SPORT | 12 BUSINESS | 01 Minister Al Kaabi meets with India’s Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas Al Rayyan face Esteghlal hurdle as Al Sailiya eye upset in ACL play-offs Tuesday 28 January 2020 3 Jumada II - 1441 2 Riyals www.thepeninsula.qa Volume 24 | Number 8150 Sidra to launch several services for women in 2020 FAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA Sidra Medicine, a member of Qatar Foundation, has announced a slew of new services to be introduced in 2020 including opening of a state-of-the-art In-Vitro Ferti- lization (IVF) facility in the first quarter of the year. The other facilities and services include opening of an expanded postpartum unit with new deluxe rooms and suites, starting operating outpatient evening clinics for obstetrics and gynaecology services, offering cervical screenings and opening a Women’s Adult Pain Clinic. The Women’s Services Pro- gramme at Sidra Medicine has progressed remarkably since opening of the main hospital in 2018, said Dr Abdulla Al Kaabi, Chief Medical Officer at Sidra Medicine, addressing a press conference held yesterday. “Within two years, we have expanded from maternity, gynaecology and maternal-fetal medicine to include a robust line up that covers a wider spectrum of services covering repro- ductive as well as maternal child health and much more,” he said. “I am very excited to announce that this quarter we will see the launch of our IVF facility in addition to several other new programmes.” Over the next few days, Sidra Medicine will open new Deluxe Maternity rooms and suites fitted out with adjoining lounge areas and ensuite facilities. The suites also include a separate connecting reception room. Also a new Women’s Adult Pain Clinic will start to treat chronic pain in women via medication, nerve blocks, active physical therapy and behavioural interventions. “Sidra Medicine’s multidis- ciplinary approach has been structured keeping the woman and her needs and choices in mind,” said Dr Michel Makhlouf, Acting Chair of Women’s Services at Sidra Medicine. P4 MoTC launches Qatar Internet Exchange Point SACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA Minister of Transport and Communications, H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti yesterday launched the first Internet Exchange Point in Qatar (QIXP). Established in MEEZA data center, the QIXP will enable local networks to exchange information efficiently at a common point within the country instead of exchanging the local information outside the country, thus ensuring that Internet users in Qatar have faster and a more secure access to the digital content. The QIXP functions as a meeting point between Internet service providers and digital content service providers for the exchange of data and information. It is one of the key compo- nents of Internet infrastructure, which will directly contribute to improving the quality of the Internet, developing the Infor- mation and Communications Technology Sector (ICT), raising the performance of networks by reducing the latency of accessing the content and reducing the number of intermediate points. “We are pleased to launch QIXP today, which is a new achievement in developing the essential components of Internet infrastructure in the ICT sector of Qatar,” said H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti. “This project will contribute to further improve the country’s international network readiness rankings and to attract global content providers, in addition to enabling the new generations for creativity in the digital content realm and building up the aspired digital future, thus contributing to achieving Qatar National Vision 2030 goals by providing a world- class infrastructural and informatics backbone and a knowledge-based economy that contributes to diversifying the national economy,” added H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti. His Excellency pointed out that the Ministry has a plan to launch 3 other major Internet Exchange points this year. On a question about the State’s preparations in terms of transport systems for the 2022 World Cup, H E the Minister said that the Ministry has integrated plans for launching several alter- natives of transportation that are safe and environmentally friendly during the next two years in prep- aration for the World Cup, as well as to encourage individuals to use public transport and increase dependence on electric public transportation where about 25 percent of the public transport fleet in Qatar will be environmen- tally friendly. The launch event was attended by Mohammed Ali Al Mannai, President of the Com- munications Regulatory Authority (CRA), and by repre- sentatives of the entities that form the QIXP Steering Com- mittee like, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Edu- cation and Higher Education, Qatar University, Qatar National Library, Qatar National Broadband Network (QNBN), the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) under Qatar Foundation for Education, Sciences and Community Development, Ooredoo Qatar, Vodafone Qatar and Gulf Bridge International (GBI).P2 Amir discusses Libya issue with German Chancellor QNA — DOHA Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani yesterday held a telephone conversation with German Chancellor H E Dr Angela Merkel. During the phone call, they exchanged views on a number of regional and international issues, particularly develop- ments in Libya. H H the Amir affirmed the support of the State of Qatar to the outputs of the Berlin Conference. The two sides stressed the need to adhere to the ceasefire and calm and to provide space for dialogue, in order to pre- serve the lives of Libyans and to prevent bloodshed. During the call, they reviewed the solid bilateral relations between the two friendly countries and means of enhancing and developing them. THE PENINSULA — DOHA The Ministry of Public Health has confirmed that no cases of China Novel Coronavirus have been detected in Qatar, and called on the public not to pay attention to any infor- mation not issued by trusted authorities. The MoPH will continue to keep the public updated, said the statement issued by the Ministry yesterday. No cases of new coronavirus in Qatar: MoPH Registration for National Address through MoI website, Metrash2 begins THE PENINSULA — DOHA The registration of the National Address has started from yesterday through the Metrash2 app and Ministry of Interior (MoI) website. Residents and citizens can also register directly at MoI Services Centres. In Metrash 2, when Qatar ID holder fills in the infor- mation on National Address, children under 18 years old under their sponsorship will be automatically registered in the same address. Spouse will have to register separately. One needs to fill in their home address, telephone number, and email address. Work address, if not automatically filled in, also needs to be typed in. Once regis- tration is done, residents will receive an SMS confirming the same with the details entered. MoI has urged the public to register their address within the specified period of six months that ends on July 26, 2020. The National Address will serve many government entities such as the Ministry of Municipality and Environment; the Ministry of Justice; the Supreme Judiciary Council and Planning and Statistics Authority, a senior official had said earlier. Minister of Transport and Communications, H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti, launching the Qatar Internet Exchange Point as other officials look on. The QIXP functions as a meeting point between Internet service providers and digital content service providers for the exchange of data and information. Crackdown on farms running non-agricultural activities SANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) has detected 82 agricultural farms for carrying non-agricultural activities like running labour camps, warehouses in the municipalities of Al Sheehaniya, Al Rayan, Al Wakra and Umm Salal. The non-agricultural activ- ities were shutdown completely in 48 erring farms while 34 farms committing minor viola- tions have rectified their situation. The action was taken under a nationwide campaign launched by the MME in collab- oration with the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs; Ministry of Commerce and Industry; and Internal Security Force (Lekhwiya) to ensure that the agricultural farms are com- plying with the laws. The inspection campaign reached at the farms in Al Khor and Al Zakhira Municipality and soon it will move to Al Dayeen and Al Shamal. The details about the campaign were given by officials at a press conference held at Al Mansour Tower of the MME yesterday. Addressing the press con- ference, Jabir Hasan Al Jabir, Director of Al Sheehaniya Municipality who is the Head of Team for Follow up the Vio- lations at Farms said: “Under the campaign, violations were removed at 20 farms out of total 32 erring farms in Al Sheehaniya Municipality while 12 farms with minor violations have rectified their situation.” Al Jabir said that Al Rayan Municipality witnessed the removal of 12 violations and seven rectifications. “Five major violations were removed at Al Wakra Munic- ipality and another eight vio- lations are being removed,” said Al Jabir. P3 Qatar handball team receiving the winners' trophy from Qatar Olympic Commiee President, H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani, in Kuwait yesterday. Qatar crushed South Korea 33-21 to win the 19th Asian Championship in Kuwait. Sport 12 Qatar crush South Korea to win Asian Handball Championship Trump to unveil his Mideast peace plan today QNA/AFP — WASHINGTON, RAMALLAH US President Donald Trump said yesterday that he will unveil his Middle East peace proposal today. In press statement while meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House, Trump said his plan “makes a lot of sense for everybody.” Trump will deliver joint remarks with Netanyahu at the White House today to outline his plan. “This is an opportunity for peace,” Trump said, “well show a plan that has been worked on by everyone. Well see if it catches hold. If it does, thatd be great. If it doesnt, its okay.” The Palestinian presi- dency has frequently warned of the dangerous conse- quences of the so-called “deal of the century” on the entire region. Palestinian leaders, who have not been invited to the White House, have already rejected the US initiative. “We call on the interna- tional community to not be partners in this (plan) because it contravenes international law,” Palestinian prime min- ister Mohammed Shtayyeh told journalists ahead of a weekly cabinet meeting, yesterday. The details of Trump’s ini- tiative, which has been in the works since 2017, are not yet public. P10
Transcript
SPORT | 12BUSINESS | 01
Minister Al Kaabi meets with India’s
Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas
Al Rayyan face Esteghlal hurdle as Al Sailiya eye upset in ACL play-offs
Tuesday 28 January 2020
3 Jumada II - 1441
2 Riyals
www.thepeninsula.qa
Volume 24 | Number 8150
Sidra to launch several services for women in 2020FAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA
Sidra Medicine, a member of Qatar Foundation, has announced a slew of new services to be introduced in 2020 including opening of a state-of-the-art In-Vitro Ferti-lization (IVF) facility in the first quarter of the year.
The other facilities and services include opening of an
expanded postpartum unit with new deluxe rooms and suites, starting operating outpatient evening clinics for obstetrics and gynaecology services, offering cervical screenings and opening a Women’s Adult Pain Clinic.
The Women’s Services Pro-gramme at Sidra Medicine has progressed remarkably since opening of the main hospital in 2018, said Dr Abdulla Al
Kaabi, Chief Medical Officer at Sidra Medicine, addressing a press conference held yesterday.
“Within two years, we have expanded from maternity, gynaecology and maternal-fetal medicine to include a robust line up that covers a wider spectrum of services covering repro-ductive as well as maternal child health and much more,” he said.
“I am very excited to
announce that this quarter we will see the launch of our IVF facility in addition to several other new programmes.”
Over the next few days, Sidra Medicine will open new Deluxe Maternity rooms and suites fitted out with adjoining lounge areas and ensuite facilities. The suites also include a separate connecting reception room. Also a new Women’s Adult Pain Clinic
will start to treat chronic pain in women via medication, nerve blocks, active physical therapy and behavioural interventions.
“Sidra Medicine’s multidis-ciplinary approach has been structured keeping the woman and her needs and choices in mind,” said Dr Michel Makhlouf, Acting Chair of Women’s Services at Sidra Medicine. �P4
MoTC launches Qatar Internet Exchange Point
SACHIN KUMAR THE PENINSULA
Minister of Transport and Communications, H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti yesterday launched the first Internet Exchange Point in Qatar (QIXP). Established in MEEZA data center, the QIXP will enable local networks to exchange information efficiently at a common point within the country instead of exchanging the local information outside the country, thus ensuring that Internet users in Qatar have faster and a more secure access to the digital content.
The QIXP functions as a meeting point between Internet service providers and digital content service providers for the exchange of data and information.
It is one of the key compo-nents of Internet infrastructure, which will directly contribute to
improving the quality of the Internet, developing the Infor-mation and Communications Technology Sector (ICT), raising the performance of networks by reducing the latency of accessing the content and reducing the number of intermediate points.
“We are pleased to launch QIXP today, which is a new achievement in developing the essential components of Internet infrastructure in the ICT sector of Qatar,” said H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti.
“This project will contribute to further improve the country’s international network readiness rankings and to attract global content providers, in addition to enabling the new generations for creativity in the digital content realm and building up the aspired digital future, thus contributing to achieving Qatar National Vision 2030 goals by providing a world-class infrastructural and
informatics backbone and a knowledge-based economy that contributes to diversifying the national economy,” added H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti.
His Excellency pointed out that the Ministry has a plan to launch 3 other major Internet Exchange points this year.
On a question about the State’s preparations in terms of transport systems for the 2022 World Cup, H E the Minister said that the Ministry has integrated plans for launching several alter-natives of transportation that are
safe and environmentally friendly during the next two years in prep-aration for the World Cup, as well as to encourage individuals to use public transport and increase dependence on electric public transportation where about 25 percent of the public transport fleet in Qatar will be environmen-tally friendly.
The launch event was attended by Mohammed Ali Al Mannai, President of the Com-munications Regulatory Authority (CRA), and by repre-sentatives of the entities that
form the QIXP Steering Com-mittee like, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Edu-cation and Higher Education, Qatar University, Qatar National Library, Qatar National Broadband Network (QNBN), the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) under Qatar Foundation for Education, Sciences and Community Development, Ooredoo Qatar, Vodafone Qatar and Gulf Bridge International (GBI).�P2
Amir discussesLibya issuewith GermanChancellor
QNA — DOHA
Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani yesterday held a telephone conversation with German Chancellor H E Dr Angela Merkel.
During the phone call, they exchanged views on a number of regional and international issues, particularly develop-ments in Libya. H H the Amir affirmed the support of the State of Qatar to the outputs of the Berlin Conference.
The two sides stressed the need to adhere to the ceasefire and calm and to provide space for dialogue, in order to pre-serve the lives of Libyans and to prevent bloodshed.
During the call, they reviewed the solid bilateral relations between the two friendly countries and means of enhancing and developing them.
THE PENINSULA — DOHA
The Ministry of Public Health has confirmed that no cases of China Novel Coronavirus have been detected in Qatar, and called on the public not to pay attention to any infor-mation not issued by trusted authorities. The MoPH will continue to keep the public updated, said the statement issued by the Ministry yesterday.
No cases of new coronavirus in Qatar: MoPH
Registration for National Address through MoI website, Metrash2 begins THE PENINSULA — DOHA
The registration of the National Address has started from yesterday through the Metrash2 app and Ministry of Interior (MoI) website. Residents and citizens can also register directly at MoI Services Centres.
In Metrash 2, when Qatar ID holder fills in the infor-mation on National Address, children under 18 years old under their sponsorship will be automatically registered in the same address. Spouse will have to register separately.
One needs to fill in their home address, telephone number, and
email address. Work address, if not automatically filled in, also needs to be typed in. Once regis-tration is done, residents will receive an SMS confirming the same with the details entered.
MoI has urged the public to register their address within the specified period of six months that ends on July 26, 2020.
The National Address will serve many government entities such as the Ministry of Municipality and Environment; the Ministry of Justice; the Supreme Judiciary Council and Planning and Statistics Authority, a senior official had said earlier.
Minister of Transport and Communications, H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti, launching the Qatar Internet Exchange Point as other officials look on.
The QIXP functions as a meeting point between Internet service providers and digital content service providers for the exchange of data and information.
Crackdown on farms running non-agricultural activitiesSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA
The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) has detected 82 agricultural farms for carrying non-agricultural activities like running labour camps, warehouses in the municipalities of Al Sheehaniya, Al Rayan, Al Wakra and Umm Salal.
The non-agricultural activ-ities were shutdown completely in 48 erring farms while 34 farms committing minor viola-tions have rectified their situation.
The action was taken under a nationwide campaign launched by the MME in collab-oration with the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs;
Ministry of Commerce and Industry; and Internal Security Force (Lekhwiya) to ensure that the agricultural farms are com-plying with the laws.
The inspection campaign reached at the farms in Al Khor and Al Zakhira Municipality and soon it will move to Al Dayeen and Al Shamal. The details about the campaign were given by officials at a press
conference held at Al Mansour Tower of the MME yesterday.
Addressing the press con-ference, Jabir Hasan Al Jabir, Director of Al Sheehaniya Municipality who is the Head of Team for Follow up the Vio-lations at Farms said: “Under the campaign, violations were removed at 20 farms out of total 32 erring farms in Al Sheehaniya Municipality while
12 farms with minor violations have rect i f ied their situation.”
Al Jabir said that Al Rayan Municipality witnessed the removal of 12 violations and seven rectifications. “Five major violations were removed at Al Wakra Munic-ipality and another eight vio-lations are being removed,” said Al Jabir. �P3
Qatar handball team receiving the winners' trophy from Qatar Olympic Committee President, H E Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani, in Kuwait yesterday. Qatar crushed South Korea 33-21 to win the 19th Asian Championship in Kuwait. �Sport 12
Qatar crush South Korea to win Asian Handball Championship
Trump to unveilhis Mideast peace plan today
QNA/AFP — WASHINGTON, RAMALLAH
US President Donald Trump said yesterday that he will unveil his Middle East peace proposal today.
In press statement while meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House, Trump said his plan “makes a lot of sense for everybody.” Trump will deliver joint remarks with Netanyahu at the White House today to outline his plan.
“This is an opportunity for peace,” Trump said, “well show a plan that has been worked on by everyone. Well see if it catches hold. If it does, thatd be great. If it doesnt, its okay.”
The Palestinian presi-dency has frequently warned of the dangerous conse-quences of the so-called “deal of the century” on the entire region.
Palestinian leaders, who have not been invited to the White House, have already rejected the US initiative.
“We call on the interna-tional community to not be partners in this (plan) because it contravenes international law,” Palestinian prime min-ister Mohammed Shtayyeh told journalists ahead of a weekly cabinet meeting, yesterday.
The details of Trump’s ini-tiative, which has been in the works since 2017, are not yet public. �P10
OFFICIAL NEWS
Guatemala City: Acting Charge D’Affaires of the Embassy of the State of Qatar to the Republic of El Salvador, Tariq Othman Al Othman, represent-ing the State of Qatar, participated in the Inauguration Ceremony of H E Alejandro Giammattei as Presi-dent of the Republic of Guatemala. QNA
Acting Charge D’Affaires greets El Salvador President
02 TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020HOME
Qatar takes part in meeting over Arab League's joint Arab action
QNA — CAIRO
The work of the sixth meeting of the fourth team on the development of popular aspect of the Arab League’s joint Arab action, chaired by Algeria, was held at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Arab League, at the level of Permanent Delegates.
Qatar was represented by Deputy Permanent Represent-ative of Qatar to the Arab League, H E Ambassador Hassan bin Ahmed Al Mutawa. The meeting discussed and evaluated what has been accomplished by the team over the past five meetings, and exchanged suggestion regarding this.
The first team is concerned with developing the League’s charter. The second is con-cerned with the development of its organs. The third is con-cerned with developing the economic aspect, while the fourth focuses on popular aspect.
Ahmed bin Mohammed Military College celebrates graduation of 15th batchTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
Ahmed bin Mohammed Military College celebrated yesterday the handing out of the Bachelor of Military Science certificates to the graduates of the 15th batch of officer cadets.
The ceremony was held under the patronage and in the presence of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs, H E Dr. Khalid bin Mohamed Al Attiyah. The ceremony was also attended by the Chief of Staff of the Qatari Armed Forces, Lieu-tenant-General (Pilot) H E Ghanem bin Shaheen Al Ghanem, senior officers of the Armed Forces, officers and offi-cials of the College and faculty,
and parents of the cadets.During the ceremony, H E
the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs honoured the out-standing cadets, and handed out the certificates to the graduates.
During the four-year training course which was designed in accordance with the highest standards, both in its military and academic sections, the cadets received lessons in military science, parachute jump, thunderbolt course, in addition to management, law, accounting, information systems and international rela-tions curricula. The 15th batch included officer cadets from sis-terly and friendly countries.
The Minister of Transport and Communications, H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti, with other officials during the launch of the first Qatar Internet Exchange Point, yesterday.
The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Defence Affairs, H E Dr. Khalid bin Mohamed Al Attiyah, honouring an officer cadet during the graduation ceremony.
1,456 volunteers worked to make Arabian Gulf Cup & FIFA Club World Cup a success QNA — DOHA
A total of 1,456 volunteers from Qatar, the region and the world worked tirelessly to support the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) to deliver the 24th edition of the Arabian Gulf Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup over 26 days.
This one-of-a-kind oppor-tunity provided the volunteers with bespoke skills and the nec-essary experience for the FIFA World Cup in 2022, the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC) said yesterday.
Volunteers worked in various functional areas including communications, marketing, event services, transportation, security, media, branding and promotion, fan engagement, ticketing, accom-modation, logistics, crowd management, hospitality, accreditation and medical services, SC said on its website.
Volunteers were selected on their availability, educational background, language skills, motive to volunteer and pre-vious volunteering experience. In preparation for the tourna-ments, the selected volunteers
underwent a series of induc-tions, workshops and training programs in an effort to famil-iarize them with the tasks at hand.
SC launched its volun-teering programme in Sep-tember 2018 calling on all those interested to partake in sup-porting the FIFA World Cup 2022, stemming from the firm belief in the integral role vol-unteers play on the road to 2022. Since the programme’s inception, the SC has received more than 265,000 applica-tions from individuals regis-tering their interest.
MoTC launches first Qatar Internet Exchange PointFROM PAGE 1
Due to QIXP strategic importance in terms of infor-mation security and Internet infrastructure stability and sus-tainability in Qatar, it is also considered as a key factor in supporting the digital services that are needed to achieve the national policies and strategies and contributing to supporting the major events that Qatar hosts such as the FIFA World Cup 2022.
Mohammed Ali Al Mannai, thanked all stakeholders for their cooperation and contri-bution to the success of this project, specially MEEZA, Ooredoo Qatar and Vodafone Qatar.
He added that the CRA will continue to communicate and work with them and with all concerned and interested parties to develop this project. The CRA, he said, ensures that the best international practices are applied to improve the
Internet infrastructure and ensure provision of advanced, innovative and reliable local Internet services, and this is what the project will contribute
to providing, as enhancing speed, reliability and security of local content exchanges will benefit all parties; Internet service providers, content
providers and users, and thus will contribute to the devel-opment of the ICT sector in Qatar.
“The launch of QIXP is one of the achievements that we seek to achieve in this field, and it confirms that we are taking sustainable steps towards con-tributing to the development of a knowledge-based society, because Internet exchange points reduce the cost of inter-connection and help in creating the digital environment to enable the future generations to be creative in the world of digital content,” said Eng. Abdulla Jassmi, Technical Affairs Department Manager, CRA and QIXP Committee Chairman.
“The Committee will con-tinue to work as a one team to follow up on the progress of QIXP, in order to reach our desired goal which is meeting the market requirements of providing advanced and inno-vative services to contribute to achieving the goals of the Qatar National Vision 2030,” added Eng. Abdulla Jassmi
To connect to QIXP the con-necting policy needs to be signed and some technical con-ditions need to be fulfilled, such as obtaining Autonomous System Number (ASN) which is granted by the regional entities concerned with assigning Internet numbers, in order to connect different data networks together. Interested entities can submit an application to the Committee for consideration based on the followed procedures.
It is worth to mention that
the QIXP Steering Committee was formed based on Cabinet Decision No. (24) of 2018. The aim of the Committee is to benefit from the infrastructure available in the country through which Internet service pro-viders’ systems work, in addition to the content delivery network by exchanging Internet automatically via self-control systems to establish the QIXP.
The Committee has a set of related competencies and powers, including developing the technical plan for the estab-lishment of the QIXP’s System, managing the software of QIXP’s system and following up on the progress of the system operation and the connection between the different partici-pants, in addition to any other competencies assigned to the Committee by H E the Minister of Transport and Communica-tions related to its objectives.
According to the plan, other Internet Exchange Points will be activated during 2020, by using the data centers of telecom service providers or any other technically qualified parties, in order to facilitate the connection for the interested content providers.
Qatar to chair 105th session of Economic and Social Council
QNA — CAIRO
Qatar will chair the 105th session of Economic and Social Council which its meetings start from February 2 to 6, succeeding the State of Palestine. The meetings will prepare the economic and social files that will be submitted to the regular Arab summit scheduled at the end of next March.
On Sunday, the Council begins its meetings with one for the Social Committee, to be fol-lowed by another for the Eco-nomic Committee on Monday on February 3. On Wednesday, the Council will hold a meeting at the level of senior officials and its meetings will be con-cluded on Thursday with a ministerial meeting.
This session’s agenda includes a number of important items, the foremost of which are the economic and social file of the Arab League’s council at the level of the summit scheduled to be held at the end of next March, follow up to the implementation of the deci-sions of the 4th session of Arab-African summit in Malabo (Equatorial Guinea) 2016, the preparation for the economic aspects of the fifth summit, the Greater Arab Free Trade Area, and the developments of the Arab Customs Union, along with other economic and social items.
Mohammed Ali Al Mannai, thanked all stakeholders for their cooperation and contribution to the success of this project, specially MEEZA, Ooredoo Qatar and Vodafone Qatar.
03TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020 HOME
Shura Council approves draft law on railwaysQNA — DOHA
The Shura Council held its regular weekly meeting yesterday under the chair-manship of the Speaker, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud. At the beginning of the meeting, the Council discussed the Services and Public Utilities Committee’s report on a draft law relating to railways.
The draft law includes 36 articles according to which the functions and terms of ref-erence of the Ministry of Transport and Communica-tions and Qatar Rail are defined, regarding the technical and administrative aspects of the country’s railways. The draft law also includes issues related to the operation and
safety of railways. The Council then approved the aforemen-tioned draft law and decided to refer its recommendations
thereon to the esteemed government.
The Council continued its meeting, as it reviewed a report
of its delegation participating in the Women Political Leaders Global Forum (WPL), held in the Japanese capital, Tokyo. The
Shura Council also reviewed a report of its delegation partic-ipating in the meeting of the Standing Committee of the
Asian Parliamentary Assembly on Political Affairs, held in Isfahan, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The members of Shura Council during its regular weekly meeting yesterday under the chairmanship of the Speaker, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud.
The Speaker of Shura Council, H E Ahmed bin Abdullah bin Zaid Al Mahmoud.
QCAA Chairman reveals comprehensive development operation of aviation sectorQNA — DOHA
The Chairman of Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA), H E Abdullah bin Nasser Turki Al Subaie (pictured), stressed that the civil aviation sector in the State of Qatar has witnessed great develop-ments in the last two years with many achievements, the most important of which is the position of the sector in the first ranks in the field of aviation security and air safety.
In statements to Qatar News Agency (QNA), H E revealed that the Civil Avi-ation Authority launched comprehensive development operations related to the Qatari airspace, increased aircraft routings on State of Qatar and modernising the devices and systems used in air navigation.
He said that all these new developments and improve-ments will be ready by the 2022 FIFA World Cup, with the aim of accommodating air traffic during the country’s hosting of the tournament and beyond.
He stressed that the QCAA is working hard at all levels and in all directions regarding the development of the civil aviation sector so that the State of Qatar will occupy the first positions globally in this field, as the development of the State’s air navigation will greatly serve the World Cup tournament and beyond, where all of these develop-ments will be completed well ahead of the World Cup.
Al Subaie pointed out that these developments come as a result of the development witnessed by the civil avi-ation sector in the State of Qatar for years and especially during the last two years, as the air safety regulations in the aviation sector in the country have been fully developed to comply with the regulations of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is considered the first body currently in the world in relation to the appli-cation of civil aviation security standards and the facilities that are provided in this field in relation to Annex
1 7 t o t h e C h i c a g o Convention.
He underlined that what has been made at the level of aviation safety is great achievement and it is one of the highest results that are achieved at the global level in this field, and there is tireless work to develop the entire system that is related to aviation security and safety.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) had recently announced that Qatar is among 48 states that have made great progress in
overcoming deficiencies in safety control and improving the effective implementation of international rules and rec-ommendations related to the field, as it achieved a 91.16% compliance rate according to the new standards imple-mented by the ICAO in 2018, becoming the first country to receive this percentage through the results of a com-prehensive audit of all aspects of the aviation safety of the civil aviation system.
Qatar Civil Aviation Authority has previously set a new record in the results of the safety oversight audit of civil aviation according to the Universal Safety Oversight Audit Program (USOAP). ICAO has conducted an audit of the QCAA and its safety system, through which it verifies the compatibility of the country’s air safety standards with the international standards and standards contained in the Chicago Convention on Inter-national Civil Aviation and its annexes.
This achievement is a clear indication of the effec-tiveness of the role of the civil
aviation safety system in the State of Qatar, especially as it works in a challenging environment and within exceptional circumstances under the unjust blockade imposed on it for more than two years.
QCAA, in cooperation with all parties concerned with the aviation sector in the State, has started to modernize the technical regulations of avi-ation safety, in accordance with international standards and with the provisions of international treaties ratified by the State. These regula-tions are drafted to become applicable for the long term until 2030.
Qatar is also the first country in the region to start implementing the latest European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Compre-hensive Safety Programme regulations. The new systems for aircraft crew licences, avi-ation operations and airwor-thiness requirements have been complied with EASA regulations as one of the objectives of the regulatory and program structure of the Authority.
The Civi l Aviat ion Authority seeks to develop air services and sign agreements with many countries of the world in order to obtain more traffic routes and rights, which will increase the number of passengers through Hamad International Airport, as a permanent office in the ICAO in the Canadian city of Montreal was recently opened, in addition to winning membership in the Executive Council of the Arab Civil Aviation Commission (ACAC).
QA is Title Sponsor of Philippine Football League A signing ceremony was held yesterday in Doha between Qatar Airways and the Philippine Football Federation. Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, H E Akbar Al Baker (left), and Philippine Football Federation General Secretary, Atty. Edwin B Gastanes, signed the sponsorship agreement which sees Qatar Airways confirmed as the Title Sponsor of the Philippine Football League until 2022.
Crackdown on farms running non-agricultural activitiesFROM PAGE 1
He said that the inspection campaign began at Al Khor and Al Zakhira Municipality from January 9. So far 18 violations were recorded at the farms. “Once the campaign is competed there, the inspectors will move to Al Dayeen and Al Shamal munici-palities,” said Al Jabir.
He said that the campaigns will continue until all violations are addressed. “The violations include construction of buildings for labour camps, warehouses and non-agricultural activities at
agricultural farms,” said Al Jabir. The Ministry of Municipal and
Environment has called on the farm owners to cooperate with the municipalities in shutting down non-agricultural activities at their farms.
The farmers have also been urged to utilise these farms for agricultural purposes to keep pace with the State plan to increase self-sufficiency of the country in local agricultural produce. The Ministry also called the companies and institutions to move to the authorised labour
camps. The Director of Agricul-tural Affairs Department at the MME, Yousuf Khalid Al Khulaifi, said that a total of 27 erring farms, after rectifying their situation, started producing vegetables.
The press conference was also attended by the Director of the Inspection Department at the Ministry of Administrative Devel-opment, Labor and Social Affairs, Fahd Dhafer Al Dossary; Hamad Al Shahwani from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and Lieutenant Ali Mohamad Al Saaq from Lekhwiya.
Jabir Hasan Al Jabir, Director of Al Sheehaniya Municipality, who is also the Head of 'Team for Follow-up the Violations at Farms', along with other officials, speaking during a press conference at Al Mansour Tower of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment, yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA
Qatar is also the first country in the region to start implementing the latest European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Comprehensive Safety Programme regulations.
Promising three weeks of nonstop entertainment and colourful fashion events, the fourth edition of Shop Qatar is now in its third and final week, with a colourful schedule of events taking place in 12 malls and shopping areas spread across the country.
Special Chinese New Year celebrations are part of this year’s program with numerous family entertainment activities being staged at all participating malls.
These include calligraphy and art classes as well as cul-tural dragon parades and live
performances by Chinese drummers.
A host of designers and brands continue to showcase their latest bridal, couture and prêt-à-porter collections in fashion shows at Al Hazm, including an exclusive show by renowned Chinese designer Lan Yu tomorrow. Famous American makeup artist Mario Dedivanovic is also coming to Qatar for the first time to conduct a 5-hour masterclass on Friday.
The final week’s musical performances include a concert on Thursday by renowned Pakistani band Junoon who are reuniting after 17 years for a memorable concert in Doha. A Latin band will perform live in
City Centre on Friday while solo musicians will entertain audi-ences in Hyatt Plaza on the same day.
A local celebrity singer will also perform live at Mall of Qatar on Friday, following the final raffle draw ceremony.
Visitors and residents have one more chance to win by shopping or dining at any of the festival’s 12 retail partners.
For every QR200 spent at any participating retailer or res-taurant, shoppers can enter a weekly raffle draw for a chance to win 12 cash prizes worth QR330,000, or two cars including a Mini Cooper Hatchback and a BMW 730 Li.
Musicians perform during the 'Shop Qatar' festivities. The fourth edition of 'Shop Qatar' will conclude this week.
Legal and Legislative Affairs Committee discusses draft law on minimum wages for workers, domestic workersQNA — DOHA
The Legal and Legislative Affairs Committee of the Shura Council held a meeting yesterday, chaired by its Rapporteur H E Nasser Bin Rashid Al Kaabi.
During the meeting, the committee studied a draft law on determining the minimum wages for workers and domestic workers.
The meeting was attended by Minister of Administrative Devel-opment, Labor and Social Affairs H E Yousuf bin Mohammed Al Othman Fakhroo and the Assistant Undersecretary for Labor Affairs Mohamed Hassan Al Obaidly. They answered
members’ inquiries about the draft law.
At the end of the meeting, the Committee decided to
further study the draft law in its next meeting.
Members of the Legal and Legislative Affairs Committee of the Shura Council during the meeting.
Al Sulaiti meets with US Charge d’Affaires
Minister of Transport and Communications, H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti met yesterday with Charge d’Affaires of the US Embassy in Qatar, H E William Grant. The two officials discussed cooperation and relations between the two friendly countries in the fields of transportation and communications and means of further enhancing them.
Ministry of Education participates in celebration of Education Day in ViennaQNA — DOHA
The Ministry of Education and Higher Education participated in the celebration of the Inter-national Day of Education at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna.
The event dealt with the role of higher education and the strengthening of the rule of law, as one of the axes of the World Program for the Implemen-tation of the Doha Declaration issued by the 13th Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice held in Doha in 2015.
In a speech on this occasion, Assistant Undersecretary for Special Education Affairs at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and the Min-istry’s representative at the event, Omar Abdulaziz Al Nama, noted the role of the
State of Qatar in promoting the rule of law and its schools in educating the next generation, preparing and equipping it to respond to contemporary chal-lenges such as fighting cor-ruption and electronic crime and organized crime.
He highlighted the impor-tance of the participation of the rest of other countries and fol-lowing the State of Qatar’s model in supporting the United Nations Office for constructive programs that benefit societies and their stability.
Al Nama also stressed the role of the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) in sponsoring sci-entific research in investment and support researchers and young scholars with scholarships and their participation in academic conferences.
Al Nama noted the impor-tance of educating the school community and universities on the rule of law, which would benefit societies and their sta-bility, and the ability to achieve the strategies of countries seeking progress.
The event dealt with the role of higher education and the strengthening of the rule of law, as one of the axes of the World Program for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration issued by the 13th Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice held in Doha in 2015.
Sidra to launch several services for women in 2020FROM PAGE 1
In February, a Cervical Screening Clinic will open to offer cervical screenings which can detect abnor-malities and identify the need for treatment.
Services include Pap tests, which check for cell changes in the cervix caused by the Human Papillomavirus (HPV).
Sidra Medicine’s IVF Treatment facility is scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2020. It will be managed by a diverse team of con-sultant physicians, embryologists, nurses offering a holistic envi-ronment of care in a single location, with ‘in-house’ reproductive surgery, maternal fetal medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology services.
“The IVF facility with modern technology and equipment and is designed to provide high standard services including psychological support to the couple,” said Yaser Aldajani, Manager, IVF Laboratory Reproductive Medicine during a media held to give a glimpse of the new facilities and services.
“It has the has the capacity to have 5000 cycles per year and will initially start with 500 cycles,” he added. IVF cycle as the initiation of ovarian stimulation and all resulting separate fresh or frozen embryo transfers.
In 2019 women’s services at Sidra Medicine introduced a Fibroid Center which specialises in using minimally invasive methods and robotic surgery to remove fibroids; and offering the latest maternal-fetal medicine techniques such as
advanced non-invasive prenatal screening tests as well as the intro-duction of lactation specialists.
According to Dr Aisha Yousuf, Medical Director of Reproductive Surgery at Sidra Medicine, female patients, who have choosen to get treated at Sidra Medicine for gyne-cology care increased of travelling abroad.
“Our care and treatment is based on offering the latest and minimally invasive techniques that are safe and most importantly expand the choice for women in the country. We have seen hundreds of female patients, who have opted to come to Sidra Medicine for gynecology care including robotic surgery instead of travelling abroad to East Asia, Europe or North America for the same
treatment,” she said. “I am personally very proud to
announce that we are now offering surgeries to address Mullerian Anamolies. This particular surgery is available for women or young teenage girls, who have congenital anomalies like two complete or underdeveloped wombs or blocked overflow because of imperforated hymens. The surgery is performed via minimally invasive and robotic gynecology approach without need for large incisions,” she added.
Sidra Medicine is also actively working on several clinical research programs aimed at improving maternal and women’s health, as part of its precision medicine program.
Dr Michel Makhlouf, Acting Chair of Women’s Services; Dr Abdulla Al Kaabi, Chief Medical Officer; and Dr Aisha Yousuf, Medical Director of Reproductive Surgery at Sidra Medicine, during a press conference held to announce the hospital's new services for women, yesterday. PIC: BAHER AMIN/THE PENINSULA
A host of designers and brands continue to showcase their latest bridal, couture and prêt-à-porter collections in fashion shows at Al Hazm, including an exclusive show by renowned Chinese designer Lan Yu tomorrow.
Kahramaa launches second edition of ‘pulse’ initiativeTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
To protect the environment from carbon emission, the Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) repre-sentative by the National Programme for Conservation and Energy Efficiency ‘Tarsheed’ has launched the second edition of ‘pulse’ (Nabd) initiative under the slogan ‘Together for a sustainable championship’,
The activities of the initiative took place during a three day event held in the Kahramaa Awareness Park in cooperation with the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC). Over 1,500 school students participated in the event. This event is one of the pioneering initiatives to receive the 2022 World Cup as the
first environmentally friendly and carbon neutral championship.
The activities aim at achieving the goals of the program in reducing electricity and water consumption to cut harmful carbon emissions, and preserving the environmental heritage for future generations.
This initiative is also part of efforts to address climate change, following the partici-pation of the State of Qatar in the 25th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in the Spanish capital, Madrid.
The event witnessed a number of awareness-raising and educational lectures and work-shops at Tarsheed theater in the Kahramaa Awareness Park.
05TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020 HOME
Deputy PM and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina meets Qatar’s envoy
The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, H E Dr Bisera Turkovic, met yesterday with Ambassador of Qatar to Bosnia and Herzegovina, H E Sultan bin Ali Al Khater. During the meeting, they reviewed cooperation relations between the two countries, in addition to issues of common concern.
Ooredoo’s ‘Business in Retail’ booths launched at Al Anees Electronics, StarlinkTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
Ooredoo, the region’s leading enabler of digital business inno-vation, has announced partner-ships with Al Anees Electronics and Starlink to launch Business in Retail booths to provide enhanced levels of customer service.
Business customers of all sizes and industry verticals can now meet with Ooredoo’s Business in Retail experts at Al Anees Electronics shops in Al Watan Center, Mansoura, and Plaza Mall - Asian Town, and at Starlink shops in Al Nasser, Aspire, and Royal Plaza.
Ooredoo Qatar’s Chief Operating Officer, Yousuf Abdulla Al Kubaisi, said: “Expanding our channel
partner ecosystem with Al Anees Electronics and Starlink aims to enrich our business customers’ digital lives, and provide greater levels of cus-tomer service and conven-ience. In response to feedback from our customers, our Business in Retail experts are ready to rapidly respond to any and all business queries at a wide range of shops in Qatar.”
Al Anees Electronics has been Qatar’s pioneer of mobile
phone offerings since 1992, while Starlink is Qatar’s one-stop-shop for technology, from upgrading mobile phones and devices to delivering digital offices and homes.
Business customers can lev-erage the Ooredoo Advantage, making Ooredoo “Best for Business”, thanks to its breadth and depth of talent, best fixed and mobile networks, broadest port-folio of ICT services and solutions, and trusted partner for 60 years.
Ooredoo Qatar’s Chief Operating Officer, Yousuf Abdulla Al Kubaisi, said: “Expanding our channel partner ecosystem with Al Anees Electronics and Starlink aims to enrich our business customers’ digital lives, and provide greater levels of customer service and convenience.
HBKU’s CPP conducts information sessionTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU)'s newest college recently concluded its infor-mation session for prospective students. In keeping with other colleges, the College of Public Policy (CPP) has staged a series of outreach activities to high-light degree programs and study options. Prospective students had an opportunity to meet with faculty to learn more about the
programs delivered by CPP and the admission requirements.
The admissions campaign is designed to attract local talent.
A view of information session held for prospective students at HBKU.
Officials discuss importance of Corporate Social ResponsibilitySIDI MOHAMED THE PENINSULA
Sheikh Dr. Thani bin Ali Al Thani, Chairman of Social Responsibility Committee at Dar Al Sharq, said that the winners of CSR Awards were chosen this year to promote ethical and human concepts in companies’ activities, combining profitability with social commitment.
“There is no doubt that such an approach is consistent with the vision of the country’s lead-ership, which is concerned with the human, social and devel-opment dimension at the local and international levels,” said the Chairman.
He was delivering a speech during an event held to discuss “Social Responsibility Between Ethical Commitment and Profit-ability”. Dar Al Sharq, under the patronage of Sharq Law Firm, held a lecture by Dr. Monther Zaidan, an institutional devel-opment expert and a member of CSR Award Committee at Oryx Rotana Hotel.
Sheikh Dr. Thani bin Ali Al
Thani said that the lecture comes within the plan of the CSR com-mittee in promoting awareness of social goals and the partici-pation of all sectors in achieving it. "It is a fruitful and continuous effort in which many institutions participated with us to achieve such goals.”
The lecture was attended by a number of experts and spe-cialists. The lecture discussed the returns of social responsibility on institutions and their main activ-ities, in addition to the future of social responsibility in light of the transfer of wealth to the mil-lennial generation (the envi-ronment and society generation).
The Chairman pointed out in his speech that the CSR Com-mittee was issuing a monthly supplement to cover all CSR activities in Qatar and highlights its multiple programs in Qatar and abroad.
“The goal of the committee is to increase awareness of the importance of social responsi-bility programs in all sectors which contributes to
development programs and to promote growth and sustaina-bility of the activities of com-panies, institutions and bodies, especially in light of the boom Qatar is witnessing currently in different fields, which makes it urgent to organise such social
programs”, he said.For his part, Dr. Monther
Zaidan, stressed the necessity of promoting the concept of social responsibility, as pro-moting this concept enhances the development.
“The Social Responsibility
term has evolved over the last years and the focus of companies initially was on profit only, but the term developed later to cover ‘responsible investment’, which means investing in a way that does not harms society, and then developed to cover the necessity
of preserving the environment, society and governance," he added.
“Companies take from society and its resources and therefore they must serve it. The investment of any company must take into account three important matters which are the envi-ronment - society - governance,” he said.
For his part, lawyer Abdellah from Al Sharq Law Firm said that “Al Sharq Law Firm provides free services to many needy people who are unable to provide fees. This service is provided in part-nership with a number of insti-tutions in the country and the goal is to provide assistance to people who are unable to give fees, so the Firm intervenes to help such cases to serve the community.
“Our plan is to bring the number of community service hours to 2,000 hours per year. Last year, we provided about 1,000 hours to the community and many people benefited from it, amounting to approximately 60 to 70 people,” he added.
Officials participate in a discussion on social responsibility during a lecture held yesterday.
Msheireb Museums launches French version of mobile appTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
Msheireb Museums, the four revived historic heritage houses in the heart of Msheireb Downtown Doha, has officially released a French language version into their visitors' smartphone application, an app that features an array of digital services to enhance the visitors’ experience while discovering the history and culture of Msheireb and Qatar.
Developed by Msheireb Museums, the application is an innovative and easy way to explore each of the four houses using the geolocation tech-nology to provide the first ever digital audio tour feature in Qatar. With a digital positioning system covering every corner at the Museums, the Tour allows visitors to hear audio narrations and explanations as they move around, giving them the freedom to manage their own tour at their own pace, and make the best out of their expe-rience, while minimising con-sumption of printed material.
In conjunction with the Qatar-France 2020 Year of Culture, Msheireb Museums, in cooperation with the French Institute in Qatar, is organising the “Night of Ideas 2020”, a dis-cussion forum taking place all around the world on the same
day every year. This year, the theme is “Being alive” focusing on the various issues that have been raised by scientific research and technological progress, such as the rela-tionship between humans, machines and biodiversity in the face of technology. The pan-ellists will discuss the new chal-lenges and hopes offered by science and biotechnology, but also the risks and ethical impact of such progress.
Located in the Bin Jalmood House at Msheireb Museums and starting on Thursday at 7pm, this fruitful discussion will feature speakers who have a long tradition in the field of humanities and social sciences headed by Dr. Amal Al-Malki, Founding Dean of College of Humanities and social sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa Uni-versity, Mr. Gillian Graves, designer and expert in bio-mimicry and co-director of the Master of Science in Nature-inspired Design at ENSCI (French National High School
for Industrial Creativity), Dr. Khalid Fakhro, Director of the Precision Medicine Program, Genetic Medicine Laboratory, Sidra Hospital Doha, Dr. Marc Owen Jones (Ph.D.), Assistant Professor in Middle Eastern Studies and Digital Human-ities, College Humanities and Social Sciences, Hamad bin Khalifa University and Dr. Patrick Walsh, assistant teaching professor of phi-losophy at Hamad bin Khalifa University.
Dr. Hafiz Ali, Msheireb Museums Director, said: “Inno-vation is a core component of our vision as a social history museum. We are keen on giving our visitors an interactive, engaging and comfortable experience that encourages them to explore chapters of our country’s history. This is a huge achievement and we look forward to engaging with the community by collaborating with local and international entities such as French embassy.”
In conjunction with the Qatar-France 2020 Year of Culture, Msheireb Museums, in cooperation with the French Institute in Qatar, is organising the “Night of Ideas 2020”, a discussion forum taking place all around the world on the same day every year.
06 TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020HOME
Indonesian mission holds awareness workshop on Alzheimer'sTHE PENINSULA — DOHA Using the slogan ‘‘Never Under-estimate Alzheimer’s, the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Doha has hosted a Fun Educational Workshop on Alzheimer's disease.
The event initiated by the Alzheimer's Indonesia Chapter Doha-an association chaired by Dr. Ken Lestariyani Sulis, which focusing on the dissemination of information about dementia Alzheimer's for Indonesian who are living in Qatar.
It was organised in cooper-ation with Indonesian Com-munity Association in Qatar (Permiqa); Dharma Wanita Per-satuan KBRI Doha, an Indo-nesian Women’s Organisation which consists of wives of Indo-nesian civil servants; Indo-nesian Women Association in Qatar (Perwiq); University of Indonesia Alumni Association in Qatar (Iluni UI), Indonesian
National Nurse Association (PPNI); photography com-munity of Indonesian women in Qatar (Kompakers); and Indonesian Student Association in Qatar (PPI).
In his welcoming speech, Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to Qatar, H E M Basri Sidehabi expressed his appreciation to the enthusiast participants. “The information and knowledge about dementia Alzheimer is very important in order to prepare ourselves by keeping mental and physical health, as well as to serve the elderly, especially
our own parents, as the obli-gation for being their c h i l d r e n , ” s a i d t h e Ambassador.
During the event, Dr. Hanadi Al Hamad, Medical Director of Rumailah Hospital and Qatar Rehabilitation Institute with Noora Al Jaidah, Chairperson of Qatar Alzhe-imer’s Association also delivered their valuable insights on Alzheimer's as Keynote Speakers.
The event also presented various fun activities such Funtalk with Dr. Iqbal Mohtar, one of a very few Indonesian
working as medical officer in the Qatar Petroleum, Fun Gym which serve as an exercise to stimulate motoric and brain functions, Fun
Simulation which uses an virtual reality device to have the experience as an Alzhe-imer's patient, free medical check-up named Fun Health,
Fun Photo Booth as well as Fun Angklung, a set of Indo-nesian traditional music device uses as therapy for Alzheimer's patients.
Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to Qatar, H E M Basri Sidehabi, honouring one of the guests during the educational workshop on Alzheimer’s.
The information and knowledge about dementia Alzheimer's is very important in order to prepare ourselves by keeping mental and physical health, as well as to serve the elderly, especially our own parents, as the obligation for being their children, said the Ambassador.
SIS marks Annual Sports DayTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
Shantiniketan Indian School (SIS) recently marked the Annual Sports Day for the Pre-Primary and Primary sections at the school campus.
More than 300 students participated in the event. Shahana Madhan of class 2 E welcomed the gathering. Pres-ident, K C Abdul Latheef, was the chief guest on the occasion.
The events kicked off with a rhythmic colourful display.
Events like 50M, shuttle, relay and obstacle races ignited the competitiveness and the spirit of determination. Ilham Muhammed Bilal (KG 1A); Muhammed Razin Palliyal (KG 1A); Mohammed Behzed Naha (KG IIF); Eshaal Fathima (KG IID); Hena Fathima (IF); Raymond James (IG); Ziya Aisha (IIG); Muadh Shihab (IIG) were
d e c l a r e d I n d i v i d u a l Champions.
Red House emerged as the overall winners. Sharidhi of Class 2G in her vote of thanks appreciated the school man-agement, senior leaders, parents and teachers for hosting this event specially for the section. Principal, Dr. Subhash B Nair congratulated the sportsman spirit displayed by the students and declared the meet closed.
SIS KG and Primary section students with officials.
Marzooq Shamlan Al Shamlan Holding (MSSH), a leading group in Qatar’s business community, held its annual staff dinner on January 22, 2020 at Wyndham Doha Hotel.
Nearly 400 employees and other prestigious guests gathered at MSSH Annual Dinner to celebrate outstanding achievements of the company’s business over the past 70 years, driven by outstanding staff performance.
‘Cultural Diversity’ was the theme of this year’s dinner, aimed at celebrating employees’ cultural differences and promoting diversity in the workplace; the evening was, therefore, an opportunity for staff to demonstrate their countries’ heritage, through several booths representing the company’s different business units.
“Tonight is a celebration of
70 years of Marzooq Shamlan Al Shamlan Holding, profes-sional excellence, innovative practice and leadership through vision, commitment, and success,” said Marzooq Tariq Al Shamlan, newly appointed Group CEO.
He said that Industry expe-rience and international part-nerships have been the foun-dation of the company’s success story since its founding. “The steady growth and diversifi-cation through the years earned the company a recognition for its premium service and team creativity capability,” said Al Shamlan.
“Our success and achieve-ments would not have been possible without the excep-tional contribution of our out-standing staff, whom we regard as the group’s most valuable asset. Looking ahead, we will keep up with the market devel-opment and grasp the oppor-tunities arising with a focus on
providing comprehensive and better products and services which serve our customers’ needs to the fullest satisfaction.”
The evening featured awards and recognitions to out-standing employees who were selected among the holding’s different business units: Q-Tire and International Tire Center (ITC), International Con-struction Solutions (ICS), Qatar Trading Company, Karcher Center Doha, and Marzooq Shamlan & Sons (Crono and Watch Corner). In addition, special awards and certificates were presented to staff members in acknowledgement of their 5 and 10 years of service within the group.
“This event is mainly organised to thank our employees for their hard work in the past year as well as to welcome the new year ahead”, said Marzooq Tariq Al Shamlan.
MSSH employees being recognised and awarded for their exemplary performance and contribution to the company.
HMC’s Thyroid Unit records increase in malignant cancer cases diagnosed each yearTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
Since opening in 2015, the Thyroid Unit at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has received over 1,200 patients. Dr Mohamed Salem Al Hassan, Chair of Surgical Oncology at HMC and Chair of the Thyroid Multidisciplinary Team says this figure includes 681 benign and 549 malignant cases, and he noted there has been an increase in malignant thyroid cancer cases diagnosed each year since the Unit was established.
“From 2015 to 2019, we recorded a total of 549 newly diagnosed cases of malignant thyroid cancer, 20 percent of which were Qataris and 80 percent non-Qataris. This signals an increase in patients diagnosed with thyroid
cancer each year. It is noteworthy that the incidence of thyroid cancer in the State of Qatar is similar to that of other developed countries,” said Dr Al Hassan.
Dr Al Hassan said when the Thyroid Unit was established in 2015, it cared for 101 patients (comprising 58 malignant and 43 benign cases). Five years on, patient volumes have quad-rupled with 406 patients received in 2019.
There are four main types of thyroid cancer, with papillary car-cinoma being the most common and occurring more frequently in women.
“In Qatar, thyroid cancer is the second most prevalent cancer among women, after breast cancer. Papillary
thyroid carcinoma is the predominant histological type of thyroid cancer seen
here in Qatar, followed by follicular car-cinoma. Papillary thyroid cancer is a slow-growing cancer that can usually be cured, unlike follicular carcinoma which is typically a bit more malignant (aggressive). Follicular thyroid cancer occurs in a slightly older age group than papillary cancer and is also less common in children,” said Dr Al Hassan.
The thyroid is a small, butterfly-shaped gland located in the neck, below the Adam’s apple. The thyroid gland produces the hormones thyroxine (also called T4) and triiodothyronine (also called T3). These hormones play a role in certain bodily functions, including body temperature, mood, pulse rate, and digestion. Dr. Al Hassan says the thyroid gland, through the hormones
it produces, influences almost all met-abolic processes in the body.
While thyroid cancer is more common in people who have a history of exposure to high doses of radiation, have a family history of thyroid cancer, and are older than 40 years of age, many people who get the disease have few or no known risk factors. Dr Al Hassan said most thyroid problems can be managed well if properly diagnosed and treated early.
“The treatments for thyroid cancer include surgery, radioactive iodine treatment, and thyroid hormone replacement therapy. However, very rear cases will receive external beam radiation therapy and chemotherapy,” said Dr Al Hassan.
Dr Mohamed Salem Al Hassan
QU College of Business and Economics launches master’s degree in financeTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
The College of Business and Economics at Qatar University (QU) launches a master’s degree program in finance, which will officially start in Fall 2020. The program aims to provide competencies with the latest knowledge in the field of finance and to graduate distin-guished specialists and researchers that can contribute effectively in the field.
The program offers two tracks, the first focuses on research and includes a disser-tation at the conclusion of the course work.
The second track focuses largely on practical skillsets and includes an applied research project to complete the gradu-ation requirements.
The program is comprised of 36 credit hours, in English language, with an expected
duration of two-years. All pro-spective applicants must meet the QU master degree require-ments which include a bachelor degree (or higher) with an average cumulative GPA of 2.8 out of 4.0, or its equivalent from a higher education institute accredited by the International Accreditation Society or the Ministry of Edu-cation and Higher Education, or its equivalent in the country
where the diploma was acquired.
Applicants are also required to demonstrate English proficiency as part of the admissions process by meeting one of the conditions; having previously attained a diploma in a higher education institute, where the language of instruction was English or obtaining a minimum TOEFL score of 520 (paper test) or 190 (computer) or 68 (Internet), or alternatively a score of six in the IELTS test and these scores must be no older than two years from the intended start of semester.
Passing the admissions interview and writing a short text during the interview process are also required.
The registration is open until February 27, 2020 through the QU Graduate Studies page on the official university website.
MoCI recalls L.O.L Glamper Asst toy 2019 modelTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
The Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in cooperation with Toy Triangle Co, dealer of L.O.L. toys in Qatar, announced the recall of L.O.L Glamper Asst model of 2019 due to possible injuries caused when a child’s finger get stuck while pressing the under toy button.
The recall campaign comes within the framework of the Ministry’s continuous efforts to protect consumers and ensure that dealers follow up on products defects and repairs.
The Ministry said that it will coordinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair
works and will communicate with customers to ensure that they returned the defective toys.
The Ministry urged all cus-tomers to report any violations to its Consumer Protection and Anti-Commercial Fraud Department, which processes complaints, inquires and suggestions.
The program aims to provide competencies with the latest knowledge in the field of finance and to graduate distinguished specialists and researchers that can contribute effectively in the field.
07TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020 HOME
No reason to panic over coronavirus: QF medical expertTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
People in Qatar should not panic about a new coronavirus that has spread to almost 3,000 people and claimed 80 lives, according to a Qatar Foundation(QF) medical expert who has said that the outbreak is a reminder of the need to be hygiene-conscious.
The virus, which has no vaccine or cure, emerged in China – where its source city, Wuhan, is now in lockdown – but at least 41 cases have also been confirmed in Thailand, the US, Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, Malaysia, France, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Nepal, and Canada.
Causing severe acute respiratory infection, it is a new coronavirus, a variant of which – Sars – led to hun-dreds of deaths 17 years ago. But Dr Mohamud A Verjee, Associate Pro-fessor of Family Medicine in Clinical Medicine at QF partner university Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, said it should not cause a public scare.
“At this stage, it does not seem to be as bad as Sars, which proved quite harmful,” he said. “This coronavirus is difficult to assess accurately
because it is a new strain of the same virus, but while there have sadly been deaths, it is not something that should be frightening people in Qatar – it is just a case of being aware.
“Sars was quite virulent and even harmed carers of patients, but this virus does not seem to have this kind of potential. That is reassuring, and there is no reason to panic.
Many of those affected by the
virus are male, over 40, and already have an infection or illness, with symptoms being a high fever – 39 degrees or more – followed by a dry cough, and then breathlessness or breathing difficulties. The symptoms can appear within two days or after as long as 14 days.
Dr Verjee said that Qatar has pre-cautions in place to prevent the virus being unwittingly carried into the country. “The authorities have been very quick to act and immediately deployed special thermal cameras at Hamad International Airport, which screen people for high temperatures as they enter Qatar and allow them to be spotted for follow-up checks,” he said.
As for measures that people themselves can take, Dr Verjee advised they should regularly wash their hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds; not touch their eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands; and avoid contact with people who are visibly ill and coughing or sneezing, as well as covering their own cough.
And he said differentiating between potential signs of the virus
and standard flu symptoms should be straightforward. “Flu has a dif-ferent set of symptoms – as well as the high temperature, people with flu also tend to have severe head-aches, a sore throat, muscle or joint pain, a runny nose, and extreme fatigue,” he said.
“All physicians are well-informed and should be able to tell the dif-ference between coronavirus and flu quite easily. Even so, you have to remember that flu can also kill, and those who have not already had their flu vaccination should consider getting this protection every year.”
There have been reports that people may avoid ordering goods from China due to concerns about the virus, but Dr Verjee said, “Essen-tially, this virus is spread from humans to humans – a brand-new piece of material, wrapped up, is unlikely to contain anything nasty. But it is up to people to make their own decision.”
Dr Verjee also dismissed any prospect of an immediate vaccine, said, “There is no chance of a vaccine within days – it takes a long time to develop.
“The best thing is simply to be well aware of the importance of good hygiene and avoid contact with people who are obviously ill or who may have just come from the region where the outbreak began. It is also wise not to travel to that area of China, which has in any case been quarantined. But it should be borne in mind that most people who get this virus will recover.”
Dr Mohamud Verjee
Dr Verjee said that Qatar has precautions in place to prevent the virus being unwittingly carried into the country. The authorities have been very quick to act and immediately deployed special thermal cameras at HIA, which screen people for high temperatures as they enter Qatar and allow them to be spotted for follow-up checks.
Dr. Al Maadheed to inaugurate medical research center at UCLTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
Next week, a new medical research center will be inaugu-rated at the Division of Medicine, University College London (UCL). It is presided by Dr. Mohamed bin Ghanem Al Ali Al Maadheed (pictured), Pres-ident of Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS).
To be held at the Auditorium and Gallery of the Francis Crick Institute, London, UK, the opening ceremony will be attended by many scholars and public figures from around the world.
Located at the Royal Free Hospital in northern London, the Center for Metabolism and Inflammation comprises a select group of scientists investigating the inflammatory and metabolic processes linked to chronic, noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). It seeks to find more effective treatments for NCDs, which will be a breakthrough in the field.
In December 2017, Dr. Al Maadheed was appointed as a Visitor Professor at UCL. This is
a culmination of three decades of achievements made by Dr. Al-Maadheed in the medical and humanitarian arenas.
As a distinguished professor, Dr. Al Maadheed is recognised for his remarkable academic status both in Qatar and beyond. He has extensive multi-disci-plinary expertise that enabled him to make a big difference in many areas of knowledge.
Dr. Al Maadheed holds an MA in Epidemiology & Health Planning and a PhD in Strategic Health Care Management from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).
WCM-Q and HMC doctors publish book to boost physician communication skillsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
Doctors at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) and Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) have published a book to help medical students and postgraduate doctors enhance their ability to communicate with patients and pass their clinical exams.
The 290-page book presents 50 detailed scenarios for postgraduate doctors to enhance their ability to put patients at ease, take an accurate and comprehensive patient history, make the correct diagnosis and then communicate the diagnosis and treatment plan to the patient in a reassuring manner.
Dr. Rayaz Malik of WCM-Q and HMC, Dr. Wanis H Ibrahim and Dr. Mushtaq Ahmed of HMC, and Dr. Muhammad A. Waheed of Northampton General Hospital in England, who was formerly an HMC phy-sician, drew on their collective experience of many years as practicing physicians and post-graduate examiners to write the book, titled History Taking and Communication Skill Stations for Internal Medicine
Examinations. Dr. Malik, Professor of Med-
icine and Consultant Physician at WCM-Q and HMC said: “Being able to communicate effectively and compassionately with patients is a very important skill, that even the very best doctors often struggle with. We wrote the book to help students and junior doctors develop communication skills that match their excellence as clini-cians so that they can reach the very highest standards of patient care.
“I want to give complete credit to my colleagues Dr. Wanis, Dr. Mushtaq and Dr. Waheed for their tremendous work on this collaborative project.”
Many highly skilled post-graduate doctors who have proven themselves to be good
clinicians often struggle to pass the compulsory history taking and communication skills com-ponents of their Arab Board or MRCP exams.
This can be particularly problematic for non-native English speakers but also poses significant challenges for native speakers, as conducting a conversation while simulta-neously assimilating large amounts of complex infor-mation requires a great deal of mental agility. The doctors devised a new, comprehensive seven-step approach to facil-itate communication with patients whilst making the consultation more systematic and effective.
Dr. Wanis H. Ibrahim, Senior Consultant Internist and Pulmonologist at HMC said: “Being able to communicate in
a pleasant and reassuring way while reviewing a very complex case is very challenging. We have developed a novel 7-step approach to make communi-cation between the candidate, patient and examiners easy and effective. We believe this will help doctors of all nationalities and linguistic backgrounds to not only reach the correct diag-nosis, but also to communicate clearly and humanely with their patients and in so doing achieve excellence in patient care.”
History Taking and Com-munication Skill Stations for Internal Medicine Examinations is published by JP Medical Pub-lishers in London and New Delhi and has the ISBN number 978-1-909836-99-0.
The 290-page book presents 50 detailed scenarios for postgraduate doctors to enhance their ability to put patients at ease, take an accurate and comprehensive patient history, make the correct diagnosis and then communicate the diagnosis and treatment plan to the patient in a reassuring manner.
Qatar Museums to launch 6 exhibitions in MarchTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
Qatar Museums yesterday announced that it will present an ambitious array of exhibitions in spring 2020 at four of its institutions in the nation’s capital, offering the people of Qatar and visitors from around the world excep-tional opportunities to enjoy artworks and artifacts that span centuries and the globe.
Drawn from the holdings of Qatar Museums along with major loans, the exhibitions present renowned treasures assembled over the years by two outstanding collectors in the Gulf region, survey the achievements of two important contemporary women artists of Arab background, and provide stunning insights into the creative life of one of the greatest artists of the modern era.
H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chair-person of Qatar Museums, said, “These fascinating and remarkably diverse new exhibitions perfectly express the mission of Qatar Museums to serve the people of our nation while reaching out to the public everywhere. We strive to increase appreciation of the deep and varied artistic heritage of Qatar and its region, and at the same time provide opportunities to engage with manifold forms of contemporary culture here and around the world. It is a pleasure to welcome everyone to explore the wonders these exhibitions offer.”
The first exhibition to open is “Picasso’s Studios” to launch at Fire Station Artist in Residence on March 15 and run until July 1. It is an exhibition that brings visitors imaginatively into the series of workspaces where Pablo Picasso achieved his creative break-throughs, as seen through major art-works drawn from the collection of the Musée National Picasso in Paris. Picasso’s Studios is among the
components of the Qatar-France 2020 Year of Culture, fostering cultural exchange and mutual understanding between the two nations.
Next to launch are three exhibitions which will simultaneously open on March 24 and run until August 26 at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, one of which is “Yto Barrada: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nougat.” This is the first solo exhibition in the Gulf region of the remarkably varied and conceptually challenging work of Barrada (b. 1971) in photog-raphy, video, sculpture, and installation made between 2009-2019.
Another exhibition at Mathaf is “Huguette Caland: Faces and Places,” an overview of four decades of the joy-ously sensuous paintings, drawings, sculptures, and clothing designs of Caland (1931-2019), including a selection of never-before exhibited drawings and the artist’s first caftan.
Also at Mathaf is “Lived Forward: Art and Culture in Doha from 1960-2020,” an exhibition which looks at reference points of generations of
artists, intellectuals and cultural activists who played a major role in activating the cultural scene in Doha for more than half a century.
Making connections between art histories and the museum collection, the show presents the work of key artists and figures through the display of paintings, archival materials, pho-tography, video, and installation that survey the development of modern and contemporary art and cultural prac-tices in Qatar.
“Lived Forward” is part of the series titled Focus: Works from Mathaf Col-lection. The show will focus on artists including Saleh Taher, Faiq Hassan, Gazbia Sirry, Adam Henein, Ibrahim Al Salahi, Khalifa Al Qattan, Jassim Zaini, Dia Azzawi, Abdulwahid Al Mawlawi, Hassan Al Mulla, Youssef Ahmad, Wafika Sultan Al Essa, Faraj Daham, Mohammed Ali Abdulah, Saif Al Kuwari, Ali Hassan, Salman Al Malik, Hassan bin Mohammed Al Thani, Wafa
Al Hamed, Aisha Al Misned, Sophia Al Maria, Bouthayna Al Muftah, and Sara Al Obaidly.
On March 25, “A Falcon’s Eye: Tribute to Sheikh Saoud Al Thani” will open at the Museum of Islamic Art. Running January 02, 2021, this exhi-bition celebrates the outstanding accomplishments of one of Qatar’ greatest collectors who was largely responsible for laying the foundation for Qatar Museum’s world class col-lections. The exhibition showcases more than 300 outstanding art works from prehistoric fossils and Egyptian antiquities to Orientalist paintings and masterpieces of the history of photog-raphy in a spectacular display fol-lowing the concept of ancient (Renais-sance) “cabinet of curiosities” reflecting Sheikh Saoud’s fascination with both natural history and the art world.
Finally on March 26, “Splendours of the Ancient East: Antiquities from the al-Sabah Collection” will open at
the National Museum of Qatar. On view until July 1, the exhibition features around 170 priceless objects in gold, silver, glass, and precious stones col-lected by Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah and Sheikha Hussa Al Salem Al Sabah of Kuwait, revealing the continuity of artistic themes and motifs from ancient Arabia and central Asia into the Islamic period.
The exhibitions will be on view during the annual #QatarCreates gath-ering in Doha, March 24 to 27, in which distinguished international guests and Qatar’s leading artistic and cultural innovators mingle at exhibitions, events, and a variety of special activities.
Further information on #QatarCreates will be announced at a later date. All six of the new Qatar Museums exhibitions will be open to the public into summer 2020, with A Falcon’s Eye exhibition remaining on view into the new year.
FROM LEFT: “Sheikh Saud with the beira antelope” by Richard Avedon from the collection of Sheikh Saud bin Muhammad Foundation; Huguette Caland’s 2011 artwork “Mustache, Green Faces”; “Studies,” a 1920 painting by Pablo Picasso which will be one of the pieces to be displayed at “Picasso’s Studios” exhibition which opens on March 15 at Fire Station as part of Qatar-France 2020 Year of Culture.
H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, said: These fascinating and remarkably diverse new exhibitions perfectly express the mission of Qatar Museums to serve the people of our nation while reaching out to the public everywhere.
The European Commission has published a major report in which it singles out Saudi Arabia for “causing considerable harm to EU businesses” following the two-year theft of European sport programs by Saudi-based beoutQ and Arabsat.
LIKE all member organisations of Qatar Foundation which are engaged in excellent projects in the country and abroad, Qatar Career Development Center (QCDC) is also doing a tremendous job by helping Qatar’s youth fulfilling their career goals.
In line with Qatar National Vision 2030 and QF’s mandate, QCDC aims to help Qatar’s youth to identify and fulfill their education and career goals. Through high quality programs and services, QCDC seeks to mobilize, educate and support its target audience on how best to make and implement sound career deci-sions and plans, grow and develop professionally, and achieve their life goals in such ways that best contribute to Qatar’s development and prosperity.
Among many other programs being run by the Center, Qatar Career Development Center’s Career Readiness Program, which aims to enhance the delivery of career guidance services to students with mild to moderate learning challenges from Awsaj Academy, is an excellent project.
The Career Readiness Program tackles three key challenges: It assures families their child’s education is leading to a valued outcome. The second challenge is to bring awareness to the larger community about bar-riers students are facing and how these can be lifted. A third challenge that will be further addressed in the next academic year is to educate employers on how to integrate the concerned population in their operations.
The Career Readiness Program represents more than just another career guidance-related project. It is an important initiative that reflects QDCD’s strong com-mitment to empower all segments of society to make a meaningful contribution to the community.
QCDC has tailored the initiative to students who are eager to learn outside the classroom. Awsaj Academy, a member of QF, is a K-12 specialised school that addresses the needs of students with mild to moderate learning challenges.
QCDC is also focused on promoting career knowledge through the publication of a number of peri-odicals, studies, and research papers related to career planning and guidance. The Center has collected and analyzed a wealth of information over previous years and assessed activities, surveys and studies, which have contributed to the development of new initiatives and programs that will benefit youth and have a pos-itive impact on the labor market.
Career Advising System by QCDC is also unique, as it provides a tailor-made solution that factors in Qatar’s social and economic conditions. The Career Advising System (CAS) was developed by QCDC in co-operation with Kuder Inc.
US support is critical to our operations, and its reduction (African operations) would severely limit our effectiveness in our operations against terrorists.
Florence Parly, French Armed Forces Minister
QNA — BRUSSELS
The European Commission has published a major report in which it singles out Saudi Arabia for “causing considerable harm to EU businesses” following the two-year theft of European sport programs by Saudi-based beoutQ and Arabsat.
The report sets out priority countries only 13 worldwide on which “the EU will focus its action” regarding the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in third countries, including Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia, in particular, was selected based on represen-tations made by rights-holders and broadcasters across European sport including UEFA, the Premier League, LaLiga and (as the principal target of Saudi Arabias piracy) beIN Media Group regarding rampant copy-right piracy; along with submis-sions from other industries harmed by deficient patent and data protection regimes. Saudi Arabia is one of only two coun-tries added to the European Commissions bi-annual “priority list”, alongside Nigeria.
In highlighting the “serious shortcomings” in Saudi Arabia’s protection and enforcement of intellectual property, the report states that Saudi Arabia was selected because of its global role as a regional transit country for counterfeit and pirated goods destined for the EU, and because stakeholders report high-scale satellite and online piracy and ineffective enforcement measures to tackle them.
The report also states that BeoutQ makes available without authorization content belonging to EU sport event organizers and EU rights-holders (authors and related rights-holders) in the ter-ritory of Saudi Arabia, in the Middle East and North Africa as well as in the EU, before adding
that, according to submissions, Saudi Arabia has “not taken suf-ficient steps to stop the infringement despite the fact that the satellite services of BeoutQ are being (until recently had been) transmitted by the satellite (Badr-4/Arabsat- 4b) of the partly state-owned Arab Satellite Communications Organization”.
While beoutQ channels have not been distributed over satellite since last August, beoutQ boxes are still widely in circulation in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and continue to provide illegal access to third-party IPTV pirate apps covering every major sport and entertainment channel in the world, wiping billions of dollars of value off the global industry.
Furthermore, as a reminder of the unprecedented situation in 2019 where the eight leading bodies of world football publicly declared that they were unable to initiate a copyright infringement case in Saudi Arabia, the report highlights how the Saudi gov-ernment acts as its own judge and jury, approving or vetoing any legal action against it:
As regards criminal enforcement, stakeholders report that the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information has a discretional right to authorize or deny access to the Copyright Committee, which is the sole entity responsible for copyright infringements in Saudi Arabia, and also to approve or disap-prove the decisions of the Copy-right Committee, which does not seem to be compatible with the World Trade Organization TRIPS Agreement. These rules make the availability of criminal judicial procedures and sanctions condi-tional on political or subjective considerations.
Finally, as proceedings against Saudi Arabia continue at the World Trade Organization (WTO), and other governments (particularly the US government
and the UK government) con-tinue to condemn beoutQ and Arabsat, the European Com-mission highlights how Saudi Arabia simply ignores requests, regulations and the basic rule of law (referencing a demarche originally requested by the BBC and Sky regarding beoutQ.
In August 2018, the EU made an official demarche to request Saudi Arabia to take appropriate actions against satellite and online piracy of TV programs belonging also to EU rights-holders. In the absence of any reaction or action, the EU made a third party written submission in the WTO dispute due to its sys-temic interest in the correct and consistent interpretation and application of the TRIPS Agreement and the Berne Con-vention as well as its concerns about the impact on EU stakeholders.
In fact, the last time Saudi Arabia commented publicly on the matter was via its Ministry of Media, which asserted in the summer of 2019 that a Wim-bledon press release “baselessly claims” that “Saudi Arabia is somehow complicit in beoutQs broadcasts” which “both offends the Saudi people and is a mali-cious lie”. Commenting on the report, CEO of beIN Media Group Yousef Al Obaidly said: “The European Commissions latest report adds to the existing calls (including at the highest levels of the US and UK governments) calling on Saudi Arabia to uphold the rule of law.”
Meanwhile, Phil Hogan, the ECs Commissioner for Trade, asserted, “Protecting intellectual property is critical for the EUs economic growth and our ability to encourage innovation and stay competitive globally.” “As much as 82 per cent of all EU exports is generated by sectors which depend on intellectual property,” he added.
PAN PYLAS AP
Britain officially leaves the European Union on Friday after a debilitating political period that has bitterly divided the nation since the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Difficult negotiations setting out the new rela-tionship between Britain and its European neighbors will continue throughout 2020.
This series of stories chronicles Britain’s tortured relationship with Europe from the post-World War II years to the present.
After a modest renegoti-ation of Britain’s membership in the European Union, Prime Minister David Cameron set
the date for a referendum for June 23, 2016. He would back and lead the “remain” cam-paign, but he gave his min-isters the right to back “leave” and many of them did.
Though some big names came out in favour of leaving the EU, such as former London Mayor Boris Johnson, the pre-vailing view as the referendum campaign began in earnest was that the “remain” camp would win and confirm Brit-ain’s membership in the bloc for at least another generation.
There would, the con-sensus went, be a rush to the status quo when the time actually came, in much the same way there had been in Scotland two years earlier when it voted, by a
convincing 10-point majority, to remain part of the United Kingdom in an independence referendum.
A dizzying array of fore-casts of an imminent recession should Britain vote to leave were bandied about, but nothing appeared to stick. The “leave” camp led in many opinion polls during the cam-paign, its message of “Take Back Control” seemingly res-onating far and wide, and beyond any material considerations.
Promises of much more money for the financially strained National Health Service on a side of a bus also caught the mood of a country tired of years of austerity. As did, it must be said, warnings
about untrammelled immi-gration at a time when Europe was struggling to cope with an unprecedented surge of migrants, largely from war-torn Syria.
Brexit wouldn’t be a problem, according to the likes of Johnson, who claimed that Britain could “have our cake and eat it.”
The whole campaign came to a halt a week before the referendum when Labour lawmaker and big remain backer Jo Cox was killed by a far-right extremist. When campaigning resumed a few days later, it was widely thought that the remain camp would win partly because of the horror associated with the killing of Cox.
European Commission criticises Saudi Arabia for “causing considerable harm to EU Businesses” through beoutQ piracy activities
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09TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020 OPINION
Organisations today are struggling to establish the ethos of ‘partnership’ in their systems. Status-bound bureaucracy that would resist a switch over to the modern requirement of ‘flat’ organisations, skewed boss-subordinate relationships and a general reluctance to create internal transparency in the enterprise -- subject, of course, to the call of security -- continue to obstruct the move towards an organisational setting that built the environ of ‘partnership’.
When the SARS virus spread across China in 2002-3, the government in Beijing reacted with secrecy and obstruction. This year’s coronavirus outbreak is being tackled very differently - a key test for President Xi Jinping and the increasingly sophisticated authoritarian system he presides over.
One thing is certain: China has been able to respond in a way it’s almost impossible to imagine any other country beginning to be capable of. That means not just a colossal deployment of state resources
- up to half a million healthcare workers being rushed to the most affected city, Wuhan, and the wider province of Hubei, and two new hospitals said to be being built in little more than a week. It also means a measure of centralized state control that has effectively locked down not just the immediate area but much of China’s national transit system.
As with all infectious disease outbreaks, how suc-cessful those steps will be depends on whether China can change its citizens’ behaviour fast enough to stay ahead of a disease that is very much still being understood. That also means incentivizing its local officials to commu-nicate details swiftly and effi-ciently, rather than covering them up as they did during 2002-3 for fear of official ret-ribution. Much of that will depend on the nature of the
virus and how it develops. Xi warned this weekend that it appeared to be becoming more contagious.
That the Chinese leader himself was taking such a
forward- leaning position is itself a major change. Because of Xi’s leadership, along with economic growth, techno-logical change and more, China is now a very different place to the turn-of-the-century, albeit still very much the same melting pot of humans, animals and highly mobile populations that helped produce that outbreak. Those in charge in Beijing now have much greater ability to monitor and per-suade their population, as well as exert direct control over those with authority on the ground.
Social mediaAlready, social media
platforms such as Weibo have seen what appeared to be centrally coordinated campaigns using celebrities and social media influencers to push people away from using wildlife markets such as that believed to have been the epicentre of the virus. Transport networks have been shut down with remarkable speed, and within the worst affected areas most of the local popu-lation wants to stay inside and limit social interaction.
Such direct control has been simply impossible in most outbreaks elsewhere in the world, such as that of Ebola in West Africa from 2013-16. Then, while regional transport networks also largely ceased, that was largely due to trucking and other firms simply stopping work, with much less central coordination. There’s no doubt many local and regional officials in China still fear the consequences of speaking bad news to power, but it may well be that Xi has successfully instilled even more fear of being caught covering up such details.
Containing a respiratory disease like coronavirus is more challenging than a hemorrhagic outbreak such as Ebola, which is only com-municable through direct touch and bodily fluids. Corona may even be infec-tious before symptoms appear, which would make it much harder to lock down.
New technologyNew technology may
provide some good news, in terms of much faster testing and the development of new vaccines and treatments.
Whatever the immediate outcome of the outbreak, one more lasting legacy might well be even greater centralization. On a host of health fronts including drug regulation, China retains a far from effective provincial structure that experts say has often made addressing health problems more difficult.
Indeed, in some ways China seems to be using this entire situation to demon-strate the reach and effec-tiveness of its technological authoritarian structure, increasingly using the combi-nation of mass surveillance and big data to monitor and coerce its population in ways that would have been unim-aginable even a decade ago. It’s a structure that has been tested most recently by unrest in Hong Kong, with the crackdown against ethnic Muslim Uighurs in northwest China a stark demonstration of just how brutal the system can be. Structures that have effectively locked down an entire province and reportedly incarcerated well over a million people - while ruthlessly monitoring the rest - can relatively easily be repurposed to track disease, however.
For now, few doubt more cases are inevitable - and a truly major crisis might undercut confidence in Xi and his model. If they are able to avoid that, however, those in charge in Beijing will likely see it as more evi-dence to support the author-itarian, technological envi-ronment they hope to build, and which they believe offers the only hope of keeping on top of the problems of a fast, unpre-dictable and increasingly dangerous era.
(Peter Apps is a writer on international affairs, globali-sation, conflict and other issues.)
For China, communication and control are key to tackling virus
In the Age of Knowledge that we live in many old concepts of management of an enter-prise including those revolving around leadership, employer-employee rela-tionship and the role of hier-archy in the organisation, have received a severe knock. Among the key determinants of the new norm are the recognition that a leader must rely on knowledge-based decision making and not personal ‘charisma’ for moving ahead, acceptance of the importance of lateral rather than ‘vertical’ interac-tions for improving the output and a realisation that in the competitive environ ‘time’ had to be regarded as a precious ‘resource’ -- apart from manpower and funds. In these times, an enterprise will succeed if its leader knew how to bring the best out of all members of the organisation and create an ethos that makes everybody -- high or low in the hierarchy -- feel that they were contributing to its progress. In a word, success today is built on part-nership.
It is fascinating to find that what is being presented as the
framework of ‘best practices’ in the contemporary literature on management was quietly in play in our Intelligence organisation at the national level. The latter has always functioned on the basic premise that even a junior operator in the field con-sidered himself or herself as the extended arm of the chief and carried out the task ahead with a confidence about success — and not with any fear of failure. Three things working here for the indi-vidual are — that it was a team work in which all had stakes, that there will be no ‘issue’ of credit sharing and that the line of consultation for guidance was open right to the top all the time.
Organisations today are struggling to establish the ethos of ‘partnership’ in their systems. Status-bound bureaucracy that would resist a switch over to the modern requirement of ‘flat’ organisa-tions, skewed boss-subor-dinate relationships and a general reluctance to create internal transparency in the enterprise -- subject, of course, to the call of security -- continue to obstruct the move towards an organisa-tional setting that built the environ of ‘partnership’. An Intelligence organisation is free of these impediments and that is why its achievements become the success of the entity as a whole while its ‘failures’, whenever these become a matter of public discourse, never invite crit-
icism of its internal man-agement as such.
In the business world, ‘partnership’ is rightly being mentioned as the mantra of success — it embraces the entire circle of stakeholders, vendors and employees and, in what is a new age reali-sation, seeks to bring in channel partners and cus-tomers in the loop as well. Decades ago, Toyota became the world leaders of the auto-mobile industry by making the worker at the assembly line feel like a ‘partner’ in business and send up his feed back on any ‘deficiency’ of the process that seemed to call for remedial attention.
A vendor should not be treated as a mere supplier of products and services but should be made to feel suffi-ciently involved in under-standing the business of the corporate body and should, in fact, be encouraged to develop the mindset of a partner who was prepared for a long range relationship. Interaction with stakeholders should be frequent enough and purposeful in terms of pooling together their readings of the business situ-ation -- particularly in regard to any future advantage or risk. Partnership creates a convergence on business aims and performance evalu-ation. In an environ of part-nership, even taking crucial decisions about a ‘course correction’ or ‘diversification’ becomes easy.
The concept of
partnership is the universal recipe for progress not only for a business enterprise but also in other spheres of national life such as edu-cation, health and devel-opment. Partnership of parents and teachers, of the students and the adminis-trators running distance edu-cation programmes and that of educational institutions and the policy makers, are all required for improving the systems.
On the health front, the emerging importance of pre-ventive healthcare makes it necessary for the medical fra-ternity to encourage and help the state in sponsoring schemes that would benefit the average citizen. A demo-cratic dispensation works for the development as well as an equal protection of law for all and there should be a non-political response from all sections of the society as well as the people in public life on these two important functions of the state.
There should certainly be no politics on matters of national security since eve-rybody -- people as well as those running the government -- were partners in safe-guarding the nation. The Con-stitution of India mandates this.
Leadership today is incumbent on certain requi-sites -- decisiveness, relia-bility, initiative, nerves and knowledge-based approach -- and this means ‘a leader is made not born’. A leader in action brings to bear on his
ways some well defined traits -- power of authenticity, effectiveness of differenti-ation that enables him or her to distinguish one situation from the other, awareness of the fact that emotions some-times guided an employee, impartial evaluations and willingness to handle the challenge of change.
But more than any thing else the test of leadership lies in the leader’s success in enhancing the productivity of the organisation. This would happen if the organisation runs on ethical norms, treats every employee as a partner in the drive towards the col-lective progress and provides a workplace environ where everybody worked with urgency ‘even when there was no emergency’.
This last one connects with the new awareness of value of time as a ‘resource’. All of this becomes a primary responsibility of the lead-ership of the organisation. In short, success will come to a leader who was not reclusive but totally dedicated to building the enterprise as a grand cooperative that valued every body’s contribution regardless of the ‘rank’ in the hierarchy. It bears repetition to mention that an Intelli-gence organisation at the national apex -- unknown to the world outside -- bench-marks the play of ‘part-nership’ within, for its success.
(The writer is a former Director Intelligence Bureau)
Partnership for success
PETER APPS REUTERS
D.C. PATHAK IANS
Transport networks have been shut down with remarkable speed, and within the worst affected areas most of the local population wants to stay inside and limit social interaction.
As with all infectious disease outbreaks, how successful those steps will be depends on whether China can change its citizens’ behaviour fast enough to stay ahead of a disease that is very much still being understood.
Medical staff members wearing protective clothing to help stop the spread of a deadly virus which began in Wuhan, standing guard with police officers at a highway checkpoint in Tengzhou in China’s eastern Shandong province yesterday.
10 TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020GULF / MIDDLE EAST
Palestinians call on world to reject Trump peace planAFP — RAMALLAH
The Palestinians yesterday urged world powers to reject Donald Trump’s peace plan, which they said president Mahmud Abbas had refused to discuss with his US counterpart despite several outreaches.
Trump is due to unveil his proposal for Middle East peace this week in Washington, where he is scheduled to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz.
Palestinian leaders, who have not been invited to the White House, have already rejected the US initiative and insist that Trump’s adminis-tration has forfeited its role as an honest broker in the conflict due to what they say is the pres-ident’s pro-Israel bias.
“We call on the interna-tional community to not be partners in this (plan) because it contravenes international law,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh told jour-nalists ahead of a weekly cabinet meeting.
The details of Trump’s ini-tiative, which has been in the
works since 2017, are not yet public.
But his administration has already recognised Israeli sov-ereignty over the Golan Heights, which the Jewish state captured from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and stopped referring to the West Bank as “occupied” territory.
It also no longer considers Israeli settlements there as inconsistent with international law and most analysts expect his peace proposal to reaffirm his administration’s positions.
Trump also broke with d e c a d e s o f
international consensus that the fate of Jerusalem should be negotiated between the parties when he recognised the dis-puted city as Israel’s capital in December 2017.
He is releasing the plan as he faces impeachment hearings over abuse of office and while Netanyahu battles serious cor-ruption charges during a neck-and-neck election against Gantz. “This is a plan to protect Trump from impeachment and protect Netanyahu from prison. It is not a Middle East peace plan,” Shtayyeh told a cabinet meeting.
Previously released parts of the Trump initiative purport to offer the Palestinians sub-stantial economic incentives.
“The rights of the Pales-tinian people are not for sale,” Shtayyeh said. “This plan gives Israel sovereignty over Pales-tinian territory.”
Trump has repeatedly cast himself as the most “pro-Israeli” American president in history and his plan is expected to be the most favourable for the Jewish state ever proposed by an American leader. Three Pal-estinian officials, speaking on
condition of anonymity, said yesterday that Trump had made several attempts to discuss the plan with Abbas in recent weeks, but the Palestinian pres-ident had rejected those outreaches.
“There will be no discussion with the Americans until they recognise the two-state solution,” one senior official said. A spokesperson for the American embassy in Jerusalem was not immediately available for comment. Some have spec-ulated that the US proposal
could pull back from supporting the creation of a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem, the common defi-nition of the two-state solution.
The US proposal may also seek to give Israel the green light to annex the Jordan Valley, a key territory that constitutes around 30 percent of the West Bank.
Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri toured the Jordan Valley yesterday, saying they were taking steps towards the move — a central election
promise of right winger Netanyahu.
“As interior minister I’d like to tell you, we’ve started to prepare for an annexation — we are getting the paper-work ready,” Deri said in a statement.
In Gaza yesterday a few hundred Palestinians protested against the Trump plan, which Palestinians ironically call the “Deal of the Century”.
Demonstrators t ied American and Israeli flags to an effigy of Trump, which they then set on fire.
Trump is due to unveil his proposal for Middle East peace this week in Washington, where he is scheduled to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz.
Palestinian demonstrators carry a banner from Gaza’s Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine group denouncing the latest Middle East peace plan by US President Donald Trump in Gaza City, yesterday.
Night-time rocket attack on US Embassy in Baghdad injures 1AP — BAGHDAD
A top US commander said yesterday mortars were used in an attack on the American embassy in Baghdad that injured one person and caused some material damage the previous night, not katyusha rockets as was initially reported by staffers and a statement from the military.
Gen. Frank McKenzie, a top US commander for the Middle East, told reporters travelling with him that the mortar attack started a fire that was put out. He said no US military members were injured, but that one US national received a minor injury but has returned to work.
The two staff members of the US Embassy in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of ano-nymity because they were not authorised to brief the media, said initially it had been rockets that slammed into a restaurant inside the American compound.
The US Embassy is within
the Iraqi capital’s Green Zone, and has been a flashpoint amid wider regional tensions between the US and Iran, which have played out inside Iraq in recent weeks. Iraqi supporters of an Iran-backed militia stormed the embassy com-pound on December 31, smashing the main door and setting fire to the reception area.
Violence between Iraqi security forces and anti-gov-ernment protesters also con-tinued to seethe overnight, with one protester shot dead in a violent crackdown in the coun-try’s south. Unrest was also ongoing in the capital, with new clashes erupting yesterday near the central Khilani and Wathba squares, where security forces fired tear gas and live bullets to disperse crowds.
At least 22 protesters were wounded, five due to live fire, security and medical officials said. The officials spoke on con-dition of anonymity in line with regulations. Security forces also chased after demonstrators and
beat them. A member of the security forces overpowered a female anti-government pro-tester, dragged her by the hair and pinned her down outside
Baghdad’s municipality building. The incident, captured by an Associated Press photog-rapher, was a rare occurrence in the largely male-dominated
f r o n t - l i n e s o f t h e demonstrations.
The security personnel con-ducted a search of the female protester and tore off a
protective face mask she was wearing as a witness threw stones.
Iraq has been roiled by over four months of demonstrations over government corruption, high unemployment and Iranian influence in Iraqi pol-itics. Security forces have killed at least 500 protesters. The country is also facing a political clash over naming the next prime minister, after Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi resigned.
An initial military statement said at least five katyusha rockets had landed inside the Green Zone late on Sunday. It was the third attack targeting the US Embassy this month, and the perpetrators were not immediately known. Perpe-trators had used katyusha rockets in previous attacks and caused no injuries.
There was no claim of responsibility for any of the attacks. But the US has accused Iran-backed militias of tar-geting US interests.
Iraqi protesters scurry to catch a tear gas canister amid clashes with security forces at an anti-government demonstration in Al-Khillani square in the capital Baghdad, yesterday.
Syria regime forces set to enter key rebel hubAFP — MAARET AL NUMAN, SYRIA
Syrian regime forces were poised yesterday to enter Maaret Al Numan, a town of symbolic and strategic impor-tance in the country’s last major opposition bastion that is deserted after months of bombardment.
Maaret Al Numan is a stra-tegic prize lying on the M5 highway linking Damascus to Syria’s second city Aleppo, a main artery coveted by the regime. It is also the second biggest city in the beleaguered northwestern province of Idlib, the last stronghold of anti-regime forces and home to some three million people -- half of them displaced by vio-lence in other areas.
Damascus loyalists have since Friday seized around 18 towns and villages around the city, reaching its eastern out-skirts, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
said Monday.They have also cut a section
of the M5 leading north from Maaret Al Numan to Idlib city, the Observatory and the pro-government Al Watan news-paper reported.
Retaking full control of the highway is essential to the gov-ernment’s efforts to rekindle a moribund economy.
The fighting has forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes, with hundreds of vehicles packing a road leading out of the flashpoint region under heavy bombardment.
“Maaret Al Numan is nearly besieged,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman, explaining that regime forces were now stationed south, east and north of the city. Abdel Rahman said Damascus loy-alists were now pushing from the west and northwest in a bid to tighten the noose around the opposition holdout.
Iran accuses Europe of ‘racism’ over nuclear deal moveAFP — TEHRAN
Iran’s foreign minister yesterday said Britain, France and Germany had shown “racism” by activating a dispute mechanism in the 2015 nuclear deal.
In a televised speech in Tehran, Mohammad Javad Zarif slammed the “illusion” that “only the blue-eyed” could benefit from international law.
In the face of “repeated vio-lations by the United States and Europe, Iran does not have the right to use Article 36 (of the deal) despite several written notifications to European offi-cials,” Zarif said, without elab-orating how Iran had been denied that right. “We do not accept such racism,” he added. Britain, France and Germany announced on January 14 that they had triggered the dispute
mechanism provided under Article 36 of the nuclear agreement, but have said they remained committed to the deal. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the deal is for-mally known, had given Iran relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear pro-gramme. It has already been severely undermined by the United States’ 2018 withdrawal and reimposition of sanctions
on key sectors of Iran’s economy.
Since May 2019, Iran has progressively scaled back some commitments under the JCPOA in response to the US sanctions and Europe’s inability to find a mechanism to circumvent them. It has insisted these moves are reversible if its interests are realised. The 2015 nuclear deal was struck in Vienna by Iran, the three
European powers, the United States, China and Russia.
Its complaints mechanism allows parties to lodge com-plaints before a joint com-mission in the case of claimed violations. If the issue is not resolved by the commission, it can then be referred to foreign ministers, an advisory board and eventually to the UN Security Council, which could reimpose sanctions.
Houthis seize key route in deadly clashesAFP — DUBAI
Yemen’s Houthi rebels made gains against government troops north and east of Sanaa yesterday, seizing a strategic road in deadly fighting, loyalist military officials said.
The pro-government sources said the rebels had captured the route that con-nects Sana'a to the provinces of Marib, to the east, and Jawf to the north.
Clashes in crisis-hit Lebanon ahead of budget voteAP — BEIRUT
Lebanese lawmakers yesterday passed a controversial state budget for 2020 that aims to tackle the country’s crippling financial crisis, as angry protesters threw stones at security forces massed outside the Parliament.
Security forces were heavily deployed during the critical legislative meeting and beat back anti-government protesters, detaining several as well.
Hundreds of soldiers, including special forces, as well as riot policemen were deployed on major roads in across the capital, Beirut, and its suburbs ahead of the vote. They had sealed off the zone leading to parliament to prevent protesters from barri-cading the lawmakers’ path. The protesters had in turn blocked roads further afield in an effort to stop lawmakers from reaching the building, but
security forces managed to keep a single road open.
L e b a n o n ’ s p r o t e s t movement broke out on October 17 over government plans to impose new taxes. It quickly snowballed into demands for the ouster of the country’s entire ruling elite. Those elites have run the country since the end of the 1975-90 civil war, and pro-testers blame them for wide-spread corruption and mis-management. The protesters have rejected the new 20-member government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab, which was announced last week.
At one point, yesterday’s rallies turned violent as pro-testers removed barbed wire from a road leading to par-liament and were chased by riot policemen, who beat them with clubs. The protesters threw stones at the police, who detained about a dozen of them.
Regime, Russian airstrikes leave five dead in SyriaANATOLIA — IDLIB, SYRIA
Russian and regime forces in Syria carried out new airstrikes in northwestern Idlib de-escalation zone, killing at least five civilians, according to a Syrian civil defence group.
The White Helmets civil defence group said the regime airstrikes killed three civilians — including two in Bzabor village and one in Sarakib city.
The two other civilians were killed in Russian air-strikes in Shinan village, it added.Turkey has pushed hard for a cease-fire in Idlib after the region endured months of battering by forces loyal to the Bashar Al Assad regime and its allies, sending 1 million civilian refugees fleeing toward the Turkish border. Turkey and Russia agreed in September 2018 to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.
IMF urges Kuwait to accelerate reforms, impose taxes
AFP — DUBAI
The International Monetary Fund yesterday urged OPEC member Kuwait to introduce a package of reforms that includes imposing taxes and phasing out subsidies to plug a chronic budget deficit.
“Delays in fiscal reforms would further amplify fiscal financing needs while slow progress on the structural front would dampen growth,” the IMF said in a report.
Kuwait’s economy grew by just 0.7 percent last year and is forecast by the IMF to grow by 1.2 percent this year.
The IMF said that without reforms, the government’s financing needs are projected to grow rapidly, accounting for $180bn over the next six years.
11TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020 AFRICA
Gambia arrests 137 in protests urging President to step downAP — DAKAR, SENEGAL
Gambia’s police have arrested 137 people amid protests calling for the president to step down after three years in power, the government said yesterday.
Security forces used tear gas to break up the thousands of demonstrators, worrying many Gambians who lived under the rule of former President Yahya Jammeh for more than 22 years. Jammeh flew into exile in 2017 after an election loss to Adama Barrow, who had said he would only lead for three years.
At least 18 paramilitary members and seven civilians were injured in the confron-tation, the government said.
Barrow’s election win in 2016 was celebrated as a new beginning for the tiny West African nation. When he came to power he said he would look into calling for new elections after three years. Last year, however, some members of the coalition that backed him sup-ported his remaining in office for the five years allowed in the constitution.
Some Gambians have formed a movement called
Operation 3-Years Jotna, which means Three Years is Enough.
On Sunday, Gambia’s gov-ernment banned the group, calling it a “subversive, violent and illegal movement,” according to a statement from spokesman Ebrima G. Sankareh.
The government said the movement never registered and is determined to illegally unseat the constitutionally elected president.
Barrow’s government also suspended two radio stations pending investigations into accusations they peddled “incendiary messages and allowed their media to be used as a platforms for inciting vio-lence” by encouraging Gam-bians to join the movement.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said it is investi-gating reports of journalists being arrested and assaulted, along with the radio shutdowns.
“It is no longer the era of dictator #YahyaJammeh.
Authorities must protect press freedom & the public’s right to know,” the group said on Twitter.
The clampdown comes amid reports that former dic-tator Jammeh wants to return to Gambia.
This file picture shows Gambia’s President Adama Barrow during the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York.
Libya’s NOC issues warning over impact of oil blockadeREUTERS — LONDON
The head of Libya’s state oil firm warned yesterday that i f t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l community tolerates a blockade on the country’s oil industry it would be complicit in ending the rule of law in the country.
The 10-day old blockade is the most extensive for years, shutting down fields
and ports in the east and south of Libya and causing production to plunge from around 1.2 million barrels per day to less than 300,000 bpd.
The Chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corp (NOC), Mustafa Sanalla, said output could fall to 72,000 bpd soon if the stoppage continues.
“The international com-munity has to understand that if it rewards, or even
tolerates, those who break the law in Libya, then it will be complicit in the end of the rule of law in our country,” Mustafa Sanalla said in a speech at London’s Chatham House think tank.
“And that means more corruption, more crime, more injustice and more poverty.” The blockade is part of a con-flict between eastern based forces loyal to military
commander Khalifa Haftar and rival forces aligned with the internationally recog-nised government in the capital Tripoli.
The NOC has said the blockade was ordered by Haftar’s forces though Haftar’s backers have sought to portray the stoppage as the result of popular pressure.
Haftar, who controls most of Libya’s oil fields and ports,
has been waging a military offensive since April to take control of Tripoli.
Sanalla said the NOC had been told it would not receive the budget it requested for an ambitious expansion of oil production.
He also said the technical and environmental effects of the blockades could be dis-astrous, corroding pipelines and causing leaks for years.
Growing outcry in Ethiopia over abducted university studentsAP — ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA
Ethiopians are expressing anger and frustration over several university students, most of them female, who remain missing after their kidnapping two months ago.
A growing social media campaign echoes the #Bring-BackOurGirls activism in Nigeria over the mass kid-napping there of scores of schoolgirls in 2014. Ethiopians are pressuring the government for answers in the abduction in the Oromia region.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has been praised for appointing women to prominent positions “but with regard to the abducted girls, in its silence, it is violating a tremendous number of their human rights,” Yared Haile-mariam, Director of the Asso-ciation for Human Rights in Ethiopia, said in a statement Monday.
“Ethiopian authorities have failed to protect the victims of the abduction and to take nec-essary measures to bring them back.” It is not clear how many of the students remain captive.
The prime minister’s press sec-retary, Nigussu Tilahun, dis-closed on January 11 that 21 stu-dents from Dembi Dollo Uni-versity were released while six remained captive.
But family members say they haven’t heard from their loved ones.
“The last time I heard from my daughter was a month ago. She said youths from the local area took them to the forest. I don’t know what happened to her since,” Yeneneh Adugna, who lives in Central Gondar in the Amhara region, told The Associated Press. “We are living in an anguish every day. We are crying every day. We want to know whether they are alive or dead. No one is giving us any information.” The Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia says 18 university students, 14 of them female, were seized while returning home from university.
No one has claimed respon-sibility for the abduction, but Oromia regional officials have blamed the armed Oromo Lib-eration Army, which is clashing with government forces in the Western Oromia region.
Tunisia’s biggest party Ennahda rejects new government proposalREUTERS — TUNIS
The biggest party in Tunisia’s parliament yesterday rejected the idea of a government that excludes other parties, adding that it was ready to contest another election.
The statement by the mod-erate Islamist Ennahda threatens to upend a second attempt to form a coalition gov-ernment since elections in October, which fragmented the political establishment.
“We reject the government coalition being confined to some parties,” said Abd Karim Harouni a senior official of Ennahda, which has been part of recent unity coalitions that included most parties.
Ennahda’s own nominee for prime minister failed to push his proposed government through parliament on Jan. 10, giving President Kais Saied the opportunity to nominate his choice for premier, the former finance and tourism minister Elyes Fakhfakh. Fakhfakh said last week he would not seek to replicate recent unity coalitions, but would instead build a cabinet only from those,
including Ennahda, that were “aligned with the values of the revolution”.
Ennahda’s rejection of that proposal means Fakhfakh could struggle to assemble majority support in parliament, risking a new parliamentary election.
It points to a tussle for influence between Ennahda and Saied over the shape of the next government, analysts say, with the party’s rejection of Fakhfakh’s proposal showing its fear that he will overtake it as the major political force.
Although Ennahda, the best-established party in
Tunisia and a key part of suc-cessive coalition governments, came first in October’s election with 53 of the 217 seats, its vote share declined from previous polls. Saied won the second-round run-off vote of a separate presidential election in a land-slide, but as an independent he lacks a parliamentary base of his own.
Tunisia’s prime minister and government are primarily answerable to the parliament, but the president also has a veto over new legislation they introduce. The second-largest party, Heart of Tunisia, whose leader was defeated by Saied in the presidential election, but which is also an opponent of Ennahda, was one of those which Fakhfakh ruled out of joining the government.
It said his decision contra-dicted the will of voters and accused Saied of seeking to seize powers and move towards a presidential system of gov-ernment. Ennahda’s Harouni said all parties needed to be in the government to make it strong enough “to deal with major challenges and carry out necessary reforms.”
Tunisia’s Prime Minister-designate Elyess Fakhfakh
Madagascar flood victims struggle to pick up the piecesAFP — MAROVOAY, MADAGASCAR
Muddy currents have submerged parts of the town of Marovoay in northwestern Madagascar, flooding homes, swirling rubbish around tree tops and killing dozens.
A week of torrential rains have forced thousands to leave their homes, swept buildings away and cut off road links to the rest of the poor Indian Ocean island nation. All of Marovoay’s rice paddies have turned into swamps. “Every-thing has been swept away by the water,” said Marie Jeanne Sofia, a 38-year-old mother of four. “Our zebu and rice stocks have gone. The couches with their foam covers, the bed and even our mattress,” she said.
“We only managed to save a few sacks of rice.” At least 32 people have drowned over the past week and 15,000 others displaced by the floods, local authorities said in their latest tally yesterday.
Sofia and her family have been surviving on fish swimming through Marovoay’s flooded streets. “Usually when I catch a lot of fish I sell them to buy rice and food,” she said,
wading through the murky water with a net in hand.
“But here I can only catch a few, so I eat them straight away.” Madagascar, a former French colony off Africa’s southeastern coast, is in the midst of a six-month rainy season that had caused wide-spread damage. Global warming has increased the risk of flooding and tropical storms, as the atmosphere holds more water and rainfall patterns are disrupted.
The government declared a state of emergency on Friday, and deployed helicopters and vessels to assist victims.
Despite these efforts, Marovoay’s 20,000 inhabitants remain blocked off from the rest of the island.
Mostly fishermen and rice farmers, they float around the city on canoes and swim into their homes to rescue some belongings. President Andry Rajoelina is expected in Marovoay today after visiting the other northwestern regions of Boeny and Betsiboka last week. “The state is mobilised to rescue and support inhab-itants,” Rajoelina tweeted on Friday.
Gabon’s Bongo attacks mob justice after ‘child kidnap’ lynchings
AFP — LIBREVILLE
Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba has attacked mob justice after a second person was lynched by a crowd in the capital Libreville after rumours spread of child kidnappings.
“Two of our fellow citizens have lost their lives as a result of the dramatic incidents in Libreville on Friday,” Pres-ident Ali Bongo Ondimba said on Facebook late on Sunday.
“Nothing can justify the inhuman acts which have shaken our country, or crowd vengeance, which by defi-nition is blind and unjust,” he said. “Gabonese justice will hand out exemplary pun-ishment to all the guilty.” Rumours of a series of child abductions spread on social media following the disap-pearance on January 12 of a three-year-old boy named Rinaldi in a village in the north.
Unrest erupted in Libre-ville on Friday, with the erection of roadblocks and mob searches of vehicles for any sign of abducted children.
One man who was attacked by the crowd died that day, the government said at the weekend.
A second man, identified as Patrick Eyeghe, an employee at the country’s competition authority, was taken to hospital, but died of his injuries on Saturday.
The mob had accused him of being a kidnapper, but in fact he was only in the Venez-voir neighbourhood to pick up his children from school, offi-cials said.
Street children sleep on the verandah of a house in Kigali, Rwanda.
Rwanda detaining and abusing street children: Rights groupREUTERS — KIGALI
Rwanda, often lauded interna-tionally for its economic progress and reintegration after the 1994 genocide, is detaining and abusing street children at a holding centre in the capital, an international rights group said yesterday.
Two homeless boys who had been held at the holding centre, known as the Gikondo Transit Centre, confirmed that they had been abused there, giving accounts that were similar to those compiled from 30 children in the report by the New York-based group Human Rights Watch.
Rwanda’s Justice Minister, Johnston Busingye, said the centre trains young people in
skills including carpentry and welding and rehabilitates them from life on the streets.
“These centres are run in full compliance with law,” he said in a text message.
Rwanda adopted a law in 2017 that defines Gikondo, open since 2005, as a rehabilitation centre for people including minors exhibiting “deviant” behaviour. Human Rights Watch said the government is arbitrarily arresting and holding people there, and subjecting them to ill treatment.
Human Rights Watch said it had interviewed 30 children aged 11 to 17 between January and October 2019 who had pre-viously been detained at Gikondo. All but two of them had said officials at the centre
beat them. Children said they had to share lice-infested mat-tresses with other children, access to medical care was
sporadic and there was no support for rehabilitation.
President Paul Kagame, who won a third term in office
in 2017, is praised abroad for steering a peaceful recovery in Rwanda since the 1994 gen-ocide, when extremists from the
Hutu ethnic majority killed an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
But he has also been criti-cised for what rights groups say are widespread abuses, a muz-zling of independent media, and suppression of political opposition.
Nelly Nshutinamagara, 12, who lives on the streets of Kigali, said he was arrested by police at night, taken to Gikondo, and beaten with batons.
“They treat us badly by using batons…when one child makes a mistake, they beat us all,” he said.
Another child, nine-year-old Francois Muhizi, said: “They lock us inside a big hall and refuse to let us out to urinate.”
The government said the movement never registered and is determined to illegally unseat the constitutionally elected president.
REUTERS — BANGKOK
When Thai medical student Badeephak Kaosala dares to leave his rented apartment in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, he puts on a mask, gloves, a hat and layers of clothing to try to avoid infection with the coronavirus that has the city on lockdown.
“Anywhere you go, you are always self-conscious of touching someone or you always have to keep in mind that you have to keep a distance from the person you’re walking next to — when he sneezes, when he coughs, even when he breathes,” said the 23-year-old student at Wuhan’s Tongji Medical College.
“There’s a shortage. Everyone wants to stock up, but it is already too late,” Badeephak told Reuters via Skype. Badeephak wants to go home to Thailand, he has little choice but to wait.
The Thai government has
put a military plane on standby for a possible evacuation of its citizens, but Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said yes-terday they do not yet have Bei-
jing’s permission for the airlift.Most commercial flights out
of Wuhan were halted last week to try to contain the virus. “At the moment the Chinese
authorities have said the situ-ation is still under control, so we have prepared a plan.... Once it’s time we will seek per-mission to fly in,” Prayuth said.
Tourists wearing protective masks receive hand gel before entering a shopping mall in Bangkok, yesterday.
12 TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020ASIA
Hong Kong confirms 8coronavirus cases;Australia reports fiveAGENCIES — BEIJING
Hong Kong has confirmed two more cases of a new virus that started in central China, raising its total to eight.
Health department official Dr. Chuang Shuk-kwan said yesterday that all the cases are connected to Hubei province, where the outbreak started in December. She said there is no sign yet of it spreading to Hong Kong’s general population.
Chuang added the gov-ernment is still very concerned about that possibility and will watch developments.
Chinese health authorities say the new virus has infected 2,744 people and killed 80 as of midnight Sunday.
Australian authorities yes-terday confirmed five new cases of the novel coronavirus in the country, with the latest one reported in the state of New South Wales (NSW)
NSW health authorities said that the person was being treated in the Westmead Hos-pital in Sydney, reports Xinhua news agency.
The authorities did not unveil the identity or other details of the patient, while another six people were being tested.
According to local media reports, the latest case is a 21-year-old female student of the University of NSW, who returned from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, to Sydney last week and developed symptoms within 24 hours.
The university said in a statement that the student had no close contact with other
people at the school's Ken-sington student housing.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh authorities have tested over 2,000 travellers from China for the novel coronavirus that has killed 80 people in the Asian giant, but no one was found infected, a media report said.
Like other countries across the globe, Bangladesh has been screening travellers from China at airports since January 21.
Travellers at land ports and seaports were also being screened, Health Minister Zahid Maleque told bdnews24.com on Sunday.
"We've strengthened work-force at these ports. We'll be able to detect any coronavirus infection," he added.
At Dhaka's Shahjalal Inter-national Airport, Health Officer Md Shahriar Sazzad said they screened a total of 2,190 pas-sengers from China until Sunday.
However, dense population has made Bangladesh vul-nerable to an outbreak of the new virus if any infected person or animal enters the country, said Kabirul Bashar, who teaches zoology at the Jahangirngar University.
"Animals don't have
borders. No one will be able to stop an infected animal from crossing borders. Now the date juice season is underway. The virus can transmit through bats drinking date juice.
"Besides these, people in our country don't maintain nec-essary personal and civic hygiene. They spit at random on the streets," he added.
Professor ABM Abdullah, a former dean of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical Univer-sity's medicine department, said prevention "is very much necessary" as there is no vaccine or specific treatment for the new virus.
In the meantime, India is finding it hard to assess the exact number of Indians stranded in central China's Wuhan city which has been placed under a lockdown, fol-lowing the outbreak of the c o n t a g i o u s n o v e l coronavirus.
Although more than 500 Indian students are studying in colleges and universities in Wuhan, official sources said that most of them had left the city before the outbreak for the Chinese New Year holidays.
The sources said that the Embassy in Beijing has been in touch with 45 Indian students stuck in Wuhan, but wasn't able to determine the overall figure of Indians living in the city.
"It is difficult to ascertain because usually not all Indians there would register with the Consulate. Nor would they keep the Consulate informed if they were moving out," an official in the Ministry of External Affairs said.
A snap for the albumBrazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (centre) poses for pictures along with his daughter Laura (left) and daughter-in-law Leticia Firmo in front of the Taj Mahal in Agra, yesterday.
Muslim law based on Holy Quran, not legislation: AIMPLB tells Apex Court IANS — NEW DELHI
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has submitted in the Supreme Court that any person other than a member of a religious denom-ination should not be allowed to question the faith of that reli-gious denomination.
The Board has filed an application opposing the PIL filed by BJP leader and advocate Ashwini Upadhyay challenged the validity of practices of polygamy and ‘nikah halala’ among Muslims.
“A member of a religious denomination belonging to that faith, in the event of any vio-lation of their fundamental rights, only to the extent of a threat of life and liberty, may be permitted to seek the pro-tection of the court and
determine the issues of faith arising there from,” said the application by the board, a reg-istered society of Muslim clerics and scholars.
Upadhyay’s petition has relied upon the top court verdict declaring instant triple talaq as void ab initio, and also its verdict on the right to privacy.
The application also con-tended that personal laws do not derive their validity on the ground that they have been passed or made by legislature or other competent authority. The Board insists the foundational sources of personal law are their respective scriptural texts.
“The Mohammedan Law is founded essentially on the Holy Quran and the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and thus it cannot
fall within the purview of the expression laws of force, as mentioned in Article 13 of the Constitution, and hence its validity cannot be tested on a challenge based on Part III of the Constitution,” it held.
The Board also cited its view on the Uniform Civil Code, saying that Article 44 in the Constitution, which talked about having a common law for the entire country, was “only a directive principle of state policy and is not enforceable”. According to the application, the top court has already dealt with the issue of polygamy in 1997 and declined to issue any directive at that point in time.
The petition by Upadhyay has claimed such practices violate Muslim women’s right to live with dignity and their privacy.
Malaysia imposes ban on tourists from WuhanAFP — KUALA LUMPUR
Malaysia banned visitors from the Chinese city of Wuhan and its surrounding Hubei province yesterday, in a bid to contain the spread of a deadly virus.
A statement by the prime minister’s office said the authorities will temporarily halt all issuance of visas for Chinese citizens from the area with immediate effect.
“The government has decided to suspend temporarily all immigration facilities... to all China nationals from Wuhan city and the surrounding Hubei province,” it said.
Malaysia has reported four confirmed cases of the flu-like virus which started in the central-Chinese city and has spread worldwide.
All four, including two children, are in stable condition.
They are tourists from Wuhan who entered Malaysia for a holiday via neighbouring Singapore.
Malaysia welcomed 2.94 million visitors from China last year and is aiming to raise this to 3.48 million this year.
The prime minister’s office said the ban will be lifted when the situation returns to normal.
Meanwhile, a campaign by Malaysians on petition website change.org urging the
government to bar Chinese nationals from entering the country has gathered more than 383,000 signatures of the 500,000 target as of Monday evening. “The government should think more of the health of Malaysians,” the petition said.
“Don’t wait until there is death among Malaysian people then only the government wants to take some preventive action.”
Bengal Assembly passes resolution against CAAIANS — KOLKATA
The West Bengal Assembly yesterday passed a resolution demanding scrapping of contentious new citizenship law.
The resolution, moved by state Parliamentary Affairs minister Partha Chatterjee in a special session, was backed by members of the Congress and Left Front while the BJP opposed it.
The Left and the Congress members, however, expressed their dismay at the state gov-ernment not allowing them to move a resolution against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act earlier this month and wanted to move some amendments.
However, they did not press ahead with their amendments following appeals from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Chatterjee.
Banerjee, in her speech, described the resolution as one upholding humanity, which the law flouts. “This is no Hindu-Muslim issue. It is a matter of humanity. This law is a shame for humanity,” she said.
Banerjee said the CAA, National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Cit-izens (NRC) are inter-connected.
“These are the same thing. So this is not the time for us to quarrel. We all have to fight against dicta-torship,” she said, in an appeal to the Congress-LF members.
The resolution was passed
under rule 169 of the rules of business of the House.
It was adopted without voting, making West Bengal the fourth state in the country to pass such a resolution in its legislature.
The CPI-M-led Left Demo-cratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala and Congress-ruled Punjab and Rajasthan have already passed similar resolutions in the respective Assemblies demanding scrapping of the CAA.
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has also announced that the state Assembly will pass a resolution against the Act.
Leader of the Opposition Abdul Mannan, of the Congress, and the Left Front legislature party leader Sujon Chakraborty, of the CPI-M, were present in the House.
BJP legislator Swadhin Sarkar opposed the resolution.
On January 20, Chief Min-ister Banerjee announced that a resolution against the Citi-zenship Amendment Act will be passed in the state Assembly.
Banerjee and her Tri-namool Congress have been at the forefront of the widespread protests against the legislation in the state, which also saw vio-lence and vandalism after the law was passed last month.
The Congress and Left had earlier in the month tried to bring such a resolution in the Assembly but the Trinamool did not agree, and the matter was not included in the list of business of the House.
Australia’s rainy respite from bushfires seen endingREUTERS — BOURNE
A recent respite for Australian firefighters that brought rains and cooler weather is set to end, meteorologists warned yesterday, with hot conditions forecast for later this week raising a risk that blazes may start spreading again.
Australia experiences regular bush fires over summer,
but this season’s fires began early and have claimed 33 lives in the past four months, killed millions of animals and charred an area nearly the size of Greece.
More than a week of solid rain in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, the three states most affected by the fires, has more than halved the number of blazes, but above average temperatures were set
to return by the weekend.“Unfortunately, the reprieve
may be short-lived with a blast of heat likely late this week in some areas,” the New South Wales Bureau of Meteorology said on Twitter.
As of yesterday, 59 bush and grass fires were burning throughout New South Wales state, 28 of which were yet not contained. “More than 1,300
firefighters are using more favourable conditions to slow the spread of fires and strengthen containment lines, ahead of forecast increasing temperatures later in the week,” the New South Wales Rural Fire Service said on Twitter.
Temperatures in Melbourne, where the Australian Open tennis tournament is in its second week, are forecast to
reach 41 Celsius on Friday.Following are some high-
lights of what is happening in the bus hfire crisis: Rainfall con-tinued in Queensland, with some areas receiving nearly a sixth of their annual average in a 24-hour period yesterday.
One in two Australians have donated money to support bushfire relief efforts, a new survey showed
over the weekend.Prime Minister Scott Mor-
rison said yesterday that he will move a motion of condolence at parliament’s first sitting in early February.
A bushfire near Canberra was at “watch and act” level with fire services saying that no properties were under threat, but warning also the situation may deteriorate.
Thai student stranded in China waits for help
Australian authorities yesterday confirmed five new cases of the novel coronavirus in the country, with the latest one reported in the state of New South Wales.
13TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020 ASIA
Taliban claims downing US aircraft in AfghanistanBLOOMBERG — KABUL
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the downing of a “special American aircraft” flying over Afghanistan on what it described as an intelligence mission.
The crash happened yes-terday in the Taliban-con-trolled Sado Khel area of the Deh Yak district in Ghazni province, the militant group’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said in a message via WhatsApp.
“A special American aircraft which was flying over Afghan-istan for an intelligence mission was tactically shot down by the Taliban,” Mujahed said.
“All on board including high-ranking CIA officers were killed.”
There have been wildly conflicting claims on the crash since the news broke hours earlier — first it was reported to have been a passenger plane en-route from Dubai, then a military flight and now a US aircraft.
There has been no confir-mation so far from the US military.
“US Central Command is aware of the reports of a US air-craft crash in Afghanistan,” said Major Beth Riordan, a US C e n t r a l C o m m a n d spokeswoman.
“We are currently moni-toring the situation and will provide additional information when possible.”
dispatched for military opera-tions and it took off from Afghanistan territory,” said Ghulam Masoom Massumi, the director of air traffic man-agement at the authority, by phone.
“The military plane was not a cargo plane.” Massumi added.
He gave no details of the size and make of plane or the number of people on board.
Afghanistan’s second Vice President, Sarwar Danish, had said that a passenger plane owned by the country’s national carrier, Ariana Afghan Airlines, crashed in the Deh Yak district of Ghazni province.
However Ariana denied reports one of its planes was involved and said it was oper-ating as normal.
No other details were immediately available.
The incident follows reports last week the US and the Taliban were moving toward a peace deal that would see the eventual withdrawal of foreign
troops from Afghanistan and an end to the 18-year long conflict.
It’s the second time in recent months the two sides have appeared close to announcing an agreement.
In September President Donald Trump abruptly called off talks in response to a suicide bombing in Kabul that killed an American soldier.
The militant group controls or contests half of the country,
more territory than any time since they were toppled in 2001.
The US currently has 13,000 of the 22,673 foreign troops in Afghanistan, down from a peak of 100,000 in 2011.
Afghan National Army personnel go towards the site of an airplane crash in Deh Yak district of Ghazni province, Afghanistan, yesterday.
The crash happened yesterday in the Taliban-controlled Sado Khel area of the Deh Yak district in Ghazni province, the militant group’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said in a message via WhatsApp.
Residents removing volcanic ash, which turned into mud, among the debris of their destroyed homes in Laurel, Batangas province, in the Philippines, yesterday.
6 civilians killed in Afghan airstrike over weekend: UNAFP — KABUL
At least six civilians were killed in an airstrike in northern Afghanistan over the weekend, the UN confirmed yesterday, as f ighting continues to rage across the country despite hopes the US and Taliban were hammering out a ceasefire.
The UN’s findings come days after reports first sur-faced that several civilians had been killed in an airstrike in Boka village in northern Balkh province.
“UN gravely concerned as its initial findings indicate at least four children and two women killed Saturday by pro-government forces air-strike in Boka village, #Balkh, #Afghanistan,” tweeted the United Nations Assistance
Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). The US and Afghan militaries are the only forces in Afghanistan that have the capability to carry out air-strikes in the country.
B a l k h g o v e r n o r ’ s spokesman Munir Farhad confirmed that civilians had been killed in Boka, but said officials were still investi-gating the incident.
The statement comes as Washington has for weeks been calling for the violence to be reduced in the country, amid talks with the Taliban over a possible agreement that would see US troops begin to leave Afghanistan in r e t u r n f o r s e c u r i t y guarantees.
Taliban sources said earlier this month they had offered to initiate a brief
ceasefire of seven to 10 days, b u t t h e r e w a s n o announcement of the pro-posal by either party.
The Taliban are aiming to r e a c h a w i t h d r a w a l agreement with the US by the end of January and are pre-pared to “scale down” military operations ahead of signing a deal, their chief spokesman said earlier this month.
The two sides had been negotiating the deal for a year and were on the brink of an announcement in September 2019 when Trump abruptly declared the process “dead”, citing Taliban violence.
Talks were later restarted in December in Qatar, but paused again following an attack near the US-run Bagram military base in Afghanistan.
Removing volcanic ash
Western rights pressure may push it closer to China, says MyanmarBLOOMBERG — YANGON
Myanmar signaled that closer ties with China offer an economic buffer if human-rights concerns cause Western nations to curb trade privileges or investment.
The persecution of the coun-try’s Rohingya Muslim minority has sparked global condem-nation, and led to an Interna-tional Court of Justice order last week for emergency steps to protect Rohingya from genocide.The controversy imperils Myan-mar’s European trade privileges and is spurring calls for sanctions.
“The more sanctions Western countries impose on us, the more likely that is to boost our ties with our Asian alliances,” Commerce Minister Than Myint said in an
interview in the capital, Naypyidaw.
“We’ve opened the door to everyone.” During President Xi Jinping’s visit to Myanmar earlier in January — the first state visit by a Chinese leader in almost two decades — the two countries agreed to expedite several projects as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Yet a tightening embrace of China risks leaving Myanmar over-reliant on its giant neighbor, a concern that has long vexed some officials.
“When it comes to mega projects, we always want to see more options,” Than Myint said in the January 21 interview.
“So we usually encourage Western companies not to be worried about doing business
here. If they decide not to come, then we will have no choice but to cooperate with Asian partners.”
In records going back to 1988, China accounts for a quarter of all foreign-direct investment into
Myanmar, second only to Sin-gapore, government data shows.
Than Myint said Myanmar is aware of risks that come with China-backed investments. Such infrastructure projects have been criticised for debt terms that could leave China in control of critical infrastructure in devel-oping nations.
“Being well-observed about the Chinese debt trap in other developing countries, we will make sure we don’t make the same mistake here,” he said.
China is Myanmar’s most important trading partner, accounting for about $11 bn in trade in 2018, almost double the next nearest nation, Thailand. Asian countries occupied the top eight spots, data compiled by Bloomberg shows.
Even so, Than Myint said any loss of European trade privileges would be a blow for industries such as textile and garment pro-duction. If the preferential treatment is revoked, “a lot of households in Myanmar would be in trouble due to potential job losses,” he said.
More than 740,000 Rohingya were forced to flee for their lives across the border to Bangladesh after Myanmar started so-called “clearance operations” in earnest in 2017. The World Bank expects Myanmar’s economic expansion will climb toward 7 percent by 2022, even as domestic conflicts remain downside risks. About a third of the population lives in poverty, adding pressure on de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi to accelerate reforms.
Police arrestPashtunleader criticalof military
AFP — PESHAWAR
A charismatic Pashtun rights leader who repeatedly accused the powerful military of abuse has been arrested in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar, police said yesterday.
Manzoor Pashteen, chief of the Pashtun Protection Movement (PTM), appeared before a magistrate after being detained shortly after midnight, said police official Shiraz Khan.
Khan said Pashteen would be transferred to another dis-trict where he is wanted on charges including sedition, hate speech, incitement against the state, and criminal conspiracy.
The former veterinary student and his PTM have rattled the military since 2018 with calls to end alleged abuses by security forces targeting ethnic Pashtuns in the restive tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.
The area, once plagued by militancy and unrest, is where Washington believes Pakistan is providing safe haven to mil-itant groups including the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network.
The army has carried out many operations in the region, and security across Pakistan has dramatically improved in recent years.
The military maintains a heavy presence there, however, and the PTM has tapped into festering anger over alleged abuses against Pashtuns — including enforced disappear-ances and targeted killings.
The movement remains peaceful, but has been notable for its direct verbal attacks on the armed forces in a country where such criticism is largely seen as a red line.
Magnitude 6.3 earthquake strikes Solomon Islands
AFP — SYDNEY
A 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit the Solomon Islands yesterday, the US Geological Survey said, but no tsunami warning was issued.
The powerful quake struck just after 4pm at a depth of 17.7km some 140km southeast of the Pacific nation’s capital Honiara, the USGS added.
The Solomon Islands Met Service said there was no tsunami threat from the undersea quake.
Garedd Porowai, marketing team leader for Solomon Islands Tourism, said the tremor was “not the biggest” he had felt but it “gave us quite a jolt here in the office”.
There was no visible evi-dence of damage in Honiara’s central business district, he added. The Solomon Islands are regularly rocked by strong quakes.
The World Bank placed Pakistan among lower-middle-income countries based on its gross national income (GNI) per capita of $1,580 in 2018.
A low GNI per capita is the major obstruction to human development. The country’s value on the human devel-opment index (HDI) was 0.562, which was less than the average HDI value of 0.645 for countries in the medium human devel-opment group. It was also less than the average of 0.638 for South Asian countries.
A low value on the HDI shows large gaps in human development that must be bridged on an urgent basis — something that requires sub-stantial investment.
A huge investment is needed to improve infrastructure in dif-ferent sectors, including oil and gas, power, telecommunication, transportation, construction, textile, trade, financial services, water and sanitation, education
and health. I m p o r t a n t l y , t h e
investment-to-GDP ratio of 15 percent in Pakistan is consid-erably lower than around 30 percent prevailing in China, India and South Korea.
Among other factors, the tax regime has a major role in attracting investment, especially foreign direct investment (FDI). It is empirically established that the tax regime is important for attracting efficiency-seeking FDI. The tax policy plays a sig-nificant role in attracting FDI. A well-structured corporate tax policy plays a crucial role in per-suading businesses to start investing.
The rate of return on investment depends on the cor-porate tax rate. Businesses gen-erally invest in countries where they expect the highest rate of return on investment.
Keeping the significance of FDI in view, the government has recently adopted an FDI-friendly regime that allows non-residents to invest in debt
securities and government securities through special con-vertible rupee accounts main-tained with banks in Pakistan.
The tax payment system has been amended entirely through the Tax Law (Second Amendment) Ordinance 2019 enacted on Dec 26 last year.
Now every banking company or financial institution maintaining a special con-vertible rupee account of a non-resident company with no per-manent establishment in Pakistan is obliged to deduct final tax at the rate of 10 percent from capital gains arising on the disposal of debt instruments and government securities, including treasury bills and Pakistan investment bonds.
Importantly, there will be no restriction on the repatriation of funds from special con-vertible rupee accounts, which incentivises investment in the local debt market by non-res-ident investors.
Furthermore, the tax regime has significantly been amended
to encourage investment in the local debt market. For example, the enhanced rate of with-holding tax for persons not on the active taxpayers’ list will not be applicable to capital gains and profit on debt earned by non-resident companies.
Similarly, special con-vertible rupee accounts being maintained by non-resident companies having no per-manent establishment in Pakistan will be exempted from the collection of advance tax on banking transactions. No such benefit will be available in case they withdraw cash from such accounts.
Also, a non-resident company will not be required to pay advance tax in respect of capital gains. Additionally, requirements concerning filing the statement of final taxation and registration will be appli-cable to a non-resident company solely by reason of capital gains or profit on debt earned from investments in debt and government securities.
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi
14 TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020ASIA
Chinese Premier vows medical reinforcements as virus toll climbs to 81REUTERS — SHANGHAI
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will “inspect and direct” efforts to control a virus outbreak in the central city of Wuhan and promised reinforcements, as provincial authorities faced accusations from the public of a failure to respond in time.
Li, clad in a blue protective suit and mask, thanked medical workers in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province and the epi-centre of the outbreak, as the death toll rose yesterday to 81.
“Li thanked frontline medical workers for their all-out efforts in treating patients and urged them to pay attention to their own pro-tection,” Xinhua news agency said.
“He required efforts to guar-antee medical resources supply, race against time to treat patients and ensure adequate market supply and stable prices.”
He said 2,500 more medical workers would arrive in the next two days.
Li is the most senior leader to visit Wuhan since the out-break began. He inspected efforts to contain the epidemic and was shown on state tele-vision leading medical workers in chants of “Wuhan jiayou!” - an exhortation to keep their strength up.
He also visited the con-struction site of a new hospital due to be built in days.
On China’s heavily censored social media, where dissent is
typically suppressed, local offi-cials have borne the brunt of mounting public anger about the handling of the virus.
Some lashed out at the Hubei governor, who had to correct himself twice during a news conference over the number of face masks being produced in the province.
“If he can mess up the data multiple times, no wonder the disease has spread so severely,” one Weibo user said.
Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang told state broadcaster CCTV the city’s management of the crisis was “not good enough” — rare public self-crit-icism for a Chinese official — and said he was willing to resign.
The city of 11 million people is in virtual lockdown and much of Hubei, home to nearly 60 million people, is under some kind of travel curb. People from Hubei have come under
scrutiny within mainland China as well, with many facing sus-picion from officials about their recent travels.
“Hubei people are getting discriminated against,” a Wuhan resident complained on the Weibo social media platform.
A county in northern China is offering $145 to tipsters who report the presence of anyone from Wuhan who has not reg-istered with authorities, local government TV said.
A small number of cases linked to people who travelled from Wuhan have been con-firmed in more than 10 coun-tries, including Thailand, France, Japan and the United States, but no deaths have been reported outside China. Cam-bodia confirmed its first case on Monday.
Investors are worried about the impact on travel, tourism and broader economic activity. The consensus is that in the short term, economic output will be hit as Chinese author-ities impose travel restrictions and extend the Lunar New Year holiday to limit the spread of the virus.
Asian shares tumbled, with Japan’s Nikkei average sliding 2 percent, its biggest one-day fall in five months. Demand spiked for safe-haven assets such as the Japanese yen and Treasury notes. European stocks were down more than 2 percent. During the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Res-piratory Syndrome (SARS), a
coronavirus that originated in China and killed nearly 800 people globally, air passenger demand in Asia plunged 45 percent.
The travel industry is more reliant on Chinese travellers now than it was then.
The total number of con-firmed cases in China rose to 2,835, with about half in the central province of Hubei. But some experts suspect the number of infected people is much higher.
As worry grew around the world, Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, which has had eight con-firmed cases, banned entry to people who had visited Hubei in the past 14 days.
China extended the week-long Lunar New Year holiday by three days to February 2. The Lunar New Year is usually a time for travel by millions, but many have had to cancel plans.
The number of deaths from
the virus in Hubei climbed to 76 from 56, officials said, with five deaths elsewhere in China.
The newly identified coro-navirus is believed to have orig-inated late last year in a Wuhan market illegally selling wildlife. Much is not known, including how easily it spreads and just how deadly it is.
National Health Com-mission Minister Ma Xiaowei said on Sunday the incubation period could range from one to 14 days, and the virus was infec-tious during incubation, unlike SARS.
The World Health Organi-sation (WHO) estimated an incubation period of two to 10 days.
Last week, the WHO stopped short of calling the out-break a global health emer-gency, but some health experts question whether China can contain the epidemic.
WHO Director-General
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had arrived in China and would meet officials working on the response, his agency said.
Australia confirmed its fifth case yesterday involving a woman on the last flight out of Wuhan to Sydney before China’s travel ban.
Several Western countries including the United States and Australia, are working to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan.
Some of China’s biggest companies have been affected, with hotpot restaurant chain Haidilao International Holding shutting branches nationwide from Sunday until Friday.
Gaming giant Tencent Holdings Ltd advised staff to work from home until February 7, and e-commerce firm Alibaba removed vendors’ offers of overpriced face masks from its online Taobao marketplace as prices surged.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (centre, right) during a visit to a construction site for a new hospital being built to treat patients of a virus outbreak in Wuhan, in China’s Hubei province, yesterday.
Virus outbreak rams global tourism, costing billionsAP — BEIJING
With tens of millions of Chinese ordered to stay put and many others avoiding travel as a new virus spreads, tourism around the globe is taking a heavy hit during one of the biggest travel seasons in Asia, the Lunar New Year.
Tourism from China was already weakening before the virus forced much of the country into a standstill.
In Thailand, a favourite tropical destination for Lunar New Year travel, officials estimate potential lost revenue at $1.6 billion. In Asia and much farther away, hotels, airlines, cruise operators and others who depend on big spending Chinese tourists are ruing their absence.
Yesterday, China extended the week-long holiday by an extra three days to February 2 to help prevent the epidemic from spreading further, as authorities announced that 2,744 people had fallen ill and 80 had died from the new virus first found in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Shanghai pushed the holiday’s end back to February 9.
Travel agencies in China were told to cancel group tourism, and governments around the region were
restricting travel from Wuhan, closely monitoring other travelers and helping arrange evacuations of some foreigners stuck in Wuhan.
So far, 17 Chinese cities that are home to more than 50 million people have imposed
lockdowns.In Thailand’s capital,
Bangkok, many drugstores ran out of surgical masks and the number of Chinese tourists appeared to be much smaller than usual for the Lunar New Year. The government
announced it was handing out masks, and that the airport rail link would be disinfected.
The Tourism Council of Thailand estimated revenues for the holidays would be at least $1.6 billion lower than usual, based on an estimate of Chinese tourists
usually spending about $1,600 each. That followed a downturn in arrivals from China in early 2019 after several boating acci-dents raised questions about the safety standards of tour operators.
Overall, a few months ago the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute predicted 7 million outbound trips for Chinese New Year this year, up from 6.3 million in 2019.
Anti-government protests in Hong Kong have left many from the Chinese mainland wary of visiting that popular destination and more likely to travel farther afield. The same goes for the self-governed island of Taiwan, where heavy voter turnout in elections earlier this month favored candidates who do not favor uniting with Beijing as China’s leaders insist must happen eventually.
Chinese made about 134 million trips in 2019, according to official figures, up 4.5 percent from a year earlier but a much slower rate of increase than the nearly 15 percent growth seen in 2018. Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam and South Korea tend to be favorite destinations.
Tourism from China to the US was already on a decline even
before the coronavirus hit, hurt by the prolonged trade dispute between Beijing and Washington. In 2018, travel from China to the US fell for the first time in 15 years, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office, which collects data from US Customs forms.
The office has forecast a further decline of 5 percent in 2019. It was predicting a return to slow but steady growth in 2020 and beyond, and it isn’t clear how the outbreak and latest travel restrictions might change that. China ranks fifth overall in the number of tourists it sends to the US, behind Canada, Mexico, the UK and Japan.
In Europe, Chinese tourists tend to be big spenders and to visit fashion capitals like Paris, Milan and London to buy luxury goods items.
In Britain, Chinese visitors were second only to tourists from the Middle East in how much they spent per visit — about $2,200 on average in 2018. That sum is down from previous years, in part due to the fact that luxury goods are becoming more acces-sible and affordable in China. But the number of Chinese visiting Britain keeps growing, quadru-pling since 2010.
Chinese tourists wearing face masks walkiing after their arrival from Nusa Penida at the fast boat pier in Serangan island in Denpasar, on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali, yesterday.
North Korea urges citizens to ‘break through barriers’ as N-standoff continuesREUTERS — SEOUL
While a North Korean deadline for the United States to soften its stand on denuclearisation talks passed uneventfully over the New Year, state media and propaganda efforts have been focussing on the prospect of a long confrontation with the United States.
Optimism that two years of contacts between leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump would usher in a new age, and related hopes for economic improvement after decades of deprivation, appear to have faded.
Instead, the government has been hard at work in recent weeks using state media, prop-aganda posters, and perform-ances to warn the public of a bumpy road ahead under US and international pressure.
The propaganda effort has
included calls for North Koreans to “break through bar-riers” and strengthen the country.
The weekend’s Lunar New Year celebrations included a concert for Kim and other dig-nitaries with tributes to the country’s leaders for over-coming adversity.
It is a familiar message for North Koreans, but one that now underscores that the lead-ership does not foresee a breakthrough in diplomacy any time soon.
“The message will be that because of the US hostile policy and sanctions, that things will be more difficult for the fore-seeable future,” said Andray Abrahamian, a visiting scholar with George Mason University Korea.
Behind the scenes, North Korean officials still say they are seeking badly needed
sanctions relief, said one European scholar who regu-larly attends informal meetings w i t h N o r t h K o r e a n representatives.
Publicly, North Korea has said it is no longer bound by commitments to halt nuclear and missile testing, blaming the United States for failing to meet
the year-end deadline for it to show more flexibility in the nuclear talks and its “brutal and inhumane” sanctions.
Since Kim came to power in 2011, many North Koreans have steadily seen living con-ditions improve compared with deprivation and even famines of the 1990s.
In 2018, Kim doubled down by declaring the “completion” of the nuclear weapons pro-gramme would allow the gov-ernment to focus on economic development.
But the failure to win sanc-tions relief is putting Kim in a sensitive spot.
“In 2012, Kim promised that there would be no more belt tightening, so for him to call on the country to prepare for exactly that sends a very clear message,” Abrahamian said.
“Most North Koreans have seen their economic prospects
improve under Kim Jong Un so I’m sure this is a worrying time for them.”
The propaganda push is designed to support a line Kim set out in a speech at the end of last year calling for North Koreans to brace for an “arduous and prolonged struggle” and to foster a self-reliant economy because of a delay in the anticipated lifting of sanctions, analysts said.
Kim used that speech to acknowledge North Korea may need to “tighten our belts” for the time being.
But state media and prop-aganda have not yet widely pushed that line widely, likely in part because of Kim’s past promises, said Rachel Minyoung Lee, an analyst with NK News, a website that mon-itors North Korea.
“It is a controversial term and North Korea will likely roll
it out very subtly and carefully,” she said. The final months of 2019 saw senior officials warning the United States not to ignore its threat of a “new way” if it did not offer more concessions in talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.
Beyond a warning from Kim that the world would soon see a “new strategic weapon”, however, the deadline passed uneventfully.
Since then, the North’s state media has been ominously quiet on the issue of talks with the United States.
“I have a feeling they’re biding their time to roll out some changes to their foreign policy, including US policy, and North Korea may make its intentions clearer as it gets closer to the showcasing of its ‘new strategic weapon’,” Lee said.
North Korea leader Kim Jong Un
The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in China rose to 2,835, with about half in the central province of Hubei. But some experts suspect the number of infected people is much higher.
15TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020 EUROPE
Italy govt survives Salvini challenge but risks remainAFP — BOLOGNA
The far-right’s defeat in a key regional election in Italy staves off for now a political crisis for the government, but risks remain with a weakening Five Star party, analysts said yesterday.
The failure of the far-right League to win over voters in the wealthy region of Emilia Romagna in Sunday’s vote dashed leader Matteo Salvini’s hopes of triggering a collapse of the current coalition government.
But a floundering Five Star Movement (M5S), which shares power with the centre-left Dem-ocratic Party (PD), is creating more headaches for the gov-ernment of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
“Had Salvini won, the gov-ernment crisis would have been inevitable,” political scientist Emiliana De Blasio of the Luiss School of Government in Rome said.
“Now everything depends on the Five Stars.” The PD’s Stefano Bonaccini won just over
51 percent of the vote in the centre-north region against just under 44 percent of League can-didate Lucia Borgonzoni.
However, the M5S candidate received a paltry 3.5 percent, while the party’s candidate in the southern region of Calabria fared only slightly better, with 7.3 percent. The party had chosen not to join forces with the PD behind a single candidate.
Corriere Della Sera editori-alist Massimo Franco wrote that M5S “was crumbling every-where, casting a shadow on the government of Giuseppe Conte”.
The most striking element of the vote was not Salvini’s
defeat, but rather the “annihi-lation” of the M5S, Franco wrote, saying the party’s power was beyond marginal, now “residual”.
The M5S has been haemor-rhaging lawmakers in the midst of party infighting, and leader Luigi Di Maio stepped down from his post on Wednesday in a bid to stave off a crisis.
It is a dramatic change in fortune for the party, founded a decade ago by standup comedian Beppo Grillo, which six years ago won a majority of votes in Italy’s lower chamber of deputies.
Yesterday, acting party head Vito Crimi acknowledged M5S’s “lower than expected” results.
“However, this does not lead us to give up: if anything, the opposite is true. We have already started the work of organisation that will allow us a greater coor-dination and will allow us to be more present on the ground,” Crimi wrote in the party’s blog.
The M5S remains the largest individual party in parliament, but alliances with first the League, and then the PD has
confused its message among voters and analysts say the party risks fracture.
Now, the beleaguered party faces a choice, said De Blasio.
“They could pull the plug on the government and return to the opposition to rebuild them-selves,” she said.
Or they could move closer
to the centre left, with its recent electoral coup.
“The message from the polls is that they need to have clearer policies,” De Blasio said.
Incumbent centre-left candidate of the Democratic Party in a regional vote in Emilia-Romagna, Stefano Bonaccini, arrives to address a press conference in Bologna, Italy, yesterday.
The PD’s Stefano Bonaccini won just over 51 percent of the vote in the centre-north region against just under 44 percent of League candidate Lucia Borgonzoni.
France warns US against pulling troops from Africa’s Sahel regionREUTERS — WASHINGTON/PARIS
France delivered a stern warning yesterday against possible US troop cuts in West Africa, where groups linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State are expanding their foothold. The Pentagon is considering withdrawing the personnel as part of a global troop review meant to free up more resources to address challenges from China’s military, after nearly two decades of prioritising counter-terrorism operations around the world. French Defence Minister Florence Parly said she warned her US counterpart during a visit to the Pentagon that joint coun-terterrorism efforts in West Africa would be harmed by cuts to US military assistance. “I had the opportunity to (say) again, to mention again, that the US support is critical to our oper-ations and its reduction would severely limit our effectiveness against terrorists,” Parly said at a joint news conference, standing alongside US Defence Secretary Mark Esper. Esper, who is spearheading the review, said no decisions had been made. But he did not suggest any reconsideration of potential cuts to US forces in the region. The possibility of cuts has alarmed France, which relies on US intelligence and logistics for its 4,500-strong mission in the Sahel. The deaths of 13 French soldiers in a helicopter crash during a combat mission in Mali in November increased France’s determination to secure more support in the zone. France believes it is time to increase, not ease, pressure on militants to prevent “Islamic State from rebuilding in the Sahel,” a
senior French defence ministry official said. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian had said ahead of the Pentagon talks to reporters that he hoped Washington “will be rational to keep this partnership and that good sense will prevail.” The US currently has around 6,000 military personnel in Africa. Although some experts say a repositioning of forces is overdue, many US officials share French concerns about relieving pressure on militants in Africa.
“Any withdrawal or reduction would likely result in a surge in violent extremist attacks on the continent and beyond,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democrat Chris Coons wrote in a letter to Esper this month.
Former colonial power France intervened in 2013 to drive back militants who had
seized northern Mali the pre-vious year. Fighters have since regrouped and spread. Over the past year, militants have stepped up attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Although groups in the Sahel are believed to have the intent to carry out attacks against the United States, they are not currently believed to have the capacity to do so, offi-cials say.
General Francois Lecointre, chief of staff of the French armed forces, said that the loss of US intelligence from inter-cepted communications would be the “biggest setback”.
“I’m doing my utmost to prevent this from happening,” he said, adding that French drone-based spying systems would not be operational until year-end.
France said this month it
would deploy 220 additional troops to the region, despite rising anti-French sentiment in some countries and criticism at home that its forces are bogged down.
Parly recently visited the Sahel with counterparts from Portugal, Sweden and Estonia to press European allies to do more, especially by contributing special forces to a new French-led unit due to be set up this year.
One of the main aims of the outfit, officials said, is to improve coordination between regional troops and French planes able to carry out air strikes.
So far, take-up has been limited, with only Estonia com-mitting 40 troops. Discussions continue with eight nations. Germany has refused to take part.
US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper with his French counterpart Florence Parly hold a press conference at the Pentagon, in Washington, DC, yesterday.
Mathematics whizz splits with Macron over Paris mayor bidAFP — PARIS
French President Emmanuel Macron’s party is set to throw out a star mathematician, offi-cials said Monday, in a bitter fight over Paris’s coming mayoral election.
Cedric Villani, an award-winning academic, said he would stand for mayor in the French capital despite Macron’s Republic on the Move choosing another candidate.
The fratricidal fight has split centrist voters and jeopardised the party’s hopes of ousting Socialist incumbent Anne Hidalgo in an election set for March.
Wresting control of Paris would be a huge prize for Macron as he seeks to consol-idate his base ahead of an expected re-election bid in 2022.
After being summoned to a meeting with Macron on Sunday, Villani said he would not back down, choosing instead “to remain faithful to Parisians”.
“He has signalled his rupture with the president,” the head of Republic on the Move (LREM), Stanislas Guerini, told Radio Classique on Monday.
“His statements are quite clear, so on Wednesday night I will ask my executive com-mittee to confirm that he is no longer a member.”
Despite Macron’s solid showing in the city during the presidential campaign two and a half years ago, polls show his party lagging far behind in the Paris mayor battle.
An Odoxa-CGI survey released on Sunday showed just 10 percent of respondents likely to vote for Villani, and 16
percent for Benjamin Griveaux -- the official choice of Macron’s party chosen during a closed-door nomination.
Hidalgo was on top with 23 percent of likely voters in the first round, fallowed by the right-wing candidate Rachida Dati, a former government minister.
Griveaux said on Monday that “his door will remain open” to Villani, a former Fields Medal recipient -- considered the Nobel prize of mathematics -- who was among a wave of political newcomers swept into parliament after Macron’s victory.
But Villani, known for sporting ornate spider brooches on his lapels, made no secret of his anger at being passed over for Griveaux, and has modelled his Paris bid on Macron’s own outsider victory in 2017.
“It’s like in a love story: every once in a while you dis-agree on how you see things,” Villani’s spokesman Baptiste Fournier said Monday of the dispute with Macron.
Mathematician Cedric Villani
UK unveils new visa scheme for scientists after BrexitAFP — LONDON
Britain yesterday announced a new fast-track visa scheme for top scientists, researchers and mathematicians as it prepares a new immigration system for life outside the European Union.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed the plan just days before Brexit finally takes place on January 31.
Concerns about mass migration were a driving force in the 2016 campaign to leave the EU, and Johnson has promised to end free movement with the bloc.
EU free movement will continue for 11 months after Brexit during a transition period designed to allow London and Brussels to agree a new future partnership.
The government hopes to
introduce a new points-based immigration system on January 1, 2021, for EU and non-EU citizens, but the details are still being worked out.
The newly announced Global Talent visa system will come into effect from next month, to replace the Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) visa.
Only around 550 of the old visas were issued in 2018-19, well below the cap of 2,000, and officials hope the new, uncapped scheme will be more enticing. It is open to a wider range of applicants, and offers an easier route to set-tling in Britain.
The government also unveiled an extra £300 million to fund “experimental and imaginative mathematical sci-ences research” over the next five years.
Shipwreck diving to help boost Greece 2020 tourism: MinisterAFP — ATHENS
Greece will exploit untapped tourist activities, including diving for post-19th century shipwrecks, to help meet the new conservative government’s target of a 10-percent boost in visitor revenues this year, the tourism minister said yesterday.
“We will liberalise the cre-ation of diving parks. We will allow diving in shipwrecks over 50 years old, which are cur-rently not allowed,” Harry The-ocharis said.
A bill would be introduced “within a month” to open ship-wrecks between 1860 and 1970 to divers, he said.
The authorities will also address overcrowding at some popular cruise ship destinations, he said.
As Greece slowly emerges from a decade-long financial crisis it relies heavily on tourism to boost economic growth and
accelerate job creation. The sector accounts for about a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product and employs around 20 percent of the total workforce.
The ministry yesterday said tourism revenues in 2019 grew by 12 percent at 18.1bn euros from about 16 billion in 2018.
It expects arrivals will increase by five percent in 2020 from last year when they were 31 million, up 3.6 percent from the previous year.
Greece currently draws over three times more tourists than its 10.8 million residents, but Athens still has “a lot of untapped potential,” the min-ister said yesterday.
Shortly after the govern-nment took power in July the sector suffered a blow with the collapse of British travel giant Thomas Cook, which left thou-sands of tourists stranded on the Greek islands.
Theocharis said there was an immediate impact of over 120m euros in unpaid invoices to Greek operators, and another 500m euros in lost contracts.
Over 3,000 employees in Greece were also affected, losing seasonal jobs a month early, the minister said.
“Given the issues that arose during the year, it’s obvious that we are relieved” by the 2019 results, he said, adding that negotiations with airlines and other operators had “effectively covered all 1.6m airline seats” lost. Theocharis acknowledges “strain in the infrastructure” of some successful island destina-tions, but insists Greece is “nowhere near the kind of (con-gestion) issues other destina-tions are currently facing.”
For top island destinations such as Santorini, he says offi-cials are “working to establish a berth allocation system that is more granular... a cap per hour...
to create incentives or disincen-tives to spread out (cruise ship) flows,” he says.
Theocharis and other min-isters travel to Paris on Tuesday alongside Prime Minister Kyr-iakos Mitsotakis for a business forum designed to attract investment to Greece.
The minister notes that for many investors, a key signal will be a long-awaited breakthrough in the redevelopment of the former Athens airport of Hell-inikon into a massive park.
The eight-billion-euro project involving residences, hotels, shopping centres and cultural venues, has been delayed for years, but the gov-ernment is hopeful construction will begin this year.
“Some investors want to play it safer. For those, a big pro-portion of the investing com-munity, they need to see it hap-pening before they take the risk,” the minister said.
16 TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020EUROPE
Slovenia’s Prime Minister resigns, calls for snap pollAFP — LJUBLJANA
Slovenian Prime Minister Marjan Sarec announced yesterday he would step down and called for fresh elections, following weeks of rising tensions within his minority f i v e - p a r t y c o a l i t i o n government.
“With these members of parliament and this coalition I cannot fulfil the people’s expec-tations,” he told journalists.
“The most honest thing we could do now would be early elections... to ask people whether they trust me and they want me to continue to work,” added Sarec, who became prime minister in September 2018 following a previous snap election.
Sarec, 42, is Slovenia’s youngest-ever prime minister. He was previously best known as a comedian and political sat-irist before he launched himself as an anti-establishment politician.
Slovenian President Borut Pahor will now have to start talks with political parties to see
whether any of them can form a new coalition that commands a parliamentary majority and thus avoid a fresh poll.
Sarec’s resignation came almost at the same time as Finance Minister Andrej Ber-toncelj announced he too would quit in a row over health care funding. Since taking office, Sarec’s centre-left government has been buffeted by a string of scandals and disputes, leaving it unable to pass key legislation.
Bertoncelj just was the latest of six high-profile ministers to resign. In December, the
coalition barely managed to appoint a new cohesion min-ister. They only narrowly won the parliamentary vote after the populist Slovenian National Party agreed to abstain.
In the 2018 poll, Sarec stressed his pro-European cre-dentials and compared his pol-itics to those of French Pres-ident Emmanuel Macron.
The main opposition
right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), led by former prime minister Janez Jansa, campaigned on a tough anti-immigration line.
While it won the most seats in parliament, it failed to attract sufficient coalition partners.
Sarec’s government has kept its popularity with measures such as pension and wage rises, amid a spell of strong economic growth.
A recent opinion poll of 770 voters carried out for the private POP TV station showed the prime minister’s “Marjan Sarec List” on 15.1 percent and the SDS almost level pegging on 14.1 percent.
The Social Democrats (SD), a junior member in the current coalition, and the left-wing opposition party Levica were both on 7.2 percent.
Levica previously provided parliament support to the gov-ernment but withdrew it last year. The political landscape in the Alpine eurozone member is highly fragmented, with no fewer than nine parties in parliament repre-senting a population of just over two million.
Political analyst Vlado Miheljak of the University of Ljubljana said there was a pos-sibility that Sarec’s resignation was a “tactical decision to try forming a new coalition with a clear agenda”.
SDS leader Jansa reacted to Sarec’s announcement by saying that “early elections are by far the most likely outcome”.
Slovenian Prime Minister Marjan Sarec speaks to the press in the Parliament after announcing his resignation, in Ljubljana, yesterday.
Russia nabs Japanese seeking ‘classified’ infoAFP — MOSCOW
Moscow said yesterday that it handed Japanese diplomats a note of protest after a Japanese national was allegedly caught trying to obtain “classified information” in Russia’s Far East.
On December 25, Russian law enforcement officials detained a Japanese national who was trying to obtain “clas-sified information about Rus-sia’s military potential in the Far East,” a foreign ministry representative said on con-dition of anonymity.
The Japanese who was not identified and was in Russia on a media visa was warned about “the inadmissibility of his actions” and ordered to leave the country, the foreign min-istry said.
He left Russia the next day, the ministry added.
The Russian foreign min-istry also summoned a Jap-anese diplomat and handed him a note of protest over the incident, Moscow said.
Asked why Russia made the announcement only now, the
foreign ministry representative declined to comment.
On Sunday, Japanese police arrested a former SoftBank employee for allegedly stealing proprietary information from the telecom giant and giving it to Russian officials.
Yutaka Araki, 48, is sus-pected of obtaining “trade secrets from a computer server at a telecommunication-related company on February 18 last year, in violation of Japan’s unfair competition prevention law,” Tokyo police said in a statement.
Authorities did not identify the firm, but local media said it was major mobile carrier SoftBank Corp, a unit of the SoftBank Group.
Police suspect Russian trade officials at Moscow’s mission in Tokyo were involved in espionage, media reported.
The Russian embassy has described the media reports as “regrettable” and “cheap spy allegations”.
The foreign ministry yes-terday declined to say whether the two incidents were related.
French ship in Greece port French Marines stand on the French Landing Helicopter Deck amphibious ship Dixmude upon its presentation after its arrival in the port of Piraeus, Greece, yesterday. The LHD Dixmude will be deployed in the Mediterranean and take part in an international exercise.
Croatian pilot dies in military chopper crashAFP — ZAGREB
A Croatian military helicopter crashed yesterday off the coun-try’s Adriatic coast, killing the pilot and leaving a second crew member missing, the defence
ministry said. The US-made Kiowa Warrior OH-58D heli-copter was on a training flight, and an intensive search and rescue operation for the missing crew member was underway.
The reasons for the crash,
which occurred off the central coast in the Zlarin channel, were not immediately known.
The chopper was one of 16 armed reconnaissance heli-copters donated to Croatia by the US in 2016.
Fourteen injured as car carrying Syrians crashes in Greece
AP — THESSALONIKI, GREECE
A car carrying Syrians crashed early yesterday in northern Greece, police said, injuring all 14 people in the vehicle that is believed to have crossed the border clandestinely.
Police said the car had been travelling along an old highway in northern Greece toward the country’s second-largest city of Thessaloniki around 2am when it failed to stop for a police check. The car’s driver then lost control of the vehicle and crashed.
Greek police said all were from Syria: 11 men, one woman and two teenage children. Eight, including the teenagers, were treated for their injuries in a hospital and released. The other six remained hospitalized, including the suspected driver, a 22-year-old man.
Thousands of migrants and refugees still arrive in Greece from neighbouring Turkey each year. Most come by sea to the nearby Greek islands but others use the land border, wading, swimming or rowing across the river that divides Turkey and Greece. They then pack into smugglers’ cars and head to Greece’s cities.
Portuguese hacker says he is behind Angola corruption leaksAFP — LISBON
Lawyers for a Portuguese computer hacker said yesterday he was responsible for revealing the dealings of Angolan billionaire Isabel dos Santos, a corruption scandal with fallout across Europe and Africa.
The hacker, Rui Pinto, handed over a hard drive “con-taining all data related to the recent revelations concerning Ms. Isabel Dos Santos’s fortune” to a whistleblowing organi-sation in 2018, his lawyers said.
The tycoon daughter of former Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos now faces a slew of corruption allegations stretching across Angola’s state oil and diamond industries and banks — all of which she has denied in interviews from London.
Rui Pinto — described by his lawyers as a “very important European whistleblower” — is also behind the so-called Football Leaks, a series of stories about financial dealings
and transfers involving clubs in Europe’s top leagues.
The football revelations, which first appeared in 2015 and were eventually published in Germany’s Spiegel and other European outlets, sparked criminal investigations in coun-tries including Britain and France. Pinto, 31, was extradited from Hungary last March over allegations that he hacked into the systems of investment fund Doyen Sports and tried to blackmail them in return for not publishing information he had taken.
His lawyers have argued that Pinto — currently in pre-trial detention in Portugal — willingly stopped the blackmail attempt and turned whistle-blower, publishing the docu-ments rather than profiting personally.
But a Portuguese court decided on January 17 to go ahead with his trial on a total of 90 charges.
According to his lawyers, the hard drive Pinto handed
over on the Angolan tycoon’s finances provided the source material for revelations about “all the actors that might be involved in the fraudulent oper-ations committed at the expense of the Angolan State”.
The New York-based Inter-national Consortium of Inves-tigative Journalists (ICIJ)
— which had also worked on previous financial scandals including the 2016 “Panama Papers” — began publishing stories on dos Santos in mid-January. The consortium said it had trawled more than 715,000 files and produced stories it said revealed a “broken interna-tional regulatory system”.
Football Leaks whistleblower Rui Pinto (centre) is escorted by judicial officers as he arrives at the Metropolitan Court in Budapest, Hungary, for his trial, on March 5, 2019.
Nearly 500 migrants rescued in Mediterranean seek safe portsAFP — CENTRAL MEDITERRANEAN
Nearly 500 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean by two boats run by aid agencies were looking for safe ports in Malta and Italy, the groups said yesterday.
The Ocean Viking, a rescue vessel run by SOS Mediterranee in partnership with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) was car-rying 407 people rescued in a
total of five operations carried out over 72 hours.
Another 78 people were taken on board the Alan Kurdi, run by the Sea-Eye organisation based in Germany. They were rescued in two operations.
Sea-Eye tweeted on Sunday that the Alan Kurdi was headed for Italy after Malta refused them a safe port.
“Ocean Viking has rescued 184 men, women and children
in distress... on two inflatable rafts,” off the Libyan coast, MSF tweeted.
They pulled 82 of them out of the water in a zone normally covered by the Maltese author-ities, they added.
“With five night-time oper-ations carried out in less than 72 hours, that’s a total of 407 survivors who are now safely on board,” MSF added.
“As we approached, it was
clear the people were highly stressed & panicking,” MSF tweeted, quoting Catherine, one of the nurses on board the Ocean Viking.
“Having been at sea for 22 hours, many were suffering from hypothermia & dehy-dration. Others had been exposed to fuel, which can develop into burns on the skin,” she added.
“Despite the winter, despite
the bad weather, and despite the very few boats dedicated to the rescue in the area, boats are still leaving Libya in numbers,” Aloys Vimard, MSF’s coordi-nator on board the Ocean Viking, said.
“The survivors tell us about the deteriorating security situ-ation in Libya where there is active conflict.” MSF had refused an offer to land them at Libya as “it is not a safe place.”
Authorities battle Atlantic storm to intercept cocaine yacht
AP — LISBON, PORTUGAL
An international drug oper-ation involving authorities from six countries captured a yacht carrying almost 2 metric tons of cocaine in the middle of an Atlantic storm.
Portugal’s navy and air force took part in the seizure, with a street value of more than ¤70m ($77m), amid “very difficult weather conditions,” a Portuguese police statement said Monday.
The Portuguese operation was supported by police in Brazil, the US, Britain, France and Spain.
Intelligence-gathering that helped locate and intercept the yacht was coordinated by the Maritime Analysis and Oper-ations Centre — Narcotics, based in Lisbon.
Two foreign men aged 51 and 53 were arrested in the operation, police said.
40-strong British team to negotiate with EU on BrexitREUTERS — LONDON
Britain’s post-Brexit negotia-tions with the European Union will be conducted by a team of 40 officials known as “Task-force Europe” who will report to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, his spokesman said yesterday.
Britain leaves the EU at 2300 GMT on Friday, entering a transition phase during which existing rules will con-tinue to apply while a new long-term relationship is negotiated. The talks on a new deal are expected to begin in March, with Britain promising it will be in place by the end of the year.
The taskforce will be led by David Frost, a diplomat and one-time business lobbyist who was appointed as John-son’s Europe adviser last year and went on to lead day-to-day negotiations in Brussels on an exit agreement which was signed off last week.
Frost would most likely negotiate directly with the EU’s Michel Barnier, the spokesman said.
Frost’s team will include senior representatives from Britain’s finance ministry and foreign office, and work with other departments on specific policies. The government’s Brexit department, created in 2016 after Britain voted in a referendum to leave the EU, will be disbanded on Friday.
The foreign ministry will assume control of diplomatic engagements around the negotiations.
Ten Russiansgo on trial ondrug chargesAFP — PRAIA, CAPE VERDE
Ten Russians were due to go on trial in Cape Verde charged with drug trafficking following a record 9.5-tonne cocaine haul.
The drugs stash was found in 260 packets on the Russian-crewed, Panamanian-regis-tered ESER vessel in January 2019, the biggest ever nar-cotics find in the archipelago off the coast of Senegal.
Police said the cargo, which was coming from South America and destined for Tan-giers, was intercepted at Praia port while complying with judicial procedures linked to the death of a crew member.
They said they had warning the vessel was sus-pected of having drugs aboard.
Marjan Sarec, 42, is Slovenia’s youngest-ever prime minister. He was previously best known as a comedian and political satirist before he launched himself as a politician.
Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a sometime critic of Trump, said there was a growing likelihood that at least four Republican senators would vote to call for Bolton to testify in the trial, which would give Democrats the votes necessary to summon the former national security adviser.
17TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020 AMERICAS
Bolton book revelations roil impeachment trialREUTERS — WASHINGTON
President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in the US Senate came under fresh pressure yesterday to allow wit-nesses and new documents in his impeachment trial after a news report that a former top aide, John Bolton, has written a book manuscript that undercuts Trump’s versions of events in the Ukraine affair.
Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a sometime critic of Trump, said there was a growing likelihood that at least four Republican senators would vote to call for Bolton to testify in the trial, which would give Democrats the votes necessary to summon the former national security adviser.
Senate Republicans thus far have refused to allow any wit-nesses or new evidence in the trial that will determine whether Trump is removed from office.
The New York Times cited the manuscript of an unpub-lished book by Bolton as saying that Trump told him he wanted to freeze security aid to Ukraine until Kiev helped with politi-cally beneficial investigations into Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. If confirmed, the report would add weight to Democrats’ accusations that Trump used the $391m in aid - approved by the US Congress to help Ukraine combat Russia-backed separatists - as leverage
to get a foreign country to help him dig up dirt on a domestic political rival.
Biden is a leading contender for the Democratic nomination to face Trump in the November 3 presidential election.
Trump yesterday denied telling Bolton that he sought to use the aid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy to investigate the Bidens on unsubstantiated cor-ruption allegations. Hunter Biden worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was US vice-president.
Bolton left his post in Sep-tember. Trump said he fired him. Bolton said he quit.
“I think it’s increasingly likely that other Republicans will join
those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton,” Romney told reporters. Another moderate Republican senator, Susan Collins, said the reports regarding Bolton’s book “strengthen the case for witnesses.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Republican ally of Trump, said he would support issuing a sub-poena to obtain Bolton’s man-uscript to see if it should be added to the record, a CNN reporter said on Twitter.
The Democratic-led House of Representatives impeached Trump last month on charges of abuse of power in his dealings with Ukraine and obstruction of Congress, setting up the trial in the Republican-led Senate.
Trump is expected to be acquitted in the 100-seat Senate, where Republicans hold 53 seats and a two-thirds vote is required to convict and remove a president from office. No Republican senator has voiced support for his ouster.
Trump denied telling Bolton he was seeking something in return for unfreezing the Ukrainian aid, which eventually was provided in September after the controversy became public. “I haven’t seen the man-uscript, but I can tell you nothing was ever said to John Bolton,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.
Democrats demanded that the Senate call Bolton as a witness. “It completely blasts
House Impeachment Manager Rep. Adam Schiff speaks to the media as the impeachment trial of US President Donald Trump continues in Washington, DC, yesterday.
another hole in the president’s defense,” said Representative Adam Schiff, the head of the House Democratic team of “man-agers” who are presenting the prosecution case against Trump.
The issue of whether to call new witnesses — including Bolton — might be resolved in a Senate vote on Friday or Sat-urday. Many Republicans want a speedy trial of Trump without witnesses or any evidence beyond the material amassed in the House impeachment inquiry.
But Republican senators and staff spent yesterday getting up to speed on how the witness process would work, according to a senior Republican aide, in case the trial goes in that direction.
The White House directed current and former adminis-tration officials not to provide testimony or documents in the House inquiry. In only the third presidential impeachment trial in US history, Democrats argued last week that Trump should be removed for encouraging
Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 US election.
If senators do not allow new witnesses and evidence, the Senate could vote as soon as the end of this week on whether to remove Trump. In that case, the trial could be over before the first of the US presidential party nominating contests takes place in Iowa on February 3 and before Trump is scheduled to deliver the annual State of the Union address to Congress on February 4.
Sanders, Biden in tight race in early primary statesREUTERS — FORT DODGE, IOWA
US Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice-President Joe Biden appear locked in a tight race for the Democratic presi-dential nomination, as both campaigned in Iowa with only days left until the first contest.
New polling released on Sunday showed Sanders leading in New Hampshire and tied with Biden in Iowa, the first two states to weigh in the Democratic primary. Gaining momentum at the right time has historically been key to helping a candidate secure the nomination.
A poll of Iowa voters by CBS found Sanders and Biden sta-tistically tied, with 26% and 25% respectively. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was within striking dis-tance at 22%.
Biden led with 25% in sep-arate poll of Iowa voters by Suffolk University/USA TODAY Network Poll released on Sunday evening. Sanders reg-istered second at 19%, followed by Buttigieg at 18%.
Sanders led a poll released on Sunday of New Hampshire voters with 25% support. His closest competitor was Biden,
with 16%, according to a poll by cable network CNN and the University of New Hampshire.
A national Washington Post-ABC poll released on Sunday found Biden in the lead with 32% support, followed by Sanders at 23%. US Senator Elizabeth
Warren received 12%, and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was at 8%.
Sanders’ recent rise in polling appears to be the product of consolidating the liberal wing of the party. Biden has remained at the top of the
pack, but appears to be strug-gling to consolidate the more-centerist wing of his party.
Biden is making the pitch that he is more likely to beat Republican President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election. Kelly Walsh, 53, a
nurse in Marshalltown, Iowa, attended a Sanders rally, with her two teenage sons. She likes both Biden and Sanders.
“I want somebody that can definitely beat Trump so I kind of like Joe Biden,” she said, drawing a disapproving look from her 15-year-old, Hayden. She agrees with most of Sanders’ platform, especially his government-run healthcare plan. “If I knew Bernie could do it and he didn’t scare everybody else, I’d be 100%,” she said.
US Representative Cindy Axne, who represents a district in Iowa and endorsed Biden, said she does not want Iowa to help nominate a candidate who cannot beat Trump. “We don’t want to make a bad decision,” she said at an event for Biden.
Candidates struggling to still build traction are facing crunch time. US Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is still trying to break 10% in polls, picked up the endorsement of the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper.
The largest publication in the state, the historically conserv-ative editorial page has previ-ously had more influence in Republican primaries.
Democratic 2020 US presidential candidate and US Senator Bernie Sanders takes a photo with attendees at a campaign rally in Sioux City, Iowa, US.
Weinstein's accuser says he was ‘offended’ by her rebuffAP — NEW YORK
Harvey Weinstein “got offended” when his repeated advances were rebuffed, Mimi Haleyi testified yesterday when she took the witness stand as one of the key accusers whose allegations of assault led to charges and the trial of the former movie mogul.
Former production assistant Mimi Haleyi testified that before the alleged assault, Weinstein showed up at her apartment and begged her to join him a trip to Paris for a fashion show. She said he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “At one point, because I just didn’t know how to shut it down so to speak.... So I said, ‘You know you have a terrible reputation with women, I’ve heard,’” Haleyi said.
The then-revered Hollywood honcho “got offended,” she said. “He stepped back and said, ‘What have you heard?’” Asked by pros-ecutor Meghan Hast if she had any romantic interest in Wein-stein, Haleyi firmly answered: “Not at all, no.” Weinstein, 67, is charged with forcibly abusing Haleyi in his New York City
apartment in 2006 and molesting another woman, an aspiring actress, in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013.
The 42-year-old Haleyi, whose legal name is Miriam Haley, is the first of the two women whose accusations are at the heart of the charges against Weinstein to take the stand at the closely watched #MeToo-era trial, which is in its fourth day of testimony.
Last week, “Sopranos” actress Annabella Sciorra tes-tified that Weinstein over-powered and abused her after barging into her apartment in the mid-1990s. While outside the statute of limitations for criminal charges, Sciorra’s alle-gations could be a factor as prosecutors look to prove Weinstein has engaged in a pattern of predatory behavior.
Haleyi went public with her allegations at an October 2017 news conference, appearing in front of cameras alongside lawyer Gloria Allred, who also represents Sciorra and other Weinstein accusers.
Haleyi said she met Wein-stein while in her 20s at the 2004
London premiere of the Leonardo DiCaprio film “The Aviator.” They crossed paths again at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006 and, when she expressed interest in working on one of his productions, he invited her to his hotel room and asked for a massage. She declined, saying she felt “extremely humiliated”.
More meetings followed, and Weinstein secured Haleyi a job helping on the set of “Project Runway,” the reality competition show he produced. Later, she said, he invited her to attend a fashion show in Paris, but she declined by bringing up his sketchy reputation. The alleged assault occurred at Weinstein’s Soho apartment after he sent a car to pick Haleyi up for what she thought was a friendly meeting about her career, she said at the 2017 news conference.
The jury of seven men and five women also heard tes-timony from Dr. Barbara Ziv, a forensic psychiatrist who said that most assault victims con-tinue to have contact with their attackers, often under threat of retaliation if the victims tell anyone what happened.
Alabama fire chief confirms 8 deaths in boat dock fireAP — SCOTTSBORO
At least eight people were killed early yesterday in an explosive fire that consumed at least 35 vessels docked along the Ten-nessee River.
Scottsboro Fire Chief Gene Necklaus said all eight people who were known to be missing have been confirmed dead, and “that number could go up, because we don’t know how many were on boats” that sank.
The fire began just after midnight and quickly con-sumed the dock as people were sleeping. The wooden dock went up in flames and an alu-minum roof that covered many of the vessels melted and col-lapsed, cutting off escape routes and raining debris over the area as boaters leaped into the river. At least seven people were sent to hospitals suffering from exposure to the flames or the frigid water.
Necklaus said about 35 boats were destroyed, some of them sinking at the dock and others floating away before going under. He said divers need to locate each one and search them individually to be sure there were no other victims.
“We woke up hearing
screams and popping noises,” Mandy Durham, who was with her boyfriend in a nearby boat, said. “When we woke up, we could see red through the window. Within 15 to 20 minutes, the whole dock was in flames,” she added. "All these boats have propane tanks and gas tanks, and that’s a lot of fire.” The blaze destroyed the B dock, about 50 yards from the A dock where the boat of Dur-ham’s boyfriend was moored.
“There were numerous people rescued from the water who had escaped by going into the water,” Jackson County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Rocky Harnen said shortly after dawn. “We’re trying to get divers down here to search for pos-sible victims.”
People were jumping onto a boat at the end of the dock because fire had consumed the middle portion and that was their only escape. But then the flames spread to that boat, leaving water as their only way out, Durham said.
“Water was the only place they had to go,” Durham said. “Its just extremely sad. It’s horrible.” Reaching the victims proved challenging for rescue crews.
CDC says no new confirmed cases of coronavirus; nearly 110 under investigationREUTERS — WASHINGTON / TORONTO
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday had not recorded any new confirmed cases of a new coronavirus overnight since its last update of five, and said as many as 110 potential cases were under investigation.
Of the investigated cases across 26 states, 32 people had tested negative, the CDC said.
There is no evidence so far that the coronavirus is trans-mitted through imported goods, said Nancy Messonnier, Director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, in a briefing with reporters.
The outbreak that began in Wuhan at the end of last year has killed 81 and infected more than 2,800 in China.
The CDC on Thursday raised its travel alert for the coronavirus outbreak to a level 3, recommending people avoid all nonessential travel to Wuhan, China.
Meanwhile, the wife of Canada’s first confirmed patient with the coronavirus also has tested positive for it at an Ontario laboratory, and 19 other suspected cases in Canada are under investi-gation, public health officials said yesterday.
Canada’s second patient with the novel coronavirus is in her 50s and currently showing no symptoms, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health David Williams said at a news conference. She has been in self-isolation and is being monitored by health officials. “Given the fact that she has been in self-isolation, the risk to Ontarians remains low,” said Williams in a release earlier in the day.
Her husband had been confirmed to have the virus by a national laboratory in Win-nipeg, according to the release. He is currently stable at a hos-pital in Toronto. The man had mild symptoms while on a flight to Toronto from Guangzhou, China, Canada’s chief health officer Theresa Tam told reporters on Sunday.
The couple arrived in Toronto on January 22 after visiting Wuhan, the epi-center of the virus outbreak. There are no other members of their household, said Toronto medical officer Eileen de Villa.
18 TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020AMERICAS
Peru opposition crushed in legislative electionsAFP — LIMA
Peru’s Keiko Fujimori-led opposition suffered a crushing blow at legislative elections, losing dozens of seats in the Congress it had dominated since 2016, according to early results yesterday.
A rapid count by the Ipsos research firm showed Fuji-mori’s Popular Force party’s share of the vote has dropped from 36.3 percent in 2016 to just 6.9 percent.
Having dominated Congress with 73 of the 130 seats, it is now set to be only the sixth largest party with fewer than 20 seats, according to projections.
The first official results for Lima, which elects almost a third of the legislators, look set to confirm the drubbing, with Popular Force in fifth place on 7.33 percent. The centrist Partido Morado was leading with 14.42 percent, followed by right-wing Podemos Peru and the centrist Popular Action both on 12.69 percent.
“It’s the collapse of Fuji-morism, it’s a very deep fall, a very hard blow,” analyst Luis Benavente, director of the Vox Populi consultancy, said.
“We don’t know how many legislators they will have, but the first projections indicate it
will be a 10th of their 2016” result, added analyst Fernando Rospigliosi.
It’s a big victory for center-right President Martin Vizcarra, who dissolved parliament in September and called snap leg-islative elections in a bid to end a political crisis between the executive and Congress.
The elections have pro-duced a hung parliament dom-inated by centrist parties more likely to approve of Vizcarra’s anti-corruption reforms previ-ously blocked by Popular Force.
The largest single party is set to be Popular Action with 10.1 percent of the vote, according to Ipsos.
After the Christian funda-mentalist party Frepap (8.8 percent) come Podemos Peru (8.25), center-right Progress Alliance (8.0) and the centrist Partido Morado (7.7).
Vizcarra said he wants to establish with the new Congress “a responsible, mature rela-tionship that seeks a consensus that benefits Peru.”
Fujimori’s Popular Force looks to have paid for its leader’s implication in the sprawling Odebrecht corruption scandal. Fujimori is accused of accepting $1.2m in illicit party funding from Brazilian con-struction giant Odebrecht for her unsuccessful 2011 presi-
dential election campaign.Odebrecht has admitted to
paying at least $29m to Peruvian officials since 2004, and bribing four former Peruvian presidents.
The scandal destroyed the popularity of the 44-year-old daughter of jailed former pres-ident Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000).
She has already spent 13 months in pre-trial detention before being released in November, and on Tuesday faces a judge’s decision on whether to send her back to jail.
It wasn’t just Popular Force losing badly, but also its main ally, the social-democratic APRA of former president Alan Garcia, who committed suicide in April as police turned up at his home to arrest him in a cor-ruption case related to the Ode-brecht scandal.
APRA is Peru’s oldest political party but with only 2.6 percent of the vote, according to Ipsos, it “will lose its party registration and be left out of Congress,” Benavente told AFP.
There were more than 2,300 candidates representing 21 parties in Sunday’s election.
The vote — the first time legislative elections have been held separately from presi-dential voting — came 15 months ahead of the next
general election.It came about after Vizcarra
dissolved Congress on Sep-tember 30, a move that was widely popular amongst Peru’s 25 million population.
The opposition accused him
of a “coup d’etat” and swore in Vice President Mercedes Araoz as “acting president” but she resigned the following day.
The opposition took its case to the constitutional court, which ruled in Vizcarra’s favor.
Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra casting his vote at a polling station in Moquegua, in south Peru, on Sunday.
Bolivian President asks all ministers to resignAFP — LA PAZ
Bolivia’s interim President Jeanine Anez has asked all her ministers to resign a little more than three months before a general election.
The news on Sunday came just hours after communication minister Roxana Lizarraga resigned in protest at Anez’s decision to stand as a presi-dential candidate in the May 3 election.
Anez assumed the presi-dency on November 12, two days after Evo Morales resigned following three weeks of sometimes violent protests against his controversial re-election in a poll the Organi-zation of American States said was rigged.
Anez, a little-known senator at the time, had said she had no intention of standing for the full-time job.
But that changed on Friday when she announced her candidacy.
Anez “has decided to ask for the resignation of all min-isters to approach this new stage in the management of the democratic transition,” the presidency said in a statement.
The statement added that it was “usual” in an electoral cycle to have “adjustments in the working team of the Exec-utive.” Anez said she would name a new cabinet of 20
ministers “as soon as possible.” Hours earlier, Lizarraga, who was appointed by Anez on November 13, criticized the interim president for having “lost sight of her objectives.” Lizarraga said Anez had “started to fall into the same evils” as the party of her pred-ecessor Morales.
“This is not the path the cit-izenry has signaled to us,” said Lizarraga.
Anez was criticized for going back on her initial com-mitment not to run for pres-ident. “I respect President Anez, but I think she’s making a big mistake” because “she has not been appointed to propose herself as a candidate for the presidency,” former
president Carlos Mesa, 66, said.
Former presidential can-didate Samuel Doria Medina voiced his opposition and ex-president Morales, in exile in Argentina, reminded his suc-cessor that “she promised not to be a candidate,” although he said “it is her right.” There is also still doubt about the legality of Anez contesting the election.
Lawmaker Luis Felipe Dorado said he would consult the Constitutional Court.
Anez came only fourth on 12 percent in an opinion poll published on Sunday.
Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales (left) and Bolivian presidential candidate for the Movement for Socialism party, Luis Arce, pose after a press conference, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, yesterday.
Evo Morales’ party tops Bolivia opinion pollAFP — LA PAZ
Former president Evo Morales’ socialist party topped an opinion poll published on Sunday just over three months out from a general election in Bolivia.
The poll results came two days after interim president Jeanine Anez — who took over from Morales a little over two months ago — announced she would stand in the May 3 election.
However, Anez came only fourth in the poll with 12 percent as the former presi-dent’s Movement for Socialism
(MAS) — whose candidate is former economy minister Luis Arce — came top with 26 percent.
Centrist ex-president Carlos Mesa — who finished second to Morales in an October election that was subsequently annulled — and right-wing Luis Fernando Camacho each polled 17 percent in the survey by Mer-cados y Muestras and published in the Pagina Siete newspaper.
The poll was conducted between January 9-13 — before MAS picked Arce as its can-didate — so his name did not appear on questionnaire.
Protests broke out after Morales was declared the winner of the October 20 election amid accusations of fraud. Three weeks of at times violent unrest followed before Morales resigned after an audit by the Organization of American states found clear evidence the poll was rigged in the then-president’s favor.
Morales fled the country as dozens were killed in further rioting, mostly by his MAS supporters.
“In all the polls we’re first,” Morales said on Twitter. “In the next polls we’ll be much further ahead.”
Death toll fromstorms andflooding inBrazil risingAFP — BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL
The death toll from days of intense storms and flooding in south-eastern Brazil has risen to 44, authorities said on Sunday.
In addition to the dead, the number of injured stands at 12 and that of the missing was lowered from 25 to 19, local Civil Defense officials said.
The dead have yet to be iden-tified. Many were buried by land-slides or in the debris of collapsed houses, which in many poorer parts of Brazil are shoddily built.
Officials said some 17,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in 58 towns and cities across Minas Gerais state, including in the capital Belo Hor-izonte, as well as in nearby areas. More than 10,000 others had to flee in two neighboring states.
Images taken from the ground and the air, some posted on social media, showed the vast sweep of the disaster, with damaged houses,
fallen trees and downed utility poles, overflowing rivers, col-lapsed bridges and flooded neighborhoods.
The torrential rains — the worst since records were first kept 110 years ago — eased off on Sunday, but authorities said the risk of new landslides would con-tinue through Friday in towns in the Belo Horizonte area.
From India, where he is on an official trip, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said the government was doing “everything possible,” while adding that in such a large
area “it is difficult to serve everyone.”
Regional Development Min-ister Gustavo Canuto and Governor Romeu Zema of Minas Gerais state flew over the affected area and promised afterward in a news con-ference to prioritize humanitarian aid for the homeless. They announced immediate aid of 90 million reais (about $22m).
Zema warned that without consistent, long-term public pol-icies to reduce areas at risk, “we will see things like this many times over.”
A view of the overflowing Das Velhas River after heavy rains in Sabara, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, on Sunday.
Venezuela's Guaidó looks for backing in CanadaAP — TORONTO
Canada’s foreign minister welcomed Venezuelan oppo-sition leader Juan Guaidó for meetings in Ottawa yesterday as part of an international push to reignite inter-national support for his flagging movement.
The man recognized by the US and nearly 60 other nations as Venezuela’s rightful leader started the day with a meeting with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was to meet with Guaidó later yesterday.
Guaidó stood before packed crowds of cheering Ven-ezuelans one year ago and proclaimed that his status as head of congress made him the nation’s legitimate pres-ident because President Nicolás Maduro’s reelection was invalid.
But his effort to drive Maduro from power has thus far proven unsuccessful.
Leaving Venezuela was a risky move for the oppo-sition leader, who is under a travel ban imposed by the pro-Maduro Supreme Court.
“He’s demonstrated a lot of courage and leadership,’’ Champagne said as he welcomed Guaidó to his office.
Guaidó thanked Canada for its continuing support.“This is a great opportunity for Venezuelans and for
the region to be able to solve the crisis in our country through free elections,’’ he said through a translator.
The once-wealthy nation is gripped by crisis, which critics blame on years of failed socialist rule, while Maduro frequently blames right-wing forces backed by the United States set on overthrowing him to steal Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
Mexican march for peace swarmed by angry protesters
AP — MEXICO CITY
A four-day pilgrimage by family members of murdered or missing Mexicans culmi-nated in a tense confrontation in the capital’s main square on Sunday as supporters of Mexico’s president hurled insults at the families — including dozens of Mormons with dual US-citizenship.
Fervent followers of Pres-ident Andrés Manuel López Obrador swarmed the Caravan for Truth, Justice and Peace as it neared the National Palace with the intention of leaving a letter for the president. “Leave the country!” they yelled, accusing the victims’ families of being provocateurs or having been paid off by political oppo-nents of the president.
The hostilities underscored the difficulties of bringing peaceful solutions to a country shaken by frequent and brutal killings that often go unpunished.
There were nearly 35,000 homicides in Mexico last year — a record high for the country and a disappointing figure for López Obrador’s first full year in office. That works out to a rate of roughly 23 killings per 100,000 people, compared with five per 100,000 in the United States.
Tens of thousands more Mexicans have gone missing over the past decade, with few clues as to their final resting places and little help from authorities in tracking them down.
Members of the LeBaron Mormon community in northern Mexico lent their voice to the protest on Sunday. Their settlement was upended in November when gunmen ambushed a convoy traveling on a rugged mountain road a few hours drive south of Arizona. Three American women and six of their children were killed.
Adrián LeBaron lost a daughter and four grand-children in the November attack. Before the slayings, he said, he was like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand — “unaware of the massacre taking place in Mexico.” “Now, I have lifted my head to never bury it again,” LeBaron said.
Critics have accused LeBaron of seeking attention. He said staying silent would be an insult to the memory of his daughter and grandchildren.
A file photo of Bolivia’s interim President Jeanine Anez
The announcement came hours after communication minister Roxana Lizarraga resigned in protest at interim President Jeanine Anez’s decision to stand as a presidential candidate in the May 3 election. Anez said she would name a new cabinet of 20 ministers “as soon as possible.”
19TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020 HOME
New Master’s Program at NU-Q is a response to growing demand for sports professionalsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA
From cycling to swimming and from fencing to football – there’s no doubt Qatar has firmly posi-tioned itself as a global hub for world-class sporting events. The infrastructure development is visible on all fronts – from the new metro network to roads, stadia and hospitality facilities. However, what may not be so apparent is the demand for specialists with the right expertise and skills to manage, promote, and grow such high-profile sporting events.
To respond to market needs, Northwestern University in Qatar has partnered with Northwestern University School of Professional Studies in Chicago to bring the
Master of Arts in Sports Admin-istration (MSA) program to Qatar. MSA students build essential skills for the sports industry including marketing, spon-sorship, operations, compliance, media relations, and more. Grad-uates earn their master’s degree from Northwestern University — ranked ninth nationally among US universities.
“This 11-course graduate program is suitable for people
already working in the field who wish to advance their careers and those who aspire to enter the industry,” said Jairo Lugo-Ocando, Director of the Graduate and Executive Education program at NU-Q. He added: “The courses are led by instructors experienced in sports marketing and management who teach practical skills that stu-dents can apply in their everyday work.”
The master’s program is fully accredited by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education of the State of Qatar and 100 percent full scholarships are available for tuition fees. In addition, students can make the valuable connections that are essential to building a career in sports by networking with instructors and fellow classmates — current and future sports pro-fessionals themselves.
The curriculum is tailored around the needs of today’s busy professionals and pro-vides the necessary flexibility by combining study online and on NU-Q’s Education City campus. Applications for the upcoming semester close on April 15.
“This 11-course graduate program is suitable for people already working in the field who wish to advance their careers and those who aspire to enter the industry,” said Jairo Lugo-Ocando, Director of the Graduate and Executive Educa-tion program at NU-Q.
VCUarts Qatar open for applications until February 1THE PENINSULA — DOHA
The final day for new students to submit an application for admission to VCUarts Qatar is Sunday, February 1, for the Fall 2020 semester, according to Katherine Magnum, Recruitment and Admissions Director at the University.
VCUarts Qatar, a Qatar Foundation partner university, is located in Education City at a facility customised with state of the art labs, libraries and studios.
VCUarts Qatar is the branch campus of VCUarts in Richmond Virginia, a top ranked public art and design school in the United States.
Mangum says that there is already a good number of applicants who have their appli-cations and portfolios submitted, so she encourages others to be sure to not miss the deadline if they hope to begin their studies at VCUarts Qatar in August of 2020.
VCUarts Qatar offers five undergraduate degree programs: Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion Design, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design, Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Painting and Printmaking and Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Art History. There is also a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program.
According to Mangum, admissions coun-sellors are available daily for consultations and the university’s website includes appli-cation requirements, answers to frequently asked questions, and program information. There is also specific time available for
coaching and support on portfolio development.
“Our graduates pursue successful careers in a variety of industries – there are many opportunities opening up in Qatar’s economy that are in need of the skillsets that our stu-dents acquire at VCUarts Qatar,” says Mangum, “In addition to working as artists and creatives, they can apply their critical thinking and design skills to the growing
cultural and museum sector as well as small business, interior design, retail and merchan-dising, tourism and consulting.”
VCUarts Qatar welcomed its class of 2023 in August 2019, with 86 students from 14 countries, with 79 joining as undergraduates and seven joining the Masters of Fine Arts in Design program. “We look forward to wel-coming the class of 2024 this summer,” said Mangum.
VCUarts Qatar welcomed its Class of 2023 in August 2019, with 86 students from 14 countries, with 79 joining as undergraduates and seven joining the Masters of Fine Arts in Design program.
CROSSWORD
Dolittle is a 2020 American fantasy adventure film directed by Stephen Gaghan, from a screenplay by Gaghan, Dan Gregor, and Doug Mand, from a story by Thomas Shepherd.
DOLITTLE
MALL ROYAL PLAZA
Toy Guardians (2D/Animation) 2:00pmShylock (2D/Malayalam) 2:00, 6:15 & 11:30pm Street Dancer 3D (2D/Hindi) 2:30, 8;45 & 11:30pmDisco Raja (2D/Telugu) 3:45pmAnjaam Pathira (2D/Malayalam) 4:30 & 9:00pmThe Turning (2D/Horror) 7:15pmFrozen II (2D/Comedy) 5:15pmThe Last Full Measure (2D/Drama) 7:00pmPanga (2D/Hindi) 9:00pmJust Mercy (2D/Drama) 11:30pm
1917 (2D/Crime) 3:10pmAnjaam Pathira (2D/Malayalam) 4:40, 11:40pmBad Boys For Life (2D/Action) 10:40am, 1:10, 2:10, 3:35, 6:00, 7:00, 8:30, 9:30, 11:00pm & 12:00 midnightDolittle (2D/Comedy) 10:10am, 11:00am, 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 6:20, 8:20, 10:20pmJumanji: The Next Level (2D/Action) 11:05, 1:30 & 3:55pmJust Mercy (2D/Drama) 12:10, 5:10, 7:25 & 8:00pmPanga (2D/Hindi) 2:00 & 7:35pmSpies in Disguise (2D/Animation) 10:00am & 12:00pmStreet Dancer 3D (2D/Hindi) 12:20, 3:35, & 8:40pmThe Gentlemen (2D/Action) 12:00, 2:15, 4:30, 6:45, 9:00 & 11:15pmThe Last Full Measure (2D/Drama) 2:55 & 10:40pmThe Turning (2D/Horror) 1:15, 5:30, 10:05pm & 0:05amUnderwater (2D/Action) 0:20am
Anjaam Pathira (2D/Malayalam) 4:00 & 10:00pmBad Boys For Life (2D/Action) 12:30 & 5:30pmDisco Raja (2D/Telugu) 1:00 & 7:00pmDolittle (2D/Comedy) 12:30, 2:30, 4:40 & 6:50pmPanga (2D/Hindi) 12:30 & 6:00pmStreet Dancer 3D (2D/Hindi) 3:00, 8:40 & 11:30pmThe Gentlemen (2D/Action) 1:00, 3:00, 5:40, 10:00 & 10:40pmThe Turning (2D/Horror) 3:30pm
Shylock (2D/Malayalam) 2:00, 5:45 & 11:30pmDisco Raja (2D/Telugu) 2:30pm Anjaam Pathira (2D/Malayalam) 8:45 & 11:00pmThe Turning (2D/Horror) 7:00pmPanga (2D/Hindi) 4:30pmStreet Dancer 3D (2D/Hindi) 8:15 & 11:30pmAl Nihaya A.K.A The End (2D/Action) 5:15pmJust Mercy (2D/Drama) 7:00pmThe Gentlemen (2D/Action) 9:30pmToy Guardians (2D/Animation) 2:15pmFrozen II (2D/Comedy) 4:00pm
Shylock (2D/Malayalam) 2:00 & 9:00pmPanga (2D/Hindi) 2:00pm; Disco Raja (2D/Telugu) 4:30pm; Street Dancer 3D (2D/Hindi) 6:00 & 8:45pmToy Guardians (2D/Animation) 2:30pmDolittle (2D/Comedy) 4:15pmAnjaam Pathira (2D/Malayalam) 4:30 & 11:30pmFrozen II (2D/Comedy) 7:00pmThe Gentlemen (2D/Action) 7:00pmJust Mercy (2D/Drama) 7:00pmThe Last Full Measure (2D/Drama) 9:30pmThe Turning (2D/Horror) 11:30pm
20 TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2020MORNING BREAK
FAJR SUNRISE 05.00 am 06.19 am
W A L R U WA I S : 15o↗ 18o W A L K H O R : 11o↗ 20o W D U K H A N : 09o↗ 22o W D O H A : 12o↗ 22o W M E S A I E E D 09o↗ 22o W A B U S A M R A 09o↗ 18o
PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY
HIGH TIDE 06:45 – 17:59 LOW TIDE 00:44 – 14:39
Relatively cold daytime with slight dust at times and some clouds, cold by night.
Minimum Maximum12oC 22oC
ZUHRMAGHRIB
11.47 am05.17 pm
ASR ISHA
02.53 pm06.47 pm
Billie Eilish, a voice of the youth, tops the Grammy AwardsAP — NEW YORK
Singer Billie Eilish, who gave voice to young people struggling with depression on a do-it-yourself album she made at home with her older brother, is atop the music world.
The 18-year-old made history at the Grammy Awards Sunday. Not only did she become the youngest person to win one of Grammy’s top awards — record, song and album of the year, and best new artist — Eilish is the first artist to sweep all four since Chris-topher Cross in 1981.
Her triumph came on a night made somber by the death of former Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant. It also ended a tumultuous week for the Recording Academy that included its ousted CEO accusing the Grammys nomi-nations process of being rigged, and Diddy calling out the organ-ization for not giving enough respect to R&B and hip-hop.
Eilish’s “When We all Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” also won best pop vocal album. Her brother Finneas O’Connell also won awards for engineering and producing the album.
“The music I listened to when I was growing up, maybe
7, 8, 9 or 10, 13, that was the most important music to me forever,” Finneas said backstage after the ceremony. “Anytime a person that age comes up to either one of us and says (it is their favorite), I know how much that means to them. That’s why it means so much to me. I hope they’re celebrating. This is all because of them.” He said that they never thought that an album that addresses depression, suicidal thoughts and climate change would be up for a Grammy.
Eilish noted that they made the album in a bedroom of the Los Angeles-area home where they grew up in.
“It’s like anything is pos-sible,” she said.
In accepting her awards, Eilish noted that she had grown up listening to many of the artists at the ceremony in Los Angeles’ Staples Center. She also said she thought Ariana Grande deserved album of the year, an onstage moment that recalled Adele saying the same thing about Beyoncé the same year Adele triumphed.
The success of a young, white girl came on a night the Recording Academy seemingly went out of its way to highlight diversity.
Lizzo offered a powerhouse opening performance, and there were tributes to Prince and the late rapper Nipsey Hussle. Tyler, the Creator offered an incen-diary version of “Earfquake” with Boyz II Men. Lil’ Nas X sang his omnipresent “Old Town Road.” H.E.R. sang, as did host Alicia Keys and Gary Clark Jr. with the Roots.
Tyler, the Creator said later that the rap album Grammy was a backhanded compliment.
While he’s grateful to be acknowledged, “it also sucks whenever we, I mean guys that look like me, do anything that’s genre bending, they always put it in an urban rapper category,” he said. “I don’t like that urban word. It’s just a politically correct way to say the N-word to me.” Earlier in the show, Keys sat at a piano to sing a rewrite of Lewis Capaldi’s song, “Someone You Loved” that name-checked many of the nominated artists but also included a few pointed lines about respect.
“I’m gonna be honest with y’all,” she said. “It’s been a helluva week.” Keys also had the delicate task of addressing the shock of Bryant’s death in a helicopter crash, while onstage at the same arena where the
former Laker won champion-ships. She sang “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” with Boyz II Men. References to Bryant abounded — a Lakers jersey held up by Run-DMC
during their performance of “Walk This Way” with Aero-smith, and adorning a couch on a set where Lil Nas X began “Old Town Road.” “We’re all feeling crazy sadness right now,” said
Keys, who received praise online for how she handled it.
“Alicia, you’ve been lighting this awards show up,” rapper Common said onstage. “Thank you.”
US singer-songwriter Billie Eilish (left) and songwriter Finneas O’Connell pose in the press room with the awards for Album Of The Year, Record Of The Year, Best New Artist, Song Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal Album during the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, in Los Angeles, on Sunday.
Balloon festival in Austria Balloons are in the air during a joint trip as part of the 19th Alpine Ballooning 2020 on the mountains near Kossen, Austria, yesterday.
What will change the day after BrexitAFP — BRUSSELS
At midnight on Friday — 1,317 days after British voters decided to leave the European Union — Brexit will finally come about. What will change on February 1? At first, not much. Daily business between the United Kingdom and the EU will continue as before during an 11-month transition period until the end of the year.
This will allow London and Brussels to negotiate new arrangements to guide future relations, but in the meantime there are some practical changes.
In theory, the British gov-ernment could rescind its decision to leave the European Union at any moment until mid-night on Friday (2300 GMT), as if nothing had happened.
But from then on there will be no turning back, the union would have lost one of its largest and richest states, the first ever to quit the project.
The EU will therefore lose 66 million inhabitants — leaving it with a population of around 446 million — along with 5.5 percent of its land mass.
If Britain ever does decide it wants back in, then this will be a matter for EU accession procedures as for any outside applicant.
In Brussels, the lowering of the Union Jack outside the European Parliament will sym-bolise a concrete change: Britain is out of the union and a “third country”.
It will have no MEPs. 73 Brits elected in May will leave. 46 of the seats will be kept for future EU members and 27 will be distributed among under-represented countries.
Britain will no longer have a right to nominate a top official to the European Commission, although London failed to do so last year and its seat is already vacant.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will no longer be invited to summits of the European Council of leaders, and ministers will no longer attend EU council meetings.
As non-EU citizens, Brits will not be eligible for senior bureaucratic posts in Brussels, but many have already secured dual nationality and residence rights.
Britain will, however, con-tinue to pay into the EU budget as the second largest net con-tributor after Germany until the end of the transition.
According to the United Nations, around 1.2 million British citizens live in other EU countries, mainly in Spain, Ireland, France, Germany and Italy.
And according to the UK stats office, another 2.9 million citizens of other EU countries live in Britain, around 4.6 percent of the population.
Under the withdrawal agreement signed by both sides, both sets of expatriates will ini-tially retain the rights they had before Brexit to work and reside in their host country.
But Britons in Europe and EU citizens in the UK may have to register with the authorities and individual member states will set up procedures of their own. Free movement will apply until the end of the transition. Afterwards, the withdrawal treaty says EU nationals will be able to stay in the UK if they continue to work.
The UK government has said it intends to end “freedom
of movement” for future EU arrivals, and precise details of reciprocal rights will be nego-tiated after Brexit.
Britain has, of course, already spent years negotiating with European Commission official Michel Barnier’s Brexit task force on the terms of its departure.
But these negotiations will change after Friday, when the “Article 50” procedure in the European Treaty expires and
the UK becomes a third country.The UK will nevertheless
remain subject to EU law and the European Court of Justice until the end of the transition, and in any judgements in cases pending from before the final departure.
Barnier is in talks with EU member states to draw up a negotiating mandate for a trade agreement to govern cross-Channel commercial ties after the transition.
Britain’s leader of Labour Party delegation at the European Parliament, Richard Corbett, poses during a photo session near the Parliament in Brussels, on January 22, 2020.
Japanese chef makes history as he joins France’s Michelin eliteAFP — PARIS
Chef Kei Kobayashi became the first Japanese chef ever to win the maximum three Michelin stars in France yesterday.
The 42-year-old, who was born in Nagano, was the biggest winner on a night when Jap-anese cooks triumphed in the backyard of French haute cuisine.
Kazuyuki Tanaka won two stars for Racine, his French res-taurant in the northeastern city of Reims, as did Yasunari Okazaki for his crossover Franco-Japanese cuisine at L’Abysee au Pavillon Ledoyen in Paris.
Kei — a striking figure with bleached blond hair — said Jap-anese cooks have earned their place at the top of French cuisine.
“There are lots of Japanese chefs now in France and you have accepted us and given us a place,” he said as picked up the highest distinction in French cooking.
“Thank you, France,” he said.
Kei admitted that his per-fectionism can make him a “difficult person” to work with.
“I am quite hard. I ask a lot of my team, and then I ask a lot
more,” he joked.He opened his restaurant,
Kei, in centre of the French capital, nine years ago, and wowed Paris with such sig-nature dishes as sea bass cooked on its scales and Scottish smoked salmon with roquette mousse and a tomato vinaigrette with lemon emulsion.
Critics hailed the precision of his cooking and the way he made relatively simple dishes.
Michelin described his cooking as both “delicate and memorable”.
“It’s very simple. Every dish that Kei turns the rigour of his attention to is called on to become a signature one,” it added.
“I am a Japanese chef who cooks French food,” Kei said of his 30-seat restaurant, which he runs with his wife Chikako.
With its sparse grey interior, the chef said he did not need to hang pictures on the walls. “My cuisine provides the necessary touches of colour,” he declared.
He moved to France in 1998 after training in French restau-rants in Japan, working under the legendary chef Gilles Goujon at the Auberge du Vieux Puits.
Australian woman dies in cake-eating contestAFP — SYDNEY
A woman died while taking part in a cake-eating competition to celebrate Australia Day, local media reported yesterday.
Paramedics were called to in the state of Queensland on Sunday afternoon after a woman was involved in a “medical incident”.
Public broadcaster ABC reported the 60-year-old had a seizure after she “shovelled a lamington into her mouth”.
Lamingtons, a traditional Australian dessert, are cube-shaped sponge cakes dipped in chocolate and covered in grated coconut.
The woman was rushed to hospital in the coastal town of
Hervey Bay but later died, ABC reported. She was a contestant in the Beach House Hotel’s annual Australia Day lamington and meat pie eating contest.
In a post on Facebook, management and staff offered their “deepest condolences” to the woman’s friends and family.
Police said the death was not suspicious.
Mothers of militant, Belgium attack victim pen book together
AFP — BRUSSELS
Bloodlines bind them to people on opposite sides of a violent divide. One is the mother of a jailed militant, the other the mother of a victim wounded in a bloody 2016 attack in Brussels.
But these two Belgian women shared tears, and com-passion, and finally an idea to write a book together to tell the world what unites them beyond the differences.
Fatima Ezzarhouni, a 48-year-old born in Morocco and raised since the age of four in the city of Antwerp where she works as a care assistant, said she “just clicked” with Sophie Pirson, a 61-year-old employee in a contemporary arts museum who lives in Brussels.
“We connected immedi-ately,” confirmed Pirson.
They met in 2018 in a therapy group started by clinical sociologists that brought together mothers of militants and of the victims of a wave of attacks that rocked Europe two years earlier.
The deadliest in Belgium occurred in the capital on March 22, 2016, when double attacks claimed by the Islamic State group killed 32 people and wounded 340 others.
Pirson’s younger daughter Leonor, then aged 30, was travelling in a Brussels metro train that day when a suicide bomber in her carriage set off his bomb. More than a dozen people were killed. Leonor, mutilated and made deaf, ended up being treated for a long time in hospital.
Sitting by her daughter’s bed in intensive care, Pirson said her thoughts turned “to the mothers of the bombers” that day. “I said to myself, it must be horrible for them to have their son killed and nobody being able to under-stand the pain those mothers were going through,” she said.
Ezzarhouni’s son Abdellah Nouamane wasn’t involved in those Belgian attacks. But he was an IS militant. Recruited online aged 18 while in Antwerp, he left without word for Syria in 2013 to join the militant group.
Ezzarhouni said the bits of information she gets about her son are rare and sometimes contradictory. Their book is a collection of joint interviews between the two women.
