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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2016
Colombia may win Nobel Prize
World
TIME SIGNATURE. Okayama University of Science Professor Shinobu Ishigaki lies next to a dinosaur footprint in the Gobi Desert. A Mongolia-Japan joint expedition found four fossil footprints in a layer of earth that dates back 70-90 million years ago. AFP
Palestine president attends Peres funeral J
ERUSALEM—World leaders from US President Barack Obama to Prince Charles were expected in Israel on Friday for the funeral for ex-prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres.
In a rare visit to Jerusalem, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who signed the Oslo accords and negotiated with Peres, will also attend the funeral. Security forces were on high alert for the funeral at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl national cemetery, with roads closed and thousands of officers deployed. Some 70 countries were to be represented, with the range of leaders illus-
Clinton, Trump commend Merkel CHICAGO—Hillary Clinton on Thursday took a swipe at Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who further crippled his long-shot bid for the White House by failing to name a single foreign leader he likes. Asked about her favorite world leader by campaign reporters in Chicago on Thursday, Clinton said “oh, let me think,” before bursting into laughter. “No, look,” she continued. “I like a lot of the world leaders. One of my favorites is Angela Merkel.” “I think she’s been an extraordinary, strong leader during difficult times in Europe, which has obvious implications for the rest of the world.” “Her leadership and steadiness on the euro crisis and her bravery in the face of the refugee crisis is something that I am impressed by.” The two women have known each other for a long time, “back into the 1990s,” Clinton boasted. “I’ve spent a lot of time with her and I hope that I’ll have the opportunity to work with her in the future,” she added. “But we could talk about lots of different leaders if you want to sometime.” AFP
trating the respect Peres gained over the years in his transformation from hawk to committed peace advocate. His death on Wednesday at the age of 93 led to an outpouring of tributes worldwide for Israel’s last remaining founding father. An estimated 30,000 people filed past his coffin as he lay in state outside parliament in Jerusalem on Thursday. Former US president Bill Clinton was among those who paid last respects there, appearing moved as he stood in silence before the coffin. Clinton had helped usher in the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s, which resulted in the Nobel Peace Prize for Peres. After Peres’s death, he called him “a genius with a big heart.” Obama is expected to arrive on Friday morning and depart after the ceremony. Around 8,000 police were being de-
ployed for the commemorations. “We are dealing with an operation on an unprecedented scale,” said police chief Roni Alsheikh. The last time such an event was held in Israel was the 1995 funeral for Yitzhak Rabin, Peres’s rival in the Labor party but partner in negotiating the Oslo accords. Peres will be buried next to Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist opposed to the accords. In a career spanning seven decades, Peres held nearly every major office, serving twice as prime minister and as president, a mainly ceremonial role, from 2007 to 2014. He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.
STOCKHOLM—The architects of a historic accord to end Colombia’s 52-year war are among the favorites to win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize as speculation mounts ahead of next week’s honors. The awards season opens Monday with the announcement of the medicine prize laureates in Stockholm, but the most keenlywatched award is that for peace on October 7. The Norwegian Nobel Institute has received a whopping 376 nominations for the peace prize, a huge increase from the previous record of 278 in 2014 -- so guessing the winner is anybody’s game. Experts, online betting sites and commentators have all placed the Colombian government and leftist FARC rebels on their lists of likely laureates. Other names featuring prominently are Russian rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina, the negotiators behind Iran’s nuclear deal Ernest Moniz of the US and Ali Akbar Salehi of Iran, Greek islanders helping desperate migrants, as well as Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege who helps rape victims, and US fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden. US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is also known to have been nominated, but his chances are seen as low. Dan Smith, head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), said Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Timoleon Jimenez would be worthy winners this year, even though the ink on their historic peace accord is barely dry. Four years of negotiations culminated on Monday when Santos and Jimenez signed the peace deal, which will only be ratified after an October 2 referendum on the accord. “My hope is that today’s Nobel Committee in Oslo is inspired by their predecessors’ decision to award the 1993 prize to Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, architects of the peaceful end of apartheid,” he told AFP.
12 bodies found in Mexico river GUADALAJARA—Authorities have recovered 12 bodies in a western Mexican river near a lake popular among US tourists, as suspicion about the deaths turned toward two drug gangs on Thursday. Three bodies were found in the Lerma river on Thursday afternoon, after nine others were recovered in the first three days of the week, said Eduardo Almaguer, the top prosecutor in Jalisco state. “Twelve bodies have been found in the Lerma river and its mouth at Lake Chapala,” Almaguer told reporters. He did not say how the three new victims died. The nine other bodies showed “show signs of violence,” he said. A police official said at least two of those victims had bullet wounds and two others were mutilated. “If two criminal groups participated in this situation, our obligation is to arrest them,” Almaguer said, without naming the gangs. The bodies were recovered within the municipality of Jamay, a fishing area. The lake is also surrounded by a large expat community, including retirees.
The western state has been hit by violence perpetrated by the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful and violent criminal groups. Almaguer said some victims may have been killed in Jalisco and others in the neighboring state of Michoacan, another major flashpoint in Mexico’s decade-long drug war. Jamay is near the municipality of La Barca, which lies near the JaliscoMichoacan border, where 75 bodies were unearthed from 37 clandestine graves between late 2013 and early 2014. In the river case, Almaguer said his office has asked the authorities in Michoacan and the state of Guanajuato for help in identifying the bodies, in case the victims came from those states. “We don’t have any report of abduction, which is why the process of identification and the prosecution of this crime have been slow,” he said. About an hour’s drive from Jamay, federal police killed 42 New Generation cartel suspects on a ranch in the Michoacan munici-
pality of Tanhuato in May 2015. Only one officer was killed in the clash, a lopsided death toll that raised suspicions that police had either used excessive force. The National Human Rights Commission issued a scathing report last month alleging that 22 civilians were “arbitrarily executed” during the operation. The report prompted President Enrique Pena Nieto to fire federal police chief Enrique Galindo. The New Generation cartel had killed some 30 police officers and soldiers in the weeks prior to the Tanhuato incident. In one clash, the gang downed a military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade earlier in May 2015. But the Jalisco gang has also clashed with rival criminals in neighboring Michoacan state, where the Knights Templar drug cartel once held sway. Farmers formed vigilante forces to counter the Knights Templar in 2013 and the cartel has been severely weakened, but smaller gangs have since emerged and continue to wreak havoc in the state. AFP
MOMENT. Rapper Joey Bada$$ performs onstage at MTV’s ‘Wonderland’ LIVE Show on Thursday in Los Angeles, California. AFP
Abstract painter Shirley Jaffe, 93 PARIS—US artist Shirley Jaffe, an influential painter in contemporary abstract art, died on Thursday aged 93, after spending most of her life living and working in France, the gallery that represented her announced. Born in 1923 in New Jersey, Jaffe moved to Paris in 1949 after studying fine art in New York and Washington. A close friend of fellow Americans Sam Francis and James Bishop, both painters, the adopted daughter of Paris was represented for several decades by the prestigious art gallery Jean Fournier. Jaffe first came to be known in the
art scene for her abstract expressionist work. She broke away from this style in the early 1960s, adopting instead a colorful, geometric style. “Considered one of the most influential painters in contemporary abstract art, she caught the attention of artists from younger generations, such as Jessica Stockholder and Bernard Piffaretti,” the Nathalie Obadia gallery, which had represented her since 1999, said in a statement. At the turn of the century Jaffe designed stained glass windows for the chapel of Perpignan in southern France. AFP