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10 WORLD<br />
OMANDAILYOBSERVER SATURDAY l FEBRUARY 18 l 2017<br />
DEPARTED SOULS REMEMBERED<br />
Queen Mathilde (L), King Philippe-Filip (2nd L), Princess Maria Esmeralda (2nd R) and Princess Lea of Belgium (R) stand as they listen during a special mass to<br />
commemorate the deceased members of the Belgian Royal Family, at the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwkerk, in Laeken-Laken, Brussels, on Friday. — AFP<br />
Your looks may<br />
not influence<br />
pay cheque<br />
LONDON: A fat pay cheque may be<br />
influenced by more than just physical<br />
attractiveness or the lack of it, say<br />
researchers dispelling the ‘beauty<br />
premium’ theory which says beautiful<br />
people earn more while those who are<br />
not so gorgeous are paid less.<br />
The findings showed that healthier<br />
and more intelligent people and<br />
those with more conscientious,<br />
more extraverted and less neurotic<br />
personality traits are the ones who<br />
take fatter pay checks home.<br />
“Physically more attractive workers<br />
may earn more, not necessarily<br />
because they are more beautiful,<br />
but because they are healthier, more<br />
intelligent and have better personality<br />
traits conducive to higher earnings,<br />
such as being more conscientious,<br />
more extraverted and less neurotic,”<br />
said Satoshi Kanazawa from the<br />
London School of Economics and<br />
Political Science.<br />
Economists have widely<br />
documented the “beauty premium” —<br />
or, conversely, the “ugliness penalty”<br />
— on wages. Population-based<br />
surveys in the US and Canada for<br />
instance showed that people who are<br />
physically attractive earn more.<br />
For the study, detailed in the<br />
Journal of Business and Psychology,<br />
the team analysed a nationally<br />
representative sample from a US<br />
data set that measured physical<br />
attractiveness of all respondents on a<br />
five-point scale at four different points<br />
in life over 13 years. — IANS<br />
Italy minister says June<br />
national vote impossible<br />
ROME: A prominent Italian minister<br />
said on Friday it would be impossible<br />
to hold a national election in June,<br />
as the head of the ruling Democratic<br />
Party (PD) is urging.<br />
The PD party leader, former Prime<br />
Minister Matteo Renzi, last week<br />
called for a PD leadership contest<br />
in a bid to reassert his authority,<br />
after he lost last year’s constitutional<br />
reform referendum and resigned in<br />
December.<br />
Renzi is expected to resign as<br />
party leader at a PD assembly on<br />
Sunday. That would probably trigger<br />
a leadership contest — which begins<br />
with a party congress, followed by a<br />
primary vote — and could open the<br />
way for an early vote.<br />
But Culture Minister Dario<br />
Franceschini, who leads a large PD<br />
faction, on Friday urged Renzi to<br />
postpone the party congress in an<br />
effort to keep the party together. He<br />
also argued that the party hasn’t got<br />
enough time for a congress, a primary<br />
and a national election in June.<br />
“We need not rush to hold the<br />
congress,” Franceschini said in an<br />
interview with the newspaper la<br />
We need not rush to hold<br />
the congress. There is<br />
time, given the fact it’s no<br />
longer possible to vote in<br />
June<br />
DARIO FRANCESCHINI<br />
Culture Minister<br />
Repubblica. “There is time, given the<br />
fact it’s no longer possible to vote in<br />
June.” The legislature’s term is not due<br />
to end until February 2018.<br />
Polls show that Renzi should easily<br />
win back control of the party. But PD<br />
dissidents are threatening to quit and<br />
form a rival party, accusing him of<br />
being authoritarian and of dragging<br />
the PD away from its leftist roots.<br />
Renzi, in an interview with<br />
Corriere della Sera newspaper on<br />
Friday, repeated pleas to party rivals<br />
not to leave, but gave no signal that he<br />
would slow his push for a congress and<br />
early vote.<br />
Three-quarters of PD voters do not<br />
want a party split, and 64 per cent want<br />
Renzi to remain the bloc’s secretary, an<br />
Ixe poll published on Friday by state<br />
TV RAI showed.<br />
But many fear the PD will fare<br />
badly in local elections scheduled<br />
for June, and parliament continues<br />
to squabble over changing Italy’s<br />
proportional electoral laws, which are<br />
slightly different for the upper and<br />
lower houses.<br />
Under current laws, the party<br />
leader has the power to select many<br />
of the candidates, meaning Renzi’s<br />
internal foes might not make it into<br />
the next parliament if he keeps his<br />
post.<br />
If they form a rival party, the critics<br />
would be able to create their own list<br />
of candidates and would also bleed<br />
votes from the PD, making it harder<br />
for Renzi to regain power.<br />
The PD is now polling at about 30<br />
per cent, which means it would not be<br />
able to govern alone if a vote were held<br />
under the current proportional voting<br />
systems. — Reuters<br />
Environmental lawyer<br />
murdered in Philippines<br />
MANILA: A Philippine lawyer<br />
who specialised in investigating<br />
crimes against the environment<br />
has been ambushed and shot dead,<br />
police said on Friday.<br />
The murder on Wednesday<br />
of Mia Manuelita Mascarinas-<br />
Green deepened concerns that<br />
the Philippines is one of the<br />
world’s most dangerous places for<br />
environmental campaigners, with<br />
more than 100 killed over the past<br />
15 years.<br />
Four motorcycle-riding<br />
gunmen opened fire after<br />
surrounding a van being driven<br />
by Mascarinas-Green — with her<br />
children and nanny in the vehicle<br />
— near her home on the central<br />
island of Bohol, the authorities<br />
said.<br />
Mascarinas-Green was<br />
pronounced dead at a hospital<br />
but her children were unharmed,<br />
regional police spokesman Senior<br />
Inspector Reslin Abella said.<br />
“The victim is a known<br />
environmental<br />
lawyer.<br />
Investigators are checking whether<br />
the attack had any link to the cases<br />
she had handled in relation to<br />
environmental issues,” Abella said<br />
by telephone.<br />
“They now have the identity<br />
of at least one of the perpetrators<br />
and a hot pursuit operation is<br />
ongoing,” she said without naming<br />
the suspect.<br />
Abella said police were at the<br />
moment unaware if Mascarinas-<br />
Green had been threatened<br />
previously in relation to her work.<br />
Her children are twins, aged<br />
two, and a 10-year-old daughter,<br />
according to local media reports.<br />
CEMENTING RELATIONS<br />
Her death brings to 112<br />
the number of environmental<br />
campaigners murdered in the<br />
Philippines over the past 15 years,<br />
according to Filipino environment<br />
monitor Kalikasan.<br />
This includes 12 since President<br />
Rodrigo Duterte took office seven<br />
months ago, Kalikasan said.<br />
“Most of these cases remain<br />
unresolved as the government<br />
continues to ignore the threat<br />
against environmental defenders,”<br />
Clemente Bautista, its national<br />
coordinator said.<br />
“What this means is that the<br />
perpetrators are emboldened to<br />
do it again and again because no<br />
one ever gets caught.”<br />
Greenpeace Southeast Asia<br />
executive director Yeb Sano<br />
also said the killing highlighted<br />
the culture of impunity in the<br />
Philippines, where powerful<br />
figures abuse a corrupt political<br />
and justice system to literally get<br />
away with murder.<br />
“Those who cause<br />
environmental destruction are<br />
resorting to savage measures<br />
and deplorable acts to stop<br />
communities and people who<br />
are standing up to protect our<br />
imperilled environment,” Sano<br />
said.<br />
Environmental monitor Global<br />
Witness separately lists 88 killings<br />
of environmental activists and<br />
workers in the Philippines between<br />
2010 and 2015. The attacks spiked<br />
with 33 dead in 2015, ranking the<br />
Philippines as the second most<br />
dangerous country in the world<br />
for environmental campaigners<br />
behind Brazil. — AFP/dpa<br />
Romania’s Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu (L) shakes hands with European<br />
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker upon his arrival at the European<br />
Commission in Brussels on Friday. — AFP<br />
WAR ANNIVERSARY MARKED<br />
Ethical qualms make UK police<br />
cameras a mixed success<br />
People place flowers and incenses sticks during a small rally marking the 38th anniversary of the Chinese border war against<br />
Vietnam (February 17, 1979) in front of the statue of Vietnam’s King Ly Thai To in downtown Hanoi on Friday. — AFP<br />
LONDON: With accusations of<br />
police misconduct raging on both<br />
sides of the Atlantic, Britain has taken<br />
the lead in supplying officers with<br />
body cameras despite worries about<br />
ever-increasing surveillance by the<br />
authorities.<br />
London’s Metropolitan Police<br />
Force is currently providing over<br />
22,000 officers with Body Worn Video<br />
(BWV), saying it will “help officers<br />
to gather evidence and demonstrate<br />
their professionalism.”<br />
The force is one of around a dozen<br />
that have tested wearable technology,<br />
motivated by a fatal police shooting in<br />
2011 that sparked widespread riots, as<br />
well as a major study that suggested<br />
they led to a 93 per cent reduction in<br />
complaints against the police.<br />
A series of police shootings in the<br />
United States and the recent claims of<br />
rape against a French policeman have<br />
intensified an international debate<br />
about whether cameras should be<br />
used all the time.<br />
British police say they have helped<br />
defuse tense encounters and speed<br />
up prosecutions, but the absence of<br />
a legal obligation to use them means<br />
their scope in uncovering any police<br />
misconduct could be limited.<br />
Privacy advocates also fear that the<br />
speed of technological advancement<br />
is outpacing ethical considerations<br />
about privacy.<br />
“While we understand the<br />
perceived transparency benefits<br />
relating to body-worn cameras, we<br />
do have profound concerns about the<br />
potential rollout of the technology for<br />
purposes beyond law enforcement,”<br />
Renate Samson, head of Big Brother<br />
Watch, said.<br />
Officials such as traffic wardens<br />
and even local council litter enforcers<br />
see the “new capabilities as the<br />
solution to a broad range of problems”,<br />
she said. “We could find ourselves<br />
being filmed all the time by officials<br />
wandering the streets.”<br />
Bernard Hogan-Howe, Chief<br />
Commissioner of the Metropolitan<br />
Police, began a trial of body-worn<br />
video cameras in 2014 after the death<br />
of Mark Duggan, who was shot by<br />
officers in north London in August<br />
2011.<br />
The death led to riots in London<br />
and other major cities, and the police<br />
chief said the use of cameras would aid<br />
investigations into police shootings.<br />
However, the fatal shooting of<br />
Yassar Yaqub by West Yorkshire<br />
Police marksmen during a car chase<br />
last month was not caught on camera<br />
despite a force-wide rollout of the<br />
devices.<br />
Home Office guidelines state that<br />
“the decision to record or not to<br />
record any incident remains with the<br />
user”. — AFP