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Volume 22 | Number 7407 | 2 RiyalsMonday 15 January 2018 | 28 Rabia II I 1439 www.thepeninsula.qa

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BUSINESS | 21 SPORT | 29

PM receives message from Kuwait’s Premier

Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani received a written message from Prime Minister of Kuwait H E Sheikh Jaber Al Mubarak Al Hamad Al Sabah, pertaining to bilateral relations and ways of enhancing them in all fields. The message was delivered by Kuwait’s Ambassador to Qatar H E Hafiz Mohammed Al Ajmi, yesterday. →SEE ALSO PAGE 2

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) has met full and diverse range of national scarce resources needs such as, numbering, domain names and spectrum. Throughout 2017, CRA allocated 100,000 mobile numbers to service providers, registered 3,272 new Qatari domain names, issued 1,311 spectrum licences and assigned 649 frequencies.

“CRA is keen to ensure the effective management and allo-cation of the national scarce resources and to meet all current and future needs. CRA also ensures that the use of such resources is rationed in a fair

and transparent manner,” said Mohammed Ali Al Mannai, Pres-ident of CRA.

In the field of numbering management, during 2017 CRA allocated 10,000 fixed-line numbers to service providers. As of December 31, 2017, a total of 8.1m mobile and 1.46 million fixed line numbers have been allocated. Throughout the year, 29,466 mobile numbers were ported and 5,914 mobile numbers were returned under mobile number portability service.

In addition to mobile and fixed-line numbers allocation, CRA assigned 15 numbering resources for other services that includes toll free, public service and licensed operator service.

With emergence of new services like M2M/IoT and the need to keep the numbering plan in pace with the global technological developments, CRA is working to update the national num-bering distribution table and policy which will be issued in 2018.

CRA has made considerable effort to encourage the uptake of “.qa” domain names which allow local businesses to secure a reliable and reachable name on the Internet and ensure that they reflect their Qatari identity when they provide their services to their local and international customers.

→CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

FAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Sidra Medicine, a speciality health care organi-sation for children, young people and women and a member of Qatar Foundation, yesterday opened its new hospital building.

The hospital, considered as one of the world’s most tech-nologically-advanced health care facilities, welcomed 10 inpatients on the first day of its formal opening.

The first inpatients seen by Sidra Medicine were children requiring low-risk surgeries and a woman who underwent C-section.

However, the services will be ramped up through mid-2018 and more complex pedi-atric surgeries, specialist pedi-atric services in neurology and cardiology, among others would be included, along with deliveries focusing on high-risk pregnancies.

“The opening of the main hospital at Sidra Medicine marks the achievement of another major milestone in the expansion of health care

facilities in the country,” said Minister for Public Health H E Dr Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari.

“The new hospital will further enhance the health care provided for women and children and reinforce our commitment to improve the health and well-being of the people in Qatar,” he added.

Patients are encouraged to continue seeing their regular physicians unless they have a scheduled appointment at Sidra Medicine.

As no Emergency Department (ED) is currently open at Sidra Medicine and emergency cases should con-tinue to be seen at the already established ED centres throughout the State of Qatar. Sidra Medicine open its ED in mid-2018 once the hospital becomes fully operational.

wAs a high-tech facility, Sidra Medicine has adopted cutting-edge technologies to enhance the patient experience and underpin the highest standards of care and patient safety.

→CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The number of E-gate users at Hamad International Airport (HIA) almost doubled in 2017 compared to the preceding year. As many as 2.46 million passengers used the E-gates at HIA last year, including 1.28 million arrivals to the country and 1.18 million departures from the country, while in 2016, a total of 1.41 million passengers had used the facility. HIA plans to open 20 new E-gates with 10 gates at the departure lounge and as many at the arrivals lounge soon.

This will help the passengers to finish all procedures without being reviewed by any staff. Major Khalid Muhammad Al Mulla, head of Airport Passports Section said that the E-gates services provided by the Min-istry of Interior to all citizens and residents are free of charge. This innovative service saves time and efforts of the passengers.

He added that HIA currently has 40 electronic gates, including 19 in the arrivals lounge and 21 in the departures lounge, which facilitate the smooth entry and exit of passengers at HIA. The E-gates work with identification of travellers’ vital data including fingerprints, iris scan and per-sonal travel documents.

The E-gates are easily available for the passengers at the airport with availability of the assistance by staffs of Airport Security and Airport Passports departments. The electronic gates are located in a place par-allel to the passport counters, which are clearly visible to all travellers. Qatari citizens and

residents travelling via HIA can use E-gate facility at the entry and exit points for quick com-pletion of passport control pro-cedures. All residents above 18 years old with ID cards can get benefit of this facility. The pro-cedures of using E-gates are very simple.

The passenger has to place the ID card or passport on the e-reader first. Then the first glass barrier will be opened and the passenger will reach the middle of the gate. The system will match the data of identity with iris scan or fingerprint. Once the information is matched and ver-ified, the gate will open

automatically. He added that the system of E-gates at HIA has been lauded by the International Civil Aviation Organization as a distinctive model.

The Ministry of the Interior is working to increase the number of e-gates at the airport. This will overcome the expecta-tions of travellers in adopting smart technology to complete their travel procedures at Hamad International Airport.

He said that the airport passport department has opened an office next to the e-gates to activate the service using ID cards of the residents who are over the age of 18 years.

He stressed that the use of the ID card does not require prior registration or payment of any fees.

The head of the airport pass-ports department called on res-idents to use the electronic gates at HIA to facilitate the com-pletion of their travel without having to stand in front of the passport counters.

QNA

DOHA: Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani received yesterday a verbal message from the President of Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, pertaining to bilateral rela-tions and means to advance them in different fields. Kazakhstan’s Special Envoy for Middle East and Africa Baghdad Amreyev conveyed the message, during a meeting with Minister of State for Foreign Affairs H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi. The meeting was attended by a number of Foreign Ministry officials.

Sidra Medicine opens hospital building

100,000 mobile phone numbers issued last year

Emir receives message from President of Kazakhstan

iPhone cases recalled for causing burnsDOHA: Ministry of Economy and Commerce has issued a recall of Victoria’s Secret Liquid glitter iPhone cases from the market. The ministry has asked users to immedi-ately stop using the product and return it to the outlet for a full refund. The ministry in a statement said that there is a defect with the case wherein the ornamental cover could break and cause the liquid inside to leak and this could result in skin rashes and burns. The ministry said in a statement issued yesterday to contact Dareen International Co (Qatar) on Phone no: 8000707 for further information.

Passengers using E-gate service at Hamad International Airport.

Over 2.46 million passengers use E-gates at HIA

Qatar monitoring Sheikh Abdullah’s reported detentionDOHA: The State of Qatar announced that it has been closely monitoring the situ-ation on the video that appeared in some media outlets in which Sheikh Abdullah bin Ali Al Thani appears to be speaking of his detention. Spokesperson for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry H E Lulwah Al Khater said in remarks to QNA that the State of Qatar is closely monitoring the situation, but due to the total severance of ties with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) it is difficult to clearly establish the circumstances surrounding the situation. Despite that, the State of Qatar principally stands with the protection of rights for every individual and affirms the entitlement of his family to pursue all legal means for the protection of his rights. she added: “We have seen similar behaviour, in the past, by the siege countries where rights of individuals and offi-cials alike are violated in total contravention of interna-tional norms, conventions and laws with no clear purpose or valid reasoning.”

Hamad International Airport plans to open 20 new E-gates with 10 gates at the departure lounge and as many at the arrivals lounge soon.

Once fully operational by mid-2018, the hospital will handle 275,000 outpatients, 11,000 procedures, 100,000 emergencies and deliver over 9,000 babies per year.

The hospital welcomed 10 inpatients on the first day of its formal opening.

The new building has 10 operating theatres and 400 beds.

02 MONDAY 15 JANUARY 2018HOME

PM meets US Charge d’AffairesPrime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani met yesterday with Charge d’Affaires of the United States Embassy in Qatar, Ryan Kleha. Talks during the meeting covered cooperation between the two countries and ways of promoting them in various fields.

PM meets Malaysian AmbassadorPrime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani met yesterday with Ambassador of Malaysia to the State of Qatar, Dato’ Ahmad Fadil Bin Shamsuddin. They reviewed aspects of cooperation between the two countries and prospects for their development and enhancement. They also discussed a number of issues of mutual interest.

PM meets Interpol officialPrime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani met yesterday with the Executive Director of the Interpol Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI), Noboru Nakatani, and the accompanying delegation, on the occasion of their visit to the country. They reviewed areas of cooperation between the State of Qatar and Interpol and ways of developing them, especially in security fields, in addition to a number of issues of common concern.

QNA

DOHA: Permanent Population Committee (PPC) issued the 37th edition of Sukkan newsletter, its quarterly bilingual publication for September 2017. The news-letter contains a set of topics aimed at spreading population culture and raising awareness of its issues to reach a better life for the people living in Qatar.

The issue has a series of topics, including a brief presen-tation on the legislative and institutional efforts undertaken by the State of Qatar to protect and promote the rights of expa-triate workers as a productive and effective development force, as emphasized in Qatar National Vision 2030.

The second theme of this issue addresses the issue of the

empowerment of women with disabilities and the achieve-ments of the State of Qatar in this field, based on its firm conviction that women with disabilities are primarily cit-izens and have rights and

duties, therefore achieving their aspirations for social justice and the right to sus-tainable development which was adopted by the United Nations in September 2015.

The third theme of this issue revises the most recent Interna-tional Labour Organisation (ILO) report of 2017, which includes an extensive analysis of various aspects of child labour, based on a set of relevant statistical indi-cators, which contributes to an integrated description of this issue in different regions of the world.

The last topic of this issue briefly highlights the concept of natural population growth rate, difference between the birth rate and the death rate of a country or place in a certain time frame.

Permanent Population Committee issues 37th Sukkan newsletter

The newsletter addresses the issue of empowerment of women with disabilities and the achievements of the State of Qatar in this field, based on its firm conviction that women with disabilities are primarily citizens and have rights and duties.

Sidra Medicine opens hospital buildingContinued from Page 1

“As part of Qatar Foundation, Sidra Medicine is a true embodiment of the country’s wider, long-term efforts to build a world-class healthcare and research infra-structure in Qatar, a H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser’s specific focus on transforming the care of women and children’s services in Qatar. Qatar Foundation, with Sheikha Moza at the helm, has been a powerful force for progress,” said Professor the Lord

Darzi of Denham, Vice-Chair of the Board of Governors at Sidra Med-icine, while addressing a press con-ference held at the new hospital.

“It has established Qatar as a leader in education, science and community development. We are incredibly proud to bring Her Highness’s vision to life. Sidra Medicine is the first of its kind facility in the Middle East and will become a resource for the entire Gulf region in terms of specialty care for women and children supported by an

impressive research infrastructure that will help lead the way in personalized medicine,” the Lord Darzi of Denham said.

“I have no doubt that Sidra Medicine will become an international beacon of best practice and high-quality, academ-ically-driven patient care,” he said.

“This is a big investment for a country that would like to see huge improvements in the quality of health services. Sidra Medicine’s basic prin-ciples are most needed in health care, which is a patient centered service with quality and safety.

“It is also a unique facility in the Middle East, and our doors are open to treating all patients within Qatar also within the Gulf region and beyond,” he added.

Medical care at Sidra Medicine is supported by research aimed at advancing the understanding of the epi-demiology and mechanisms of diseases for the people of Qatar.

This will help develop personalised preventative, diagnostic and therapeutic tools and improve the health outcomes of the women, young people, and children of Qatar.

“The clinical teams at Sidra Medicine are some of the best in the world. They have been united by a passion to deliver the very best care to women, young people and children in Qatar and will be trusted partners throughout the journeys that our patients will take with us. As a state-of-the-art facility handling high-risk and special cases, our approach to the opening is necessarily phased to allow for proper testing at each stage. The safety and comfort of our patients are of utmost importance and we look forward to welcoming them,” said Sidra Medicine CEO, Peter Morris.

“Sidra Medicine not only stands for medicine today but medicine tomorrow, which is why our tripartite focus on patient care, biomedical research, and medical education is so important,” he

added.Dr Abdulla Al Kaabi, Executive

Chair of the Children’s Services Clinical Management Group, Executive Vice Chief Medical Officer and Member of the Board of Governors, Dr John Fer-guson, Chief Medical Officer, Dr Justin Konje, Chair of Women’s Services Clinical Management Group, Morag Gates, Chief Operating Officer and Dr Rashid Al Ali, Division Chief, Bio-medical Informatics also addressed the press conference.

Once fully operational by mid-2018, Sidra Medicine will handle 275,000 out-patient appointments, 11,000 proce-dures, 100,000 emergency attendances and deliver over 9,000 babies per year, adding capacity to a rapidly growing population and delivering world-class specialist care.

Sidra Medicine will also accept regional and international referrals for

women, young people, and children who need its specialist expertise. An international referrals office has already handled 117 cases from Bahrain, Egypt, Ghana, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Nigeria, Oman, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the UAE since Sidra Medicine opened its Outpatient Clinic in May 2016.

Sidra Medicine’s outpatient services were launched on May 1, 2016, and now it operates over 50 outpatient clinics and services related to pediatric care for children and young people and maternity care for women.

Sidra Medicine’s research pro-gramme has been in operation since 2015 and aims to develop world-leading science and research programs that will align with Qatar’s national research strategy and also help address other public health issues.

FAZEENA SALEEM THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Sidra Medicine yesterday welcomed the first baby born at its new ultramodern hospital that will provide world-class healthcare services for children, young people and women in Qatar and internationally.

The arrival of baby Mariam, weighing 3.1kg, was announced by Dr Justin Konje, Chair of Women’s Services Clinical Management Group, during a press conference held to mark the opening of the new hospital building.

“It’s a very special for this country and for the women and children whom we will be looking after. We delivered our first baby. The mother and baby are healthy and well,” he said.

According to Dr Konje, the baby’s father was also present in the theater when baby Mariam was born, which is a rare practice at hospitals in Qatar.

He said: “Sidra Medicine will deliver about 500 babies per month by June and 750 per month by end of the year. Starting from February 4, we will start taking referrals from two Primary Health Care Centers - Al Rayyan and Al Gharafa. Also, by March, we will start receiving referrals for gyne-cology and by end of the year will provide reproductive medicine services and IVF.”

Sidra Medicine also received nine pediatric inpatients yesterday. The first inpatients for both children’s and women’s services for the main

hospital were already been registered and scheduled. Admissions in the first few months will be through the Sidra Medicine Outpatient Clinic and in col-laboration with Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).

During the first weeks of opening, Sidra Medicine’s inpatient services include paediatric medicine (gastroenterology, endocrinology and adolescent med-icine) and elective general surgery for children and young people. The women’s service will only be doing elective caesarean deliveries.

Dr Jhon Ferguson, Chief Medical Officer, Sidra Medicine, said that six pedi-atric surgeries in different specialities were conducted on the first day of opening the hospital.

First baby born on opening day

Professor Ibrahim Janahi, Division Chief of Pediatric Pulmonology at Sidra Medicine, seeing one of the first inpatients at the hospital yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

03MONDAY 15 JANUARY 2018 HOME

QNA

DOHA: Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani received yesterday a verbal message from President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, pertaining to bilateral rela-tions and means to advance them in different fields. Kazakhstan’s Special Envoy for Middle East and Africa Baghdad Amreyev conveyed the message, during a meeting with Minister of State for Foreign Affairs H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi yesterday.

Message from Bangladesh: Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani received yesterday a written message from Bangladesh MP and Foreign Minister Abul

Hassan Mahmood Ali, pertaining to bilateral relations and means to support and develop them. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi received the message during a meeting with Bangladesh Ambassador to the State of Qatar Achod Ahmed.

FM receives message: Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani received a written message from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kairat Abdrakhmanov, pertaining to bilateral rela-tions and ways of advancing them. The mes-sage was handed to the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs H E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi, yesterday by the Special Envoy of the Republic of Kazakhstan for the Middle East and Africa Baghdad Amreyev.

Qatar Post opens re-branded Al Rayyan, Lulu branchesIRFAN BUKHARI THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Post Chairman and Managing Director Faleh Al Naemi has said that soon Made-in-Qatar prod-ucts will also be available on Q-Post’s e-commerce platform – Turkish Souq – for buyers in Turkey.

“Currently, around 300,000 Turkish products are available on Turkish Souq, but by the end of 2018 the number of products available on the platform will touch five million,” Al Naemi said while talking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of re-opening of Qatar Post’s newly re-branded branches in Al Rayyan and Lulu Old Airport.

To a question, he said that soon products produced in Qatar would also be available on e-commerce platform for buyers in Turkey. He said that the response of people on Q-Post’s e-com-merce platform was good which would further grow with the passage of time.

On January 1, Qatar Post had launched e-commerce platform – Turkish Souq – in partnership with Turkish Post (PTT).

Qatar Postal Services Company (Qatar Post) yesterday officially re-opened its re-branded branches in Al Rayyan and Lulu Old Airport. The cer-emonies were attended by Qatar Post Chairman and Managing Director Faleh Al Naemi and the COO Hamad Al Fahida, as well as other dignitaries including its departmental heads and directors.

Al Rayyan branch showcases Qatar Post’s new brand initiative and strategy which represents its digital ambition arising from the transfor-mation of its services from traditional to hi-tech.

Aside from the big change in serv-ices, the Al Rayyan branch’s state-of-the-art facility also reflects the new strategy of working on the physical change of Qatar Post.

Talking to The Peninsula, Al Naemi said that all branches of Qatar Post and its kiosks would be re-branded with new identity by the end of 2018. “People will like them and also the ease in transactions we are providing through our advanced services,” he added.

With the success of the

re-branding campaign which started with the main post office building, Al Rayyan branch becomes the first among its wide network of branches to be opened under the recently launched initiative with the new-look Qatar Post logo and brand colours.

Speaking at the event, Al Naemi said: “We are happy to open Al Rayyan branch, it brings our mission of deliv-ering modern life closer to the people of the area.”

Al Fahida said: “We are delighted to open our newly re-branded Al Rayyan branch of Qatar Post. Our re-branding campaign, launched last year, has been very successful in all ramifications. The transformation has helped us provide much better and efficient services to the customers and we are well poised to take service delivery to the next level.”

More Qatar Post re-branded branches are scheduled to be opened in the next coming months with Al Mansoura and Souq Al Ali branches topping the list.

Faleh Al Naemi, Chairman and Managing Director of Qatar Post, and other officials cutting a ribbon to mark the inauguration of the Q-Post’s re-branded Al Rayyan Branch yesterday. PIC: BAHER AMIN/THE PENINSULA

Qatar Post Chairman and Managing Director Faleh Al Naemi said that soon Made in Qatar products would be available on e-commerce platform for buyers in Turkey. He said that the response of people on Q-Post’s e-commerce platform was good which would further grow with the passage of time.

Continued from page 1During 2017 CRA registered 3,272

new domains (up nearly 10 percent from 2,981 in 2016) which indicates that Qatari domain extensions are serving the Qatari market and community well. Also the total number of registered Qatari domains reached 20,253.

In the field of spectrum management, CRA issued during the year 407 import authorisation licenses (up by 12 percent from 363 in 2016), issued 1,082 type approval cer-tificates for radio and telecommunications terminal equipment (RTTE) and received 22,317 custom clearance applications. Fur-thermore, CRA received 56 spectrum inter-ference cases (down by 33 percent from 84

in 2016) and conducted six quality of service investigations relating to the consumers’ complaints received during 2017 (down by 45 percent from 11 in 2016).

CRA conducted two routine inspec-tions on 546 shops that are selling radio and telecommunication equipment (up by 180 percent from 195 shops in 2016) and issued 257 violation notices for shops that were selling telecoms devices and equip-ment without having the required licenses. CRA also played a significant role in sup-porting spectrum requirements of three major events during the year including the National Day Celebration, the final round of the Superbike World Championship and FIA World Touring Car Championship.

100,000 cellphone numbers issued last year

Message from Kazakhstan PresidentH E Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi with Baghdad Amreyev.


THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs opened a new mosque in Umm Al Saneem that can accommodate about 360 worshipers as part of the Ministry’s plan to increase the number of mosques and develop them in all areas and to keep pace with urban and population growth, in line with the Qatar National Vision 2030.

The new mosque, which carries the number (M.S / 250), has a main hall for prayers and a total area with a capacity of 625 worshipers, in addition another area that can accommodate 50 women worshippers. The mosque includes a spacious place for ablution in addi-tion to parking spaces with dedicated parking lots for the people with disabilities, along other amenities.

The Ministry said that the designs take into con-sideration the size of the land on which the mosques was built, the requirements of green and sustainable buildings, the sustainable preservation of electricity and water and the preservation of the aesthetics of the designs in a way that reflects the originality of Qatari and Islamic heritage.

Ministry of Awqaf opens new mosque in Umm Al Saneem

An outside view of the new mosque. Right: A view of the prayer hall.

QU-CHS holds training on Qatar Dietary GuidelinesTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Department of Human Nutrition at Qatar University College of Health Sciences (QU-CHS) recently conducted two training sessions on Qatar Dietary Guidelines.

The training sessions aimed to train the department’s teaching assistants and students to apply these guidelines and recommendations in their pro-fession. The session was deliv-ered by Nasima Banu Mohammed Naveeduddin, Teaching Assistant at CHS Department of Human Nutrition.

The Qatar Dietary Guide-lines are part of the National Nutrition and Physical Activity Plan 2011-2016 developed by the Ministry of Public Health. They aim to reduce morbidity and mortality attributable to chronic non-communicable diseases in the State of Qatar.

Nasima Banu Mohammed Naveeduddin noted that these guidelines are based on food rather than nutrients. “The objective of the training is to allow the participants to under-stand the importance of the guidelines and learn methods and tips and implement them in their day-to-day life to protect

themselves from chronic dis-eases”, she said.

“These guidelines also focus on physical activity and healthy lifestyle, benefits of breast feeding, maintaining a healthy weight and eating healthy while protecting the environment. They also highlight the significant role of parents as role models of healthy eating and healthy life-style. This training will help the participants to understand and implement the Qatar Dietary Guidelines, which are developed

according to the needs of people in Qatar. These guidelines will enable people to change their dietary and lifestyle patterns and stay healthy,”she added.

CHS Dean and Biomedical Research Center Director Prof Asma Al Thani noted that the Qatar Dietary Guidelines are developed for the healthy adult population not only for those who are at risk for chronic diseases.

Al Thani said:“The lifestyle changes in the State of Qatar due to the rapid economic, demo-graphic, social and cultural development changed the die-tary and lifestyle patterns. They influenced dietary preferences and shifted them to processed and refined food products which are loaded with saturated sugars, excess of sodium, high sugar and trans-fat. They also engendered less physical activity or sedentary lifestyle.”

“According to research on the nutritional status of the Qatari population, there is a high prevalence for childhood obesity, which is a risk factor of metabolic syndrome. This fur-ther can increase the risk for cardiovascular diseases in later life. The Qatari population is also deficient in Vitamin D. This training session showcases the

ongoing efforts of the College of Health Sciences to high-light issues that are of interest to the society and raise community aware-ness on timely health topics while stressing the impor-tance of adopting a healthy diet and following daily physical exercises to pre-vent chronic diseases,” she added.

“According to research on the nutritional status of the Qatari population, there is a high prevalence for childhood obesity, which is a risk factor of metabolic syndrome. This further can increase the risk for cardiovascular diseases in later life. The Qatari population is also deficient in Vitamin D.

‘Win 10 Nissan Patrol Car’ promotion begins at SafariTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Safari, a well-known hypermarket group which created new definition’s to the world of shopping experience, started a new promotion named “Safari Win 10 Nissan Patrol Car Promotion” yesterday. This is the first mega promotion from Safari Group in the year 2018. Promotions from Safari has always created several lucky winners. In a press release Safari group director & General Manager Zainul Abideen (pictured) expressed his sincere gratitude to the loyal customers for their endless support for the past several years.

“The customers have given tremendous support to the “Safari win 20 Toyota Camry Car Mega Promotion” which started in 2017 and ended in Jan-uary 2018. Safari had started a unique revolution in shopping,

at the retail industry of Qatar when they introduced the mega promotion “You are the Million-aire”. The prize money for this promotion was one million Qatar riyal. Safari has already given gold coins, cash prizes, cars etc, to the customers through such mega promotions. The best part is that the winners of these promotions were mostly common people from all walks of life and different nationality.

Safari’s promotions has always got tremendous support due to the reason of its high value of Raffle Draw promotions.

This time Safari introduces 10 Nissan Patrol car through five lucky draws. In each lucky draw two cars will be awarded. 10 lucky winners can get a Nissan Patrol 2018 cars by spending just QR50, they will get one coupon for every purchase of QR50.

Zainul Abideen also pointed that this promotions will be uniquely available in all outlets of safari. Safari is trying to give a new shopping expe-rience to the customers at the time of this New Year 2018. As a part of this mega promotion Safari has started many new offers, musical game shows etc. Musical show is scheduled at the food court of Safari Mall on January 15, 16 and 17. This event will be led by the famous artists from Doha and the entry will be free.

Qatari research gets certificate from Belmont international forumQNA

DOHA: A joint Qatari-European-American scientific research on food, water and energy has been awarded a scientific and technical certificate from the Belmont International Scientific Research Forum and the European Union for Urban Cities.

The scientific research was about the formulation of a sus-tainable strategy for food, water and energy resources (FWE) in

urban areas by improving the cooperation between food, water and energy systems for a period of three years starting from Jan-uary 2018 and ending in December 2020. Some interna-tional donors, including the Qatar National Research Fund, are financing this research.

The Qatar team is headed by Director of the Municipal and Environmental Studies Center Dr Mohammed bin Saif Al Kuwari , representing the Ministry of

Municipality and Environment and the researcher of the Qatar Institute for Environmental and Energy Mohammed Al Hashri, while Hamad bin Khalifa Univer-sity (HBKU) is represented by Pro-fessor Dr Abdul Karim Ahmed, where the Qatar team is involved with European and American sci-entific research centers.

The Qatar team, in cooper-ation with universities, national institutions, and specialised research centers, is carrying out this important scientific

research to serve Qatar Vision 2030 , and the National Development Strategy 2017-2022, and achieves the sustainable strategy for food, water and energy resources in Qatar.

Some 88 scientific researches participated in the first phase, of which 40 researches qualified to com-pete in the final stage in December 2017, while the short list comprised 15 sci-entific researches and papers. The Qatari -Euro-pean-American joint scien-tific research has won the certificate to provide inno-vative solutions to challenge the relationship between food, water and sustainable energy.

The 17 sustainable development goals called for in the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Develop-ment Plan call for a holistic approach to address the growing demand for food, water and energy.

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Doha International Family Institute (DIFI), a member of Qatar Foundation (QF), in collaboration with the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs, will hold a public seminar titled ‘Qatari Families: Strengths and Challenges’, at the Qatar National Conven-tion Centre from January 16 to 17, 2018.

The seminar will discuss the findings of a study on Qatari families, as part of a larger DIFI research project on Arab Family Strengths in Qatar, Jordan, and Tunisia. Highlighting the project, Noor Al Malki Al-Jehani, Executive Director, DIFI, emphasized that families are the basic, foundational social units in every society, and that healthy individual within healthy families are essential to the core of a healthy society.

“It’s the responsibility of society, and in eve-ryone’s best interest, to help create a positive environment for all families. Therefore, the pur-pose of our research is to identify the factors that are associated with strong, Arab families, the challenges they face, and how they rely on their strengths as individuals, family units, members of communities, as well as the wisdom of their cultural and religious beliefs, to meet these many challenges,” said Al-Jehani.

The two-day seminar will include the fol-lowing four panel discussions: ‘Marital Rela-tionships’, ‘Parenting’, ‘Culture’, and ‘Financial Aspects’. On the first day, Dr. Abdallah Badahdah, Director of the Family Research Division, DIFI, and Dr. John DeFrain, Professor Emeritus of Family Science in the Department of Child, Youth and Family Studies, College of Education and Human Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, will present the research findings. Dr. Azza Abdulmeneim, Senior Lead Researcher, DIFI, and Dr. Sylvia

M. Asay, Professor of Family Studies, University of Nebraska at Kearney, USA, will present the second day’s research findings.

The event, which is open to the public, will bring together policy-makers, practitioners, researchers, service providers, and members of Qatar’s civil society, providing them with a plat-form to discuss the most important challenges facing Qatari families and propose recommen-dations to strengthen Qatari families.


1,000 mooring fields to be built at four harboursTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: As many as 1,000 mooring fields will be built at the harbours of Al Wakrah, Al Khor, Al Zakhira and Al Ruwais to accommodate private boats.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications yesterday announced that it had started implementing a project to build private boats mooring fields at all harbors across the country.

Work has begun at all har-bours simultaneously and the project is planned to be completed within 18 months, said a statement.

The Ministry has assigned the project to the Qatar Ports Manage-ment Company (Mwani Qatar), which will carry it out in collabo-ration with private sector companies.

The project comes within the Ministry’s strategy for planning and developing the marine trans-port sector. The goal is provide some 1,000 moorings in accord-ance with latest global standards and systems at the harbors of Al Wakra, Al Khor, Al Zakhira and Al Ruwais, through direct coordina-tion with the Ministry of Munici-pality and Environment’s Fisheries Department, which is concerned

with harbour affairs.“The project is one great, right

solution providing moorings for private boaters, particularly fol-lowing a considerable rise in the number of private boats registered lately by the Ministry,” said Dr Saleh Fetais Al Marri, Director Maritime Transport Planning and Licensing and General Supervisor of Maritime Transport Affairs at MoTC.

He said the project aims to regulate private boats mooring operations within modern anchoring spaces constructed with world-class standards and spec-ifications to fulfill private boaters’ needs and expectations.

It also aims to keep the boats safe from dangerous weather events such as storms and high waves, provide smoother private

boats movement and preserve people’s belongings. It also sup-ports the private sector in a way that helps boost Qatar’s economic development, Al Marri added.

Dr Al Marri said the project’s most important feature is the opti-mized use of the potential of Qatar’s harbors and establish-ments, aiming to reduce cost, observe environmental and sus-tainability standards and codes and apply the world’s best prac-tices in terms of project designing and execution.

He said there are 436 mooring slips at Al Wakra Harbor, 324 at Al Ruwais Harbor, 200 at Al Khor Harbor and 28 at Al Zakhira Harbor. Planning of these mooring

slips has taken into consideration all sizes of boats, which means each mooring slip can accommo-date more than one boat and part of the project is to increase the number of moorings in the future.

Marine Fishing Harbors Sec-tion Head at the Ministry of Munic-ipality and Environment Hamad Murshid Al Muraikhi said the project contributes to serving many private boat owners and reduce burden on the fishing harbours.

Upon project completion, the current fishing harbours will be cleared from private boats, mooring fields be reorganized and redistributed and new services be provided and this would help fulfil

fishermen’s desire that fishing har-bours should not be exclusive to only ships and boats that have a license from the Ministry of Municipality and Environment’s Fisheries Department.

Environment standards and codes have been observed in the project, aiming to preserve the environment and marine living resources, Al Muraikhi said stressed that allocating mooring fields for private boaters will not be at the same harbors where fish-ermen’s ships and boats operate, but adjacent to them.

Eng. Nabil Alkhaldi, Engi-neering Director at Mwani Qatar said the mooring fields project stands as one of the major

public-private partnerships in Qatar as the private sector plays a key role in its implementation based on the considerable atten-tion the country places to enhancing and bolstering private sector’s role and contribution to developmental projects country-wide. The project implementation plan has been endorsed by the bodies concerned and the plan is to complete and deliver the project in roughly a year and a half, he said.

“Al Zakhira Harbor’s mooring fields are to be completed and delivered in 10 months, Al Khor Harbor’s mooring fields in 14 months and Al Wakra and Al Ruwais mooring fields in 18 months,” he added.

Project works include con-structing mooring slips at a length of 22 meters for boats and at a length of 10 metres for cruisers, as well as groynes for which we use sustainable, eco-friendly mate-rials, Alkhaldi noted.

Implementing an eco-friendly project had been in the centre of attention of all stakeholders and parties involved in the project, using eco-friendly materials and techniques that help preserve the environment and living marine resources, Alkhaldi said.

Work has begun at Al Wakrah, Al Khor, Al Zakhira and Al Ruwais harbours simultaneously and the project is planned to be completed within 18 months.

FROM LEFT: Saleh Fetais Al Marri, Nabil Alkhaldi and Hamad Murshid Al Muraikhi.

QC completes 786 projects in Indonesiascarcity. It is worth mentioning that QC implements water projects to provide clean drinking water in many countries world-wide to alleviate the daily suf-fering of needy people in villages and remote areas. 200 persons got married in a mass wedding ceremony organized by Qatar Charity in Jakarta, which costed half a million riyals, donated by a g e n e r o u s Q a t a r i philanthropist.

DIFI to host open seminar on ‘Qatari Families: Strengths and Challenges’

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Charity has imple-mented 786 development projects in Indonesia last year, with the continued support of Qatari people, to benefit thou-sands of people in need in the country.

Karam Zainham, Director of the QC Office in Indonesia, said that Qatar Charity gives great importance to the development sector, especially to the basics of life in poor countries. He pointed out that QC has implemented 786 development projects at a cost of QR14.2m during the last year 2017, said a statement.

He stated that those imple-mented projects included orphanages, housing for poor families, multi-service centers, mosques, income-generating projects and water projects.

Zainham thanked Qatari people and appreciated their standing with needy Indonesian people in their hard time. He fur-ther said that these projects could not have been carried out without the support of Qatari philanthro-pists. Qatar Charity has provided 13 houses to orphans and needy families at a cost of 600 thousand riyals to take care of children under a stable family atmosphere.

Qatar Charity Office in Indo-nesia has built 4 multi-service centers in the country last year to meet urgent needs of poor people. These centers, consisting of educational institutions, health centers and clean drinking water resources, were constructed at cost of five million riyals.

Qatar Charity built 38 mosques at a cost exceeding four million riyals in the country,

taking into consideration the mosque’s vital roles in Muslim lives, as it is not only a place for worship, but also a place for edu-cation and knowledge. It brings Muslims together and works on getting them united as well as teaches them the great ethics of Islam and provides them with correct Islamic knowledge.

Qatar Charity has imple-mented 40 income-generating projects to benefit Indonesian families in need, especially con-centrating on those lost their breadwinner. This came as part of the economic empowerment, which is given the utmost impor-tance by Qatar Charity due to its great benefit and return to indi-vidual and communities.

Qatar Charity has constructed 690 water wells in many Indo-nesian villages and remote areas, where people suffer from water

One of the Qatar Charity’s projects in Indonesia.


Qatar Airways supports Qatar Cancer SocietyTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Airways supports Qatar Cancer Society’s (QCS) programs which aims to raise awareness of cancer prevention methods and emphasis the importance of early detection of disease treatment, said QCS yesterday. This initiative comes within the framework of Qatar Airways’ responsibi l i ty programme to promote public health especially cancer.

Dr Dera Al Dosari, Public Relations and Marketing manager of QCS, met Qatar Airways’ del-egation at QCS headquarters and received the donation.

Mariam Hamad Al Noaimi,

General Manager of QCS, thanked Qatar Airways for the kind ges-ture and said “that the donation is part of Qatar Airways commit-ment to its responsibilities towards the community, espe-cially to raise awareness about cancer”.

She wished all the institutions

to join hands in order to raise awareness of the disease, as well as support for people living with both materially and morally.

Dr Dera al Dosari said “We hope that more partnerships with all state institutions to contribute to the deployment of community awareness of cancer and ways to prevent it”.

Nabeela J Fakhri, Senior Vice President- Human Resources of Qatar Airways said “We are very proud of all the good work by charity organisations in Qatar, and by Qatar Cancer Society, being one of the largest charity organisations in Qatar with a mis-sion to improve health conditions, especially during those times

where the numbers of cancer vic-tims are rapidly increasing”.

“The donation as part of its efforts to raise health awareness

and to improve health conditions of the Qatari community”.

Dr Dera Al Dosari, Public Relations and Marketing Manager of QCS, with Qatar Airways’ delegation at QCS headquarters receiving the donation.

This initiative comes within the framework of Qatar Airways’ responsibility programme to promote public health especially cancer.

GU-Q to host talk on Palestine by renowned historianDOHA: At an upcoming talk at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q), histo-rian, social activist, and author Professor Ilan Pappé will discuss the oppor-tunities and challenges facing Palestine during the term of President Donald Trump. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held tomorrow at 6.30pm, at GU-Q’s Education City campus.

Pappé is a professor of history and director of the European Center for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter and an internationally recog-nised researcher focusing on the modern Middle East and Arab-Israeli con-flict. His lecture aims to offer insight into the current and future impact of the Trump presidency, including opportunities that may arise from the recent decision to move the location of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. “The talk will explain why the Trump decision was not all bad news, as it will force anyone involved in the Palestine question to rethink the peace process and the basic ideas underlining it, as Trump is taking out the US from any mediating and meaningful role in the so-called peace process,” said Pappé. Pappé holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and authored of more than 20 books.

National Car Company introduces all-new Mazda 2018 modelsTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: National Car Company, sole agent of Mazda in Qatar, introduced the all-new 2018 Mazda 6, Mazda CX3 and Mazda CX9. The new models, all made in Japan comes with free 5-year Unlimited Km warranty along with road side assistance and are on display at the state of the art Mazda showroom located at Al Nasr. JINBA ITTAI – ACHIEVE A ONENESS

As an ancient Japanese tradition, horse mounted archers believed that the key to mastering their skill was to “achieve a oneness” between horse and rider. This is known as Jinba Ittai, or “horse and rider as one.” And it’s the engi-neering inspiration for the new genera-tion Mazda vehicles.

THE MAZDA6 Mazda6 is a driver’s car. A personal

sports sedan with everything in the cockpit dedicated to helping you cele-brate driving through a direct feeling of being at one with the vehicle. New gen-eration SKYACTIV VEHICLE DYNAMICS, realised as a result of Mazda human cen-tric development philosophy, debuts with the adoption of G-Vectoring Control (GVC) to take the trademark Jinba Ittai driving experience to a new level. Engineered to respond precisely to your every wish as if it were a part of you, Mazda6 offers unprecedented linearity in acceleration, cornering and braking to take Mazda’s world-famous unity between car and driver to a still higher level.

THE MAZDA CX3 CX-3 is your companion for whatever

the road may throw its way—from urban

sprawl to the Great Outdoors. CX-3 was developed to “Create the standard for the next era.”It’s a vehicle designed to meet the needs of a new generation of car buyers, supporting creative, adventurous lifestyles.

The interior offers a high-quality and sophisticated feel that complements the exterior design. Attention was paid to every detail, including the cohesiveness of designs and quality of materials.

Mazda’s unwavering commitment to making vehicles that thrill and delight is evident in the driving dynamics derived from the confident inspiring i-ACTIV All Wheel Drive which is far better than any contemporary crossover SUV. The assur-ance of i-ACTIV all-wheel drive comes through its sensors, which take into account factors like steering angle, throttle inputs and wheel-spin along with temperature and use of wipers to paint a clear picture of the outside conditions. i-ACTIV all-wheel drive can adjust power output more than 200 times per second, using 27 different variables, to “predict” what the road conditions look like.

THE MAZDA CX9

Brand-New Mazda CX-9 is the ultimate blend of stunning sophistication and family SUV. It’s the very first Mazda to feature the breakthrough SKYACTIV-G 2.5T petrol engine. Delivering class-leading perform-ance with real-world efficiency, the turbo-charged engine offers driving excitement never before felt in a seven-seat SUV. The new CX-9 delivers breakthrough perform-ance with the newly-developed SKYACTIV-G 2.5T petrol engine bringing new levels of driving pleasure. The direct injection tur-bocharged engine provides more imme-diate power and torque for effortless accel-eration and overtaking, even when towing and carrying loads. The smooth ride and athletic responses are further enhanced with the latest advances in SKYACTIV TECHNOLOGY, of which CX-9 boasts the full suite. The addition of intelligent i-ACTIV AWD monitors and even predicts road conditions.

The innovative Dynamic Pressure Turbo adjusts boost pressure and airflow according to engine speed to overcome tra-ditional problems such as turbo lag.


High-yielding breed of sheep createdSANAULLAH ATAULLAH THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Under a research project to increase reproduction of animals for meat and milk, the Livestock Research Unit at the Agricultural Research Depart-ment run by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment created a high yielding breed of sheep, with genetic modification.

“Sheep with improved genetic traits gives more milk than their normal average, as per the result of a fresh research con-ducted by the Research Unit,” Massoud Jarallah Al Marri, Head of the Agricultural Research Department, posted on the web-site of the Ministry.

He said the Department is conducting a number of research projects to increase the repro-duction of animals including increasing varieties of sheep and its milk production.

“It is well-known that most livestock in Qatar are being used only for meat and not for milk,” said Al Marri, adding that the Unit is working on improving genetic traits of sheep under a research.

“Under the research, artifi-cial insemination was given to female-sheep which resulted in increase in twin reproduction by 67.5 percent.”

He said the research work also helped in reducing death of animals below six percent that became possible by adopting preventive programme, immu-nisation during pregnancy and prescribed foods to newly-born sheep.

The Department has started operation recently at a new

livestock reproduction facility at Al Shahaniya. He said that the facility was handed over to the Department in the mid of last year. The project is built in an area of 80,000sqm. “The research work will be conducted at the facility to improve the spe-cies of camel and sheep by using artificial insemination to produce good species and then it will be handed over to the animal breeding farms,” said Al Marri.

He said the centre will also conduct research on fodder com-ponents to prescribe diet for ani-mals. “Laboratories and other necessary facilities are being set up at the animal reproduction centre. Technical and adminis-trative staffs are being hired to open the centre within next two months,” said Al Marri.

The centre will have three main laboratories for feeding and breeding animals and a gene bank for animals.

“The centre was supplied three herds of animals (sheep of two species -Al Awasi and Al Shami) and camel for using in research and study that will be conducted at the centre in future,” said Al Marri.

According to an official figure, the commercial farms in Qatar are having about 1.4 mil-lion animals including goat, sheep, cow and camels.

QNCECS Secretary-General, Dr. Hamda Hassan Al Sulaiti, and other officials at a workshop on the use of the electronic application for people with disabilities.

Need to develop training programs for people with disabilities stressedQNA

DOHA: The Secretary-General of Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science (QNCECS), Dr. Hamda Hassan Al Sulaiti, reaffirmed the need to develop training and rehabilitation programs to help persons with disabilities over-come the barriers imposed by their disability and to provide them with alternative means and help to cope with their situations.

At a workshop on the use of the electronic application for people with disabilities, Dr. Al Sulaiti said the disability may limit the disabled person’s ability to co-exist and integrate into the community and iden-tify the areas of services and

entertainment, which requires the provision of special pro-grams including the use of m o d e r n m e a n s o f communication.

In her speech delivered by Head of the Arab and Islamic Affairs Department at QNCECS Abdullah Khamis Al Kubaisi said great credit goes to the work of international, regional and local organisations, voluntary asso-ciations, human rights associa-tions and a number of major corporations who have empha-sized the rights of persons with disabilities to work, access to appropriate jobs and facilitate access to their workplaces, health and leisure centres.

This has contributed to the increase of interest by countries

in the field of services for the care and rehabilitation of the disabled.

The two-day workshop will be attended by representatives from the Ministry of Public Health, health and safety department at the Ministry of Education and Higher Educa-tion, QNCECS, in support of community initiatives, including the Accessible Qatar initiative, in cooperation with Sasol, inter-national chemicals and energy company. The workshop aims to train the first application and website of its kind in the region to provide instant and reliable information on the accessibility of people with disabilities to various public places and tourism across Qatar.

HBKU to offer workshops on subtitling, sports translationTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: In an effort to extend specialised training opportu-nities to professionals within the interpretation industry, the Translation and Interpreting Institute (TII), part of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), is offering two public workshops this month on Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling, as well as Approaches to Translating Sports Documents.

Both upcoming sessions are part of TII’s ongoing trans-lation education and interpre-tation development work-shops, which seek to offer one-of-a-kind instruction to those with advanced skills within the interpretation and translation industry.

Nabeel Rashid, acting director of the Translation and Training Center at TII, said, “As industries in Qatar increasingly realise the need to communi-cate across cultures, tap into new markets and inspire new audiences – the demand for high-quality translators and interpreters grows manifold. Through our upcoming work-shops on subtitling and sports translation, we aim to provide Qatar-based translators and interpreters with direct access to specialized areas of transla-tion that will continue to be in demand as the business sector burgeons.”

Scheduled to be held from January 21 to 24, the Audio-visual Translation: Subtitling workshop will introduce par-ticipants to the techniques of intralingual and interlingual subtitling. Next, TII will host its Approaches to Translating Sports Documents workshop from January 28 to 31.

Sheep with improved genetic traits gives more milk than their normal average, as per the result of a fresh research.

Hamad Port, the largest port in the region, continues to achieve new milestones. The port added a new feather to its cap by adding of a new service from South

Korean shipping line Hyundai Merchant Marine to its growing network list.

On Saturday, Hyundai Merchant Marine’s 365.5-metre-long ‘Hyundai Drive’ made its first call to Hamad Port. This marked the official start of a new Hyundai Merchant Marine’s KME (Korea Middle East Express) service.

This occasion became more special as ‘Hyundai Drive’ was the largest container vessel to enter Hamad Port.

The arrival of this mega ship also reflects growing confidence of global shipping lines on Hamad Port and its ability to handle world’s mega vessels in line with the modern technology. The port has confirmed its position as the most well-equipped ports in the region.

Hyundai Merchant Marine is a leading global shipping company operating over 130 vessels encompassing more than 60 sea routes to over 100 ports of call.

This new service will boost the traffic of goods further as the company plans to operate weekly direct services to Hamad Port covering a number

of major ports in Asia, including ports of Kwangyang, Busan (South Korea), Ningbo, Kaohsiung, Yantian and Shekou ports (China), Singapore, Port Klang (Malaysia).

Hamad Port has played crucial role in defeating unjust siege imposed on Qatar by blockading countries. The port, which has become Qatar’s gateway to world trade, has witnessed increased traffic of goods since it started operations. In 2017, Hamad Port received a total of 1,748 vessels and handled 772,835 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers, 1,165,180 tonnes general cargo, 606,412 heads of livestock and 65,096 of RORO.

Despite the blockade, Qatar was able to ensure uninterrupted supply of goods for the residents through its ports and Hamad Port played a major role in maintaining normalcy in supply of goods. Goods ranging from foods and raw materials for constructions projects continue to enter the country through sea route.

Mwani Qatar in cooperation with its partners had, after imposition of siege, inaugurated a number of new direct shipping lines between Hamad Port and a number of ports in the region and beyond.

Hamad Port has made significant achievements at the regional and international levels in a short period of time. As the port continues to write new success stories, it is set to transform Qatar into a regional and international trade and logistics hub.

THE self-independence and social participation of people struggling to make a living because they cannot

find stable employment should be steadily promoted. The support system for them should be strengthened.

A report compiled by a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry study panel reviewing the independence support system for the needy has indicated steps, including greater assistance to help people find jobs and improved consultation services on managing a household budget.

The independence support system for the needy started in fiscal 2015. The system was launched in response to the jump in welfare assistance recipients due to the increase in people with unstable jobs. The system quickly detects people on the verge of requiring welfare assistance due to unemployment, illness, debts or other reasons, and encourages their independence by linking them to the appropriate support.

The central bodies implementing this system are prefectural and municipal governments that have welfare offices. General inquiry counters were set up at those offices for people to seek advice on a wide range of topics, and support measures tailored to the circumstances of each individual are compiled there. Some of these offices offer, at their discretion, training to help people find jobs, advice on managing a household budget and

learning support for children.In the two years after the system was

introduced, 450,000 people called in for consultations and 120,000 continually received support. Of them, 60,000 people found jobs or increased their income.

Although the system has been successful to a degree, many problems remain. There are huge discrepancies between regions with regard to services offered at the offices’ discretion. Only 44 percent of local governments offered long-term unemployed people and “hikikomori” social recluses support to prepare them for finding a job, such as by arranging work experience. Just 40 percent provided consultation services for managing a household budget.

It is estimated that as many as 540,000 young people are hikikomori. The number of middle-aged and elderly people who live in isolation is also rising. There are deep concerns that these people will fall into economic hardship, as their parents become increasingly elderly.

Many of the nation’s needy people have run up big debts because they cannot grasp how to manage a household budget or prepare mid- and long-term life plans.

The panel’s report called for all local governments that have welfare offices to offer employment preparation assistance and household budget consultation services — bearing in mind that such services should be compulsory. It is hoped that local governments make efforts to

provide these services.Needy people tend to become isolated,

which makes it difficult for information about available support to reach them. It is important that welfare, medical care, housing and other relevant divisions in local governments cooperate closely to find people eligible for support. It also is essential to nurture human resources with the necessary expertise in this area.

The report also incorporated a review of the livelihood protection system. To curb the medical assistance that accounts for half of the entire expenses of this system, the report proposed introducing health management support for people receiving this assistance, and corrective measures to prevent people making excessive doctor visits. These steps should be promoted in concert with strengthened support for people to become independent by finding employment.

The criteria for receiving livelihood assistance will change in the next fiscal year. As a result, 67 percent of households receiving assistance to help cover food, heating and lighting costs will have this monetary support cut by up to 5 percent. This is a result of efforts to balance the spending abilities of ordinary low-income households and those who receive benefits.

Some observers are concerned this method will extremely reduce the level of benefits that can be received under deflation. Methods for setting these criteria will need to be reviewed.

Hamad Port has made significant achievements at the regional and international levels in a short period of time. As the port continues to write new success stories, it is set to transform Qatar into a regional and international trade and logistics hub.

CHAIRMANSHEIKH THANI BIN ABDULLAH AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK [email protected]

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM [email protected]

08 MONDAY 15 JANUARY 2018VIEWS

EDITORIAL

Accomplishing new feats

QUOTE OF THE DAYWe will continue our

operations begun with Operation Euphrates

Shield to clean our southern borders of terror in Afrin in the days ahead God willing. The slightest

disturbance on the border would be the signal for us

to take a step.

Recep Tayyip ErdoganTurkish President

Will more European countries follow Norway’s lead on Yemen war?

Strengthen support system to help needy

DR. KHALID AL JABER & GIORGIO CAFIERO

KEY pillars of Norway’s foreign policy in the Middle East include maintaining neutrality in regional conflicts, serving a

humanitarian role in crisis-ridden areas, and building strong investment ties. Over the years, Oslo’s conflict mediation/resolution efforts along with Norway’s contributions to humanitarian and peacekeeping missions in post-conflict zones have significantly enhanced the Scandinavian country’s soft power in the Middle East. Such an approach has enabled Norway to better cement economic relations with Middle Eastern countries while earning a reputation for bringing “good will” to the volatile region.

Having never been a colonial power in the Arab world, Norway—unlike France, Italy, Turkey, and the United Kingdom—does not bring such historical baggage to the region. Furthermore, on the “Arab Street”, Norway is not really associated

with any aggression in the region in contrast to certain Western powers, as well as Russia and Iran. Nonetheless, Norway—as a close ally of the United States, which is also one of the few European countries to maintain good ties with Hamas—has used its unique diplomatic position to serve as an intermediary

between Washington and Hamas, quite like Qatar. Simultaneously, Oslo’s alliance with the US has not prevented Norway from deepening ties with Iran.

Within the framework of Oslo’s vision for promoting peace in the war-torn region, this month the Foreign Ministry announced the suspension of Norway’s weapons and ammunition sales to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The ministry stated that the suspension “reflects the strict precautionary approach taken by Norway”, citing human rights concerns in Yemen. Foreign Minister Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide expressed “great concern” over Yemen’s humanitarian crisis.

Domestic politics were a key factor behind Norway’s decision to halt exports of weapons and ammunition to the UAE, which reached nearly $10 million in 2016. In Norway, a host of civil society organisations and human rights groups, along with lawmakers, pushed hard to stop the sale of weapons to Abu Dhabi, which Norway had permitted since 2010 (although the country had previously banned the sale of arms and ammunition to Saudi Arabia).

How does Norway’s decision fit into the context of Europe’s general set of attitudes toward supplying the Saudis and Emiratis weapons as Yemen’s war and humanitarian disaster exacerbate? Although the European Union parliament adopted a resolution calling on the bloc’s members to stop exporting weapons to Saudi Arabia due to the Yemeni crisis, there is no European consensus on this highly contentious issue.

EU members have disagreements about where international law comes down with respect to arms sales to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi amid the Yemen war. Unquestionably, the strong incentives that European politicians have for not opposing such lucrative deals with Saudi Arabia and the UAE pertain to the economic benefits of greater foreign exchange in their countries’ economies and the growth of their flourishing defense industries that have recently provided good-paying jobs amid periods of high unemployment in Europe.

Italy, Germany, and Spain have all sold arms to Saudi Arabia since the Riyadh-led coalition’s 2015 entry into Yemen. Consequently, those governments have received criticism from lawmakers and civil society organisations who call on their leaders to end such weapons deals with Saudi Arabia. In late 2017, political pressure in Greece, largely driven by political and moral considerations, pushed Athens to scrap a missile and bombs deal with Saudi Arabia.

As many observers of the political crisis and humanitarian disaster in Yemen concur, Western countries’ arms sales to parties involved in the Yemeni crisis have been key factors prolonging the war.

To be sure, Norway has never been a main source of the UAE or any GCC state’s arms imports and throughout this conflict the United States, United Kingdom, and France have been their top weapons sources. To state the obvious, changes in Washington, London, and Paris’ approaches to GCC arms sales—much more so than Norway’s—would prove far more influential in terms of pressuring the Saudis and Emiratis to accept a cease-fire and begin negotiating peace with the Houthis and other actors in the conflict.

The important question is how will other Western countries, including those that have higher financial stakes in continuing to supply GCC states with arms, move forward? Although as outrage over the crisis in Yemen grows and there are increasingly vocal calls on all governments that supply arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE to freeze such sales, for now Riyadh and Abu Dhabi’s top weapons providers in the West have leaders who are ignoring such calls.

Regardless, Oslo’s decision to suspend arms and ammunition sales to the UAE until the Yemen crisis is resolved is indeed indicative of a growing opposition across Europe to the Saudi-led coalition’s actions in Yemen and a recognition of Europe’s role in the country’s humanitarian disaster. Norway, in emphasising the need for a more a cautious foreign policy vis-à-vis Yemen, has set forth an alternative approach that Europe could embrace toward the Arab world’s poorest country where more than seven million live on the brink of famine and over 20 million need humanitarian assistance.

Dr. Khalid Al Jaber is the Director of Gulf International Forum and Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO and founder of Gulf State Analytics.

ESTABLISHED IN 1996

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Norway, in emphas-ising the need for a more a cautious foreign policy vis-à-vis Yemen, has set forth an alternative approach that Europe could embrace toward the Arab world’s poorest country where more than seven million live on the brink of famine.

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With Latin America increasingly “at the end of the queue” for aid and investment dollars, more money for projects to boost resilience needs to come from within the region and be better coordinated to help vulnerable communities.

SOPHIE HARES REUTERS

ELECTIONS across Latin America could help clean up rampant corruption fuelling the

region’s deep social and economic divide as millions vote this year, while Venezuela’s crisis poses the biggest humanitarian threat, analysts and aid workers said.

“Corruption is the scourge of Latin America. The average person might see corruption as something elites do,” said Jason Marczak, director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

“More dramatically, it affects those who are less well off. Pilfering of state resources for corrupt reasons means less money is available for public schools or for transportation.”

A report by anti-corruption group Transparency International last October showed roughly one-in-three Latin Americans paid a bribe in the previous year to a public

employee, from police officers to teachers and hospital workers.

Despite a brightening economic picture, many countries need to do more to reduce the huge gap between rich and poor in the world’s most unequal region while ramping up spending on critical infrastructure, health and education, experts said.

With poverty levels expected to remain broadly stable, they urged governments to increase longer-term investment in skills development to make sure Latin Americans can maintain their livelihoods and improve living standards.

“There is a big challenge in terms of human capital formation in Latin America,” said Hugo Nopo, research economist at GRADE, a Lima-based development analysis organisation. “The problem now is that every single

additional reduction in poverty is going to be harder to get.”

This year’s six main polls could see more anti-establishment leaders coming to office, and socio-economic policies in countries including Mexico more targeted at those who have been “left behind”, said the Atlantic Council’s Marczak.

Leftist front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed to tackle corruption and boost social spending in Mexico if he wins the July vote to govern the country, where cartel violence has pushed murder rates to a record high.

Brazilians will cast their vote in October as unemployment starts to fall and harsh recession ends in the country shaken by the “Car Wash” bribery case that nearly toppled its president and ensnared politicians and elites across Latin America.

Colombians will vote for the first time since a 2016 peace deal with the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which is fielding a candidate for the May poll. Votes are also scheduled for Costa Rica, Paraguay and Venezuela.

“It’s kind of 50/50 at this point, some (countries)... are really moving forward - people’s lives are improving greatly - and then you have these other countries that are of real concern,” said Kate Schecter, chief executive of World Neighbors, a non-profit group working with poor communities in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Many fear the humanitarian crisis in

Venezuela could deepen even further this year as sanctions grip and its oil-based economy continues to crumble after years of painful recession.

Thousands have left the country where crippling food shortages, the world’s highest inflation rate and a near-collapse of the health system are compounded by violence, which has made Caracas the world’s most dangerous city.

“The prognosis for 2018 is further deterioration, humanitarian emergency, and an increased exodus of Venezuelans,” Robert Malley, chief executive of Internat-ional Crisis Group, said in a report.

“Sustained domestic and international pressure — as well as guarantees of future immunity — will be required to push the government toward credible presidential elections.”

In Central America, the gang violence and migrant crisis plaguing the disaster-prone region, together with the growing impacts of climate change, are making it harder to keep people safe, aid workers said.

Violence, corruption, hunger and water shortages in the “Northern Triangle” of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are expected to continue forcing people to migrate north, despite increasing deportations from the United States.

Walter Cotte, Americas director for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), warned that U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to

end temporary protected status for 200,000 Salvadorans in 2019 could create a “dangerous situation” as remittances dry up and returnees put pressure on El Salvador.

More widely, as shown by last year’s string of disasters - from earthquakes, hurricanes and fires to floods and droughts— the majority of Latin American nations still lack effective plans for disaster risk reduction and recovery, he said.

While the Caribbean has vowed to become the world’s first “climate-resilient region” in 2018 after last year’s devastating hurric-anes, only about 10 countries in the region have robust disaster prevention and management capacities, said Cotte.

Ecuador is making strides but Peru and Brazil both need more systemic approaches to managing disaster risks, he said.

Some 15 countries “are really in the nursery”, lacking the resources, systems and experience to cope with a predicted rise in disasters, he added.

“Resilience isn’t happening if you don’t have better leadership in policies,” said Cotte.

With Latin America increasingly “at the end of the queue” for aid and investm-ent dollars, more money for projects to boost resilience needs to come from within the region and be better coordinated to help vulnerable communities, he noted.

ON January 3, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn made two major announcements: His

government will release political prisoners and close down a notorious detention centre at the heart of Ethiopia’s capital,widely known as a torture chamber for dissidents and government opponents. Desalegn announced the decision as part of a wider package of reforms aimed at fostering national reconciliation and widening the democratic space.

Rights groups welcomed the announcement as “an important step toward ending long-standing political repression and human rights abuse in the country” while others saw the move as a significant concession to the

relentless protests of the last two years by the Oromos and Amharas — the two largest ethnic groups in the country.

As local and international media began to scrutinise the rationale, implications and consequences of the announcement, most of the commentary focused on Ethiopia’s perceived admission that there are political prisoners in the country. US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce even issued a statement praising Ethiopia for “finally acknowledg[ing] that it holds political prisoners.”

Shortly after the announcement, however, the government distanced itself from this interpretation by emphasising the fact that the prime minister never used the term “political prisoners” in his initial statement.

Indeed, Desalegn only referred to “political leaders and individuals whose crimes have resulted in court convictions or have resulted in their ongoing prosecution under the country’s law,” in his statement and never gave a clear indication as to which prisoners will be eligible for release.

The Ethiopian government has always denied consistent and widespread reports by human rights groups that it holds political prisoners. Like his predecessor, the late Meles Zenawi, who adamantly denied politicising the legal system to stifle dissent and opposition, Desalegn has also repeatedly dismissed the suggestion that Ethiopia is holding political prisoners.

Shortly after he took power in 2012, Al Jazeera’s Jane Dutton asked Desalegn if he intends to “confront” the legacy of political repression he inherited from Zenawi and take steps to release the “thousands of [political opposition] languishing in jail”. Desalegn said, “There are no political opposition that are languishing in prison.”

In May 2015, shortly before the country’s national election in which the ruling party won 100 percent of seats both at the national and regional levels, Al Jazeera’s Martine Dennisasked Desalegn about the imprisonment of “record number of journalists” to which he replied “these are not journalists …The moment you join a terrorist group, you become a blogger”.

No sitting government would publicly admit to holding political prisoners, and even after last week’s announcement — Ethiopian government still appears to be refusing to do so. But evidence suggests that very few governments in the world today hold more political prisoners than Ethiopia.

Since assuming power, the government frequently used the legal system to lock up members and leaders of the opposition. Indeed, the courts served as potent instruments of repression and power consolidation second only to the military-security apparatus.

Since the early days of the regime and particularly following the adoption of the country’s notorious anti-terrorism law in 2009, there has been a frightening politicisation of the legal system and the administration of justice. With or without disguise, Ethiopia used its courts and other institutions of justice to harass, intimidate, and eliminate political opposition from the political space.

In the early days of the regime, several members of opposition parties have been held in detention centres throughout the country without charges, particularly in the Oromia regional state. Actual or suspected members of the

Oromo Liberation Front have been arrested in mass and detained without charges. More than two decades later, the whereabouts of several individuals including prominent Oromo politicians such as Nadhi Gamada and Bekele Dawano are still unknown.

Following the contested election in 2005, the government rounded up leaders of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) who made significant electoral gains that denied the incumbent its majority. Since the government adopted its notorious anti-terror legislation, more than 1,000 people including opposition political leaders, journalists, bloggers, activists, scholars, and religious figures, have been charged with terror-related crimes. It is estimated that tens of thousands of individuals are currently in jail because of the government’s intolerance to dissenting views.

What makes these individuals political prisoners is not their innocence or guilt but the fact that their arrest, prosecution, and conviction were purely motivated by political ambitions as opposed to normative concerns with the rule of law and justice.

In other words, the legal process is set in motion not for the determination of guilt and innocence but for political expedience, to pursue the dual goal of delegitimising political foes and physically eliminating them from the political space.

While the Ethiopian government still appears to be refusing the mere existence of thousands of political prisoners in the country, last week’s announcement, however incomplete, is a step in the right direction.

The closure of the infamous torture chamber commonly known as Maikalawi is another welcome development that signals a departure from the repressive practices of the past. But it needs to be noted that the prime minister did not admit that his government used the prison as a torture centre. He instead noted that the prison will be closed and turned in to a museum as result of its role in past atrocities.

Yet there are many credible reports showing that opposition politicians, protest organisers, journalists, suspected dissenters and other voices critical of the government are taken to Maikalawi and subjected to torture or other forms of inhuman and degrading treatment under the rule of the current regime.

Ballot box key to bridging Latin America’s stark social divide

Ethiopia’s decision on ‘political prisoners’ in context

AWOL K ALLO AL JAZEERA

09MONDAY 15 JANUARY 2018 OPINION

There can be no justification to hold some political prisoners or journalists, bloggers and scholars while releasing high-profile leaders of political parties.



12 MONDAY 15 JANUARY 2018MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Tunisia goes for social reforms after unrestAFP

TUNIS: Tunisia’s government announced an increase in aid to the needy and improved health care as part of social reforms following a week of unrest trig-gered by austerity measures.

Social Affairs Minister Mohamed Trabelsi told reporters that monthly aid to needy fami-lies would rise from 150 dinars (€50) to between 180 and 210 dinars. He said reforms which have been in the pipeline for sev-eral months would guarantee medical care for all Tunisians, without elaborating, and also pro-vide housing to disadvantaged families.

The announcement came after President Beji Caid Essebsi con-sulted with political parties, unions and employers.

The North African country has been shaken by a wave of protests over poverty and unemployment during which hundreds of people were arrested before the unrest tapered off.

“It’s a very advanced legal project, which was submitted to parliament and will be discussed

over the next week,” said a gov-ernment source who requested anonymity.

At the opening of his consul-tations, Essebsi accused the for-eign press of “amplifying” the social unrest and damaging the country’s image in its coverage of protests. The president said he would visit a disadvantaged neigh-bourhood of Tunis that had been the scene of street protests. Tunisia, whose economy has been hit by a collapse in tourism reve-nues following a wave of attacks in 2015, has secured a $2.9bn IMF loan in return for a reduction in its budget deficit and financial reforms.

The two-hour crisis talks at the presidential palace brought together Essebsi, representatives of political parties, the powerful UGTT trade union and the UTICA employers’ federation. “We dis-cussed the general situation in the country and the reforms, espe-cially socio-economic, that must be adopted to overcome the cur-rent problems,” UTICA head Wided Bouchamaoui told reporters.

Proposals were raised “to pull out of this tension” without scrap-ping a contested 2018 budget, said Rached Ghannouchi, head of the Islamist movement Ennahda in Tunisia’s ruling coalition, without elaborating.

UTICA and UGTT shared the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for their work during Tunisia’s transition towards democracy after the rev-olution. The demonstrations broke out ahead of yesterday’s seventh anniversary of the toppling of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in a revolt that sparked uprisings across the Arab region.

The trigger for the protests on January 7 was the budget imposing tax hikes after a year of rising

prices. A man in his 40s died in unrest on Monday night in the northern town of Tebourba, though police have insisted they did not kill him.

Interior ministry spokesman Khlifa Chibani said a total of 803 people suspected of taking part in acts of violence, theft and looting were arrested this week.

Some 97 security forces and members of civil protection units

were also injured, he said. There was no immediate toll for the number of protesters injured in the unrest. Calm returned to the country on Thursday night and there was “no attack against public or private property” in the night of Friday to Saturday, Chibani said. “These demonstrations reveal the anger felt by the same people who mobilised in 2011 and got nothing in terms of social and economic

rights,” said political analyst Olfa Lamloum.

Protests are common in Tunisia in January when people mark the anniversary of the rev-olution that ousted Ben Ali.

This year, the country has seen rising anger after the government adopted the 2018 budget which includes hikes in value-added tax, on mobile phones and real estate as well as in social contributions.

President of Tunisia, Beji Caid Essebsi, delivers a speech during the opening ceremony of a youth centre within the celebrations to mark the seventh anniversary of the revolution, at the Hay et-Tadamun neighbourhood in Tunis, yesterday.

Liberia ruling party expels PresidentREUTERS

MONROVIA: Liberia’s ruling Unity Party has expelled the country’s outgoing President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, whom they accuse of meddling in last year’s presidential elec-tions in which its candidate suffered a bruising defeat.

Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been in power for 12 years, denies the party’s allegations that she held inappropriate private meetings with elec-tion magistrates before October 10. Four other party officials were also expelled, the party said in a statement distributed yesterday.

“The behaviour of the expelled persons ... constitutes sabotage and undermined the existence of the party,” said the statement announcing the decision, which was taken by the party’s executive committee.

Hamas official hurt in Lebanon blastAFP

SIDON: An official of the Pales-tinian movement Hamas was wounded yesterday in a car bomb blast in Lebanon’s southern port city of Sidon.

Hamas’s Lebanon branch named the wounded man as its “staff member” Mohammed Hamdan.

“The blast wounded his leg, destroyed his car and damaged the building. Preliminary evi-dence points to Zionist (involve-ment) behind this crime,” it said in a statement.

A military source said that a

BMW “detonated, wounding Hamas official Mohammed Hamdan”, and Lebanon’s army said a “500-gramme bomb” had been placed in his vehicle.

Firefighters arrived to put out the flames and Lebanese security forces quickly cordoned off the area. The Red Cross confirmed there was only one person wounded in the blast and said he had been transported to hospital in a civilian vehicle. Hamdan did not appear to have a public or political role in Hamas, but a Pal-estinian security source said that he was a member of the organi-sation’s security apparatus.

Members of the Syrian government forces stand on a tank in Jabal Al Hass in the southern part of Aleppo province as they advance towards the Abu Duhur military airport in the ongoing offensive against opposition fighters, yesterday.

Iraq PM to head new coalition in May voteAFP

BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi (pictured) announced plans to run for re-election in May at the head of a new coalition separate from key rival and Dawa party co-member Nuri Al Maliki.

Abadi said in a statement he set up the “Victory Alliance” coalition as a “cross-sectarian” list aimed at overcoming divi-sions and battling inequalities in the country.

The coalition, the 65-year-old pre-mier said, would strive to “protect the

victory and the sacrifices” of the Iraqi people and to “fight against corruption... (and for) the unity of Iraq”.

Abadi declared victory in December

in the three-year war by Iraqi forces to expel the Islamic State group from the vast areas north and west of Baghdad it had seized in 2014.

Abadi had announced the previous month that Iraq’s next parliamentary elec-tion would be held on May 15, but the date was later changed to May 12. The capture by IS of nearly one third of Iraq came under the rule of Maliki, the current Vice-President and former prime minister who ceded power to Abadi in August that year.

Abadi and Maliki are both members of the Dawa party which has held the Iraqi premiership since 2006, three years after

Saddam Hussein was ousted in a US-led invasion. Maliki is running in the parlia-mentary election at the head of his “State of Law” alliance, which won most of the votes in the previous polls of 2014.

The creation of separate lists seems to indicate deep personal divisions within the Dawa party.

But Maliki’s spokesman, Abbas Al Mussawi, said the party backs both lists.

“The fact that two list are being put forth does not mean a clash between two people, but a confrontation between visions, programmes and different alli-ances,” Mussawi said.

Guinea-Bissau PM resigns in bid to end crisis

AFP

BISSAU: Guinea-Bissau’s Prime Minister Umaro Sissoco Embalo has submitted his resignation to the president, in a bid to end a two-year political crisis in the poor west African nation.

Guinea-Bissau has been in the throes of a power struggle since August 2015, when President Jose Mario Vaz sacked former prime minister Domingos Simoes Pereira.

Embalo, who became prime minister in December 2016, tendered his resigna-tion to Vaz last week. “I am not someone who clings to power. If the president does not trust me, I won’t wait to be fired, I will leave,” he said.

A source at the presidency confirmed the resignation had been submitted.

At its latest summit on December 16, the ECOWAS west African bloc urged Guinea-Bissau’s leaders to resolve the crisis marring their tiny nation within two months, or else face sanctions.

US coalition to build huge border force in SyriaAFP

BEIRUT: The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group said it was working to create a 30,000-strong border security force in northern Syria, drawing sharp condemnation from Turkey.

With the offensive against IS winding down, the coalition and its allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance were beginning to shift their focus to border secu-rity, coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon said.

“There is a goal of a final force of approximately 30,000,” about half of whom would be retrained SDF fighters, he said.

“There are approximately 230 individuals that are training right now in the border security force.

That’s an inaugural class,” Dillon said.

Backed by the US-led coali-tion’s air strikes, special forces advisers, and weapons, the SDF has ousted IS from swathes of northeastern Syria.

Its Kurdish and Arab members now control territory bordering Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east and Syrian government forces to the west.

Turkey reacted sharply to news of the border force on Sunday, saying it would “legiti-mise a terror organisation”.

Ankara is fiercely opposed to the SDF, which is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — considered by the Turkish government to be a “ter-rorist” group.

Lebanese security forces secure the area following a car bomb blast in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon, yesterday.

The North African country has been shaken by a wave of protests over poverty and unemployment during which hundreds of people were arrested before the unrest tapered off.

13MONDAY 15 JANUARY 2018 ASIA

Star power Indian Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan (centre) and personnel from the Mumbai police take part in the’Umang Mumbai Police Show 2018’ in Mumbai, yesterday.

AFP

NEW DELHI: Benjamin Netan-yahu arrived in New Delhi yesterday for the first visit by an Israeli leader to India in 15 years, promising closer ties with the regional power.

Netanyahu and his wife Sara were welcomed at the interna-tional airport in New Delhi by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who made history in July when he became the first Indian leader to visit Israel.

Indian Prime Minister broke protocol to personally receive his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu with a hug as he arrived here to begin a six-day visit that will also take him to Mumbai and Gujarat.

“This visit is an opportunity to enhance cooperation with a global economic, security, tech-nology and tourism power,” Netanyahu said in a statement ahead of his visit.

“Indian Prime Minister Modi is a close friend of Israel and of mine.”

Modi — who will accompany Netanyahu for large parts of his five-day tour — embraced the Israeli prime minister on the tarmac before the pair set off to pay homage at a war memorial in the Indian capital.

“Your visit to India is historic and special. It will further cement the close friendship between our nations,” Modi said on Twitter.

Netanyahu will be only the

second Israeli PM to visit India and the first since Ariel Sharon in 2003. He is accompanied by the largest-ever business dele-gation to travel with an Israeli leader. Executives in technology, agriculture and defence are among those making the journey as Tel Aviv pursues deals with Asia’s third-largest economy.

The build up to Netanyahu’s visit was soured this month when India called off a deal to buy 8,000 anti-tank guided missiles from Israel’s state-owned defence contractor Rafael.

The Indian army and the government are discussing ways to revive the $500 million order, which was scrapped when the country’s own state-run defence contractor offered to build sim-ilar missiles locally.

Israel is a major weapons

supplier to India, exporting an average of $1bn of military equipment each year, but Modi wants to end India’s status as the world’s top defence importer.

Netanyahu and Modi kicked off the visit with a stop at a memorial to Indian soldiers who fought in World War I to help lib-erate the Israeli city of Haifa.

The Israeli leader will later meet with Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj before a private dinner with Modi.

Netanyahu expects to sign new agreements in fields of energy, aviation and cinema pro-duction, with stops at the Taj Mahal, a visit to Modi’s home state of Gujarat and meetings with Bollywood luminaries in Mumbai. But he will also make an emotional visit to a Jewish centre targeted in the 2008 Mumbai attacks during his tour, a symbolic gesture to India’s tiny and shrinking Jewish community.

Modi receives Netanyahu at airport

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi raise their arms upon Netanyahu’s arrival at Air Force Station Palam in New Delhi, yesterday.

Netanyahu is accompanied by the largest-ever business delegation to travel with an Israeli leader. Executives in technology, agriculture and defence are among those making the journey as Tel Aviv pursues deals with Asia’s third-largest economy.

IANS

NEW DELHI: A seven-member delegation of the Bar Council Of India (BCI) yesterday met Justice J Chelameswar, one of the four senior judges of the Supreme Court who went public with their differences with Chief Justice Dipak Misra, and two other justices.

The delegation met Justice Chelameswar at his residence and discussed the issue for

around 45 minutes. Early in the morning, the delegation met Jus-tice R.K. Agrawal and thereafter Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, two days after the four judges went public with their differences with the Chief Justice.

Later, the delegation met Justice Arun Mishra.

The BCI had on Saturday decided to send a delegation to meet a majority of the Supreme Court Judges on Sunday so that the crisis can be resolved at the

earliest. “The council is of the unanimous view that it is an internal matter of the Supreme Court. The council has hope and trust that the judges of the Supreme Court will realise the seriousness of the issue and in future may avoid any such situ-ation that politicians or political parties could take undue advan-tage of and or which could cause harm to our judiciary,” the BCI said in a statement on Saturday.

The council has requested political parties and politicians not to criticise the judiciary or make it an issue as it would weaken the independence of judiciary, which is the protector of democracy.

BCI President Manan Mishra has said it was “most unfortu-nate” that the four judges held a press conference, sending out a message that all was not well with the Supreme Court and that the issue should have been

“sorted out internally”. Manan Mishra has also dubbed it a “family dispute” that should be resolved within the judiciary. But he felt the judges should not have gone to the media with their complaints.

The four judges -- Chela-meswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B. Lokur and Kurian Joseph -- on Friday took on the Chief Jus-tice over allocation of cases, saying the administration of the top court was “not in order”

BCI team meets Chelameswar, two other judges

IANS

NEW DELHI: The iconic war memorial at a roundabout near Teen Murti Bhavan in Delhi was yesterday renamed Teen Murti-Haifa Chowk to pay homage to the Indian soldiers who fell in the battle of Haifa — now in Israel — during World War I.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu and wife Sara attended a solemn cere-mony at the Teen Murti Memo-rial to mark the formal renaming of the roundabout near the Teen Murti Bhavan, which was the official residence of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

Modi tweeted that he and Netanyahu “paid tributes to the brave Indian soldiers who fought at Haifa” and “laid down their lives during the liberation of the city”, the third largest in Israel.

“The spot where we com-memorate their sacrifice will now be called Teen Murti-Haifa Chowk,” he wrote. “This year we

mark 100 years of the end of the First World War. We remember with pride, the Indian soldiers who fought valiantly in the war.”

The two leaders laid a wreath and signed the visitor’s book at the memorial.

“One of these pages was written 100 years ago, in the sac-rifice of Indian soldiers at Haifa.

Teen Murti Marg renamed after Israeli city

IANS

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) legislator KK Ramachandran Nair from Chengannur in Kerala’s Alap-puzha district died at a hospital in Chennai in the early hours yesterday, party sources said.

The 65-year-old first-time legislator was ailing for a while and was undergoing treatment .

His body will be brought here later yesterday, and will be taken to his home town in Chengannur.

The soft-spoken Nair entered politics when he was a school student and was very active in his district. During the Emergency period, he was jailed. The last rites were held yesterday evening.

Kerala CPI-M legislator dies

IANS

SRINAGAR: Biting winter cold continued its sway on the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir yesterday with the weather office giving no indication of any immediate relief.

Minimum temperatures remained several degrees below the freezing point in Kashmir Valley and Ladakh region. At minus 15.2 degree Celsius, Leh town was the coldest in Jammu and Kashmir yesterday.

“Cold wave is likely to continue in Kashmir Valley and Ladakh region for at least another seven days,” an offi-cial of the Met department said.

Kashmir Valley is passing through the 40-day long period of harsh winter cold called ‘Chillai Kalan’ which will end on January 30.

The minimum tempera-ture was minus 4.3 degree Celsius in Srinagar, minus 4.8 degree Celsius in Pahalgam and minus 5 degree Celsius in Gulmarg yesterday.

IANS

MUMBAI: After months of facing resistance, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s “Padmaavat” — earlier titled “Padmavati” -- will hit the screens worldwide on January 25, the makers formally announced yesterday.

The filmmaker hopes the audience likes the movie, which he says is his homage to the valour of the Rajputs.

The period drama, which will release in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, will release with a U/A certificate after incorporating five modifications — including title change — suggested by the censor board.

Bhansali said: “’Padmaavat’ is a dream come true for me. I have always been fascinated by the stories of honour, valour and vigour of our great Rajput warriors that have been cap-tured so beautifully in our lit-erature and this movie is my homage to those glorious stories.

“I would also like to thank the entire film fraternity for supporting Viacom18 and Bhansali Productions through the entire production and pre-release phase and hope they like the film they so supported.”

The makers, Bhansali Pro-ductions and Viacom18 Motion Pictures, have said the film is based on 16th century Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s epic poem “Padmavat”. It stars

Deepika Padukone as Rani Pad-mavati, Shahid Kapoor as Maharawal Ratan Singh and Ranveer Singh as Alauddin Khilji.

“Padmaavat” was caught in a row over claims by Rajput groups backed by a section of the BJP that it distorts history. Shree Rajput Karni Sena, at the forefront of the protests, demanded a ban. Some states, including Rajasthan and Gujarat, have banned the movie.

However, the makers are overwhelmed by the support they have received.

“’Padmaavat’ is a cinematic masterpiece in every sense of the word. We hope we will sur-pass the expectations of our fans from across the world. We are humbled with the immense support we have received from the government authorities, the Central Board of Film Certifi-cation and the entire film fra-ternity,” said Sudhanshu Vats, Group CEO, Viacom18.

“It’s a story that is inher-ently Indian in its context, ethos and values.”

Ajit Andhare, Chief Oper-ating Officer, Viacom18 Motion Pictures, said the movie will witness a “mega-scale release across maximum screens, lan-guages and formats covering 2D, 3D and Imax 3D in India and the world”.

It will be the first Indian film to have an IMAX 3D release, the makers said.

‘Padmaavat’ to hit screens on January 25

IANS

GENEVA: The World Economic Forum (WEF) yesterday ranked India at the 30th position on a global manufacturing index, five places below China, but higher than the other BRICS members Brazil, Russia and South Africa.

Releasing its Global Manu-facturing Index here yesterday, WEF said Japan topped the rankings in its “Readiness for the future of production report” on the basis of developing the best structure of production.

Japan is followed by South Korea, Germany, Switzerland, China, Czech Republic, the US,

Sweden, Austria and Ireland in the top 10. While China figures among the WEF’s “leading coun-tries”, India has been placed in the “Legacy” group along with Hungary, Mexico, Philippines, Russia, Thailand and Turkey, among others, and Brazil as well as South Africa are among the “nascent” ones.

The report notes that the 25 countries placed in the “leading” category were in the best posi-tion to gain as production sys-tems stand on the brink of expo-nential change.

Regarding India, which had a total manufacturing value of over $420bn in 2016, the report

said that its manufacturing sector has grown by over 7% per annum on average in the past three decades and accounts for 16-20% of GDP. “Home to the second-largest population in the world and one of the fastest growing economies, the demand for Indian manufactured prod-ucts is rising. India has room for improvement across the drivers of production, except for demand environment where it ranks in the top 5,” the WEF said.

The report referred to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government’s Make in India programme to turn the country into a manufacturing hub.

India 30th on WEF manufacturing index

J&K shivers in cold wave

14 MONDAY 15 JANUARY 2018ASIA

Standing for justice A girl holds a sign as she chants slogans with others to condemn the abuse and killing of 7-year-old girl Zainab Ansari in Kasur, during a protest in Lahore, yesterday.

REUTERS

PHNOM PENH: Foreign-based members of Cambodia’s dissolved opposition party have launched a movement to demand the release of its detained leader and to call for free and fair elections and possibly protests.

The Supreme Court dis-solved the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) in November at the request of the government of long serving Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Party leader Kem Sokha was arrested in September and is accused of trying to over-throw the government with American help and of espionage — charges he denies and says are politically motivated ahead of a general election in July.

Former CNRP leader Sam Rainsy said in a tweet on Sunday that the Cambodia National Rescue Movement (CNRM), launched on Saturday, would provide a new structure that nobody can harm or dissolve.

“The CNRM can launch appeals to the people to organize peaceful protests, to workers to go on strike and to the armed forces to side with the people,” Sam Rainsy tweeted, along with a statement.

Sam Rainsy, a former CNRP leader who lives in exile in France, did not say it was calling for any protests at this point. It was not immediately clear how widespread the backing for the new movement was among CNRP members.

According to the statement, the CNRM’s members include Sam Rainsy, his wife Saumura Tioulong and deputy presidents of the now dissolved CNRP, Eng Chhai Eang and Mu Sochua.

“We invite our compatriots from all walks of life, regard-less of their political affiliation, to join the CNRM in order to protect the will of the Cambo-dian people through free, fair and inclusive elections,” the statement said.

They said in the statement that they also demand the release of Kem Sokha and other politician prisoners of con-science. Huy Vannak, under-secretary of state at the Interior Ministry, called the movement “desperate” and that Sam Rainsy is “a serial loser.”

“I advise the people on this list about the spirit of the Cam-bodian Supreme Court’s deci-sion on the prohibition of polit-ical rights and to avoid taking illegal or guerrilla acts leading to the harm of innocents and the destruction of Cambodians,” he said.

INTERNEWS

I S L A M A B A D : Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan has approached the Supreme Court with a request to become party to a pending case seeking directions for making swift arrangements to grant overseas Pakistanis the right to vote before the upcoming general elections.

The Supreme Court is already seized with petitions moved by a group of citizens - on behalf of Solicitor Mohammad Dawood Ghazanvi, Farhat Javed and others - stating that denying overseas Pakistanis the right to participate in the democratic process would con-stitute a refusal by the govern-ment to carry out its constitu-tional obligations.

The petition highlighted that Pakistani expatriates consider the country their homeland and contribute nearly $18bn in remittances to the national economy every year.

The case came up for hearing last week before a three-judge Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, but the court decided to take up the matter again after stakeholders,

including the Election Commis-sion of Pakistan (ECP), came up with concrete proposals in this regard.

Imran Khan, Dr Arif Alvi, Sardar Azhar Tariq and others have now moved a fresh appli-cation before the Supreme Court, asking for the implemen-tation of its own 2014 judgement in the Chaudhry Nasir Iqbal case, where the ECP was directed to make all possible efforts to ensure that expatri-ates could participate in the gen-eral elections and exercise the fundamental rights conferred by Article 17(2) of the Constitution.

Moved jointly by senior counsel Anwar Mansoor Khan and Chaudhry Faisal Hussain, the application asks the apex court to declare that overseas

Pakistanis are also citizens of Pakistan and, as such, could exercise their right of franchise no matter where they live.

The application highlighted that the judgement in the Chaudhry Nasir Iqbal case was in line with Khan’s earlier con-tentions, who had pointed out that under Article 189 of the Constitution any directions passed by the apex court was binding on all courts of Pakistan, as well as executive and judicial authorities, including the ECP.

The petition argued that the ECP could also exercise its powers “in anticipation of an ill that might have the effect of rendering the election unfair”, adding that it was legally empowered under Article 218(3) to exercise its powers pre-emp-tively to avoid a violation of these standards.

They contended that there was no legal bar keeping the commission from implementing the earlier judgement of the apex court, but regretted that the ECP failed to comply with the apex court’s judgement.

Khan’s party enjoys a great deal of support among expa-triate Pakistanis and has a strong support base in countries such as the UK and US.

Grant voting rights to citizens abroad: PTI

The petition highlighted that Pakistani expatriates consider the country their homeland and contribute nearly $18bn in remittances to the national economy every year.

INTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: The government of Pakistan has added around 10,000 megawatt electricity to the national grid and it is striving to produce electricity to meet country’s needs for next 15 years.

Currently the country has surplus production of gas and all of the consumers are getting

uninterrupted supply. This has been stated by Prime Minister ShahidKhaqan Abbasi yes-terday while addressing the annual function of Mari Petro-leum Company here.

He emphasised the need to enhance the volume of indige-nous energy resources to cope with country’s needs and reduce the burden of import bill on the national economy.

The premier spoke high of the company’s valuable contri-bution to mitigate the energy crisis in the country besides playing its role to ensure food security.

The annual event was attended by a huge number of company’s staffers and their families as the event also coin-cided with the golden jubilee celebrations of the company.

10,000MW added to national grid

INTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan’s drive in 79 selected districts for regis-tration of female voters to bridge the gender gap will enter a new phase from today, as the male-female voter ratio is to remain 56-44 per cent even in 7.3m new voters to be added to the elec-toral rolls from January 15.

Of new 73,60,279 persons, 40,72,433 are males and 32,87,846 females: hence the dis-parity is quite obvious.

P r e v i o u s l y , a m o n g

9,70,22,591 registered voters database, the male-female dis-parity stood at 56-44 per cent with 54598173 males and 42,42,4,418 females and need-less to say the new entries (73,60,279) will also reflect the same ratio during revision of electoral rolls.

The question being asked in the Election Commission of Paki-stan and elsewhere is whether the voters will go to polls late this year with the same disparity or desired results of reducing it at least by half will be achieved.

A few months back,

the Election Commission, duly supported by civil society and some NGOs, had launched a drive in 79 districts, identified, where there was more male-female gender gap than the other districts.

Under this drive, there will be door-to-door mobilisation from Monday, involving mobile registration vans. And this will continue till April 30.

“We intend to bring down this difference or disparity between male and female voters to 6 million before the next gen-eral election sometime this year,”

said Additional Director General Gender Affairs at the Election Commission Nighat Siddique.

She conceded that indeed it was difficult to bridge this gap to a level, but she insisted that they were quite hopeful of slashing this gap to 6 million, which pres-ently stood at around 12.7m.

She pointed out that during the ongoing drive, males were noticed to be more forthcoming in getting registered for obtaining the CNICs than the females and they obviously could not be refused, but the mobile teams would make sure to reach out to

females. Electoral experts say that any drive to get registered maximum number of females to obtain the CNICs and then get registered as voters is difficult, unless the political parties and their activists at grass root level get involved in it. It is pertinent that there are apprehensions that the concerns of men that the images of females on the elec-toral rolls, might be misused, could lead to deletion of signifi-cant number of females from these rolls.

Already, KP and Balochistan Election Commissions have been

approached by worried males, who sought help in getting names of their women with-drawn as registered voters. “You can’t compel anyone not to seek withdrawal of the names of their females. It is purely optional.

We had requested the gov-ernment to consider not pro-viding electoral rolls with images of female voters to political par-ties or candidates, “said a senior ECP official, who did not wish to be identified. He noted that they could expect requests for dele-tions of female voters during revision of electoral rolls.

Pakistan’s drive to bridge gender gap enters a new phase

Exiled Cambodian oppn members set up new movement INTERNEWS

ISLAMABAD: In what comes as mega blow to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the ruling camp has failed to finalise its candidate to contest for the slot of Chief Minister in Balochistan Assembly against the joint opposition’s candidate Abdul QuddusBazinjo.

The development would have serious political reper-cussions for the ruling party in case Bazinjo, who belongs to Pakistan Muslim League Quaid (PML-Q), manages to get elected as Leader of the House.

The PML-Q has only five seats in 65-member Balo-chistan Assembly, compared to 21 seats of PML-N. Political sources privy to the develop-ments in Balochistan said PML-N leadership held mar-athon consultative sessions in Lahore and Islamabad to finalise a candidate but failed.

They blamed the number of dissident PML-N leaders in the Balochistan Assembly was the reason for the failure. During deliberations between former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister Sha-hidKhaqan Abbasi, Chief Min-ister Punjab Shehbaz Sharif, PML-N Chairman Raja ZafarulHaq and other senior party stalwarts, the top lead-ership considered a number of names for the coveted slot.

REUTERS

MANILA: The Philippines raised the alert at its restive Mayon volcano by one notch early yesterday, citing signs of rising magma that could lead to hazardous eruptions.

Residents were evacuated from two villages near the vol-cano, a tourist attraction in Albay province because of its near-perfect cone shape, fol-lowing a “phreatic or steam-driven eruption” on Saturday, and there was a further erup-tion yesterday.

Saturday’s eruption unleashed ash, rocks and sul-furic odor, and was followed by rumbling sounds and a faint glow in the crater, the Philippine

Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said.

Phivolcs raised the alert to level 2, which means that the current activity is “probably of magmatic origin, which could lead to more phreatic eruptions or eventually to hazardous mag-matic eruptions.”

A second ash eruption was recorded before noon yesterday, but Phivolcs said it was main-taining alert level 2.

Mayon’s most destructive eruption was in February 1841, when lava flows buried a town and killed 1,200 people. It last erupted in 2014, spewing lava and forcing thousands of people to evacuate. “The public is strongly advised to be vigilant and desist from entering the six

kilometre (3.7 mile) radius Per-manent Danger Zone to mini-mize risks from sudden explo-sions, rockfall and landslides,” Phivolcs said.

It advised people experi-encing ashfall to cover their noses and mouths with a damp, clean cloth or dust mask. It also said aircraft must avoid flying close to the volcano’s summit.

Those within the slope of the volcano, but outside the 6-km danger zone, were told to take precautionary measures against possible roof collapses due to accumulated ash and rainwater. Phivolcs chief Renato Solidum said the volcano appeared due for another eruption as it has been displaying abnormal behaviour since late last year.

Philippines raises volcano alert level

Mount Mayon erupts in Legazpi City, Philippines, yesterday.

PML-N fails to find a candidate in Balochistan

15MONDAY 15 JANUARY 2018 ASIA

AFP

HONG KONG: A South Korean has been arrested for the suspected murder of his wife and young son at the luxury Ritz-Carlton hotel on Hong Kong’s harbourfront yesterday, officials said.

Police rushed to the hotel after receiving a report yes-terday morning that a man and a woman, both aged 42, were fighting.

The woman and a boy aged six were found dead at the scene while the man was arrested on suspicion of murder and taken to hospital, police said.

The suspect was believed to have consumed alcohol and appeared unconscious in the hotel suite with minor wounds to his hand and face, police assistant district com-mander Chan Tsz-Leung told a press conference.

The woman suffered mul-tiple cuts and wounds to her neck and wounds were also found on the throat of the boy. Police retrieved a five-inch-long knife at the scene, Chan said. The motive for the killings remained unclear, with the suspect still in hos-pital and unfit to talk to police.

A source with knowledge of the investigation told AFP that a friend of the suspect had warned authorities in South Korea he was poten-tially suicidal shortly before the incident. The Ritz-Carlton is located on the top floors of Hong Kong’s tallest sky-scraper -- the International Commerce Centre -- and is famous for panoramic views of the city and its Victoria Harbour.

“Our thoughts are with the family of the guests involved at this very difficult time,” a hotel spokesperson in Hong Kong told AFP, declining to comment further as an investigation was ongoing.

S Korean held over murder at HK hotelREUTERS

BEIJING: An Iranian oil tanker has sunk after burning for more than a week following a collision on January 6 in the East China Sea, Chinese state media said yesterday, adding that large amounts of oil are burning in the surrounding waters.

The stricken tanker, called the Sanchi (IMO:9356608), which had been adrift and on fire following the accident with the freighter CF Crystal, had “sud-denly ignited” around noon (0400 GMT), China Central Tel-evision (CCTV) said.

“Currently it has already sunk,” CCTV said, citing the Shanghai maritime search and rescue centre. It showed video

of a tower of billowing black smoke that it said reached as high as 1,000 metres, and flames

on the surface of the water. The ship sank before 5 p.m. (0900 GMT), the broadcaster said.

China’s State Oceanic Administration said that because the hull of the ship had deto-nated, a large amount of oil in surrounding waters was on fire, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The Administration said it would expand the scope of its monitoring and “quickly ascer-tain the spread and drift of over-flowing oil” from the wrecked ship. A Chinese salvage team on Saturday recovered two bodies from the tanker. Another body, presumed to be one of the Sanchi’s sailors, was found on Monday and brought to Shanghai for identification.

The Sanchi’s crew consisted of 30 Iranians and two Bangla-deshis. Iranian officials said the

remaining 29 crew members and passengers of the tanker were presumed dead. Iranian Presi-dent Hassan Rouhani sent mes-sages of condolence to the fam-ilies of the crew and called for an investigation into the acci-dent, Iranian state media reported.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi earlier told his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif by telephone that “as long as there is 1 percent of hope, China will continue to make 100 percent effort” to rescue and recover the crew.

The tanker, owned by National Iranian Tanker Co, was carrying almost 1 million barrels of condensate, an ultra-light crude oil, to South Korea.

Burning Iranian oil tanker sinks after Jan 6 accident

AFP

SYDNEY: Thousands of resi-dents of an island near a Papua New Guinea volcano have been evacuated after escalating eruptions sparked fears of a possible landslide and tsunami, authorities and reports said yesterday.

The previously dormant volcano, more than 500 metres high, on the northern island of Kadovar off PNG erupted on January 5 with all 600 residents evacuated.

But volcanic activity signif-icantly escalated in recent days, culminating in a big blast on Friday, the Rabaul Volcanolog-ical Observatory (RVO) said.

“Big rocks were blasted out and there was a significant amount of material involved,” the RVO told local news web-site Loop PNG. “The rocks were glowing red... previous to this blast, it was observed that the fracture, which was apparent in the initial aerial photos, run-ning from the summit dome down to the coast, had appar-ently widened.” More than 3,000 residents on surrounding

islands Biem and Ruprup were also evacuated, local reports said, after fears a second vol-cano on Biem had also erupted.

Local volcanologists have yet to confirm the second erup-tion, with the RVO saying the tremors could be from the ongoing activity on Kadovar.

PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said his government was supporting the evacuations as he warned of a possible tsu-nami. “The terrain around the (Kadovar) volcano is very steep, so this increases the risk of a large landslide that could trigger a tsunami,” O’Neill said in a statement Sunday.

“Tsunamis can travel hun-dreds and thousands of kilome-tres across open water, so com-munities must be ready if there is a landslide.” He added that flights had been cancelled and all ships and boats not involved with the evacuation effort were to keep clear of the area. Tsu-namis can be triggered by undersea earthquakes or due to the eruption or collapse of volcanoes located on coastlines, according to the United States Geological Survey.

REUTERS

BANGKOK: A tourist speedboat carrying 31 passengers exploded in front of Phi Phi Le island in the southern Thailand province of Krabi yesterday, injuring 16, mostly tourists from China, the Phi Phi police said.

The speedboat, named “King Poseidon”, was ferrying 27 Chi-nese tourists from the nearby resort island of Phuket to Phi Phi

before its engine caught fire and exploded injuring 14 tourists and two crew members, the police said, adding that the authority is still investigating the cause of the explosion.

Out of the 16 injured, six are in a severe condition, Phi Phi hospital staff told Reuters, adding that seven people have been sent to hospitals in Phuket for further treatment and nine have been discharged.

Beach resorts and islands in southern Thailand are major tourist attractions. Tourism accounts for around 12 percent of Southeast Asia’s second-big-gest economy and is one of its fastest growing sectors. The Thai Ministy of Tourism and Sports expects the country to welcome 37 to 38 million tourists in 2018, up from around 35 million vis-itors last year, 10 million of which were tourists from China.

AFP

KAUNAS, LITHUANIA: Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday visited a memorial to a Japanese diplomat who saved 6,000 European Jews from the Holocaust by issuing visas from war-torn Lithuania, in defiance of Tokyo.

Abe visited the two-storey building, now a museum, that housed the consulate where Chiune Sugihara worked in the Baltic state’s second city Kaunas.

“The courageous humani-tarian act of Mr Sugihara is highly appreciated by the whole world,” Abe said, adding that the dip-lomat worked with “conviction and passion”.

“I am really very proud of him as a Japanese.”

Ahead of the visit on Sat-urday, he told reporters Sugi-hara’s memory still provides guidance in a world “where rule of law and international order are being challenged in various forms”. The diplomat, who died in 1986 aged 86, is thought to

have been among around 15 who issued visas for European Jews during World War II.

He is often called “Japan’s Schindler” -- a reference to German industrialist Oskar Schindler who is credited with saving 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust.

“Sugihara needed a lot of courage to do what he has done, especially when we know that it was dangerous for him to defy the government’s orders,” the head of Lithuania’s Jewish com-munity, Faina Kukliansky, said.

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius described the visit as “emotional”. Sugihara

was appointed vice-consul in October 1939, one month after German and allied Soviet forces attacked and carved up neigh-bouring Poland.

Japan saw still-independent and neutral Lithuania, which harboured thousands of Polish refugees, as a perfect location for the polyglot Sugihara to collect intelligence about military devel-opments in the region.

But when Moscow invaded the country crowds of Jewish ref-ugees, mostly from occupied Poland, started lining up at the Japanese consulate seeking visas to flee.

Sugihara wasted no time in issuing visas, sometimes working 18 hours a day and evading strict instructions issued by Tokyo.

With visas in hand, Jews took a gruelling two-week railway trip across Russia to Vladivostok in the far east and then travelled by boat to Japan.

Many of them were later sent to the Shanghai Ghetto and stayed there until the end of the war. Sugihara received Israel’s

“Righteous Among the Nations” title honouring people who saved Jews during the Holocaust in

1984. Abe, who has been criti-cised for appearing to minimise Japan’s own atrocities during the

war, is on a six-day trip in the Baltics which will also take in Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania.

Abe honours ‘Japan’s Schindler’ in Lithuania

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives at the Sugihara House in Kaunas, Lithuania, yesterday.

Abe visited the two-storey building, now a museum, that housed the consulate where Chiune Sugihara worked in the Baltic state’s second city Kaunas.

Iranian friends and relatives of the oil Tanker crewmen react inside Iran’s International Oil Tanker Central building in the capital Tehran following news of its sinking, yesterday.

Tourist speedboat explodes; 16 hurt

PNG volcanic eruption sparks evacuations

REUTERS

BEIJING: China’s Education Ministry yesterday revoked the prestigious academic title of a university professor accused of physically harassing students, state media said, in a case that has sparked national media coverage and a nascent #MeToo movement in the country.

Beihang University in Beijing said last week that it removed Chen Xiaowu from his teaching posts after an investigation found he had engaged in “physical har-assment behaviour” that seri-ously violated professional ethics and the school’s code of conduct.

The Beijing Youth Daily had previously reported Chen saying

he had done “nothing illegal”, but Reuters was unable to reach him for comment as the university declined to provide Chen’s tele-phone number and said he was refusing interviews.

The university’s investigation was launched after former Bei-hang student Luo Xixi publicly accused Chen of physically har-assing her 13 years ago in an

online blog that promptly went viral after it was posted on Jan-uary 1.

“The ministry decided to revoke Chen Xiaowu’s status as a Yangtze River Scholar,” Chi-nese state radio said, referring to an academic award given to individuals in higher education.

The ministry also authorised

the university to relieve Chen of his appointment and took back his award funding, it said. It did not give further details.

In her post, Luo said Chen made an unwanted sexual advance after luring her to his sister’s house, and that he relented only after she burst into tears and said she was a virgin. Luo also accused Chen of har-

assing several other students.Luo, who now lives in the

United States, said she was inspired by the #MeToo social media movement that started in October in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations in the US entertainment industry, and encouraged others to come for-ward and share their own expe-riences under the hashtag.

China revokes academic title of professor accused of harassment

Smoke rises from a tourist speedboat after its explosion in Phi Phi Islands, Thailand, yesterday.

16 MONDAY 15 JANUARY 2018EUROPE

Germany’s SPD at odds over coalition planAFP

FRANKFURT AM MAIN: Leading members of Germany’s Social Democrats voiced scepti-cism yesterday over a prelimi-nary coalition agreement reached with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, days after the hard-fought deal was hailed as a breakthrough.

Berlin’s SPD Mayor Michael Mueller said he was “very crit-ical” about entering into another government with Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc after all three parties slumped to their worst results in decades in last September’s election.

“The same coalition with the same policies is not the right answer,” the centre-left

politician told the Tagesspiegel daily, calling for “further talks” to win more concessions on key SPD demands.

Party leaders on Friday announced after tortuous nego-tiations that they had signed off on a policy blueprint paving the way for formal coalition

discussions to begin after months of paralysis in Europe’s top economy.

In the 28-page document, the parties agreed to join France in a push to “strengthen and reform” the eurozone, to limit the influx of asylum seekers to Ger-many to around 200,000 a year, and to refrain from tax hikes.

But Mueller lamented the SPD’s failure to secure a tax hike for the rich or a restructuring of the country’s two-tier health care system—two major campaign pledges.

Those concerns were echoed by the SPD’s Malu Dreyer, pre-mier of Rhineland-Palatinate state, who also slammed the com-promise to cap immigration.

The migration stance

outlined in the roadmap was “very difficult” for the SPD, she told the German newspaper group Funke Mediengruppe.

The criticism will make for uncomfortable reading for SPD chief Martin Schulz, who has promised to give party members the last word on a third stint as Merkel’s junior coalition partner.

In a sign of the difficulties ahead, SPD delegates at a regional party conference in Sax-ony-Anhalt on Saturday nar-rowly voted against starting formal coalition talks.

Spiegel news weekly said the non-binding vote was “hugely symbolic” coming just a day after the in-principle agreement “that Schulz is trying to sell as a success”.

The stakes will be higher next Saturday, when 600 party del-egates will be asked to give the green light at a congress, fol-lowed by a final vote by more than 400,000 rank-and-file members.

The SPD’s youth wing chief Kevin Kuehnert has vowed to spend the coming days criss-crossing the country to press his case against a new grand coali-tion, known as “GroKo” in German political shorthand.

Top conservative lawmaker Alexander Dobrindt of Merkel’s Bavarian CSU sister party urged Schulz to nip the potential revolt in the bud.

“Martin Schulz must now show that the SPD can be a reli-able coalition partner and get

this brouhaha under control,” Dobrindt told the Bild am Son-ntag daily.

The SPD initially vowed to go into opposition after scoring a humiliating 20.5 percent in the September ballot.

But former EU Parliament chief Schulz faced pressure to reconsider after Merkel’s efforts to forge a government with two smaller parties collapsed in November.

Merkel, whose political life is on the line after more than 12 years in power, has welcomed the coalition blueprint as “a fresh start” for Germany and Europe.

Commentators however have already described a pos-sible repeat of the left-right alli-ance as a “coalition of losers”.

Norway’s right-wing expands but remains minority governmentAFP

OSLO: Norway’s right-wing coalition yesterday took in a small centre-right party, but remains a minority government and will continue the search for the parliamentary majority needed to ensure it can pass laws.

And the government had to make concessions to entice the Liberal Party aboard, notably over the environment and oil exploitation.

Conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who has been in power since 2013, secured a narrow victory with her coali-tion partner, the anti-immigra-tion Progress Party, in Sep-tember elections.

The new deal with the Lib-eral Party was announced by the three party chiefs after ten days of negotiations in the southeast town of Moss.

“We’ve had good discus-sions,” Solberg told a press conference.

“The temperature rose occa-sionally but the mood was gen-erally very good.”

The distribution of ministe-rial portfolios between the three parties will take a little longer to agree, but an announcement is expected by Friday.

Even with the addition of the eight Liberal members of parlia-ment, the coalition government remain short of a parliamentary majority, with 80 of the 169 seats in the chamber, and will have to

continue the search for partners.Traditional ally the Christian

Democrats, who also have eight deputies, have so far resisted all offers to enter the current

government.The revised government

platform, thanks to the Liberals, will now include measures such as the protection, until the end

of the government’s term in 2021, of waters around the idyllic Lofoten, which the oil industry would very much like to get its hands on.

‘Overcome fears over immigrants’AFP

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis called yesterday for hospitality towards migrants, calling it a “sin” to give in to fear of the other as he marked the World Day of Migrants and Refugees.

“It is not easy... to put one-self in the shoes of people so dif-ferent from us,” the pontiff said during a mass at St Peter’s Basilica.

“Local communities are sometimes afraid that the newly arrived will disturb the estab-lished order, will ‘steal’ some-thing they have long laboured to build up,” Francis said.

While such fears are not a sin, said the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics, “the sin is to refuse to encounter the other, the dif-ferent, the neighbour.”

“The sin is to allow these

fears to determine our responses, to limit our choices, to compro-mise respect and generosity, to feed hostility and rejection,” Francis said, adding: “We often refuse to encounter the other and raise barriers to defend ourselves.”

The 81-year-old pontiff, himself the son of immigrants to Italy from Argentina, has cham-pioned the cause of migrants and asylum seekers since his elec-tion in 2013.

His first official trip outside Rome was to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, which was at the time the first point of arrival in Europe for thousands of migrants.

In April 2016, Francis visited the Greek island of Lesbos, a main entry point to Greece for migrants travelling from the Turkish coast, and returned home with three families of

Syrian refugees aboard the papal plane.

“Every stranger who knocks at our door is an opportunity for

an encounter with Jesus Christ, who identifies with the wel-comed and rejected strangers of every age,” Francis said Sunday.

Today, Pope Francis will begin an eight-day tour of his native South America, visiting Peru and Chile.

Russia deploys more missile defence systems in CrimeaREUTERS

MOSCOW: Russia deployed a new division of S-400 surface-to-air missiles in Crimea, Russian news agen-cies reported, in an escalation of military tensions on the Crimean peninsula.

Russian annexed Crimea from Ukraine in the year 2014, triggering economic sanctions by the European Union and United States and a tense stand-off in the region.

The US said in December it planned to provide Ukraine with “enhanced defensive capabilities”, which officials said included Javelin anti-tank missiles..

Moscow’s latest deploy-ment represents the second division armed with S-400 air defence systems on the peninsula, after the first in the spring of 2017 near the port town of Fedosia.

The new division will be based next to the town of Sev-astopol and will control the airspace over the border with Ukraine, the RIA news agency reported.

The new air defence system, designed to defend Russia’s borders, can be turned into combat mode in less than five minutes, Interfax news agency quoted Viktor Sevostyanov, a com-mander with Russia’s air forces, as saying.

Russia’s defence ministry says the S-400 systems, known as “Triumph”, can bring down airborne targets at a range of 400km and bal-listic missiles at a range of 60km.

France’s first panda cub makes public appearanceAFP

FRANCE’S first panda cub made its debut public appear-ance on Saturday, five months after its birth, to rapturous crowds -- some of whom had travelled hours to see the fluffy male.

Yuan Meng, which means “making a dream come true” in Chinese, was introduced into his new enclosure in Beauval zoo in central France along with his mother as adoring onlookers ringed the site.

“We got up at 3:00 in the morning. My son absolutely wanted to see the cub,” said Delphine who had travelled from the Paris region.

“We felt we took part in a historic moment. It was very moving,” she said.

Zoo veterinarian Baptiste Mulot said the cub had been brought to the enclosure over the past 10 days to familiarise himself with surroundings.

Panda reproduction, in captivity or in the wild, is notoriously difficult because the female panda is only in heat once a year for about 48 hours.

But the number of pandas worldwide has rebounded since the black-and-white bear was declared an endan-gered animal in the 1980s, thanks to efforts to protect it and its habitat.

China has dispatched its national treasure to only about a dozen countries, using the animal as a symbol of close relations.

Kosovo seeks extradition of Israeli ‘organ trafficker’AFP

PRISTINA: Kosovo has asked Cyprus to extradite an Israeli man suspected of being the brains behind an international organ trafficking gang.

The suspect, named as Moshe Harel by local press, is accused of organising more than 30 illegal kidney removals and transplants at a clinic near Kos-ovo’s capital Pristina, the pros-ecutor’s office said.

“I will do my utmost so that this person, who, in addition to criminal offences has harmed the international image of Kosovo, is brought to justice for

these acts,” said Justice Minister Abelard Tahiri (pictured) on Facebook.

Police announced his arrest in Cyprus last week.

Harel has been hunted by the authorities for almost a decade for exploiting victims, often

recruited from poor areas in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, by promising $18,000 for their organs.

Recipients, mainly Israelis, would pay up to 100,000 euros for the transplant.

The organ trafficking net-work came to light in 2008 after a Turkish man collapsed at Pris-tina airport after having a kidney removed.

Police raided the Medicus clinic, which shut following the scandal.

In 2013, an EU-led court in Kosovo sentenced five Kosovan doctors to up to eight years in prison for organ trafficking in

the country.Donors, whose organs were

illegally removed, were left without proper medical care and treated “like waste,” prosecutors said at the time of the trial.

But the Supreme Court of Kosovo annulled the verdict in 2016 and ordered a new trial, which is ongoing.

The indictment named Harel as the trafficking network’s mas-termind, while Turkish doctor Yusuf Ercin Sonmez -- labelled by Kosovo media as the “Turkish Frankenstein” and still on the run -- was suspected of per-forming the transplants at the clinic.

“The same coalition with the same policies is not the right answer,” SPD Mayor Michael Mueller said, calling for “further talks” to win more concessions on key SPD demands.

Immigrants attend a mass given by the Pope, marking the World Day of Migrants and Refugees at St Peter’s Basilica, in the Vatican, yesterday.

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg (centre), Minister of Finance Siv Jensen (left) and Trine Skei Grande, leader of The Liberal Party of Norway, attend a news conference to announce that the Norwegian government will be broadened to include the Liberal Party, in Jeloy, Norway, yesterday.

17MONDAY 15 JANUARY 2018 EUROPE

Call for open borders

8 dead in Portugal leisure centre fire

68% of Greeks against use of ‘Macedonia’REUTERS

ATHENS: A majority of Greeks do not want the term “Mace-donia” used in any solution to a long-running dispute over the former Yugoslav republic’s name, a poll showed yesterday.

The dispute over the name of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), as it is formally known, has persisted for nearly three decades and has held up its prospects of joining the European Union.

Greece has challenged the name since Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, saying it implies terri-torial claims to a Greek prov-ince of the same name.

It has only agreed that the country be referred to interna-tionally as “FYROM” until the row is resolved. That is the name under which it was admitted to the United Nations in 1993.

The two neighbours have agreed to form working groups led by foreign ministers to hold talks on a solution. They are hoping for progress in talks with a UN mediator on January 17.

Greek government officials have suggested that Athens would try to focus on brokering an agreement that calls for a compound name with a geo-graphical qualifier.

However, a nationwide survey conducted by Marc

pollsters last week for the Proto Thema newspaper asked if Greece should agree on a com-pound name including the term “Macedonia”, with 68 percent repsonding “no” and 23.6 per-cent “yes”.

Greeks are highly sensitive about the name issue and

rallies are planned in Athens and in northern Greece in the coming weeks against any com-promise that might retain the name Macedonia.

Macedonia is also the name of Greece’s largest province and of the ancient northern Greek kingdom ruled by Alexander the Great.

Deputy Foreign Minister George Katrougalos (pictured) said yesterday that the govern-ment was aiming for resolution to the name issue “with national unity”.

“The solution that we will bring to parliament will be accepted not only by the two government partners but much more broadly,” he said yesterday.

On Thursday, former Yugo-slav Republic, Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov met his Greek counterpart, Nikos Kotzias in Thessaloniki to discuss ways to move forward in the long-standing dispute.

We parted convinced that there is a will on both sides to move forward,” Dimitrov said.

He added that both parties agreed to form working groups led by foreign ministers to directly negotiate possible solutions to the name dispute.

“I expect the first meeting could come as early as February.”

A nationwide survey conducted by Marc pollsters last week asked if Greece should agree on a compound name including the term “Macedonia”, with 68 percent repsonding “no” and 23.6 percent “yes”.

AFP

LISBON: Fire ripped through a local community centre in northern Portugal where dozens of people were watching a weekend football match, killing eight and injuring another 38, nine seriously, officials said yesterday.

Nine people with severe burns were taken by helicopter to hospitals in Porto and Lisbon, emergency response chief Carlos Pereira said.

Civil protection official Paulo Santos earlier said between 50 and 60 people were hurt.

“It happened very fast. The whole floor was in flames within five minutes,” survivor Julio Dias told the daily Publico.

“In the panic, a lot of people massed against the doors and it was impossible to open them.”

He said a few minutes later rescue workers forced open a door using ropes tied to an all-terrain vehicle.

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was heading to the scene yesterday.

Officials said the fire broke out at around 9pm (2100 GMT) Saturday on the first floor of the building in a village near

Tondela, which lies between the northern towns of Coimbra and Viseu.

Many had taken part in an amateur card tournament, playing Sueca, a popular game in Portugal, and were watching football match, they said.

Local mayor Jose Antonio Jesus said the fire was caused by the explosion of a wood-burning stove, which let off a “large quantity” of carbon monoxide.

The Tondela fire service said the blaze was brought under control after an hour.

The area was hit by a series of deadly wildfires in October.

UKIP leader urged to quit over partner’s remark on MarkleAFP

LONDON: The leader of Brit-ain’s anti-EU, anti-immigration UK Independence Party (UKIP) faced calls to resign yesterday after his girlfriend reportedly made racist remarks about Prince Harry’s fiancee Meghan Markle.

Henry Bolton, who was elected in September, said his 25-year-old partner Jo Marney had been suspended from the party after the text messages were published in the Mail on

Sunday newspaper.But one party politician said

she should have been expelled, while a UKIP member of the European Parliament said it was time for the “inexperienced” leader to “go quietly”.

According to the tabloid, Marney wrote messages to a friend complaining that Markle—an American actress of mixed race who is due to marry Harry in May—would “taint our royal family” with her “seed”.

In a statement, Marney said her remarks were “deliberately

exaggerated to make a point” and were taken out of context, but “I fully recognise the offence they have caused”.

Bolton is the third elected leader of UKIP since Nigel Farage resigned after helping secure a vote to leave European Union in June 2016, and the party has struggled to find a role.

UKIP chairman Paul Oakden said that Bolton, who recently made headlines due to his deci-sion to leave his wife and date Marney, had some “difficult deci-sions to make”.

The party’s governing board will meet next weekend and will consult with the former army officer “if he is still the leader at that point”, he said.

Oakden said the coming year would be “crucial” for Brexit negotiations, adding: “We need to be behind our leader 100 per-cent in taking that battle forward.

“Whether or not the party decides it willing to give that support to Henry is for the party to decide.”

UKIP MEP Bill Etheridge

said: “We are seeing UKIP resources used to defend Hen-ry’s private life.

“Henry does not have the experience, the political nous or advice to deal with the issues he faces.... He must go, he must go quickly, he must go as quietly as possible.”

Peter Whittle, a UKIP member of the London Assembly, tweeted: “These are disgraceful remarks. This person should not just be suspended from @UKIP but expelled altogether.”

Portugal oppn party elects new leaderREUTERS

LISBON: Portugal’s main oppo-sition Social Democrats have elected Rui Rio, former mayor of the country’s second-largest city of Porto, as their new leader who will face the daunting task of boosting the centre-right party’s lowly ratings ahead of a 2019 election.

Rio, 60, replaces former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, whose centre-right gov-ernment imposed painful aus-terity measures under the terms of an international bailout in 2011 to 2014, which helped the debt-laden country emerge from its economic and debt crisis. He stepped down as party leader after two terms.

Rio, an economist who was a popular mayor for three terms in 2001 to 2013, beat former pre-mier Pedro Santana Lopes to the party leadership by 54 to 46%.

In his victory speech, he said he wanted to build “an alterna-tive government to the current leftist front that has formed in parliament... capable of pro-viding more stable and

courageous governance to con-front the country’s major struc-tural problems”.

Despite the unpopular aus-terity, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) won the most votes in the last parliamentary elec-tion in 2015, but fell short of a majority even jointly with their allies to form a second-term government.

‘Brexit vote at risk of being reversed’REUTERS

LONDON: Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage said yesterday he was increasingly concerned that a vote for Britain to leave the EU could be overturned by a powerful group of the bloc’s supporters.

In an interview with Brit-ain’s Observer newspaper, Farage, former head of the eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP), said a well-organ-ised and funded group of cam-paigners that wants to remain in the EU was drowning out those who want to leave.

“The Remain side are making all the running,” said Farage. “They have a majority in parliament, and unless we get ourselves organised we could lose the historic victory that was Brexit.”

Last week, Farage said he was warming to the idea of holding a second vote on Brit-ain’s membership of the EU to settle the argument - an idea written off by other Brexit cam-paigners who urged the gov-ernment to press on with exit talks with the bloc.

In 2016, Britons voted 52 to 48% in favour of ending its membership of the EU. Prime Minister Theresa May has ruled out a second referendum, saying her government was seeking an amicable divorce

with the EU which will safe-guard the economy and enable Britain to secure trade deals with other countries.

But some Brexit cam-paigners fear her approach has led to the watering down of sev-eral of their demands, including the ability to reduce immigra-tion and to reclaim sovereignty by leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

Several pro-EU campaigners say the need for a second refer-endum has become more pressing because public opinion is showing some signs of turning against Brexit as the difficulty of negotiations to leave the bloc becomes increasingly clear.

On Thursday, a ComRes poll of 1,049 adults showed that although more people think there should not be a second referendum (51 to 43%), if there were to be a re-run, voters say they would opt to stay in the EU by 55 to 45%.

Demonstrators march from Claviere in Italy to Montgenevre in France to ask for open borders for migrants, yesterday.

The former head of the eurosceptic UKIP, said a well-organised and funded group of campaigners that wants to remain in the EU was drowning out those who want to leave.

Highest sea levels at Dutch coast recorded in 2017AFP

THE HAGUE: Storm surges and tidal cycles caused record sea levels along the coast of the Netherlands last year, a Dutch marine institute has found.

“The level has been rising gradually since 1890 by about 0.2 cm per year due to the melting of the ice and the warming up of the ocean,” expert Fedor Baart, of the research organisation Del-tares, said in a statement.

“That means that, as a rule, you expect the sea level to be higher every year.”

Sea and water levels are carefully watched in the Netherlands, as much of the country lies below sea-level and is protected from flooding by a series of defences such as dykes, sand dunes, windmills to pump away water and sophisticated barrages.

In 2017, the institute measured the average sea levels along the Dutch coast to be 11 centimetres (over four inches) higher than normal water levels in Amsterdam, a gauge known as the NAP.

The previous highest reading was in 2007 when the water was nine centimetres above the NAP.

The institute said in 2017 “there were several storm surges in a single year for the first time since 2007,” which had contributed to the high water levels.

Firefighters and villagers stand outside the building of a local community centre, after the fire broke out, in Vila Nova da Rainha, in Tondela, yesterday.

18 MONDAY 15 JANUARY 2018AMERICAS

Hawaii false missile alert sparks panicAFP

HONOLULU: Authorities faced anger and demands for answers yesterday after a false alarm about an incoming ballistic missile caused panic in Hawaii, a Pacific archipelago already on edge over fears of a North Korean attack.

The notification was sent out just after 8:00am (1800 GMT) on Saturday, lighting up phones with a disturbing alert urging people to “seek immediate shelter.”

Emergency management officials later admitted “the wrong button was pushed” during a shift change.

But it took nearly 40 minutes for a corrected message to be issued—with Hawaii’s governor saying there was no automatic way to cancel the false alarm, meaning it had to be done manually.

The Federal Communica-tions Commission (FCC), which is responsible for standards, pro-cedures and testing protocols for the Emergency Alert System that delivered the false alert, prom-ised a “full investigation”.

The alert, which read “BAL-LISTIC MISSILE THREAT

INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL”, sparked panic, with people rushing for safety whether in a bathtub, a base-ment, a manhole or cowering under mattresses.

And after it was declared a false alarm and the panic had subsided, there was anger, with many asking how such an error could have happened.

“Everyone in America needs to understand that if you had to go through this, you would be as angry as I am,” Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii wrote on social media.

“We’re terrified and angry. Called my parents. Called my sister. Husband and I were shaking, verge of tears. Waited 40 minutes for a correction. No

confidence in this emergency alert system,” photographer Ais-linn Victoria said on Twitter.

Adventurer Alison Teal called it “the worst moment of my life.”

The erroneous message came after months of soaring tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, with North Korea claiming it had success-fully tested ballistic missiles that could deliver atomic warheads to the United States, including Hawaii’s chain of volcanic islands.

“I deeply apologise for the trouble and heartbreak that we caused today,” said Vern Miyagi, administrator of Hawaii’s Emer-gency Management Agency.

“We made a mistake,” he acknowledged at a press conference.

“We’ve spent the last few months trying to get ahead of this whole threat, so that we could provide as much notification and preparation to the public,” he said, pledging to investigate what happened “so that this doesn’t happen again.”

As screenshots of the cell phone warning went viral on social media, Gabbard quickly tweeted that it was a “FALSE ALARM” with Hawaii’s EMA

confirming “there is NO missile threat to Hawaii.”

US military spokesman David Benham later said US Pacific Command “has detected no ballistic missile threat to Hawaii. Earlier message was sent in error.”

When a corrected message was eventually sent out, it read: “There is no missile threat or

danger to the state of Hawaii.”“What happened today was

totally unacceptable,” Hawaii Governor David Ige said.

“I’m sorry for that pain and confusion that anyone might have experienced.”

The White House said Pres-ident Donald Trump was briefed about the incident, calling the alert “purely a state exercise.”

The alert went out just a month after Hawaii tested its nuclear attack siren system for the first time since the Cold War era in a drill which will now be con-ducted monthly, an emergency management spokesperson said.

Trump—who has used bom-bastic rhetoric about Pyongyang and its leader Kim Jong-Un—has yet to react to the false warning.

UN offers Colombia aid with migration crisisREUTERS

BOGOTA: The United Nations is willing to send more resources to Colombia to help the Andean country care for hundreds of thousands of Vene-zuelans fleeing food shortages and economic devastation in their homeland, Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.

Guterres is on a two-day visit to Colombia to discuss the progress of its peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels and ongoing peace talks with smaller guerrilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN), which recently re-started attacks after a months-long ceasefire.

Venezuelans fleeing acute food shortages, high crime and

political unrest have flooded across the border to Colombia in recent years. Some visit just to buy groceries, while others begin lives from scratch, often working informally and without visas. Last year, Colombia extended permits for Venezue-lans in a humanitarian measure - the government estimates there are some 470,000 Ven-ezuelans in the country.

“I want to manifest all the support of the United Nations to the government and people of Colombia in this humani-tarian effort, the reception of all these people, and say that we are even willing to mobilise other international help as is possible,” Guterres said after meeting with President Juan Manuel Santos, ministers and security officials.

Trump says migration deal ‘probably dead’AFP

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump appeared to give up for dead a bipartisan deal on immigration yesterday, blaming Democrats as the aftershocks of his vulgar disparagement of African countries and Haiti rumbled Washington’s political battlegrounds.

Trump came back on the issue in a pair of early morning tweets three days after report-edly referring to African and Haitian immigrants as coming from “shabby countries,” trig-gering global condemnation.

“DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t

really want it,” Trump tweeted, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals pro-gramme at the heart of the immigration impasse.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the country illegally as children -- so-called “dreamers” -- face deportation unless a compro-mise can be reached that would grant them rights to stay.

A bipartisan deal to resolve the dreamers problem in return for changes demanded by Republicans in the way visas are allocated collapsed in acrimony Thursday with Trump’s remarks, which were widely denounced as racist.

“I think this man, this pres-ident, is taking us back to another place,” John Lewis, a Georgia congressman who was on the front lines of the 1960s civil rights movement, said yes-terday. “I think he is a racist.”

Senator David Purdue, a Republican from Georgia, called charges that Trump is racist “ridiculous” and his reported remarks a “gross misrepresen-tation” of the White House meeting on immigration.

But other Republicans, pained by the turn of events, spoke out against the president as debate over the slur spilled into yesterday’s television talk shows.

“I can’t defend the indefen-sible,” said Mia Love, a Haitian-American congresswoman from Utah who campaigned on Trump’s behalf in the country’s Haitian community.

“I still think that he should apologize,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think that there are people that are looking for an apology. And I think that that would show real leadership.”

Trump’s “shabbu countries” remarks were confirmed by Sen-ator Dick Durbin, a Democrat who attended the White House meeting, after it was reported by the Washington Post and other media.

US military spokesman David Benham later said US Pacific Command “has detected no ballistic missile threat to Hawaii. Earlier message was sent in error.”

A combination photograph shows screenshots from a cellphone displaying an alert for a ballistic missile launch and the subsequent false alarm message in Hawaii.

Media worker murdered in Mexican border

REUTERS

MEXICO CITY: A journalist was killed yesterday in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, adding to a wave of violence in one of the world’s most dangerous countries for media workers.

Carlos Dominguez was murdered yesterday after-noon in the city of Nuevo Laredo, state officials said in a statement. The attorney general’s office has launched an investigation to determine the circumstances of the killing, including whether it was related to Dominguez’s work as a journalist, the state said.

Dominguez was an inde-pendent journalist who wrote a political column. In one of his last publications, he lamented the growing polit-ical violence that has struck Mexico ahead of the presi-dential election in July.

Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, the governor of Tamaulipas, denounced the killing in a post on Twitter.

“My condolences to the family of the journalist Carlos Dominguez Rodriguez,” he wrote.

“My commitment to them and the journalistic commu-nity of Tamaulipas is that this murder will not go unpunished.”

Venezuelan govt and oppn remain at negotiating tableAFP

SANTO DOMINGO: Venezuelan government and opposition delegates meeting in the Domin-ican Republic will hold a new round of talks on Thursday on resolving the crisis facing the country, the Dominican presi-dent said.

Venezuela is in the throes of a deepening crisis caused by falling oil prices, spiraling infla-tion and corruption that has

ravaged the oil-rich country’s economy. President Nicolas Maduro has increasingly consol-idated power, aided by disarray in the opposition.

“Although we have very important advances, we are still left with pending issues,” Presi-dent Danilo Medina said.

The two sides will hold fur-ther talks in Santo Domingo on January 18, said Medina, one of those working to encourage the dialogue.

After 10 hours of meetings aimed at finding solutions to the protracted political and eco-nomic crises, Jorge Rodriguez, the main Venezuelan govern-ment delegate, said there was consensus on the “majority of the points.”

“We remain at the negoti-ating table... we have some points that I am sure will be resolved” in the talks on January 18, Rodriguez said.

J u l i o B o r g e s , t h e main delegate for the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable

(MUD), also highlighted agreement.

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos (right) and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during a joint news conference, in Bogota, Colombia, yesterday.

Two dead as strong quake hits PeruAFP

LIMA: A 7.3 magnitude earth-quake shook southern Peru yesterday, killing at least two people and injuring 65 others, the South American country’s civil defence agency said.

Local authorities said homes made of adobe col-lapsed in coastal areas most directly affected by the quake, which struck in the Pacific, 31km from the seaside town of Acari in the region of Arequipa, according to the US Geological Survey.

“There are two fatalities in the region of Arequipa and so far 65 injured have been

reported,” General Jorge Chavez, head of the National Civil Defense Institute, said.

He said military planes were delivering humanitarian aid including tents to affected areas.

One person died in the Yauca district and another in the Bella Union district, both in the Arequipa region, where rescue workers were trying to help those affected, Peru’s Civil Defense said.

Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski traveled to the region and flew over the quake zone. He attributed the two deaths to adobe houses collapsing.

The Peruvian navy and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii ruled out the threat of a tsunami.

Adobe houses were leveled in the coastal town of Lomas and elsewhere in the sur-rounding area, Santiago Neyra, the mayor of the nearby town of Caraveli said.

Electricity was out in sev-eral municipalities and many roads were closed to traffic or passable in only one direction, the mayor said.

Structural damage was reported to a bridge in Areq-uipa, said the head of the region’s highway police, Major Alberto Rojas.

Mayor of Caracas Rodriguez during talks between President Nicolas Maduro’s government and Venezuela’s opposition coalition, in Santo Domingo.


FAJRSHOROOK

05.01am06.21 am

ZUHRASR

11.43 am02.45 pm

MAGHRIBISHA

05.07pm06.37pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

HIGH TIDE 04:45 – 15:00 LOW TIDE 11:45 – 21:30

Hazy to misty/foggy at places at first, be-

comes Mild daytime and cold by night.

WEATHER TODAY

COURTESY: Qatar Meteorology Department

Minimum Maximum 14oC 26oC


THE PENINSULA

DOHA: A total of 17 falconers have qualified for the next round of the falcon competition “Al-Tala” at the 9th Interna-tional Marmi Falcon Festival taking place in the Sakhat Sealine and will continue until January 27.

Yesterday, five falconers joined the list of the qualified falconers by hunting live Hab-bari birds. The winners include Fahad Saad Abdullah Rashid Al Mohannadi from Group 30, Shaheen Salem Shaheen Al Ateeq Al Dosari from Group 32, Fahd Bakhit Talib Al Baha Al Marri from Group 33 and the Barzan team from Group 34 and Shaikh Al-Shammari from Group 37. This year’s Marmi’s festival is hosting the oldest fal-coner (80-year-old) Rashid Jibhan Bakhit Al-Mankhas.

Al-Munkhas pointed out that he has been practicing falconry for 65 years. He has touched the strong will of the current generation to preserve their forefather’s herit-ages. Al-Sakhar called on young people to utilise the possibilities that were not available in the past

in order to highlight their superi-ority and preserve this legacy.

For his part, the falconer Fahad bin Saad bin Rashid Al-Muhannadi, who is participating for the first time in the championship, said that the Tala Festival is an opportunity to share with friends the same hobby, pointing out that the most important thing for him is to qualify for the next round.

The Free Qarnas Tala champi-onship will take place today, with entrance of 10 new groups (from Groups 38 to 47) seeking a foothold in the next round which will take place next tomorrow .

17 falconers qualified for next round

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Cultural Village Foundation - Katara is all set to host the fifth edition of the Winter Festival from Thursday until January 22 featuring an array of enter-tainment and cultural activ-ities.

The festival is organised in cooperation with a number of entities, centers and organisations located in Katara. The activities will comprise a number of per-formances, including a European show, as well as popular folkloric shows, entertaining events and informative competitions.

In addition, the public will have an opportunity to acquire traditional and artistic pieces from Katara’s Traditional Souq, which will include a diverse range of pavilions that offer various products, such as textiles, perfumes and unique art pieces.

The Winter Festiva will also see Al-Gannas Associ-ation participating with an exhibition and educational workshops for young fal-coners, as well as Al Dau and Hadad Al-Salukii at Katara’s Esplanade. In

addition, the organizers of Al-Galayel Championship will host an exhibition dis-playing collectibles and equipment from all previous championships. Moreover, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment is sched-uled to organize ‘winter planting’ workshops for children.

An exclusive campaign on health awareness and free medical checkups for the public, together with, blood sugar and blood pres-sure tests, calculating body mass index will be con-ducted by the Syrian Amer-ican Medical Center, Al Hayat Medical Center, Bin

Muftah Center, Naseem Al Rabeeh Medical Centre, Value Medical Center and Boston Medical Care.

On the sideline activities of the festival, Tamim Toast Master International Club will offer entertaining shows on the art of public speaking and classic poetry and Bedaya Centre is par-ticipating with a display of new business startups held with an aim to educate the public on the various serv-ices provided by each project.

The festival will be held at Katara Esplanade from 4pm to 9pm from January 18 to 22.

Katara winter fest from Thursday

RAYNALD C RIVERA THE PENINSULA

DOHA: More than 200 days into the blockade, some local companies said it has done more good than harm, strengthening their position in the Qatari market and opening up busi-ness opportunities for other countries as well.

“For us as an events company, the blockade has not made a single differ-ence. What I see from my contacts from day to day that I deal with designers not only from Qatar but internationally, they are really inter-ested to come and open new busi-nesses here. They see it as a new opportunity,” Primrose Fernandes, Account Executive, Design Creationz.

Design Creationz is a leading local events management, marketing and consultancy company specialised in high end fashion, known for organ-ising fashion events such as Heya Ara-bian Fashion Exhibition which gathers a huge number of designers and brands from around the world.

Italian, Spanish and German brands as well as brands from Hong

Kong, Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Leb-anon and Turkey have expressed interest in coming and starting a busi-ness here, added Fernandes.

“Because of Heya we are in direct contact with designers and they really want to start businesses here. They see this blockade as an opportunity for them to start business here, and it’s really interesting,” she said.

The 12th edition of Heya in November last year saw many inter-national brands who took part as well as a 25 percent increase in the number of local participants.

“We haven’t felt a bit of the blockade. It hasn’t affected us at all and business still growing,” said Fernandes, who was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the recent Arabian Fashion Show at this year’s Shop Qatar.

Pooja Adam, Marketing and PR Manager at QLabel, a local fashion brand, was of the same view saying the blockade has spurred business.

“Because we are a small brand, we get to cater to our clients. We have lots of clients since the blockade because as a brand based in Qatar we can get the goods delivered to our clients in 24 hours,” said Adam.

On Qatar Tourism Authority’s (QTA) efforts to promote local entre-preneurs, she said: “We do believe that QTA has helped us elevate our brand within the market during this time. It’s very important for us to be in partner-ship with them.”

Adam lauded Shop Qatar for pro-viding “a platform to elevate our brand to the Qatari audience as t is impor-tant for us to be seen by Qataris as like a benchmark for modest wear.”

As a young company which has been in the market for a year, QLabel has been receiving great response from Qataris. “The response is great. Actu-ally, 90 percent of our customers are Qataris. What we do is provide home service so we get to see them directly, show our collection, and cater to their needs which they like and works for them,” said Adam.

‘Siege has opened up opportunities’

FROM LEFT: Primrose Fernandes, Account Executive, Design Creationz; Daniela Lesanu, Sales Manager and Pooja Adam, Marketing and PR Manager at QLABEL at a recent Shop Qatar media event at Mondrian Doha.

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Hamad Medical Corpo-ration (HMC)’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer and Head of Infectious Diseases, Dr Abdul-latif Al Khal (pictured), has emphasised its important for people with flu or common cold symptoms to avoid visiting patients until these symptoms subside completely.

“While the flu is generally not a life-threatening condition for a young healthy individual, it can make someone who is already sick or recovering from a medical condition very ill and can complicate their illness and prolong their stay in the hos-pital,” said Dr Al Khal.

“People who are sick with symptoms of respiratory tract infections shouldn’t visit someone in hospital at any time of year, but this advice is par-ticularly important during the flu (winter) season when the flu virus and several other respi-ratory (flu-like) viruses are in circulation.”

Healthy hospital visitors are instructed to sanitize their hands when they arrive at the hospital and before they leave. They should also cover their cough or sneeze with a tissue

or their sleeve, and sanitize their hands after coughing or sneezing.

Dr. Al Khal added that indi-viduals who feel sick should stay at home to avoid spreading the flu and focus on getting well. He said that anyone expe-riencing flu symptoms should rest, drink plenty of fluids, and take fever-reducing medicine. Those who have other chronic diseases like asthma or heart disease and who have flu-like illness (fever, cough, runny nose, sore throat, body aches) should seek medical attention immediately.

Dr Al Khal added that mem-bers of the public who are expe-riencing flu symptoms should seek treatment from their pri-mary care provider.

People having flu told to avoid visiting patients

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: The German Encounters exhibi-tion, on show at the Garage Gallery at the Fire Station, draws to a close on Saturday.

Art lovers and culture fans have just one week left to take in this major high-light of the Qatar Germany 2017 Year of Culture which showcases some of the very best in German contemporary art.

The exhibition features a selection of incredible artworks from the Deutsche Bank Collection, one of the world’s most important corporate collections of con-temporary art.

More than 100 exemplary works on paper including photographs, and paint-ings by 27 artists provide an informative overview of the development of German art – and thus also of the history of the country from the 1960s to the present.

The first-rate selection of contempo-rary art features works by Joseph Beuys and by the neo-expressionist painters such as Georg Baselitz and Markus Lüpertz; photographers of the Düsseldorf School, including Andreas Gursky, Candida H�fer, and Thomas Ruff; and hugely influential post-conceptual artists such as Isa Gen-zken, Rosemarie Trockel and Martin Kip-penberger. The collection also includes renowned figurative paintings by Neo Rauch, as well as abstract acrylic works by Katharina Grosse and photographs by Annette Kelm.

The exhibition has proven to be hugely

popular with the public, a t t r a c t i n g p o s i t i v e reviews and widespread i n t e r e s t across the community. A dedicated educational programme d e v e l o p e d with the G o e t h e -Institut has provided local audiences val-uable insights into the exhibition.

Part of the landmark ‘Years of Cul-ture’ initiative, Qatar Germany 2017 Year of Culture is a yearlong program designed to deepen understanding between nations through the mutual exchange of arts, cul-ture, heritage and sports, developed by Qatar Museums in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Gulf Region, the German Embassy in Doha and the Embassy of Qatar in Germany.

Launched in 2012 under the guidance of Qatar Museums’ Chairperson, HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Kha-lifa Al Thani, Qatar’s Years of Culture ini-tiative promotes mutual understanding, recognition and appreciation between countries. The initiative encourages the

people of Qatar and partner countries to discover their cultural similarities, as well as to explore their differences and engage in mutual dialogue.

Commenting on the finale of German Encounters, Khalid Al Ibrahim, Chief Stra-tegic Planning Officer at Qatar Museums said: “This wonderful exhibition is a truly memorable celebration of the influence and significance of German culture and art. At Qatar Museums, we’re focused on offering a world-class programme of exhi-bitions and activities, supporting Qatar’s continued development as a cultural hub. I’d urge as many people as possible to take advantage of this last opportunity to see such an incredible selection of art over the next few days.”

German Encounters expo ends on Saturday

Visitors watch a performance at the previous edition of Katara Winter Festival.

A falconer with bird at the 9th International Marmi Falcon Festival.

Visitors enjoying an art work at The German Encounters exhibition,

Date post:	10-Jun-2020
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