THE FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE DAILY IN FREE KUWAITEstablished in 1977 / www.arabtimesonline.com

THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021 / ZUL-QAADAH 28, 1442 AH emergency number 112 NO. 17734 16 PAGES 150 FILS

tennis marketsPage 15

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KAC INCREASES FLIGHTS TO LONDON TO 3 PER WEEKKuwait ups passenger capacity, flightsKUWAIT CITY, July 7, (Agencies): Kuwait’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has announced increasing the operating capacity and accomodation capability for incoming passengers to 5,000, effective today (Wednesday).

The passenger capacity will be “open” for all without restrictions, said DGCA Director General Yousef Al-Fozan said on Wednesday.

He made the remarks in a press statement following a visit by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Sheikh Hamad Jaber Al-Ali Al-Sabah to the DGCA headquarters to express congratulations on winning a seat in the Arab Civil Aviation Organization.

Flights’ operating capacity has been increased, reaching up to 67 outgoing and incoming flights per day, Al-Fozan dis-closed.

The airport authorities are keen on enforcing health precautions (namely against COVID-19), he added, indicating that all passengers must abide by the health protocols.

The DGCA is ready to serve citizens and expatriates according to latest Cabinet decision effective August 1, the adminis-tration Director General has affirmed.

People with valid residency in Kuwait are allowed to enter the country regardless of their profession, he clarified further, however, they must have taken double jabs of the anti-COVID-19 vaccines, accredited in the State of Kuwait.

Kuwait Airways declared on Wednesday increasing weekly flights to London to three starting July 10.

Crown Prince meets representatives of COVID committee

KUWAIT CITY: His Highness the Amir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ah-mad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah sent a cable of condolences on Tuesday to Russian President Vladimir Putin expressing sincere grief toward victims of a plane that crashed in Russia’s Far East.

His Highness Deputy Amir and Crown Prince Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Ham-ad Al-Sabah sent similar cables to the Russian President. (KUNA)

❑ ❑ ❑

KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait’s Audit

Bureau’s keen eye on fi nances of authorities and bodies under its su-pervisory jurisdictions resulted in saving up to KD 1.08 billion (USD 3.5 billion) that could have been wasted over the past four years.

Yousef Al-Fozan, the bureau assistant undersecretary for over-seeing accounts and fi nancial affairs, said in a statement, on Wednesday, marking its 57th an-niversary that the department, in line with its thrifty policy, spared the State Treasury prospected (un-desired) expenditures estimated at KD 467.7 million (approximately USD 1.54 billion) during the 2019-2020 fi scal year. (KUNA)

‘Inaccurate assertions’To: Ahmed Al-Jarallah,

Dear Editor-in-Chief

First, we would like to express our appreciation for your inter-est in covering issues unfolding in Ethiopia in your daily English language newspaper, the Arab Times. However, we regret your inaccurate assertion in the Opin-ion Section of the newspaper un-der the title “The Abyssinian Nile, Houthi Yemen, Persian Wahrez, Hassan Irlou” published on June 29th, 2021.

In this editorial article, you made recurrent mistakes and for-warded erroneous insights which are totally unrelated based solely on your own faulty judgements and proclivity of distortion to-wards Ethiopia and its policies.

In fact, it is not the first time that you have shown us vividly your partiality and deliberate ig-norance of facts towards Ethiopia, particularly on the Nile issue and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Your favouritism on the issues overweighed the facts and the truth on the ground, which exposes your repeated failure to contribute posi-tively to bridging the gaps among brotherly countries on the utiliza-tion of the Nile for the benefit of their people.

First, your argument that Ira-nian companies are participating in the construction of the GERD is a baseless and unfounded claim. Your insight surely emanated from your personal desire to deliberate-ly create confusion among your readers, international and regional partners.

You should know that the Gov-ernment and People of Ethiopia are proudly building the GERD with their own money. Ethiopians from all walks of life, at home and in the diaspora, are supporting the dam with dedication in the face of challenges.

Secondly, your assertion that “Ethiopia is working to make Sudan and Egypt thirsty by im-prisoning Nile waters” is totally frivolous, beyond the compre-hension of a healthy mind and an absurd fallacy, born out of mere appalling fancy which ignores truth and science. How on earth can a country imprison and block a river, the longest in the world, which stretches over thousands of miles with a significant volume of water?

Thirdly, your attempt to portray the GERD as a security threat to Sudan and Egypt and the Arab world in general is totally mislead-ing and unacceptable. The GERD, as a hydro power dam, will not

pose any threat; it is rather a means for accelerating regional economic integration with multiple benefits not only for Ethiopia but also to downstream countries as well as the region at large.

As you probably know, Ethiopia contributes 86% of the Nile flow or 77 bcm per year. The country has a population of more than 110 million. And more than 65 mil-lion Ethiopians have no access to electricity, where as the country’s energy demand is growing by 20% every year. As a result, almost two thirds of school children in Ethio-pia are forced to stay in darkness. And millions of women still forced to travel long distance for fetching water and firewood.

Ethiopia’s endeavours to uplift its people from abrupt poverty by utilizing its own resources includ-ing the Abay River without in-flicting significant harm to down-stream countries should not in any way be taken as a threat for Sudan and Egypt.

In fact, these allegations of yours would not have been given in return to a country and its peo-ple who have a strong historical and religious connection with the Arab world, and who served as a haven for the refugees of the companions of the Prophet Mu-hammad (peace be upon him) fleeing persecution during the first Hijra. As a Muslim, you could have used your knowledge to tell the truth about how Ethio-pia was a place of refuge for the first Muslims.

As a journalist you could also have made many headlines on how hundreds of Syrians who have set up home in Ethiopia, are living in the country with harmony and re-spect, to the extent that they were invited to share Ramadan lftar with the Prime Minister!

As a writer, you could tell your audience about this good past; as well as Ethiopia’s sincere desire to live with Muslim nations and their people forever in harmony, love, and peace today and in the future as in the past.

As the Nile is a transboundary water resource, Ethiopia passion-ately believes that its management and utilization should be based on internationally recognized princi-ples of equitable and reasonable utilization, causing no significant harm, and cooperation.

We still call on journalists like yoursel to be impartial, fact based, and focus on the matters that sus-tain peace and avoid tensions among these countries.

Public Diplomacy Department Embassy of EthiopiaKuwait

THE economic concept is based on the principle that ‘the owner is a consumer’, and this is what the late Amir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad, may God have mercy on him, ad-opted after his return from a visit to China by establishing a coop-erative society in every region owned by the consumers of the respective areas to provide ser-vices at moderate prices.

However, at the end of the fiscal

year, these cooperatives made huge profits. Some of these soci-eties which were run by a corrupt mentality were losers.

When the private sector is run by certain efficiency, it succeeds, so why not apply the concept to the electricity, water, health and teaching sectors? Isn’t that the right thing to do?

…Yet, tomorrow is another day.

Zahed Matar

The corporation said on its Twitter ac-count that the flights would be organized on Saturdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

KAC resumed operations to the British capital in the middle of the past month at a rate of a single flight a week.

It has re-arranged flights to Geneva, Munich and Frankfurt effective July 9 at a rate of two flights per week.

It has also declared renewing opera-tions to Paris, Malaga and Sarajevo.

On June 15, it declared starting three flights per week to Bodrum on Saturdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. And on June 18, it began organizing three flights a week to Trabzon on Sundays, Mondays and Fridays, in addition to the regular flights to Istanbul.

His Highness the Crown Prince Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah affirmed relentless support for the medical teams in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, and praised their role in dealing with the crisis, reports Al-Seyassah daily

He said this after receiving the Chair-man of the Supreme Advisory Commit-tee to confront COVID-19 pandemic and a member of the COVID-19 Vaccination Committee Dr. Khaled Al-Jarallah, and members of the COVID-19 Vaccination Committee of the Ministry of Health Dr. Khaled Al-Saeed and Dr. Mona Al-Ah-mad at Bayan Palace on Tuesday, July 6.

His Highness the Crown Prince praised the role played by the front-liners from all sectors of the country in facing the pan-demic since the time of its outbreak.

He affirmed that, “Everyone is working as one team to confront this pandemic”.

Front-linersMeanwhile, Dr. Khaled Al-Jarallah, on

his Twitter account, said he and his col-leagues were honored to visit His High-ness the Crown Prince and were graced by his supportive directives to the medi-cal staff and other front-liners in all sec-tors who have been fighting the pandemic for more than one year.

Also, in a post on his Twitter account, Dr. Khaled Al-Saeed said, “We were honored on Tuesday to visit His Highness the Crown Prince. We received his direc-tives, and his support for us and the medi-cal staff facing the pandemic, especially at this juncture of the crisis”.

He affirmed the keenness of His High-ness to “remind us that we are one team in the face of this health crisis”.

Dr. Al-Saeed thanked His Highness the Crown Prince for “his patience and for giving sufficient time to discuss the developments.”

Kuwait’s Ministry of Health (MoH) declared on Wednesday that a special team would scrutinize vaccine certificates given abroad before eing accredited and posted on the local official websites and platforms.

The MoH said in a statement that it ap-proved PCR certificates from a number of laboratories and medical centers in a number of countries.

However, a vaccinated arrival must take the PCR test three days after coming to the country.

As for the non-vaccinated, he (or she) is ought to do the examination six days after arrival, in line with the current medi-cal measures in Kuwait.

The vaccination against Covid-19 vi-rus has become a condition for appoint-ment in some government institutions, after the ‘Insurance Regulatory Unit’ of the Ministry of Commerce and Indus-try stipulated that obtaining at least one dose of approved vaccines can be con-sidered one of the aspects for appoint-ment, reports Al-Qabas daily quoting reliable sources.

LinkedThe same sources expect other govern-

ment institutions to follow suit especially those which are not linked to the Civil Service Commission (CSC)

In a related context, the daily learned that there is coordination between gov-ernment institutions and the Ministry of Health to provide vaccination to govern-ment employees at their places of work to make the government institutions a safer place for employees.

Also:KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait’s Ministry of Health refuted on Wednesday the rumors that were spread on social media outlets about the ministry denying private hospi-tals from importing coronavirus vaccines.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health issued a decree last February that permits private hospitals and health centers to im-port the approved COVID-19 vaccines.

In the same context, Union of the Owners of Private Medical Professions affirmed that importing medicines and vaccines must go through franchisees and registered medical companies, therefore, private hospitals can only give vaccines if provided by the those companies in coor-dination with the Ministry of Health.

Emirati astronaut, Nora Al Matrooshi, talks to her colleague, Mohammad Al Mulla, during their first public appearance at a news conference held by Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre

(MBRSC), in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, July 7. (AP)

Opinion

Letter to the Editor

Day by Day

By Ahmed Al-JarallahEditor-in-Chief, the Arab Times

THERE have been multiple attempts to harm the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) since its establishment on May 25, 1981. These malicious attempts were aimed at striking at the core of this historic project of brothers in the Gulf family. However, with every harmful attempt, the GCC house came out stronger and more solid than before.

Therefore, any current attempt to upset the relationship between the children of the same house is just a mirage. A good exam-ple is the recent GCC crisis that lasted for several years and the fuss that enveloped it, let alone the toxic arrows hurled at it in an attempt to frustrate its harmonize compo-sition, However, in the end, such mischie-vous attempts came to nothing during the GCC summit held at Al-Oula city in Saudi Arabia where the brothers met and ironed out issues as if nothing had happened.

In this institution, there are two main pillars - the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Often, those who fi sh in troubled wa-ters tried to capitalize on the differences of opinion on some issues, but they were met with disappointment as always. This was because the GCC was established to stay, and it continues with its mission to reach the total integration of its member states.

It is true that the envisaged achievements are not at the level that the Gulf people as-pire for, but that does not mean that any tran-sient disagreement would lead to its death.

For nearly a decade, this formidable in-stitution has been subjected to many high caliber challenges, starting with the Mus-lim Brotherhood Group’s attempt to sabo-tage its countries, then the Obama adminis-tration’s plan to cement the logic of Iranian conspiracy against the voice of reason and Gulf moderation, followed by the war in Yemen and the persistence of the Mullahs regime and its Houthi agents to undermine the strength of the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia, with the cooperation of the UAE, which is the second active force, and the rest of the Gulf states.

All these challenges fell at the doorstep of the GCC house, because the unity of this house depends on the unity of shared des-tiny and path which forms a great wall that renders it more resistant to turbulence than anything else.

In all regional and international forums, there are varied viewpoints stemming from each country’s vision of how to protect its interests ... This is normal between brothers.

Unfortunately, there are newspapers, media and communication sites - both Arab and Western - that capitalize on such dif-ferences of opinion, which would be purely technical. It seems they do so without go-ing back to the archives, and they present issues as if they were the only reality.

There are many differences within the OPEC regarding several fi les ... and this is not the fi rst time.

However, the differences in opinion over an issue does not spoil the friendship between these two brotherly pillars; rather, it always turns out to be benefi cial for the Gulf house as a whole.

This is what the people of the GCC coun-tries aspire for, especially since the two countries have wise and far-sighted lead-ers like King Salman bin Abdulaziz and his Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and the rest of the leaders of the Emirates, all of who are well aware of the challenges facing them.

The Arabian Gulf states are aware and collectively face the malice and ferocity of those stalking them. In addition, these icons - Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - are always protected by the in-sistence of the people and nations of the GCC for more unity and integration.

Therefore, we say to all those who seek to capitalize on differences in opinions to frustrate the unity of the GCC house - “You are tilling in the sea”.

Email: ahmed@aljarallah.com

Follow me on:

ahmedaljarallah@gmail.com

Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and thosewho till in the sea of ‘illusions’

Other Voices

Newswatch

When will God free usfrom our decisions?!

By Ali Ahmed Al-Baghli Former Minister of Oil

I wished to become a British and live in the country that once colonized a quarter of the globe when I read the statement of

their prime minister — Boris Johnson — about the so-called ‘Great Freedom Day’ in terms of restrictions related to corona-virus, which will be lifted on July 19. Therefore, it is no longer mandatory to wear a mask in public places starting from that day … Johnson also announced that the fourth stage of the roadmap to get out of corona restrictions include the end of work from home and restrictions on gatherings.

He also unveiled the plan to cancel quarantine for those coming from countries on the orange list of travel restrictions, if they are

fully vaccinated.In Kuwait, the more restrictions that

our Minister of Health — the young Sheikh — invents, the higher the number of infections and deaths.

A-Qabas daily reported on Tuesday that the infection rate has increased. Kuwait recorded the highest number of new corona cases on Monday — 1,977; increasing the total number of cases to 365,649 in a country whose population is almost four million citizens and expatri-ates, while the number of those who died

reached 2,029 and the number of those confi ned in intensive care units and other wards reached 18,514.

If decision-makers only respected themselves, their names, and their professional and political reputation from the beginning of the crisis till date; they would have gathered whatever belongs to them — papers, documents and personal items — and went home after submitting their resignation, because they failed in their jobs and the decisions they took are considered unprecedented failures.

Instead, they continue to make us feel embarrassed and a fail-ure daily. So, God, how did they take the decision to reward front-liners? What we understand and what logic states is that frontline work during the corona pandemic means direct contact with the crowd. Thus, we were surprised when the benefi ciaries include whoever is working in the 16 entities which submitted lists of em-ployees eligible for this reward according to the standards of their senior offi cials.

We will mention some of them. For example, the ‘Offi ce of the Civil Service Commission Chairman’, ‘Kuwait Anti-Corruption Authority’, ‘Ministry of Oil’, ‘Direct Investment Promotion Au-thority’, ‘Secretariat General of the Supreme Council for Planning and Development’, ‘Secretariat General of Awqaf’... and other similar bodies whose employees have no direct contact with the public; and the public does not even know their locations.

How will these employees receive millions out of the KD600 million earmarked for this purpose by the government which told us some time ago that it would not be able to pay salaries after some months?!

Can you blame me if, for the fi rst time in my life, I wished that I am not a Kuwaiti considering our failed offi cial decisions?

ali-albaghli@hotmail.com

Al-Baghli

2ARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

Under the sponsorship of its main partner Mubadala Investment Company (Mubadala), and as part of the programme of its 18th edition, held under the theme ‘The Future Starts Now’, Abu Dhabi Festival presented the world pre-

miere of L’Apocalypse Arabe, an opera co-produced with the pioneering experimental cultural institution the LUMA Foundation in France. The opera debuted on 4 and 5 July at Luma Arles’ Grande Halle, Parc des Ateliers. This pre-miere is part of Abu Dhabi Festival’s ongoing mission to contribute to culture and art globally through commissioning and producing works around the world, and through collaborations with international arts organisations.

H.E. Huda I. Alkhamis-Kanoo, Founder of Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, and Founder and Artistic Director of Abu Dhabi Festival said, “We are delighted to partner with Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the LUMA Foundation to bring the legendary Etel Adnan’s masterpiece, L’Apocalypse Arabe, to life. Abu Dhabi Festival’s co-production is a historic opportunity to present her poetry and artwork on a global stage with composer Samir Odeh-Tamimi and direc-tor Pierre Audi. The production adds new depth and intensity, echoing Etel’s powerful call for peace.”

L’Apocalypse Arabe was based on the legendary epic poems of Lebanese-American poet and visual artist Etel Ad-

nan. Written in 1975 during the Lebanese Civil War, the poems represent the impact of Arab culture and the disaster caused by war, whilst condemning crimes that spring from intolerance.

H.E. Xavier Chatel, French Ambassador to the UAE, said: “As a longstanding fan and a yearly attendee of the Fes-tival d’Aix-en-Provence, I am very excited that the world premiere of L’Apocalypse Arabe will take place there this year. The event is a beautiful example of a French Emirati cooperation, between ADMAF and the Luma Foundation. It is also a beautiful example of Abu Dhabi Festival’s efforts to bring the work of Arab artists to wider audiences around the world”

Music and libretto were composed by the innovative avante-garde Palestinian-Israeli composer Samir Odeh-Ta-mimi, and the Opera is directed by accomplished French-Lebanese theatre director and artistic director Pierre Audi. It is performed by Frankfurt-based Ensemble Modern, a leading New Music ensemble of diverse musicians from across Europe and Asia, and conducted by the notable Ivan Volkov, in a co-production with the pioneering experimental cultural institution, the LUMA Foundation in France.

Exceptional agility demonstrated

Adaptability key to development in young amid COVIDThe first cohort of Youth Development Delegates in the Arab Region pro-

gram has demonstrated exceptional agility and adaptability, turning the challenge of COVID-19 into an opportunity for learning and encouraging wider engagement by young people in the pursuit of the Sustainable Develop-ment Goals in their countries, according to the first annual report of the Youth Development Delegates in the Arab Region Program, issued recently in Abu Dhabi.

Sponsored by the Arab Youth Center (AYC) in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Regional Bureau for Arab States, the program which started in 2020, engaged 11 youth delegates in 10 Arab countries in a yearlong leadership development experience. Throughout the year, the delegates learned how development assistance activities are con-ducted on the ground and worked closely with local development agencies and organizations

“The program gave me an in-depth understanding of how youth can unleash their potential to become a driving force for implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” said Ahmed Buasallay, Youth Development Delegate from Bahrain.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UNDP offices where the youth development delegates worked, adapted to flexible and remote work mo-

dalities. The challenge was turned into an opportunity through the adaptabil-ity and creativity that the delegates showed throughout the year. The first annual report of the program summarizes their achievements across target areas: getting acquainted with UNDP’s work in youth development field, enhancing their personal and leadership skills as well as capacities to tackle development challenges in their countries, connecting with UNDP decision making, and compiling portfolios of youth achievements and innovation at country level.

Collaborating with UNDP’s Youth Leadership Programme (YLP), the re-port records that through their activities under the program, the youth dele-gates engaged over 9,000 young people in online and offline training sessions, webinars and awareness raising activities. Online social media outreach, in-cluding regional social media campaigns, have garnered more than 500,000 views across the Arab region. Delegates also worked in cooperation with more than 50 companies, institutions, and organizations in the youth develop-ment sector.

The first cohort of delegates assisted UNDP in managing initiatives focus-ing on youth, peace, and economic and social development in their respective countries. Through their work, the 11 delegates gained practical experience and insight into UNDP’s modes of operation to support national and regional

efforts to eradicate poverty, improve living standards, and promote resilience and sustainable development.

“I had the opportunity to work with creative, passionate and innovative youth delegates from across the region,” commented Aya Albitar, Youth De-velopment Delegate from Syria. “This has had a major impact on my pro-fessional and personal skills. It also allowed me to expand my network of contacts.”

In addition to their involvement in national events in their countries, the delegates participated in regional events that brought together countries rep-resented in the program. These included celebrating International Youth Day, which made more than 140,000 impressions through social media platforms; live events; supporting organizing the YLP-6 Regional Forum; and imple-menting the Hope campaign that raised awareness about the importance of mental health and positive thinking for young people through social media.

The report outlines the 2021 plans of the Youth Development Delegates program, which include supporting a new approach to youth leadership de-velopment under YLP-7, organizing virtual events, webinars and panel dis-cussions to encourage greater youth engagement in development across the region, and stepping up local and regional cooperation with partners and deci-sion makers in the development sphere.

editor’s choice

Above and below: L’Apocalypse Arabe.

Composer Samir Odeh-Tamimi said, “It is my pleasure to be part of Abu Dhabi Festival to realise a dream of mine that is over 20 years old. L’Apocalypse Arabe had

a profound impact on me, and I have thought of it daily since I read it in 2001. Seeing this proj-ect come to fruition is a dream come true. This opera has been a creative experience like no other, and I am confident that with the hard work of our team, it communicated Etel Adnan’s vision truly and powerfully.”

Pierre Audi, the opera’s director, commented, “I am delighted to be working again with Abu Dhabi Festival to present a work of art that beau-tiful interprets Etel Ad-

nan’s message decrying intolerance and hatred, a message that is as urgent today as it was when she wrote it over 40 years ago. It is wonderful to see that Abu Dhabi Fes-tival is engaging global artists to reach audiences with a call for peace.”

ARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021 3

Fajr ........ 03:20Sunrise .. 04:55Zohr ....... 11:53

Asr .......... 15:27Maghrib .. 18:51Isha ........ 20:22

Prayer TimingsExpected weather for the next 24 hours:

By Day: Very hot and relatively humid over coastal areas with light to moderate north westerly wind to light variable wind with speeds of 08-32 km/h.

By Night: Hot to rather hot

and relatively humid over coastal areas with light variable wind to moderate north westerly wind with speeds of 12-32 km/h.Station Max Exp Min RecKuwait City 46 35Kuwait Airport 48 29

Abdaly 49 30Jahra 50 32Salmiyah 41 35Ahmadi 41 36Wafra 45 30Salmy 47 31Jal Aliyah 50 29Managish 47 30

Weather

VACCINE REGISTRATION WEBSITE: https://cov19vaccine.moh.gov.kw/SPCMS/CVD_19_Vaccine_Registration.aspx

Agility sprints 9 fi ls, Tamdeen Investment dips

Late spurt helps Kuwait index notch robust gainsBy John MathewsArab Times Staff

KUWAIT CITY, July 7: Kuwait stocks swung higher on Wednesday, stemming the two-day decline. The All Shares Index sprinted 39.14 points to 6388.08 pts helped by a spurt in buying in the second half led by some of the mid caps and blue chips.

The Premier Market climbed 26.61 points to 6934.50 pts while Main Market vaulted 69.83 points 119.73 points. BK Main 50 soared 119.73 points to 5586 pts. The volume turnover meanwhile dipped below the 200 million mark to hit a multi-month low. Over 165 million shares changed hands — a 26 pct drop from the day before.

The sectors closed mostly in green. Utilities outpaced the rest with 1.35 pct gain whereas Insurance shed 1.21 percent, the worst per-former of the day. Volume wise, Financial Services continued to top with over 72 mil-lion shares while Banking sector was ahead in value with KD 12.2 million.

Among the prime movers, sector bellwether National Bank of Kuwait rallied 6 fi ls to 857 fi ls on back of 1.6 million shares while Bou-byan Bank scaled 5 fi ls. Commercial Bank

vaulted 50 fi ls to 550 fi ls and Gulf Bank climbed 4 fi ls after pushing over 9 million shares. Boursa Kuwait Securities paced 13 fi ls to close at KD 1.410.

Zain ticked 1 fi l higher to 588 fi ls with a vol-ume of 1.3 million whereas Ooredoo eased 1 fi l to 630 fi ls. stc scaled 6 fi ls before settling at 846 fi ls and logistics major Agility sprinted 9 fi ls to 930 fi ls taking the year-to-date gains to 274 fi ls. Humansoft Holding eased 1 fi l to KD 3.799.

KIPCO paused at 159 fi ls whereas Maba-nee Co dialed up 1 fi l. Mezzan Holding gave up 4 fi ls to close at 628 fi ls and Advanced Technology Co leapt 18 fi ls to 535 fi ls. Tam-deen Investment Co erased last session’s gains with a 12 fi ls slide to 255 fi ls.

National Industries Group inched 1 fi l high-er to 219 fi ls while Gulf Cable stood pat at 755 fi ls. Boubyan Petrochemical Co fell 3 fi ls to 852 fi ls and Al Qurain Petrochemical Co erased 2 fi ls. Jazeera Airways glided 10 fi ls higher to 646 fi ls whereas ALAFCO tripped 1 fi l. Integrated Holding was down 3 fi ls at 362 fi ls and Aznour added 3 fi ls. Tamdeen Invest-ment dipped 12 fi ls to 255 fi ls.

The market opened on a fi rm note and slipped into red in early trade. The main in-dex continued to drift lower and plumbed the

day’s lowest level of 6338 pts ahead of the mid-session. It moved listlessly before rev-ving sharply in the fi nal minutes to close with robust gains.

Top gainer of the day, Commercial Bank of Kuwait vaulted 10 pct to 550 fi ls while Mas-saleh scaled 8.33 percent to stand next. Kuwait Hotels skidded 9.64 pct, the steepest decliner of the day and Ahli United Bank BSC topped the volume with over 20 million shares.

Mirroring the day’s gains, the winners outnumbered the losers. 74 stocks advanced whereas 44 closed lower. Of the 138 counters active on Wednesday, 20 closed fl at. 8211 deals worth KD 31.7 million were transacted during the session.

In the banking sector, Burgan Bank dialed up 2 fi ls before closing at 224 fi ls and Kuwait International Bank took in 1 fi l. Warba Bank stood pat at 248 fi ls and Ahli United Bank BSC dialed up 1 fi l with brisk trading. Al Ahli Bank added 2 fi ls whereas Ahli United Bank Kuwait held ground at 297 fi ls.

Kuwait Cement Co slipped 6 fi ls to 242 fl s and Hilal Cement added 2.9 fi ls with thin trad-ing HEISC paced 5 fi ls before closing at 495 fi ls whereas Shuaiba Industrial dialed down 2 fi ls. ACICO Industries erased 3 fi ls after push-

ing 1.3 million shares. Kuwait Foundry Co gained 4 fi ls. Kuwait

Hotels dropped 7.4 fi ls to 69.4 fi ls whereas Ed-ucational Holding Co paused at 730 fi ls. Syn-ergy Holding took in 1 fi l. Automated Systems Co inched 1 fi l higher to 106 fi ls while KCPC added 3 fi ls with thin trading. OSOS Holding Group gave up 2.8 fi ls and Inovest BSC crept 1 fi l higher.

Kuwait and Gulf Links Transport Co was unchanged at 56.9 fi ls and Sultan Centre scaled 10 fi ls to close at 193 fi ls. Arabi Hold-ing dialed down 1 fi l and NAPESCO slipped 5 fi ls to 870 fi ls. United Projects Co gained 7 fi ls and Combined Group Contracting Co was up 5 fi ls at 295 fi ls. Burgan Company For Well Drilling fell 2 fi ls to 172 fi ls.

Kuwait Investment Co slipped 11 fi ls to 228 fi ls whereas International Financial Advisors paused at 130 fi ls. Arzan Financial Group dialed up 1 fi l and Kuwait Financial Centre (Markaz) gained 5 fi ls on back of 2.9 million shares. Gulf Investment House gave up 4 fi ls whereas KAMCO added 2 fi ls. Noor Finan-cial Investment was unchanged at 230 fi ls.

The market has been mixed so far during the week. It had rallied 176 points during whole of June and is up 817 points year-to-date.

Euro/KD 0.3555

Yen/KD 0.0027

British £/KD 0.4154

Indian Rs/KD 0.0040

Philippines Peso/KD 0.0060

FTSE +50.14 pts at 18:50 July 07

Nikkei -276.26 pts at closing July 07

Gold $1,804.25 per oz (London)

US$/KDUS$/KD 0.30095/05 0.30095/05

NYMEX crude $71.52 per barrel

Brent crude $72.90 per barrel

LIBOR rate 0.13488%

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60s expats in dilemma,illegal if still in country

3-month temporary reprieve

KUWAIT CITY, July 7: At a time when thousands of resi-dents are still waiting for the ‘cancellation’ of the decision to prevent the renewal of work permits for those who have reached 60 years of age and if they are not university gradu-ates, the suspension of issuing the new decision causes ‘confu-sion’ on a daily basis for labor departments because of the implementation of the deci-sion from the beginning of this year, reports Al-Qabas daily.

Sources told the daily, the labor ad-ministrations receive requests for re-newal of residence permits from people who are above 60 after their requests are rejected by the automated system, but the employees do not have a sat-isfactory answer to them, except for the possibility of a 3-month extension through the Ministry of Interior.

The sources added, the employees or directors of departments in the Pub-lic Authority for Manpower (PAM) do not have any information about the new amendments or what is required during the coming period, and the renewal ban is still in force but the fate of those above 60 is unknown.

AffectedThe Al-Qabas daily met a group of

those affected by the decision, who con-fi rmed that the continued delay in issu-ing the amendments confuses their lives and the future of their presence in the country, individually or even their fami-lies.

One of them said he came to Kuwait in the 1960s and lives with his family, children and grandchildren now, but there is no longer the ability to continue in light of the prevention of renewal of residence.

“During the past year, my daughter obtained admission to Kuwait Univer-sity, and during the past months, I trans-ferred her residence under the universi-ty’s sponsorship and she is now residing in the female students’ dormitory, but I will leave for home with my family.”

The same applies to two sisters who are over sixty years old, who pointed out that they own a 49 percent stake in

a company, but does not comply with the condition of Article 19 of the Resi-dence Law, which stipulates the inves-tor must have 100,000 dinars capital. They pointed out the absence or delay of amendments delays their decision to stay or leave.

Those affected pointed out that the PAM employees say there is an option to oblige them to have a private health insurance for the elderly only, and an an-nual fee ranging between 100 and 500 dinars.

They stated there are dozens of peo-ple who are affected by the decision be-cause they live in the country illegally (residence law violators) and according to the law they have automatically to pay 2 dinars per day of illegal stay and face the risk of deportation any time.

According to reliable sources, the is-sue is still awaiting a decision from the Minister of Commerce and Industry Dr. Abdullah Al-Salman, according to some senior sources.

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Expats entry nears: Agencies operat-ing at Kuwait International Airport are preparing to implement the Cabinet’s decision to allow the entry of expatriates who have taken two doses of approved vaccines starting from Aug 1, reports Al-Qabas daily quoting a reliable source who confi rmed that the entry mechanism for expatriates will be fi nalized within the coming days.

The source said the airport authorities are waiting for their upcoming meeting with the Ministry of Health offi cials in order to address many issues, such as the procedures excluded from the recent decisions. These procedures include increasing the number of arrivals from 3,500 to 5,000 passengers and the num-ber of fl ights; as well as easing some travel restrictions, the source added.

On June 17, the Council of Ministers announced several decisions like allow-ing citizens to travel and the entry of non-Kuwaitis provided they have taken two doses of any of the approved vac-cines -- Pfi zer, AstraZeneca-Oxford and Moderna; or one dose of Johnson & Johnson. They are required to present proof showing negative result of PCR test taken 72 hours before arrival in the country and then undergo another PCR test during the home quarantine period of seven days after arrival.

Photo by Mahmoud JadeedHundreds of Asian and Arab expats are seen leaving the country, some for good.

Airport exit, entry traffi c set to increaseKuwait International Airport agencies are preparing to implement the Cabinet’s deci-sion to allow the entry of expatriates who have taken two doses of approved vaccines starting from Aug 1, reports Al-Qabas daily quoting a reliable source who confi rmed that the entry mechanism for expatriates will be

fi nalized within the coming days.The Council of Ministers announced sev-

eral decisions like allowing citizens to travel and the entry of non-Kuwaitis provided they have taken two doses of any of the ap-proved vaccines -- Pfi zer, AstraZeneca-Ox-ford and Moderna; or one dose of Johnson

& Johnson.They are required to present proof show-

ing negative result of PCR test taken 72 hours before arrival in the country and then undergo another PCR test during the home quarantine period of seven days after ar-rival.

MoI specifi es conditions Clinic attracts smokers wanting to ‘kick habit’Nod to use of weapon by police

KUWAIT CITY, July 7: The recent mur-der of martyr on duty, policeman Ab-dulaziz Al-Rashidi, has cast a shadow over the procedures adopted by the Min-istry of Interior, especially with regard to the prohibitions of weapons use by secu-rity personnel, reports Al-Seyassah daily.

Following this incident the Assistant Undersecretary for Public Security Af-fairs at the Ministry of Interior Major-General Faraj Al-Zoubi has issued a circular specifying seven cases during which security personnel are allowed to use weapons to control violent behavior, resisting arrest in addition to mandating the presence of two patrolmen in each ve-hicle while on patrol duty.

Circular No. 168/2021 issued by Ma-jor-General Al-Zoubi, a copy of which has been obtained by the daily, contains instructions and standing orders for di-rectors-general of security directorates in all governorates, directors of opera-tions and patrol departments and area commanders to inform the police force in case a patrol is dispatched to answer calls or implement operations and service orders for conducting patrols, or tempo-

rary confi rmation in certain places or lo-cations, or to go out to carry out any other security mission.

On the issue of using fi rearms, commit-ment and adherence to the implementation of the instructions and orders related to the use of weapons and shooting as stipu-lated in Article (2) of Ministerial Resolu-tion 727/2019, according to the following cases — a person convicted of a felony or imprisonment, if he resists or attempts to escape; a suspect accused of a fl agrant fel-ony or misdemeanor, if he resists or tries to escape; a person who is wanted by law but resists arrests or tries to escape; while dispersing a gathering or demonstration if it involves seven people or more, and the purpose is to commit a crime, or the public security is endangered or the lives of people or property are at risk and if the people refuse to disperse after warning them and after all other means to disperse them fail; if a prisoner tries to escape; in self-defense and when dealing with peo-ple with hysteria or outbursts of anger out of emotional control, and that would harm himself or others, whether in a public or private place.

By Marwa BahrawiAl-Seyassah Staff

KUWAIT CITY, July 7: Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Kuwait Anti-Smoking and Cancer Society, Dr. Khaled Al-Saleh, said the smoking cessation clinic over two weeks received 14 patients — patients of different ages and nationali-ties — and praised the clinic’s success in helping three of them to quit smoking.

Al-Saleh said the clinic has succeeded in attracting those who wish to quit smoking and pointed out the clinic operates on Tuesdays every two weeks for two hours from six to eight in the evening.

He said it is necessary to boom an appointment and said there are special arrangements have been made to accommo-date women.

He said there is gradual increase in the smoking addicts visiting the clinic. He added, the services provided include prescribing necessary drug treatments to treat those wishing to quit smoking, and continuous follow-up to determine their response to treatment.

He also noted there is a support group to help those who wish to quit smoking and to stand by them to identify the ob-stacles and challenges that some of them may encounter during the ‘quitting’ phase and this includes psychological support.

He explained the treatment does not depend only on the provision of medication, but extends to include providing psy-chological and moral support to overcome this stage, calling on those wishing to quit smoking. The appointment can be booked by calling 94704366.

KCB: history of alleviating citizens’ economic burdensKUWAIT CITY, July 7, (KUNA): Kuwait’s late Amir Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah signed a law on July 8, 1965 establishing Saving and Credit Bank, replacing Kuwait Credit Bank (KCB), with a mandate of alleviating economic burden of Kuwaiti families by facilitating loans and credits, and giving grants.

Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem fi rst signed KCB establishment law in 1960 with the purpose of facilitating real estate, industrial, and agricultural credit, as well as providing loans to Kuwaiti em-ployees of the state.

The Saving and Credit bank had its objec-tives altered. It emphasized raising awareness in regards to saving and investments culture. How-ever, in 1995 the bank was reverted back to its original name, KCB, ceasing all saving activities.

The bank currently operates as in independent public establishment and under the supervision of State Minister for Housing Affairs and Urban Development.

The bank prides itself on being a constant ac-companiment to citizens’ life journeys and monu-mental decisions. KCB General Director Salah Al-Mudhaf stated “the bank aids its benefi ciaries in building their forever homes and establishing their future plans (like renovation), therefore, magnifying a sense of security in one’s homeland, Kuwait.”

KCB provides a variety of services to the Kuwaiti people, amongst which are real estate loans, considered to be most prominent type of loans in the bank. The bank offers Kuwaiti citizens a loan of Kuwaiti Dinars (KD) 70,000

(USD 232,000) with no interest, as well as other types of loans for property developments such as refurbishing projects worth KD 12,000 (around USD 40,000).

Aside from property-related loans the bank also provides social loans and grants. For instance, it grants Kuwaiti women a loan worth KD 70,000 under certain conditions, and up to KD 6,000 (USD 20,000) marriage loans. Additionally, the bank distributes grants for people with disabili-ties.

KCB has also been working in close proxim-ity with Martyr’s Bureau for 30 years. A special counter has been set up in all of the bank’s loca-tions for families of martyrs, so that they are given priority and would not need appointments to com-plete their paper work.

LOCALARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

4

KUNA photoDeputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Sheikh Hamad Jaber Al-Sabah during his visit to the

General Administration of Civil Aviation.

‘Kuwait Arab aviation body seat proves sector growth’Kuwait’s position as deputy chief of the Arab Civil Aviation Organization is a testament to the me-teoric growth the country has seen in the crucial sector, the defense minister said on Wednesday.

This achievement would not have been pos-sible without the “diligence” of the local civil avia-tion workforce, Sheikh Hamad Jaber Al-Sabah,

who doubles as deputy prime minister, said in a statement.

He underlined the significance of the aviation sector as an “integral component” of national eco-nomic growth, besides being part and parcel of the nation’s long-term development plans, added the minister. (KUNA)

Ambassador of Finland.

KUNA photosAmbassador of the Republic of Belarus.

Training to be done annually during summer

PAM trains students to join private sectorKUWAIT CITY, July 7: The Public Authority for Manpower affirmed its keenness to train students to work in the private sector, reports Al-Seyassah daily.

The training will happen an-nually during the summer to provide the students with vari-ous skills, enhance their capa-bilities and self-confidence to qualify them to enter the private sector.

The Supervisor of Training, Planning and Evaluation at the National Manpower Develop-ment Department at the author-ity, Hanan Karam, told KUNA on Tuesday that in this regard, various training programs are being offered to suit the various specializations of students to provide them with work skills, qualify them and raise aware-ness of the importance of work-ing in the private sector and its impact on the professional and career development of all stu-dents.

Karam added through this project, the students are intro-duced to the skills and quality of work in the private sector through appropriate field train-ing in various private sec-tor companies, to make them aware of the work requirements in non-governmental institu-tions.

She pointed out this project was launched in 2004 and has trained more than 12,000 stu-dents since its inception. The targeted sectors are banking, investment, retail, insurance, co-operative societies and telecom-munications.

As for the project’s objec-tives, she explained they re-volve around attracting young people while they are in school by enrolling them in practical training programs aimed at cre-ating awareness of the impor-tance of working in the private sector and its impact on the pro-fessional and career develop-ment of the individual, as well

as strengthening and building students’ skills and abilities and strengthening their confidence in themselves to qualify them to enter the private sector labor market.

She stated that the goals also include spreading a spirit of challenge and love of work by opening up job prospects for them in the private sector and preparing students technically for the requirements and needs of the labor market in the private sector.

She indicated the registra-tion opened on June 27 and will continue until July 22, or until the completion of the number of targeted opportu-nities through the authority’s official website, provided that the implementation period of the summer project for training students will from August 8 un-til September 2, taking into ac-count the health requirements approved by the Ministry of Health.

small and medium enterprises (SMEs) whose problems must be solved imme-diately; especially the problems caused by the coronavirus crisis. He claimed such plots will be distributed to certain enterprises without the need to submit economic and feasibility studies. In some cases, the distributed plot is valued at KD10 million while the capital of the benefi ciary company is only KD10,000, he disclosed.

ViolationsHe asked His Highness the Prime Min-

ister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid, Chairman of the Environment Public Authority (EPA) Sheikh Abdullah Al-Homoud Al-Sabah, and Minister of Commerce and Industry Abdullah Essa Al-Salman to prevent such violations.

He added some benefi ciaries did not meet the conditions, indicating one of them established companies in 2020 which are included in the agenda of PAI’s board meeting on Wednesday while the applications of other companies were rejected even if they were established in 2014 and 2015.

Commenting on the issue, MP Abdul-lah Al-Turaiji urged Al-Shaheen to fi le a case at the relevant monitoring institu-tions like Kuwait Anti-Corruption Au-thority (Nazaha) and provide them with the information in his possession.

Al-Shaheen then responded, stating that everyone knows what happens to cases fi led at Nazaha, so he resorted to the most effective platform – public opinion.

Meanwhile, Minister of Commerce and Industry Abdullah Essa Al-Salman on Wednesday issued a decision to sus-pend the distribution of industrial plots for more study.

He affi rmed PAI’s board of directors did not discuss the distribution of plots during their meeting; adding the distribu-tion plan will be revised to ensure strict compliance with the regulations, and that approvals were obtained from the con-cerned institutions especially EPA.

QueriesAlso, Al-Shaheen forwarded queries

to the minister about the establishment of factories in Nuwaiseeb based on the fact that protecting public health and the envi-ronment is part of the responsibilities of different public institutions, and in view of the decisions issued by the Council of Ministers and EPA to prevent the estab-lishment of such factories.

He wants to know why the decision of former Minister of Commerce and In-dustry Khalid Al-Rawdan to suspend the allocation of two million square meters land in Nuwaiseeb for one company has not been implemented.

He asked about the violation of deci-sions issued by the Cabinet and EPA to prevent the establishment of new facto-ries; particularly in Nuwaiseeb, and gen-erally in the southern part of Kuwait, as they pose a grave threat to public health.

He requested for information like the cri-teria for the distribution of industrial plots and number of plots distributed to SMEs.

In another development, MP Hamdan Al-Azmi called on the government to solve the problem of Kuwaitis studying in Egypt. He said these students completed their fi nal exams 10 days ago, but they have not been able to return home due to the lack of Kuwait Airways fl ights.

Some beneficiaries of industrialplots do not meet conditions: MP

Queries sent on establishment of factories in Nuwaiseeb

By Saeed Mahmoud SalehArab Times Staff

KUWAIT CITY, July 7: MP Osama Al-Shaheen said there have been grave violations at the Public Author-ity for Industry (PAI) regarding the distribution of in-dustrial plots.

He obtained information that some plots will be distributed to MPs

and consultants who have strong links with the government, pointing out this is a conflict of interests. He is afraid that such violations will lead to payment of political receipts, which are not in the interest of public funds.

He disclosed the agenda of the meeting of PAI’s board of directors on Wednesday includes the distribution of plots with a total area of almost 3,850,000 square meters to 67 major enterprises. He asserted this size is larg-er than what have been distributed since the independence of Kuwait.

He argued the abovementioned space can be distributed to almost 3,850

HH Crown Prince, HH PM send greetings

Dy FM receives credentials of foreign envoysDeputy Foreign Minister Ambassador Majdi Al-Dhafeeri received on Wednes-day credentials of the newly-assigned ambassadors of Finland, the Republic of Belarus, Panama, Moldova and Angola.

These envoys are non-resident am-bassadors to the State of Kuwait.

The credentials delivery ceremony was attended by the Assistant Foreign Minister for Protocol Affairs, Ambassa-dor Dhari Al-Ejran, and the Assistant Foreign Minister for the deputy foreign minister bureau affairs, Ayham Al-Omar. (KUNA)

His Highness Amir cables Solomon’s Governor General on National DayKUWAIT CITY, July 7, (KUNA): His Highness the Amir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah sent earlier on Wednesday a cable of congratulations to the Governor General of Solomon Is-lands David Vunagi on the occasion of his country’s National Day, wishing him everlasting health and wellness, and fur-

ther progress and prosperity to his coun-try.

His Highness Deputy Amir and Crown Prince Sheikh Meshaal Al-Ah-mad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and His High-ness the Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah sent similar cables.

Solar energy projects to produce 4K MW by ‘30

CSC confi rms MoF receiving lists ofthose eligible for Covid-19 incentiveKUWAIT CITY, July 7: The Civil Service Commission (CSC) has confirmed that the Ministry of Finance received lists of civil servants and other personnel eligible for Co-vid-19 incentive from 16 State institutions, which have been serving on the front lines of the fight against the virus, reports Annahar daily.

In a press statement, the CSC disclosed that some of the lists have been approved as per the regulations; while others will be scrutinized further to ensure the incentive is granted only to the rightful beneficiaries.

The commission recently asked the Fi-nance Ministry to lay down a mechanism for the disbursement of the incentive in line with law number 4/2021, which stipulates approval of additional budget for State in-stitutions for fiscal year 2020/2021 to pave way for the payment of the incentive to de-serving employees.

The commission asked the State institu-tions, whose lists of beneficiaries have been

endorsed and submitted to the ministry, to strictly comply with the disbursement guidelines.

It also unveiled a plan to form a commit-tee to receive complaints from employees whose names were excluded from the list of beneficiaries. It added that the excluded personnel must explain in writing why they deserve the incentive.

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The electricity capacity from solar en-ergy projects implemented by Kuwait will reach approximately 4,000 megawatts after their completion by 2030, reports Al-Anba daily.

The Ministry of Electricity and Water source said this is done in cooperation with the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) and that the electricity is generated by the Shaqaya project and supplied to the grid following studies that were undertaken by the World Bank.

MoU signed

KAB participates in Doha’s 62nd ARABOSAI meetingKUWAIT CITY, July 7, (KUNA): Kuwait Audit Bureau (KAB) participated with a delegation headed by SAB’s President Faisal Al-Shaya, in the 62nd meeting of the Executive Council of the Arab Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (ARABOSAI), on Monday for two days in the Qatari capital, Doha.

Director of Training and International Relations at Ku-wait SAB Dr Saud Al-Zamanan said in a press statement that the meeting included signing a Memorandum of Un-derstanding (MoU) between ARABOSAI and Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).

Meanwhile, Chairman of ARABOSAI Sheikh Bandar bin Mohammad, at opening of the two-day meeting, expressed appreciation for the sincere efforts made by the heads and members of the committees from the organization for shoul-dering responsibilities entrusted to them to the fullest.

He called for proposing innovative initiatives that raise capabilities of the organization and enhance its perfor-mance, expressing satisfaction with the development wit-nessed in the coordination between the organization and international parties.

He announced the signing a Memorandum of Under-standing (MoU) between ARABOSAI and Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), which is one of the five regional commissions of the United Na-tions to stimulate economic activity in member countries.

The participants discussed during the meeting a report presented by the Chairman of ARABOSAI about the Council’s activity, a report by the General Secretariat and development initiatives proposed by the Presidency of ARABOSAI.

They also approved the 2021 budget, in addition to pre-senting the bodies’ reports on their participation in the work of committees and working groups emanating from International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI).

The organization, represented by Sheikh Bandar, signed a MoU on sidelines of the meeting with ESCWA, represented by the Under-Secretary-General of the Unit-ed Nations and Executive Secretary Dr. Rola Dashti, to strengthen cooperation between them, and promote de-velopment.

LOCALARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

5

A DIGEST OF PUBLIC OPINION

Elated Kuwaitis praise sincere citizens for hike in Reserve Fund“DURING the heathenish Iraqi invasion and occupation of our beloved country (from Aug 2, 1990 up to Feb 26, 1991), many Kuwaitis as usual were spending their summer vacation outside the country, since they are historically penchant for travel -- the habit and love for travel they have inherited from their forefa-thers,” columnist Oweid Al-Sulaili wrote for Al-Shahed daily.

“The treachery befell suddenly on a very dark night. During that time a citizen of a Gulf country who was stunned asked me about the situation of Kuwaitis who lived a luxurious life. I immediately responded saying by virtue of Almighty Allah and our leadership -- we pray to Almighty Allah to bless our leadership -- and our em-bassies throughout the world paid the Kuwaitis who were abroad their monthly salaries regularly without interrup-tion in addition to giving housing allowance equivalent of living in a five-star hotel or paid the rent of a luxurious villa in addition to furniture and food allowances as well as the other financial requirements.

“The Gulf citizen was surprised and commented saying ‘I wish I was a Kuwaiti and I hope my Amir was Sheikh Jaber! However, the narration of this simple story shows the State of Kuwait although it was occupied for seven months during which the oil exports remained suspended, the government resorted to the Future Generations Fund to finance the war of libera-tion and all requirements in addition to providing a good standard of living for all Kuwaitis abroad as well citizens who were inside the country.

“Not just that, this Fund covered the costs of reconstruction of the country from destruction caused by the barbaric invasion, the Fund that was the brain-child of the Amir of Hearts, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad, we pray to Almighty Allah to bestow His mercy upon him -- during the 1970s to boost our country’s ability to encounter the disasters and the wars. This institution was led by a choice of homeland citizens.

“In this connection, the American ‘Bloomberg Agency’ in a statement said the balance of Kuwaiti Sovereign Fund or the ‘Next Generations Reserve’ was $700 billion -- the third sovereign fund in the world after the Norwegians and the Chinese. For its part, the Kuwaiti Public Institution for Social Security (PIFSS), had declared earlier, that the value of the Kuwaiti Investment Portfo-lio had increased by $23.1 billion, as such the assets of this portfolio had soared to become $133.7 billion.

“It is needless to say this news is pleasing to the ear of the Kuwaiti people. In the meantime, PIFSS, has attributed this success to efforts exerted by sincere citizens who work day and night for the sake of progress and luxury of the homeland without paying attention to both the foreign secret hands and their local machineries who are working to undermine the reputation of the country and promote negativity in addition to their attempts to persuade all citizens that Kuwait is a failed state, given the fact such allegations fall within the relevant people’s intention to carry out their satanic schemes.

“In conclusion, greetings of reverence for HH the Amir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad and HH the Crown Prince Sheikh Meshaal Al-Ahmad -- we pray to Al-mighty Allah to protect them -- for the great achievements and their persistent directions and control for the good of the homeland.

“In the meantime, we send greetings to all employees of both the Kuwait Investment Authority and the PIFSS for their sincere efforts for the sake of serving the beloved homeland.”

Also: “A problem surfaced in the manpower required by both the public and the

private sectors following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly since we know that the number of expatriates in the country fell, because some of them were abroad and were unable to return due to the preventive health measures taken by the Kuwaiti Ministry of health, and in spite of this the job opportunities that were made available for Kuwaiti graduates were less than the required number and this resulted in unemployment, particularly among those who are qualified,” columnist and administrative development and human re-sources consultant Abdullah Al-Abduljader wrote for Al-Anba daily.

“Of course, there is a government decision for Kuwaitization and this means every non-Kuwaiti employee is a ‘victim’ of the replacement policy including the Gulf citizens in ministries and other government institutions; this is in ad-dition to instructions to the private sector determining the minimum number of Kuwaitis it should employ.

“Apart from the above, there is another government decision to review the population structure by reducing the number of expatriates particularly the so-called ‘menial’ workers and those who reside in the country illegally, the cause of which was the visa traders.

”As a matter of fact, the decisions and related problems need a review of man-power planning in addition to studying the actual employment need, particularly

those who are required by the public sector in terms of volume and quality.“The Public Authority for Manpower (PAM), should in turn hasten to define

the number of required employees and the posts awarded to them by the private sector in order to avert the repetition of the population structure problem and that of the menial manpower as well as the residence traffickers phenomena.”

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“Ten years ago, when the price of a barrel of oil exceeded $100 and the State budget enjoyed financial surpluses and expenditures of about KD13 billion, I wished in my article in the newspaper to ‘stay hungry...stay ignorant’ such that the price of oil would drop to less than $30 dollars so we could wake up from dependence on a single source of income and a distorted economic system based on the employment of citizens in an unproductive public sector. Thus, we would be obligated to change this corrupt equation,” columnist Hasan Al-Mousawi wrote for Al-Jarida daily.

“The price of oil went down to less than $30 at the beginning of 2016, but we did not learn from that. We continued to increase expenses insanely and consume financial surpluses until the assets of the general reserve decreased from KD46 billion in 2014 to less than KD10 billion now. Liquidity is about to run out with the corona pandemic. The country has experienced a stifling liquidity crisis.

“We were supposed to learn from the second incident, after we missed the first opportunity. However, after looking at the details of the new budget, we find no indication of such learning.

“With a quick look at the new budget, we find that expenditures increased by KD1.4 billion to become KD23 billion, including KD16.5 billion for salaries and subsidies, while the expected revenues do not exceed KD11 billion. This means that revenues alone do not cover the two items -- salaries and subsidies. Though revenues are expected to increase due to the current oil price, we can-not rely on luck and the unknown to continue the irrational spending.

“Wastage and financial corruption are very clear and concentrated in salaries and subsidies (i.e. 71 percent of expenditures) for a bloated, corrupt bureau-cratic apparatus which kills energies and obstructs achievement, a wastage that majority of parliamentarians who are claiming to be pro-reform do not want to address.”

— Compiled by Zaki Taleb

Oweid Al-Sulaili

Serving citizens, meeting their needsis an honor for me, says Sheikh Talal

Capital Governor meets Dasma residents

KUWAIT CITY, July 7: Capital Governor Sheikh Talal Al-Khaled said, “As a gover-norate, we serve citizens and meet their needs, and this is a recommendation of HH the Amir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad, and HH the Crown Prince, Sheikh Mishaal Al-Ahmad, to serve the sons on the soil, and it is an honor for me to serve the people of the governorate, and to fulfi ll the trust and mission entrusted to me.”

The governor said this when he met the citizens of the Dasma area at Dar Ma’arafi, in the pres-ence of the head of the emergency team of the Capital Governorate municipality, Zaid Al-Enezi and members of the team, as well as the deputy head of the judicial police at the Ministry of Elec-tricity Ahmad Al-Shimmari, and a number of of-ficials of the governorate’s general office.

He said the people have an important role to play and support the state agencies to prevent violations especially violations committed by the bachelors who live in model and private areas. He said reporting such violations, is the duty and responsibility of every citi-zen so that the authorities can deal quickly with such violations.

He appealed to the people not to rent houses to bach-elors in their areas because they pose a great danger to the security and safety of society.

He stated: “The campaign against violations began in September 2020 and we will not accept violations and it is not a goal in itself, but rather it is a way to implement the law that was created to serve the coun-try and its people.”

He added: “We were frustrated when we realized the real estate was exploited by some to rent houses to single expatriates, in addition to a large number of neglected cars, scrap and other violations.”

Al-Khaled stressed on the need to build labor cities to accommodate large numbers of workers, consid-ering that it is the best solution to solve the housing problems of bachelors.

He stressed that the random situation that is wit-nessed is unhealthy, so there are no compliments at the expense of the security of the homeland and the health of its community, pointing out that the launch of the campaigns against all violations came on this basis and will extend to all regions of the province.

Governor Al-Khalid thanked the heroes of the cam-paign, Zaid Al-Enezi, his team, the deputy head of the judicial police in the Ministry of Electricity and Water, and all participants in the campaign.

KUNA photoMinister of State for Communications and Information Technology and Minister of Public Works Rana Al-Fares and Qatari Minister of Municipal and Environment Af-

fairs Abdullah Al-Subaie during the meeting.

diwaniya

Bid to hike cooperationKuwait’s Minister of State for Communica-tions and Information Technology and Min-ister of Public Works Rana Al-Fares and Qatari Minister of Municipal and Environ-ment Affairs and Acting Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Abdullah Al-Subaie dis-cussed on Tuesday means of increasing

cooperation between the two countries in the public works and infrastructure fields.

Speaking to KUNA, Al-Fares said they have discussed some of outstanding de-velopment projects and plans that are implemented as a part of Kuwait’s new development vision. (KUNA)

89 private nurseries for specialneeds people licenses renewed

By Fares Al-AbdanAl-Seyassah Staff

KUWAIT CITY, July 7: The Assistant Un-dersecretary for Social Development at the Ministry of Social Affairs, Hana Al-Hajri, said 544 private nurseries designated for people with special needs are active while 16 have submitted a request to cancel their licenses.

Al-Hajri told Al-Seyassah daily the li-censes of 89 nurseries of the 544 have been renewed and that the ministry is coordinat-ing efforts with the competent authorities to form an integrated inspection team to inspect all private nurseries, in addition to coordinating with the Public Authority for the Disabled to inspect the nurseries for children of this category.

She said there is intention to soon create

an electronic ‘application’ site for owners of private nurseries to submit renewal requests and to those who want to open new nurser-ies via the Internet, in coordination with the Computer Department.

Al-Hajri indicated the ministry has dis-tributed the health requirements guide to private nurseries in 6 governorates and the Ministry of Health has been requested to complete the second phase of vaccination for nursery workers and to amend the status of many of its licenses in accordance with Law 22 of 2014 and its executive regula-tions.

She confi rmed legal measures were taken against what she called ‘non-existing nurser-ies’ and looked into several complaints fi led by citizens regarding refund of fees, and the re-formation of the committee to issue and follow up licenses for private nurseries.

Top official acquitted

By Jaber Al-HumoudAl-Seyassah Staff

KUWAIT CITY, July 7: The Court of Ap-peals upheld the verdict of the lower court and acquitted a colonel who was working as Director-General of Immigration Inves-tigations in the Ministry of Interior.

However, the court sentenced a fi rst lieutenant and a retired military offi cer each for 10 years imprisonment, and or-dered them to pay 72,000 in fi ne.

They were found guilty in a case of bribery worth 80,000 dinars, ‘seizing’ KD 30,000 from a Syrian, money laundering and falsifi cation of investigation reports.

The court acquitted two others of the charge of possessing drugs.

The Syrian was arrested on charges

of running a fi ctitious company and was involved in ‘bulk employment’ (visa traffi cking) but was able to escape law after striking a compromise with the offi cer and his civil partner (retired of-fi cer) after paying them 10,000 dinars.

The sources said the issue of bribe did not end and the duo continued to harass and blackmail the Syrian and asked for more money and the Syrian ended up paying 30,000 dinars.

When the duo continued to black-mail the Syrian he was tired and fi nally decided to report the incident to the authorities (the Criminal Investigation Department) following which a trap was set for the First Lieutenant and caught him in the act while receiving money from the Syrian.

Two get 10 years jail in bribe case

10 years jail indeath of maid

By Jaber Al-HumoudAl-Seyassah Staff

KUWAIT CITY, July 7: The Criminal Court, headed by Judge Mutib Al-Ardhi, sentenced a Kuwaiti woman to 10 years imprisonment with hard labor.

She was found guilty of causing the death of her domestic worker (maid).

The same court has acquitted her of the charge of trafficking in persons.

The court also found her husband guilty of abetting in the crime and sentenced him to one year in jail with hard labor.

Other Voices

‘Time vital to get nationality’By Ahmad alsarraf

Last Thursday’s article regarding the violations and unjust amend-

ments to the Kuwaiti Nationality Law was met with different reactions rang-ing between strong support and strong rejection and this is normal when the issue is of vital importance and at heart is the issue of the identity of a homeland and the identity of citizens as ev-ery word on this topic can be inter-preted in a differ-ent manner than intended by the writer, therefore it is important first to correct some of the errors contained in the article.

The selection of the year 1920 as the base year for acquiring Kuwaiti citizen-ship in an original capacity was made mostly at the suggestion of the late Hamad Yousef Al-Issa. Also, the year in which the famous manipulation of the nationality fi le occurred during the era of the late Sheikh Jaber Al-Ali was in 1966, not 1980, when he was acting Minister of Interior for a short period.

It is said that the number of those who acquired or were granted the citizen-ship by Sheikh Jaber Al-Ali and from a specifi c tribe was in hundreds, not in the thousands and there does not seem to be agreement on the real number.

I have never objected to the acqui-sition of citizenship of children of the naturalized persons and under any ar-ticle or pretext as long as the children are small or were born after their fa-ther obtained the Kuwaiti citizenship.

My main objection focused on the children of the naturalized persons who acquiring the Kuwaiti national-ity when they were adults though they had lived in their original country until the age of puberty, during which they formed loyalty to that country , then came with their father to Ku-wait and obtained the nationality, and therefore they must , according to the text of the 1960 law, which has been manipulated and amended, wait for thirty years from the date of natural-ization in order for them to acquire the nationality by origin and have the right to participate in the political pro-

cess and to assume senior positions.As for the children of naturalized

Kuwaitis to become Kuwaitis by ori-gin according to the text of Law No. 44/1994, they have equal rights like others without waiting for their loyal-ty to their new homeland to crystallize with the passage of the thirty-year pe-riod is not acceptable especially after we have seen the bad consequences of the overall situation in the country.

As for saying that several Western countries including America in which Arabs, Muslims and African immi-grants became members in Congress, so why not be like them. This saying is unfair because the number of immi-grants who became members of Con-gress is very few within a huge popu-lation. Environment and laws prevent them from exploiting the situation ac-cording to their sectarian or tribal af-fi liations, and this is unlike what hap-pened and happens with us from those who obtained citizenship illegally and succeeded in tampering with the iden-tity of the homeland and moreover, more often than not they are not loyal.

Like many others, I do not believe in the classifi cation of nationality (acquired-naturalized) but at the same time I do not believe that everyone who has obtained the citizenship is necessarily loyal to this country or that his loyalty is not in doubt.

The small size of the state, in terms of population and geography and the corruption of its government admin-istration make me express my reser-vation about the automatic entry into the political and legislative sphere for anyone once they acquire the citi-zenship. I still believe that what the founding fathers demanded is the ne-cessity of a suffi cient period of time for acquiring citizenship in order for loyalty to take root and this is a very important issue.

Also, I still believe in the neces-sity of granting citizenship to highly qualifi ed people and those who have rendered great services to this nation within clear and strict conditions.

* * *In an effort to overcome my back-

log of articles I decided to add a Fri-day to publish them and the measure may be temporary.

❑ ❑ ❑

e-mail: a.alsarraf@alqabas.com.kw

alsarraf

LOCALARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

6

Kuwait backs Egypt, Sudan ‘rights’KUWAIT CITY, July 7, (KUNA): Kuwait on Wednesday said it fully backs Egypt and Sudan’s efforts to “preserve their le-gitimate water rights,” amid a dispute with Ethiopia over the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Cairo and Khartoum’s attempts to solve the GERD dispute are in “accordance with the rules of international laws,” said a Kuwaiti foreign ministry statement.

It urged the international community to ensure that any solution to the quarrel should be “based on international conventions” that would serve the collective interests of the three countries (Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia).

Meanwhile, President of the Arab Parliament Adel Al-Asoumi on Tuesday called on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to reach a fair and mandatory agreement on the fi lling and operating rules of the Grand Ethiopian Re-naissance Dam (GERD).

Al-Asoumi sent a letter to UNSC on the GERD crisis before the meeting it should hold by next Thursday upon a request from Egypt and Sudan.

Photos during the event honoring graduates of the Kuwaiti Graduates Development Program (KGDP) Group 8.

Benefit from experiences gained during training: Professor Alrefaei

IBS honors graduates of KGDP Group 8KUWAIT CITY, July 7: Under the pa-tronage of the Governor of the Central Bank of Kuwait and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Banking Studies, Dr. Mohammad Al-Hashel, the Director-General of the Institute of Banking Studies, Prof. Dr. Yaqoub Alrefaei, honored the gradu-ates of the Kuwaiti Graduates Devel-opment Program (KGDP) Group 8, which was held from March 24, 2019 until August 31, 2020, during which there was a break due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The program is part of the “Kafaa” initiative, launched by the Central Bank of Kuwait in cooperation with Kuwaiti banks and the manage-ment of the Institute of Banking Stud-ies, which aims to enhance the banking sector’s contribution to developing the capabilities of newly graduated Ku-waitis and qualify them to work in the banking sector.

The annual organization of this pro-gram is facilitated by the continuous cooperation between the Central Bank of Kuwait and Kuwaiti banks within the framework of the social responsibility of the banking sector, and by building na-tional cadres and competencies capable of supporting the development process in the State of Kuwait. It is implemented un-der the supervision and management of the Institute of Banking Studies with the support of the local Kuwaiti banks par-ticipating in it. A group of new Kuwaiti graduates are selected and employed in banks, who train and qualify them to work in this important sector. They are trained for a full year before receiving their work duties, and this training in-

cludes several aspects and different appli-cations, namely: theoretical and practical as well as fi eld training, which provides participants with the opportunity to gain practical and professional experience, in preparation for their involvement in the fi eld of banking, to be able to carry out the tasks entrusted to them with high ef-fi ciently.

DistinguishedIn a speech delivered by Professor

Alrefaei congratulating the partici-pants on their graduation, and in the presence of those responsible for im-plementing the program from the Insti-tute of Banking Studies, Professor Al-refaei urged the participants to benefi t from the experiences they gained dur-ing their training on this distinguished program, and to make every effort to achieve the desired benefi ts from their training in their fi eld of work. The program is one of the best options for recent graduates wishing to work in the banking and fi nancial sector, as it includes a variety of training and spe-cialized materials in the banking and fi nancial fi eld, as they have acquired a high level of skill and knowledge in this fi eld.

The certifi cate of this program is accredited by The London Institute of Banking & Finance (LIBF), which is one of the oldest international insti-tutions in the fi eld of banking and fi -nancial services, and this professional accreditation is not granted until after verifying that the entity that will obtain it follows the latest professional train-ing techniques and methods.

One of the most important features of this program is that the Central Bank of Kuwait, in cooperation with local banks, appoints the trainees who have been selected in those banks and then works on enrolling them for a full year at the Institute of Banking Studies to receive intensive and vital training, which includes training in lecture halls with the aim of developing their basic skills and specialization in banking.

They are trained on the use of elec-tronic training, which is provided in cooperation with the most prestigious companies specialized in this fi eld. The training in this program also includes fi eld training in local Kuwaiti banks, with the aim of obtaining practical experience and linking theoretical as-pects with practical reality. After that, the fi eld training phase begins outside the State of Kuwait, where participants are dispatched to many developed countries in the fi eld of banking to be trained on the latest state-of-the-art technology in the banking and fi nan-cial sector, with the aim of identifying external banking practices and gaining international experience.

Professor Alrefaei also thanked His Excellency the Governor of the Cen-tral Bank of Kuwait, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Banking Studies, His Excellency Dr. Mohammad Yousef Al-Hashel, and the members of the Board of Directors of the Institute for their support of this pro-gram, as well as the directors of human resources in the participating banks, for their efforts and follow-up to achieve the success of its convening each year.

2,500 to benefit from campaign

KRCS distributes Eid coupons to needy familiesBy Arwa Al-Waqyan

KUWAIT CITY, July 7, (KUNA): The Kuwait Red Crescent Society announced Wednesday, the distri-bution of Eid Al-Adha coupons for the benefi t of 2,500 needy families inside the country who are reg-istered in the association’s state-ments.

Director of the Society’s Local Aid Department, Maryam Al-Ad-sani, told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that the distribution of Eid Al-Adha coupons to needy families is in addition to the Kuwait Red Crescent Society’s continuous projects in providing multifaceted assistance to these families.

She added that this campaign aims to bring a smile and joy on the faces of children, women and the elderly, stressing the associa-tion’s keenness to support needy families and alleviate them with the approaching Eid Al-Adha.

BeneficiariesShe explained that the benefi -

ciaries of the aid will go to take the sacrifi ce meat from the shops designated to cover their needs on the occasion of Eid Al-Adha, which contributes to establishing a spirit of joy for everyone.

She indicated that the assistance provided by the association to needy families inside Kuwait in-cludes widows, orphans, divorced women, people with special needs, the sick, and the elderly and low-income people.

Al-Adsani stated that the distri-bution of coupons is based on the association’s database with infor-mation about families in all gover-norates of the State of Kuwait. She drew attention to the association’s interest in extending bridges of cooperation and humanitarian and charitable partnership with bene-factors who support its humanitar-ian efforts so that their donations reach the needy and other segments of society.

She indicated that the association receives all alms and zakat from cit-izens and residents for distribution to the poor and the needy, noting that Kuwait’s giving will not stop helping the needy, whether inside or outside it.

KUNA photoDistribution of Eid Al-Adha coupons to needy families inside the country.

The Guest Show poster

The Guest Show features Dr Amir AhmedOn July 8, The Guest Show (TGS) on Radio Kuwait will present Dr Amir Ahmed, President of The In-dian Doctors Forum (IDF), a pre-mier organisation of leading health professionals in Kuwait. The last one and a half years have been an extraordinarily challenging time, especially for health professionals in Kuwait and around the world.

The government of Kuwait is engaged in a relentless struggle against the pandemic. And mem-bers of the Indian Doctors Forum including doctors and nurses have played a crucial role in this battle.

Not only have they borne the psy-chological burden of fighting an in-visible enemy, they are experienc-ing the physical stress of working in a risky environment. These doctors and nurses are the true warriors of Covid -19 because of their bravery and commitment.

On The Guest Show, Dr Amir Ahmed speaks of his journey as a physician, of the journey of IDF as an organization, the contribution of Indian health workers to the fight against the pandemic, the psycho-logical burden and physical chal-lenges of the last one year.

INTERNATIONALARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

7

Cybersecurity experts caution

‘Ransomware attackdamage is minimal’WASHINGTON, July 7, (AP): US President Joe Biden said Tuesday that damage to U.S. businesses in the biggest ransomware attack on record appears minimal, though information remained incomplete. The company whose software was exploited said fewer than 1,500 businesses worldwide appeared compromised but cybersecurity experts caution that the incident isn’t over.

Also Tuesday, a security researcher who chatted online with representatives of the Russia-linked RE-vil gang behind the attack said they claimed to have stolen data from hundreds of companies, but offered no evidence.

Answering a reporter’s question at a vaccine-related White House event, Biden said his national security team had updated him Tuesday morning on the attack, which exploited a powerful remote-management tool run by Miami-based software company Kaseya in what is known as a supply-chain attack.

“It appears to have caused minimal damage to U.S. businesses but we’re still gathering informa-tion,” Biden said. “And I’m going to have more to say about this in the next several days.” An offi cial at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, speaking on condition they not be further identifi ed, said no federal agencies or critical infra-structure appear to have been impacted.

On Wednesday, Biden and Vice President Kama-la Harris will lead an interagency meeting to discuss the administration’s efforts to counter ransomware.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki held out the prospect of retaliatory action. What Biden told President Vladimir Putin in Geneva last month still holds, she said: “If the Russian government cannot or will not take action against criminal actors resid-ing in Russia, we will take action or reserve the right to take action on our own.”

What sort of action that would be is unclear.Biden has said repeatedly that the Kremlin bears

responsibility for giving ransomware criminals safe harbor, even if it is not directly involved. There is no indication that Putin has moved against the gangs. Psaki said Russian and U.S. representatives were meeting next week and would discuss the matter.

StakesFurther underscoring the geopolitical stakes in cy-

berspace, the Republican National Committee said Tuesday that it had been informed over the week-end that one of its contractors had been breached, though it was not immediately clear by whom. The RNC said no data was accessed.

The contractor, Synnex, initially said that the ac-tion “could potentially be in connection with the recent cybersecurity attacks of Managed Service Providers,” a likely reference to the breaches last week. But it backed away from that claim in a sec-ond statement late Tuesday.

Friday’s attack hobbled businesses in at least 17 countries. It shuttered most of the 800 supermarkets in the Swedish Coop chain over the weekend be-cause cash registers stopped working, and report-edly knocked more than 100 New Zealand kinder-gartens offl ine.

Kaseya said it believes only about 800 to 1,500 of the estimated 800,000 to 1,000,000 mostly small business end-users of its software were affected. They are customers of companies that use Kaseya’s virtual system administrator, or VSA, product to fully manage their IT infrastructure.

Cybersecurity experts said, however, it is too early for Kaseya to know the true impact given its launch on the eve of the Fourth of July holiday weekend in the U.S. They said many targets might only discover it upon returning to work Tuesday.

Ransomware criminals infi ltrate networks and sow malware that cripples them by scrambling all their data. Victims get a decoder key when they pay up. Most ransomware victims don’t publicly report attacks or disclose if they’ve paid ransoms. In the U.S, disclosure of a breach is required by state laws when personal data that can be used in identity theft is stolen. Federal law mandates it when healthcare records are exposed.

AttackSecurity researchers said that in this attack, the

criminals did not appear to have had time to steal data before locking up networks. That raised the question whether the motivation behind the attack was profi t alone, because extortion through threat-ening to expose sensitive pilfered data betters the odds of big payoffs.

But Ryan Sherstobitoff, threat intelligence chief of the cybersecurity fi rm Security Scorecard, said REvil representatives claimed Saturday to have stolen data from hundreds of companies and were threatening to sell it if ransom demands of up to $5 million for bigger victims - they were seeking $45,000 per infected computer - were not met.

“The operators are claiming that, though there is not necessarily direct evidence,” added Sherstobit-off, who said he masqueraded as a victim to engage the criminals. He said the criminals claimed banks were among victims.

REvil offered a universal software decoder to free all victims in exchange for a lump sum payment of $50 million, he added. On Sunday, that sum rose to $70 million in a post on the criminals’ dark web site.

Analysts say the chaos ransomware criminals have wrought in the past year - hitting hospitals, schools, local governments and other targets at the rate of about one every eight minutes - serves Pu-tin’s strategic agenda of destabilizing the West.

Most of the more than 60 Kaseya customers that company spokeswoman Dana Liedholm said were affected are managed service providers (MSPs), with multiple customers downstream.

“Given the relationship between Kaseya and MSPs, it’s not clear how Kaseya would know the number of victims impacted. There is no way the numbers are as low as Kaseya is claiming though,” said Jake Williams, chief technical offi cer of the cybersecurity fi rm BreachQuest. Others research-ers also questioned Kaseya’s visibility into crippled managed service providers.

The hacked VSA tool remotely maintains cus-tomer networks, automating security and other software updates. Essentially, a product designed to protect networks from malware was cleverly used to distribute it.

In an interview on Sunday, Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola estimated the number of victims in “the low thousands.” The German news agency dpa had reported that an unnamed German IT services company told authorities that several thousand of its customers were compromised. Also among reported victims were two Dutch IT services companies.

A broad array of businesses and public agencies were hit, apparently on all continents, including in fi nancial services, travel and leisure and the public sector - though few large companies, the cybersecu-rity fi rm Sophos said.

Liedholm, the Kaseya spokeswoman, said the vast majority of the company’s 37,000 customers were unaffected and said the company expected to release a patch Wednesday.

America

Britain

LONDON, July 7, (AP): Britain’s High Court has granted the U.S. government permission to appeal a decision that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be sent to the United States to face espio-nage charges.

The judicial office said Wednesday that the appeal had been granted and the case would be listed for a High Court hearing. No date has been set.

In January, a lower court judge refused an American request to send Assange to the U.S. to face spying charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of secret military documents a decade ago. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition on health grounds, saying Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S.

prison conditions.The judge ordered that Assange must

remain in prison during any potential U.S. appeal, ruling that the Australian citizen “has an incentive to abscond” if he were freed.

Assange, 50, has been in London’ high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was arrested in April 2019 for skipping bail seven years earlier during a separate legal battle.

Assange spent seven years holed up in-side Ecuador’s London embassy, where he fled in 2012 to avoid extradition to Swe-den to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed.

U.S. prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ pub-lication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.

The prosecutors say Assange unlaw-fully helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published. Lawyers for Assange argue that he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amend-ment freedom of speech protections for publishing documents that exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghani-stan.

Assange’s fiancée, Stella Moris, urged U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday to drop the prosecution launched under his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Moris, who has two young sons with As-sange, said outside the High Court that the WikiLeaks founder was “very unwell” in prison.

“He won his case in January. Why is he even in prison?” she said.

“I’m appealing to the Biden adminis-tration to do the right thing. This appeal was taken two days before the Trump ad-ministration left office, and if the Biden administration is serious about respecting the rule of law, the First Amendment and defending global press freedom, the only thing it can do is drop this case.”

Assange’s extradition

UK court allows US to appeal verdict

Stella Moris, with her children Gabriel, (left) and Max, as she joins supporters of her partner and their father Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, including Fashion Designer Vivienne Westwood, (right), during a picnic in Parliament Square to mark his 50th birthday, in London, Saturday July 3, 2021. Assange is being detained in Belmarsh prison in London while the US continues an attempt to extradite him under the US’s 1917 Espionage Act for ‘unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classifi ed documents related to the national defence.’ (AP)

Market Movements 07-07-2021

Business Change Closing ptsUK - FTSE 100 +50.14 7,151.02EUROPE - Euro Stoxx 50 +25.86 4,078.53EGYPT - EGX 30 +122.46 10,277.25INDIA - Sensex +193.58 53,054.76

Change Closing ptsSAUDI - Tadawul -12.66 10,958.55JAPAN - Nikkei -276.26 28,366.95UAE - DFM -0.61 2,782.08PHILIPPINES - All Shares -49.43 6,943.00PAKISTAN - KSE 100 -98.24 47,247.92SINGAPORE - Straits Times STI -48.99 3,141.60

China fines internet giants in anti-monopoly cases

Companies including internet giants Alibaba and Tencent were fined Wednesday by anti-monopoly regulators in a new move to tighten control over their fast-developing industries.

In 22 cases, companies were fined 500,000 yuan ($75,000) each for actions including acquiring stakes in other compa-nies that might improperly increase their market power, the State Administration for Market Regulation announced. It said viola-tors include six companies owned by Aliba-ba Group, five by Tencent Holding Ltd. and two by retailer Suning.com, Ltd.

China’s leaders worry about the domi-nance of its biggest internet companies, which are expanding into finance, health services and other sensitive areas. The rul-ing Communist Party says anti-monopoly enforcement, especially in tech, is a priority this year.

In the biggest penalty to date, Alibaba was fined 18.3 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) in April on charges of suppressing competi-tion. Other companies have been fined or reprimanded for violating competition, data protection, censorship and other rules.

On Sunday, ride-hailing service Didi Global Inc., which had a U.S. stock market debut last week, was ordered by regulators to overhaul its collection and handling of customer information.

Didi raised $4 billion from investors in its New York stock offering.

The company was founded in 2012 as a taxi-hailing app and has expanded into other ride-hailing options including private cars and buses. It says it also is investing in electric cars, artificial intelligence and other technology development. (AP)

In this file photo, a man talks on his phone as a woman rides on an electric bike past a company logo at the Alibaba Group headquarters in Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang prov-ince. (AP)

In this file photo, a sign is displayed at a restaurant in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. The Institute for Supply Management said July 6, growth in the services sector, where most Americans work, slowed in June following record expansion in May. (AP)

Traders seen on the floor of Boursa Kuwait. Kuwait’s bourse is undergoing major renovations that would equip the building with ‘cutting-edge’ technol-

ogy. (AP)

Boursa Kuwait ‘building’gets cutting-edge faceliftKUWAIT CITY, July 7, (KUNA): Ku-wait on Wednesday said its national bourse office is undergoing major renova-tions that would equip the building with “cutting-edge” technology, forcing an in-terim closure as operations are completed.

Antiquated stock market screens have been replaced with “more modern apparatuses allowing for more than 50 percent power consumption,” the bourse said in a statement, citing numerous fa-cilities that are in need of refurbishment.

The renovation work “fully complies with environment-friendly standards,” added the statement, highlighting the

measure as a “social obligation” on the part of a venerable institution such as the national stock exchange.

Through this initiative, the Kuwaiti bourse seeks to ensure that none of its day-to-day operations would be detri-mental to national environment conser-vation efforts in any way, according to Nasser Al-Sanousi, the bourse’s chief marketing officer.

He hailed the initiative as one of a “plethora of endeavors” the bourse had undertaken to illustrate the signifi-cance of “sustainable development,” added the official.

Biden plans to sign order toimprove workers’ leverageWASHINGTON, July 7, (AP): President Joe Biden plans to sign an executive order that will reduce the ability of employers to prevent workers from going to rival firms and remove some of the state occu-pational licensing requirements that make it harder to land a job.

The order is designed to improve workers’ leverage in the economy, increase their chances of employ-ment and generate more competition among U.S. employers, a person familiar with the order said Wednes-day, insisting on anonymity ahead of its release. It would be a key test as to whether empowering workers

will lead to pay hikes and smooth the way for them to move to parts of the country where their skills are most in demand. It also enables Biden to show in the 2022 congressional elec-tions how Democratic policies are fo-cused on workers, a key argument as Republicans have increasingly tried to frame their party as backing the working class.

The forthcoming order will direct the Federal Trade Commission to restrict and potentially bar so-called noncompete agreements, which have stopped workers in industries includ-ing fast food and Big Tech from go-ing to other employers for higher pay.

DoD to pursue deal with both Microsoft and Amazon

Pentagon cancels contract with Microsoft

US service sector grows‘slightly’ slower in June

Many companies still struggling to hire enough workers

SILVER SPRING, Maryland, July 7, (AP): Growth in the services sector, where most Americans work, slowed in June following record expansion in May.

The Institute for Supply Management said Tuesday that its monthly survey of service in-dustries retreated to a reading of 60.1, following a all-time high reading of 64 in May. Any read-ing above 50 indicates the sector is expanding.

It’s the 13th straight month of expansion in the services sector following a two-month contraction in April and May of last year as businesses were forced to shut down during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

After five consecutive months of expansion, the employment index fell into contraction territory in

June with a reading of 49.3, down from May’s 55.3, suggesting many companies are still struggling to hire enough workers.

The Labor Department reported an encouraging burst of hiring in its jobs report last week, 850,000 jobs added in June, well above the average of the previous three months. Hiring in June was particularly strong in res-taurants, bars and hotels, which collectively absorbed heavier layoffs from the recession. Those businesses added 343,000 jobs, but it may not be enough.

Comments from respondents continued to focus on supply chain issues, supply shortages and staffing difficulties.

“Manpower has been a concern,” said one; another commented: “Lack of labor is killing us.”

One group benefitting from the plentiful jobs is

teenagers. An acute labor shortage - especially at res-taurants, tourism and entertainment businesses - has teenage workers in high demand. Lifeguarding, bussing tables and other jobs are paying $15 to $17 or more in many places, luring young people into the workforce in numbers not seen since before the Great Recession.

The Labor Department says that 33.2% of Ameri-cans aged 16-19 are working, the highest percentage since 2008. Though that number ticked down slightly in June, it’s still higher than the pre-pandemic figure.

New US manufacturing data released last week showed that demand continued to be so strong that companies are struggling to keep up with orders. Supply chain shortages and difficulty finding enough workers contributed to a backlog of orders and late deliveries in the manufacturing sector.

WASHINGTON, July 7, (AP): The Pen-tagon said it canceled a disputed cloud-computing contract with Microsoft that could eventually have been worth $10 bil-lion. It will instead pursue a deal with both Microsoft and Amazon and possibly other cloud service providers.

“With the shifting technology envi-ronment, it has become clear that the JEDI Cloud contract, which has long been delayed, no longer meets the re-quirements to fill the DoD’s capability gaps,” the Pentagon said in a statement Tuesday.

The statement did not directly men-tion that the Pentagon faced extended legal challenges by Amazon to the original $1 million contract awarded to Microsoft. Amazon argued that the Microsoft award was tainted by poli-tics, particularly then-President Don-ald Trump’s antagonism toward Ama-zon founder, Jeff Bezos, who stepped down Monday as the company’s chief executive officer. Bezos owns The Washington Post, a newspaper often criticized by Trump.

The Pentagon’s chief information officer, John Sherman, told reporters Tuesday that during the lengthy legal fight with Amazon, “the landscape has evolved” with new possibilities for

large-scale cloud computing services. Thus it was decided, he said, to start over and seek multiple vendors.

Sherman said JEDI will be replaced by a new program called Joint Warf-ighter Cloud Capability, and that both Amazon and Microsoft “likely” will be awarded parts of the business, although neither is guaranteed. Sherman said the three other large cloud service provid-ers - Google, IBM and Oracle - might qualify, too.

Microsoft said in response to the Pen-tagon announcement, “We understand the DoD’s rationale, and we support them and every military member who needs the mission-critical 21st century technol-ogy JEDI would have provided. The DoD faced a difficult choice: Continue with what could be a years-long litigation battle or find another path forward.”

Amazon said it understands and agrees with the Pentagon’s decision. In a statement, the company reiterated its view that the 2019 contract award was not based on the merits of the compet-ing proposals “and instead was the result of outside influence that has no place in government procurement.”

Oracle, which had earlier sought the JEDI contact but didn’t make it to the final round, declined comment Tuesday.

In separate statements, IBM said it was evaluating the new Pentagon approach and Google said it looked forward to discussing it with Pentagon officials.

The JEDI project began with the $1 million contract award for Microsoft, meant as an initial step in a 10-year deal that could have reached $10 billion in value. The project that will replace it is a five-year program; Sherman said no exact contract value has been set but that it will be “in the billions.” Sherman said the government will negotiate the amount Microsoft will be paid for hav-ing its 2019 deal terminated.

Amazon Web Services, a market leader in providing cloud computing services, had long been considered a leading candidate to run the Penta-gon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infra-structure project, known as JEDI. The project was meant to store and process vast amounts of classified data, allow-ing the U.S. military to improve com-munications with soldiers on the bat-tlefield and use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities.

The JEDI contract became mired in legal challenges almost as soon as it was awarded to Microsoft in October 2019. The losing bidder, Amazon Web Services, went to court arguing that the Pentagon’s process was flawed and unfair, including that it was improperly influenced by politics.

This year the Pentagon had been hinting that it might scrap the contract, saying in May that it felt compelled to reconsider its options after a federal judge in April rejected a Pentagon move to have key parts of Amazon’s lawsuit dismissed.

The JEDI saga has been unusual for the political dimension linked to Trump. In April 2020, the Defense Department inspector general’s office concluded that the contracting process was in line with legal and government purchasing standards. The inspector general found no evidence of White House interfer-ence in the contract award process, but that review also said investigators could not fully review the matter because the White House would not allow unfet-tered access to witnesses.

This file photo shows the Pentagon in Washington. The Pentagon said that it is canceling a cloud-computing contract with Microsoft that could eventu-ally have been worth $10 billion and will instead pursue a deal with both

Microsoft and Amazon. (AP)

BUSINESSARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

9

American Airlines logs big jump in travel

American Airlines says it carried nearly three times as many passengers over the July 4 weekend than it did over the holiday last year, the latest sign that travel - at least within the United States - is continuing to rebound from pandemic lows of 2020.

American said Wednesday that it car-ried nearly 2.7 million passengers on more than 26,000 American and American Ea-gle flights between last Thursday and Monday. The airline did not provide com-parisons with 2019, but the Transportation Security Administration screened 10.1 mil-

lion travelers in the same five-day period, down 17% from the comparable period in 2019. Those figures have been improving every month.

Most U.S. travelers are taking domestic flights; international travel remains more deeply depressed. A global airline trade group on Wednesday urged governments to relax travel restrictions that were im-posed to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Willie Walsh, head of the International Air Transport Association, said the rules are confusing and discourage people

from travel, which his group insists can be done safely. He said COVID-19 tests required by many countries are too ex-pensive, further discouraging travel.

The group said that air travel world-wide was down 63% in May compared with the same month in 2019. The group said domestic travel is China and Russia is higher than it was before the pandem-ic, but that a travel recovery in Japan and India has been thrown into reverse by the rise of new and more contagious variants of the virus. (AP)

American Airlines employees work at ticket counters in Terminal 3 at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Friday, July 2, 2021. (AP)

Stocks rise as investors await Fed minutesTechnology and industrial stocks top gainers

NEW YORK, July 7, (AP): Stocks edged higher Wednesday, a day after the S&P 500 snapped a seven-day winning streak. Inves-tors are watching the bond market, where yields have tumbled sharply in the last couple of days despite strong economic data.

The S&P 500 index was up 0.3% as of 12:15 p.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 83 points, or 0.2%, to 34,661 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.1%.

Technology and industrial stocks were the biggest gainers. Apple rose 1.4% and Otis rose 2.8%. Energy stocks lagged the broader market as oil prices slipped 2.4%.

Bond yields were quickly moving lower, an unusual occurrence given there’s been no economic data to im-ply an economic slowdown or defl a-tion. In fact, the data for several weeks has shown the opposite - an economic growing quickly out of the pandemic, and infl ation tied to demand for raw materials and workers.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury note was trading at 1.31%, down from 1.37% the day before. A month ago, the 10-year note was trading at around 1.62%. The last time bond yields moved lower so quickly was in March 2020 when the pandemic effectively shut down the U.S. economy. Lower bond yields can be good for many parts of the economy, however. Mortgage rates are tied closely to bond yields, and government borrow-ing costs fall when the cost of issuing bonds decreases.

Stocks that are heavily infl uenced by interest rates, particularly banks, slipped in early trading but recovered.

Investors will get minutes from the Federal Reserve’s June meeting at 2

p.m. Eastern. Wall Street will be look-ing for additional clues about the Fed’s thinking on interest rates and infl ation. After the last meeting, Fed policymak-ers said they planned to raise interest rates as soon as 2023, which was soon-er than the market expected.

The FTSE 100 in London opened 0.5% higher at 7,136.05. Frankfurt’s DAX gained 0.7% to 15,618.92 while the CAC 40 in Paris added 0.3% to 6,525.16.

Asian stock markets followed Wall Street lower Wednesday after U.S. ser-vices activity weakened.

Market benchmarks in Tokyo, Hong

Kong and Seoul declined. Shanghai advanced.

Overnight, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index broke a seven-day streak of record closes and fell after the Institute of Supply Management reported service industry activity grew in June at a slower rate than forecast.

The “disappointing drop” suggests the U.S.recovery “is not immune” to global pockets of resurgence of the coronavirus, said Mizuho Bank in a report.

The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo sank 1% to 28,366.95 and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong lost 0.9% to 27,813.25.

The Shanghai Composite Index was up 0.7% at 3,557.19 after China’s Cab-inet announced it would impose strict-er data security and other standards on Chinese companies that want to join foreign stock exchanges.

The announcement, at a time when Beijing is tightening control over tech-nology industries, is a potential hurdle for Chinese entrepreneurs who have raised billions of dollars abroad. It comes after ride-hailing service Didi Global Inc. was ordered to stop signing up new users and remove its app from online stores while it increases security for customer information.

In this file photo provided by the New York Stock Exchange, trader William Lawrence, (center), works on the floor of the exchange. Stocks edged higher Wednesday, a day after the S&P 500 snapped a seven-day winning

streak. (AP)

Nissan CEO tells Japan court

‘Ghosn had too much power’TOKYO, July 7, (AP): Nissan Chief Executive Makoto Uchida told a Japanese court on Wednesday that the company’s former chairman, Car-los Ghosn, had held too much power, failed to listen to others, and stayed on for too long.

Uchida said Wednesday that those were factors that led to fi nancial mis-conduct charges for Ghosn. He was testifying as a witness for Nissan Mo-tor Co., which as a corporate entity is standing trial on charges of having falsifi ed securities reports in under-re-porting Ghosn’s compensation. It does not contest the charges.

Greg Kelly, an American former ex-ecutive vice president at Nissan, also is on trial on charges of failing to fully report Ghosn’s compensation. Both he and Ghosn have adamantly insisted they are innocent.

Ghosn was arrested in 2018, but fl ed to Lebanon while out on bail. Lebanon does not have an extradition treaty with Japan.

“I felt ashamed and miserable when I learned that something this outra-geous was happening,” Uchida told the Tokyo District Court about the allega-tions against Ghosn and Nissan.

“The Nissan brand was tarnished, the workers were demoralized, and trust for management has been lost,” he said.

Uchida said an atmosphere of fear prevailed at the company, with staff believing that challenging Ghosn car-ried serious risks.

“We were only trying to play melodies that sounded good to our boss,” he said. “I’ve been working to try to change that since becoming CEO.”

Ghosn was sent to Nissan by its French alliance partner Renault about two decades ago, helping to revive a company on the brink of bankruptcy. From about 2014, he became less col-

laborative and the company began to chase sales volume, setting overly am-bitious goals, Uchida said.

While some at Nissan may have felt Ghosn stayed at the helm for too long, in his testimony Kelly has insisted is-sues over reporting of his compensa-tion arose because the company was trying to fi nd legal ways to improve his pay to prevent him from leaving for a rival automaker. Ghosn took a huge pay cut when the disclosure of big executive salaries became required in Japan in 2010.

Uchida became chief executive and president in 2019. He worked at ma-jor Japanese trading company Nissho Iwai Corp. before joining Nissan in 2003, when Nissho Iwai merged with another trading company, Nichimen, later becoming Sojitz Corp.

Uchida’s predecessor, Hiroto Saikawa, resigned after he became em-broiled in a scandal of his own, also re-lated to under-reported compensation. Saikawa has not been charged.

Nissan has promised to strengthen its corporate governance and audits to prevent a recurrence of any fi nancial wrongdoing.

Ghosn has accused other top Nissan executives of plotting to force him out of the company due to fears he might push for Renault, which owns 43% of Nissan, to gain more control over the Japanese automaker.

Nissan executives have testifi ed at the trial that this was a concern.

The alliance of Renault, Nissan and smaller automaker Mitsubishi Motor Corp. shares technology, auto parts and production plants. That makes Nissan and Renault nearly inseparable, according to industry experts.

It’s unclear when the panel of three judges will hand down their verdict in the trial. It could take months. The maximum penalty Kelly could face is 15 years in prison.

BUSINESSARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

10

SoftBank Group names Kornblau Global Head of Communications

SoftBank Group Corp. (“SBG”) today announced that Mark Ko-rnblau will join SBG as Global Head of Communications, ef-fective August 16. Kornblau joins SBG from the NBCU-niversal News Group, where he is currently Executive Vice President of Communications.

Kornblau will be based in SoftBank’s New York offi ce and will report to Masayoshi Son, Representative Director, Corpo-

rate Offi cer, Chairman & CEO of SBG, and Marcelo Claure, Cor-porate Offi cer, Executive Vice President & COO of SBG and Chief Executive Offi cer of Soft-Bank Group International.

In this role, Kornblau will be responsible for leading SBG’s corporate communications strategy, directing the Compa-ny’s external and internal glob-al communications functions. He will also work with SBG’s

nearly 300 portfolio companies to foster alignment and value creation across the SoftBank Group ecosystem.

“Mark is a highly regarded and talented communications leader who has been a trusted advisor to CEOs, presiden-tial candidates, government leaders and journalists for more than two decades,” said Claure. “He will be a valuable partner to our leadership team

and the entrepreneurs and companies we invest in.”

Kornblau said, “SoftBank is at the center of a transforma-tive global moment. It is shap-ing the future by identifying truly innovative technologies and accelerating the growth of companies that are revolu-tionizing the way we live and work - for the better. I’m look-ing forward to supporting that mission.” (AP)

In this fi le photo, people walk by a SoftBank shop

in Tokyo. (AP)

Don’t be afraid to invest

What will you teach yourchildren about ‘money’?

By Amrita JayakumarNerdWallet

Hey, internet: Remember millennials? Many of us have graduated from our lattes and leisurely brunches to be-

come parents with jobs, car loans and perhaps even a mort-gage.

On our road to adulthood, we’ve experienced two global crises - a recession and a pandemic. Many of us are also still carrying mountains of student debt. These years have shaped our outlook on money, and now we’re teaching our kids what we know.

Here are the money lessons fi ve millennial parents around the country want their children to learn (answers have been edited for length and clarity):

‘Don’t ever think your child is too young to learn’ Laurynn Vaughn, 37, of Kissimmee, Florida, is a single

parent to two daughters, ages 5 and 4. She runs a day care that closed during the pandemic but has since reopened. She is also an active volunteer

“I don’t want to pass on the fact that I was not taught about money. I think the earlier you teach your children, the better. I already teach them that there’s pretty much three principles with money. The No. 1 thing is giving. The second thing is saving. And the third thing is, what you have left is what you can enjoy. My principles are a little different, there’s really four: I pay bills, then I give, I save and have money left over to enjoy. Teaching them at their level is better than not teaching them because you’re waiting for them to get to a level.”

‘It’s better to be a working student and leave college with much less debt’

Mae Waugh Barrios, 34, of Holliston, Massachusetts, is a parent to three children, ages 10, 4, and 2. She is an instruc-tional coach for middle school and is on an unpaid leave of absence to look after her children during the pandemic. Her husband, Francisco, runs a landscaping business. She has $20,000 in student loans left to pay off.

“That was the biggest mistake I made in my whole life. Everyone said go to whatever college you want, just take the loans. Nobody told me the real after-effects of student loans. My husband didn’t go to college. Our plan is to open a college savings account for (our children) when I go back to work. It’s (also) better to be a working student and leave col-lege with much less debt. My husband and I have made sure we don’t get so bogged down by debt that we can’t survive. We talk a lot at the dinner table about being rich and being poor. If you are rich, your money works for you. If you are poor, you work for money.”

‘A greater emphasis on experiences’Steffa Mantilla, 36, of Houston has a 4-year-old son. She is

a certifi ed fi nancial education instructor, a former zookeeper and founder of the personal fi nance website Money Tamer.

“In our household, we’re putting a greater emphasis on ‘experiences’ rather than ‘things.’ (For my son’s birthday), instead of buying tons of presents, we’ll buy one present and then tickets to the children’s museum or local zoo. We encourage relatives to give gifts of experience, as well, that they can do together. This puts the focus on family and friends while also teaching him to live with less stuff around.”

‘Not being afraid to invest’ Alan LaFrance, 37, of Austin, Texas, has a 5-year-old son.

He works in digital marketing and his wife, Meladee, is a respiratory therapist.

“You could pay for a car in cash, but you could (get) a loan for that car and take that capital and invest it. If you can make more with that money, you’re in a much better situa-tion overall. At some point you can’t just squirrel everything away, you have to start letting the money work for you. As parents, we want our kids to save, but in reality, you can do that too much and really miss out on a lot of opportunity.”

‘Build another stream of income’Jernessa Jones, 39, of Florence, Alabama, is a single par-

ent to a 6-year-old son and is an accredited fi nancial coun-selor at Operation Hope, a fi nancial literacy nonprofi t. She graduated from an MBA program during the pandemic and started a fashion accessory business.”

“My mom and dad didn’t own a business and neither were homeowners. I was looking for houses last year because homeownership is the fi rst step to building generational wealth. I realized I could afford the mortgages for some of the houses I looked at, but I’d probably be house poor. I decided to step back and see what I could do to build another stream of income. Entrepreneurship was another thing I could teach my son about. From beginning to end, even when I opened my business bank account, he was there.” (AP)

Are state interest-rate caps anautomatic win for borrowers?

Caps free borrowers from predatory lending models: advocates

NEW YORK, July 7, (AP): Small-dollar, short-term lenders, unburdened by a fed-eral maximum interest rate, can charge borrowers rates of 400% or more for their loans.

But more states are bringing that number down by setting rate caps to curb high-interest lending. Cur-rently, 18 states and Washington, D.C. , have laws that limit short-term loan rates to 36% or lower, according to the Center for Responsible Lending. Other states are weighing similar legislation.

“This legislative session we’ve seen an increased and renewed interest in limiting interest rates and limiting the harms of payday loans,” says Lisa Stifler, director of state policy for the CRL.

Rate-cap opponents say that when a state caps interest, lenders can no longer operate profitably, and consumers with already limited options lose their last resort. Consumer advocates say that caps free borrowers from predatory lending models.

Here’s what happens when a state caps interest rates and what alternatives consumers have for small-dollar loans.

Legislation targets APRTo deter high-interest lenders and protect consumers

against predatory loans, legislation targets the somewhat complex and decidedly unsexy annual percentage rate.

APR is an interest rate plus any fees a lender charges. A $300 loan repaid in two weeks with a $45 fee would have a 391% APR. The same loan with an APR reduced to 36% would have a roughly $4.25 fee - and much less revenue for the lender.

APR isn’t an appropriate way to view the cost of a small loan, says Andrew Duke, executive director of the Online Lenders Alliance, which represents short-term

online lenders.“The number ends up looking a lot higher and more

dramatic than what the consumer perceives to be the cost of the loan,” he says.

Duke says consumers should instead use the actual fee to assess a loan’s affordability.

But what the fee doesn’t show is the costly, long-term debt cycle many borrowers end up in, Stifler says.

More than 80% of payday loans are taken out within two weeks of repaying a previous payday loan, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“The business model of payday loans and the industry is based on repeat borrowing,” Stifler says. “It is a prod-uct that causes a debt trap that actually pushes people out of the financial system.”

In states that don’t allow interest rates above 36% or otherwise ban payday lending, there are no storefront payday lenders, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Consumers have other optionsSome high-interest loans, like pawn loans , may remain

after a rate cap is implemented, Duke says, but limiting consumers’ options could force them to miss bill pay-ments or incur late fees.

Illinois State Sen. Jacqueline Collins, D-Chicago , who was a chief co-sponsor on the consumer loan rate cap in Illinois that was signed into law in March , says she hopes that the new law will remove the distraction of payday and other high-interest loans and give the state’s residents a clearer view of affordable alterna-tives.

Credit unions, for example, can offer small loans. While credit scores are considered on a loan application, a credit union often has a history with a borrower and can assess their ability to repay the loan using other informa-tion. This can make it easier to qualify.

For consumers struggling to pay bills, Stifler suggests contacting creditors and service providers for a payment extension. She recommends consumers turn to credit counseling agencies, which can offer free or inexpensive financial assistance , or religious organizations, which can help provide food, clothing and help with transporta-tion to a job interview .

Exodus Lending is a Minnesota nonprofit that advo-cates for fair lending laws and refinances residents’ high-interest loans with interest-free ones.

Many people who come to Exodus for help say they chose a high-interest loan because they felt too ashamed to ask a friend or family member for help, says Executive Director Sara Nelson-Pallmeyer . If Minnesota caps inter-est rates on short-term, small loans - which a bill on hold in the legislature aims to do - she says she’s not worried about how consumers will fare.

“They’re going to do what people do in states where they aren’t allowed,” she says. “Borrow from people you care about, ask for more hours, take on a second job, sell your plasma - just the things that people do who don’t go to payday lenders, and that’s most people.”

In this fi le photo, a woman walks past a personal fi -nance loan offi ce in Franklin, Tennessee. (AP)

In this fi le photo, dollar bills have been dropped into a tip jar at a carwash in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Many millennials are now parents with jobs, car

loans and mortgages. (AP)

Stable China-UK ties conduciveto ‘free trade’, says Premier LiBEIJING, July 7, (KUNA): Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said that a stable relationship between China and the United Kingdom is conducive to maintaining free and fair trade, promoting global economic recovery, facing challenges and achieving two peoples’ prosperity.

This came during an online meeting with representatives of the business sector in the UK late Tuesday.

Li affi rmed his country’s readiness to consolidate mutual trust with the UK and seek to broaden common ground while setting aside differences and deepening mutually benefi cial cooperation to achieve win-win results for constructive con-sensus.

He added that Beijing and London, as permanent mem-bers of the UN Security Council and two major economies in the world, represent important forces for safeguarding world peace, promoting common development and defending the multilateral trading system.

He also expressed China’s readiness to continue strength-ening communication with all parties, especially to share its achievements in scientifi c research to accelerate progress towards ending the coronavirus epidemic.

SCIENCEARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

11

‘Pray for rain’

Wildlife, air quality atrisk as lake nears lowSALT LAKE CITY, July 7, (AP): The silvery blue waters of the Great Salt Lake sprawl across the Utah desert, hav-ing covered an area nearly the size of Delaware for much of history. For years, though, the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi River has been shrinking. And a drought gripping the American West could make this year the worst yet.

The receding water is already affecting the nesting spot of pelicans that are among the millions of birds dependent on the lake. Sailboats have been hoisted out of the water to keep them from getting stuck in the mud. More dry lakebed getting exposed could send arsenic-laced dust into the air that millions breathe.

“A lot us have been talking about the lake as fl atlining,” said Lynn de Freitas, executive director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake.

The lake’s levels are expected to hit a 170-year low this year. It comes as the drought has the US West brac-ing for a brutal wildfi re season and coping with already low reservoirs. Utah Gov Spencer Cox, a Republi-can, has begged people to cut back on lawn watering and “pray for rain.”

For the Great Salt Lake, though, it is only the latest challenge. People for years have been diverting water from rivers that fl ow into the lake to water crops and supply homes. Because the lake is shallow — about 35 feet (11 meters) at its deepest point — less water quickly translates to receding shorelines.

The water that remains stretches across a chunk of north-ern Utah, with highways on one end and remote land on the other. A resort — long since closed — once drew sunbath-ers who would fl oat like corks in the extra salty waters. Picnic tables once a quick stroll from the shore are now a 10-minute walk away.

ArsenicRobert Atkinson, 91, remembers that resort and the feel-

ing of weightlessness in the water. When he returned this year to fl y over the lake in a motorized paraglider, he found it changed.

“It’s much shallower than I would have expected it to be,” he said.

The waves have been replaced by dry, gravelly lakebed that’s grown to 750 square miles (1,942 square kilometers). Winds can whip up dust from the dry lakebed that is laced with naturally occurring arsenic, said Kevin Perry, a Uni-versity of Utah atmospheric scientist.

It blows through a region that already has some of the dirtiest wintertime air in the country because of seasonal geographic conditions that trap pollution between the mountains.

Perry warns of what happened at California’s Owens Lake, which was pumped dry to feed thirsty Los Angeles and created a dust bowl that cost millions of dollars to tamp down. The Great Salt Lake is much larger and closer to a populated area, Perry said.

Luckily, much of the bed of Utah’s giant lake has a crust that makes it tougher for dust to blow. Perry is researching how long the protective crust will last and how dangerous the soil’s arsenic might be to people.

This year is primed to be especially bleak. Utah is one of the driest states in the country, and most of its water comes from snowfall. The snowpack was below normal last win-ter and the soil was dry, meaning much of the melted snow that fl owed down the mountains soaked into the ground.

Most years, the Great Salt Lake gains up to 2 feet (half a meter) from spring runoff. This year, it was just 6 inches (15 centimeters), Perry said.

“We’ve never had an April lake level that was as low as it was this year,” he said.

More exposed lakebed also means more people have ventured onto the crust, including off-road vehicles that damage it, Great Salt Lake coordinator Laura Vernon said.

“The more continued drought we have, the more of the salt crust will be weathered and more dust will become air-borne because there’s less of that protective crust layer,” she said.

The swirling dust also could speed the melting of Utah’s snow, according to research by McKenzie Skiles, a snow hydrologist at the University of Utah. Her study showed that dust from one storm made the snow so much darker that it melted a week earlier than expected. While much of that dust came from other sources, an expansion of dry lakebed raises concerns about changes to the state’s billon-dollar ski industry.

“No one wants to ski dirty snow,” she said.While the lake’s vast waters are too salty for most crea-

tures except brine shrimp, for sailors like Marilyn Ross, 65, it’s a tranquil paradise with panoramas of distant peaks.

“You get out on this lake and it’s better than going to a psychiatrist, it’s really very calming,” she said.

But this year, the little red boat named Promiscuous that she and her husband have sailed for more than 20 years was hoisted out of the water with a massive crane just as the season got underway. Record-low lake levels were ex-pected to leave the boats stuck in the mud rather than skim-ming the waves. Low water has kept the other main marina closed for years.

Support“Some people don’t think that we’re ever going to be

able to get back in,” Ross said. Brine shrimp support a $57 million fi sh food industry in

Utah but in the coming years, less water could make the salinity too great for even those tiny creatures to survive.

“We’re really coming to a critical time for the Great Salt Lake,” said Jaimi Butler, coordinator for Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. She studies the American white pelican, one of the largest birds in North America.

They fl ock to Gunnison Island, a remote outpost in the lake where up to 20% of the bird’s population nests, with male and female birds cooperating to have one watch the eggs at all times.

“Mom goes fi shing and dad stays at the nest,” Butler said. But the falling lake levels have exposed a land bridge to

the island, allowing foxes and coyotes to come across and hunt for rodents and other food. The activity frightens the shy birds accustomed to a quiet place to raise their young, so they fl ee the nests, leaving the eggs and baby birds to be eaten by gulls.

Pelicans aren’t the only birds dependent on the lake. It’s a stopover for many species to feed on their journey south.

A study from Utah State University says that to main-tain lake levels, diverting water from rivers that fl ow into it would have to decrease by 30%. But for the state with the nation’s fastest-growing population, addressing the prob-lem will require a major shift in how water is allocated and perceptions of the lake, which has a strong odor in some places caused treated wastewater and is home to billions of brine fl ies.

“There’s a lot of people who believe that every drop that goes into the Great Salt Lake is wasted,” Perry said. “That’s the perspective I’m trying to change. The lake has needs, too. And they’re not being met.”

Climate

Ann Haas poses June 18, 2021, in Eden Prairie, Minn., with a photo she took of her late father, Raymond Haas. Haas lost her father to COVID-19 on Nov. 11 and works in the laundry at the same Veterans Affairs hospital where he spent his final days. Haas said memories coming flooding back each time she folds a tan blanket

like the one that covered him while he was fighting to live. (AP)

A person displays a bottle of COVIDEX, a locally-made herbal medicine ap-proved by the government for use as a supportive treatment for viral infections, in Kampala, Uganda, July 6. Some hos-pitals with COVID-19 wards are charg-ing prohibitive sums for most Ugandans and many are now self-medicating within their homes, experimenting with everything from traditional medicine to a newly-approved herbal remedy selling

briskly as COVIDEX. (AP)

Discovery

Expert shows minerals history: A ge-ology researcher from Southern Illinois Uni-versity at Carbondale has created an exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on the history of minerals.

Daniel Hummer’s exhibit went on dis-play recently. It recounts the history of the original 12 minerals in the universe and how they evolved over billions of years, according to the university.

Its message is that minerals’ evolution and life are interconnected in ways previ-ously unknown.

“Minerals may have played a role in creating life by allowing new interac-tions of molecules on their surfaces, and in turn, life alters the environment enough to allow the formation of new minerals,” Hummer said in a university news release. “So the evolution of both life and miner-als rely on each other in ways that we’re only beginning to understand.”

Hummer is assistant professor in the School of Earth Systems and Sustain-ability at SIU. The museum asked him to develop the exhibit in 2018 and it was supposed to open last year until the pan-demic hit. (AP)

❑ ❑ ❑

Environmentalists slam Mexico: Environmentalists criticized Mexico’s state-owned oil company after a gas leak at an underwater pipeline unleashed a subaquatic fi reball that appeared to boil the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Greenpeace Mexico said the accident appeared to have been caused by the fail-ure of an underwater valve and that it il-lustrates the dangers of Mexico policy of promoting fossil fuels.

President Andrés Manuel López Obra-dor has bet heavily on drilling more wells and buying or building oil refi neries. He touts oil as “the best business in the world.”

Greenpeace wrote in a statement that the fi re, which took fi ve hours to extin-guish, “demonstrates the serious risks that Mexico’s fossil fuel model poses for the environment and people’s safety.”

Climate activist Greta Thunberg re-posted a video clip of the massive fi reball on her Twitter account.

“Meanwhile the people in power call themselves ‘climate leaders’ as they open up new oilfi elds, pipelines and coal power plants — granting new oil licenses ex-ploring future oil drilling sites,” Thunberg wrote. “This is the world they are leaving for us.” (AP)

❑ ❑ ❑

Big cats, bears get jab: A San Fran-

fi rst two animals at the Oakland Zoo to get the vaccine this week, the San Fran-cisco Chronicle reported. The doses were donated and developed by veterinary pharmaceutical company Zoetis in New Jersey.

Alex Herman, vice president of veteri-nary services at the zoo, said none of the animals have gotten the virus, but they wanted to be proactive. Tigers, black and grizzly bears, mountain lions and ferrets were the fi rst to receive the fi rst of two doses.

In a press release, she said the zoo has used barriers for social distancing and staff have worn protective gear to pro-tect susceptible species. “We’re happy and relieved to now be able to better protect our animals with this vaccine,” she said.

Zoetis is donating more than 11,000 doses for animals living in nearly 70 zoos, as well as more than a dozen con-servatories, sanctuaries, academic insti-tutions and government organizations lo-cated in 27 states, according to the press release.

The San Diego Zoo started inoculating primates in January after a COVID-19 breakout among a troop of gorillas at its Safari Park. Great apes share 98% of their DNA with humans and are especially sus-ceptible, as are felines. (AP)

cisco Bay Area zoo is inoculating its big cats, bears and ferrets against the corona-virus as part of a national effort to protect

animal species using an experimental vac-cine.

Tigers Ginger and Molly were the

In this photograph created by a fisheye lens shows cracked mud at the Great Salt Lake on April 25, 2021, near Antelope Island, Utah. The lake in Utah has been shrinking for years, and a drought gripping the American West could make

this year the worst yet. (AP)

Mourners struggle to function normally again

Unending grief adds to pain for someNEW YORK, July 7, (AP): Kelly Brown’s 74-year-old father got sick fi rst with COVID-19, followed by her 71-year-old mom just two days later. John and Judy Trzebiatowski died of the illness just a week apart last Au-gust, sending Brown into a black tun-nel of grief that doesn’t seem to have an end.

Health restrictions stripped away the things that normally help people deal with death, such as bedside visits at the Wisconsin hospital where they were treated and a big funeral with hugs and tears, she said. That left Brown to deal with her sorrow on her own, and now she’s having a hard time seeing a way forward.

With more than 605,000 dead of COVID-19 in the United States and nearly 4 million worldwide, Brown is among the thousands or more who could be experiencing prolonged grief, the kind of mourning that experts say can prevent people from moving be-yond a death and functioning normally again.

“It’s the most horrible thing to have to go through,” said Brown. “I would not wish this upon anyone.”

Natalia Skritskaya, an expert on grieving, said it’s too early to say whether prolonged grieving, also known as complicated grief, will be a major complication from the pandem-ic - it isn’t yet over, with thousands still dying daily worldwide, including hundreds in the United States. Many mourners have yet to pass the one-year anniversary of a loss, and few studies have been published so far on the psy-chiatric fallout, she said.

But prolonged grief is both real and potentially debilitating, said Skritskaya, a research scientist and clinical psychol-ogist with the Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia University in New York. She noted that it can be treated with therapy in which participants talk through their experience and feelings.

“The core of it is kind of helping people face the reality of what hap-pened,” she said. “It’s not an easy treatment. It’s intense.”

Jerri Vance said therapy has helped her deal with grief since her husband, James Vance, a retired police offi cer in Bluefi eld, West Virginia, died of COVID-19 on New Year’s Day, but she worries about their two young daughters.

“Seeing my kids’ grief adds to my pain,” she said. “One of my kids isn’t making much progress in therapy be-cause her daddy was her person. She is still mad at the world.”

A study published in the fall pre-dicted a likely increase in cases of pro-longed grief linked to the pandemic. Already, people who lost loved ones to COVID-19 are fi lling social media pages with stories of tears and sadness that just won’t go away.

Many cite the loss of typical end-of-life rituals for their continual grieving; some struggle because of the unex-pectedness and seeming unfairness of the coronavirus. The politicization of the pandemic is a thorn for many who constantly see and hear some argue against what health experts say are life-saving practices including vacci-nations, mask wearing and social dis-tancing.

Opinions“In my offi ce I listen all day to unso-

licited opinions and try not to engage, as it is unprofessional,” said Betsy Ut-nick, whose father, Sheldon Polan of Selden, New York, died in April 2020. She said she still cries every day be-cause the grief has yet to subside.

Noreen Wasti knows the feeling. She lost her father to the illness caused by the coronavirus on Dec. 27 and is having a hard time going on.

Wasti, who writes and creates online content in New York, said she’s unsure what it will take to get over the loss of Salman Wasti, 76, a retired biology pro-fessor from Glocester, Rhode Island.

“This has been the fi rst time I’ve lost someone so dear to me, so I never had a map for grief nor really understood the magnitude. I always thought you’re sad for a few months and then you’re OK. I was so wrong,” she said. “It hits in waves and those waves feel as se-vere as the day we lost him.”

With so many people hurting and lit-tle personal interaction for months be-cause of pandemic health restrictions, social media has become the place where many connect to share stories of loved ones and loss. One private Fa-cebook page dealing with COVID-19 losses has more than 10,000 mem-bers, and continuing grief is a constant thread of discussion.

Rabia Khan has found solace online since the death on Thanksgiving Day of her father, Pakistani activist Mu-hammad Hameedullah Khan of Chi-cago. In survivor and family groups, she said, the grieving don’t face insen-sitive questions about how a loved one contracted the virus or why someone wasn’t careful enough to avoid it.

Aside from sharing stories online of her late boyfriend Ben Schaeffer, a New York subway conductor and his-

torian, Lisa Smid has tried to redirect her anguish into something positive. She sponsored an online lecture at the New York Transit Museum and plans to honor his legacy by endowing more memorial lectures.

“I like being able to have an event to look forward to at which I’ll have an acceptable outlet for my grief as I move forward with my own life,” she said.

Ann Haas of St. Paul, Minnesota, is still trying to fi nd some sort of outlet as she mourns, but work keeps bringing her back to the worst day of her life.

Haas lost her father, Raymond Haas, to COVID-19 on Nov. 11 and works in the laundry at the same Veterans Affairs hospital where he spent his fi -nal days. Haas said memories coming fl ooding back each time she folds a tan blanket like the one that covered him while he was fi ghting to live.

“‘I wish other people could see what this does to people. I hear peo-ple saying, ‘This isn’t real, it’s noth-ing,’” Haas said between sobs. “I’ve got nothing left. I don’t know if it’s going to take them losing someone to understand.”

Also:NEW YORK: A pandemic would seem like the worst time to start working as a nurse in a Manhattan hospital, but there Justin Davis was last spring, try-ing desperately to help patients strick-en with the coronavirus while worried for his own health.

The 43-year-old Pittsburgh, Penn-sylvania, resident was among those who stepped up to come to New York City when it was a pandemic epicenter, a choice that required leaving behind his wife and three young children for a situa-tion fi lled with uncertainty and risk.

“I came because I wanted to do something to make my family proud,” the military veteran said.

His family will get a chance to ex-press their pride on Wednesday, along with a whole bunch of New Yorkers, at a parade honoring essential workers for their efforts in getting New York City through the pandemic.

“This is a huge thing,” said his wife, Jennifer Davis. “This is awesome. We just had to come up here and be here for him, to support him and celebrate him.”

Davis will be in the parade on a fl oat sponsored by AMN Healthcare, the staffi ng company he works for that sent him to New York City and then other places around the country in the last year to work in COVID-swamped hospitals.

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Helen Mirren, (left), and Taylor Hackford pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the fi lm ‘Annette’ and the opening ceremony of the 74th international fi lm festival, Cannes, southern France, Tuesday, July 6. (AP)

New animated series refl ects real world issues

Netfl ix’s preschool show ‘Ridley Jones’ boasts girl powerLOS ANGELES, July 7, (AP): If there’s a missing necklace, an AWOL baby penguin or a herd of on-the-loose caribou, Ridley Jones is your go-to guy. Or make that your girl.

The 6-year-old title character of Netfl ix’s new animated series has the pluck and daring of classic screen heroes who were routinely male, a stubborn trope that “Ridley Jones” creator Chris Nee is eager to van-quish for TV’s youngest viewers.

“Girls have not really gotten to be the action-adventure leads of shows” aimed at preschoolers, she said. “It felt really different to give Ridley that journey.”

Nee counts herself a “huge” fan of 1970s and ‘80s thrill-ride mov-ies including ”Goonies,” “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” — with the latter getting a tip of the fedora from Ridley’s own headgear in the six-episode series debuting July 13.

Iara Nemirovsky voices Ridley, part of an impressive cast that in-cludes Blythe Danner, Laraine Newman, Sutton Foster, Jane Lynch and Bob Bergen.

An award-winning maker of children’s animated fare, Nee’s con-sistent goal is to include an array of characters. She did it with “Doc McStuffi ns,” about an African American girl whose career dreams in-spired its viewers, especially Black youngsters, to see medicine as an option, and she does it with “Ridley Jones.”

Ridley is following a family tradition by joining her mother and grandmother in protecting the museum they call home and its precious relics, including Egyptian mummies and animals which, after visitors scoot, come to comically endearing and sometimes wayward life.

Nee is “just really a master of storytelling for this audience,” said Heather Tilert, director of preschool content for Netfl ix.

There are overt lessons to be learned, as when overeager Ridley pushes for more responsibility before she’s ready to handle it. But Nee and her writers don’t beat the drum for gender equality, allowing Rid-ley’s exploits to make the point.

An equally nuanced approach goes for a friendly, hairdo-conscious bison named Fred, voiced by Ezra Menas. In the fi rst episode, Ridley asks Peaches the monkey if Fred is “a she or a he.”

“I don’t know. They’re just a Fred,” replies Peaches. “Cool,” says Ridley, and the action resumes.

Identifi edRidley’s query about Fred mirrors a real-life conversation that was

recounted to Nee, in which a child was discussing a playmate who identifi ed as neither male or female. To give the character authenticity, actor Menas is nonbinary, Nee said.

She said she’s determined to “push the boundaries of representation” by including what is a rare if not unprecedented character in a show for preschoolers.

“In many ways, Fred is playing out a lot of things that I felt as a gay kid growing up in the ‘70s and the ’80s,” she said, when hostility toward gay men exploded during the nascent AIDS crisis. Now it’s people in the nonbinary and trans world being targeted, Nee said.

“You might be at a moment of fi nding your true self, which is a very joyful thing, at a time when you’re looking at the news and are very

aware there are factions of the country who really hate you,” she said. What would Nee, parent to a teenager, say to those who might consider

the show’s viewers too young to be faced with questions about gender? “It’s just actually what’s happening in the world, and we’re refl ect-

ing it,” she said. “Sticking your head in the sand isn’t going to change that, and it is going to mean that we’re not being as supportive as we can be to the kids who are going through these things.”

Netfl ix executive Tilert said the diversity refl ected in Nee’s work is a key part of its value to the streaming service, which signed a multiyear deal with her in 2018.

“We have a global member base, and it’s really important to us that all of our members, especially kids and family, can see themselves re-fl ected on screen and refl ected in our shows,” Tilert said. “That’s part of how we’re going to build trust.”

Upcoming Netfl ix series produced by Nee include “Ada Twist, Sci-entist,” based on the books by writer Andrea Beaty and illustrator David Roberts about a Black girl with boundless curiosity, and “Spirit Rangers,” which follows the magical adventures of three Native American siblings.

Shows that may be appealing for kids who identify closely with the characters aren’t intended to exclude other viewers, Nee said, citing “Ridley Jones” as a case in point.

“Hopefully, girls are going to be excited about it because they might see a version of themselves they’ve never seen before, something aspi-rational,” she said. “But boys will hopefully want to watch as well, and get to experience what it is to be totally invested in a girl-led show. I think that’s important.”

NEW YORK: Former Fox News and NBC personality Megyn Kelly will host a weekday live talk show on SiriusXM this fall, build-ing upon a successful podcast.

“The Megyn Kelly Show” will broadcast for two hours at noon and feature Kelly’s viewpoints on the day’s top stories, as well as listeners’ calls and interviews, the satellite media company said Tuesday.

The show will premiere Sept 7 and the deal she struck means her radio show will become avail-able to her podcast listeners after premiering on SiriusXM.

“My team and I have been grateful to see our show, in less than a year, become one of the most successful podcasts in America — proving that there is a thirst for open, honest and more meaningful conversations about current events,” Kelly said in a statement.

Kelly was a star at Fox and helped moderate fi ve presidential debates, then became anchor of the third hour of “Today.” But her time at NBC was short-lived; Kelly was removed in 2018 after defending blackface Halloween costumes.

Kelly is an American journalist, attorney, political commentator, talk show host, and television news anchor. She was a talk show host at Fox News from 2004 to 2017, and a host and correspond-ent with NBC News from 2017 to 2018. She currently produces a podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, and is active in posting to her Instagram page and YouTube channel.

During her time at Fox News, Kelly hosted America Live, and before that, co-hosted America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer. From 2007 to 2012, the two reporters hosted Fox News Chan-nel’s New Year’s Eve specials. Kelly also hosted The Kelly File from October 2013 to January 2017. In 2014, she was included in the TIME list of the 100 most infl uential people. Kelly left Fox News in January 2017 and joined NBC News. She started hosting the third hour of the morning show Today with her program titled Megyn Kelly Today in September 2017. The show was cancelled in October 2018, after a segment discussing blackface, and she

left the network in January 2019. (Agencies)

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LONDON: A sculpture symbol-izing Britain’s complex colonial ties and an artwork featuring the faces of 850 people are set to go on display in Trafalgar Square, one of London’s highest-profi le

venues for public art.City offi cials on Monday

announced the next two works to occupy the “fourth plinth,” a large stone pedestal in the central London square.

From 2022 to 2024 the plinth will display Malawi-born artist Samson Kambalu’s “Antelope,” a sculpture of Pan-Africanist

leader John Chilembwe beside European missionary John Chor-ley. Based on a 1914 photograph, it depicts Chilembwe as the much larger fi gure, “revealing the hidden narratives of under-represented peoples in the history of the Brit-ish Empire in Africa and beyond,” City Hall said.

Mexican artist Teresa Mar-

golles’ “850 Improntas (850 Im-print),” featuring casts of the faces of people from around the world, will be installed in 2024. City Hall said “the ‘life masks’ will be arranged round the plinth in the form of a Tzompantli, a skull rack from Mesoamerican civilizations” of what is now Central America and Mexico. (AP)

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Festival will try to resuscitate global cinema

Spike Lee, ‘Annette’ kick off Cannes festCANNES, France, July 7, (AP): The Cannes Film Festival rolled out the red carpet for the fi rst time in more than two years on Tuesday, launching the French Riviera spectacular with the premiere of Leos Carax’s “Annette,” the introduction of Spike Lee’s jury, and with high hopes for shrugging off a punishing pandemic year for cinema.

The 74th Cannes opened Tuesday with as much glitz as it could summon, led by “Annette,” a fan-tastical musical starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard and scored by the musical duo Sparks. The opening ceremony also returned last year’s Palme d’Or winner, Bong Joon Ho (for “Parasite”) and Jodie Foster, who fi rst came to Cannes as a 13-year-old with Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” for an honorary Palme.

The occasion drew a wide spectrum of fi lm lu-minaries back to Cannes to celebrate the festival, canceled last year due to the COVID-19 virus. Pe-dro Almodovar, Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren and Bella Hadid walked the red carpet, which was again lined with tuxedoed photographers and surrounded by eager onlookers.

“So it feels good to go out,” said Foster in French.“Vivre la France!” declared Lee. The festival was offi cially declared open by Bong,

Almodovar, Foster and Lee, in a mix of Korean, Spanish, French and English. Over the next 10 days, the Cannes Film Festival will try to resuscitate glob-al cinema on a grand scale.

Cannes has pushed ahead in much its usual form, with splashy red-carpet displays and a lineup of many of the world’s most revered fi lmmakers, including Asghar Farhadi, Wes Anderson, Mia Hansen-Love and Paul Verhoeven. Festivalgoers are tested every 48 hours, seated shoulder to shoulder and masked for screenings.

Lee, who is heading the jury that will decide this year’s Palme, arrived earlier in the day wearing a “1619” baseball hat and trying to keep a low profi le. “I’m not trying to be a hog,” he said to reporters, urg-

ing them to ask his fellow jurors questions. But Lee’s presence was hard to ignore. His face

as Mars Blackmon from his 1986 feature fi lm debut “She’s Gotta Have It” (which premiered at Cannes) adorns this year’s poster at the festival central hub, the Palais des Festivals. Lee is the fi rst Black per-son to ever lead Cannes’ prestigious jury. In his fi rst comments, in response to a question from Chaz Ebert, widow of Roger Ebert, Lee spoke about how little has changed since 1989’s “Do the Right Thing” — which made a controversial debut at Cannes.

“When you see brother Eric Garner, when you see king George Floyd murdered, lynched, I think of Ray (Radio) Raheem,” Lee said, referring to the “Do the Right Thing” character. After 30-plus years, you’d “think and hope,’’ Lee said, “that Black peo-ple would have stopped being hunted down like ani-mals.”

SurvivalMuch of the talk on Tuesday at Cannes centered

on injustice and survival. That the festival was even happening, after last year’s edition was canceled, was a surprise to some. Maggie Gyllenhaal, who’ll see the 24 fi lms in competition for the Palme as a member of the jury over the next 12 days, said it will be her fi rst time in a movie theater in 15 months. When “Parasite” actor Song Kang Ho was invited to be a juror, he said, “I thought: Will there really be a festival?”

“The fact that we’re here today, it’s really a mira-cle,” said Song.

Still, much of the usual pomp is toned down this year. There’s a relative dearth of promotion up and down Cannes’ oceanfront promenade, the Croisette, and Hollywood has less of a role than in years past. Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho (“Ba-curau”), a juror, added that in some parts of the world, cinema is under siege. In President Jair Bol-sonaro’s Brazil, he said, the national cinematheque has been closed and its staff dismantled.

“This is a very clear demonstration of contempt for

cinema and for culture,” said Filho, who noted the tragedy of Brazil reaching 500,000 dead from COV-ID-19 when, he said, many thousands could have been saved by a stronger governmental response.

That conversation was prompted in part by a Georgian journalist who asked jury members about resistance. Russia invaded the former Soviet repub-lic in 2008.

“The world is run by gangsters,” said Lee, listing former US President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In that context, the regular topics of concern at Cannes were perhaps dwarfed. But the jurors made passionate cases for the future of movies — and a more inclusive future. This year’s competition line-up includes a Cannes-high four female fi lmmakers, but they still make up a fraction of the 24 fi lmmakers vying for the Palme.

“I think when women are listening to themselves and really expressing themselves, even inside, about a very, very male culture, we make movies differ-ently. We tell stories differently,” said Gyllenhaal. She recalled watching Jane Campion’s “The Piano” (the lone fi lm directed by a woman to ever win the Palme) as formative and unfi ltered. “It just went in straight.”

The rise of streaming also took the spotlight. Cannes has refused to select fi lms without French theatrical distribution for its competition lineup. The festival and Netfl ix have been at odds for several years. On Monday, Thierry Fremaux, festival direc-tor, cited Cannes’ record at discovering fi lmmakers and asked: “What directors have been discovered by (streaming) platforms?”

Lee, who made last year’s “Da 5 Bloods” for Netf-lix, hardly bated an eye when asked about the subject.

“Cinema and screening platforms can coexist,” said Lee, who called Cannes “the world’s greatest fi lm festival.” “At one time, there was a thinking that TV was going to kill cinema. So, this stuff is not new.”

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‘Immigration is passion’

For Miranda, art andphilanthropy linkedNEW YORK, July 7, (AP): For “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, the inspirations for art and philanthropy are inextricably linked.

On Wednesday, Miranda is announcing a series of donations to organizations that serve immigrants, whose experiences are central to the new fi lm version of his hit Broadway musical “In the Heights.”

“For me,” Miranda told The Associated Press, “phi-lanthropy and artistic inspiration kind of come from the same place.”

He is forever drawn to what he calls “the things that don’t leave you alone.” Immigration, he said, is both a passion and a foundational element of his work.

“In the Heights,” he noted, centers on immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America living in New

York City. And “Hamilton,” he said, “is sort of the proto-immigrant story.”

“I think I am in awe of peo-ple who can make an impos-sible leap to leave everything they know behind and start a new life here,” he said. “And I think it’s one of the great things about our country.”

In honor of the Fourth of July, the Miranda Family Fund awarded a total of $225,000 in grants to immigrant rights

groups and policy reform advocates throughout the country. The recipients are Arizona’s Pima County Justice for All, California’s Coalition for Human Rights Los Angeles, Colorado Immigration Rights Coalition, Michigan’s Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, Texas’ Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Utah Refugee Connec-tion, Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Washing-ton, and both Alianza for Progress and Orlando Center for Justice in Florida.

Luis Miranda Jr., Lin-Manuel’s father and co-founder of the MirRam Group, a political consulting fi rm that has worked on campaigns for Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, said all the recipients were recommended by friends of the family in the fi eld of immigration.

It was important to the Mirandas to make the grants unrestricted, so the money would go to “whatever the organization believes is important,” Luis said. “It’s going to make a difference.”

Donations“They know what they need,” Lin-Manuel added.Though the Miranda Family Fund has been active

for years in donations to the arts community, especial-ly arts education, the donations announced Wednes-day mark a new direction.

The fi ght for immigrants’ rights became a much larger part of the fi lm version of “In the Heights” than it was in the musical that opened on Broadway in 2008. Lin-Manuel said the idea to make the char-acter of Sonny a DREAMer, an undocumented immi-grant who has Deferred Action for Childhood Arriv-als (DACA) status, came from Quiara Alegria Hudes, who wrote the screenplay.

“Immigration was on the front page in a totally dif-ferent way in the past few years,” Lin-Manuel said. “So in updating it, it sort of only made sense to make that a part of the conversation because that is part of the conversation here uptown in our communities. And so what’s so brilliant about Quiara’s choice to make Sonny struggle with his undocumented status is that he’s the most New Yorkian character. He’s the one who said, ‘If I had $96,000, I would fi x my neigh-borhood.’ ”

Luis added that they had that character in mind in choosing the organizations to help.

“It’s to make sure that we continue to help those organizations that are helping people like Sonny - refugees, immigrants, people who are coming and are trying to fi gure out how to make it here,” he said.

Lin-Manuel said that highlighting the story of an undocumented immigrant was important to him.

“I think that’s one of the things art can do that head-lines can’t always do,” he said. “Now, you feel like, you know someone who’s going through this. You know Sonny, and it just it goes into your bloodstream in a different way.”

He said the donations are another way of demon-strating support.

“We’re at our best when we’re celebrating our promise,” Lin-Manuel said. “So many people come here from all over the world because of this promise that we export - and that we so often fall short of. If you work hard, there is a possibility of a better life. We want to help the organizations that help to make that possible for folks who make that journey.”

SuccessesLin-Manuel said it’s vital to showcase both the suc-

cesses and the struggles of being an immigrant. “The trick is not to look at it through rose-colored

glasses, but through really clear eyeglasses,” he said. “It’s always something that we can be working on, al-ways something we can do better.”

He holds his own work to that idea as well. The release of the movie version of “In the Heights” cre-ated controversy because there were no dark-skinned, Afro-Latino characters in the fi lm’s lead roles. Lin-Manuel issued an apology and promised “to do better in my future projects.”

“Every time you make a frame, you hear from the folks who say, ‘Hey, I’m not in the frame’,” he said. “I take that learning with me to the next project. But I also know, because I live here, how proud this neigh-borhood is of this movie. Afro-Latinos and Latinos of every shade and how seen they feel and I can under-stand what I can do better next time. I’m holding space for all of it. I think that’s the only way to grow as an artist. ‘Hamilton’ got criticism. Everything I do gets criticism. And I can take it and I can grow from it.”

“You have to understand I started writing ‘In the Heights’ because I didn’t feel seen,” he continued. “So I am also hoping that someone is going to see ‘In the Heights’ and say, ‘That wasn’t my story’ and write their own. I would be thrilled by that.”

One thing that is not on Lin-Manuel’s mind, though, is returning to “Hamilton,” which is set to reopen on Broadway on Sept. 14. Theorists were noticing Lin-Manuel’s longish hair recently and wondered whether he was planning a return to the Tony award-winning smash.

He’s not. And he cut off his hair to prove it, which Luis happily tweeted out.

“I have three more movies coming out this year, right?” said Lin-Manuel, referring to the animated “Vivo” out this summer, Disney’s “Encanto” this fall and his directorial debut “Tick, Tick... Boom.” “I don’t have the bandwidth to jump back in the show.”

Miranda

In this Sept. 2, 2008 fi le photo, veteran Bollywood actor Dilip Kumar, (right), receives a Lifetime Achievement award at the 54th National Film Award ceremony in New Delhi, India. Kumar, hailed as the ‘Tragedy King’ and one of Hindi cinema’s greatest actors, died Wednesday, July 7, 2021 in a Mumbai hospital after a pro-

longed illness. He was 98. (AP)

Bollywood’s great ‘Tragedy King’

Indian cinema legend Dilip Kumar diesNEW DELHI, July 7, (AP): Bol-lywood icon Dilip Kumar, hailed as the “Tragedy King” and one of Hindi cinema’s greatest actors, died Wednesday in a Mumbai hospital af-ter a prolonged illness. He was 98.

The “Tragedy King” title came from Kumar’s numerous serious roles. In several, his character died as a frustrated lover and a drunkard. He also was known as Bollywood’s only Method actor for his expressive performances identifying a charac-ter’s emotions.

Kumar was hospitalized twice last month after he complained of breathlessness, and his family tweet-ed “with a heavy heart and profound grief” the announcement of his pass-ing.

“Dilip Kumar will be remem-bered as a cinematic legend. He was blessed with unparalleled brilliance, due to which audiences across gen-erations were enthralled. His passing away is a loss to our cultural world,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet that also offered his condolences to Kumar’s family and admirers.

“An institution has gone,” Bolly-wood superstar Amitabh Bachchan tweeted. “Whenever the history of Indian Cinema will be written, it shall always be ‘before Dilip Kumar, and after Dilip Kumar’ ...”

“It’s the end of an era,” fi lmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar said.

He was born Muhammad Yusuf Khan, a Muslim, on Dec. 11, 1922.

His Pathan family hailed from Pe-shawar, in what became Pakistan after the Partition, and he visited his ancestral home in the late 1980s.

Kumar was hugely popular among cinema lovers in Pakistan as well.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said he was saddened to learn of Kumar’s death. ``For my genera-tion, Dilip Kumar was the greatest and most versatile actor,’’ he tweeted.

Khan also recalled Kumar’s gen-erosity in helping to raise funds in Pakistan and London for a trust to set up cancer hospitals in his mother’s memory.

CareerHe changed his name as he de-

buted in Bollywood, the Hindi-language fi lm industry centered in Mumbai, with “Jwar Bhata,” or “Sea Tides,” in 1944.

His career spanned over six dec-ades with over 60 fi lms. His fi rst ma-jor box-offi ce hits were “Jugnu,” or “Firefl y,” in 1947 in which he starred alongside Noor Jehan, and the 1948 fi lm “Shaheed,” or ”Martyr.”

He played a variety of charac-ters - a romantic hero in “Andaz,” a swashbuckler in “Aan,” a dramatic drunkard in “Devdas,” a comic role in “Azaad,” a Muslim prince in the historical epic “Mughal-e-Azam” and a robber in the social movie “Ganga Jamuna.”

Mehboob Khan’s blockbuster “Aan” in 1952 was his fi rst fi lm in Technicolor and was among a string

of light-hearted roles he took at the suggestion of his psychiatrist to shed his “Tragedy King” image.

He starred in many social drama fi lms like “Footpath”, “Naya Daur” (“New Era”), “Musafi r” (“Travel-ler”) and “Paigham” (“Message”) in 1950s.

His top female co-stars included Madhubala, Nargis, Nimmi, Meena Kumari, Kamini Kaushal and Vyjan-thimala.

In 1966, Dilip Kumar mar-ried Saira Banu, who was 22 years younger than him, and the couple acted in “Gopi,” “Sagina Mahato” and “Bairaag.” They had no chil-dren.

In 1961, he produced and starred in “Ganga Jamuna” in which he and his brother Nasir Khan played the title roles. It was the only fi lm he produced. Indian media reports say he declined the role of Sherif Ali in David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” in 1962. The role went to Egyptian actor Omar Sharif.

He took a break in the late ‘70s but returned with a character role in the successful “Kranti,” or “Revolu-tion” in 1981. He continued playing key roles in fi lms such as “Shakti,” “Karma” and “Saudagar.” His last fi lm was “Qila” (“Fort”) in 1998.

In 1994, he was given the “Da-dasaheb Phalke” award, the highest honor for contributions to Indian cinema. He also served in the upper house of Indian Parliament after be-ing nominated for a six-year term.

Obituary

Jodie Foster poses with her honorary Palme d’Or at the opening ceremony of the 74th international fi lm festival, Cannes, southern France, Tuesday,

July 6. (AP)

Ingham Spears

LOS ANGELES: Britney Spears’ court-ap-pointed attorney on Tuesday fi led documents to resign from her conservatorship, the latest of several such moves that have come in the fallout from the pop singer’s comments in court decrying the legal arrangement that controls her money and affairs.

Samuel Ingham III fi led documents in Los Angeles Superior Court requesting that the court appoint Spears a new attorney, and saying his resignation would take ef-fect as soon as that happened.

During her June 23 speech in court, in which she condemned the conservatorship and asked Judge Brenda Penny to end it, Spears was critical of Ingham, and said she wished the court would allow her to hire a lawyer of her choice.

Last week, Bessemer Trust, the estate-management company that Spears had requested replace her father as conservator of her fi nances, fi led its own documents withdrawing from the case. The fi ling said that circumstances had changed after Spears’ comments in court on June 23.

At a hearing in November, Penny denied Spears’ request to have her father replaced entirely, but said James Spears and Bessemer Trust could work together as co-conservators of her fi nances.

And on Monday, in a letter obtained by entertainment industry publication Dead-line, Britney Spears’ longtime manager Larry Rudolph also resigned, saying she had no intention of resuming her career after a 2 1/2 year hiatus that has left him with no work to do for her.

A veteran probate attorney, Ingham was for years a largely silent fi gure in the con-servatorship, at least publicly, but became a more vocal advocate for Britney Spears starting last year. His statements in court that she feared her father and would not resume her career so long as he had power over it were an early crack in the presumed consensus among the fi gures involved in the conservatorship.

At the June 23 hearing, Ingham said that Britney Spears had not asked him to fi le a petition to end the conservatorship, but said

Variety

Jury members Tahar Rahim, (from back left), Jessica Hausner, Kleber Mendon-ca Filho, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mylene Farmer, Spike Lee, (from front left), Mela-nie Laurent, Kang-Ho Song, Mati Diop appear at the opening ceremony of the 74th international fi lm festival, Cannes, southern France, Tuesday, July 6. (AP)

he expected she might do so soon. In her re-marks critical of Ingham, Spears said during the hearing that she hadn’t known she could fi le such a petition, and she still has not. (AP)

❑ ❑ ❑

THESSALONIKI, Greece: Greek police said they have arrested two 56-year-old men for trying to sell a rare Roman-era statue of Hecate for 40,000 euros (about $48,000).

Police in Thessaloniki said they also arrested a 35-year-old farmer from nearby Pella, who allegedly admitted that he had

found the statue on his farm and gave it to the two men to sell.

Police were made aware of the fi nding and an undercover police offi cer posed as a buyer and, after a month of negotiations, the two men were arrested in possession of the statue as they went to meet the purport-ed buyer, police said in a statement, adding that such statues are “extremely rare.”

The marble statue, 33 centimeters (13 inches) high and 16 centimeters (six inches) wide and weighing 10 kilograms (22 pounds) , is from the second or third

century A.D., a time when Greece was part of the Roman Empire.

It depicts three similar fi gures of Hecate joined together and facing in different di-rections. This is because these statues were used at crossroads, Michalis Tiverios, emeritus professor of classical archaeology at Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University, told The Associated Press.

The statues, a few of which have been found, were placed on pedestals, where the directions were inscribed, Tiverios added. Hecate statues also marked boundaries. (AP)

❑ ❑ ❑

BERLIN: A man in Austria was bitten by a 1.6-meter (5 1/4-foot) python during an early-morning visit to the toilet at his home on Monday, police said.

The reptile, which apparently escaped from a neighbor’s apartment and may have slithered through the drains, was cleaned and handed back to its owner.

The 65-year-old victim “felt a ‘nip’ shortly after sitting on the toilet at home in Graz just after 6 am, according to a state-ment from police in Styria province. He then looked into the toilet and discovered the albino reticulated python.

The snake apparently had escaped un-noticed from the apartment of the man’s 24-year-old neighbor. It wasn’t immediate-ly possible to fi gure out how it escaped and how it got into the toilet, but police said it may have made its way through the drains.

A reptile expert was called to retrieve the snake, which was returned to his owner. Police said the younger man kept 11 non-venomous constrictor snakes and a gecko in his apartment, in terrariums and drawers. He faces an investigation on suspicion of causing bodily harm by negligence. (AP)

SPORTSARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

14

Shields’ successor

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., July 7, (AP): Claressa Shields is the most successful American amateur boxer of her generation. She dominated the middleweight division at the past two Olympics, overwhelming every opponent and becoming the only U.S. fi ght-er to claim two boxing golds.

With Shields on to her pro careers in boxing and mixed martial arts, the most successful boxing nation in Olympic histo-ry needed a replacement for To-kyo at the weight class Shields had dominated ever since wom-en were allowed to fi ght at the games nine years ago.

USA Boxing found a soldier.Naomi Graham is aware of

the importance of being chosen to follow Shields at 75 kilograms in Tokyo, but she’s faced bigger pressures in her life. Six years older than Shields, she’s a relative newcomer to high-level boxing, only picking it up a decade ago and fi ghting her way to Olympic contention while also serving in the Army as a staff sergeant and ammunition specialist.

Graham will be the fi rst fe-male active-duty service mem-ber to fi ght for the U.S. at the Olympics, and she relishes the history she’s making.

“I feel like a regular person that’s just pursuing my dreams,” Graham said. “And then I have to think, and I’m like, ‘Wow, there really is a lot of people who have tried to do this who haven’t been able to.’ I just want to keep inspiring.”

Graham had been fascinated by boxing since her childhood in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but her mother kept her out of the ring even though her six-years-older sister, Rachel Clark, trained in the sport and eventually boxed profes-sionally from 2008 to 2011.

Army boxer fights way to Oly for US

Phillies hand Cubs’ 11th straight lossStanton’s homer starts barrage as Yankees thump Mariners 12-1

CHICAGO, July 7, (AP): Bryce Harper homered and tied a career high with five hits, Andrew Mc-Cutchen smacked a grand slam and the Philadelphia Phillies handed Chicago its 11th straight loss, beating the Cubs 15-10.

Rhys Hoskins also went deep. The Phillies jumped on Jake Ar-rieta (5-9) and finished two shy of a season high with 16 hits.

The Cubs extended their worst skid since they dropped 12 in a row in May 2012.

Harper had a three-run homer and a season-high four RBIs. McCutchen smacked his third career grand slam and second this season. Jean Segura chipped in with four hits and four runs.

Aaron Nola (6-5) went six innings, allowing four runs and six hits. He struck out eight and walked one.

Arrieta matched the second-shortest start of his career, lasting just 1 2/3 innings in his second straight outing. He gave up seven runs, tying a season high, and six hits.

Angels 5, Red Sox 3In Anaheim, California, Shohei

Ohtani pitched seven innings of fi ve-hit ball and hit an early RBI double, leading Los Angeles past Boston.

Ohtani yielded two runs and struck out four, winning his matchup with fel-low All-Star Nathan Eovaldi.

Ohtani (4-1) didn’t walk a batter. Al-though he went 1 for 4 at the plate and failed to homer for the second straight game after hitting 14 in his previous 17 games, Ohtani still cracked a double in the fi rst inning that drove in the An-gels’ fi rst run.

Max Stassi hit a two-run homer and doubled and singled for the Angels, while David Fletcher went 4 for 4 in their fi fth win in six games.

Padres 7, Nationals 4In San Diego, Wil Myers hit a three-

run homer and had fi ve RBIs, and Manny Machado celebrated his 29th birthday with three hits and three runs as San Diego beat Washington.

Machado singled in the go-ahead run during the three-run fi fth and also had two doubles.

Myers homered off Erick Fedde (4-5) . It was his 10th. Machado was aboard on a leadoff double and Eric Hosmer on a single.

Josh Harrison tied it with a three-run homer to straightaway center fi eld off rookie lefty Ryan Weathers with no outs in the fi fth.

Yankees 12, Mariners 1In Seattle, Giancarlo Stanton

clubbed a three-run homer off the rail-

ing of the second deck in the fi rst in-ning, Luke Voit had a career-high fi ve hits and three RBIs, and New York beat Seattle.

DJ LeMahieu singled in each of the fi rst three innings, becoming the fi rst New York player to have three hits in the fi rst three innings since Aaron Judge in April 2018.

The 12 runs and 18 hits were season highs for the Yankees.

New York starter Jameson Taillon (4-4) allowed four hits and one run. He matched his season-high with nine strikeouts.

Pirates 2, Braves 1In Pittsburgh, Bryan Reynolds drew

a four-pitch walk from Tyler Matzek, forcing in the winning run in the ninth inning as Pittsburgh beat Atlanta and extended its winning streak to three games.

Matzek (0-3) threw just eight of 20 pitches for strikes.

Pittsburgh has won three in a row following a six-game losing streak. The Braves had won four of fi ve before losing twice to the Pirates.

Ke’Bryan Hayes hit a pair of dou-bles for the Pirates. Adam Frazier and Wilmer Difo also had two hits each.

Orioles 7, Blue Jays 5In Baltimore, Pedro Severino and

Cedric Mullins homered off Steven Matz, Anthony Santander also went deep and Baltimore beat Toronto.

Toronto hit three home runs, too, in-cluding No. 28 by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. All the homers came after Balti-more had taken a 7-1 lead.

Matz (7-4) allowed six hits and four runs — three earned — and struck out four in four innings.

Making his fi rst major league start, Orioles right-hander Spencer Watkins (1-0) allowed one run and three hits over fi ve innings. He walked three and struck out two.

Rangers 10, Tigers 5In Arlington, Texas, John Hicks

became the fi rst player to homer in his fi rst four games with the Rangers/Washington Senators franchise and added a go-ahead single in the seventh inning to lead Texas over Detroit.

Hicks hit a two-run homer in the fourth that put the Rangers ahead 2-1 in a four-run inning.

Daniel Norris (0-3) allowed two hits and two earned runs in a third of an in-ning.

John King (7-5) allowed Jake Rog-ers’ solo homer in the sixth.

Astros 9, Athletics 6In Houston, Yordan Álvarez hit two

took advantage of sloppy play to beat Minnesota.

Catcher Zack Collins, making the start after Yasmani Grandal went on the injured list earlier in the day with a torn tendon in his left knee, had a two-run single in the second inning after two walks and two errors by the Twins.

It was the only hit by Chicago in seven innings against Minnesota start-er José Berríos (7-3), who struck out 10.Marlins 2, Dodgers 1, 10 Innings

In Miami, automatic runner Star-ling Marte advanced to third on Blake Treinen’s wild pitch and continued home when catcher Will Smith threw wildly past third base for a game-end-ing error in the 10th inning, giving Mi-ami a win over Los Angeles.

Miami went 1 for 14 with runners in scoring position and got a pair of un-earned runs as the Dodgers made two of the game’s four errors.

Treinen (2-4) got two outs before bouncing an 0-1 slider that bounced away from Smith to the edge of the dirt circle on the fi rst-base side of the plate, Smith’s throw bounced off the glove of third baseman Justin Turner to the low wall behind third base as Marte slid into third headfi rst.

Royals 7, Reds 6In Kansas City, Mo., Salvador Per-

ez’s walk-off single capped Kansas City’s four-run rally in a win over Cin-cinnati.

The Royals scored six runs off the Reds’ bullpen in the fi nal two innings and Perez got his third game-ending hit this season.

Richard Lovelady (2-0) picked up the win. Heath Hembree (2-4) took the loss.

Diamondbacks 4, Rockies 3In Phoenix, David Peralta was hit by

a pitch with the bases loaded to force in the winning run and Arizona beat Colorado.

Stephen Vogt led off the ninth against Colorado reliever Daniel Bard (4-5) with a sharp single up the middle. Stuart Fairchild ran for Vogt. Daulton Varsho walked on a full count and Nick Ahmed lined to center with the runners holding. Josh Rojas walked to load the bases and Peralta took a pitch off the leg to bring in the winning run.

Joakim Soria (1-3) pitched a perfect ninth for the win.

Cardinals 6, Giants 5In San Francisco, Nolan Arenado

and Edmundo Sosa homered to back Adam Wainwright’s fourth straight winning decision, Paul Goldschmidt hit a go-ahead two-run single in the fourth inning, and St. Louis beat San Francisco.

Yadier Molina added a run-scoring single in the seventh before Sosa con-nected in the eighth. The Giants scored twice in the bottom half, getting Mike Yastrzemski’s RBI single and a double by Wilmer Flores.

New York Yankees’ Gleyber Tor-res hits a two-run single during the fourth inning of the team’s baseball game against the Los Angeles An-gels on June 29, in New York. (AP)

Philadelphia Phillies starting pitcher Aaron Nola delivers during the first inning of a baseball game against the Chicago Cubs, on July 6, in Chicago. (AP)

MLB Results/Standings

WASHINGTON, July 7, (AP): Results and standings from the MLB games on Tuesday.

American LeagueEast Division

W L Pct GBBoston 54 33 .621 _Tampa Bay 49 36 .576 4Toronto 43 40 .518 9New York 42 41 .506 10Baltimore 28 57 .329 25

Central Division W L Pct GBChicago 50 35 .588 _Cleveland 42 40 .512 6-1/2Detroit 39 47 .453 11-1/2Kansas City 36 49 .424 14Minnesota 35 49 .417 14-1/2

West Division W L Pct GBHouston 53 33 .616 _Oakland 49 38 .563 4-1/2Seattle 45 40 .529 7-1/2Los Angeles 43 42 .506 9-1/2Texas 34 52 .395 19

National LeagueEast Division

W L Pct GBNew York 44 37 .543 _Philadelphia 41 42 .494 4Washington 41 43 .488 4-1/2Atlanta 41 44 .482 5Miami 37 47 .440 8-1/2

Central Division W L Pct GBMilwaukee 51 35 .593 _Cincinnati 44 41 .518 6-1/2St Louis 43 44 .494 8-1/2Chicago 42 44 .488 9Pittsburgh 32 53 .376 18-1/2

West Division W L Pct GBSan Francisco 53 32 .624 _Los Angeles 53 33 .616 -1/2San Diego 51 37 .580 3-1/2Colorado 37 49 .430 16-1/2Arizona 24 63 .276 30

Baltimore 7 Toronto 5Texas 10 Detroit 5Chic. White Sox 4 Minnesota 1Houston 9 Oakland 6Kansas City 7 Cincinnati 6LA Angels 5 Boston 3NY Yankees 12 Seattle 1

Pittsburgh 2 Atlanta 1Miami 2 LA Dodgers (10 inn) 1Philadelphia 15 Chic. Cubs 10Arizona 4 Colorado 3St Louis 6 San Francisco 5San Diego 7 Washington 4

Olympic travel a big challenge for some Pacific island teams

Ko to represent New Zealand at Tokyo GamesWELLINGTON, New Zealand, July 7, (AP): Rio de Janeiro silver medalist Lydia Ko will represent New Zealand in golf at the Tokyo Olympics.

The former world No. 1 has been selected along with Europe-based pro-fessional Ryan Fox in the New Zealand team for Tokyo. Fox also competed at Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Ko was the youngest player, male or female, to win a professional tournament when she did so, aged 14, at the New South Wales Open in 2012. She was the youngest player at 15 to win an LPGA Tour Event and the youngest at 18 to win a major championship when she captured the 2015 Evian Championship.

The South Korea-born Ko will go into the Olympic tournament in good form after winning her fi rst LPGA title since 2018 at the Lotte Championship this year. Fox, who has played on the European Tour since 2016, is the son of former All Blacks fl yhalf Grant Fox.

Meanwhile, fa-mous athletes in sports like tennis and golf heading to the Tokyo Olym-pics will probably

arrive in Japan at the front of the plane.It’s a style to which the athletes of the

Pacifi c Islands are unaccustomed. Fiji’s gold medal-winning men’s rugby sevens team will arrive in Tokyo along with the other members of their national team on Thursday on a cargo/freight fl ight which is hauling mostly frozen fi sh.

Commercial passenger fl ights to and from Pacifi c nations have become scarce during the pandemic. Lorraine Mar, the chief executive of the Fiji Association of Sports and National

Olympic Committee, said Wednesday that arranging travel for the Fiji team to Tokyo has been a “logistical chal-lenge.”

Mar said around 51 athletes and officials, mostly the Fiji men’s and women’s sevens squad, will be on Thursday’s flight from Fiji’s princi-pal international airport at Nadi. It’s a regularly-scheduled freight flight which has some capacity for pas-sengers.

The sevens teams recently have been based in Australia where the Fiji men won the Oceania Sevens title in Townsville, Queensland two weeks ago.Ko

OLYMPICS

USA Boxing team member Naomi Graham takes part in drills during a media day for the team in Colorado Springs,

Colo., on June 7. (AP)

BASEBALLBOXING

homers and drove in fi ve runs, José Altuve drove in the go-ahead run with a single, and Houston rallied to beat Oakland for its fi fth straight win.

The Astros took the lead with a three-run outburst in the sixth inning. Altuve gave the Astros their fi rst lead with a two-run single, and Yuli Gurriel added an RBI groundout. Myles Straw had an RBI single in the fourth.

Oakland tagged Houston starter Framber Valdez for three runs in the fi rst and second innings.

Bryan Abreu (3-3) threw two score-less innings for the win. Ryan Pressly pitched the ninth for his 15th save.

White Sox 4, Twins 1In Minneapolis, Carlos Rodón

pitched six strong innings and Chicago

SPORTSARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

15

Van Aert conquers Ventoux to win Tour de France 11th stageMALAUCENE, France, July 7,

(AP): Belgian champion Wout van Aert twice conquered the daunting and grueling Mont Ventoux to win the prestigious Stage 11 of the Tour de France on Wednesday.

Van Aert was part of a breakaway that formed in the early stages of the nearly 200-kilometers trek in south-ern France featuring an unprecedented double climb of the iconic mountain known as the “Giant of Provence.”

“I know I’m not the best climber, but when I pick my day I know I have my chances,” said Van Aert.

Race leader Tadej Pogacar was fourth, one minute and 38 seconds behind, and kept the yellow jersey. The defending champion was briefl y dropped by Jonas Ving-egaard near the summit in the second ascent of the iconic mountain but erased the 38-sec-ond defi cit in the downhill.

Pogacar has an overall lead of fi ve minutes and 18 seconds over Rigob-erto Uran, with Vingegaard in third place, 5:32 off the pace.

At 26, Van Aert is a jack of all trades. He can sprint, climb and time trial, but did not fi ght for the general

classifi cation, working in support of Jumbo-Visma leader Primoz Roglic.

The former cyclo-cross world cham-pion was given more leeway by his team after Roglic retired from the Tour last week, setting his sights on a stage win.

Van Aert went solo during the sec-ond ascent of the Ventoux, about 11 kilometers from the summit, opening a big gap with his breakaway compan-ions.

He kept his lead intact in the long downhill to the fi nish line, smiling to TV cameras and clenching his fi st as he approached the town of Malaucene. He then raised on his pedals and yelled in triumph with his arms stretched.

It was van Aert’s fourth career stage win at the Tour.

The Ventoux is part of the Tour’s lore. It was the site of an incredible scene back in 2016 when four-time champion Chris Froome had to briefl y run toward the summit after he dam-aged his bike in a crash.

An epic contest between Lance Armstrong and Marco Pantani in 2000 also took place on the slopes of the “Bald Giant,” where British rider Tom Simpson died in 1967 from a combina-tion of amphetamines and alcohol.

The stage got off to a lively start as world champion Julian Alaphilippe

broke away with Nairo Quintana, but the Colombian climber could not fol-low his pace and got dropped.

Alaphilippe was joined by a group of three riders and created a three-minute lead over the main pack across the vineyards and rolling landscape of the Luberon region. Behind the quar-

tet, a group of counter-attackers chased hard in the fi rst big climb of the day, the Col de la Liguière, but could not fi ll the gap.

In sizzling hot weather, Pogacar rode in the main pack with his yellow jersey wide open. Others tried to cool down with small bags of ice cubes ap-

plied to their necks. The downhill from La Liguière led

the breakaway to the town of Sault and the start of the fi rst ascent of the Ven-toux via a 22-kilometer climb. They were joined at the front by the chasing group as the real suffering began.

The leading pack split with Alaphilippe and six others, including Van Aert, moving away 12 kilometers from the summit surrounded by hordes of excited fans. Riding in rarefi ed air, Alaphilippe was fi rst to reach the barren

summit, where swirling cloud added to the ominous lunar-looking landscape.

Paced by 2018 champion Geraint Thomas and his Ineos Grenadiers teammates, the peloton struggled to cut the gap. Alaphilippe was clocked at a top speed of 99 km/h (61.5 mph) on the descent. Julian Bernard took over the lead as the group went back for its sec-ond ascent of Mont Ventoux, a shorter but steeper climb compared to the fi rst. Kenny Elissonde attacked alone but his move was countered by Van Aert.

Pogacar keeps yellow jersey

Belgium’s Wout Van Aert celebrates on the podium after winning the elev-enth stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 198.9 kilometers (123.6 miles) with start in Sorgues and fi nish in Malaucene, France, on July 7. (AP)

Lappartient to be confi rmedUCI president for 4 more yrsAIGLE, Switzerland, July 7, (AP): David Lappartient is poised to lead the UCI, cycling’s global governing body, for four more years after his name was the only one put forward for the presidency by the UCI’s management committee this week.

The UCI said in a statement that the Frenchman had submitted his candidacy and that, “pursuant to article 40, paragraph 3 of the UCI constitution, his election for a sec-ond four-year term will be confi rmed without being put to vote.”

The 48-year-old Lappartient, who took over from Brian Cookson in

2017, will offi cially begin his next term in September.

The UCI also announced the candidates for the management committee, which includes the fi ve presidents of continental confed-erations, an athletes’ commission president and 11 elected mem-bers. The current presidents are Wajih Azzam of Africa, Rowena Williams from Panamerica, Osama Al Shaafar for Asia, Tony Mitchell from Oceania and Enrico Della Casa for Europe. Katerina Nash is the current athletes’ commission president.

8-time Wimbledon champ Federerbeaten by Hurkacz in quarterfi nals

Djokovic to meet Shapovalov in semis

WIMBLEDON, England, July 7, (AP): Eight-time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer lost 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-0 to 14th-seeded Hu-bert Hurkacz of Poland in the quarterfi nals at the All England Club on Wednes-day.

Federer turns 40 next month and never was able to summon the serving and shot-making that have carried him to 20 Grand Slam titles overall.

That is tied with Rafael Nadal for the most by a man in tennis history.

Hurkacz is a 24-year-old from Po-land who had not made it past the third round at any major tournament until this one.

Novak Djokovic and Denis Shapovalov also reached the semifi -nals with wins Wednesday.

If Djokovic beats Shapovalov and then goes on to claim a sixth Wimble-don title - and third in a row - on Sun-day, that would allow the 34-year-old from Serbia to tie Federer and Nadal with 20 Slam trophies.

Djokovic was not quite his indomi-table, infallible self.

After racing to a 5-0 lead at the outset, he dropped three consecutive games to his unheralded quarterfi nal opponent, 48th-ranked Marton Fuc-sovics. Wasted fi ve set points in the process, too.

Soon enough, Djokovic righted himself, as he usually does, and beat Fucsovics 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 on a windy, overcast afternoon at Centre Court to reach his 10th semifi nal at the All Eng-land Club and 41st at a major tourna-ment.

And there’s this, too: Djokovic improved to 19-0 in matches at ma-jors this season as he pursues the fi rst calendar-year Grand Slam by a man since Rod Laver in 1969. Djokovic seized trophies on the Australian Open’s hard courts in February, on the French Open’s red clay in June and now seeks to add one on Wimble-don’s grass.

Djokovic - who fi nished with more unforced errors, 30, than winners, 23 - will face a fi rst-time major semifi nal-ist, No. 10 Denis Shapovalov of Cana-

da, on Friday.Shapovalov edged No. 25 Karen

Khachanov of Russia 6-4, 3-6, 5-7, 6-1, 6-4 in nearly 3 1/2 hours at No. 1 Court.

“Obviously, he’s the best player in the world,” Shapovalov said about the prospect of taking on Djokovic, “but I think anything is possible. And when you look at the scoreboard fi rst thing on Friday ... it’s going to be 0-0. So that’s it. Nothing else matters.”

The 2016 Wimbledon boys’ cham-pion compiled nearly twice as many winners as Khachanov, 59-31. That total included 17 aces for Shapovalov, which helped lessen the importance of his 10 double-faults.

The last break came at 4-all in the fi fth set. Shapovalov converted his fourth break chance in that game when Khachanov sent a forehand long.

Federer and Djokovic have won a combined 13 titles at Wimbledon and made 30 appearances in the quarterfi -nals.

None of the other six men left in the draw when Wednesday began had ever been to the quarterfi nals at the All England Club, equaling a tournament record for the most debuts in the round of eight.

Indeed, only one member of the group previously went as far as the semifi nals at any Grand Slam tourna-ment: Berrettini lost at that stage in the 2019 U.S. Open.

The women’s semifi nals Thurs-day will be No. 1 Ash Barty vs. 2018 champion Angelique Kerber, and No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka vs. No. 8 Karolina Pliskova.

It took the top-seeded Djokovic just 18 minutes to collect 20 of the fi rst 27 points and the initial fi ve games against Fucsovics, a 29-year-old from Hungary.

“I started off extremely well,” Djok-ovic said.

That’s when there was that three-game blip, an odd midmatch lapse, perhaps a result of the swirling breeze that made the tennis balls dance unpre-dictably in the air.

Serbia’s Novak Djokovic plays a return to Hungary’s Marton Fucsovics during the men’s singles quarterfi nals match on day nine of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, on July 7. (AP)

Australia’s Hunter Paisami runs at the defence during the rugby international between France and Australia at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia, on July 7. (AP)

Lolesio scores last-gasp winner

Costly error for France asAustralia rally for late win

Olympics likely to open during COVID-19 ‘state of emergency’

BRISBANE, Australia, July 7, (AP): Just out of quarantine, an inexperienced and underprepared France lineup led the series-opening rugby test against Australia from the sixth minute until a blunder in the dying seconds.

The mistake allowed Noah Lolesio to kick a penalty goal in stoppage time, giving Australia a 23-21 comeback win on Wednesday night in the fi rst of three matches in 11 days be-tween the teams.

After sweat-ing on Austral-ia’s errors for winger Gabin Villiere to score two early tries to set up a 15-0 lead, keeping up the pressure for 80 minutes and frustrating the hosts, an errant pass from a last-minute lineout cost France a fi rst test victory in Aus-tralia since 1990.

The French won a defensive lineout on their quarterline and should have kicked for touch to end the game and clinch the win, but the ball went loose and Australia’s replacement scrumhalf Tate McDermott pounced on it to set up a dramatic fi nish.

The Australian forwards launched phase after phase at the French line in a bid to capitalize on a series of penalty advantages but were unable to score or get a clean pass to Lolesio, who was in the pocket ready to take a dropped goal.

The rookie fl yhalf had his attempted dropped goal blocked, but calmly slot-ted a penalty shot seconds later from di-rectly in front to seal it.

Asked if he’d ever won a test from a similar position, Wallabies captain Michael Hooper said: “Not when you think it’s all but done. Happy to be on

the right side of it, though.“Very proud of the guys to keep

fi ghting there right to the death.”France coach Fabien Galthie praised

his team’s strong start but conceded that inexperience cost them in the end.

“There’s lots of strong emotion - we need to be able to get rid of a lot of those emotions,” he said. “We need to shift what just happened and focus on next week.”

The second match is in Melbourne next Tuesday.

The French squad was missing a host of stars and went into the match on lim-ited practice after spending two weeks in strict quarantine because of Aus-tralia’s COVID-19 protocols, yet it was the Australians who lacked cohesion in their fi rst test of the 2021 season.

The scrappy encounter was played in front of 17,821 fans, with a crowd al-lowed into Suncorp Stadium four days after Brisbane fi nished a snap four-day lockdown. Villiere scored the opener in the 6th minute with an angled run from the left wing after the French won a scrum against the head.

He sprinted 25 meters untouched for his second after the French won a scrum following an Australian error, shifted the ball to the midfi eld and Jon-athan Danty fed him a quick inside ball in a yawning gap.

Australia reduced the margin to 15-7 at the break when hooker Brandon Paenga-Amosa barged over in a driv-ing maul.

Louis Carbonel and Melvyn Jaminet kicked second-half penalties for France and Lolesio added one. The French led 21-13 with 10 minutes to go.

Hooper drove over from close range and Lolesio converted to make it 21-20 with less than 10 minutes left, but squandered chances appeared likely to be costly for Australia until the very end.

Australian center Hunter Paisami, who had a try disallowed in the fi rst half for a forward pass, created a chance with a grubber kick into the in-goal in the 55th minute that Tom Wright knocked-on.

TOKYO, July 7, (AP): Surging COV-ID-19 cases in Tokyo have hit a two-month high that almost guarantees the Japanese government will declare a new state of emergency to start next week and continue for the duration of the Tokyo Olympics.

The pandemic-delayed Olympics open in just over two weeks on July 23.

IOC President Thomas Bach is scheduled to arrive in Tokyo on Thurs-day, when he will be greeted by the rising cases as he self-isolates for three days in the International Olympic Com-mittee’s fi ve-star hotel in the capi-tal.

A new state of emergency could lead to a ban even on lo-cal fans. That decision on fans is expected Friday when local organiz-ers meet with the IOC and others.

The present quasi-state of emergency ends Sunday. Tokyo reported 920 new cases on Wednesday, up from 714 last Wednesday. It is the highest total since 1,010 were reported on May 13.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga met with key ministers to discuss virus measures and reportedly is consider-ing reinstating a state of emergency in the capital until Aug. 22. The Olympics end on Aug. 8.

Suga did not confi rm the report but noted Tokyo’s upsurge and vowed “to do everything we can to prevent the fur-ther spread of the infections.”

Suga said he would make a fi nal de-cision Thursday after consulting with a panel of experts.

Fans from abroad were banned from attending the Olympics months ago.

But just two weeks ago, organizers and the IOC decided to allow venues to be fi led to 50% of capacity but not to ex-ceed 10,000.

The soaring cases are likely to mean that venues will be without any fans, although sponsors and others may have access. The no-fan atmosphere could include the opening ceremony at the $1.4 billion National Stadium.

“The infections are in their expan-sion phase and everyone in this country must fi rmly understand the seriousness of it,” Dr. Shigeru Omi, a top govern-ment medical adviser, told reporters.

He urged authorities to quickly take tough measures ahead of the Olympics

with summer vacations approaching.“The period from July to Septem-

ber is the most critical time for Japan’s COVID-19 measures,” Omi said.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike told reporters that she expects the govern-ment to declare a state of emergency in Tokyo, a fourth for the capital since the pandemic began early last year.

Separately, a government COVID-19 advisory panel met Wednesday and ex-pressed concerns about the ongoing re-surgence of the infections.

“Two-thirds of the infections in the capital region are from Tokyo, and our concern is the spread of the infections to neighboring areas,” said Ryuji Wak-ita, director-general of the National In-stitute of Infectious Diseases.

The Olympics are pushing ahead against most medical advice, partially because the postponement of 15 months stalled the IOC’s income fl ow. It gets almost 75% of its income from selling broadcast rights, and estimates suggest it would lose between $3 billion and $4 billion if the Olympics were canceled.

Lolesio

Pogacar

Suga

RUGBY

CYCLING

OLYMPICS

TENNIS

2 Russian rowers out of ‘Tokyo Oly’

MOSCOW, July 7, (AP): Two Russian rowers have been re-moved from the squad for the Tokyo Olympics after failing drug tests, Russian offi cials said Wednesday.

Russian Olympic Committee president Stanislav Pozdnyakov told the Tass state news agency that the two rowers had been pro-visionally suspended and replaced in the team before the fi nal Olym-pic squad was announced.

Pozdnyakov said that the Rus-sian rowing federation “must take all comprehensive measures to ascertain the circumstances of this incident, which can only be called outrageous.”

Federation president Alexei Svirin named the rowers as Nikita Morgachev and Pavel Sorin from the quadruple sculls crew in com-ments to state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti. The 40-year-old Morgachev competed at the Olympics in 2008, 2012 and 2016. Sorin was heading into his fi rst Olympics.

PHOENIX, July 7, (AP): Chris Paul waited 16 years to get to the NBA Finals, bringing with him a team starving for their fi rst championship.

The setting was entirely new.The performance was same ol’ Chris Paul.“Just knew he’s ready,” Phoenix forward Mikal Bridg-

es said. “He’s prepared his whole life for this moment and it shows out there on the court.”

Paul had 32 points and nine assists in an NBA Finals debut that was well worth the wait, Devin Booker scored 27 points and the Suns beat the returning Giannis Ante-tokounmpo and his Milwaukee Bucks 118-105 on Tues-day night in Game 1.

Paul scored 16 points during a sensational third quar-ter that had Phoenix fans who waited 28 years to see the NBA Finals again screaming in delight.

“Every time he shoots it we think it’s going in,” Booker said.

It almost did in the third quarter, when Paul was 6 for 7 and made all three 3-pointers.

Finally playing for the title in his 16th season, the star point guard has the Suns in the NBA Finals for only the

third time, and it sure looked as if they could make this ending different than the other two.

“We’ve been building all season long for these mo-ments,” Paul said. “We’re going to keep playing. This is just one game. We’ve got to stay locked in.”

Deandre Ayton added 22 points and 19 rebounds to continue his breakout stretch of play in his fi rst postsea-son.

Antetokounmpo had 20 points and 17 rebounds after missing two games with a hyperextended left knee. Khris Middleton scored 29 points, but the Bucks will have to play from behind again after dropping Game 1 for the third straight series.

“We know it’s not going to be easy. We know it’s go-ing to be tough,” Middleton said. “There’s times where we’re going to be down in this series. But this series isn’t over. We’re down. We’ve still got to keep competing and just playing.”

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ARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021 16

SportsArgentina’s goalkeeper Emil-iano Martinez, (left, above), stops a ball during a Copa America semifi nal soccer match against Colombia at the National Stadium in Brasilia, Brazil. (AP)

Martinez saves three penalties in shootout against Colombia

Argentina advance on penalties to Copa fi nal vs BrazilBRASILIA, Brazil, July 7, (AP): It will be Lionel Messi’s Argenti-na against Neymar’s Brazil in the Copa America fi nal on Saturday at the historic Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.

Argentina won their semifi nal against Colombia 3-2 on penalties after three saves by goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez. Regular time ended 1-1 at the Mané Garrincha Stadium in Brasilia on Tuesday.

“Dibu is a phenomenon. We trusted him,” Messi said after the match, in a reference to Martinez’ nickname. “It was an objective to play all the matches and now we will try to win this fi nal.”

Argentina haven’t captured a major title since 1993 when they won Copa America. On that occa-

sion, the team e l i m i n a t e d Colombia on penalties 6-5 in the semi-fi nal after a goalless draw.

Brazil beat Peru 1-0 on Monday to advance to the fi nal. The

Selecao have never lost a Copa America fi nal at home and have won fi ve out of six matches so far. Neymar said after the semifi nal he wanted to meet his Barcelona mentor Messi at the decider.

“Both of us are in the fi nal, I know Neymar said it because we are friends and he wanted me to be there too,” Messi said. “It will surely be very close and diffi cult. We are aiming high, we managed to get the fi rst objective of playing the fi nal, playing all matches. Now we are aiming higher than ever, we are going to seek that Copa.”

It took Argentina only seven minutes to open the scoring. Rod-rigo de Paul found Messi in the penalty box with a through pass. The star earned his fi fth assist in the tournament with a pass to Lau-taro Martinez, who put the ball in the right corner past Colombia goalkeeper David Ospina.

A more aggressive Colombia, led by Juan Guillermo Cuadrado, hit the bar and the post in the fi rst half before they leveled in the 61st minute with Luis Diaz, who received the ball on the left of Ar-gentina’s box shot almost with no angle to beat Martinez.

Argentina reacted after 67 min-utes when Ángel di María came into the match, replacing Nico González. The winger created several opportunities including one in the 80th minute that ended with Davinson Sanchez saving a fi nish by Lautaro Martinez on the goal line.

The last big opportunity in regu-lar time came with Messi hitting Ospina’s right post in 81st minute from short range.

Martinez saved the shots taken by Sanchez, Yerry Mina and Ed-win Cardona in the shootout. Messi converted his opportunity from the spot and was one of the most joy-ous players in the celebrations. He seeks his fi rst major title with Ar-gentina against favorites Brazil.

Rodrigo de Paul missed his shot, but Leandro Paredes and Lautaro Martinez netted their chances for Argentina in the shootout. Cuad-rado and Miguel Borja scored from the spot for Colombia.

In tears, Martinez said after the match he wanted to face the Bra-zilians in the fi nal in the Maracana Stadium.

“This is a matter of luck, today it was mine. Brazil are a great team, the favorites,” Martinez said. “But we have a great coach, we have the best player in the world and we will try to win it,” he said.

“We have nothing to regret,” Colombia coach Reinaldo Rueda said. He had also reached the sem-ifi nal with Chile in 2019 and lost. “Now we have to wait for soccer to give our effort back so we can give some joy to the Colombian people some other time.”

Argentina and Colombia were the original hosts of Copa Amer-ica, which was shifted to Brazil two weeks before kick off.

Colombia will play on Friday in the third-place playoff against Peru.

Italy reach Euro 2020 fi nal

Jorginho the hero

LONDON, July 7, (AP): Facing a wall of nerv-ous blue-and-white clad Italy fans behind the goal, Jorginho took his trade-mark hop and skip before calmly stroking in the win-ning penalty.

So much for the pressure of a shootout in the European Champi-onship semifi nals.

A dash of Italian panache com-pleted a 4-2 penalty-shootout win over Spain at Wembley Stadium.

The match fi nished 1-1 after ex-tra time and provided Italy with their toughest test of the tournament, with Spain controlling possession for long periods. Federico Chiesa scored for Italy with a curling shot in the 60th minute but substitute Alvaro Morata equalized for Spain in the 80th.

Morata, dropped from the starting lineup for the fi rst time in a tournament during which he has received verbal abuse and even death threats from his own fans, will go down as Spain’s scapegoat once again after having a penalty saved by Gianluigi Don-narumma in the next-to-last kick of the shootout.

As he walked back to the center circle with his head bowed, Jorginho made the opposite journey and didn’t make the same mistake.

The Chelsea midfi elder has his own style when it comes to taking penal-ties and he didn’t abandon it when it mattered most, sparking a throng of celebrations as Italy’s players sprinted from the halfway line.

Jorginho was mobbed. Italy coach Roberto Mancini was hugged by the rest of coaching staff. The players lined up on the edge of the area and ran together, holding hands, toward the fans.

Leonardo Bonucci went further, leaping over the advertising hoardings to get even closer to the crazed support-ers whose loud cheering had lifted the team in their most diffi cult moments.

Riding a national record unbeaten run of 33 games, Italy will play in their fourth European fi nal and look to win the title for a second time, after 1968.

It’s quite the redemption story for a

country which failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

They have had the aura of champi-ons since Day 1 of the tournament and they’ll be sticking around until the last day, too. But it’s at the home of English soccer where the team have had their toughest matches.

Against Austria in the round of 16, the Italians were taken to extra time at Wembley and they had to go the dis-tance, too, against Spain.

Spain’s striker-free formation ini-tially fl ummoxed the Azzurri, who have become a more progressive team under Mancini but were given a clinic at times in ball possession and move-ment in midfi eld.

Experienced center backs Giorgio Chiellini and Bonucci looked uncer-tain at times, not knowing whether to drop back or follow deep-lying for-ward Dani Olmo - who started ahead of Morata - into the center of midfi eld.

Spain’s pressing also drew some rash clearances from the back from Ita-ly. That created the team’s best chance in the fi rst half with Ferran Torres’ shot requiring a low save from Don-narumma.

The Italians had even more prob-lems when Morata came on as a substi-tute but, by then, Chiesa had put them ahead after latching onto a loose ball, cutting inside and curling a shot into the far corner. It was his second goal at Wembley in this tournament, hav-ing scored just as impressively against Austria.

Italy players celebrate after winning the Euro 2020 soccer championship semifi nal match against Spain at Wembley Stadium in London, England. (AP)

SOCCER

BASKETBALL

SOCCER

Italy’s goalkeeper Gianluigi Don-narumma saves a shootout pen-alty during the Euro 2020 soccer semifi nal match between Italy and Spain at Wembley stadium in Lon-

don. (AP)

Messi

‘We’ve been building all season long for these moments’

Paul ‘stars’ as Suns subdueBucks in NBA Finals opener

Phoenix Suns’ Cameron Payne (15) shoots over Milwaukee Bucks’ P.J. Tucker (17) during the fi rst half of Game 1 of basketball’s NBA Finals in Phoenix. (AP)