e_Paper, Wednesday, May 3, 2017

World
Hamas softens stance on Israel, drops
Muslim Brotherhood link
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas
on Monday dropped its longstanding
call for Israel’s destruction,
but said it still rejected the
country’s right to exist and backs
“armed struggle” against it.
In a policy document presented
in Doha by its leader Khaled
Meshaal, Hamas also said it would
end its association with the Muslim
Brotherhood, a move apparently
aimed at improving ties with Gulf
Arab states and Egypt, which view
the Brotherhood as a terrorist group.
But it says its struggle is not
against Jews because of their religion
but against Israel as an occupier.
The six-page Document of General
Principles and Policies unveiled
Monday by Hamas, accepts a Palestinian
state within the 1967 borders
while refusing to recognise Israel.
Here are some key points of the
UN: 1.4m children acutely
malnourished in Somalia
• AFP, Geneva
Somalia, hit by drought and on
the verge of famine, will count
1.4 million acutely malnourished
children by the end of the year, up
50% from late 2016, the UN said
Tuesday.
The United Nations children’s
agency warned that 275,000 of
those children were expected to
be so severely malnourished that
they could easily die.
Severe acute malnutrition is the
most extreme and visible form of
undernutrition, with victims often
appearing skeletal and frail, and in
urgent need of treatment to survive.
Such children “are nine times
more likely to die of cholera, or
diarrhoea or measles,” Unicef
spokeswoman Marixie Mercado
told reporters in Geneva.
“The combination of malnutrition
and disease, plus displacement
is deadly for children,” she
‘Turkey’s EU dream is
over’
• Reuters, Ankara
Turkey under President Tayyip Erdogan has turned its
back on joining the EU, at least for now, the bloc’s top
official dealing with Ankara said, offering economic cooperation
instead if both sides can restore friendly ties.
After years of stalemate on Turkey’s bid to join the
world’s biggest trading bloc, EU governments say the
process is dead, citing Erdogan’s crackdown on dissidents,
his ‘Nazi’ jibes at Germany and a referendum
giving him sweeping new powers that a rights group
says lack checks and balances.
“Everybody’s clear that, currently at least, Turkey
is moving away from a European perspective,”
EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn, who oversees EU
membership bids, said. •
Supporters of Hamas protests against Palestinian Authority president Mahmud
Abbas in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on May 2
AFP
said, pointing out that a severely
malnourished and dehydrated
child can die in a matter of hours
from diarrhoea or cholera.
The World Health Organisation
warned last month that the
drought was fuelling an outbreak
of cholera and acute diarrhoea in
Somalia that has already killed
hundreds of people.
The warning comes as Somalia
faces the threat of its third famine
in 25 years of civil war and anarchy.
At least 260,000 people died in
the 2011 famine in Somalia – half
of them children under the age of
five, according to the WFP.
Mercado pointed out that during
that famine, “the major killer of children
were diarrhoea and measles.”
The dire drought and food
situation has forced more than
615,000 people to flee their homes
since last November, in a country
where 1.1m people are already internally
displaced. •
document:
Ü “There shall be no recognition of
the legitimacy of the Zionist entity.”
Ü “Without compromising its
rejection of the Zionist entity,
Hamas considers the establishment
of a fully sovereign and
independent Palestinian state.”
Ü “Hamas rejects the persecution of
any human being on nationalist,
religious or sectarian grounds”.
Ü “Hamas does not wage a struggle
against the Jews because
they are Jewish but wages a
struggle against the Zionists
who occupy Palestine.
Ü “The right of the Palestinian
refugees and the displaced to
return to their homes from
which they were banished or
were banned from returning to
whether in the lands occupied
in 1948 or in 1967.” •
Mummies rot as Yemen
war vexes even the dead
• Reuters, Sanna
Famine and disease haunt the living, but
not even the dead are spared the calamities
of Yemen’s two-year-old civil war.
Ancient mummies are withering
away in a major museum for lack of
electricity and preservative chemicals
from abroad, a sign that the conflict is
harming not only the country’s present
and future but also its rich past.
The dozen spindly corpses, curled
into the fetal position or swaddled in
baskets, belong to a lost pagan civilization
around 2 1/2 millennia ago, long
before the advent of Islam.
Lying beneath glass panes within
the archaeology department in the
capital Sanaa’s main university, the
mummies might have spent their
eternal slumber blissfully unaware of
the otherworldly warplanes pounding
their homeland.
A Saudi-led military coalition has
carried out thousands of air strikes in a
bid to dislodge Yemen’s armed Houthi
movement from the capital. The conflict
has killed at least 10,000 people
and unleashed a humanitarian crisis.
But a timeless enemy, abetted
by the disorder of war, threatens the
mummies’ repose.
“The mummies have started to
decay and are infected with bacteria.
This is because we don’t have
electricity and the machines that are
supposed to maintain them,” said Abdelrahman
al-Gar, head of the university’s
anitiquities department.
“We need some chemicals to sanitise
the mummies every six months,
and they aren’t available due to the
political situation.”
Antiquities experts are appealing
to the university and the culture ministry
for funding and equipment to
better fend off the microbes eating
into the mummies’ flesh. •
9
WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017
USA
US issues travel alert for
Europe
The US State Department issued a
travel alert for Europe on Monday,
saying US citizens should be aware
of a continued threat of terrorist
attacks throughout the continent.
In the alert, the State Department
cited recent incidents in France,
Russia, Sweden and the UK and said
Islamic State and al-Qaeda “have
the ability to plan and execute terrorist
attacks in Europe.” REUTERS
THE AMERICAS
Eight dead in Colombia
military plane crash
Eight people died Monday when
a military aircraft crashed into a
hill in central Colombia, President
Juan Manuel Santos said.
The crash occurred to the west of
Bogota, between the towns of Facatativa
and Zipacon, the governor
for the region, Jorge Emilio Rey,
said on his Twitter account. AFP
UK
May: EU united in getting
deal that works for them
UK Prime Minister Theresa May
warned British voters on Tuesday
that the 27 other EU countries
were determined to win a divorce
deal that “works for them”, using
criticism that she had “illusions”
over the talks to bolster her election
campaign. May said the only way to
secure a good deal for Britain was
for the country to unite behind her
in the snap election she has called
for next month. REUTERS
EUROPE
Denmark bans six hate
preachers
DT
Denmark on Tuesday published
a blacklist of six foreign preachers
accused of spreading hatred,
including five Muslims and an
American Evangelical pastor,
banning them for at least two
years. The blacklist “sends a clear
signal that travelling fanatical
religious preachers who try to
undermine our democracy and
fundamental values of freedom
and human rights are not welcome
in Denmark,” the immigration
and integration ministry said in a
statement. AFP
AFRICA
Armed attacks on ships in
West African waters rise
Armed attacks on ships in West
African waters nearly doubled in
2016, with pirates increasingly focused
on kidnapping their crew for
ransom off Nigeria’s coast, a report
said on Tuesday. A recent spate of
attacks off Somalia, meanwhile,
may also indicate a resurgence of
piracy in East Africa as a result of
less vigilance, the Oceans Beyond
Piracy project said. REUTERS