CELEBS 9 @newsofbahrain OP-ED Kanye West surprises...2019/10/24 · Kanye West recently proved that he is a doting husband after he present-ed his wife Kim Kardashi-an a lavish gift

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Kanye West surprises wife Kim Kardashian with a beautiful birthday giftKanye West recently proved that he is a doting husband after he present-ed his wife Kim Kardashi-an a lavish gift.P14

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02His Majesty highlights role of Kuwait in joint Arab initiatives

03NAO report stresses ‘hundreds’ of violations in public establishments

04Disaster management centre at Bapco to deal with emergencies

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His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander, and First Deputy Prime Minister, yesterday met the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe. HRH the Crown Prince recognised the importance of further expanding the bilateral relations between the Kingdom of Bahrain and Japan, adding that the exchange of visits offer a chance to explore opportunities that benefit both countries and their people. HRH the Crown Prince and the Prime Minister exchanged views on ways to further enhance co-operation between Bahrain and Japan, and reviewed the significant advances made by both countries in developing key economic sectors. The Minister of Finance and National Economy, Shaikh Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa; the Private Secretary to HRH the Crown Prince, Shaikh Abdullah bin Isa Al Khalifa; and the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Bahrain to Japan, Ahmed Mohammed Al Dossari, were also in attendance.

Bolstering ties

• Police said the trailer had travelled from Belgium to Purfleet and landed shortly after 12.30 am on Wednesday.

• Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said his country had no other connection with the deaths.

London

British police found the bodies of 39 people inside a truck at an industrial es-tate near London yesterday and said they had arrested the driver on suspicion of murder.

The discovery of the bodies - 38 adults and one teenager - was made in the early hours after emergency services were alerted to people in a truck container on an industrial site in Grays, about 20 miles (32 km) east of central London.

Police said the trailer had ar-rived at nearby docks having trav-eled from Zeebrugge in Belgium and the bodies were found just

over an hour later.The red cab unit of the truck

was believed to have originated in Ireland. It had “Ireland” em-blazoned on the windscreen along with the message “The Ultimate Dream”. The driver, a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland, remained in custody.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was appalled by the news and was receiving regular updates about the investigation which was focused on human trafficking.

“We know that this trade is go-ing on - all such traders in human beings should be hunted down and brought to justice,” he said.

All those in the container were pronounced dead at the scene after the emergency services were called to the Waterglade Industri-al Park, not far from docks on the River Thames.

Police said the trailer had trav-elled from Belgium to Purfleet and landed shortly after 12.30 am on Wednesday.

It left the port on the truck at about 1.05 am and ambulance

services notified police about the discovery of the bodies at 1.40 am.

Originally it was thought both parts of the vehicle had entered Britain at Holyhead in North Wales on Saturday and to have originally started its journey in Bulgaria.

The Bulgarian Foreign Min-istry said while the vehicle was registered in Bulgaria by a compa-ny owned by an Irish woman on June 19, 2017, it had left the next day and never returned.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said his country had no other connection with the deaths.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Irish authorities would carry out any investigations necessary if it was established that the truck had passed through Ireland.

Police officers in forensic suits spent the day inspecting the large white container on the truck next to warehouses and had sealed off much of the surrounding area of the industrial site with large green barriers as they carried out their investigation.

39 bodies in truck Driver arrested; British police launches probe into shocking incident

At this stage, we have not identified where the victims are from or their identities and we

anticipate this could be a lengthy

process. ESSEX POLICE HEAD Mo Robinson, the truck driver was arrested.

Trump lifts Turkey sanctions Washington, DC

The US is lifting sanc-tions imposed on Tur-key nine days ago over its offensive against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, President Donald Trump says.

His decision came after Russia agreed with Turkey to deploy troops to extend a ceasefire along the Syrian border.

Turkey’s assault began af-ter Mr Trump’s unexpected move to withdraw US troops from northern Syria earlier this month.

“Let someone else fight over this long bloodstained sand,” the president said in a TV address from the White House.

He was heavily criticised by both Democrats and Re-publicans for the abrupt military pullout, as the

Nine found alive in separate truckLondon

In a separate incident, nine people — all alive — have been found in the back of a truck, the UK’s Kent Police said in a statement yesterday. They were found on a highway and “are now being checked as a precaution by the South East Coast Ambulance Service before they are passed to Home Office im-migration officers,” the statement said

An Aerial picture shows screens put around the back of the white truck, with forensics tents placed nearby.

02THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2019

His Majesty highlights role of Kuwait in joint Arab initiatives

HM the King hails deep-rooted fraternal relations between Bahrain and Kuwait

• The meeting also focused on current developments unfolding in the region, in addition to other issues of common concern.

• Kuwaiti Deputy Premier commended Bahrain’s historic, fraternal and honourable stances in support of Kuwait and its people.

Manama

His Majesty King Ham-ad bin Isa Al Khalifa yesterday received a letter from the Amir of Kuwait His Highness Shaikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Jaber Al Sabah dealing with solid bilateral re-lations binding the two broth-erly countries and peoples, in addition to latest regional and

international developments and issues of mutual concern.

This came as HM the King received yesterday, at Al Sa-friya Palace, Kuwaiti Deputy Premier and Foreign Minis-ter Shaikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Hamad Al Sabah, who conveyed to HM the King greetings from the Amir of Kuwait, and wished the Kingdom of Bahrain and its people further progress and

prosperity. HM the King welcomed the

Kuwaiti minister and extended greetings to HH Shaikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Jaber Al Sabah and wished him abundant health and well-being and the brotherly Kuwaiti people fur-ther progress and prosperity.

He hailed deep-rooted strong fraternal relations binding the two brotherly countries and

peoples, the stressing the im-portance of constant consul-tation and coordination to support the march of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and confront regional challenges.

HM the King commended the pivotal role played by HH Shai-kh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Jaber Al Sabah to bolster Bahraini-Ku-waiti relations, hailing his ded-icated efforts to support the

joint Arab action and advocate and protect Arab issues.

The meeting also focused on current developments unfold-ing in the region, in addition to other issues of common con-cern.

The Kuwaiti Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister expressed thanks and appreciation to HM the King, hailing royal efforts to strengthen outstanding re-

lations of co-operation binding the two countries.

He commended Bahrain’s historic, fraternal and honour-able stances in support of Ku-wait and its people.

Earlier yesterday, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa received Shaikh Sabah upon his arrival at Bahrain In-ternational Airport.

Shaikh Khalid receives HH Shaikh Sabah upon his arrival in the Kingdom.His Majesty holds discussion with HH Shaikh Sabah.

Public-private partnership ‘key for development’ Manama

Cabinet Affairs Minister Mohammed Al Muta-wa underlined the great importance accorded by the Bahraini government to part-nership between the public and private sectors, as one of the pillars of the Economic Vision 2030 and the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

He added the report of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) re-vealed that the Arab countries need $230 billion to be added to their initial annual expenditure to reach SDGs, which is hard for the governments to provide such fund.

Therefore, he noted, the King-dom of Bahrain started setting partnerships with private sector institutions in various fields like housing programmes and health and educational services.

He emphasised the impossi-

bility to maintain sustainable development without sustain-able funding.

The Cabinet Affairs Minister was speaking in the opening of the 5th edition of Bahrain

Excellence Forum which is or-ganised under his patronage by Act Smart Public Relations Con-sultancy on October 23 and 24.

The forum’s Secretary Gener-al Dr Fahad Ibrahim Al Shehabi said the region is witnessing geo-political changes which affected oil prices and had a negative impact on the states’ budgets.

Addressing the forum, which is held this year under the theme “Excellence Through Partnership between the Pub-lic and Private Sectors”, he emphasised Bahrain’s capabil-ity to face all those challenges through many solutions, in-cluding the Fiscal Balance Pro-gramme which had as one of its tools the Voluntary Retirement Programme.

He thanked the Cabinet Af-fairs Minister for patronising the forum for five consecutive years. He also thanked the La-bour Fund (Tamkeen), the fo-rum’s strategic partner.

It is hard for Arab governments

to attain developmental goals without entering key

partnerships with the private sector.

MR AL MUTAWA

International Motor Trading Agency (IMTA) has unveiled the all-new Mazda3 for the people of the Kingdom. The all-new Mazda3 will be on display at the Mazda showrooms in Sitra and Tubli and will be open to the public. Test drive can be pre-booked by giving a ring on 17706010 (Sitra) and 17875777 (Tubli). IMTA President Ms Suzan Kanoo along with senior executives and dignitaries attended the launch event.

All-new Mazda 3 launched


NAO report stresses ‘hundreds’ of violations in public establishments

NAO urges more measures to control the levels of public debt

• The annual report is issued by the NAO, as an independent entity, for the aim of improving the government’s performance financially and administratively.

• The report underlined various excessive spending in several government entities including many ministries, departments and institutions.

TDT | Manama

Scores of fiscal violations were yesterday unveiled with the release of the Na-tional Audit Office (NAO) annual report, Tribune has learnt.

The report which is annually released at this time of the year addresses violations and short-ages of performance at govern-ment bodies.

It was yesterday handed over to the Council of Representa-tives’ Speaker Fawziya Zainal by NAO Chairman Shaikh Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa.

The report mentioned some of the violations detected at min-istries and public authorities in 2018.

In the report, it was stated that many ministries and gov-ernment bodies had directly borrowed funds from foreign parties without including the debts in the general balance re-corded.

The report mentioned that this has reflected a false image of the actual amount of the public debt released earlier, which is nearly BD12.5 billion, while the actual public debt amount was over BD13.5bn.

In its recommendation, the NAO stressed the need to take more effective measures to con-trol the levels of public debt, in order to tighten control over it and ensure its management on sound economic and regulatory

bases.Other violations detected in-

cluded the ones within Educa-tion Ministry, where the report showed that 60 out of 134 oper-ating kindergartens in the King-dom have not renewed their licences for periods exceeding

five years.The report said that there

was a significant delay in the renewal of licences, and also noted two kindergartens were licensed to operate, although they did not meet the necessary requirements.

It was also mentioned in the report that 59 out of 107 private educational institutions, 55 per cent of the total institutions in the Kingdom, have not renewed their licences for long periods of up to five years.

The report underlined vari-ous excessive spending in sev-eral government entities such

as the Youth and Sports Affairs Ministry, Bahrain International Airport, Health Ministry, Works, Municipalities Affairs and Ur-ban Planning Ministry, Bahrain Institute of Public Administra-tion and more.

The annual report is issued by the NAO, as an independent entity, for the aim of improving the government’s performance financially and administrative-ly, ensuring accountability and promoting transparency, in accordance with international standards, and within the frame-work of the laws and systems regulating the process.

Two new traffic signals installed on Saar AvenueManama

The Ministry of Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning has announced that it has, in co-operation with the Gen-eral Directorate of Traffic of the Ministry of Interior, installed two new traffic sig-nals, as part of the on-going Saar Avenue improvement at the intersections with Road 2941 and Road 1523 in Saar of Northern Governorate.

The signals will be operat-ing with the new modifica-tion from today, the ministry added, calling on all road us-ers to observe and obey the traffic rules for safety of all.

Separately, the Ministry of Works said that the sewer-age maintenance works on Baghdad Avenue at Isa Town necessitate closure of one lane for southbound traffic near Isa Town Mall and the traffic movement will be di-verted to Avenue 5.

The closure will be effec-tive from Thursday and for a period of 25 days.

Shaikh Ahmed hands over the report to Ms Zainal.

55per cent of the total institutions in the Kingdom have not

renewed their licences for long periods of up to

five years.

51 abandoned vehicles removed TDT | Manama

As many as 51 abandoned vehicles were removed from different areas in the Southern Governorate in the past two weeks, Southern Area Municipality announced yesterday.

The municipality explained that the removal came as part of a series of campaigns launched against violations of occupying roads and harming the environ-ment.

It added that the campaigns follow the directives of Works, Municipalities Affairs and Ur-ban Planning Minister Essam Khalaf.

In a statement released yester-day, the municipality explained that it had notified the owners of the vehicles to remove them within a certain period of time, stating that the vehicles were removed after no response was received from the owners in the said time.

It affirmed that the campaigns against such violations will con-tinue to cover all the areas in the Southern Governorate, as such phenomenon has a negative impact on the flow of traffic and risks residents’ safety.

The abandoned vehicles were removed after no response was received from the owners.

The drive will continue to cover all

areas in the Southern Governorate. SOUTHERN MUNICIPALITY

One-week detention for over speeding TDT | Manama

The Public Prosecution yesterday announced that it has ordered to de-tain a reckless driver, who was recently caught driving over 250 km per hour on one of the King-dom’s highways.

Traffic Prosecution Chief Prosecutor Abdulhadi Al Asfoor confirmed in a statement post-ed on the prosecution’s official page on Instagram that the inci-dent recently took place on Shai-

kh Khalifa Bin Salman Salman Bridge and that Prosecution was

notified about the offence by the General Directorate of Traffic.

Mr Al Asfoor added that the prosecution summoned the driver, interrogated him and ordered his detention for one week, in order to refer him to the concerned criminal court.

In the interrogation, the driv-er confessed to the offence and justified his action by informing interrogators that he was “ab-sent-minded and did not pay attention to his speed”.

The Prosecution summoned the driver, interrogated him and ordered his detention for one week, in order

to refer him to the concerned criminal court.

MR AL ASFOOR

Draft laws reviewed Manama

The Legal and Legislative Affairs Ministerial Com-mittee yesterday held its regular meeting chaired by Jawad bin Salem Al Arrayed, Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Committee in presence of its members at the Government House main auditorium.


Disaster management centre at Bapco to deal with emergencies

Centre equipped with latest technologies to deal with emergencies Manama

Interior Minister, General Shaikh Rashid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, and Oil Minister, Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, yesterday inaugurated the Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) Centre for Leadership to deal with oil-related emergen-cies and disasters.

Deputy Chairman of the Su-preme Council for Environment, Faisal bin Rashid Al Khalifa, and Chief of Public Security and Head of the National Disaster Management Committee, Ma-jor-General Tariq Al Hassan, at-tended the event.

Upon the arrival of Interior Minister, the patron of the cere-mony, the launching of the centre took place with a brief by the Deputy CEO of Bapco, Ebrahim Talib about the readiness of the centre to deal with oil spills.

He said that as part of efforts to meet the latest developments in responding to emergencies and disasters, the assistant of organisations with high expertise were sought to learn about suc-cessful experiences of developed countries.

He continued that a compre-hensive team to deal with var-ious cases was formed, and the centre was equipped with the latest technologies for effective responses to accidents.

He highlighted that the centre was designed to manage more

than one emergency at the same time.

After that, Interior Minister toured the centre and was in-formed about the implementa-tion steps of the national exercise against oil spills that commenced at 7 am on October 23.

The drill is organised by the Interior Ministry, the National Oil and Gas Authority and the Supreme Council for Environ-ment in co-operation with the National Disaster Management Committee.

The exercise’s phases, imple-mentation process, scenarios and goals were highlighted. The drill

reflects the capability of the par-ticipating organisations to work together while fulfilling their duties to enhance preparedness.

On this occasion, the Interior

Minister expressed thanks and appreciation to Shaikh Moham-med bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, the Oil Minister, for his sincere ef-forts in enhancing competencies, productivity and development in all oil-related aspects, along with the performance levels, in-cluding reinforcing preparedness to tackle emergencies in the oil sector.

He valued the role of Bapco that reflects the level of compe-tency and training as a national platform to develop expertise and leaders, as well as its con-tributions to the building of the nation.

He highlighted that the na-tional exercise with a scenario of a threat that targets an oil es-tablishment comes at a time with unprecedented challenges.

“As we see, there is a clear tar-geting of oil establishments in the region,” he said, asserting the importance of field training to learn skills to deal with emer-gencies.

He valued the exercise for being a realistic and the com-petency and capabilities of the participating organisations, through their co-operation and co-ordination in planning and implementation.

He hailed the high readiness through the drills phases that is considered as the accumu-lated experience and efforts in the field of capacity building, whether at the human level or concerning modern equipment and techniques used in dealing with emergencies per the latest international emergency plans.

He highlighted the essentiality to build on such exercises as part of joint fieldwork.

The Interior Minister said that the centre that was inaugurated would have positive outcomes to supervise the control operations to deal with oil-related emer-gencies.

He stressed the importance of co-operation and co-ordination among all the participating or-ganisations to gain expertise to enhance readiness.

General Shaikh Rashid inaugurates the centre in the presence of Shaikh Mohammed and other senior officials.

Ministers being briefed on the facilities at the centre.

The establishment of the centre will lead

to positive outcomes to supervise the

control operations to deal with oil-related

emergencies. GENERAL SHAIKH RASHID

Informatics award honour for Bahrain Kuwait

The National sugges-tions and complaints system (Tawasul) has won His Highness Shai-kh Salem Al Ali Al Sabah Informatics Award.

Kuwait News Agency (BNA) said that Bahrain swooped the prize among ten other Arab informat-ics projects which were announced winners of the 19th edition of the prize.

Award steering com-mittee chief Bassam Al Shemmari said at a news conference that ten Arab States won the prize, in-cluding seven enterprises in the public sector.

Two Arab countries swooped the award for the private sector, while the last one went to the civil society.

In the public sector, the UAE won three awards for its enterprise “bash-er” (begin) affiliated to the communication au-thority, “tamm” (accom-plished) of Abu Dhabi digital authority and “police station in your phone” of the Ministry of Interior

Other winners in the public sector was Saudi Arabia which bagged two prizes for the enterprise “the citizen account” of the Ministry of Labour and Social Development and “rasd” of the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA). Qatar won a prize for the enterprise, “aoun” (solidarity) of the Minis-try of Municipality .and Environment.

As to the private sec-tor, Al Shemmari said Jordan earned the award for “cyber translator for .”sign language,” Egypt f o r “ p l a n t s o f c y b e r sciences “and Palestine for “sofoof. The award total value stands at USD 200,000, equally distrib-uted among the winners, at a rate of USD 20,000 for each winner. The winners will be honoured at a cer-emony under Amiri pat-ronisation in November.

Global students to go plogging on Asry Beach

TDT | Manama

As part of the Govern-ment’s ongoing cam-paign against single use plastic, the students of Global Institute for Management Sci-ence will go plogging on Asry Beach, Hidd, at 6 am tomorrow.

Plogging is a combination of jogging with picking up litter. It started as an organised ac-tivity in Sweden around 2016 and spread to other countries in 2018, following increased concern about plastic pollution.

It became popular in Asia and Middle East after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi cleaned the shores of Mamal-lapuram beach, near Chennai,

during his morning walk. “Refreshing walk and exercis-

es in Mamallapuram, along the scenic coast. Plogging at a beach in Mamallapuram this morning. It lasted for over 30 minutes. Also handed over my ‘collection’ to Jeyaraj, who is a part of the hotel staff. Let us ensure our

public places are clean and tidy! Let us also ensure we remain fit and healthy,” Modi had tweeted with pictures and a video.

Abdul Jaleel Abdulla, Global Institute Director and Chief Ex-ecutive Officer, said the activity has been organised in line with the government’s campaign against single use plastic.

“Global Institute has always been encouraging events and campaigns aimed at protecting the environment. We have al-ways been with the Kingdom’s authorities in successfully im-plementing pro-environment measures.”

Anyone interested to join the drive can give a call or WhatsApp on 36458340. To register, give a ring on 17740150.

We have always been with the Kingdom’s

authorities in successfully

implementing pro-environment

measures.MR JALEEL ABDULLA

Bahrain, UAE sign media agreementManama

The Ministry of Informa-tion Affairs and the UAE National Media Council (NMC) signed a memorandum of understanding related to an ex-ecutive media co-operation pro-gramme in the field of cinema.

The agreement, which was sealed by Information Affairs Ministry Undersecretary Dr Abdulrahman Mohammed Bahr and NMC Media Affairs Sector director Dr Rashid Khal-fan Al Nuaimi, aims to promote co-operation in the field of cin-ema and exchange experiences and development mechanisms

Dr Bahr hailed strong frater-nal relations binding the King-dom of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, lauding joint co-operation between the two countries in all fields.

“The Memorandum of Un-derstanding which was signed today embodies media co-oper-

ation”, he said. He added that the agreement

will enable the two countries to share cinema laws and regula-tions, encourage exchanged vis-its of cinema experts, officials and technicians.

The deal will also help show-case the successful artistic films of both countries, to encourage

local production and enrich ar-tistic content.

Dr Al Nuaimi expressed thanks and appreciation to the Ministry Information Affairs for its co-operation to consoli-date media co-operation, which would contribute to expanding multi-faceted cooperation to reflect strong historic relations.

Dr Al Nuaimi, Dr Bahr sign the agreement.

Quarter Quarter Nine months Nine months ended ended period ended period ended 30 September 30 September 30 September 30 September 2019 2018 2019 2018 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Unaudited) Operating income 366,115 356,798 1,080,100 1,049,087 Operating costs (356,405) (335,958) (1,038,373) (981,115)

Operating profit for the period 9,710 20,840 41,727 67,935 Expenses Staff costs (17,242) (19,664) (55,913) (62,023)General and administrative expenses (15,465) (13,310) (42,623) (74,040)Selling and advertising expenses (17,140) (15,816) (48,590) (68,744)Finance cost on lease liabilities (10,661) - (31,345) -Depreciation of property, plant and equipment (743) (807) (2,225) (3,124)Amortisation of intangible assets (901) (874) (2,805) (2,555)Directors’ fees (10,500) (6,600) (32,500) (76,250) Total expenses (72,652) (57,071) (216,001) (286,736)

Loss before investment and other income (62,942) (36,231) (174,274) (218,801)

Investment and other loss 2,645 (170,381) (1,141,222) (764,865)

Net loss and other comprehensive loss for the period (60,297) (206,612) (1,315,496) (983,666) Basic and diluted loss per share Fils(1.67) Fils(5.74) Fils(36.54) Fils(27.32)

ASSETS Non-current assets Property, plant and equipment 412,676 512,969 Intangible assets 21,033 23,068 Right-of-use assets 842,176 - Financial assets at fair value through profit or loss 4,291,081 5,730,662 5,566,966 6,266,699 Current assets Inventories 29,373 61,908 Prepayments and other receivables 108,726 122,732 Cash and cash equivalents 367,582 172,372 505,681 357,012 Total assets 6,072,647 6,623,711 EQUITY AND LIABILITIES Capital and reserves Share capital 4,000,000 4,000,000 Statutory reserve 794,927 794,927 Capital reserve 68,245 68,245 Retained earnings 218,534 1,534,030 Treasury shares (400,000) (400,000) Total equity 4,681,706 5,997,202 Non-current liabilities Non-current portion of lease liabilities 590,709 - Employees’ terminal benefits 86,274 85,869 676,983 85,869 Current liabilities Current portion of lease liabilities 244,030 - Trade and other payables 469,928 540,640 713,958 540,640 Total liabilities 1,390,941 626,509 Total equity and liabilities 6,072,647 6,623,711

Share Statutory Capital Retained Treasury capital reserve reserve earnings shares Total

At 31 December 2017 4,000,000 794,927 68,245 2,932,511 (400,000) 7,395,683 Dividends paid for the year 2017 - - - (360,000) - (360,000) Net loss and other comprehensive loss for the period - - - (983,666) - (983,666)

At 30 September 2018 4,000,000 794,927 68,245 1,588,845 (400,000) 6,052,017 At 31 December 2018 4,000,000 794,927 68,245 1,534,030 (400,000) 5,997,202 Net loss and other comprehensive loss for the period - - - (1,315,496) - (1,315,496) At 30 September 2019 4,000,000 794,927 68,245 218,534 (400,000) 4,681,706

Condensed interim statement of financial position as at 30 September 2019 (Expressed in Bahrain Dinars)

Condensed interim statement of cash flows for the quarter and nine months period ended 30 September 2019 (Expressed in Bahrain Dinars) (Unaudited)

Condensed interim statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income for the quarter and nine months period ended 30 September 2019 (Expressed in Bahrain Dinars) (Unaudited)

Condensed interim statement of changes in shareholders’ equity for the quarter and nine months period ended 30 September 2019 (Expressed in Bahrain Dinars) (Unaudited)

The unaudited condensed interim financial information, set out on pages 4 to 16 were approved and authorised for issue by the Board of Directors on 23 October 2019 and signed on its behalf by:

Abdul Latif Khalid Al Aujan Garfield Jones Chairman Vice-Chairman and Managing Director

30 September 2019

31 December2018

Nine months Nine months period ended period ended 30 September 30 September 2019 2018 (Unaudited) (Unaudited)

Operating activities Net loss for the period (1,315,496) (983,666) Adjustments for: Depreciation property, plant and equipment 118,858 112,640 Amortisation of intangible assets 2,805 2,555 Amortization of right-of-use asset 196,125 - Unrealised fair value losses on financial assets at fair value through profit or loss 1,432,348 1,086,878 Dividend income (286,508) (286,320) Interest income (3,005) (578) Finance cost on lease liabilities 31,345 - Changes in operating assets and liabilities: Inventories 32,535 11,230 Prepayments and other receivables (24,180) (32,097) Trade and other payables (70,712) (37,229) Employees’ terminal benefits, net 406 8736 Net cash provided by/(used in) operating activities 114,521 (117,851) Investing activities Purchase of property, plant and equipment (18,565) (20,629) Proceeds from disposal investment 7,233 - Purchase of Intangible assets (770) (2,250) Net movement in capital work-in-progress - (75,827) Additions in investments - (4,011) Dividend received 286,508 286,320 Interest received 3,005 578 Net cash provided by investing activities 277,411 184,181 Financing activities Lease liability paid (196,722) - Dividends paid - (360,000) Net cash provided used in financing activities (196,722) (360,000) Net increase /(decrease) in cash and cash equivalents 195,210 (293,670) Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of the period 172,372 502,235 Cash and cash equivalents, end of the period 367,582 208,565

(Unaudited) (Audited)

05

world

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2019

China plans to replace Hong Kong leader: FT• Beijing is drawing up a plan to replace Lam with an interim chief executive

• Replacement would be installed by March

AFP | Beijing

Beijing is drawing up a plan to remove Hong Kong’s beleaguered Chief Exec-utive Carrie Lam, the Financial Times reported Wednesday, af-ter nearly five months of pro-de-mocracy unrest.

The pro-Beijing leader has faced sustained criticism from protesters in the semi-autono-mous city.

So far, the Chinese central government has given its sup-port to her and the Hong Kong police, calling the demonstrators “rioters” and condemning the violence.

But according to the FT report, which quoted unnamed figures briefed on the deliberations, Beijing is drawing up a plan to replace her with an interim chief executive.

However, sources told the

newspaper that the plan would be dependent on the situation in the city first stabilising so that the central government is not seen as giving in to violence.

Beijing rejected the report as “a political rumour with ulterior motives”.

“The central government firmly supports Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam... to put an end to violence and chaos and restore order as soon as possible,” foreign ministry

spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a press briefing.

Lam’s office said it would not comment on speculation.

Hong Kong has been battered by 20 weeks of protests and with no political solution in sight, clashes have intensified each month.

Earlier this month, Lam -- who has refused to grant any major concessions to protesters -- invoked a colonial-era emer-gency law to ban face masks,

setting off a new wave of pro-tests and vandalism that shut down much of the city’s trans-port network.

One of the protest leaders, Jimmy Sham, was hospitalised after being attacked by unknown assailants wielding hammers last week.

If President Xi Jinping de-cides to go ahead with the plan to remove Lam, the report said her replacement would be in-stalled by March.

Leading candidates being considered to replace her re-portedly include Norman Chan, former head of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and Henry Tang, who has also served as the territory’s financial secretary and chief secretary for admin-istration.

Tang said in a statement that he supported Lam and would not comment on speculation.

Five demandsLam’s ouster may not be

enough to allay the concerns of Hong Kong’s protesters.

“The plan definitely has come too late as Carrie Lam’s net sup-port... dropped to a disastrous level as early as four months ago,” said political analyst Dixon Sing.

“It is impossible to believe that Hong Kong people... would be happy and go back home once Carrie Lam has stepped down.”

A leaked audio recording emerged in September of Lam saying she would quit if she had a choice -- although she later said she had not contemplated standing down. Her resignation is not one of the protesters’ five central demands, who are in-stead calling for measures in-cluding an investigation into po-lice brutality, universal suffrage and the release without charge of arrested protesters.

“I don’t think replacing Carrie Lam could solve the problem completely,” 18-year-old student Joyce Ho said. “If the govern-ment can respond to the five de-mands, I believe Hong Kongers would stop (the protests).”

‘No popular legitimacy’

Lam has faced a series of po-litical difficulties since the city’s legislature returned for a new session last week.

She was unable to give her State of the Union-style poli-cy speech after pro-democracy lawmakers repeatedly interrupt-ed her, forcing her to deliver the address via video.

“I don’t think a change in chief executive will have much impact on the profound political crisis that Hong Kong is facing,” said Ben Bland, director of the South-east Asia Project at the Lowy Institute, a policy think tank.

“The problem is less who leads Hong Kong and more that its leaders have no popular le-gitimacy because they are effec-tively chosen by Beijing.”

Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam has attracted criticism for her handling of months of protests. (Courtesy of Guardian)

Chan Tong-kai, a Hong Kong citizen who was accused of murdering his girlfriend in Taiwan last year, leaves from Pik Uk Prison


Many of them have made commitments that they claim will make their products

more sustainable, but largely protect the

outdated throwaway business model that got us into this mess

in the first place

THE REPORT, RELEASED IN MANILA

For those of us working in science

and technology, it’s the ‘hello world’

moment we’ve been waiting for -- the most meaningful

milestone to date in the quest to make

quantum computing a reality

GOOGLE’S CEO SUNDAR PICHA

Big firm products top worst plastic litter list: report• Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestle were responsible for the most pieces of plastic collected

• China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka dump the most plastic into the oceans

• Others in the top ten polluters include Mondelez International, Unilever, Mars, P&G, Colgate-Palmolive, Philip Morris and Perfetti Van Mille

• Just nine percent of all plastic produced since the 1950s has actually been recycled

AFP | Manila

Tens of thousands of pieces of plastic littering the plan-et come from just a handful of multinational corporations, an environmental pressure group said yesterday.

Coca-Cola, Nestle and Pepsi-Co were named by Break Free from Plastics, a global coalition of individuals and environmen-tal organisations, who warned

the companies largely avoid cleanup responsibility.

The coalition’s volunteers collected nearly half a million pieces of plastic waste during a coordinated “World Clean Up Day” in 51 countries a month ago, of which 43 percent were marked with a clear consumer brand.

For the second year in a row, it said, Coca-Cola came out on top, with 11,732 pieces of plastic col-lected from 37 countries across four continents -- more than the next three top global polluters combined.

“Many of them have made commitments that they claim will make their products more sustainable, but largely protect the outdated throwaway busi-ness model that got us into this mess in the first place,” said the report, released in Manila.

As nations, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka dump the most plastic into the oceans, but “the real drivers of much of this plastic pollution in Asia are actual-ly multinational corporations headquartered in Europe and the United States”, it said.

Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nes-tle were responsible for the most pieces of plastic collected, ac-cording to the report.

Others in the top ten polluters include Mondelez Internation-al, Unilever, Mars, P&G, Col-gate-Palmolive, Philip Morris and Perfetti Van Mille, it added.

Single-serve sachets

While global consumer brands now acknowledge their role in perpetuating the crisis, the re-port said they “have been equally aggressive in promoting false solutions to address the prob-lem”.

Promoting recycling is their way of shifting responsibility to consumers, it said.

Just nine percent of all plastic produced since the 1950s has actually been recycled, the re-port said.

The report deems single-serve multilayered sachets, common in Southeast Asia and aimed at low-income families that cannot afford bigger volumes of con-sumer products, as “the most damaging type of plastic pack-aging”.

Coca-Cola’s promotion of a

single-use bottle using plastic collected from the oceans, as well as PepsiCo’s efforts to pro-mote recycling, “do not get to the heart of the problem and all but guarantee the plastic pollution crisis will grow worse”.

Nestle sells over a billion prod-ucts a day in single-use packag-ing “but has no clear plans for reducing the total amount” it puts into the world, the report alleged.

The firm said it was work-ing towards solutions “to make reports like this a thing of the past”.

“As the world’s largest food and beverage company, we know we have an important role to play in shaping sustainable solu-tions to tackle the issue of plas-tics waste,” a Nestle spokesper-son said in a statement.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo -- like Nestle -- have pledged to make their packaging recyclable, re-usable or compostable by 2025. The beverage giants have also pulled out of a US lobbying or-ganisation that represents the plastics industry.

“Changing the way society makes, uses, and disposes of packaging is a complex chal-lenge and we’re playing our part,” a PepsiCo spokesperson said.

“We want to help build a sys-tem where plastic packaging never becomes waste.”

Coca-Cola did not immedi-ately respond to requests for comment.

The coalition’s volunteers collected nearly half a million pieces of plastic waste during a coordinated ‘World Clean Up Day’

Google claims quantum leap in computing

• A rival team at IBM has already expressed scepticism

AFP | Paris

Scientists claimed Wednesday to have achieved a near-myth-ical state of computing in which a new generation of machine vastly outperforms the world’s fastest super-computer, known as “quantum supremacy”.

A team of experts working on Google’s Sycamore machine said their quantum system had executed a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken a classic computer 10,000 years to complete.

A rival team at IBM has already expressed scepticism about their claim.

But if verified and harnessed, the Google device could make even the world’s most powerful supercomputers -- capable of performing thousands of tril-lions of calculations per second

-- look like an early 2000s flip-phone.

Regular computers, even the

fastest, function in binary fash-ion: they carry out tasks using tiny fragments of data known as bits that are only ever either 1 or 0.

But fragments of data on a quantum computer, known as qubits, can be both 1 and 0 at the same time.

This property, known as su-perposition, means a quantum computer, made up of several qubits, can crunch an enormous number of potential outcomes simultaneously.

The computer harnesses some of the most mind-boggling as-pects of quantum mechanics, including a phenomenon known as “entanglement” -- in which two members of a pair of bits can exist in a single state, even if far apart.

Adding extra qubits therefore leads to an exponential boost in processing power.

In a study published in Nature, the international team designed the Sycamore quantum process-er, made up of 54 qubits inter-connected in a lattice pattern.

They used the machine to perform a task related to ran-dom-number generation, iden-tifying patterns amid seemingly random spools of figures.

The Sycamore, just a few mil-limetres across, solved the task within 200 seconds, a process that on a regular machine would take 10,000 years -- several hun-dreds of millions of times faster, in other words.

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai hailed the result as a sea change in computing.

“For those of us working in science and technology, it’s the ‘hello world’ moment we’ve been waiting for -- the most meaningful milestone to date in the quest to make quantum computing a reality,” he wrote in a blog post.

“This demonstration of quan-tum supremacy over today’s leading classical algorithms on the world’s leading supercom-puters is truly a remarkable achievement,” William Oliver, a computer researcher at the Mas-sachusetts Institute of Technol-ogy, wrote in a comment piece on the discovery.

Not so fast? The quest for quantum su-

premacy is still far from over, however. The authors them-selves acknowledge the need for better hardware and more sophisticated monitoring tech-niques in order to truly harness the power of quantum.

Some immediate applications of quantum computing could

be in encryption software and AI, but its calculations could eventually lead to more efficient solar panels, drug design and even quicker and better financial transactions.

Wednesday’s announcement was not without controversy.

After a leaked draft of the Google lab’s paper appeared on-line last month, chip-maker IBM, which runs its own quantum computing programme, said the boasts of the Sycamore comput-er’s feats were exaggerated.

Instead of 10,000 years for an ordinary supercomputer to match Sycamore’s performance, IBM scientists in a blog post claimed it would be more like two-and-a-half years using the most sophisticated traditional processors.

“Because the original meaning of the term ‘quantum suprema-cy’... was to describe the point where quantum computers can do things that classical comput-ers can’t, this threshold has not been met,” they wrote.

Today’s computers, even super-computers, function in a strictly binary fashion: using tiny fragments of data known as bits that are only ever either 1 or 0


The computer har-nesses some of the

most mind-boggling aspects of quantum

mechanics, including a phenomenon known as

“entanglement” -- in which two members of a pair of bits can exist in a single state, even

if far apart. Adding extra qubits therefore

leads to an exponential boost in processing

power


Many of them have made commitments that they claim will make their products

more sustainable, but largely protect the

outdated throwaway business model that got us into this mess

in the first place

THE REPORT, RELEASED IN MANILA

For those of us working in science

and technology, it’s the ‘hello world’

moment we’ve been waiting for -- the most meaningful

milestone to date in the quest to make

quantum computing a reality

GOOGLE’S CEO SUNDAR PICHA

Big firm products top worst plastic litter list: report• Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestle were responsible for the most pieces of plastic collected

• China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka dump the most plastic into the oceans

• Others in the top ten polluters include Mondelez International, Unilever, Mars, P&G, Colgate-Palmolive, Philip Morris and Perfetti Van Mille

• Just nine percent of all plastic produced since the 1950s has actually been recycled

AFP | Manila

Tens of thousands of pieces of plastic littering the plan-et come from just a handful of multinational corporations, an environmental pressure group said yesterday.

Coca-Cola, Nestle and Pepsi-Co were named by Break Free from Plastics, a global coalition of individuals and environmen-tal organisations, who warned

the companies largely avoid cleanup responsibility.

The coalition’s volunteers collected nearly half a million pieces of plastic waste during a coordinated “World Clean Up Day” in 51 countries a month ago, of which 43 percent were marked with a clear consumer brand.

For the second year in a row, it said, Coca-Cola came out on top, with 11,732 pieces of plastic col-lected from 37 countries across four continents -- more than the next three top global polluters combined.

“Many of them have made commitments that they claim will make their products more sustainable, but largely protect the outdated throwaway busi-ness model that got us into this mess in the first place,” said the report, released in Manila.

As nations, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka dump the most plastic into the oceans, but “the real drivers of much of this plastic pollution in Asia are actual-ly multinational corporations headquartered in Europe and the United States”, it said.

Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nes-tle were responsible for the most pieces of plastic collected, ac-cording to the report.

Others in the top ten polluters include Mondelez Internation-al, Unilever, Mars, P&G, Col-gate-Palmolive, Philip Morris and Perfetti Van Mille, it added.

Single-serve sachets

While global consumer brands now acknowledge their role in perpetuating the crisis, the re-port said they “have been equally aggressive in promoting false solutions to address the prob-lem”.

Promoting recycling is their way of shifting responsibility to consumers, it said.

Just nine percent of all plastic produced since the 1950s has actually been recycled, the re-port said.

The report deems single-serve multilayered sachets, common in Southeast Asia and aimed at low-income families that cannot afford bigger volumes of con-sumer products, as “the most damaging type of plastic pack-aging”.

Coca-Cola’s promotion of a

single-use bottle using plastic collected from the oceans, as well as PepsiCo’s efforts to pro-mote recycling, “do not get to the heart of the problem and all but guarantee the plastic pollution crisis will grow worse”.

Nestle sells over a billion prod-ucts a day in single-use packag-ing “but has no clear plans for reducing the total amount” it puts into the world, the report alleged.

The firm said it was work-ing towards solutions “to make reports like this a thing of the past”.

“As the world’s largest food and beverage company, we know we have an important role to play in shaping sustainable solu-tions to tackle the issue of plas-tics waste,” a Nestle spokesper-son said in a statement.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo -- like Nestle -- have pledged to make their packaging recyclable, re-usable or compostable by 2025. The beverage giants have also pulled out of a US lobbying or-ganisation that represents the plastics industry.

“Changing the way society makes, uses, and disposes of packaging is a complex chal-lenge and we’re playing our part,” a PepsiCo spokesperson said.

“We want to help build a sys-tem where plastic packaging never becomes waste.”

Coca-Cola did not immedi-ately respond to requests for comment.

The coalition’s volunteers collected nearly half a million pieces of plastic waste during a coordinated ‘World Clean Up Day’

Google claims quantum leap in computing

• A rival team at IBM has already expressed scepticism

AFP | Paris

Scientists claimed Wednesday to have achieved a near-myth-ical state of computing in which a new generation of machine vastly outperforms the world’s fastest super-computer, known as “quantum supremacy”.

A team of experts working on Google’s Sycamore machine said their quantum system had executed a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken a classic computer 10,000 years to complete.

A rival team at IBM has already expressed scepticism about their claim.

But if verified and harnessed, the Google device could make even the world’s most powerful supercomputers -- capable of performing thousands of tril-lions of calculations per second

-- look like an early 2000s flip-phone.

Regular computers, even the

fastest, function in binary fash-ion: they carry out tasks using tiny fragments of data known as bits that are only ever either 1 or 0.

But fragments of data on a quantum computer, known as qubits, can be both 1 and 0 at the same time.

This property, known as su-perposition, means a quantum computer, made up of several qubits, can crunch an enormous number of potential outcomes simultaneously.

The computer harnesses some of the most mind-boggling as-pects of quantum mechanics, including a phenomenon known as “entanglement” -- in which two members of a pair of bits can exist in a single state, even if far apart.

Adding extra qubits therefore leads to an exponential boost in processing power.

In a study published in Nature, the international team designed the Sycamore quantum process-er, made up of 54 qubits inter-connected in a lattice pattern.

They used the machine to perform a task related to ran-dom-number generation, iden-tifying patterns amid seemingly random spools of figures.

The Sycamore, just a few mil-limetres across, solved the task within 200 seconds, a process that on a regular machine would take 10,000 years -- several hun-dreds of millions of times faster, in other words.


“For those of us working in science and technology, it’s the ‘hello world’ moment we’ve been waiting for -- the most meaningful milestone to date in the quest to make quantum computing a reality,” he wrote in a blog post.

“This demonstration of quan-tum supremacy over today’s leading classical algorithms on the world’s leading supercom-puters is truly a remarkable achievement,” William Oliver, a computer researcher at the Mas-sachusetts Institute of Technol-ogy, wrote in a comment piece on the discovery.

Not so fast? The quest for quantum su-

premacy is still far from over, however. The authors them-selves acknowledge the need for better hardware and more sophisticated monitoring tech-niques in order to truly harness the power of quantum.

Some immediate applications of quantum computing could

be in encryption software and AI, but its calculations could eventually lead to more efficient solar panels, drug design and even quicker and better financial transactions.

Wednesday’s announcement was not without controversy.

After a leaked draft of the Google lab’s paper appeared on-line last month, chip-maker IBM, which runs its own quantum computing programme, said the boasts of the Sycamore comput-er’s feats were exaggerated.

Instead of 10,000 years for an ordinary supercomputer to match Sycamore’s performance, IBM scientists in a blog post claimed it would be more like two-and-a-half years using the most sophisticated traditional processors.

“Because the original meaning of the term ‘quantum suprema-cy’... was to describe the point where quantum computers can do things that classical comput-ers can’t, this threshold has not been met,” they wrote.

Today’s computers, even super-computers, function in a strictly binary fashion: using tiny fragments of data known as bits that are only ever either 1 or 0


The computer har-nesses some of the

most mind-boggling aspects of quantum

mechanics, including a phenomenon known as

“entanglement” -- in which two members of a pair of bits can exist in a single state, even

if far apart. Adding extra qubits therefore

leads to an exponential boost in processing

power


Chinese hitmen jailed over repeatedly outsourced murderBeijing

A string of hitmen who re-peatedly subcontracted a murder to each other -- then failed to go through with the job -- have been jailed in China.

The hapless assassins kept passing on the contract -- each time taking a cut of the cash -- in the hope that someone lower down the chain would actually carry out the killing.

But when the man with the lowest price got his marching orders, he decided instead to fake the murder -- and enlisted the help of the intended victim.

The whole farcical enterprise collapsed when the would-be target simply called the cops.

A court in Nanning heard how the original dispute erupted in 2013, when a businessman sur-named Wei sued real estate de-

veloper Qin Youhui.Fearing a costly and lengthy

legal battle that could dent his bottom line, Qin hired assassin Xi Guangan to “take out” Wei, the court said, paying him two million yuan ($282,000).

Xi, however, didn’t fancy get-ting his hands dirty, and subcon-tracted the work to Mo Tianx-iang for half the price.

Mo, in turn, handed the job to another would-be killer, Yang Kangsheng, for 770,000 yuan.

Yang, spott ing what he thought was an easy way to make a quick buck, hired Yang Guangsheng for 700,000 yuan.

Yang Guangsheng then ex-tended the chain to a fifth hit-man, Ling Xiansi, who agreed to do the job for just 100,000 yuan ($14,000) -- five percent of the

original contract.However, Ling realised the

price wasn’t worth a possible life sentence if he was caught, so he decided to try to fake the murder -- and got in touch with his mark.

Wei -- the man who was by this time supposed to be well and truly dead -- told the court that he met the possible assassin at a cafe and agreed to pose for a photo where he was bound and gagged.

The photoshoot over, Wei trotted off to the police sta-tion, where officers set about unwinding the tangled tale of incompetent killers.

All five -- plus the man who originally ordered the hit -- were jailed last week, for terms rang-ing from two years and seven months to five years.

The hapless assassins kept passing on the contract, each time taking a cut of the cash, in the hope that someone lower down the chain would actually carry out the killing

Boeing 737 MAX flight control system key in Lion Air crashAFP | Jakarta

Mechanical and design problems with a Boeing 737 MAX flight control system were key factors in the crash of a Lion Air jet last year, Indone-sian investigators told victims’ families in a briefing on their findings yesterday.

But some grieving relatives expressed anger that investiga-tors were not planning to blame the US airplane maker or budget carrier for the disaster in their final crash report expected Fri-day.

“We’re not satisfied with the explanation from investigators, but we have no choice but to accept it,” Epi Syamsul Qomar, who lost his son, told report-ers after a closed-door meeting with investigators in Jakarta.

All 189 passengers and crew were killed when the Boeing 737 MAX slammed into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff from Jakarta on October 29 last year.

A few months later, the model was grounded worldwide af-ter an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crashed, killing 157 people aboard.

Preliminary investigations into both accidents implicat-ed the model’s Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), an automated flight-handling mechanism that pilots were unable to control.

In a slide-show presentation, Indonesia’s National Transpor-tation Safety Committee told relatives their report would in-clude problems with the MCAS as a “contributing factor”.

“During the design and cer-tification of the (737 MAX), as-sumptions were made about pilot response to malfunctions which, even though consistent with current industry guide-lines, turned out to be incor-rect,” said the presentation, part of which was provided to AFP.

It added that the system was vulnerable to the sole sensor it relied on for inputs, and that a replaced sensor on the doomed Lion Air plane had been “mis-calibrated” during an earlier repair.

An “absence of guidance” to 737 MAX pilots added to the challenges of dealing with a malfunction, according to the

presentation.‘Constant reminder’“As the report hasn’t been

officially released by the inves-tigative authorities, it is pre-mature for us to comment on its contents,” a Boeing spokes-woman said.

Lion Air, Southeast Asia’s big-gest airline by fleet size, did not reply to requests for comment.

A report released by inter-national regulators said the US Federal Aviation Administra-tion lacked the manpower and expertise to fully evaluate the

jet’s MCAS when it certified the plane.

An initial report into the In-donesian crash had also taken aim at budget carrier Lion Air’s safety culture.

“Why would the investigation not recommend a severe sanc-tion for the airline?” asked An-ton Sahadi, who lost his cousin in the crash.

“This isn’t just about one per-son. They were 189 lives” lost, he added.

However, investigators said they did not have a mandate to assign blame or recommend sanctions.

The sit-down with relatives came after Boeing on Tuesday replaced the chief of its com-mercial plane division, the most significant executive departure since the 737 MAX grounding plunged the company into crisis seven months ago.

Boeing faced new scrutiny following text messages from November 2016 in which a test pilot described the MCAS dur-ing a simulation as “running rampant” and behaving in an “egregious” manner.

The company shared the mes-sages with the Department of Justice in February.

But the FAA learned of their existence only recently and publicly criticised Boeing for withholding them.

Boeing is facing scores of law-suits, and a plaintiffs’ lawyer previously told AFP that it had so far reached settlements with 11 families of victims.

All 189 passengers and crew died when a Lion Air 737 MAX jet crashed shortly after takeoff last year

‘Baby Shark’ song used to soothe toddler becomes rallying cry

Reuters

A popular children’s song became a rallying cry in Lebanon after protesters in Beirut spontaneously sang the hit to calm a toddler caught in the midst of a noisy demon-stration.

When driver Eliane Jabbour was surrounded by a rally in the capital last weekend, she asked protesters if they could stop shouting as her young son, Robin, was asleep in the front passenger seat.

On the spot, Eliane relates, the crowd spontaneously broke out into a rendition of the song “Baby Shark”, com-plete with hand gestures de-picting a shark’s bite, and big smiles.

The video shot by Eliane, which has since gone viral, shows a group of around twen-ty people around her car, sing-ing to the surprised toddler as he clutches a bottle. A bearded man is seen dancing, wading in and out of the crowd with fish-like motions.

The “Baby Shark” song has been popularised by a video uploaded to YouTube by a South Korean children’s edu-cational company called Pink-fong in 2016. It has become one of the most-watched videos on the platform, with over 3.7 billion views.

Protesters in Lebanon are angry about the state of the economy, corruption and public services, but the ‘Baby Shark’ episode brought a mo-ment of relief from the wave of dissent, and a uniting rallying cry.

Videos posted on Twitter on Sunday showed demonstra-tors waving Lebanese national flags, letting off flares and sing-ing the catchy song.

Even Robin, who appeared wide-eyed and unmoved by the all-singing, all-dancing crowd in the video posted by his mother, has become a fan.

“Although he looked con-fused in the video, right now he starts laughing whenev-er he watches it,” she said on Tuesday.

Demonstrators waving Lebanese national flags, letting off flares and singing the catchy song.

Russia lands nuclear bombers in AfricaReuters | Sochi/Moscow

Russia landed two nucle-ar-capable bombers in South Africa on a training mis-sion on Wednesday, a flight apparently timed to coincide with President Vladimir Pu-tin’s opening of a flagship Rus-sia-Africa summit designed to increase Russian influence.

The two Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bombers touched down at Waterkloof air force base in Tshwane on Wednes-day, the South African Nation-al Defence Force said.

Speaking before dozens of African heads of state at a two-

day summit in the southern Russian city of Sochi, Putin called for trade with African countries to double over the next four to five years and said Moscow had written off Afri-can debts to the tune of over $20 billion.

Putin


Hon. Chairman Najeb Yacob Alhamer | Editor-in-Chief Mahmood AI Mahmood | Chairman & Managing Director P Unnikrishnan | Advertisement: Update Media W.L.L | Tel: 38444692, Email: [email protected] | Newsroom: Tel: 38444680, Email: [email protected] & circulation: Tel: 36458394 | Email:[email protected] | Website: www.newsofbahrain.com | Printed and published by Al Ayam Publishing

JUSTIN SALHANI

When the Lebanese people took to the streets of Bei-rut last week to protest against government corruption and austerity measures, bodyguards of one minister confronted them with rifles. What followed was an act of defiance on the part of a protester in what has been dubbed the ”Oc-tober Revolution”. An unarmed woman, surrounded by gunmen, shot out a foot and karate-kicked one of them, catching him by sur-prise as he flailed and his weapon dangled redundant. This dramatic scene was caught on video, memed on social media and morphed into a symbol of the revolt.

There is little doubt that one of the largest mobilisations in Leba-non’s history is an impassioned re-sponse to the country’s long-stand-ing social and economic woes. This is not the first time that people have voted with their feet. It happened in 2005 against the Syrian occupa-tion of their territory and 10 years later, against the government’s failure to find solutions to a waste crisis. Today though, Lebanese citi-zens are out to reclaim their dignity.

However, even as the mass-es have mostly carried out these demonstrations with dignity, the same cannot be said about the political class that has run the country since Lebanon’s civil war came to an end nearly 30 years ago. In fact, even as the 1989 Taef agreement forced elites to work together for the sake of keeping this very diverse country together, they also persevered to pit their people against one another. They have used sectarian scare tactics and clientelism to convince their respective followers that only they

can fix Lebanon’s problems.A chain of events in recent times,

however, has served to expose those exerting the livers of pow-er. First came the government’s austerity measures to curb pub-lic spending, the effects of which became even more severe due to shortages of US dollars and fuel. Then came the worst wildfires the country has seen in decades, which spiralled out of control, partly due to government mismanagement of the resources it originally had at its disposal to quell such disasters. The proverbial last straw was the government’s decision to roll out a series of taxes, including one on

WhatsApp – one of the few free communication services used by the country’s most vulnerable.

While some have derisively called the protests the “WhatsApp Revolution”, the truth is that this uprising has been a long time com-ing. Lebanon has during this pe-riod wrestled with a number of problems. The wealth gap matches those of the world’s most stricken nations, according to the World Inequality Database, with the country’s richest 1 per cent pulling in 25 per cent of national income between 2005 and 2014. This, while the economy has declined during the past five years and unemploy-

ment for people aged 25 and under at 37 per cent.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri can-celled planned taxes and sought a 72-hour window during which to announce a way forward. But his assurances seem a case of too little, too late. Millions of Lebanese peo-ple have suffered during the past three decades, with the fortunate few having been forced to move abroad. Some will never return and neither will their offspring. To many, the question was: what can the government accomplish in 72 hours that it could not for three decades?

Mr Hariri announced his propos-

als before deadline, including re-forms to the cabinet and the dock-ing of salaries paid to ministers and parliamentarians. He promised reforms in the power sector and the return of billions of dollars’ worth of public money, pilfered away, to the government coffers. Protesters, though, are not taking Mr Hariri’s proposals seriously, with memes about them being circulated on WhatsApp.

The protests themselves, of course, are being taken very seri-ously by the people. They have been well organised, despite the absence of any visible leaders on the ground. They have also included a broad spectrum of society, with people from all over the country making various demands and possessing differing ideologies out onto the streets, marching in lockstep. En-tire families are out, including the young and the old.

But despite this remarkable show of strength through unity, it is hard to predict what the final outcome of these protests will be. People could still turn on each other and the political class could still take advantage of the fissures – as they have done so in the past. There is even speculation that the Lebanese Armed Forces could take over.

In the meantime though, there appears to be no let up from the people. Offices remain closed and roads blocked. Protesters contin-ue to be filled with the rarest of commodities available in Lebanon – hope – and it is important for them to stay united and stay defi-ant. It is, after all, the only means they have to achieve the end they have wanted for so long: a more responsible and responsive gov-ernment genuinely devoted to the betterment of the country.

MORAL AUTHORITY COMES FROM FOLLOWING UNIVERSAL AND TIMELESS PRINCIPLES LIKE HONESTY, INTEGRITY, TREATING PEOPLE WITH RESPECT.STEPHEN COVE

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Hope unites a nation on protests that cross sectarian lines

Despite this remarkable show of strength through unity, it is hard to predict what the final outcome of these protests will be

Prime Minister Saad Hariri cancelled planned

taxes and sought a 72-hour window during which to

announce a way forward. But his assurances seem a case of too little, too late.

Everyone knows that Chris-topher Columbus dis-covered the Americas by accident. But there is nothing accidental about Discover Amer-ica Week in Bahrain from Octo-ber 24 to November 1. The US Embassy and our partners in the Bahraini and American business community have planned a series of activities aimed at highlighting the prosperity and opportunity generated by our enduring ties.

By any measure, commerce, investment and trade between our countries have never been better. Exchange of goods and services continues to soar. Since the US-Bahrain Free Trade Agree-ment (FTA) came into effect in 2006, two-way trade of goods and services has tripled, from $782 million in 2005 to over $3 billion in 2018. This has benefitted both of our economies: over that time period, Bahrain’s exports to the United States more than doubled, reaching $991 million in 2018. Under the FTA, Bahrain exports a variety of products to the United States, including textiles, alumi-num, glass and plastics.

Locally, the number of Amer-ican companies choosing to do business in Bahrain continues to

increase, with over 200 U.S. firms at present doing business on the island. The new, unconventional offshore find announced in April 2018, as well as other deep gas reserves recently uncovered on-shore, have the potential to fur-ther deepen the US-Bahrain eco-nomic relationship.

Nor is it only about the energy industry. Information technolo-gy and data processing are new sources of wealth in the global economy, and I am excited to see an increasing number of US com-panies partnering with Bahrain to grow this important sector. Un-dergirding our growing ties in this sector are our abiding educational ties cultivated through partner-ships and exchanges between Bahraini and American educa-

tional institutions. One standout is the new Amazon Web Service’s Bachelor’s degree program in cloud computing, which is to be offered in partnership with the

University of Bahrain.One of the important factors

behind this impressive growth has been the excellent cooperation we have enjoyed with our Bahraini partners. A great example was the official trip to Washington, DC, by His Royal Highness Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, where he met with President Trump and signed an agreement with Vice President Pence to ac-quire advanced equipment to sup-port the security of Bahrain.

Everything begins with the exchange of ideas. So we will kick off Discover America Week with a luncheon, hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce that features American business woman Ingrid Vanderveidt, Founder and CEO of “Empower-

ing a Billion Women by 2020.” Ms. Vanderveidt will speak on “Making the Impossible, Possible: Technology as the Great Equalizer and Enabler to Global Business Success”.

I encourage you to please take a moment to find out what we are doing on the U.S. Embassy web-site at https://bh.usembassy.gov and follow our Discover America Week activities on Twitter (@USEmbassyManama), Instagram (@usembassybahrain), and Face-book (U.S. Embassy Manama). I hope you will join me in celebrat-ing Discover America Week and look forward to welcoming you all to our exciting events!

(Justin Siberell is the US Ambassador to Bahrain.)

US Embassy launching Discover America Week Locally, the number of American companies

choosing to do business in Bahrain continues to increase, with over 200

U.S. firms at present doing business on the island. JUSTIN SIBERELL



JUSTIN SALHANI

When the Lebanese people took to the streets of Bei-rut last week to protest against government corruption and austerity measures, bodyguards of one minister confronted them with rifles. What followed was an act of defiance on the part of a protester in what has been dubbed the ”Oc-tober Revolution”. An unarmed woman, surrounded by gunmen, shot out a foot and karate-kicked one of them, catching him by sur-prise as he flailed and his weapon dangled redundant. This dramatic scene was caught on video, memed on social media and morphed into a symbol of the revolt.

There is little doubt that one of the largest mobilisations in Leba-non’s history is an impassioned re-sponse to the country’s long-stand-ing social and economic woes. This is not the first time that people have voted with their feet. It happened in 2005 against the Syrian occupa-tion of their territory and 10 years later, against the government’s failure to find solutions to a waste crisis. Today though, Lebanese citi-zens are out to reclaim their dignity.

However, even as the mass-es have mostly carried out these demonstrations with dignity, the same cannot be said about the political class that has run the country since Lebanon’s civil war came to an end nearly 30 years ago. In fact, even as the 1989 Taef agreement forced elites to work together for the sake of keeping this very diverse country together, they also persevered to pit their people against one another. They have used sectarian scare tactics and clientelism to convince their respective followers that only they

can fix Lebanon’s problems.A chain of events in recent times,

however, has served to expose those exerting the livers of pow-er. First came the government’s austerity measures to curb pub-lic spending, the effects of which became even more severe due to shortages of US dollars and fuel. Then came the worst wildfires the country has seen in decades, which spiralled out of control, partly due to government mismanagement of the resources it originally had at its disposal to quell such disasters. The proverbial last straw was the government’s decision to roll out a series of taxes, including one on

WhatsApp – one of the few free communication services used by the country’s most vulnerable.

While some have derisively called the protests the “WhatsApp Revolution”, the truth is that this uprising has been a long time com-ing. Lebanon has during this pe-riod wrestled with a number of problems. The wealth gap matches those of the world’s most stricken nations, according to the World Inequality Database, with the country’s richest 1 per cent pulling in 25 per cent of national income between 2005 and 2014. This, while the economy has declined during the past five years and unemploy-

ment for people aged 25 and under at 37 per cent.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri can-celled planned taxes and sought a 72-hour window during which to announce a way forward. But his assurances seem a case of too little, too late. Millions of Lebanese peo-ple have suffered during the past three decades, with the fortunate few having been forced to move abroad. Some will never return and neither will their offspring. To many, the question was: what can the government accomplish in 72 hours that it could not for three decades?

Mr Hariri announced his propos-





MORAL AUTHORITY COMES FROM FOLLOWING UNIVERSAL AND TIMELESS PRINCIPLES LIKE HONESTY, INTEGRITY, TREATING PEOPLE WITH RESPECT.STEPHEN COVE

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Hope unites a nation on protests that cross sectarian lines

Despite this remarkable show of strength through unity, it is hard to predict what the final outcome of these protests will be

Prime Minister Saad Hariri cancelled planned

taxes and sought a 72-hour window during which to

announce a way forward. But his assurances seem a case of too little, too late.

Everyone knows that Chris-topher Columbus dis-covered the Americas by accident. But there is nothing accidental about Discover Amer-ica Week in Bahrain from Octo-ber 24 to November 1. The US Embassy and our partners in the Bahraini and American business community have planned a series of activities aimed at highlighting the prosperity and opportunity generated by our enduring ties.

By any measure, commerce, investment and trade between our countries have never been better. Exchange of goods and services continues to soar. Since the US-Bahrain Free Trade Agree-ment (FTA) came into effect in 2006, two-way trade of goods and services has tripled, from $782 million in 2005 to over $3 billion in 2018. This has benefitted both of our economies: over that time period, Bahrain’s exports to the United States more than doubled, reaching $991 million in 2018. Under the FTA, Bahrain exports a variety of products to the United States, including textiles, alumi-num, glass and plastics.

Locally, the number of Amer-ican companies choosing to do business in Bahrain continues to

increase, with over 200 U.S. firms at present doing business on the island. The new, unconventional offshore find announced in April 2018, as well as other deep gas reserves recently uncovered on-shore, have the potential to fur-ther deepen the US-Bahrain eco-nomic relationship.

Nor is it only about the energy industry. Information technolo-gy and data processing are new sources of wealth in the global economy, and I am excited to see an increasing number of US com-panies partnering with Bahrain to grow this important sector. Un-dergirding our growing ties in this sector are our abiding educational ties cultivated through partner-ships and exchanges between Bahraini and American educa-

tional institutions. One standout is the new Amazon Web Service’s Bachelor’s degree program in cloud computing, which is to be offered in partnership with the

University of Bahrain.One of the important factors

behind this impressive growth has been the excellent cooperation we have enjoyed with our Bahraini partners. A great example was the official trip to Washington, DC, by His Royal Highness Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, where he met with President Trump and signed an agreement with Vice President Pence to ac-quire advanced equipment to sup-port the security of Bahrain.

Everything begins with the exchange of ideas. So we will kick off Discover America Week with a luncheon, hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce that features American business woman Ingrid Vanderveidt, Founder and CEO of “Empower-

ing a Billion Women by 2020.” Ms. Vanderveidt will speak on “Making the Impossible, Possible: Technology as the Great Equalizer and Enabler to Global Business Success”.

I encourage you to please take a moment to find out what we are doing on the U.S. Embassy web-site at https://bh.usembassy.gov and follow our Discover America Week activities on Twitter (@USEmbassyManama), Instagram (@usembassybahrain), and Face-book (U.S. Embassy Manama). I hope you will join me in celebrat-ing Discover America Week and look forward to welcoming you all to our exciting events!

(Justin Siberell is the US Ambassador to Bahrain.)

US Embassy launching Discover America Week Locally, the number of American companies

choosing to do business in Bahrain continues to increase, with over 200

U.S. firms at present doing business on the island. JUSTIN SIBERELL


TOP

4TWEETS

04

02

03

01

Big success on the Turkey/Syria Bor-der. Safe Zone created! Ceasefire has held and combat missions have ended. Kurds are safe and have worked very nicely with us. Captured ISIS prisoners secured. I will be making a statement at 11:00 A.M. from the White House. Thank you!

@realDonaldTrump

I am very happy to learn of Namo Govt deciding today to merge BSNL and MTNL and streamline the operations to solve pay-ment issues. I hope this kind of new approach will be now extended to Air India. Privatisation in the present context of fi-nancial slump is counter productive

@Swamy39

Today the @nytimes chose to eliminate my role, stating that there is no need for a dedicated focus on newsroom and jour-nalistic security. I strongly believe in what I do (and what we did), and to say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. (1/3)

@runasand

Impeachment is not “lynching,” it is part of our Constitution. Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It’s despicable.

@JoeBiden

Disclaimer: (Views expressed by columnists are personal and need not necessarily reflect our

editorial stances)





1861The first transcontinental telegraph line across the United States is completed.

1871An estimated 17 to 20 Chinese immigrants are lynched in Los Angeles, California.

1889Henry Parkes delivers the Tenterfield Oration, effectively starting the federation process in Australia.

1901Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

TODAY DAY IN

HISTORY

Justin Trudeau 2.0 is a political trapeze artist

In his second term, the prime minister will have to work with other parties whose priorities are different. It won’t be easy

Justin Trudeau will return to Ottawa as leader of a minority government after a gruelling campaign marred by scandals.

KAREEM SHAHEEN

In the end, Justin Trudeau survived.Canada’s prime minister and leader of its Liberal Party, who was once idolised as one of the last defenders of the global liberal order against a rising tide of nationalism and xenopho-bia around the world, emerged chastened but victorious from the country’s federal elections.

He will return to Ottawa as leader of a minority govern-ment after a gruelling campaign marred by scandals that have forever tarnished his brand and exposed deep divisions among the electorate but nevertheless delivered a resounding defeat to the country’s fledgling far-right movement.

It hasn’t been an easy year for Mr Trudeau. He was implicated in efforts to unduly pressure his attorney-general an

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