cooperation with the IMF will be disrupted, and the threat that the country will again return to the prospect of default, is much higher if other candidates win,” said Serhiy Fursa, a Kiev-based investment banker at Dragon Capital. Shoring up state finances means little to voters left out of pocket. Liubov Spychak, 73-year pensioner from the town of Cherkasy, fought back tears as she described how expensive it had become to heat her two-bedroom apartment.

In December almost four-fifths of her pension went on utilities, she said by telephone: “I am very ill after working my whole life for a chemical plant. I can hardly walk and they rejected my application for subsidies.” In Skryhalivka, in the Fastiv district where Poro-shenko got around 65 percent of votes in 2014, villagers said many people were struggling.

With snow thick on the ground on a February afternoon and the thermometer on her living room table showing 5 degrees Celsius, Yurchenko said her pension after a 45-year career as a teacher and school principal did not go far enough.

Yurchenko estimates she would need to spend nearly four months’ worth of pension income to heat her home properly through the winter.

Presidential candidate, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko speaking to journalists during her briefing outside the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kiev, yesterday.

10 SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019EUROPE

UN warns of ‘complacency’ as measles cases soar globallyAFP PARIS

Just 10 countries were respon-sible for three-quarters of a global surge in measles cases last year, the UN children’s agency said, including one of the world’s richest nations, France.

Ninety-eight countries reported more cases of measles in 2018 compared with 2017, and the world body warned that

conflict, complacency and the growing anti-vaccine movement threatened to undo decades of work to tame the disease.

“This is a wakeup call. We have a safe, effective and inex-pensive vaccine against a highly contagious disease — a vaccine that saved almost a million lives every year over the last two decades,” said Henrietta Fore, executive director of Unicef. “These cases haven’t happened

overnight. Just as the serious out-breaks we are seeing today took hold in 2018, lack of action today will have disastrous conse-quences for children tomorrow.”

Measles is more contagious than tuberculosis or Ebola, yet it is eminently preventable with a vaccine that costs pennies.

But the WHO last year said cases worldwide had soared nearly 50 percent in 2018, killing around 136,000 people.

Ukraine, the Philippines and Brazil saw the largest year-on-year increases in cases. In Ukraine alone there were 35,120 cases — nearly 30,000 more than in 2017. Brazil saw 10,262 reported cases after having none at all the year before.

While most of the countries that experienced large spikes in cases are experiencing unrest or conflict, France saw its caseload jump by 2,269.

The resurgence of the disease in some countries has been linked to medically baseless claims linking the measles vaccine to autism, which have been spread in part on social media by members of the so-called “anti-vax” movement.

The WHO last month listed “vaccine hesitancy” among the top 10 most pressing global health threats for 2019.

“Almost all of these cases are

preventable and yet children are getting infected even in places where there is simply no excuse,” Fore said.

“Measles may be the disease, but all too often the real infection is misinformation, mistrust and complacency.”

Other nations included on Unicef’s top 10 list of cases increases were Yemen, Vene-zuela, Serbia, Madagascar, Sudan and Thailand.

Spain allows UK citizens to stay in no-deal BrexitREUETRS MADRID

Spain said yesterday it would allow British citizens living in the country to stay on if Britain leaves the European Union without a deal, giving them until the end of 2020 to apply for permanent residency and making it automatic for many.

With less than a month until Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has yet to convince parliament to back the Brexit deal she negotiated. That leaves open the possibility of an abrupt exit with no agreement.

Spain has one of the largest British expat communities in the EU and has been at pains to reassure them that their rights will be protected after Brexit.

Spain’s Brexit contingency plan makes clear that measures agreed by Spain would be con-ditional on the same terms applying to Spaniards living and working in Britain.

“Our main objective is that no British or Spanish citizen is left unprotected, neither they nor their relatives,” Foreign Minister Josep Borrell told a news con-ference. Spain plans at first to allow British nationals to stay if they hold a simple certificate of residency delivered to them, as to any other EU citizen, before Britain’s exit, Spain’s draft decree published yesterday showed.

If they don’t hold such a doc-ument, they can still stay on until their situation is resolved.

British nationals and their families would then have to apply for a foreigner’s identity card by the end of 2020, to

establish their permanent right to stay in the country.

If they already had per-manent residency rights in Spain, the process will be “nearly automatic,” the draft decree said. In other cases, temporary resi-dency will be granted.

More than 300,000 British citizens are registered in Spain and an unknown number unreg-istered, the Spanish government said. The new residency process would apply to about 400,000 people, it estimated.

The Brexit contingency leg-islation also applies to Gibraltar, Borrell said, while stressing that Madrid will insist on having a say on the application of any Brexit measure to the peninsula.

The bill will be sent immedi-ately to parliament, before Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s gov-ernment faces early elections. The Spanish government approved a decree last month to hire 1,735 new public workers to deal with the consequences of Brexit.

Students seek climate change solutionREUTERS HAMBURG

Thousands of students in the German port city of Hamburg marched out of school yester-dayled by teenage Swedish envi-ronmental activist Greta Thunberg to call for more action on climate change.

The protest is part of a global movement known as “School Strike 4 Climate” or “Fridays For Future” launched last August when Thunberg began protesting outside the Swedish parliament on school days.

About 3,000 students marched through the streets of the port city chanting: “We are here, we are loud, because you are stealing our future.”

Thunberg said the school strikes would go on until politi-cians took firmer action against climate change.

“For way too long, the poli-ticians and the people in power have gotten away with not doing anything to fight the climate crisis. But we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer,” she said.

The Hamburg demonstrators also demanded an end to coal-fired energy. Germany is planning to phase out coal by 2038 and has imposed higher emission standards on cars, but higher costs for cleaner vehicles and power are concerns for the government and the industry.

Last month, the 16-year-old Thunberg joined protests in

Belgium, where she won a European Union pledge to spend billions of euros combating climate change during the next decade.

The youth initiative has called for nationwide strikes on March 15 as part of an interna-tional day of action by students in which more than 40 countries are expected to participate.

German Environment Min-ister Svenja Schulze said on Twitter the protests were impressive.

But Ties Rabe, education senator for Hamburg state, said that although he supported the young people’s attempts to make the world a better place: “No one improves the world by skipping school”.

A 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist, Greta Thunberg (centre), taking part in a protest claiming for urgent measures to combat climate change, in Hamburg, Germany, yesterday.

Our main objective is that no British or Spanish citizen is left unprotected, neither they nor their relatives: Foreign Minister Josep Borrell

Brexit extension could draw legal challenge: German ReportREUTERS BERLIN

Britain could face an EU legal challenge if it seeks to delay Brexit because of the impact on EU legislative elections, a legal opinion produced for Germany’s Bundestag said, potentially making it difficult for Berlin to back anything but a short extension.

A non-binding legal opinion, written by experts in the German lower house’s Europe department as an aid for lawmakers, may raise doubts about whether Berlin could back the longer delay which pro-EU campaigners would need to stage a refer-

endum on halting Brexit.“In all scenarios, legal pro-

visions appear worth consid-ering to protect the legitimacy of the European Parliament and its decisions from the political and legal risks that may be associated with an extended deadline,” the opinion read.

The next European Par-liament will be elected on May 23-26.

Should Brexit negotiations be extended up to the formation of the next European Parliament and Britain not take part in the elections, the Bundestag report said rights of its citizens and those from other EU member states resident in Britain would likely be violated.

Russian spy poisoning site declared decontaminatedAFP LONDON

The English town of Salisbury is officially decontaminated, the government said yesterday, almost a year after it was the scene of a nerve agent attack on Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal.

The former double agent’s house and 11 other suspect sites have been ruled safe after an 11-month clean up by military teams in the sleepy town in Wiltshire, southwest England.

Skripal and his adult daughter were discovered unconscious on a Salisbury park bench on March 4 after they were poisoned by what investigators said was a highly toxic nerve agent, Novichok.

The British government said the

attempted assassination was “almost cer-tainly” approved by the Russian state.

“The completion of clean-up work... marks a significant milestone in South Wiltshire’s return to normality following the sickening Novichok nerve agent attack last year,” said the Department for Envi-ronment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Skripal’s home was partially dis-mantled as part of the decontamination, requiring a “sealed frame” to be erected around the building — which sits on a quiet cul-de-sac — before military teams took down the roof.

“Work will begin shortly to reconstruct and refurbish the house so it can return to being a home again,” said Alistair Cun-ningham, chair of the South Wiltshire Recovery Coordinating Group.

“Salisbury has proved it is resilient, positive and looking forward and we are working on a range of regeneration

projects and events to focus on an even better future for the city and south Wilt-shire,” he added.

Hungary leader faces revolt in EU parliamentary groupingAP BRUSSELS

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seeing growing oppo-sition from partner center-right parties in the EU Parliament, a revolt that has the potential to impact upon May’s elections.

Several Christian Democrat parties have voiced their oppo-sition to the continued mem-bership of the EPP umbrella group of Orban’s Fidesz party. In recent years, Orban has been

strongly identified with anti-migrant rhetoric.

One party from Luxembourg and two from Belgium wrote in a letter to the grouping’s presi-dency asking for Fidesz to be excluded because the Hungarian leader “has been acting in striking contradiction” with the EPP’s Christian Democrat values.

The EPP, they said, was too important “to be undermined within our own ranks by what we are so determined to fight: nationalism-based populism and

open hostility against European integration.”

Dutch and Portuguese parties have echoed that complaint, which has swollen over recent months — that Orban is too far to the political right of traditional Christian Democrat values.

Maxime Prevot, the leader of the Belgian francophone CdH said Friday that “the excesses of Orban were no longer admissible and can no longer be supported.”

Orban’s stance on migrants from conflict zones has alarmed

many within the group. He has accused European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who is part of the EPP, for being too lax on immigration. Orban has plastered Budapest with posters showing Juncker as a gloating force of evil.

Juncker’s Commission issued a rebuttal against Orban’s alle-gations — hardly the unity the grouping wants to display three months ahead of elections.

Dutch Christian Democrat leader Rutger Ploum said “recent

events have shown that informal talks with Fidesz no longer have the desired effect.”

And Portugal’s CDS/PP party said in a letter to the EPP presi-dency that the differences with Fidesz “are too substantial” for Orban’s party to remain inside the group.

Orban hopes anti-migration forces will become a majority in all EU institutions, including the EU Parliament and EU Com-mission, the bloc’s executive body.

A file photo of members of the fire brigade in green biohazard encapsulated suits at The Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury, southern England.

French journalists sacked after online bullying scandalAFP PARIS

Two French journalists were sacked yesterday for their part in an online bullying scandal that has shaken the country’s media, industry sources said.

David Doucet, the web editor of the hip Les Inrockupt-ibles magazine, and his deputy Francois-Luc Doyez, are the first to lose their jobs for their involvement in the social media “boy’s club” called the “League of LOL”.

A source at the magazine said that its management had taken the decision because of the men’s “unprofessional conduct”.

Members of the male-dom-inated closed Facebook group were accused of targeting their feminist and minority col-leagues for online abuse.

The French government has vowed to tighten laws on hate speech and harassment in the wake of the scandal, which broke last month.

Doucet had already admitted setting up false celebrity social media accounts and being behind two tele-phone hoaxes, including one designed to humiliate a female television presenter. He had apologised for the “disgust-ingness” of his acts on Twitter.

11SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019 EUROPE/ AMERICAS

US hits Caracas officials with sanctions over aidAFP WASHINGTON

The United States imposed sanc-tions yesterday on six Vene-zuelan security officials for obstructing aid that Washington had tried to force in as part of its effort to support the country’s opposition leader against Pres-ident Nicolas Maduro.

“We are sanctioning members of Maduro’s security forces in response to the repre-hensible violence, tragic deaths, and unconscionable torching of food and medicine destined for sick and starving Venezuelans,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

The six include Major General Richard Jesus Lopez Vargas, the commander of the Venezuelan National Guard, and Jesus Maria Mantilla Oliveros, commander of a unit tasked by Maduro with reinforcing security on the Brazilian border, the Treasury Department said yesterday.

The sanctions freeze any assets in the United States by the six security officials as well as US financial dealings with them.

The United States, backed by Colombia and Brazil, last weekend tried to push badly

needed aid into the crisis-torn country in coordination with Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, whom Washington has recognised as interim president.

Venezuelan forces blocked the operation, fearing it was a precursor to an invasion as Pres-ident Donald Trump has not ruled out the use of force to depose Maduro.

Four people were killed in the ensuing melee and Guaido was stuck outside Venezuela, although he has vowed to return.

“The United States strongly supports the efforts of Interim President Juan Guaido, and Treasury will continue to target Maduro loyalists prolonging the suffering of the victims of this man-made humanitarian crisis,” Mnuchin said.

Russia and China on Thursday vetoed a US and European-backed resolution at the United Nations that would

have called for new presidential elections in Venezuela and unimpeded deliveries of human-itarian aid.

Guaido has said that 300,000 people could die without an influx of aid into Ven-ezuela, where Maduro’s leftist government presides over a crumbling economy in a crisis that according to the United Nations has caused 2.7 million people to flee since 2015.

The Trump administration has rejected Maduro’s appeals for direct talks, saying there is nothing to negotiate so long as he stays in power.

Honduran Air Force soldiers load humanitarian aid for Venezuela on an aircraft at Hernan Acosta Mejia air base, in Tegucigalpa, yesterday.

Russia vows more support for ‘friend’ MaduroAFP MOSCOW

Russia vowed to maintain support for the embattled regime of its Venezuelan “friend” President Nicolas Maduro, including with human-itarian aid supplies.

During talks with Vene-zuelan Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said President Vladimir Putin

expressed “support and soli-darity for his colleague and friend” Maduro in the country’s political standoff with the opposition.

“Russia will continue to assist the Venezuelan author-ities in resolving social and eco-nomic problems, including through the provision of legit-imate humanitarian aid.”

Battered by an economic m e l t d o w n , V e n e z u e l a descended into political crisis

when opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president in January and asserted that Maduro was no longer legitimate.

Maduro and his allies —including Russia — have accused Washington of attempting to carry out a coup against his government.

Lavrov said Russia had recently sent to Venezuela 7.5 tonnes of medical supplies and received a request for more

shipments. “We are currently consid-

ering it.” He added that Russia was

also sending “mass supplies” of wheat to Venezuela, claiming those shipments helped nor-malise the humanitarian situ-ation in the country, which is crisis-ridden despite its oil wealth.

Lavrov renewed warnings to the US not to intervene mili-tarily in Venezuela.

Nato chief says bloc preparing for more Russian missilesAFP SOFIA

Nato Chief Jens Stoltenberg said the military alliance needs to be ready for a world with more Russian missiles, after a UN warning that the global arms control system is collapsing.

“Nato does not want a new Cold war, we don’t want a new arms race. And therefore we call on Russia to come back into compliance with the INF (Inter-mediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty,” Stoltenberg told reporters during a visit to the Bulgarian capital Sofia.

“At the same time we need to be prepared for a world without the INF treaty and with more Russian missiles,” he added.

The US began the process of exiting the key missile treaty last month in response to Moscow’s deployment of a new missile — the 9M729 — that Nato says breaches the pact.

In response, Russia announced its own withdrawal from the cornerstone treaty signed in 1987, which banned ground-launched missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometres.

The crisis has sparked fears of a new arms race in Europe.

Earlier this week, UN Sec-retary General Antonio Guterres warned that “key components of the international arms control architecture are collapsing”.

“These new Russian missiles are nuclear capable, they can reach European cities, they are hard to detect and they have little warning time so they reduce the threshold for any potential use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict,” Stoltenberg said.

Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who will host his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on Monday, added that he had agreed “to use to the maximum the strength of diplomacy, our bilateral ties (...) to prevent an arms race with these monstrous missiles.”

Bulgaria — an EU and Nato member — has also preserved close economic and energy cooperation with Russia, reflecting deep historical and cultural ties between the two countries.

But Borisov reiterated his country’s loyalty to Nato.

“Bulgaria is not Russia’s Trojan horse in Nato — on the contrary, Bulgaria is among Nato’s most disciplined and most loyal members,” Borisov said.

The sanctions freeze any assets in the United States by the six security officials as well as US financial dealings with them.

Kosovo rejects idea of land swap with SerbiaAP TIRANA

Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci yesterday has rejected any idea of a land swap with Serbia, saying that “a land swap would never occur.”

Last year, Thaci had pro-posed a “border correction,” with Kosovo getting Serbia’s southern Presevo Valley and giving nothing in exchange, without

explaining how Serbia would accept that.

Tensions between the neigh-bours has persisted since Kos-ovo’s 1998-99 war for inde-pendence that ended with a 78-day Nato air campaign, then to be run by the UN.

Kosovo officially declared independence from Serbia in 2008, which Belgrade refuses to recognise.

The European Union has told

Serbia and Kosovo they must normalise their ties if either is to have a chance of joining the bloc. Some officials in Serbia and Kosovo have suggested a land swap — specifically Serbia’s Presevo Valley for Kosovo’s northern Mitrovica.

Kosovo-Serbia negotiations, starting in 2011 under the EU’s auspices, have been strained after Pristina’s decision to set a 100 percent import tariff on Serb

and Bosnian goods until Belgrade recognizes its sovereignty and stops preventing it from joining international organizations.

Belgrade said it won’t take further part in the negotiations until the tariff is revoked.

Thaci also turned down the idea of a Greater Albania saying that “Kosovo’s union, the union of the Albanian nation is the union with the EU and Nato and the eternal friendship with US.”

Brazil to launch graft probe into dam disasterREUTERS BRASILIA

Brazil’s authorities will inves-tigate miner Vale SA over possible corruption in misleading officials about the safety of its dam that burst and killed hundreds, a spokes-woman for the Mines and Energy Ministry said yesterday.

If found to have violated Brazil’s 2013 anti-corruption law, Vale could face a fine of up to 20 percent of its 2018 gross revenue. In 2017, the company reported $28.79bn in revenue.

Vale is due to report fourth-quarter 2018 earnings on March 27.

Bloomberg first reported that the ministry’s mining sec-retary Alexandre Vidigal de Oliveira said in an interview that he had requested an inves-tigation be opened into whether Vale had colluded with auditors to misrepresent the safety of the dam.

Vale shares fell as much as 5.4 percent after that report was published, before partly recov-ering to be down 1.6 percent in early afternoon trading.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A tailings dam at Vale’s Corrego do Feijao iron ore mine in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais burst on January 25, releasing a torrent of mining waste that buried its workers and local residents. The disaster in the town of Bruamdinho has left at least 182 confirmed dead and more than 100 missing and presumed dead.

The National Mining Agency (ANM) will initiate the investi-gation, the spokeswoman said.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on board as it is rolled out of the horizontal integration facility at Launch Complex 39A as preparations continue for the Demo-1 mission, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, yesterday. The Demo-1 mission will be the first launch of a commercially built and operated American spacecraft and space system designed for humans as part of Nasa’s Commercial Crew Program.

Ready for test flight

Price of Michael Jackson’s ranch dropsAFP LOS ANGELES

Michael Jackson’s (pictured) Neverland Ranch in California is back on the market for $31m, a steep cut from the $100m asking price four years ago.

The 2,700-acre estate located near Los Olivos and renamed Sycamore Valley Ranch features a main house with six bedrooms along with three guest houses, a four-acre lake with a waterfall, tennis courts, several barns and animal shelter facilities.

The dramatic price cut for the iconic property is partly due to years of drought in the region that affected the real estate market, Kyle Forsyth, one of the listing agents, told US media.

He said the compound has been well maintained and “with the drought ending and the Santa Ynez Valley in full bloom,” now was the best time to sell.

Jackson reportedly paid $19.5m for the property in the 1980s but a real estate investment firm bought it in 2008 for $22.5m after the singer

defaulted on a loan. The King of Pop died the fol-

lowing year.News of the sale comes as

HBO is set to air tomorrow a four-hour documentary titled “Leaving Neverland,” which includes the testimonies of two men who claim Jackson abused them as children all over the ranch, including the attic, the master bedroom and the pool.

Jackson faced multiple alle-gations of child abuse during his lifetime.

His ranch was raided in 2003 as part of a child moles-tation case against him and police at the time seized a large collection of pornography and images of nude children.

Jackson was acquitted in the case in 2005.

Canada approves extradition hearing against Huawei CFOREUTERS OTTAWA

The Canadian government said it would allow an extradition hearing to proceed against the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, who was detained in Canada late last year.

Meng Wanzhou, currently under house arrest, will appear in a Vancouver court on March 6 to set the date of the hearing. Meng and Huawei face US charges of conspiring to violate US sanctions on Iran.

“Today, department of Justice Canada officials issued an authority to proceed, for-mally commencing an

extradition process in the case of Ms. Meng Wanzhou,” the gov-ernment said in a statement.

“The department is satisfied that ... there is sufficient evi-dence to be put before an extra-dition judge for decision.”

Legal experts had predicted Ottawa would give the go-ahead, given the close judicial relationship between Canada and the United States.

It could be years though before she is ever sent to the US, since Canada’s slow-moving justice system allows many deci-sions to be appealed.

The decision is likely to sour Canada’s already bad relations with China, which is demanding Meng to be released.

12 SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019AMERICAS / CLASSIFIEDS

Trump ordered Kushner’s top-secret clearance: NYTREUTERS WASHINGTON

US President Donald Trump ordered his chief-of-staff in May to grant his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner a top-secret security clearance, the New York Times reported.

It said senior administration officials were troubled by the decision, which prompted then White House Chief-of-Staff John Kelly to write an internal memo about how he had been ordered to give Kushner the top-secret clearance.

The White House counsel at the time, Donald McGahn, also wrote an internal memo out-lining concerns raised about Kushner and how McGahn had recommended against the decision, it said.

The Times said the memos contradicted a statement made by Trump in an interview with the newspaper in January that he had no role in Kushner’s receiving his clearance.

Asked about the report, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: “We don’t comment on security clearances.”

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Kushner’s attorney Abbe Lowell, said in an email that White House and security clearance officials last year asserted that Kushner’s clearance was “handled in the

regular process with no pressure from anyone.”

“New stories, if accurate, do not change what was affirmed at the time,” Mirijanian said.

Kushner’s temporary clearance was suspended by Kelly in February 2018 along with other officials operating under temporary clearances as part of measures to tighten pro-cedures after White House staff secretary Rob Porter was fired when his two ex-wives raised charges of domestic abuse.

Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings said in a statement the Times report indi-cated Trump “may have granted access to our country’s most sen-sitive classified information to his son-in-law against the advice of career staff.”

Earlier this year, Cummings said the House of Representa-tives Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which he heads, would investigate the White House security clearance process.

Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings said in a statement the Times report indicated Trump “may have granted access to our country’s most sensitive classified information to his son-in-law against the advice of career staff”.

Trump claims Cohen’s book would prove ex-aide a liarAP WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump claimed yesterday that his former lawyer Michael Cohen shopped a book to publishers that portrayed Trump in a favourable light, vastly at odds with Cohen’s damning testimony to Congress.

In a tweet, Trump said Cohen’s manuscript was a “love letter” to him and said Congress should demand the manuscript as evidence Cohen’s testimony this week was “fraudulent” and “dishonest.”

Cohen told a House panel Trump was a “racist,” ‘’conman” and liar. He testified that Trump used his inner circle to cover up politically damaging allegations,

and lied throughout the 2016 election campaign about his business interests in Russia.

“Congress must demand the transcript of Michael Cohen’s new book, given to publishers a short time ago,” Trump tweeted. “Your heads will spin when you see the lies, misrepresentations and contradictions against his Thursday testimony. Like a dif-ferent person! He is totally discredited!”

Cohen testified to the House Oversight committee in public on Wednesday and to a House intelligence panel behind closed doors on Thursday.

A person familiar with nego-tiations confirmed Cohen’s book was submitted for auction, and that Hachette discussed an offer, but didn’t reach a deal.

Melania to take ‘Be Best’ initiative on the roadAP WASHINGTON

First Lady Melania Trump is going on a three-state tour to promote her “Be Best” initiative.

The White House said Mrs. Trump will travel next week to Oklahoma, Washington and Nevada.

Mrs. Trump will visit a school in Tulsa and a technology company near Seattle on

Monday. On Tuesday, she will attend an opioids town hall in Las Vegas.

The first lady unveiled her child well-being initiative last year. The programme aims to teach children to behave responsibly online and to avoid drugs.

In a statement, Mrs. Trump saidshe wants to “shine a spot-light” on programmes that are helping children.

Flood woesA resident and his dog navigate through a flooded neighbourhood, in Guerneville, California, yesterday. The Russian River has crested over flood stage and is now receding after floodwaters inundate the town of Guerneville. The town is currently under mandatory evacuation and roads leading into the town have been flooded over.

Homeland Security extends migration protectionsAP WASHINGTON

Homeland Security officials have formally extended protec-tions that allowed immigrants from four countries to live and work legally in the US.

The move yesterday com-plies with a federal judge’s ruling that halted the decision to discontinue temporary pro-tected status for people from Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti and El Salvador. The California judge ruled in October.

The protections were set to expire in May, but will be extended until the preliminary injunction remains in effect.

Temporary protected status is granted to countries ravaged by natural disasters or war and lets citizens of those countries remain in the US until the situ-ation improves back home.

About 300,000 people have received those protections.

Trump administration offi-cials had moved to discontinue protections for many countries; several lawsuits have been filed.

Last month, Department of Homeland and other indi-viduals and US agencies were sued over the Trump adminis-tration’s newly implemented “Migrant Protection Protocols” initiative, which forces some asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while they await immi-gration court dates.

13SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2019 CLASSIFIEDS

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Plastic found in deepest ocean animals, says research AFP PARIS

Animals living in the deepest ocean trenches have been found with plastic fragments in their gut, according to new research published showing how manmade pollution reaches into the bowels of the planet.

More than 300 million tonnes of plastics are produced annually, and there are at least five trillion plastic pieces floating in our oceans.

Because deep-sea explo-ration is expensive and time-consuming, most studies on plastic pollution up until now had been close to the surface, showing a widespread level of plastic contamination in fish, turtles, whales and sea birds.

Now a British team of researchers say they have dis-covered cases of plastic ingestion among tiny shrimp in six of the world’s deepest ocean trenches.

In the Mariana Trench east of the Philippines, the deepest depression on Earth, 100 percent of the animals studied had plastic fibres in their digestive tracts. “Half of me

was expecting to find some-thing but that is huge,” said Alan Jamieson, from Newcastle University’s School of Natural and Environmental Sciences.

Jamieson and his team nor-mally spend their time looking for new species in the depths of the ocean.

But they realised that during the course of expedi-tions dating back a decade they had accumulated dozens of specimens of a species of tiny shrimp that lives between 6000-11,000 metres (19,500-36,000 feet) beneath the surface.

They decided to look for plastic. “We are sitting on the deepest dataset in the world, so if we find (plastics) in these, we are done,” Jamieson said.

The team was astonished by just how widespread the plastic contamination at extreme depths proved to be.

For instance, the Peru-Chile Trench in the southeast Pacific is around 15,000 kilo-metres (9,300 miles) from the Japan Trench. Yet plastic was found in both.

“It’s off Japan, off New Zealand, off Peru, and each trench is phenomenally deep,”

Jamieson said. “The salient point is that they are consist-ently found in animals all around the Pacific at extraor-dinary depths so let’s not waste time. It’s everywhere.”

Of the 90 individual crea-tures the team dissected, 65 — over 72 percent — contained at

l e a s t o n e p l a s t i c microparticle.

The study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, said it was unclear if the particles had been ingested by fish at higher depths which then died and sank.

But when the team

analysed the fibres — most of which appeared to be clothes fabrics such as nylon — they found that the plastics’ atomic bonds had shifted compared to brand new material, suggesting they were several years old. Microplastic particles are either dumped directly into the seas

via sewers and rivers or form when larger chunks of plastic break down over time.

Once they start gathering bacteria, they get heavier and eventually sink.

“So even if not a single fibre were to enter the sea from this point forward, everything that’s in the sea now is going to even-tually sink, and once it’s in the deep sea where is the mech-anism to get it back?” asked Jamieson.

“We are piling all our crap into the place we know least about.” Because plastic con-tamination is now so wide-spread, even at extreme depths, the team cautioned that it was nearly impossible to know what effect plastic ingestion was having on bottom-dwelling species.

“These particles could just pass straight through the animal, but in the animals we looked at they must be blocking them. The equivalent would be for you to swallow a 2-metre polypropylene rope and expect that not to have an adverse affect on your health,” said Jamieson.

“There’s no good aspect to this.”

Plastic bags trapped in a bush are seen on the side of a road in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, yesterday.

Snowman-like art called “Weathermen,” designed by Jaemee Studio of Jersey City, New Jersey, adorn the Red River Mutual Trail in Winnipeg, Canada, yesterday.

Snow art

Scientists see evidence of underground lakes system on MarsAP BERLIN

Scientists say images of craters taken by European and American space probes show there likely once was a planet-wide system of underground lakes on Mars.

Data collected by Nasa and ESA probes orbiting the red planet provide the first geo-logical evidence for an ancient Martian groundwater system,

according to a study by researchers in Italy and the Netherlands published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Francesco Salese, one of the scientists involved, said in an email yesterday that the findings confirm earlier models and smaller-scale studies, and that the underground lakes may have been connected to each other.

The notion of water on Mars has long fascinated scientists

because of the possibility that the planet may have once harbored similar conditions to those that allowed life to develop on Earth. Patches of ice previously spotted on Mars provide tantalizing hints of a watery past for the arid world. Researchers said flow channels, pool-shaped valleys and fan-shaped sediment deposits seen in dozens of kil-ometers-deep craters in Mars’ northern hemisphere would

have needed water to form. Co-author Gian Gabriele Ori said an ocean some scientists speculate Mars may once have had between three and four billion years ago could even have been connected to the underground lakes.

The researchers also saw signs of minerals such as clay on Mars that would have required long periods of exposure to water to form. Ralf Jaumann, a

planetary scientist at the German Aerospace Center who wasn’t directly involved in the study, said such sites are a good starting point for future Mars landers to search for signs of ancient life.

However Jack Mustard, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University who also wasn’t part of the study, ques-tioned the paper’s claims, saying he didn’t see evidence of under-ground lakes in the data.

IANS LONDON

Making people more aware of their own internal body signals, such as heartbeat or breathing rate, could promote a positive body image, says a new study.

The findings, published in the journal Body Image, suggests that awareness of internal body signals can affect the way we see ourselves. “Our research finds associations between the awareness of internal body signals and measures of body image. This could have implications for promoting positive body image, for example modifying interoceptive awareness through mindfulness-based practices,” said lead author Jen-nifer Todd from the Anglia Ruskin University in the UK. The study found that people who can sustain attention towards their internal body signals tended to report higher levels of positive body image.

The researchers also found that people who trust their internal body signals are more likely to hold a positive view of their own body, and be less preoc-cupied with being overweight. “However, the research, which was conducted with exclusively British partic-ipants, also demonstrates that the relationship between interoceptive awareness and body image is complex and requires further investigation,” Todd said.

Learn how to promote positive body image

IANS LONDON

Working for nine plus hours a day could put women at higher risk of depression, but not men, finds a study.

Women who worked extra long hours, more than 55 hours a week, had 7.3 percent more depressive symptoms than women working a standard 35-40 hours a week.

However, the same was not the case in men, the study found.

“This is an observational study. Although we cannot establish the exact causes, we do know many women face the additional burden of doing a larger share of domestic labour than men, leading to extensive total work hours, added time pressures and overwhelming responsibilities,” said lead researcher Gill Weston, post-doctoral student at the Uni-versity College London.

“Additionally, women who work most weekends tend to be concentrated in low-paid service sector jobs, which have been linked to higher levels of depression,” Weston said.

For the study the team included 11,215 working men and 12,188 working women. The study also showed working on weekends was linked to a higher risk of depression among both men (3.4 percent) and women (4.6 percent).

Nine-hour work raises depression risk in women

Conservationists release 155 giant tortoises on Galapagos islandAFP QUITO

Conservationists have released 155 giant tortoises on an island in the Gala-pagos to help replace a similar species that died out 150 years ago, officials said.

The young tortoises, of the breed Chelonoidis hoodensis, were set free on Santa Fe island, the Galapagos National Park service announced.

The tortoises, each aged around 10-12 years old, were raised at the Fausto Llerena breeding centre and are part of a programme to repopulate the island at the centre of the Pacific archipelago.

Also known as the Espanola Giant Tortoise, the newly freed reptiles are a similar species to the Chelonoidis spp,

which are today extinct. They originally come from Espanola Island, also known as Hood Island, in the far southeast of the Galapagos chain. “The tortoises that have been released carry a microchip under their skin with a per-manent number attached to make it easier to track them,” said Jorge Carrion, the head of the Galapagos National Park.

The newly released tortoises join 394 others which were set free on the 9.5 square mile island. The programme, run by the national park service and the NGO Galapagos Conservancy, is due to run until 2026.

The giant tortoises are “engineers of the ecosystem” because they help spread vegetation in their natural habitat, said Carrion. The first of the creatures was released on to the island

in 2015, said Washington Tapia, in charge of Galapagos Conservancy’s giant turtle project. The animals are “between 10 and 12 years old and should start to reproduce in the next five to seven years,” he said. Located some 600 miles off the coast of South America, the islands belong to Ecuador and are classified as a Unesco World Heritage Site.

The islands are best known for their unique flora and fauna, which inspired naturalist Charles Darwin to write his landmark 1859 study on evolution, “The Origin of Species.” Giant tortoises are believed to have arrived on the remote volcanic island chain about three to four million years ago, borne by ocean currents. With no natural predators, they spread across the islands and split into different species.