SUBSCRIPTION MONDAY, JULY 3, 2017 SHAWWAL 9, 1438 AH www.kuwaittimes.net Meteorologist Damascus Small traders Stindl tap-in refutes 62 C bomber kills struggle with wins Germany temperature 18 after India tax Confederations as fake3 news car chase7 revolution21 Cup20 over Chile All sides standing ground Min 30º as Gulf deadline ‘expires’ Max 48º High Tide 08:10 & 21:23 Qatar rejects ultimatum, could face fresh sanctions Low Tide 00:44 & 15:14 40 PAGES NO: 17269 150 FILS DUBAI/DOHA: Qatar faces possible further sanctions by Amir returns from India Arab states that have severed ties with Doha over alle- Abu Dhabi airport gations of links to terrorism, as a deadline to accept their demands was expected to expire yesterday night. Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin now exempt from Abdulrahman Al-Thani said the demands were made to be rejected, adding that the Arab ultimatum was aimed not at tackling terrorism but at curtailing his country’s US ban on laptops sovereignty. But he told reporters in Rome that Doha remained DUBAI: The capital of the United Arab now applies to nonstop US-bound ready to sit down and discuss the grievances raised by Emirates became the first city to be flights from nine international airports in its Arab neighbors. “This list of demands is made to be exempt from a US ban on laptop com- Amman, Kuwait, Cairo, Istanbul, Jeddah, rejected. It’s not meant to be accepted or ... to be nego- puters being in airplane cabins, the Riyadh, Casablanca, Doha and Dubai. tiated,” Sheikh Mohammed said. “The state of Qatar country’s flag carrier said yesterday. In late May, Homeland Security instead of rejecting it as a principle, we are willing to Long-haul airline Etihad said it wel- Secretary John Kelly said he was consid- engage in (dialogue), providing the proper conditions comed the decision by the US ering banning laptops from the passen- for further dialogue.” He added that no one had the Department of Homeland Security, ger cabins of all international flights to right to issue an ultimatum to a sovereign country. which comes “subject to enhanced secu- and from the United States. Kelly’s com- The feud erupted last month when Saudi Arabia, the rity measures” at Abu Dhabi ments came after US President Donald United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplo- International Airport. That airport Trump shared highly classified intelli- matic and travel ties with Qatar, accusing it of support- already has a US Customs and Border gence about the Islamic State group ing terrorism and being an ally of regional foe Iran, Protection facility that allows passengers wanting to use laptops to target aircraft charges that Doha denies. The countries have threat- to clear screening they’d otherwise have with senior Russian officials visiting the ened further sanctions against Qatar if it does not com- to go through when landing in America. White House. ply with their list of 13 demands presented to Doha by Etihad did not elaborate on what Kuwaiti mediators 10 days ago. The demands include additional security measures passengers The laptop ban, as well as a Trump administration travel ban on six pre- closing a Turkish military base in Qatar and shutting would face to be allowed to have their the Al Jazeera pan-Arab television network, which laptops, tablets and other electronics dominantly Muslim nations, has hurt Gulf long-haul carriers. Emirates, the Doha also rejected. Qatar’s Gulf critics accuse Al Jazeera with them on their flights. Neither Abu of being a platform for extremists and an agent of long-haul carrier based in Dubai, has KUWAIT: HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (right) is Dhabi International Airport nor interference in their affairs. The network has rejected slashed 20 percent of its flights to received at the airport by HH the Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al- Homeland Security immediately the accusations and said it will maintain its editorial America in the wake of those decisions. Jaber Al-Sabah after he arrived back to the country from a private visit to responded to a request for comment. independence. India yesterday. — KUNA (See Page 2) The US ban, first announced in March, Continued on Page 13 Continued on Page 13 Egypt fuel hike fans inflation fears CAIRO: Hisham Gaber had been prepar- reform program, which fuelled inflation. ing his wedding for months, but started Analysts believe the fuel price rises will to have second thoughts as inflation in further increase inflation although it was News Egypt rocketed due to government aus- announced to have decreased in May to in brief terity measures, including sharp increases an annual rate of 30.9 percent, from 32.9 in fuel prices. “Marriage and handling the percent the previous month. “Prices are additional burdens in these conditions still rising but not as sharply as before,” Saudi king orders columnist have become an unsound decision,” said said Amr Adly, an analyst with the to stop piling on the praise the 28-year-old engineer. The govern- Carnegie Middle East Center. Radwa El- DUBAI: Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz has ment on Thursday announced an Sweify, an analyst with Pharos Holding for ordered an over-enthusiastic columnist to be suspended increase in fuel prices of up to 55 percent, Financial Investments, believes that infla- from his job after he equated him with God, Saudi media the second since November when it also tion will spike. reported yesterday. Ramadan Al-Anzi’s column in Al- floated the currency in an IMF-backed Continued on Page 13 Jazirah newspaper describing King Salman as “Haleem”, or forbearing, and “Shadeed al-Eqab”, strict in punish- ment - both terms associated in Islam with God - appeared to have gone too far. The newspaper pub- lished an apology late on Saturday. Saudi media report- ed that the king had ordered that action be taken against the newspaper. In a message to Information Minister Awwad bin Saleh Alawwad, the king wrote that he was “astonished by some of the phrases used in the column”, according to Okaz newspaper. GAZA: A member of the Hamas security forces sets fire to a pile of confiscated bars Indian woman attacked of hashish and analgesic pills, seized since the beginning of the year in Gaza City, with acid for fifth time on May 11, 2017. —AFP NEW DELHI: A woman who survived an alleged gang rape and four separate acid attacks has once again been hit by corrosive liquid, Indian police Stigma keeping drug said yesterday. The 35-year-old mother, who was allegedly gang-raped and attacked with acid by two men in 2008 over a property dispute, was at a addicts quiet in Gaza women’s hostel in Lucknow when a man scaled the GAZA CITY: After Umm Mazen found her Umm Mazen, a 32-year-old mother of walls and poured the chemical onto her. The husband shivering in his bed and com- three who refused to give her full name for woman sustained burn injuries to her face and CAIRO: An Egyptian petrol station worker fills up a pickup truck’s tank in the capi- plaining of a migraine, he confessed he fear of consequences in Gaza’s conserva- shoulder and is undergoing treatment at a hospi- tal on June 29, 2017.— AFP was addicted to painkillers and could no tive society, said the drug nearly ruined her tal. The woman was attacked twice more by the longer provide for the family. In the Gaza life. Fearing a scandal, her husband refused same men, in 2012 and 2013, in a bid to force her Strip, the tiny Palestinian territory sand- hospital treatment. “I warned his family and to withdraw the criminal cases against them. Most wiched between Israel, Egypt and the I even threatened to report it to the Hamas Pacquiao loss stuns recently, the two men allegedly forced her to drink Mediterranean and ravaged by three wars police,” she told AFP. acid while she was travelling on a train with one of in a decade, drug abuse is often a hidden Iyad Al-Bozum, spokesman for the war-weary Filipinos her daughters in March this year. problem. While no reliable statistics are Hamas-run interior ministry, told AFP there available, experts and medical support was an “organized plan to smuggle large MARAWI, Philippines: Millions of boxing after watching the fight in an evacuation Assad appears on Syrian groups estimate there are tens of thou- quantities of drugs into Gaza,” saying deal- fans in the Philippines, including those dis- center near war-ravaged Marawi city. currency for first time sands of drug users in Gaza. ers were targeting young people. While placed by fighting with Islamist militants, Islamist militants who went on a ram- BEIRUT: President Bashar Al-Assad has appeared on the Young men are among those most some drugs are smuggled through the walked away in stunned dinsbelief as page in Marawi on May 23 have trig- Syrian currency for the first time, his portrait printed on a affected in a territory suffering 45 percent Israeli border, most enter from Gaza’s national hero Manny Pacquiao lost his gered weeks of intense fighting with the new 2,000-pound banknote that went into circulation unemployment, rising to more than 60 southern border with Egypt, the ministry world title to Australian Jeff Horn in a country’s military that has killed more yesterday. Central bank governor Duraid Durgham said percent among the youth. Narcotics such said. The Gaza Strip has been blockaded for major upset yesterday. Pacquiao, 38, is an than 400 people and forced nearly the 2,000-pound note was one of several new notes as cannabis are sold illegally in the more than a decade by Israel, which has elected senator and a unifying figure in the 400,000 people to flee their homes.