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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2016
World
SPICE. Indian Bollywood actor Arjun Rampal (center) with Indian designers and models at the Blenders Pride Fashion Tour 2016 attend the “Reflections of Style” event in Mumbai on
IS claims Baghdad bombing, 10 dead BAGHDAD—Suicide bombers struck two Shiite-majority areas of the Iraqi capital Monday, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 30, officials said, attacks claimed by the Islamic State group. In the deadliest blast, a bomber detonated explosives in the Amil neighborhood of southern Baghdad, killing at least six people and wounding 16 or more, officials said. Another bomber detonated explosives near a garage for taxis and buses and a tent providing refreshments to passersby as part of a Shiite religious ritual, killing at least four people and wounding 18. IS issued a statement claiming the attack, saying it targeted Shiite Muslims whom the Sunni extremist group considers to be heretics. IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, and while the jihadists have since lost signficant ground, they retain the capacity to carry out frequent attacks in government-held areas. Iraqi forces are preparing for an assault on Mosul, a city in the north that is the last held by IS in the country. But the IS threat will not end even with Mosul’s recapture, and the jihadists will be likely to increasingly revert to insurgent tactics such as bombings if they lose the city. AFP
Monday. AFP
Wedding blast kills 22 B
EIRUT—A suicide bomber killed at least 22 people Monday in an attack targeting a party in the northeastern Syrian province of Hasakeh, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and medics said.
“A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a hall in Tall Tawil village during the wedding of a member of the Syrian Democratic Forces, killing at least 22 civilians,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. The SDF is an Arab-Kurdish coalition battling jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group in northern Syria. On the same day, United States abandoned its effort to convince Russia to impose a ceasefire on the Syrian regime as government forces pursued their relentless onslaught on eastern Aleppo. Meanwhile, the United Nations Syria envoy voiced deep disappointment Monday at the collapse of US-Russian talks to revive
a Syria ceasefire, but vowed to keep working for a political solution. “The UN will continue to push energetically for a political solution of the Syrian conflict regardless of the very disappointing outcome of intense and long discussions among two crucial international stakeholders,” the office of Staffan de Mistura said in a statement. Accusing Moscow of abetting Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad’s assault on civilian districts of the city, Washington said it had suspended bilateral talks with Russia on reviving a truce. “Everybody’s patience with Russia has run out,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told re-
porters. A State Department official said US Secretary of State John Kerry is “laser-focused” on finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict through multilateral channels. But his near-daily telephone calls and regular Geneva talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the crisis are over. “This is not a decision that was taken lightly,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said, announcing an end to plans to set up a joint US-Russian military cell to target jihadists. There was no word on what America’s “Plan B” might be despite rumors of tougher US sanctions and talk that Saudi Arabia and Qatar might step up arms shipments to anti-Assad rebels. At the United Nations, Russia dismissed a French-drafted UN resolution aimed at imposing a ceasefire in Aleppo as having “no chance of working,” insisting the priority should be fighting jihadists in Syria.
“I’m not even sure many other council members would like to see a resolution on cessation of hostilities which has no chance of working,” Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said. “If the only effect of that resolution is that the secretary general will start thinking of some monitoring mechanism which is not going to work in the first place, then there is not much sense in having that resolution.” The Russian and US militaries will keep a communications channel set up to ensure their forces do not get in each other’s way during “counter-terrorism operations in Syria,” Kirby said. But US personnel who had been sent to Geneva to set up a “Joint Implementation Center” with Russian officers are coming home. “We regret this decision by Washington,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, Russian news agencies reported. A truce was declared on Septem-
ber 12 under a deal Kerry and Lavrov signed in Geneva last month, but it collapsed within a week. Washington accused Moscow of failing to rein in Assad’s government forces and of carrying out air strikes on civilian targets, including a UN aid convoy. Moscow, meanwhile, says the United States failed to separate “moderate” anti-Assad rebels from jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda. According to Kirby, Russia was “unwilling or unable to ensure Syrian regime adherence to the arrangements to which Moscow agreed.” The US spokesman accused Moscow and Damascus of targeting hospitals and preventing aid from reaching desperate civilians. The Russian response was just as stark. “Washington simply did not fulfil the key condition of the agreement,” Zakharova said of Washington’s struggle to separate opposition fighters from the jihadist Fateh al-Sham Front. AFP
Paris home for street art PARIS—Not content with spray painting its way into the urban collective consciousness, street art is at last graduating to the gallery as Paris opens its first permanent exhibition of the genre. After a Rome exhibition for British graffiti king Banksy, French counterpart JR’s trompe l’oeil wrapping of the Louvre Pyramid and a feast of “Urban Exploration” at Villa Medicis, now comes a Parisian sequel--150 works on permanent show at the Art 42 peer-to-peer learning center. The exhibition which opens this month is a further sign of how street art is establishing itself as an
art form in its own right, some 50 years after early proponents used metro tunnels and handy walls as blank canvases. Over in the US, Jessica Goldman Srebnick a decade ago was afraid of walking through Wynwood, a derelict warehouse neighborhood in Miami. Today, she is the virtual curator of an open-air art gallery that has turned the area into one of the hippest places in the United States. Windowless factory warehouses in the bleak urban district have become a venue where artists, including internationally famous ones, paint murals that raise street
art to new heights. Meanwhile, global contemporary art sales slowed by a quarter in the year to July 2016 as demand in China dried up, according to leading index Artprice. Turnover was $1.5 billion (1.3 billion euros) compared with $2.1 billion in the previous year. “The market saw a healthy period of adjustment, which was as necessary as it was predictable,” Artprice founder and chief executive Thierry Ehrmann said in the report released on Sunday. Despite the correction, contemporary art “remains a particularly high-performing long-term investment,” Artprice said. AFP
Get out, Merkel—xenophobes DRESDEN—Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel was greeted on Monday by whistles and shouts of “Get out” after arriving in Dresden -- birthplace of xenophobic movement Pegida -- for German reunification celebrations. The angry crowd also waved signs saying “Merkel must go” in the east German city, where some 2,600 police were deployed as a security precaution. The German leader has been under pressure at home over her liberal refugee policy that saw an influx of nearly 900,000 migrants last year.
Dresden is hosting national celebrations to mark 26 years since the reunification of East and West Germany, with the chancellor and President Joachim Gauck in attendance. Supporters of Pegida, the antiimmigrant, xenophobic group that began in Dresden, also gave Gauck a hostile greeting upon his arrival. The group initially drew just a few hundred supporters to its demonstrations before gaining strength, peaking with rallies of up to 25,000 people in early 2015.
Though Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) took a drubbing in recent regional polls, she insisted on the sidelines of Monday’s celebrations that “mutual respect” and “acceptance of very divergent political opinions” are needed to meet the challenges facing Germany. Norbert Lammert, the speaker of the German parliament, took aim at those who “whistle and shout” but who “clearly don’t have the slightest memory of the condition of this city and this region were in before reunification”. AFP
ROAR. A mascot scares guests at the Shin Godzilla Los Angeles premiere on Monday in Los Angeles, California. AFP
Trump stopped from raising funds NEW YORK—The top state prosecutor in New York has ordered Republican nominee Donald Trump’s charitable foundation to stop fund-raising in New York immediately, saying that it was operating without proper certification. The office of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told the Donald J. Trump foundation last Friday that it must “cease and desist from soliciting contributions” in New York. The notice was made public on Monday. The notice of violation informed the charity that it had been engaged in fundraising activities that were not permitted under the law because they had not been registered with state authorities. “Failure to immediately discontinue solicitation... shall be deemed to be a continuing fraud upon the people of the state of New York,” the letter warned. The notice gave the Foundation 15 days to registered the required information and file delinquent financial reports of any fundraising activities in previous years with the state’s Charities Bureau. “All forms must be properly certified, complete and accurate,” said the letter. “Any person who swears falsely to any document required... may be guilty of a crime under the New York Penal Code,” it added. The Trump campaign was tight-lipped Monday in response. “Because this is an ongoing legal matter, the Trump Foundation will not comment further at this time,” the Republican nominee’s spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in a statement carried by The New York Times. Schneiderman, who is a Democrat, filed a lawsuit in 2013 against the real-estate tycoon accusing his now defunct, self-styled Trump University of being an elaborate scam. A trial into alleged malpractice at Trump University is scheduled to begin in San Diego, California on November 28 -- three weeks after the presidential election between Trump and his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. AFP