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By Javad HeiranniaINTERVIEW
By Ali KushkiTehran Times journalist
PERSPECTIVE
ECONOMYd e s k
S P O R T Sd e s k
A R Td e s k
TEHRAN TIMESIran’s Leading International Daily
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42 10 12Tehran wants all oil payments to be in euro: Zanganeh
Zarif to attend SCO summit
India’s COM-DEALL to help launch autism rehabilitation center in Iran
Marene van Holk to stage play on migration to Europe in Tehran
W W W . T E H R A N T I M E S . C O M I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
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L Y Former Eni’s CEO sees Iran’s oil output at 5m bpd in 3 years
4
12 Pages Price 10,000 Rials 38th year No.12579 Sunday JUNE 19, 2016 Khordad 30, 1395 Ramadan 13, 1437
More cooperation between Tehran and Moscow
in the offing: Velayati
TEHRAN — For many, bilateral relations between Tehran and Moscow have been more like “take the rough with the smooth.”
Over the past decades, there have been challenges in between, including Russia’s delayed operationalization of Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, their performance during Iran’s nuclear row with the West, as well as the S-300 mis-sile system contract.
Whatever the nature, at no times the diplomatic cord has broken off and perhaps, for this reason the two have deemed it strategic. Ever since the Syrian conflict broke off in 2011, Tehran and Moscow have seen closer-than-ever relations, both unanimously backing the Syrian govern-ment and President Bashar al-Assad.
In what follows, Ali Akbar Velayati, top aid to the Su-preme Leader, has shared his thoughts with the Tehran Times on defensive cooperation between Iran and Russia as well as the stance of the two on the future of Syria.
Velayati believes that there is no difference between the two states in terms of the future of President al-Assad, saying regional collaboration between Tehran and Moscow has just started.
On defensive issues be-tween Iran and Russia, the Iranian official sees no serious obstacles on the way as Moscow has relatively man-aged to fulfill its commitments.
Yuram Abdullah Weiler, a political com-mentator, says “From the beginning of its history, the United States of America has been viewed as a warlike and ag-gressive nation not only by other colo-nial powers but also the nations within the western hemisphere struggling for their own independence.”
He also adds that “The abridge-ment of human rights in the quest of national security is as American as ap-ple pie.”
Following is the full text of the inter-view:
The U.S. claims to be one of the countries respecting human rights. What do you think?
A: From the beginning of its histo-ry, the United States of America has been viewed as a warlike and aggres-sive nation not only by other colonial powers but also by the nations within
the western hemisphere struggling for their own independence. Pursuing an expansionist ideology based on liber-alism and Protestantism derived from the European Enlightenment, the U.S. has used a combination of diploma-cy, duplicity, and deception to achieve its geopolitical goals, which are based on notions of the ultimate superiority of its people, political economy, and culture.
By 1793, the fledgling United States of America was already waging a terror campaign against the aboriginal peo-ples of the North American continent for the purpose of ensuring a supply of land for the insatiable appetites of the white settlers. To that end, the early leaders of the country gave the native inhabitants a cultural ultimatum: either abandon your culture and adopt the political economy of the Euro-American colonizers with its concept of property rights and emphasis on commerce, or be exterminated. 9
Abridgement of human rights in quest of national security is American apple pie: Analyst
The Big Bang Theory and Iran’s banking row
Enough is enough! That’s what Iran and six global powers reached at after being at a dec-
ade-long standstill over Tehran’s nucle-ar agenda, thrashing out a deal which exchanged limits on the country’s nu-clear program for sanctions reliefs.
While expecting to reap the har-vest, Tehran seems to have grown more unsatisfactory, citing that remov-al of sanctions has been more “word on paper” than economic growth.
Particularly, Tehran has complained that international banks are reluctant to resume or establish correspondent banking relationships with it, linking it to fearing foul of fines by the U.S. over deals with Iranian partners.
Iranian Foreign Minister Moham-mad Javad Zarif, for example, was quoted as having said there is a “psy-chological barrier” in trade with Teh-ran, urging Washington to reassure in-ternational bank that they can engage in business with Iran.
In reply to Tehran’s banking itches, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, after a meeting with his Iranian counterpart in Oslo said, “We have lifted the sanc-tions we said we would lift and we have completely kept faith with both the black-and-white print as well as the spir-it of this effort. In fact, I have personally gone beyond the absolute requirements of the lifting of sanctions to personally engage with banks and businesses and others who have a natural reluctance after several years of sanctions to move without fully understanding what they are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do.” 2
Iran’s Paralympics delegation departure date announced
Iran’s delegation to the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games will depart Tehran on August 31.
Iran is expected to send a team of approximately 90 ath-letes, participating in 12 sports.
The Iranian athletes are going to repeat their previous re-sults in the upcoming Paralympics.
The Persian Paralympians wrapped up the London 2012 Paralympic Games with 24 medals, standing in the 11th place of the tournament. The Paralympic Games will run from Sept. 7-18 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Annual FDI in Iran expected to
hit $8 billionTEHRAN — Iran expects to attract
$8 billion of foreign direct investment in the current Iranian calendar year, which ends on March 20, 2017, said a member of Iran International Chamber of Commerce.
Attracting foreign investment re-quires disputes, which are still in place with the world even after the lifting of sanctions, to be resolved, howev-er, some $2.5 billion worth of foreign investment permits were issued just in the third calendar month of Khordad (May 21-June 20), Mehr news agency quoted Hossein Salimi as saying on Saturday.
That was while annual foreign di-rect investment has recently been to the tune of $2 billion, he noted.
“Iran has been inundated with a rush of foreign investors as of the removal of sanctions, who eagerly wait to enter the lucrative Iranian market,” he said, “regarding the long queue of overseas investors applying for investment in Iran, the volume of attracted foreign investments is ex-pected to hit eight billion dollars by the end of the current year.”
As he said, the country also ex-pects to attract foreign investment through indirect financing meth-ods, such as buy-back and build–operate–transfer (BOT) as well, which will add to the volume of for-eign investments.
In their recent speeches, President Hassan Rouhani and his administra-tion’s spokesman Mohammad-Baqer Nobakht have reportedly put the vol-ume of attracted FDI, at more than $3.41 billion in the four-month period after the implementation of nucle-ar agreement with world powers in mid-January.
Spain was the largest European im-porter of Iranian crude in April, as car-goes ramped up following the ending of EU and US nuclear sanctions on Tehran.
Spain landed 3.06mn bl (101,500 b/d) of Iranian crude in April, accord-ing to customs data, up from a single 986,000 bl (31,800 b/d) cargo in March, as Iran competed for market share in the Mediterranean region.
Refiners Cepsa and Repsol have purchased crude from Iran’s state-owned NIOC. The March cargo ar-rived in Algeciras, where Cepsa has its 240,000 b/d San Roque refinery. Port authority data for April shows no Irani-an crude landing at either Cartagena, where Repsol has a 220,000 b/d refin-ery, Tarragona, where it has a 180,000 b/d refinery, or at Castellon where BP
has a 110,000 b/d plant, suggesting San Roque may have landed more volumes.
France was the second biggest European importer of Iranian crude in April, landing 2.2mn bl (74,500 b/d) on board the very large crude carrier (VLCC) Atlantas, which had been chartered by Total and load-ed at Iran’s Kharg Island terminal in March. The Atlantas had been scheduled to dock at the French port of Le Havre on 24 March, but may have been delayed on its route around South Africa, with customs figures showing no French crude imports from Iran in March. Total has signed a crude supply deal with NIOC.
Greece was the third biggest Eu-ropean importer of Iranian crude in
April, landing 1.04mn bl (34,600 b/d), with refiner Hellenic Petroleum re-ceiving the cargo in the middle of the month. Fellow Greek refiner Motor Oil Hellas appears not to have received any crude in April. Romania also land-ed a 508,000 bl (16,800 b/d) shipment of crude from Iran, the second month in a row it has imported a similar sized cargo suggesting some kind of term contract has been opened with NIOC. In March Romania imported 478,000 b/l (15,400 b/d), delivered into the Black Sea port of Constanta, part of a deal struck by Switzerland-based trading firm Litasco. Since April, Iran has been expanding the list of buyers of its crude in Europe and the Mediterra-nean region, and shipments are under-way after deals with Shell and Repsol.
(Source: argusmedia.com)
Iran finds Spain a willing crude buyer
By Negar Assadi and Marjan GolpiraEXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
See page 2
ying regional collaboration tween Tehran and Moscow s just started.On defensive issues be-
een Iran and Russia, thenian official sees noious obstacles on way as Moscow
s relatively man-ed to fulfill itsmmitments. ee page 2
From this we can see that the United States
has no respect for human rights unless it is to its advantage to do so in pursuit of its imperial
geopolitical goals.
IIDCYA dusts off film archiveTEHRAN — The Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults
(IIDCYA) has selected a lineup of 44 short films from its ar-chive, which keeps movies from giants of Iranian cinema, to screen at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.
The selection includes films by Abbas Kiarostami, Nured-din Zarrinkelk, Dariush Mehrjui, Masud Kimiai, Nasser Taqvai and Sohrab Shahid Saless.
The screening program has been arranged as part of the Karnameh Exhibition of Visual Culture of Iranian Children, which is currently underway at the museum.
The program will begin with a screening of Morteza Mo-mayyez’s “A Green Spot” at 5 p.m. on Monday and will run until June 30. “Freedom” by Nasser Taqvai, “The Territory” Arapik Baghdasarian, “Waiting” by Amir Naderi and “Rain-bow” by Nafiseh Riahi will also be shown that same day.
TEHRAN — Rank-ing Iranian officials
have felicitated the Iraqi nation and government on recapturing the strategic city of Fallujah.
On the occasion, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif offered congratulations to the Iraqi people and its government for lib-erating the city from terrorist hands,
hailing it a “manifestation of ... divine victory for those who fight for God.”
Iraqi forces on Friday entered the center of Fallujah, the city held the longest by ISIL, nearly four weeks after the start of the offensive.
Fallujah, nearly 50 kilometers
west of the capital Baghdad, was the first Iraqi city ISIL took control of in early 2014.
Zarif further expressed hope that further conquests against terrorist groups are awaiting the Iraqi nation.
Also, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani on Saturday offered con-gratulations to the Iraqi nation over the victory.
Iranian officials felicitate Iraq on Fallujah recapture
Cont. below
POLITICALd e s k
In a message to his Iraqi coun-terpart Salim al-Jabouri, Larijani de-scribed the recapture of Fallujah as a great achievement, saying the honor
has its roots in the national solidari-ty and unity in the Arab country and trust in God against extremist groups, according to Tasnim. “Fallujah has re-
turned to the homeland. Our troops are in control of the city and have tightened their grip on its center,” Abadi said in a televised address.
Iranian officials felicitate Iraq on Fallujah recapture
AFP
TEHRAN — Irani-an Foreign Minister
Mohamamd Javad Zarif plans to visit Uzbekistan to attend the Shanghai Co-operation Organization.
Summit of the SCO Heads of State is scheduled to be held on June 24 in Tashkent.
Various member states to the or-ganization, especially Russia and China, have supported Iran’s membership.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organiza-tion is a Eurasian political, economic, and military organization which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of Chi-na, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajik-istan, and Uzbekistan.
On July 10, 2015, the SCO decided to admit India and Pakistan as full mem-bers, and they are expected to join by 2016.
Afghanistan, Belarus, India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan have currently observer status in the organization.
Iran applied for full membership on 24 March 2008.
Pakistan welcomes Iran’s membership to SCO: official
Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokes-man Mohammed Nafees Zakaria said on Saturday Pakistan welcomes Iran’s permanent membership in the Shang-hai Cooperation Organization.
Iran’s membership to the organi-zation, as an important country in the Middle East region, can bear many fruits to both the region and the organ-ization, he highlighted in an interview with IRNA.
Pakistan’s membership is being final-ized, according to the Pakistani official.
Zakaria further noted Iran and Pa-kistan’s membership to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will lead to expansion of ties between the two countries and also to expansion of Iran and Pakistan’s relations with China and Russia.
JUNE 19, 2016JUNE 19, 20162 I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a lN A T I O N
MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS
‘Iran to baffle U.S. if divulging real military might’
TEHRAN — If Iran divulges the hole of its mili-tary capabilities it will baffle the U.S. and the Zionist regime, said Deputy Commander of Iran’s General Staff of Armed Forces Masud Jazayeri.
Iran has made much progress in military technology, and is now for example among the top world countries in missile precision, he told Tasnim on Saturday.
The US, Israel, and some reactionary Arab states have frequently said they would take to arms against Iran, which necessitates full preparedness on the side of Iran, he underlined.
TA
SN
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TEHRAN — MP Ali Motahari has said his father Morteza Motahari believed Islamic revolution is dif-ferent from a revolutionary Islam, speaking in re-cent statements by President Hassan Rouhani.
Maybe Mr. Rouhani by raising that belief of my father was trying to warn some of today’s revolution-aries not to simplify everything in Islam to a mere cru-sade, Motahari wrote on Telegram on Saturday.
‘Islamic revolution different from revolutionary Islam’
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Governmental websites’ hacker arrested by IRGC
TEHRAN — Iran has traced and arrested a hacker who has so far hacked the websites of a number of governmental organizations.
The operation of identifying and arresting the hacker was carried out by the IRGC, Nasim report-ed on Saturday.
Working under the name Mafia Hacking Team, the man had hackerd the websites of the Civil Reg-istration Organization, the Islamic Republic of Iran Post Company, and a number of universities.
The hacker has been referred to the court and is being questioned, the IRGC said in an an-nouncement.
TEHRAN — Chairman of the Expedi-ency Council has urged the Rouhani
administration to curb unbridled liquidity which is eating into the country’s production sector.
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani made the remarks in an interview with Qanoon daily published on Saturday.
“Liquidity is very high in our country, which in turn leads to inflation,” he said, adding liquidity should be channeled into the production sector.
Liquidity poses one of several underlying challeng-es to the country’s production sector, already stutter-ing under wrong policies adopted by the Ahmadine-jad Administration as well as international sanctions against the country.
Rafsanjani is not the first senior official urging the incumbent government to take necessary measures in order to shake economy.
In his recent meeting with ranking decision-mak-ers, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Aya-tollah Khamenei cited stagnation and unemploy-ment as two major problems in the country, adding: “These problems stem more from the policies and planning of the current and previous administrations
than [international] sanctions.” While the government has come in for a lot of flak for
its economic performance, it has managed to reduce in-
flation from a high of 44 percent under the Ahmadinejad administration to a low of almost 10 percent, promising single-rate inflation in two months.
Curbing inflation was one of the major promises by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during his presidential campaign.
There is high hope for better economic performance now that Iran is emerging from crippling sanctions af-ter it thrashed out a deal with the West over its nuclear program.
On the other hand, the country is taking initial steps to implement Resistance Economy, a term used to de-scribe an endogenous economy which prioritizes do-mestic production and minimum import.
While on paper, things look pretty good, it is not clear how Rouhani is going to materialize the goals of its eco-nomic agenda.
A major challenge is globally low oil prices which is seen by many experts as a main drag on the acting gov-ernment.
Also, Iran has temporarily lost its regional markets be-cause of numerous conflicts I the regions, notably Syria and Iraq.
1 But unlike these soothing remarks,
reservations continue to loom large as evidenced by one banking source telling Reuters “The assurances given by Kerry are still vague and that goes for the whole U.S. approach - there is ‘no letter of comfort’ for the banks.” The statement was made after Kerry’s May visit in London with representa-tives from major European banks.
This is where the Big Bang Theory applies. The hope is that one big in-ternational deal will unlock the flood-gates.
“Everyone is waiting for the first big bang - like France’s Total or Roy-al Bank of Scotland to open the way,” said an Iranian businessman.
However, the question arises as to what that big deal can be! One such big bang can be Iran’s decision to purchase about 100 commercial passenger planes from Boeing in what would be the biggest sale of U.S. goods to Iran since the easing of economic sanctions.
Although financing arrangements are not complete, the historic agree-ment is likely to cover deliveries and services over nearly a decade at a cost of more than $17 billion, accord-ing to the Washington Post.
The above news was also con-firmed by Iran’s minister of roads and urban planning, Abbas Akhundi.
The deal, once finalized, is of criti-cal importance in terms of the bank-
ing dilemma international banks are having with Iran.
That which banking channel(s) will be used to transfer the whop-ping amount of trade practically shows the way for banking trans-actions with Iran, allaying foreign banks’ concerns.
The decision might have been tactical taken jointly by Tehran and Washington in a bid proving to the world that the nuclear deal is going through, making inroads into the economic sector.
Only would the deal have the potential to break the banking ice. Otherwise, Iran and 5+1 should once more sit around the same table to fix the deadlock.
1 Below are the questions posed by the daily paper
Is there any disagreement between Iran and Russia over the future of Syria and President Bashar al-Assad? Has Russians reduced their military helps to Syria?
A. Russians have neither cut nor reduced their helps to the Syrian government and remained loyal to their friendly relations with Syria. To my knowl-edge and on the basis of the talks I held with Pres-ident Putin during my recent visit of Moscow, he retreated Russia will be continuing its support for the Syrian government. So, I do strongly believe that there is no disagreement between Tehran and Moscow over the future of the Syrian government. The cooperation between the two countries have just started, and we are at the beginning of some kind of regional cooperation. We are after one common goal that is fighting against terrorism which is against the national interests of Russia and Iran. However, that is not to say that there are no other future joint cooperation between the two countries, as the Shang-hai cooperation is one to take as an example.
Cooperation between Moscow and Tehran in the defense sector has growingly been a challenge with the S-300 missile system as a case in point. There have been reports on Iran’s interest in pur-chasing Sukhoi Su-30 from Russia. What is the guar-antee that the contract, if finalized, won’t be anoth-er S-300 case?
A. From one side, Iran has signed some military pacts with Russia and we think we have been relatively success-ful in fulfilling the agreements.
For example, if you recall, there was huge prop-aganda by the Western media that Russians won’t be delivering the S-300 missile system to Iran. However, one month ago they delivered first par ts of the system and I do think Russians will fulfill the agreements they signed with the Iranian side. And principally speaking, Tehran doesn’t see any ma-jor obstacles in fulfilling defense agreements with Moscow.
Rafsanjani complains of liquidity overdose, says it causes inflation
The Big Bang Theory and Iran’s banking row
More cooperation between Tehran and
Moscow in the offing: Velayati
POLITICALd e s k
POLITICALd e s k
Zarif to attend SCO summit
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Iraq forces eye Mosul after Fallujah breakthrough: ministerIraqi forces hunted down holdout extremists in Fallujah Sat-urday after retaking the city center and trained their sights on Mosul, ISIL’s last remaining major hub in the country.
While not fully under government control yet, Fallujah is the latest in a string of battlefields losses for ISIL (Islamic state in Iraq and the Levant) terrorist group, which has seen its 2-year-old “caliphate” shrink significantly in recent months.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi Friday declared Fallujah retaken after the national flag was raised over the main gov-ernment compound but ISILS fighters still hold most north-ern neighborhoods.
Elite Iraqi forces “are continuing their progress in the lib-eration of neighborhoods in northern Fallujah,” Lieutenant General Abdulwahab al-Saadi, the overall commander of the operation, told AFP.
Forces led by the police of Anbar province, where Fallujah is located, were meanwhile combing reconquered southern neighborhoods for pockets of ISIL fighters and explosive de-vices, he said.
Abadi announced the recapture of the city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, in December but the security forces only established full control over the city in February.
Saadi and other commanders said Iraqi forces faced only limited resistance during the major advance that saw them push into the heart of Fallujah and clinch a breakthrough in the four-week-old operation.
Security sources said ISIL fighters have been slipping out of the city by blending in with civilians fleeing the fighting.
ISIL’s retreat in Fallujah sparked what the Norwegian Ref-ugee Council described as “an unprecedented tidal wave of mass displacement from Fallujah.”
It said late Friday that up to 20,000 people fled the city in just a few hours.
Footage on social media showed hundreds of people swimming across the Euphrates to reach safety.
“It is unknown how many families are still trapped inside Fallujah but we are concerned they are the most vulnerable – pregnant women, elderly people, people with disabilities,” the NRC said.
Aid groups have been warning for days they would be overwhelmed by the flow of displaced and were running low on funding and supplies to respond to the humanitarian cri-sis.
Building on the momentum of the Fallujah operation, Iraq announced Saturday that joint Kurdish-federal forces were starting a new phase in the push on Mosul from the south.
Mosul next “We started at 5 a.m. the second phase of the liberation of
Nineveh,” Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi told AFP.“The target of the operation is to take Qayyarah and
make it a launchpad for Mosul,” Obeidi said.Qayyarah, which has an airfield, lies across the River Tigris
from the main base for pro-government forces in the Kurd-ish-controlled area of Makhmour.
It is some 60 kilometers (35 miles) south of Mosul.Abadi ignored U.S. advice to focus on Mosul last month
when he declared the launch of the Fallujah operation but he vowed Friday that the liberation of the northern city was “very near”.
The embattled premier has promised that ISIL would be defeated nationwide by the end of 2016 but an ongoing of-fensive in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, has achieved only modest gains so far.
Fallujah, where U.S. forces suffered some of their worst losses since the Vietnam War, looms large in modern extrem-ists mythology but Mosul is much larger.
Patrick Martin, Iraq analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, argued that ISIL could survive the loss of Fallujah.
“The ISIL messaging machine will likely find ways to con-tinue attracting recruits and encouraging lone wolf attacks despite the loss of Fallujah,” he said.
The extremist group, which has recorded few military suc-cesses on home turf lately and grabbed more headlines for claiming attacks in the West, now faces major offensives on its Syria de facto capital Raqa and on Mosul.
“Mosul and Raqqa could be very different battles since when they fall the delusions of holding a caliphate completely fall away,” said Patrick Skinner, an analyst with the Soufan Group.
(Source: AFP)
Kerry sides with diplomats on Syria strike U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said an internal memo calling for stronger military action against the Syrian govern-ment is an “important statement” which he would consider when he returns to Washington.
“It’s an important statement and I respect the process, very, very much,” Kerry said Friday in Copenhagen.
An internal document, signed by 51 State Department officials involved with advising on Syria policy, called for targeted strikes against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh, even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield,” the cable reads.
Their urgent call for military action closely resembles the arguments Kerry has been making in Situation Room de-bates on how to force President Assad to accept a transition of power, administration officials said, according to the New York Times.
Kerry has warned President Barack Obama that unless Washington is willing to put more pressure on Assad, he will simply wait out the end of Obama’s second term in office.
“For quite some time, Secretary Kerry has had real reser-vations about the president’s approach to Syria,” Frederic C. Hof, a former special adviser to the White House on Syria, told the Times.
“His mellow reaction might indicate sympathy,” he added.(Source: al Alam)
JUNE 19, 2016JUNE 19, 2016 INTERNATIONALh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l 3I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
Morsi sentenced to life on espionage charges
Sharply criticizing NATO war games in Eastern Europe, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Bild am Sonntag newspaper that inflaming the standoff with Russia would endanger European security and in-crease risk of reviving an “old confrontation.”
The ongoing large-scale Anakonda-16 NATO mili-tary maneuvers in Poland, simulating the repulsion of “Russian aggression” against the country, are counter-productive, Deutsche Welle cited German Foreign Min-ister Frank-Walter Steinmeier as telling Bild am Sonntag newspaper, in an interview to be published Sunday.
“Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistak-en,” Steinmeier said ahead of the upcoming NATO sum-mit in Warsaw beginning July 8. “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation,” he emphasized.
Rather than inflaming the situation further “through saber-rattling and warmongering,” there ought to be more space for dialogue and cooperation with Moscow, Steinmeier said.
It would be “fatal to now narrow the focus to the military, and seek a remedy solely through a policy of deterrence,” German FM said, calling to give way to di-plomacy instead of military posturing.
Calling for dialogue and a diplomatic approach, Steinmeier also mentioned the necessity of maintaining military preparedness of NATO.
The alliance should also consider the possibility to “renew discussions about the benefits of disarmament and arms control for security in Europe,” he said.
The Anaconda drills have become NATO’s largest ex-
ercise in Europe since the Cold War, bringing to Poland over 31,000 troops from 24 NATO member states and “partner nations,” including the US, the UK, Germany, Canada, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and others.
Moscow has once again pointed out that augmen-tation of NATO military presence in Eastern Europe and Baltics is unjustified, stressing that Russia has no plans whatsoever to interfere with any country in the region.
“I am convinced that every serious and honest politi-cian is well aware that Russia will never invade any NATO member. We have no such plans,” Russian Foreign Min-ister Sergey Lavrov stated.
The NATO summit in Warsaw is set to put “Russian threat” issue high on the agenda, as the gathering will be making the final decision on stationing additional NATO troops in Eastern Europe.
More NATO troops deployed to Poland will be send-ing “a clear signal that an attack on Poland will be con-sidered an attack on the whole Alliance,” the bloc’s Sec-retary General told reporters following his meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda in early June.
The statements made by NATO leadership put Rus-sian diplomats in a position where they have to deny the obvious.
“During the NATO secretary general’s recent visit to Poland, officials in this country [Poland] made state-ments suggesting that from now on Russia would know that any attack on Poland would mean an attack on NATO as a whole. This is completely absurd because they are discussing a non-existent problem. There are no plans for any attacks on Poland,” Russian envoy to NATO Aleksandr Grushko said in an interview with TV
channel Russia-24.Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Econom-
ic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday, President Vladimir Putin said that NATO has “an absolutely slapdash attitude to our position on anything,” adding that it was the US that had unilaterally quit the missile defense treaty, which was in-itially signed to “provide strategic balance in the world.”
NATO “needs a foreign enemy, otherwise what would be the reason for the existence of such an organization,” said the Russian leader. The conflict in Ukraine, caused by a bloody coup supported by the US and its European NATO allies, was forced on that country “to substanti-ate the very existence of the North Atlantic alliance,” the Russian president concluded.
Putin assured his audience that he does not want to proceed to a new Cold War, as “no one wants it.”“How-ever dramatic the logic of the development of interna-tional relations might seem on the outside, it’s not the logic of global confrontation,” he explained.
(Source: RT)
Belgian police arrested 12 suspects in a major anti-terror operation overnight amid security alerts in Belgium and France around the Euro 2016 soccer tournament and just three months after extremist bombers wrought carnage in Brussels.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel chaired a meeting of the government’s security council - which includes the min-isters of defense, foreign affairs, home affairs and justice - on Saturday after the raids and said soccer-related events would go on as planned with extra secu-rity measures.
“We want to continue living normally,” Michel told a news conference. “The sit-uation is under control.”
“We are extremely vigilant, we are monitoring the situation hour by hour and we will continue with determination the fight against extremism, radicaliza-tion and terrorism,” he said.
Earlier on Saturday the Belgian fed-eral prosecutor’s office said 40 people had been taken in for questioning and 12 among them were arrested “in con-nection with a criminal investigation con-cerning terrorism.”
“The investigating judge will decide on their possible detention later today. The investigatory results necessitated an immediate intervention. The investiga-
tion continues,” it said in a statement.No weapons or explosives had been
found during the overnight searches, which also involved 152 garage lockups.
Soccer matches targeted?Flemish public broadcaster VTM said
the people arrested overnight were sus-pected of planning an attack in Brussels this weekend during one of Belgium’s soccer matches.
Areas where fans watch matches in Brussels were potential targets, as well as other crowded areas such as shopping centers and stations, Belgian media re-ported.
The Belgian crisis center in charge of coordinating security responses decided
not to raise the security level to the max-imum that would indicate an imminent threat of attack, Michel said.
Public broadcaster RTBF said Bel-gium’s crisis center on Friday had placed several government ministers, including Michel, under heightened protection.
Michel said extra security measures had been taken for some people but did not name them.
With the Euro 2016 soccer tourna-ment underway in neighboring France, Europe is on high security alert. Extremist suicide bombers killed 32 people in Brus-sels in March following attacks in Paris last November in which 130 people died.
Investigators have found links be-
tween the Brussels and Paris attackers, some of whom were based in Belgium.
On Monday a French police couple were stabbed to death outside their home in Paris in an attack claimed by ISIL terrorist group. In a video posted on social networks, the attacker, Larossi Ab-balla, linked it to the soccer tournament, saying: “The Euros will be a graveyard.”
A spokeswoman for Paris public pros-ecutor Francois Molins said two people close to Abballa would meet a judge on Saturday while a third one was released.
Separately, a judiciary source told Reuters on Friday a 22-year-old man suspected of planning attacks on tour-ists had been jailed on terrorism charges after being arrested at the start of the week.
On Wednesday Belgian police re-ceived an anti-terror alert warning that a group of ISIL fighters had recently left Syria en route for Europe planning at-tacks in Belgium and France, security of-ficials said.
Also on Friday police arrested and detained a 30-year-old man named as Youssef E.A, a Belgian national, on sus-picion of taking part in terrorist activities in connection with the Brussels attacks.
The man worked at Brussels airport, said RTBF, citing judiciary sources.
(Source: Reuters)
An Egyptian court has handed down its final ruling in the trial of 11 people, includ-ing deposed president Mohamed Mor-si and Al Jazeera journalists, accused of leaking state secrets to Qatar.
The court on Saturday confirmed a ruling from May 7, when six of the de-fendants were sentenced to death.
After that initial verdict, the Cairo court had to seek the advice of Egypt’s Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam, the highest religious leader in the country, to be able to finalize the verdicts.
Egyptian law requires the mufti to sign off on death sentences. His opinion is not binding but usually respected by courts.
Morsi was sentenced to 15 years in prison along with other defendants.
Those sentenced to death include Ibrahim Helal, former director of news at Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel. He is not in Egypt and was tried in absentia.
Helal was accused of passing state secrets to Qatar in what human rights groups have dismissed as a politicized case and a sham trial.
Alaa Sablan, who was an Al Jazeera employee until last year, as well as Asmaa Alkhatib, a journalist with the pro-Muslim Brotherhood Rassd News Network, were also sentenced to death in absentia.
The others sentenced to death - po-litical activist Ahmed Afifi, flight attendant Mohamed Kilani, and academic Ahmed Ismail - are in state custody.
The verdicts can be appealed in Egypt’s Court of Cassation.
Steven Ellis, the director of advoca-cy and communications at International Press Institute told Al Jazeera that he was “disappointed” with the verdict but not entirely surprised “given the climate to-wards press freedom in Egypt”.
“We are extremely disappointed to hear this verdict and hope that Interpol and foreign governments, in the event that a warrant for extradition is issued, do not honor those warrants because this was a sham case that was political-ly motivated. There was extremely thin if any evidence tying these journalists to
the alleged crimes that happened.”The Committee to Protect Journalists
has listed Egypt among the top jailers of journalists, and one of the most danger-ous places to report from.
Since Al Jazeera began reporting on the anti-government protests that erupt-ed in January 2011, the network has found itself being consistently and deliberately targeted by the Egyptian authorities.
Its offices were forced to close and several of its journalists were briefly de-tained that year.
In early 2013, one of its studios over-
looking Tahrir Square was firebombed as police officers looked on.
Then in July of the same year, just hours after the military removed the country’s first democratically elected president in a coup, soldiers stormed Al Jazeera Arabic’s offices in Cairo during a live broadcast,
forcing the channel to go off air.By the end of 2013, five Al Jazeera staff
were behind bars, imprisoned simply for the sole reason of being journalists.
Although an international campaign managed to secure their freedom, there are more than 70 other journalists still in prison.
Al Jazeera continues to reject any ac-cusations that it has in any way compro-mised its journalistic integrity.
2013 coupMuslim Brotherhood-backed Morsi
was overthrown by the military in July 2013 after mass protests a year after he took office.
Senior leaders in the Muslim Broth-erhood and their followers have been sentenced to death in different cases since military leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew Morsi’s government.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which has since been banned, has dismissed the sentences and other harsh verdicts as politically motivated.
The Egyptian government has repeat-edly said that the country’s courts oper-ate independently.
(Source: Al Jazeera)
German FM blasts NATO military drills in Eastern Europe
Belgian police detain 12 suspected of planning new attacks
Egypt confirms death sentences in espionage case
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F The Indian arm of South Korea's LG Electron-ics Inc has begun selling a TV with a feature that it says repels mosquitoes, which can spread dis-eases such as malaria, Zika and dengue.
The TV's "Mosquito Away Technology" uses ultrasonic waves that are inaudible to humans but cause mosquitoes to fly away, according to the company. It was released in the country on Thursday, LG said.
The same technology, which was certified as effective by an independent laboratory near Chennai, India, has been used by LG in air con-ditioners and washing machines, the company said.
Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg's phi-lanthropy venture has made its first major invest-ment, leading a funding round in a startup that trains and recruits software developers in Africa.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative LLC, created by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, led a $24 million Series B funding in Andela, the startup said on Thursday.
Alphabet Inc's GV, previously known as Google Ventures, was also part of the funding round.
Andela selects the top 1 percent of tech talent from Africa, trains them and places them in engi-neering organizations.
Apple Inc said its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were still available for sale in China after Beijing's intellectual property regulators barred their sales saying the designs had infringed a patent held by a Chinese company.
"We appealed an administrative order from a regional patent tribunal in Beijing last month and as a result the order has been stayed pending re-view by the Beijing IP Court," Apple said in a state-ment on Friday.
The notice, dated May 19, banning sales of cer-tain iPhone models in Beijing was posted on a Chi-nese government website.
Former Eni’s CEO sees Iran's oil output at 5m bpd in 3 years
TEHRAN — Paolo Scaroni, the former
chief executive officer of Italian energy company Eni SpA, told Bloomberg in a TV interview on June 17 that Iran’s oil pro-duction will reach five million barrels per day (bpd) in three years from now.
Scaroni, who is currently the deputy chairman at NM Rothschild & Sons, said, “Certainly they [Iranian oil companies] can do it from hydrocarbon point of view.”
Iran’s production is going up slow-ly but it is going up, he noted, adding, “There is no yet a number of contracts between Western companies and the Ira-nian oil companies, which are needed in order to enhance production of the exist-ing oilfields in Iran.”
“But this will come slowly and it will
come as long as the peace in Iran with the rest of world will continue to be ac-tive,” Scaroni commented.
Iran’s oil output surpassed 3.8 million bpd in the third Iranian calendar month of Khordad (started May 21), the Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh an-nounced on June 14.
Iran, once OPEC’s second-largest pro-ducer after Saudi Arabia, is seeking to clear space for its gradual return to the market now that the sanctions are being lifted against the country.
In the 169th (ordinary) OPEC meet-ing in Vienna on June 2, Zanganeh an-nounced that the Islamic Republic plans to increase oil production to 4.8 million bpd in five years and return its pre-sanc-tions share of 14.5 percent in OPEC.
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LG Electronics sells mosquito-repelling TV in India
Zuckerberg's philanthropy project makes first major investment
Apple says iPhones still available for sale in China
Tehran wants all oil payments to be in euro: Zanganeh
TERHAN — Iran sells its crude oil to all international markets only in euro but no
other currencies, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh an-nounced, IRIB news reported on Friday.
Iran wants to recover tens of billions of dollars it is owed by buyers of its oil in euros and is billing new crude sales in euros, too, looking to re-duce its dependence on the U.S. dollar following sanc-tions relief in January.
In February, a source at state-owned National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) told Reuters that Iran would charge in eu-ros for its recently signed oil contracts with firms includ-ing French oil and gas major Total, Spanish refiner Cepsa
and Litasco, the trading arm of Russia's Lukoil. Iran has also told its trading partners who owe it billions of
dollars that it wants to be paid in euros rather than U.S. dol-lars, said the person, who has direct knowledge of the matter.
The NIOC source said Iran's central bank instituted a policy while the country was under sanctions over its nuclear pro-gram to carry out foreign trade in euros.
Iran shifted to the euro and cancelled trade in dollars be-cause of political reasons.
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TEHRAN — Head of Iran’s Trade Pro-motion Organization (TPO) Valiollah
Afkhamirad, in a meeting with Ecuadorian ambassador to Iran Umberto Vinuesa Rodriguez in Tehran called for the two countries’ private sectors to take necessary ac-tions on the way to expand bilateral commercial ties.
Criticizing the low volume of mutual trade between the two countries at the present time, Afkhamirad high-lighted the pivotal role of both sides’ private sectors in improving the trade volume.
He also thanked the Ecuadorian Parliament for ratifi-cation of trade agreement with Iran and expressed hope that the contract would remarkably increase bilateral trade in future.
The Ecuadorian ambassador, for his part, under-scored the vitality of improvement of mutual trade and said that his country backs endorsement of preferential trade agreements (PTA) with the Islamic Republic, as well as development of banking ties and opening of credit
lines.Earlier in February, Iran and Ecuador discussed ways
for facilitating mutual trade, launching joint ventures and
reopening of Ecuador ’s commercial office in Tehran dur-ing a meeting between Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Trade Diego Aulestia Valencia and Mohsen Jalalpour, the chairman of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA), in Tehran.
During the meeting, Valencia called for revision of customs duty on its country’s goods, exported to Iran, saying that Ecuador looks for its commercial office in Tehran to resume activity.
A major part of Iran’s exports to Ecuador, he said, contains industrial goods and machinery which their trade would be facilitated by expansion of relations be-tween the two countries’ chambers of commerce.
He said Ecuador seeks Iranian investment for its de-velopment projects in different fields such as explora-tion, extraction and refining of minerals as well as con-struction sector.
Furthermore, Valencia called for opening a credit line between the two countries’ banks.
Private sectors in charge of expanding Tehran-Quito trade: TPO chief
The return of Iranian oil to the interna-tional market is hurting Russia’s main crude grade, forcing it to trade at the biggest discount in two years.
The discount of Russia’s Urals grade in the Mediterranean to global bench-mark Dated Brent widened to $2.40 a barrel, according to traders monitoring the Platts window. That’s the lowest since June 2014. Vitol offered the grade again on Friday at smaller discounts. It didn’t find a buyer.
Urals crude, which is similar to Iran’s flagship blend, became the main benefi-ciary when the Persian nation was barred from selling oil in Europe in 2012 because
of its nuclear program. Since those sanc-tions were lifted in January, the Russian grade has suffered, according to four traders familiar with the market.
“Iranian exports have been impres-sive,” giving refiners in Europe a wider choice of supply, Abhishek Deshpande, an analyst at Natixis SA said by e-mail.
Delays unloadingChallenges unloading cargoes at the
Italian port of Trieste - a major hub for refineries in Eastern and central Europe - are also contributing to pricing pressure, traders said. Unloading at a jetty there slowed, with just four vessels each with a capacity of 1 million barrels loading since
the start of April, compared with an aver-age of four vessels a month in the first quarter.
Meanwhile, a series of strikes at French refineries last month reduced crude in-take, according to DNB Markets.
“This development for Urals is natu-ral when Iran ramps up at the same time as there are strikes in several European refineries, hampering physical crude de-mand,” Torbjoern Kjus, chief oil analyst at DNB Markets, said by e-mail.
Three oil refineries in France have yet to restart completely, according to To-tal SA, which operates five plants in the country.
Iran has wasted no time in trying to regain market share, according to the International Energy Agency. Exports of crude last month reached 2.1 million barrels a day, almost pre-sanction levels, the agency said on June 14. Before sanc-tions were tightened four years ago, Iran shipped 2.2 million barrels abroad, it said.
Flow of Iranian crude grades to coun-tries in the European Union was 355,000 barrels a day in May, compared with 330,000 in April, according to tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
“Iran has moved swiftly to reclaim its European customers,” the IEA said.
(Source: Bloomberg)
Russian crude losing out as Iranian oil returns to Europe
TEHRAN — Iran load-ed a gas condensate
cargo of 300,000 barrels from the phase 19 of its South Pars gas field on Saturday for shipment to South Korea, the Shana news agency reported.
South Korea’s media in April quoted informed industry sources as saying that
the country intends to more than dou-ble its imports of crude oil and gas con-densate from Iran. The sources that were not named emphasized that the policy is meant to ramp up energy ties with the Is-lamic Republic.
South Korea’s imports of Iranian crude oil jumped around 130 percent in May
from the same month a year ago, extend-ing gains after international sanctions were lifted in January on Iran’s nuclear program.
Seoul brought in 1.26 million tons of Iranian crude oil last month, or 297,625 barrels per day (bpd), compared with 541,510 tons imported a year ago, cus-toms data showed.
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Iran loads 300,000-barrel gas condensate cargo for S. Korea
Two senior Republican House of Represent-atives lawmakers said on Friday they were concerned that Boeing Co's reported plans to sell aircraft to Iran could threaten U.S. national security and had requested more information from the company.
Iran said on Tuesday it had reached an agreement with Boeing for the supply of jetliners, reopening the country's skies to
new U.S. aircraft for the first time in decades under an international nuclear agreement that eased sanctions.
Boeing has not confirmed an aircraft sale agreement.
The company on Tuesday declined to provide detailed comment in response to Western and Middle East sources saying Iran had reached an understanding with
the company to acquire over 100 passenger jets.
Republican members of the U.S. Con-gress questioned the Boeing deal as soon as the news reports came out.
In their letter to Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg, the lawmakers asked for "clarification" of the current state of ne-gotiations.
Their questions included whether Boe-ing could guarantee that Iran's government could not convert Boeing passenger aircraft to cargo aircraft and whether it would re-possess aircraft if Iran violated the nuclear agreement.
Not every congressional Republican is opposed to a potential U.S. aircraft deal.
(Source: Reuters)
Potential Boeing Iran sale faces opposition in U.S. congress
Armenia-Iran trade relations more active since sanctions removalArmenian First Deputy Minister of Economy Garegin Melkonyan said after the lifting of Western sanctions against Iran, Armenian-Iranian relations have become more active.
Speaking at a news conference on June 16, the official said Armenia will showcase its products and services at an international business forum in Iran, scheduled for 2016 autumn in a large pavilion.
He noted that expansion of trade ties between the two countries was evidenced by a large delegation of Arme-nian representatives who attended the forum in Iran in December 2015.
"In the autumn Iran will be hosting another major busi-ness event, where Armenia will have a separate pavilion with one thousand square meters to showcase its prod-ucts," Melkonyan mentioned.
He added that the lifting of sanctions against Iran has increased the interest in the Islamic Republic not only of the Armenian businessmen, but also of business commu-nities in other countries.
(Source: Arka News Agency)
Brexit fears pound Asian stock marketsAsian markets were hijacked by Brexit polls last week. The safe-harbor yen rose to JPY104 per U.S. dollar, its high-est since September 2014, as the Bank of Japan held its policies in wait-and-see mode. The Nikkei 225 and Hang Seng Index tumbled by 6.6% and 4.3%, respectively.
While analysts question the accuracy of United King-dom opinion polls, the public trend in favor of Brexit is alarming. Investment banks broadly agree that the Brit-ish pound will see large moves this week, either rising to $1.50 if Britain votes to remain in the European Union, or to $1.30 or below if it decides to leave. Should Asia worry?
Asia has the advantage of distance. Exports to Brit-ain account for just 0.7% of the region’s gross domestic product. Former British colony Hong Kong may have the strongest economic ties to the U.K. Its exports of goods and services to Britain are worth about 5% of its GDP, so a 25% decline in U.K. imports could wipe out Hong Kong’s economic growth this year. This partly explains why the Hang Seng tumbled to a three-week low.
Not many Asian companies sell to Britain, however. Across Asia, there are only 28 companies with at least a $500 million market cap and minimum 15% revenue exposure to the U.K., according to Bank of America Mer-rill Lynch.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 could pull back to 14,000, or an-other 10%, in the event of Brexit, warns Citi Research. The yen is the culprit. Goldman Sachs estimates that Brexit would weaken the pound by about 11% on a trade-weighted basis, and strengthen the yen by about 14%. We could see the yen rise to JPY100 per U.S. dollar, ac-cording to Nomura Securities.
Will the U.S. and Japan get into a spat? Japan’s Finance Minister Taro Aso said a five-yen move in two days and eight-to-nine yen move in 10 days can’t be considered “orderly,” a justification for currency intervention. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew disagreed at the Group of Seven meeting in May.
To be sure, some companies could benefit from Brex-it. Tata Motors ’ (TTM) Jaguar Land Rover unit produces luxury cars mostly in the U.K. but sells 80% of its output elsewhere, so a cheaper pound could help sales. But this is not something to trade on right now. It would take a while before the dust settles and the pound returns to its long-term value.
(Source: barrons.com)
Orlando tourism: No mass cancellations now but future unsureExperts say it’s too soon to gauge whether a week of horrific news out of Orlando will hurt tourism there. But travel agents are not seeing widespread cancellations, and many travelers say they’re committed to visiting.
“I had more people worrying last year about, ‘Should I post-pone my trip because of Ebola?’” than are worried about going to Orlando, said Cindy Minor, owner of Small World Big Fun, a travel agency specializing in Disney vacations based in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Orlando has been rocked in the past week by three events: the mass murder of 49 people in a nightclub, the fatal shoot-ing of singer Christina Grimmie after a concert, and a 2-year-old killed by an alligator at a Disney World resort lagoon.
It remains to be seen whether the bad news will shake Or-lando’s status as the top tourist destination in the U.S., with 66 million visitors in 2015.
“Not one person has said, ‘Put the trip off,’ or ‘We were thinking about it but we want to wait,’” Minor said. For many travelers, she added, the choice comes down to this: “Are you going to sit and be scared in your house? Or are you going to live your life and make memories with your family?”
Karen L. Brown of Glasgow, Scotland, was among many who posted hearts on Visit Orlando’s Facebook page. She and her ex-tended family of six pledged to stick with plans for a 2017 Orlando trip. “We love everything Orlando,” she said in an email. “I haven’t even considered cancelling.”
Lori Pennington-Gray, a professor at the University of Florida’s Tourism Crisis Management Initiative, said travelers who’ve already booked trips “may be less inclined to cancel” than those who “are still deciding where to go” later this year.
“Disney is one of those big trips where it’s quite costly, it’s an important family proposition, and it’s not something someone who has saved up all year for may be willing to walk away from,” she said. Travelers who do cancel trips may or may not get re-funds, depending on how they booked. Airlines typically levy steep cancellation fees, but theme park tickets may be refundable, especially if purchased as a package deal and cancelled 30 days ahead of the reservations. (Source: Associated Press)
“It takes a long time to become young,” Pa-blo Picasso once said. He was talking about the kind of art he wanted to create, but he may as well have been speaking of his birthplace, Málaga. The southern Spanish port town is one of the oldest cities in the world, occupied at various points through its 2,800-year history by the Phoenicians, the Romans and the Arabs, all of whom left behind their own distinctive architecture and design, the most spectacular of which is the 11th-century Moorish Alcazaba, made of a series of formidable ramparts of buff-colored stone overlooking the Alboran Sea.
And while those empires may have fallen and the seats of power may now be else-where, Málaga itself is newly relevant — not for nation-builders, but for culture-seekers, who throng its medieval streets visiting its surplus of museums.
Along with, of course, the Museo Picasso Málaga, there’s the striking Center Pompidou Málaga, the Iberian branch of the famous Paris-ian museum of modern art — partly a huge, playful cube of multicolored glass that catches the sun; the year-old outpost of the Russian Museum, housed in a former tobacco factory; a satellite of Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Muse-um; and the CAC Málaga (Centro de Arte Con-temporáneo). In addition, there’s also the MAUS (Málaga Arte Urbano Soho) project in the city’s not-very-originally named Soho district.
Here, a clutch of renowned international artists, such as Kenny Scharf and the Ma-drid-based painter Abraham Lacalle, have been invited by Fernando Francés, the di-rector of the CAC Málaga, to use the city’s walls as their canvas; most of the contribu-tions to date are by local artists.
Add to this a recent restaurant and bar boom, a thriving cafe scene and a forthcom-ing luxury hotel — the Gran Miramar Málaga, opening later this year — and you have a place where everything old is, finally, new again.
This recently opened hotel has an ideal central location, spacious, light-flooded rooms and, best of all, a large rooftop swim-ming pool. Make sure to note the building’s
exterior, which was designed around the ex-cavated remains of the Moorish walls that once surrounded the city.
In order to beat the heat, Málagans start their evenings late and party until dawn ... which explains the appeal of the traditional sugar-rich Spanish breakfast of churros, a lemony muffin called a Magdalena and thick hot chocolate. Have yours at Central, one of the oldest and most popular cafes in the city.
This sleek Michelin-starred restaurant with an outdoor terrace serves chef José Carlos Garcia’s brilliant tasting menus. While ever-changing, they might include dishes like shrimp beignets with kimchi and muscatel grapes, monkfish liver with sweet tomato and miso soup and suckling pig with pineapple.
Not only are the tapas-cum-sushi and sushi-cum-tapas outstanding at this res-taurant, the people-watching is terrific, too. The menu proves how the marriage of the seafood-centric Málagan kitchen and the
equally (though different) seafood-centric Asian kitchen can make delicious mates with dishes like crispy shrimp omelets, Vi-etnamese rolls stuffed with wild mountain goat and tempura sushi rolls filled with as-paragus and mushrooms.
This Málaga institution, housed in an 18th-century mansion near the Museo Pi-casso Málaga, has long been a favorite among the city’s most esteemed residents, including the actor (and Málaga native) An-tonio Banderas and Salvador Dalí. The wine bar-restaurant encompasses a maze of small rooms and hidden patios, with views of the Alcazaba and the neighboring Ro-man ampitheatre.
Sample some of the best craft beers made in Spain at this new (and very popu-lar) beer bar. The spot offers more than 250 different types of brews, and the owners make their own blends for local holidays.
You can find beautifully crafted sombre-
ros, Panama hats and straw beach bonnets at this superb old-school millinery in the Old Town — it’s a veritable time capsule of southern Spanish style and gentility.
A recently opened Arab-style hammam in the center of the city, Hammam Al An-dalus has beautiful tiled walls and marble floors and offers a variety of massages and treatments. The best is the Al Andalus ritual, which includes a bath, exfoliation and a re-laxing massage, followed by mint tea in the resting room, which is dreamily lit by lan-terns and candles.
Founded in 1994, one of the largest bo-tanical gardens in Europe — 56 acres in to-tal — is a lush and shady place for a stroll. The main garden has a dazzling collection of palm trees, including rare and primi-tive species, along with bamboo, birds of paradise and cycads. Bring some ham and cheese for a picnic afterward.
Source: (The New York Times)
HISTORY & HERITAGEh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m JUNE 19, 2016JUNE 19, 2016 5I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
The Center Pompidou Málaga, which opened to great fanfare in 2015 (Photo: Luis Díaz Díaz)
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A guide to the ancient, now thriving, city where Picasso was born
JUNE 19, JUNE 19, 201620166I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
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Welcome to Weimar BritainThere is a whiff of Weimar in British politics
today. The murder, by bullet and blade, of Labour Party MP Jo Cox - less than
a week after the Orlando massacre - says so much about the resentment and craven fears loaded into British society at the moment.
Two separate witness reports state that the killer shouted “Britain First” during the attack, referring to a violent far-right group.
There is also some emerging evidence that the killer had far-right sympathies, which would have placed him in opposition to Cox’s pro-migrant, pro-refugee politics. If this is true, it represents the full arrival of armed and deadly culture wars of the United States in the United Kingdom.
Naturally, Britain First dismisses the witness claims as “hearsay”. But the reaction of many right-wing activists on the internet illustrates what is at stake in the political fallout.
For them, it is self-evident that the killing is a “left-wing false flag”, an attempt to steal from the nationalist right the victory they were due in the upcoming referendum over British mem-
bership of the European Union.Why might that be? What does Britain’s mem-
bership of this undemocratic, neoliberal bloc have to do with the politics of a racist street gang? Only this: The main campaigns for “exit” from the Eu-ropean Union have foregrounded one question before all else - immigration.
Justice Secretary Michael Gove, a leader of the official Vote Leave campaign, claims that a population the size of Scotland is heading to the UK in the next 15 years, putting pressure on public services.
The same campaign chose the build-up to an England v Turkey football game to suggest that British security was at risk from EU mem-bership, as Turkey’s EU accession would result in Turkish criminals coming to the UK.
The pro-exit press has supported this campaign, suggesting that 12 million Turkish migrants could be on their way to the UK. Penny Mordaunt, a Conservative minister, has joined in, adding that Turkish immigrants could put the NHS at risk. This is coming from a government that is effectively privat-izing the health service, while starving it of funds.
The braying leaderNigel Farage, the braying leader of the
hard-right UK Independence Party and a lead-ing figure in the anti-EU group Grassroots Out, recently unveiled a widely derided billboard poster with the words “Breaking Point” super-imposed over an image of a sea of brown faces.
Social media users have pointed out the un-canny resemblance of the image to Third Reich propaganda about gypsies and Jews.
As if to confirm the British far-right’s orienta-tion towards the U.S. culture wars, a third exit campaign, Leave EU, has used Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant speech about the “vicious snake” of migration in a campaign video filled with menacing images of fungible migrant hordes surging in European cities.
The campaign’s imagery also, once again, draws on a visual style of racist hilarity once prevalent on the inter-war anti-Semitic Right.
The purest, chemically concentrated ex-pression of this ascendant politics of resent-ful nationalism can be found among England football fans, whose rioting, nationalist slogans and racist violence were capped by the despic-able baiting and humiliation of Roma children,
throwing bottles and coins at them.These political and cultural tendencies have
been incubating for some time. The psychic fuel for this racist and often violent acting out is an experience of decline, linked to patterns of deindustrialization and underinvestment.
Resentful nationalismResearch suggests that it is not the poorest,
but those who have experienced a downward class trajectory for the past few decades, who are most susceptible to resentful nationalism.
The British right has always been masterful at linking this experience of decline to the pur-ported loss of an ideal nation - the Britain of
fair play, where everyone knew their neighbor - caused by immigration.
And now immigration is also treated as syn-onymous with the loss of control people feel over a political and media class that is increas-ingly oblivious to popular opinion.
And the monster behind it all: the “EUSSR”, a “leftist” bloc with its own rouble. Paranoia and con-spiracy theories are far from new in this debate.
Across Europe, fascism is once more on the rise. Greece was on the precipice of a neo-Nazi surge, and could still return to that state as fresh austerity is implemented.
Hungary has a far-right presidency, while Austria has only just averted the same fate. Marine Le Pen could very well be the next president of France.
Across the Atlantic, a campaign which openly flirts with violence and white-suprem-acists - and which demands “America First!” at every opportunity - is giving Hillary Clinton a run for her ample money.
And here in the UK, a humane, center-left member of parliament has been murdered for the sanctified cause of “Britain First” - and im-migrant last. (Source: Al Jazeera)
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By Richard Seymour
Joe Cox
N E W S I N B R I E F
WORLD ECONOMYh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / e c o n o m y JUNE 19, JUNE 19, 20162016 7I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
In the worse situation, IMF sees growth slowing sharply this year and the economy shrinking 0.8 percent in 2017. The impact
would see the economy 5.6 percent smaller by 2019 compared with a baseline forecast.
The International Monetary Fund weighed in once more with its thoughts on Britain’s referendum, warning the UK could slide into a re-cession if it quits the European Union.
In a 64-page document, the Wash-ington-based fund said that the size of the hit would depend on a multi-tude of factors, though its overall as-sessment is that the UK “would likely be worse off economically in the long run.”
The IMF also warned of a potential credit squeeze if liquidity markets dry up, which could stymie spending and investment. The Bank of England has moved to preempt this with addition-al auctions to make funds available to banks before and after the vote.
The IMF delayed publication of the report by a day after campaigning in the referendum was halted following the fatal shooting of Labour Party lawmaker Jo Cox on Thursday. Speak-ing on Friday, Managing Director Christine Lagarde said her thoughts were with Cox’s family and friends.
‘Adverse’ scenarioIn its report, the IMF presented
forecasts for “limited” and “adverse” Brexit scenarios. In the worse situa-tion, it sees growth slowing sharply this year and the economy shrinking 0.8 percent in 2017. The impact would see the economy 5.6 percent small-er by 2019 compared with a baseline forecast, while unemployment would rise above 6 percent and the deficit would be wider.
IMF officials said that a permanent hit to output would probably mean deeper austerity. Chancellor of the Ex-chequer George Osborne has said an emergency budget would be required within two months of a Brexit to fill a hole in the public finances.
“While recognizing that this choice is for UK voters to make and that their
decisions will reflect both economic and non-economic factors, directors agreed that the net economic effects of leaving the EU would likely be neg-ative and substantial,” the organiza-tion said.
The intervention is not the first from the IMF, which has issued several warnings on the potential impact of Brexit. Lagarde has also defended the organization’s stance, saying that of-ficials are “just doing our job” in pre-senting their analysis.
The BOE and the Treasury have also issued referendum-related fore-
casts, and all have been criticized by the pro-Brexit lobby for scaremonger-ing. “Leave” campaigners have also accused the IMF of a poor track re-cord for failing to predict past events such as the 2008 financial crisis.
Quantifying lossesIn the long run, much of the eco-
nomic impact would depend on what could be negotiated after a vote to leave, the IMF said. There would be direct negative effects from reduced trade access, as the country would be unlikely to quickly establish agree-ments with other countries. Brexit
could also bring losses in productiv-ity, which would be magnified if Brexit were accompanied by restrictions on migration.
Uncertainty during the transition could delay investment and hiring, and some firms may relocate if their business depends on access to the single market, according to the fund. It sees finance and manufacturing as the most vulnerable.
“Exit from the single market would almost certainly reduce market access of UK-based financial firms -- both domestic and foreign -- to the EU, subject them to regulatory uncertain-ty for some time, and force them to re-examine business models,” the IMF said.
There’s also the potential for a vi-cious circle where households hold off buying durable goods and property, resulting in weaker demand which in turn pushes up unemployment and further reduces consumption, the IMF said.
The paper estimated that sterling could plunge as much as 15 percent, which would push up inflation to 4 percent -- double the BOE’s target. IMF officials also discussed more fun-damental economic issues for the U.K., including low productivity growth, the record current-account deficit and high levels of household debt.
The BOE has said it would face a tradeoff between containing inflation and boosting output in the event of a vote to leave. It warned on Thurs-day that the potential impacts of a UK exit from the EU extend beyond Britain, with spillover effects to the global economy. The IMF also high-lighted external risks, and said other EU economies are most vulnerable, especially Ireland, Cyprus, Malta, the Netherlands and Belgium.
(Source: Bloomberg)
IMF revives recession warning for UK economy over Brexit vote
Eurozone releases Greece bailout moneyA fresh tranche of money for debt ridden Greece has been approved by the Eurozone’s bailout fund.
The amount of 7.5bn euros (£5.9bn; $8.4bn) is scheduled to be paid out early next week.
The money is part of a larger deal agreed on in May but depended on a number of reform conditions to be fulfilled by Athens.
Greece owes its creditors more than €300bn - about 180% of its annual economic output (GDP).
The country is in urgent need of the fresh money from Europe to service two debt payments to the Eu-ropean Central Bank next month.
"This is a welcome breath of oxygen for the Greek economy," the EU's top eco-nomic affairs official, Pierre Moscovici, said.
The Luxembourg-based European Stability Mechanism (ESM) said it approved the money to be transferred after Greece's government completed required reforms.
Over the past weeks, the government in Athens pushed through with several reform packages and a plan on long-de-layed privatizations. (Source: BBC)
Rosneft is not afraid of competing with Saudi Arabia on oil prices: CEORosneft is not afraid of competing with Saudi Arabia on oil prices, Chief Executive Officer of the Russian oil major Igor Sechin said on Friday at the St. Petersburg International Eco-nomic Forum (SPIEF).
"We should respond to the market situation, rather than to activity of Saudis. We are not giving up our positions neither in India nor in Indonesia. I think we will work everywhere. Europe is connected with us by sound infrastructure; we can demonstrate efficiency," Sechin said.
Mass media reported earlier Saudi Aramco is cutting pric-es for European consumers but increasing the same for the United States. The price reduction was associated with re-sumed Iran’s oil supplies to Europe. (Source: Tass)
I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
8I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
N E W S I N B R I E F
M E D & S C I h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o mJUNE 19, JUNE 19, 20162016
Giraffes are facing 'silent extinction' Giraffes are facing a ‘silent extinction’ with just 90,000 animals still roaming the African plains, far fewer than the endangered African Elephant, a new documentary warns.
Just 15 years ago there were thought to be around 150,000 giraffes in the wild but since then numbers have slumped by 40 percent because of habitat loss and poaching.
A new BBC documentary, narrated by Sir David Atten-borough, followed a conser-vation team as they relocated a group of 20 animals across the Nile in Uganda where it is hoped they will be safe from oil prospectors.
“These gentle giants have been overlooked,” said Sir David. “It’s well known that African elephants are in trou-ble and there are perhaps just over half a million left.
“But what no one realized is there are far fewer giraffes.
Giraffes have already become extinct in seven countries. They are killed for their meat and their habitats are being destroyed. Time is running out.”
Giraffe expert Dr. Julian Fennessy, Executive director of Giraffe Conservation Foundation, launched the daring rescue mission to relocate a population of Ugandan giraffes after learning just how few animals were left.
“I am absolutely amazed that no one has a clue,” said Dr. Fennessey. “This silent extinction. Some populations less than 400 populations. That is more endangered than any gorilla, or almost any large mammal in the world.
“Everyone thinks they are everywhere. But numbers are plummeting. It would be a really sad world without giraffes.
“Giraffe have gone extinct in seven countries in Africa. It’s not going to happen again. There is no giraffe going to go extinct on my watch.”
(Source: The Telegraph)
Algae offers airlines a cleaner futureAs airlines struggle to find cleaner ways to power jets and with an industry-wide meeting on CO2 emissions just months away, scientists are busy growing algae in vast open tanks at an Airbus site at Ottobrun, near Munich.
The European aerospace group is part-financing the Munich Technical University project to grow algae for biofuel and, al-though commercial production is a long way off, hopes are high.
Thomas Brueck, Munich TU's associate professor of industrial biocatalysis, says that the biofuel from algaculture could cater for 3-5 percent of jet fuel needs by about 2050.
Algae can grow 12 times faster than plants cultivated on soil and produces an oil yield about 30 times that of rapeseed.
However, although aviation biofuel made from feedstocks such as flax or used cooking oil is already available, limited stocks and low oil prices mean only a few airlines, including Lufthansa and KLM, are using it on a trial basis.
To "substitute 100 percent of the kerosene use today, we will not do it with algae alone. We need a combination of different technologies to actually enable that substitution," Brueck said.
Airbus also says the technology, in which it and the Bavarian government are investing more than 10 million euros ($11 mil-lion) between them, is still at an early stage and is not financially viable for airlines just yet.
(Source: Reuters)
New ‘extinct’ meteorite hints at violent cosmic collisionGeologists in Sweden have found what they call the first-ever “extinct” meteorite buried within a 470-million-year old lime-stone slab. The new space rock belongs to a family of meteorites that once bombarded Earth, but no longer plunge to the planet, according to a paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
“No similar meteorite is known on Earth of the 50,000 mete-orites that have been found,” said Birger Schmitz, a geolo-gist from Lund University in Sweden, and lead author of the paper.
Half a billion years ago, two asteroids between Jupiter and Mars are believed to have col-lided, spewing celestial shrap-nel across the Solar System. Countless pieces flew past Earth, but some crash-landed in its ancient oceans. Follow-ing millions of years of sedi-ment buildup and compres-sion, the meteorites fossilized,
much like the trilobites and shellfish that shared the seafloor.Eventually, miners in a Swedish quarry came across the fossil-
ized meteorites among limestone that was destined to be made into floor panels. At first they began throwing the ugly black rocks into the dump, until a geologist finally got a look at one and realized its significance.
Over the past 25 years, Dr. Schmitz and his colleagues collected more than 100 fossilized meteorites from the Swedish quarry. They classified all but one as L-chondrites, a common type of meteorite. These space rocks came from the same parent rock and provided evidence for the first asteroid from the collision.
(Source: The NYT)
Geneticists from KU Leuven, Belgium, have shown that tumor protein TP53 knows ex-actly where to bind to our DNA to prevent cancer. Once bound to this specific DNA sequence, the protein can activate the right genes to repair damaged cells.
All cells in our body have the same DNA, yet they're all very different. One cell may become a brain cell, the other a mus-cle cell. This is because not all genes are active - or 'switched on' - in every cell.
Professor Stein Aerts and his team study the 'switches' that turn genes on and off.
Gaining insight into these mechanisms is very important, because genetic defects and differences may not only be in our genes, but also in the 'switches' that control them.
It's a known fact that genes are activated when a protein binds to a specific sequence on our DNA. But how does this protein find its way in our extraordinarily complex DNA?
The exact DNA sequenceScientists have thus far been assuming
that one protein could never locate the exact
DNA sequence to activate a specific gene all by itself - at least not in human beings.
"We used next-generation sequencing to test the capacity of DNA sequences to act as switches for more than 1500 DNA sequences at the same time," explains Professor Stein Aerts. By way of comparison: in the past, researchers had to test all switches one by one. "We then used supercomputers and ad-vanced computer models to examine the dif-ferences between effective and non-effective switches. That's how we discovered that TP53 is able to locate the exact DNA sequence to which it needs to bind - all by itself."
The "protein TP53 plays a crucial role in the prevention of cancer. When a cell is damaged - because of UV or radioactivity, for instance - TP53 switches on the right genes to repair the cell.
A cell sometimes loses TP53, so that cancer can start developing there. In about 50% of all cancers, there's a problem with the protein TP53. That's why it's so impor-tant to unravel its underlying mechanisms."
(Source: EurekAlert)
Hot Jupiters are giant exoplanets whose size is comparable to that of the biggest planet in the Solar System. Unlike Jupiter whose year lasts around 12 Earth-years, however, these planets orbit very close to their parent stars having an orbital period of just less than 10 days.
The conditions in regions very close to the parent stars are initially unsuitable to support the formation of Jupiter-like planets so these exotic giants are believed to have formed further out and only migrated closer to their par-ent star at a later time.
Because of the nature of these gas giants' development, sci-entists thought that they could not form in dense open cluster of stars. Open clusters often contain hundreds of loosely ar-ranged stars that are packed within a diameter of about 10 light years across. Findings of a new study though defy this idea.
A team of astronomers have found a large concen-tration of hot Jupiters around stars in Messier 67, an
open cluster with 88 stars and is estimated to be about the same age as the sun.
More common starsUsing the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher
(HARPS) spectrograph at the European Southern Observa-tory's (ESO) La Silla Observatory in Chile, along with other tel-escopes and instruments, ESO's Luca Pasquini and colleagues
observed that hot Jupiters were in fact more common around stars in the cluster than in stars outside of clusters.
The astronomers found there are hot Jupiters around about 5 percent of the stars in the cluster that were studied, which is far more than what were observed in comparable studies that looked at stars that are not in clusters, where the rate is about 1 percent.
"No hot Jupiters at all had been detected in open clus-ters until a few years ago," said Pasquini. "In three years the paradigm has shifted from a total absence of such planets - to an excess!" The researchers said that the dense envi-ronment in a cluster like Messier 67 may have likely pushed the giant planets closer. Stars that are packed closer to-gether than average results in more frequent encounters between planets and nearby stars, which may help explain the large number of hot Jupiters in the cluster.
(Source: Tech Times)
Plastic pollution is a colossal environmental problem, with millions of tons of it dumped into the ocean every year. And while many nations around the world have made an effort to step up their recycling game in recent years, there’s clearly more work to be done: When it comes to plastic water bottles in the United States alone, for in-stance, only about one-sixth to one-third of them actually end up being recycled.
A paper out Friday in the journal Science Advances de-scribes a new recycling method aimed to help tackle the issue. The study demonstrates a relatively simple and ef-ficient process that can be used to break down one of the most common types of plastic waste into usable fuel.
“As a chemist, we understand these polymers are ex-tremely inert — they’re very stable — and if you don’t do anything, they can persist in the water or soil for hundreds or even thousands of years without breaking down,” said Zhibin Guan, a chemistry professor at the University of California at Irvine and one of the study’s senior authors. “We thought we should work on something to address this issue.”
Used in many productsThe study focuses on a type of plastic known as poly-
ethylene, a material that’s used in many products, including water bottles to plastic bags. The authors of the new study note that it’s the highest-volume type of plastic in the world — some sources indicate that up to 100 million metric tons
of it are produced each year. Plastics, in general, are typically made from petroleum,
natural gas or sometimes other organic materials in the first place — so it’s possible to turn them back into fuels or other useful hydrocarbons. The problem with polyeth-ylene is that it’s an extremely stable plastic, meaning it doesn’t react easily with other chemicals. This makes it difficult to break down.
Nevertheless, some processes do already exist to make it happen — and some companies are even trying to put them to commercial use. But they often require extreme tempera-tures to work and aren’t always that efficient, Guan said.
(Source: The Washington Post)
One way to tackle our huge plastic pollution problem: Turn it into fuel
Astronomers find unusually large number of hot Jupiters in dense star cluster
Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neu-rodegenerative disorder that affects movement; its most recognizable symp-tom is trembling hands. These tremors can make everyday activities like holding a glass of water or writing incredibly dif-ficult. And while there are some poten-tial treatment methods on the horizon, a new device might soon help Parkinson’s patients lead a more normal life.
The GyroGlove, developed by Lon-don medical student Faii Ong, has the potential to help Parkinson’s patients manage their tremors. Ong first had the idea to create the glove as a medical stu-dent when, while treating a 103-year-old Parkinson’s patient, he found it was dif-ficult for her to eat soup. With nothing to ease her tremors, he built the GyroGlove, which uses the physics of mechanical gy-roscopes to reduce trembling.
Spinning discsAccording to notes Ong provided to
Medical Daily, the gyroscopes “are basi-cally tops, or spinning discs. Like tops that try to stay upright, gyroscopes similarly seek to remain in the same position by conserving angular momentum. Thus, these gyroscopes instantaneously and proportionally resist hand movement.”
When the gyroscopes are activated, Ong said, they make the trembling hand feel like it’s moving through syrup — the tremors are smoothed and damped, giv-ing the hand full control.
The team at GyroGear tested out the glove on a wooden hand attached to a motorized rig that made it shake similarly to the way a Parkinson’s patient’s hand would tremble. Their first tests showed a nearly 90 percent reduction in the trem-ors caused by their rig. Further testing is now being conducted on patients with Parkinson’s and essential tremors — a nervous system disorder that causes rhythmic shaking in the hands.
The glove will help Parkinson’s pa-tients lead more normal lives, according to Dr. Alison H. McGregor, a professor of musculoskeletal biodynamics and direc-tor of educational strategy and quality at the Imperial College London. “Being able to control or manage the tremor associated with Parkinson’s can make a range of daily tasks we all take for grant-ed achievable from writing a letter (and) putting a key in the door to dressing and feeding yourself,” she told Medical Daily in an email.
(Source: Medical Daily)
World Health Organization (WHO) ad-visers have agreed in principle to dilute the yellow fever vaccine in order to stretch out supplies if current outbreaks get worse.
It would be a desperate measure to save lives from the often-deadly virus, carried by mosquitoes and found in many tropical areas.
The "yellow fever vaccine given as one fifth of the regular dose could be used to control an outbreak in case of vaccine shortages" the WHO said in a statement.
More than 3,000 cases of yellow fever have been reported in Angola and 345 people have died.
Suspected casesAnd more than 1,000 suspected cases
are reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with 71 deaths.
A few cases have also been reported in Kenya and China, carried by travelers. In a separate outbreak, 30 people have been infected and seven have died in Uganda.
Brazil, Chad, Colombia, Ethiopia, Ghana and Peru also have yellow fever circulating.
Yellow fever is a relative of dengue, Zika and chikungunya but is far deadlier. It's also the only virus in the family that
has a good vaccine to prevent it. It's paid for by the nonprofit Gavi vaccine alliance.
"Yellow fever outbreaks in Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda are placing unprecedented demands on vaccine supply for emer-gency vaccination campaigns to con-trol the spread of the disease," said Jon Abramson, chair of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization.
"Right now we have enough vac-cines in the global stockpile to cope with the ongoing outbreaks if there are no further extensions. However, given the wide spread of the disease in An-gola and the potential for it to get out of control in the city of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, WHO and partners are seriously considering the use of this dose-sparing strategy to prevent transmission through large-scale vaccination campaigns."
Despite vaccination drives, the virus is still spreading. It cannot be eradicated since it not only infects people, but mon-keys and other animals too, so the mos-quitoes that spread it can be re-infected even if the population's vaccinated.
(Source: NBC News)
WHO agrees to dilute yellow fever vaccine to fight new outbreaks
GyroGlove helps ease hand tremors in patients with Parkinson's disease
Cancer-preventing protein finds its own way in our DNA
The "protein TP53 plays a crucial role in the prevention of cancer. When a cell is damaged -
because of UV or radioactivity, for instance - TP53 switches on the right genes to repair the cell.
ECONOMYd e s k
ECONOMYd e s k
WORLD IN FOCUSh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l 9I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
N E W S
State Department officials shook up Amer-ica’s generally obedient diplomatic estab-lishment this week with an internal memo urging U.S. military action against Syria’s government with the goal of pressing Pres-ident Bashar Assad to accept a cease-fire and gaining the upper hand on him in fu-ture talks on a political transition.
Reasons abound for why an interven-tion is improbable, not least the vague military objective and risks for U.S. ser-vice personnel. Most significant, Presi-dent Barack Obama is opposed.
Even the diplomats who signed the “dissent channel cable” aren’t calling for U.S. forces to push Assad out of power immediately or make him surrender ter-ritory to opposition groups — more typ-ical goals for military campaigns. Instead, they say targeted U.S. attacks could in-crease leverage over the Syrian leader in diplomatic negotiations that have re-peatedly failed so far.
Intervening would plunge Washington into an unpredictable and deadly conflict. The Syrian opposition includes scores of rebel formations jostling among rival eth-nic groups and U.S.-designated terrorist organizations such as the ISIL. Russia’s air force, Iranian troops and paramili-tary units are fighting alongside Assad, crowding the skies and the battlefield.
And American priorities are else-where. Despite calling on Assad to step aside five years ago, Obama is focused on defeating the ISIL in Syria and not re-gime change. His administration wants to preserve Syria’s state and army for a future “transition government” that could restore order and help tackle IS. It wants Russia and Iran to help in that effort.
Here is a look at what frustrated State Department officials called for and why a policy shift is unlikely:
White House resistanceThe now classified cable was transmit-
ted through an official channel for dissent-ing views. Fifty-one mostly mid-level de-
partment officials who work on America’s Syria policy signed on. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal quoted from copies they reported seeing or obtaining.
The document expresses clear frustra-tion with a White House-driven response to a conflict that has killed perhaps a half-million people and contributed to a worldwide refugee crisis.
“The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, af-ter five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable,” The Times quoted it as saying.
The sentiment isn’t new in Foggy Bot-tom. Obama’s last two secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, pushed for intervention, as has a former defense secretary and CIA director. But the com-mander in chief has the last word, and nothing has swayed him thus far.
When Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” in 2013 by using chemical weapons, the U.S. president backed down from his threat of retaliatory strikes. And ongoing chaos in Libya, where the U.S. helped overthrow dictator Moammar Gaddafi in
2011, is only making him more reticent.“None of the options are good,” Oba-
ma said in Saudi Arabia in April. Any “Plan B” without a political settlement risks extending the war for years, he said.
“The president has always been clear that he doesn’t see a military solution to the crisis in Syria, and that remains the case,” White House spokeswoman Jennif-er Friedman added Friday.
Many unknownsApart from defeating ISIL, Obama’s Syr-
ia strategy has three stages: forcing Assad into a cease-fire and “political transition” talks, pressing him to leave power, then uniting his army and moderate forces to join the counterterrorism effort.
After five years of civil war, the chain of events hasn’t yet started. Fighting rages de-spite numerous partial cease-fires between Syria’s government and opposition groups.
And without leverage, the dissenters noted, Assad will never feel pressure to stop bombing and negotiate.
Military action can “drive a more fo-cused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplo-matic process,” they said, shifting “the
tide of the conflict” and sending a “clear signal to the regime and its backers that there will be no military solution.”
But if airstrikes are limited, would they scare Assad into peace talks or make him more determined to dig in? If the U.S. ultimately hopes Assad will negotiate his own departure, what new incentive would he have?
“The threat of strikes brings dramatic results,” Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said approvingly of the memo. “This isn’t about invading Syria or another Iraq. It’s about punishing Assad for his violations of the cessation of hostilities. And it could, if backed up with resolve, change Assad’s in-creasingly rigid negotiating position.
The memo says doing that would ad-dress the lack of support among Syria’s Sunni majority for the U.S. goals of isolat-ing and defeating ISIL. Sunnis are leading the fight against Assad, a member of Syr-ia’s Shiite-linked Alawite minority.
But if Libya is an example, U.S. interven-tion doesn’t always play out that way. A year after Gaddafi’s overthrow, militants attacked the American diplomatic outpost in the city of Benghazi. Washington has no diplomatic presence inside the country today.
Russia“We have been arguing from the
beginning of the Syrian crisis that there should be more robust intervention,” For-eign Minister Adel al-Jubeir of Saudi Ara-bia, a key U.S. ally, said Friday.
But if planning an intervention was complicated early on, it became harder after Russia’s foray into the conflict in September.
Attacking Assad’s forces now would risk escalating a proxy war with Moscow, which has been hitting U.S.-backed rebels. The prospect of accidental confrontation grows if the two militaries end coordination on avoiding each other’s forces in their sepa-rate counterterrorism campaigns.
(Source: AP)
Syria memo shakes up Washington but unlikely to shift policy
1 Some early U.S. leaders, like Henry Knox, secretary of war under first U.S. president George Washington, saw a moral contradiction to the treatment of the aboriginal people and the principles espoused by the U.S., and feared a “black cloud of injustice and inhumanity will im-pend over our national character.” He was correct, of course, but unfortunately, the U.S. has not learned the lesson con-cerning the blowback, the least of which is anti-U.S. sentiment, that results from centuries of such repugnant national be-havior.
This “black cloud of injustice” smoth-ered the African Peoples perhaps more so than any others, so no discussion of the U.S. record of human rights could be complete without a brief examination of the role played by slavery and its facilita-tion of hypocrisy to the point of schizo-phrenia on the part of American political leaders. The institution of slavery, itself a brutally fiendish form of cultural terrorism directed against the African Peoples, act-ed as a restraint on the export from the U.S. of the white Euro-colonizers’ Amer-ican Protestant and republican image not only to Old World Europe, but also within the Western Hemisphere, which had been declared an exclusive American domain by the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.
As a result, while the U.S. had suffi-cient military power to expand its empire at will, the country was inhibited from do-ing so out of fear of destroying the fragile union of its states over the slavery issue. The tension created by this self-restraint eventually manifested itself in the Amer-ican Civil War, which could be viewed as a massive cultural terror campaign by the Washington regime against the Southern plantation culture, which itself perpetrat-ed cultural terrorism against the African Peoples it had enslaved and imported to exploit in its lucrative agricultural econ-omy.
Since a number of the enslaved Afri-cans were Muslims, proponents of slav-ery were also waging a cultural assault against Islam by attempting to convert them to Christianity. Yet, the opponents of slavery also were guilty of the same since while they were forced to concede that Islam demonstrated a limited form of civilization among Africans, their enslave-
ment impeded Christianization. Thus, the pro and anti-slavery forces in the U.S. both agreed that cultural terrorism of one form or another was necessary to replace the enslaved Africans’ Islamic cultural heritage with Christianity.
From its blood-soaked beginnings, the United States has developed into a coun-try that practices what Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova calls “cultural cleansing” and has not only committed cultural terrorism internally against the indigenous North American Native Peo-ples and enslaved African People, but has also engaged in this heinous practice against the Islamic Republic of Iran for its failure to conform to the American Prot-estant ethic and republican image. From
this we can see that the United States has no respect for human rights unless it is to its advantage to do so in pursuit of its imperial geopolitical goals.
Some argue the U.S. human rights claim is not true and they, at most, respect their “citizen’s rights” rather than “human rights.” Accord-ingly, the killing of people in Syria or Yemen, just as an example, is not their concern. What is your assessment?
A: One of the early documents ratified in the fledgling United Nations in 1948 was the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Gen-ocide. The draft had been finalized by June of 1947, but was delayed by the U.S. delegation, which had “concerns” over the scope of the agreement. Once the convention was in force, one of the first accusations of genocide was against the United States itself for its treatment of
Black People. In 1951 the Civil Rights Congress pre-
sented a 240-page petition to the UN on behalf of Black Americans charging the U.S. government with having “a policy of genocide against the colored peo-ple of the United States.” The petition requested a resolution from the august body condemning the U.S. for failing to implement its obligations under the con-vention on prevention and punishment of genocide, and charged the Washing-ton regime with carrying out a conspir-acy to aid and encourage the killing of Blacks throughout the country. For his part, Dr. Raphael Lemkin, the author of the convention document, claimed that he did not see the atrocities committed
against Blacks in the U.S. as falling under the scope of genocide, a word he himself coined around 1943.
And the genocide against Blacks in the U.S. continues. In 2015 alone over 100 unarmed Blacks were shot and killed by police, which represents a rate 5 times as high as for unarmed whites. Out of these killings, only ten officers were charged with crimes and only two were convicted. Such is the human rights situation of Black Amer-ican citizens, who continue to be defamed as “niggers” while Washington’s imperial troops are still busy raping, pillaging and calling people in the Middle East “sand nig-gers.” Clearly, the U.S. does not respect the human rights of its own citizens much less those of the people of Syria, Yemen or anywhere else in the Middle East.
After 9/11, we saw the USA PA-TRIOT Act, which is an Act of Congress signed into law by President George
W. Bush on October 26, 2001. This act in fact legitimizes the violation of human rights instead of strengthen-ing the security of American country. How can the country be secured with-out the violation of human rights?
A: The abridgement of human rights in the quest of national security is as American as apple pie, if you will forgive me for using a trite expression. I argued in a paper that I presented to the Ha-bilian Association titled After the Gloves Came Off that, contrary to the implica-tion of your question, nothing dramatic has changed in the post-9/11 U.S. poli-cies. While admittedly, there have been modifications in the scope and magni-tude of U.S. military and covert opera-tions, which, as Walter Hixon points out, “brought into sharp relief the pathologi-cal character of U.S. identity and foreign policy,” the main differences are internal to the U.S. government and its policies towards American citizens.
If we look at the 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin held extensive hearings on allegations of mas-sive communist infiltration in the U.S., we see that the same fear of the “other” due to paranoia over securing the “home-land” against the communist threat as we see today over the presumed threat of “Islamic” terrorism. History Professor Michael J. Heale notes the consistency of U.S. policy and writes that the communist witch hunts of the 1940s and 1950s were “traditional American political culture.”
So, we see that the only real difference now is that the communist threat has been exchanged for the “Islamist” threat. Obviously, if security is the real issue, the U.S. should have learned by now that threatening the world with military in-terventions and denying its citizens their rights is not the way to secure the country. For increased security, the U.S. would be wise to follow China’s approach, which, in place of military alliances, has formed “72 partnerships in different forms and at dif-ferent levels with 67 countries and 5 re-gions or regional organizations,” accord-ing to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. These partnerships differ drastically from the U.S. approach in that they respect sovereignty, reject hypothetical enemies and go beyond cultural differences.
Abridgement of human rights in quest of national security is American apple pie: Analyst
Bank Shahr will enhance its bank-ing cooperation with leading foreign
banks in world. Currency and Intl. Deputy CEO of Bank Shahr Dr.
Seyyed Mohammad-Mehdi Ahmadi announced the above statement and revealed the increased interaction of the bank with reliable foreign banks.
He, who is the Board member of Bank Shahr, point-ed out that conclusion of brokerage contract with top 10 banks and membership in international credit cards network is tantamount to the creation of competitive advantage.
Speaking in a seminar held in Ardebil Province in the presence of senior directors of the bank, he said: “A brief
description of counseling results with brokers of foreign banks will be published in the very near future.”
In the end, he said: “A list of banks in countries includ-ing Italy, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Russia and Turkey will be introduced as cooperative bodies to Bank Shahr in order to pave suitable way for opening Letters of Credit (L/Cs).”
Bank Shahr to broaden cooperation with prestigious foreign banks
Putin slams West over backing ‘coup d’etat’ in UkraineRussian President Vladimir Putin has strongly criticized the West’s support for ‘a coup d’etat’ in Ukraine in 2014, blaming it for the bloodshed that plagued the country.
“Why support a coup d’etat in Ukraine? ... It is likely that the opposition, which is currently in power, would have come to power by democratic means,” Putin said at a question and answer session during the the St Petersburg International Economic Forum 2016 (SPIEF 2016).
The Russian president blamed the way Ukraine’s pro-Rus-sian president was toppled for the bloodshed and ensuing violence.
Putin further said the ‘coup’ had scared the Russian-speak-ing people in the Crimean Peninsula and southeastern Ukraine.
Russia-West ties have been strained since Crimea joined Russia in a referendum in March 2014.
Crimean people voted to join Russia after rejecting the Western-backed government that took over power in Kiev in February 2014.
The United States and its European allies accuse Moscow of destabilizing Ukraine. Moscow, however, rejects having a hand in the crisis gripping the Eastern European state.
Ukraine’s eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk have witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Moscow forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations in April 2014 to crush pro-Moscow protests there.
The crisis has left more than 9,000 people dead and over 20,000 others injured, according to the United Nations.
(Source: RT)
JUNE 19, 2016
From its blood-soaked beginnings, the United States has developed into a country that
practices what Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova calls “cultural cleansing” and has not only committed cultural terrorism
internally against the indigenous North American Native Peoples and enslaved African People, but has also engaged in this heinous practice against the Islamic Republic of Iran for its failure to conform to the American
Protestant ethic and republican image.
“MOBIN NET” Co. offers free and unlimited downloading package
On the occasion of holy month of Ram-adan, respected WiMAX subscribers of
MOBIN NET Communication Company can take advantage of nighttime downloading of applications as “free” and “un-limited” from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m.
Given the above issue, the company will provide its sub-scribers with the free nighttime downloading as “unlimited” in the said period.
Management of MOBIN NET Communication Company wishes its respected subscribers happy days during this aus-picious month of Ramadan.
Rights group slams Al Khalifah over crackdown on dissentA Bahraini human rights group has censured the ruling Al Khalifah regime over its heavy-handed crackdown on free-dom of religion in the kingdom, saying Manama is increas-ingly targeting Shia Muslim clerics and religious figures.
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), in a state-ment released , expressed grave concern over the alarming repression of human rights advocates and prosecution of a large number of clergymen in the country.
The BCHR pointed to the rise in the summons and inter-rogations of clerics, saying the measures are part of an intim-idation campaign aimed at stifling the religious freedom of Shia preachers and their right to free speech.
It also called on the Al Khalifah regime to comply with the international human rights regulations, and allow UN rights experts to visit Bahrain.
On June 16, Shia Muslim clerics in Bahrain stopped hold-ing congregational prayers in the country in protest at the repressive policies of Al Khalifah regime.
The clerics, in a statement titled “Those Barred from Pray-ing” released on Thursday, condemned the Bahraini regime’s efforts to restrict Shia Muslims’ freedom of religion and belief, describing the situation in the country as “deplorable.”
The statement said that the Al Khalifah regime’s systematic suppression of Bahraini Shia Muslims has reached its highest level ever. Members of the kingdom’s largest religious com-munity feel insecure, facing threats of arrest and prosecution if they seek to observe their religious rituals, primarily congre-gational prayers and Friday prayers, it added.
Last Tuesday, Bahrain suspended all the activities of the country’s main Shia opposition movement, the al-Wefaq Na-tional Islamic Society.
Al-Wefaq’s Secretary General Sheikh Ali Salman has been in prison since December 2014 on charges of attempting to overthrow the regime and collaborating with foreign powers, which he has strongly denied. On May 30, Bahrain’s Supreme Court of Appeal increased Salman’s prison sentence to nine years from the original four.
Since February 14, 2011, thousands of anti-regime pro-testers have held numerous demonstrations on an almost daily basis in Bahrain, calling for the Al Khalifah family to re-linquish power.
In March that year, troops from Saudi Arabia and the Unit-ed Arab Emirates were deployed to the country to assist the Bahraini government in its crackdown on peaceful protests.
Scores of people have been killed and hundreds of others injured or arrested in the Bahraini crackdown on the anti-re-gime activists. (Source: Press TV)
Be kind to me!
Doctor Javad Parvizi is performing a surgery on a war disabled veteran in Khatam-Ol-Anbia hospital in Tehran on December 21, 2015.
S O C I E T Yd e s k
S O C I E T Yd e s k
I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
S O C I E T Y h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s o c i e t yJUNE 19, 2016JUNE 19, 201610
IN FOCUS IRNA/ Majid Mihandoust
Sacramento, California, Mayor Kevin Johnson usually wrestles with local issues when he’s in the City Council chambers. This week, though, he just wrestled.
Johnson and the City Council on Tuesday were honoring Sacramento City College for winning the state wres-tling championship.
Johnson, a former pro basketball player who also used to wrestle, decid-ed to try his moves on one of the com-munity college champions. The mayor jokingly told one of the champion wres-tlers that he could “take him.” The two got into the standard opening pose on the floor of the Council chambers before the mayor dashed back to the council dais.
Johnson says he’s glad his wrestling challenge was just pretend, or he might have been carted out of the chambers on a stretcher.
(Source: Business Insider)
‘I think I can take him:’ mayor challenges
college wrestler
A group of nature-loving Iranians cleaned up the tourist site of Sogoleh Hill in Gorgan, Golestan province, on Friday afternoon.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated. Maya Angelou
86-year-old Iranian man gets master’s degreeAn 86-year-old man earned his master’s degree in educational research from Ajab-Shir Azad Uni-versity, East Azarbaijan province.Mir-Qanbar Heidari Shishvan finished his bachelor’s degree in social sciences in 2012 at Tabriz Azad University and was admitted for his postgraduate degree the next year.He wants to get his PhD and be a source of inspiration for the youth, IRNA news agency reported.He used to work in a bank and was also a teacher.There is documentary named President Mir-Qanbar based on his life which was screened in Ja-pan and Switzerland and won an award in Japan.
دانشجوى 86 ساله ارشد گرفتدانشجوى مرد 86 ساله مدرك كارشناسى ارشد خود را در رشته تحقيقات آموزشى از دانشگاه آزاد
اسالمى واحد عجب شيرگرفت.ميرقنبر حيدرى شيشوان مقطع كارشناسى را در رشته علوم اجتماعى در سال 91 در دانشگاه آزاد
اسالمى تبريز به پايان رساند و سال بعد از آن در مقطع كارشناسى پذيرفته شد.به گزارش ايرنا وى تصميم دارد تا مقطع دكترا ادامه تحصيل بدهد تا براى درس خواندن جوانان اين مرز و بوم مشوق باشد. وى، داراى سابقه كارمندى بانك و آموزگارى آموزش و پرورش مى باشد.
از اين پيرمرد فيلم مستندى با نام ‹رئيس جمهور ميرقنبر› نيز موجود است كه در سوئيس و ژاپن اكران شده و در كشور ژاپن جايزه كسب كرد.
LEARN NEWS TRANSLATION
Tear up
Meaning: rip into pieces For example: Tear up the boxes before you put them
in the bin.
A friend’s eye is a good mirror
Explanation: a real friend will tell you the truth
P H R A S A L V E R B
QUIZ OF THE DAY
ENGLISH PROVERB
170) I don’t think much of ____ of the candidates.a) bothb) eitherc) neither(Quiz No. 169 answer: b)
Checking on the Status of an Application Leo: Here’s the mail. Denise: Did I get anything? Leo: No, sorry. Are you expecting something? Denise: Yeah, I’m waiting for a decision letter about my appli-cation to the McQ program. I should hear any day now. Leo: Have you thought about calling and checking on the sta-tus? Denise: I called last week and my application was still under re-view. I was told that a decision was still pending. Leo: I’m sure it was just awaiting approval. There is no chance it’ll be rejected. You’re an ideal candidate and you’re sure to get good news in a day or two. Denise: I hope you’re right. In the meantime, I’m on pins and needles. Every time the mail carrier walks by, my heart skips a beat. Leo: I know this is important to you, but you’ve got to keep it in perspective. It’s not a life-or-death situation. Denise: I am keeping it in perspective. If I don’t get into this program, it’s only the end of my career, my dream, and my fu-ture – that’s all!
(Source: eslpod.com) Words & phrases
decision letter: a letter saying whether you were accepted to a program or notapplication: a formal, usually written, request for something such as a job, place at university, or permission to do somethinghear: to be told or find out a piece of informationany day now: very sooncheck on something: to investigate and make sure it is okstatus: the condition of something be under review: to examine something pending: not yet decided or settledawait: to wait for somethingapproval: when a plan, decision, or person is officially acceptedreject: to not choose someone for a job, course of study etc.ideal: the best or most suitable that something could pos-sibly becandidate: someone who is being considered for a job or is competing in an electionbe on the pins and needles: to be very nervous and unable to relax, especially because you are waiting for something impor-tant; be on tenterhooksmail carrier: someone whose job is to deliver mail; mailmansomebody’s heart skips a beat: used to say that someone suddenly feels a moment of fear or excitementkeep something in perspective: judge the importance of something correctlylife-or-death situation: vitally or gravely serious
L E A R N E N G L I S H
World renowned doctors to visit war disabled veterans in Iran
TEHRAN — Three distinguished doctors will travel to Iran in the
Iranian calendar months of Shahrivar and Mehr (Au-gust 22-October 21) to visit and examine war disabled veterans, the Martyrs and Veterans Affairs Foundation director general said.
German neurosurgeon Walter Stuhmer, plastic and reconstructive surgeon Stephen Anthony Wolfe, and Javad Parvizi specialized in hip and knee orthopedics from the U.S. are the three doctors who agreed to ex-amine these patients, IRNA quoted Iraj Arabi as saying.
Martyrs and Veterans Affairs Foundation normally invites such doctors periodically to provide war disa-bled veterans with proper treatment, Arabi noted.
For instance, spinal surgeon Hossein Mehdian from England travelled to Iran with his team on May 28 to June 3 and visited 155 patients and performed 10 sur-geries, he added.
Moreover, he pointed, Walter Hader and Paolo Federico, doctors who specialize in treatment of ep-ilepsy also travelled to Iran on April 17 and examined war disabled veterans with the seizures and epileptic episodes for five days.
TEHRAN — In association with In-dian research center COM-DEALL,
Iran’s first international autism rehabilitation center will be opened in Tehran, the director for speech therapy group of Tehran’s University of Medical Sciences said.
The Communication DEALL (Developmental Ec-lectic Approach to Language Learning) is an early intervention program for children with autism and other communication disorders.
As autism is on the rise in Iran, launching such
centers can help provide more efficient treatment with the help of scientists from other countries, Ah-madreza Khatounabadi told Tasnim news agency.
Speech therapy, occupational therapy, play ther-apy and training the parents and other services of the kind will be provided in this center, Khatounabadi explained.
Mentioning the considerable expenses of the au-tism patients’ treatment process he called on the offi-cials for financial supports of such families.
India’s COM-DEALL to help launch autism rehabilitation center in Iran
EVERGREEN, Colo. (AP) — A fawn trying to make a clean getaway after it got caught in some fencing instead wound up in the bathtub of a Colorado home.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, which posted a photo of the wayward
fawn in a tub online Wednesday, says a man freed the animal from some fencing outside his home in Evergreen Tuesday night. Instead of returning to nature, it ran through an open door in his house and into the bathroom. He told deputies that
he put it in the tub before calling for help.The sheriff’s office says deputies put the
fawn in a blanket, carried it outside and set it free away from the fences. Its mom couldn’t be seen but deputies hope they were able to reunite.
Fawn rescued from Colorado bathtub
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his mes-sage on World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, 17 June 2016, said over the next 25 years, land degradation could reduce global food productivity by as much as 12 per cent, leading to a 30 per cent increase in world food prices.
The full text of his message reads:Desertification, land degradation, drought and climate
change are interconnected. As a result of land degrada-tion and climate change, the severity and frequency of droughts have been increasing, along with floods and ex-treme temperatures. More than 50 per cent of agricultural land is moderately or severely degraded, with 12 million hectares lost to production each year.
The livelihoods and well-being of hundreds of millions of
people are at stake. Nearly 800 million people are chronically undernourished as a direct consequence of land degradation, declining soil fertility, unsustainable water use, drought and biodiversity loss. Over the next 25 years, land degradation could reduce global food productivity by as much as 12 per cent, leading to a 30 per cent increase in world food prices.
Without a long-term solution, desertification and land degradation will not only affect food supply but lead to increased migration and threaten the stability of many na-tions and regions. This is why world leaders made land degradation neutrality one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals. That means rehabilitating at least 12 million hectares of degraded land a year.
One important approach is sustainable, climate-smart
agriculture. This will not only help communities to build re-silience to climate change, it will also support mitigation by taking carbon from the atmosphere and putting it back in the soil. The transition to sustainable agriculture will also alleviate poverty and generate employment, especially among the world’s poorest. By 2050, it could create some 200 million jobs across the entire food production system.
Our theme for this year’s World Day to Combat Deser-tification is: “Protect Earth. Restore land. Engage people.” On this Day, I urge cooperation among all actors to help achieve land degradation neutrality as part of a broader effort to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and build a future of dignity and opportunity for all.
(Source: UNIC)
Land degradation to increase food prices by 30% in future: Ban
S P O R T Sh t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s p o r t s JUNE 19, 2016JUNE 19, 2016 11I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
UEFA opens case against Croatia after trouble vs. Czech RepublicUEFA has formally opened a disciplinary case against the Croatian football federation for fan disorder at a European Championship game.
Play was stopped for several minutes late in Croatia’s 2-2 draw with Czech Republic in Saint-Etienne on Friday when firecrackers and lit flares were thrown on the field from one end of the stadium where their fans were. Croatia fans then fought among them-selves as players appealed for calm.
UEFA says the charges relate to racist behaviour, crowd disturbances, throw-ing of objects on the field, and setting off fireworks.Speaking after the game, Croatia manager Ante Cacic hit out at the “sports terror-ists” whose actions marred their match.
It is the second round of charges involving Croatia fans in France. UEFA charged the federation over flares being lit and a fan running on the field to celebrate a goal with Croatia players in a 1-0 win over Tur-key last Sunday. That case will be judged on July 21.
During qualifying for Euro 2016, Croatia were ordered to close a section of their grounds for a game as punishment for fans’ racist behaviour and crowd trouble -- including setting off fireworks and throwing missiles -- at a game in Italy.
Croatia were then docked a point in their qualifying cam-paign due to the racist behaviour of their fans in the return match against Italy, when a swastika was mown into the pitch.
Meanwhile, Turkey have also been hit with a second round of disciplinary charges for fan misconduct at the tournament.
UEFA says it opened a case against the Turkish football federation for a fan running toward the field during a 3-0 loss to Spain in Nice on Friday.
UEFA’s disciplinary panel will hear the case as well as the case against Croatia on Monday and will also judge charges of fans lighting and throwing flares and fireworks.
The Turkish federation was also charged for fans lighting and throwing fireworks in their loss against Croatia in Paris.
Earlier this week, Russia were fined €150,000 and handed a suspended disqualification from Euro 2016 over crowd dis-turbances at their game against England.
(Source: ESPN)
Putin: I don't understand how 200 Russians could beat up thousands of EnglishVladimir Putin has condemned the hooliganism involving Russian and English fans that has marred Euro 2016, but suggested he cannot comprehend how his outnumbered countrymen "beat up several thousand English".
Trouble flared on the streets of Marseille and inside the Stade Velodrome before, during and after Russia's Group B opener against England last Saturday.
A group of 20 Russians, including the leader of the All-Russia Supporters Union Alexander Shpry-gin, have also been deport-ed from France as a result of their role in the incidents.
Speaking at Russia's an-nual economic forum in Saint Petersburg on Friday, Putin criticised the Russian hooligans but also poked fun at the English fans involved.
"The fighting between Russian fans with the English, that is a disgrace," Putin said.
"But I truly don't understand how 200 of our fans could beat up several thousand English.
"In any case, the treatment by law enforcement should be the same for all violators."
"I hope that there are sober-minded people among them who really love sport and understand that any violation is not supporting their favourite team but damaging to the team and to sport."
Cologne police confirmed on Thursday that five Russia fans were taken into custody after two Spanish tourists and their German companion were attacked.
(Source: OmniSport)
S P O R T Sd e s k
S P O R T Sd e s k
Iran basketball team advances Iran basketball team advances to Atlas Challenge finalto Atlas Challenge final
Alcides de Souza Faria Junior or simply Cidinho has joined Sepahan football team on a one-year contract.
The details of the deal have not been revealed.Cidinho will replace Ali Karimi who is going to join Dinamo Zagreb.
The 23-year-old attacking midfielder was a member of Brazil U-20 and U-23 football teams.
Cidinho started his youth football career on 2001 where he joined Bota-fogo. He played in all age-levels in
Botafogo until 2011.On 2011 he could play for Botafogo
in Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A. He played 28 matches in Serie A and scored 4 goals. Moreover, from 2013 to 2015 he played for Botafogo in Campeonato Car-ioca and Copa do Brasil.
In the international level, Cidinho also got a chance to play for Botafogo in Copa Sudamericana in 2012 and Copa Libertadores in 2014.
(Source: Tasnim)
Iranian international striker Kaveh Rezaei
who was on the verge of joining Persepolis in the last couple of days has been linked with a move to an un-known Austrian club according to the local media.
Rezaei is one of the top targets in the summer transfer market as he has re-ceived a couple of offers from Iran Pro-fessional League big clubs.
Rezaei’s 18-month contract with
Zob Ahan has expired at the end of the season and he is eager to continue his career in Europe.
Rezaei’s brilliant performance in the league earned him a call-up to the Iran national team as he made his debut against India during Iran’s 2018 World Cup Qualification campaign on 8 Sep-tember 2015.
He has scored 14 goals in 45 appear-ances for Zob Ahan during his 1.5-year spell at the club.
Kaveh Rezaei linked with Austrian club
Cidinho joins Iran’s Sepahan football team
Iran has been scheduled to meet Lithuania in the final match of
the 2016 International Basketball Challenge, also known as the 2016 Atlas Challenge.
Iran has already defeated Macedonia, Idaho Vandals and Lithuania in Pool B.
The team also defeated China B in the semi-final. The Dirk Bauermann’s men will play Lithuania in
the final match on Sunday. The 2016 International Basketball Challenge opened
in Suzhou on June 14 and will run through June 19.The tournament is a warm-up exercise for Iran
before the 2016 FIBA World Olympic Qualifying Tournament, which will be held between July 4 and July 9 at the multi-purpose Pala Alpitour indoor sports arena in Turin, Italy.
Iran, Greece and Mexico will trade blows in Group A, and the top two sides will advance to the Final Round to meet the top two sides from Group B, which includes Tunisia, Croatia and Italy.
The first-place team in Group A will take on the second-place team from Group B in one semi-final, and the side that comes top of Group B will go up against the second-top team in Group A in the other semi-final. The winners will them meet in a do-or-die showdown for a spot in the Olympics.
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The old 16-team Euro finals was better than the new expanded 24-team format because there were more big clashes from day one of the competition, Germa-ny coach Joachim Loew said on Saturday.
European soccer’s governing body UEFA introduced eight more teams for Euro 2016, which led to the introduction of an extra last-16 round. As a result, some of the third-placed teams now join the top two from each group in the knockout rounds.
Previously, only the top two from the four groups advanced straight into the quarter-finals.
“The 16 teams was ideal. It made for great matches from day one.” Loew, in charge for Germany for his third Euro, told reporters. “This is a different situation and a return to the old system is obviously not pos-sible anymore. So we have to accept that.”
The introduction of more teams has meant some smaller, less powerful foot-balling nations such as Iceland and Al-bania have also qualified, arming them-selves with populous defences.
After 21 matches, only one team, Spain, have managed to score three goals in one game. “There are teams playing ultra defensively. But they do that well.
The smaller nations like Albania or Wales are defensively very well schooled. They see their chance in that, so that is why we had only up to two goals per game until yesterday’s Spain win (3-0) over Turkey.”
Loew was also unhappy with the qual-ification modus for the Round of 16.
“Teams with one point from two match-es still have a chance for the Round of 16. That is not very fair but it is what it is. So we just have to accept it and use the time we have to prepare for any opponent.”
Germany, eyeing a fourth European title, are top of Group C with four points, as many as Poland. They play Northern Ireland on Tuesday and will advance with a win or draw.
(Source: Reuters)
Colombia reached the semifinals of the Copa America Centenario by beating Peru on penalties in New Jersey.
The two teams played out a low-key goalless draw at MetLife Stadium, Co-lombia with the better chances until stop-page time, when Peru defender Christian Ramos threatened a dramatic winner.
Colombia’s goalkeeper David Ospi-na, who plays for Arsenal in the Premier League, then saved from Miguel Trauco before Christian Cueva’s miss handed Co-lombia a 4-2 win in the shootout.
Carlos Bacca’s early run and shot drew a sharp save from Peru keeper Pe-dro Gallese while at the other end, Pau-lo Guerrero’s cross was headed over by Edison Flores.
The best chance yet came when Co-lombia captain James Rodriguez curled a shot with his weaker right foot from 20 yards against the base of a post, with Bacca putting the rebound wide from a tight angle.
The rest of the opening period passed in scrappy fashion and that pattern con-tinued after the break as Colombia were given an early free kick which James curled straight at Gallese.
Bacca headed straight at the keeper while Peru forward Flores drilled a free kick straight into the wall.
Ramos made a crucial clearance to prevent Cuadrado’s cross reaching Bac-ca and Jeison Murillo headed James’ free kick well wide.
Ospina made a vital stoppage-time save from Ramos’ header, taking the game straight to penalties with Copa America rules specifying no extra time until the final.
He then saved Peru’s third penalty, from full-back Trauco, with his right foot before Cueva put the fourth over the bar to send Colombia through.
(Source: ESPN)
Colombia outlast Peru on penalty kicks to reach Copa semifinals
Germany’s Loew prefers old 16-team Euro to bigger version
Leicester City’s vice-chairman is confident Jamie Vardy will reject a move to Arsenal and remain with the Premier League champions next season.
Vardy netted 24 times as he helped inspire the Foxes to the most unlikely of title triumphs in 2015-16, with his efforts were rewarded with a place in England’s Euro 2016 squad.
His performances for Leicester attracted the atten-tion of Arsenal, who have triggered a release clause – be-lieved to be worth £20 million – with Vardy set to make a final decision once England’s participation in the finals in France has come to an end.
But vice-chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, son of
chairman and owner Vichai, believes Vardy will stay at the King Power Stadium as Leicester prepare to take their seat at European club football’s top table.
“You will see the news very soon, but I think he will stay,” he told The Daily Mail.
“I think so, let’s see. We need to build the team. We keep continuing to believe that we can do something spe-cial in the Premier League and the Champions League.
“The Champions League is going to be amazing for Leicester, so let’s see. Leicester is the underdog and we can still be the underdog.”
(Source: Goal)
I think Vardy will stay - Leicester vice-chairman
b
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Zip Code: 1599814713
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O Thou! to please whose love and wrath as well, Allah created heaven and likewise hell; Thou hast thy court in heaven, and I have naught, Why not admit me in thy courts to dwell?
Khayyam
Poem of the day
SINCE 1979Prayer Times
TEHRAN — Tehran-based Dutch-British actress and director Marene
van Holk plan to direct a play on illegal migrations to Europe at Tehran’s Da Theater Hall in July.
The play, which is due to be performed in chroma key technique, will center on the illegal immigrants and asylum seekers heading from Turkey to Europe by boat, Van Holk told the Persian service of MNA on Saturday.
Chroma key is an electronic special-effects system for combining a desired background with live foreground action.
Van Holk said that migration is not a new topic, but in 2015, it turned out to be a hot topic because of the war and the events happening in Syria and Iraq.
She added that the play mainly focuses on those individuals living in Turkey and coming from countries such as Iran, Afghanistan and Syria, who are seeking to migrate illegally. “The play shows a part of their life with their different behaviors, attitudes, nationality and culture”.
The play is a co-production between the English Theatre STET from The Hague, Netherlands and the Virgule Performance Arts Company from Iran.
Parisa Moqtadi, Khosrow Pesyani, Amir-Hossein Taheri, Mina Malek and Negin Tabara are among the main members of the cast.
Arvand Dashtaray is also cooperating in this project as the stage designer.
TEHRAN — Director Rakhshan Bani-Etamed and actor Bahram
Radan from Iran have been selected for the jury of the 8th Annual Farhang Foundation Short Film Festival.
The Iranian expatriate filmmakers Jamshid Akrami and Sepideh Farsi, and the Iranian-American producer
Mark Amin are the other members of the panel.The festival will receive submissions until July
18, and the award ceremony will be held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on September 24.
The event is organized by the Farhang Foundation, an institute in Southern California that promotes Iranian art, culture and history.
NEW YORK (Reuters) — Video-sharing website Vimeo LLC cannot be held liable for copyright infringement for unknowingly hosting older music uploaded by its users, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday, dealing a blow to record labels seeking broader protections.
In a victory for internet service providers, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York also held that the mere fact that Vimeo employees had viewed videos with copyrighted sound recordings was not enough to prove the company ignored red flags of infringement.
The case, pursued by Capitol Records
and Sony Corp units, was closely watched in Silicon Valley, with Vimeo’s appeal drawing support from Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google, and other companies.
“Today’s ruling by the Second Circuit is a significant win for not just Vimeo, but all online platforms that empower creators to share content with the world,” Michael Cheah, Vimeo’s general counsel, said in a statement.
The Recording Industry Association of America, the labels’ trade group, said in a statement it was disappointed with the ruling, which it said came despite evidence
showing Vimeo’s company policy was to look the other way.
“Now, more than ever, it is clear that Congress needs to act to fix a law enacted in the days of dial-up Internet connections,” the group said.
A lawyer for Capitol Records, a unit of Vivendi SA, and the Sony units declined to provide immediate comment.
The case focused on the interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.
The law protects internet service providers from liability when users upload copyrighted content while requiring them to remove the
material if they receive notice or otherwise become aware of the infringement.
The lawsuit, filed in 2009, alleged copyright infringement over music in 199 videos that Vimeo users had uploaded to the site.
U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams in 2013 ruled Vimeo was protected under the DMCA safe harbor provisions with regard to 153 videos.
But she held that the safe harbor was not applicable to recordings from before 1972, the year Congress first included them in the scope of federal copyright law. Pre-1972 recordings are protected by state law.
TEHRAN — A book containing Persian
proverbs and wise sayings along with their similar proverbs in Bulgarian has been published in Bulgarian capital Sofia.
The bilingual book, which is entitled
“Proverbs and Mottos of Persian and Bulgarian Languages”, has been published by Iran’s Cultural Office in Sofia, the office has announced in a press release.
Over 700 Persian proverbs mostly selected from works by Persian scholars
and writers are included in the book, in addition to a number of folk sayings in Persian along with their similar Bulgarian sayings.
A number of Iranian and Bulgarian writers and scholars including Reza Mehraz, Svetla Koycheva Zhelezcheva
and Seroj Enjilian, under the supervision of editor Hajar Foyuzi have collaborated in the publication of the book.
The book is a good source for further studies by students studying Iranology and the Persian language at the University of Sofia.
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Calligrapher Esrafil Shirchi to publish selection of works
DEFC to screen environmental docs
TEHRAN – Veteran Iranian calligrapher Esrafil Shirchi, who is
a master of the shekasteh nastaliq style, plans to publish a selection of his works in a book, which will be released by the Gooya House of Culture and Art in the near future.
The book, which will be entitled “The King of the Early Birds’ Throne”, contains 250 works that Shirchi has created over the past ten years, he told the Persian service of Honaronline on Saturday.
The book is scheduled to be unveiled during a ceremony shortly after the end of Ramadan.
TEHRAN – A lineup of Iranian environmental documentary
films will go on screen at the Documentary and Experimental Film Center (DEFC) on June 20 and 21.
Among the films are “Caucasian Squirrel” directed by Dena Ziai, “The Ruler of Zagros” by Parham Dibaj and “The Values of Owl in Nature” by Iman Siof Jahromi.
The program organized under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Iran will be held at the DEFC Cinéma Vérité located at 15 Qandi Sq., North Sohrevardi St.
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Composer Mahyar Alizadeh (R) applauds after vocalist Alireza Qorbani (L) performed pieces from their album “Fairylike Girl” during a concert at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall on May 17, 2016.
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Marene van Holk acts in a scene from “London, Tehran, Rome, Amsterdam”, a play staged by Iranian director Arvand Dashtaray, at Tehran’s Hafez Hall on November 4, 2014. (Mehr/Sina Shiri)
Sylvia Plath children’s books
appear in Persian
TEHRAN — Persian versions of U.S. writer
Sylvia Plath’s children’s books “The It Doesn’t Matter Suit” and “Mrs. Cher-ry’s Kitchen” have recently been pub-lished by Woodpecker Books in Iran.
The books have been rendered into Persian by Nilufar Amrai.
Plath (1932-1963) was posthumously honored with a Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for her “The Collected Poems”, which she wrote from 1956 until her death. The book originally came out in 1981.
Golazin Publications released a Persian translation of “The Collected Poems” by Roqieh Qanbar-Alizadeh in Tehran in 2012.
Plath is also credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her two published collections, “The Colossus and Other Poems” and “Ariel”.
Marene van Holk to stage play on migration to Europe in Tehran
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Selection of Persian and Bulgarian proverbs publishedC U L T U R Ed e s k
Leonardo DiCaprio is ordered deposed over “Wolf of Wall Street”NEW YORK (Reuters) — A federal judge has ordered actor Leonardo DiCaprio to be deposed in a defamation lawsuit brought by a former Stratton Oakmont executive over his alleged depiction in the 2013 Martin Scorsese film “The Wolf of Wall Street”.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven Locke in Central Islip, New York, on Thursday said DiCaprio must be made available for questioning, which was opposed by Viacom Inc’s Paramount Pictures Corp, DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions and other defendants.
The plaintiff, Andrew Greene, sued in 2014 for more than $50 million, claiming that he was defamed in the film through the portrayal by actor P.J. Byrne of a morally and ethically challenged character named Nicky “Rugrat” Koskoff.
Paramount has said Koskoff was a “composite character” inspired by multiple individuals, including Greene.
DiCaprio, 41, played Jordan Belfort, a stock swindler who founded Stratton Oakmont and whose 2007 memoir was a basis for the film. Greene was a childhood friend of Belfort.
In opposing a deposition, defense lawyers said DiCaprio did not write the screenplay, and that there was no claim he had any role in deciding whether alleged defamatory content should be included in or excluded from the film.
Greene’s lawyers said they had already questioned Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter, and that both testified that they met regularly with DiCaprio to discuss the “Wolf” script.
Louis Petrich, a lawyer for the defendants, declined to comment.
The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including DiCaprio as best actor, Scorsese as best director and Winter for the screenplay, but did not win any.
Radan, Bani-Etemad on Farhang Foundation festival jury
Vimeo wins U.S. appeal in music copyright case
This combination photo shows director Rakhshan Bani-Etamed (L) and actor Bahram Radan.
“A Moment” tops at Portuguese festival
TEHRAN — Iranian director Naqi Nemati’s “A Moment” has won
the award for best short fiction film at Porto7, an international short film festival in Portugal.
The film is about unexpected occurrences minutes before the death of some people.
“Fish” by Saman Hosseinpur and “Survival” by Masud Hatami, both from Iran, were also screened at the festival, which was held from June 8 to 12.
About 90 short fictions, animations, documentaries and music videos coming from different countries were
screened at the 9th edition of the festival.
