GULF TIMES

published in

QATAR

since 1978

QATARQATAR | Page 24

THURSDAY Vol. XXXX No. 11380

November 28, 2019Rabia II 1, 1441 AH www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals

QF to unveil M F Husain’s fi nal art installation

Qatar participates inBosphorus Summit

Aft ershocks hampersearch for survivors

Qatar is taking part in the 10th Bosphorus Summit which kicked off in Istanbul yesterday with a delegation led by HE the Minister of Commerce and Industry Ali bin Ahmed al-Kuwari. The summit features seminars and discussion panels including a discussion session entitled “Bilateral Relations between Qatar and Turkey” to be attended by CEO of Qatar Financial Center Yousuf al-Jaida. The Summit brings together more than 3,000 participants from 80 countries. Page 11

Emergency workers yesterday pulled dust-covered corpses from the ruins of an earthquake that has claimed 30 lives in Albania, as aftershocks hampered the second day of search eff orts for survivors. The 6.4 magnitude earthquake that rattled the Balkan state early Tuesday morning was the most powerful and damaging in decades. In Durres and the town of Thumane, apartments and hotels collapsed into mountains of rubble. Page 18

BUSINESS | Page 1

Commercial Bank ‘VIPSadara’ customers hosted at ‘Al Tawash’ Gallery

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani met yesterday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Amiri Diwan. During the meeting, President Abbas briefed the Amir on the latest developments in Palestine, and thanked him for Qatar’s continued support to the Palestinian people and their just cause. The meeting also discussed bilateral relations and ways to support and strengthen them. Page 24

Amir meets Palestinian president

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani received a verbal message from Kuwaiti Amir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, pertaining to bilateral relations and ways to enhance them, in addition to the latest regional and international developments. The message was conveyed by the Speaker of the Kuwaiti National Assembly, Marzouq bin Ali al-Ghanim, during a meeting with His Highness the Amir at the Amiri Diwan yesterday. The Speaker conveyed Kuwaiti leader’s greetings to the Amir, wishing him every success, and the Qatari people further progress and prosperity.

Amir gets Kuwaiti leader’s verbal message

Yesterday’s Results

Oman 0-0 Bahrain

Saudi Arabia 1-3 Kuwait

24th Arabian Gulf Cup

Doha emerges as cruise hub

Costa Diadema, the fl eet fl ag-ship of leading Italian company Costa Cruises, docked at Doha

Port for the fi rst time yesterday, mark-ing the fi rst of 16 turnaround calls that the Dream-class cruise liner will make during the 2019-20 Season.

Doha’s emergence as a turnaround port marks a major milestone in the development of the country’s cruise tourism.

For the fi rst time, visitors can begin and end their journey from Doha and have the opportunity to enjoy Qatar’s fi ve-star airline and award-winning hospitality before and after their cruises.

Offi cials, including HE Akbar al-Bak-er, Secretary-General of Qatar National Tourism Council (QNTC) and GCEO of Qatar Airways; Ahmed al-Jamal, chair-man of the General Customs Authority; Captain Hassan al-Maqeef, executive vice president, Commercial at Mwani Qatar, Rehan Ali, executive director of Al Tawfeeq Travels, and Ravi Ramach-andran, general manager of Inchcape, among others, were present to receive the mega ship.

HE al-Baker presented a plaque to

the ship’s Captain Georgio Moretti. On this occasion, HE Jassim Seif

Ahmed al-Sulaiti, Minister of Trans-port and Communications, welcomed the arrival of Costa Diadema to Doha Port, praising the strong partnership with Costa Cruises and looking forward to many years of fruitful co-operation.

HE the Minister said: “Doha Port continues to help in positioning Qatar as one of the most sought-after desti-nations among cruise travellers in the region, thanks also to the role played by National Tourism Council, the Qatar Ports Company and other stakeholders in providing distinguished services to cruise ships and the necessary facilities for their passengers.”

Turnaround voyages contribute sig-nifi cantly to the country’s economy and strengthen the tourism sector.

In addition to visitor spending, the growth in Qatar’s cruise tourism is also contributing to the country’s economy through cruise line spending on port services and maintenance. As the cruise season grows year-on-year, thousands of jobs and business oppor-tunities are created. To Page 11

Doha Port welcomes first turnaround call with arrival of Costa Diadema cruise liner

3Gulf TimesThursday, November 28, 2019

QATAR

Justice ministry dept gets ISO certifi cationQNADoha

The Ministry of Justice Information Sys-tems’ department

received yesterday an ISO certifi cation for informa-tion systems.

The department ob-tained the certificate from Intertek.

The latest certification means the department has completed all the requirements to obtain the ISO 27001, meaning it has one of the world’s best practices for secur-

ing data and for facing cybersecurity threats.

Director of the depart-ment Khalid Mohamed Ib-

rahim commented on the occasion and said it refl ects the commitment of the Ministry to the safety and

security of data. He also said that they will

begin working on obtaining the ISO 27001.

Off icials displaying the ISO certification.

Qatar’s Ministry of Municipality and Environment has won Sheikh Salem Al-Ali Al-Sabah Informatics Award for its Aoun Application. The application was designed by the ministry’s Information Systems Department, which was among the best technical projects in the Award’s 19th edition. HE the Minister of Municipality and Environment Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki al-Subaie received the award at a ceremony held under the patronage and in the presence of Kuwaiti Amir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah. The award recognises the ministry’s eff orts in developing Aoun Application on smartphones, the new of which was inaugurated under the patronage and in the presence of HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani on September 23, 2018. The ministry is among the first government agencies to provide services to the public via smartphones and mobiles, as part of its strategic plan aiming at providing the best services to the public.

Civic ministry wins prestigious Kuwaiti award

4 Gulf TimesThursday, November 28, 2019

QATAR

Al-Hammadi meets EU off icialAl-Hammadi meets EU off icial

Qatar-Singapore forum concludes

Amir condoles with Albania leader

G77 lauds Qatar’s role in

UN resolution adoption

Qatar condemns Baghdad bombings

HE the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs Dr Ahmed bin Hassan al-Hammadi yesterday met the EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Aff airs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, in Brussels. During the meeting, they reviewed the co-operation relations between Qatar and the EU, as well as issues of common concern.HE al-Hammadi also met the Governing Board Chair of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Jan Eliasson and Director of SIPRI Dan Smith. During the meeting, they reviewed the scope of co-operation, as well as issues of common concern.

HE the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs Dr Ahmed bin Hassan al-Hammadi yesterday met the EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Aff airs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, in Brussels. During the meeting, they reviewed the co-operation relations between Qatar and the EU, as well as issues of common concern.HE al-Hammadi also met the Governing Board Chair of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Jan Eliasson and Director of SIPRI Dan Smith. During the meeting, they reviewed the scope of co-operation, as well as issues of common concern.

Qatar-Singapore Urban Planning Forum concluded yesterday in Doha.

The forum was organised by the Ministry of Mu-nicipality and Environment. The three-day event focused on exchanging expertise on issues of joint interest.

Assistant Undersecretary for Urban Planning at the min-istry Fahd Mohamed al-Qahtani said that the event was one of the outcomes of an agreement the two countries signed in 2009. – QNA

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and His Highness the Deputy Amir Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Thani have sent cables to Albanian President Ilir Meta, in which they expressed condolences on the victims of the earthquake which hit northwestern Albania, wishing the injured a speedy recovery. HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani has sent a similar cable to Prime Minister Edi Rama.

The United Nations General Assembly Third Commit-tee adopted, by consensus, the resolution of the “20th Anniversary of the International Year of the Family and

Beyond” to implement the objectives of the International Year of the Family. Qatar facilitated the negotiations on the resolu-tion on behalf of the Group of 77 and China in the United Na-tions. The Group of 77 expressed special appreciation to Qa-tar’s mission to the United Nations, which over the past years has facilitated consultations on the resolution. Qatar intro-duced the resolution since 2004, after having hosted the Doha International Conference for the Family in that year. – QNA

Qatar expressed its strong condemnation and denunciation of the series of explosions that took place in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, which led to deaths and injuries. In a statement yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs reiterated Qatar’s firm position on rejecting violence and terrorism, whatever the motives and reasons.

HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani yesterday received a written message from the Minister Responsible for Foreign Aff airs of Oman Yousuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, pertaining to bilateral relations between Qatar and Oman and the means to develop them. The message was handed over by Oman’s ambassador to Qatar Najib bin Yahya al-Balushi during his meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs.

FM receives message from Omani counterpart 16,809 standardspecifi cations issued in Q3

QNADoha

Qatar General Organi-sation for Standards and Metrology is-

sued a total of 16,809 stand-ard specifi cations during the 3rd quarter of 2019 in a number of sectors such as electricity and electronics, chemicals, textiles, con-struction, food products, agriculture, as well as oil and gas. The total number of standard specifi cations is-sued in the fi rst nine months of 2019 was 20,054.

The authority said that its eff ort in raising aware-ness among merchants has

helped them better commit to the regulations and con-ditions of importation. The amount rejections of pro-duction issued by the au-thority due to a violation of the specifi cations was only 33. This, in turn, is part of the State’s eff orts to improve regulation of the products that are produced locally or imported from abroad.

The authority also carried out 17 fi eld visits of facto-ries and labs to follow up on the progress made in those places. It also analysed pre-cious stones to ensure they were in line with its specifi -cations. The total weight of gold that was analysed was 1.305 tonnes.

5Gulf TimesThursday, November 28, 2019

QATAR

Chief Public Prosecutor in Morocco and the King’s Attorney-General Mohamed Abdel Nabawi praised the achievements of Qatar in the area of legislation. This came during a lecture organised by the Public Prosecution represented by the Institute of Criminal Studies. The Chief Public Prosecutor in Morocco, who is currently visiting Qatar, described the activities of the public prosecution in Morocco and the role it plays in serving society and fighting corruption. He also expressed his appreciation of the eff orts of HE the Attorney-General Dr Ali bin Fetais al-Marri on the Arab and International stage, and his commitment to fighting corruption and supporting the law. The lecture was attended by a number of deputies of the Attorney-General and ambassador of Morocco to Qatar Mohamed Setri.

Moroccan official praises Qatar

Al Meera to off er more local products: offi cialBy Peter AlagosBusiness Reporter

Al Meera Consumer Goods Company launched yes-terday its latest initiative

that supports local entrepre-neurs by showcasing ‘Made in Qatar’ products on the super-market chain’s shelves.

“This initiative is important for both Al Meera and local en-trepreneurs because it is the fi rst step to transform their small businesses into full-fl edged companies in the future,” Al Meera IT director Mohamed al-Bader told Gulf Times on the sidelines of the event held at Ka-tara – the Cultural Village Build-ing 15.

In a statement, Al Meera ex-plained that the event was organ-ised to showcase the products of Qatari small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to Al Meera’s commercial team.

It also off ers them the oppor-tunity to compete in the mar-ket, as well as to improve their standards across the industry, the statement continued.

“Working under the guidance of three leading entities, Nama, Bedaya and the Ministry of Ad-ministrative Development, La-bour & Social Aff airs, the Qatari SMEs enjoyed the opportunity to gain new insights about product development and market cap-ture from the commercial team of Al Meera,” the statement ex-plained.

According to al-Bader, Al Meera’s commercial team also provides free advisory services on marketing and branding, as well a feasibility study to deter-mine the success of the business and its products.

Al-Bader also underscored the

importance of registering small businesses with Al Meera, cit-ing the recent memorandum of understanding (MoU) it signed with Qatar Fuel Company (Wo-qod) for the management of Wo-qod’s Sidra convenience stores.

“At present, Al Meera has 55 branches that are showcasing locally-made products. Qatari entrepreneurs registered with us will also benefi t from our MoU with Woqod because this will provide them with a wider expo-sure once we manage their Sidra stores,” said al-Bader, who add-ed that ‘Made in Qatar’ products comprise around 15% to 20% of the total goods being sold in Al Meera stores.

This year alone, al-Bader said Al Meera has as many as 31 Qatari suppliers, three of which, have transformed into full-fl edged businesses. He added that Al Meera is sourcing a wide range of products from local suppliers and entrepreneurs in support of Qatar’s food security strategy.

“This initiative targets entre-preneurs and newly-established businesses, and Al Meera’s sup-port was extended as part its corporate social responsibility mandate. Every great company starts with an idea, which needs nurturing and support to fl our-ish.

“By engaging with these busi-nesses with our expertise, Al

Meera is playing an instrumen-tal role in realising the economic development goals of the Qatar National Vision 2030,” the state-ment said.

Al Meera added, “‘Made in Qatar’ products have assumed greater importance in recent years due to geopolitical circum-stances, but also as the country gears up to meet the diversifi -cation agenda of economic de-velopment laid out in the Qatar National Vision 2030, which is just a decade away. The initiative is Al Meera’s continued eff ort in its pursuit to support local pro-ducers and activate the SMEs’ contribution to the economic diversifi cation of Qatar.”

Al Meera IT director Mohamed al-Bader (left) viewing the products on display during the event held at Katara yesterday. PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil

Ooredoo announces new campaign for football fans

Ooredoo has announced a “fun new campaign” for football fans, running

until December 8.During the campaign, fans can

take a snap with one of the Qa-tar team cut-outs – installed at selected Ooredoo shops – using the Ooredoo App to get free data.

Also, fans can take part in the Nojoom Daily Quiz for a chance to win diff erent prizes every day until December 8.

All fans need to do is to an-swer the daily quiz question via the Ooredoo App and, if the an-swer is correct, they’ll go into the draw to win one of the “amazing gifts”, the company has said in a statement.

Speaking of the campaign, Manar Khalifa al-Muraikhi – director of PR and Corporate Communications at Oore-doo – said: “We’re delighted to offer this fun, lighthearted campaign to our customers to enhance their enjoyment of the ongoing football at-mosphere. We know we have

many football fans among us, who will no doubt want to stay connected during these excit-ing events, so the free data of-fer is a great way for them to do so for less.

“We are also sure our custom-ers will love the Nojoom quiz, with its daily wonderful prizes and brain teasers.”

QATAR

Gulf Times Thursday, November 28, 20196

HBKU holds Graduate Studies Open House

Hamad Bin Khalifa Uni-versity (HBKU) yes-terday held its annual

Graduate Studies Open House – the university’s largest stu-dent recruitment drive event that provides key informa-tion regarding the 2019-2020 academic year.

In keeping with previous years, the Graduate Studies Open House was directed at prospective students who have already identifi ed a programme of interest and want to know more about course content, study options and student life at Education City.

To assist, faculty and admis-sions staff fi elded questions and off ered their perspectives on working and studying with HBKU.

Current students were also on hand to highlight a range of extracurricular activities avail-able across Education City. Ad-ditionally, participants had the opportunity to discuss strategies for developing stronger applica-tions and watch a video in which college deans highlight HBKU’s unique contributions to local, regional and global learning ecosystems.

The Graduate Studies Open House presented the perfect opportunity to highlight HB-KU’s growing domestic and international profi le.

For the 2018-2019 academic year, the university enjoyed its largest intake made up of more than 370 new students com-prising 46 nationalities, 26% of

Snapshots from the HBKU Graduate Studies Open House. PICTURES: Shaji Kayamkulam

The annual event signals start of admissions cycle at the university

which are Qatari nationals. As things stand, HBKU’s cur-

rent student body represents more than 60 nationalities, 34% of whom are Qataris. A mul-tinational roster of more than 75 faculty members contin-ues to add its own diversity to

HBKU’s academic experience. The 2019-2020 academic year

sees the introduction of two new programmes. The College of Hu-manities and Social Sciences’ Master of Arts in Intercultural Communication is the fi rst de-gree of its kind in Qatar.

Students will engage in re-search, education, and outreach to understand the challenges of today’s changing intercultural settings in Qatar and worldwide.

The College of Law’s Doctor of Juridical Science is also the fi rst fully-fl edged research-intensive doctorate degree in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena). It is expected that the programme will create a vibrant community of legal scholars who will assume teaching positions in universities and government roles in Qatar, the Mena region and beyond.

Both degrees take HBKU’s course off erings up to 35 pro-grammes spread across its six

colleges. In academic year 2018-2019, the university introduced eight new programmes: a Master of Arts in Applied Islamic Eth-ics from the College of Islamic Studies (CIS); PhD in Humani-ties and Social Sciences from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences; Master of Information Systems in Health Management and Master of Science in Sports Management (a joint degree with the University of South Caro-lina) from the College of Science and Engineering; Master of Laws in International Law and For-eign Aff airs and Master of Laws in International Economic and Business Law from the College of Law; Master of Science in Ex-ercise Science from the College of Health and Life Sciences (a joint degree with the University of South Carolina); and a Master of Public Policy off ered by the College of Public Policy.

Speaking after annual re-

cruitment drive event, Dr Emad El-Din Shahin, dean of CIS and interim provost of HBKU, said: “The annual event is one of our most important channels for highlighting how HBKU’s aca-demic programmes provide un-paralleled opportunities for in-quiry and discovery. The event is an opportunity to highlight how we inform national research capabilities, collaborate with world-leading academic institu-tions, develop future leaders and entrepreneurs, and shape novel solutions for a positive impact at home and abroad. Ultimately, we hope that the event inspires pro-spective students to study with us and uphold our commitment to unlocking human potential.”

Admission to HBKU’s pro-grammes is now possible via the university’s website. HBKU regularly holds events to high-light its research activities and projects.

Nearly 900 to take part in Esrar Race on Nov 30

Nearly 900 participants will take part in Esrar Race 2019, scheduled

on November 30 at Aspire Park, making this edition of the obstacle course event in Qatar the largest so far.

The annual event, held un-der the patronage of the Min-istry of Culture and Sports, is organised by Diverse Sports in partnership with the Qatar National Tourism Council.

“This year’s race will be big-ger than any of our previous events. By creating more cate-gories, we are aiming to appeal to everyone interested in par-taking or watching fun sport-ing events,” Diverse Sports CEO Khalid al-Kuwari said in a statement.

“The kids’ race is also a great addition as it encourages fami-lies to do fun and active activi-ties together,” he added.

Diverse Sports is a Qatari company that seeks to deliver quality sporting events in Qa-tar that engage with Qatar’s community and beyond.

Esrar Race, which has been attracting a large number of participants from Qatar, the region and other countries across the globe every year, will be giving away a total of 12 prizes this year.

According to organisers, categories for the event in-clude team, female and male individual, and masters (45 years-old and above).

The race features 20 ob-stacles and covers 5km, giv-ing participants “an excit-ing fi tness challenge, testing endurance, strength, speed, and stamina.” The fi rst batch

of runners will begin at 8am while the last hit starts at 10:30am.

The latest edition of Esrar will also feature the Kids Race, a 1km mini obstacle course for children aged 5-12 years, with all fi nishers receiving medals.

Organisers also announced that Vodafone Qatar is the Gold Sponsor of this year’s Esrar Race.

“Vodafone Qatar has a long history of supporting sports in the country and playing an active part in events that bring people together. Esrar Race 2019 is set to be a fantastic community sporting event and we are delighted to work with Diverse Sports to help bring it to life,” said Vodafone Qatar COO Diego Camberos.

Esrar Race has also wit-nessed Qatar’s Olympic cham-pion, IAAF Athlete of the Year and IAAF 2019 high jump gold medallist Mutaz Essa Barshim taking part (as an honor-ary ambassador) in the 2018 edition of the event.

He said Esrar Race, a “very special event to him, has be-come a platform in promoting healthy and active lifestyle in Qatar, especially for the youth, Esrar 2018 saw over 500 play-ers and enthusiasts, including professionals, participating in diff erent categories.

By Joey AguilarStaff Reporter

The annual event has been attracting a large number of participants from Qatar and other parts of the world.

Participants of the TOT Academy.

Foreign coaches receive training at TOT Academy The Training of In-

ternational Train-ers (TOT) Academy,

organised and hosted by QatarDebate Centre (QD), a member of Qatar Founda-tion (QF), at student centre, Education City, featured intensive workshops for fi ve consecutive days, will conclude today.

The event, which began on November 24, brought together coaches of dif-ferent nationalities from schools around the world to equip them with the necessary skills to select and train students upon return to their respective institutions.

These students will par-ticipate in the fi fth Inter-national Schools Arabic debating championships,

which will take place in March 2020 in Doha, and will be held entirely in Arabic language.

With 10 international trainers from nine Arabic-speaking and non-Arabic speaking countries, the Academy featured partici-pants from Turkey, Kos-ovo, Czech Republic, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Oman and Britain.

A variety of QD’s debate instructors presented and led discussions and work-shops on all aspects of art of debate, with emphasis on debate skills, critical think-ing, refuting and argument but also extending to top-ics such as adjudication, motion analysis, and case building.

While the participants

refl ected the focus on how to be tolerant to people’s opinions which contrib-uted to the diversity of dis-cussions and information exchanged.

The participants em-phasised the role of Qa-tarDebate Centre through the academy to establish standards for debate and equip cadres of qualifi ed trainers to spread the art of debate in Arabic in their countries.

The participants in the TOT Academy expressed happiness in participating in the academy, which ac-quainted them with a great deal of information and extensive experience, un-derscoring its excellence, demanding its continuation in the long term.

Dutch off icial receives papers of Qatari envoy The protocol department director at the Ministry of Foreign Aff airs of the Netherlands, Pascalle Grotenhuis, received a copy of the credentials of Abdullah bin Hussein al-Jaber as ambassador of Qatar to the Netherlands. The director wished the ambassador success in his duties and bilateral relations further development and progress.

Qatari envoy to Uganda presents credentialsUgandan Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sam Kutesa received a copy of the credentials of Qatar’s ambassador Jabor bin Ali al-Dosari in Kampala yesterday. The Ugandan minister wished ambassador success in his duties and bilateral relations further development and progress.

QATAR7Gulf Times

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Qatar students head to China for Huawei ICT contest fi nal

Vodafone Qatar’s Gulf CupFan Zone proves huge draw

Huawei has announced the winners of the Qa-tar edition of the Hua-

wei Middle East ICT Compe-tition 2019, held recently in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Higher Edu-cation.

The longstanding competi-tion, which falls under Hua-wei’s strategy to develop the global information and com-munications technology (ICT) talent ecosystem, aims to nur-ture local talent in the ICT fi eld with a vision to bring dig-ital benefi ts to every person, home and organisation for a fully-connected and intelligent world, the company said in a statement.

This year’s winning team, comprising three students and their professor, was chosen from a fi eld of 253 fi nalists who competed following the pre-liminary round involving en-tries from four universities.

This year’s fi nalists from Qa-tar represent Qatar University and Community College of Qa-tar.

In addition to competing against other winners from the Middle East, the regional winners will be invited back to China to take part in a compe-tition with global Huawei ICT Competition winners.

“The competition promotes innovation and creativity while serving as a bridge between the classroom and the workplace.

“By nurturing university students’ talent in Qatar, it also contributes to increasing national ICT competitiveness while supporting Qatar Na-tional Vision 2030,” the state-ment notes.

Having already received cer-tifi cates and prizes as Qatar’s national winners, the local teams have now earned a trip to

China this month, where they will compete with their fellow fi nalists from around the Mid-dle East region to win the ICT Competition’s grand prize – $30,000.

Their visit will include a “once-in-a-lifetime chance to work among some of the world’s most renowned tech-nology pioneers in Huawei’s facilities”.

Participants will conduct fi eld experiments in Huawei’s specialised labs and research centres at its headquarters in Shenzhen, helping equip stu-dents with the tools needed to tackle complex challenges in areas such as cloud computing, IoT and network security.

The technical programme will be complemented by a number of cultural experiences and knowledge-exchange op-portunities while in China.

In addition, students and

their mentors will have the op-portunity to meet their coun-try’s ambassador to China during the Huawei-organised Ambassadors Summit Discus-sions event.

This will provide the par-ticipants with the chance to discuss with respected leaders and cultural envoys their future ambitions and anticipations for their national ICT sector.

Frank Fan, CEO of Huawei Technologies Qatar, said: “By investing in future talent and building a more robust ICT tal-ent ecosystem in Qatar, we are investing in the future of the country.

I off er them (the winning teams) my congratulations and wish them the best of luck in the competition’s fi nal stage.”

Farhan Khan, vice-presi-dent of Huawei Qatar, added: “Qatar has exceptional ICT talent, which we are proud to

nurture through opportuni-ties such as the Huawei ICT Competition.”

Throughout the Huawei ICT Competition stages, contest-ants receive the latest updates on emerging technologies that are reshaping Lebanon’s digital economy.

These include Artifi cial In-telligence (AI), Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT) and, most importantly, 5G broad-band — seen as a crucial digit-al-service enabler.

The competition is an op-portunity for students to test their abilities in these cutting-edge fi elds, and helps colleges and universities better under-stand the talent requirements of today’s top businesses and government leaders.

During the fi nal, participants are equipped with an online guide and are supervised by university professors.

Vodafone Qatar, the offi -cial telecommunications sponsor of the 24th Ara-

bian Gulf Cup, has “upped the fan experience” with a high-tech Fan Zone at Khalifa Internation-al Stadium, where thousands of football fans attending Tues-day’s opening match between Qatar and Iraq enjoyed the latest technology in real-time gaming.

The Fan Zone gives visitors the chance to experience an augmented reality (AR) game powered by Vodafone’s 5G Gi-gaNet network as well as a Vir-tual Reality (VR) football game, the company said in a statement.

5G technology provides gam-ers with ultra-fast speed, a more reliable connection and ultra-low latency to enjoy an enhanced gaming experience.

The Fan Zone is open at Kha-lifa International Stadium until the fi nal match is played on De-cember 8.

The AR game has been spe-cially customised to incorporate elements of the Arabian Gulf Cup, while the mascot — Sodeifi — guides participants through their games, the statement notes.

Participants also have the op-portunity to play on 5G handsets powered by Vodafone’s high-speed 5G network.

Integrating game visual and audio content with the user’s en-vironment in real time, AR gam-ing showcased how Vodafone’s 5G GigaNet network transforms real-time gaming.

In turn, fans can get into the action in the VR Game that transports each participant right into the arena where they can show off their football skills.

Vodafone Qatar CEO Sheikh Hamad Abdulla al-Thani said, “It has been an exciting start to the highly anticipated Arabian Gulf Cup, making us even more

delighted to have extended the fan experience well beyond the pitch and into our Fan Zone.

“Vodafone Qatar demon-strates how cutting-edge tech-nology can transform the way people stay entertained and we hope that fans will truly enjoy our virtual reality gaming expe-riences as part of an unforgetta-ble Arabian Gulf Cup 2019.”

Organised by the Arab Gulf Cup Football Federation, the tournament kicked off with the participation of all eight nations — Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar.

As part of its sponsorship of the Gulf Cup, Vodafone Qatar is covering the two tournament venues — Khalifa International Stadium and Abdullah Bin Kha-lifa Stadium — with free Wi-Fi powered by its GigaNet network that will keep thousands of fans connected during the games.

This year’s winning team, comprising three students and their professor, was chosen from a field of 253 finalists.

The Vodafone Qatar Gulf Cup Fan Zone.

QATAR

Gulf TimesThursday, November 28, 20198

Qatar’s keenness to improve transportation hailedBy Shafeeq Alingal Staff Reporter

Qatar’s keenness to imple-ment innovative meas-ures to improve trans-

portation won accolades from experts at the International Road Transport Union (IRU) confer-ence yesterday.

“Qatar is taking eff orts to get innovative things done to bring in improvement in the trans-portation sector. The country has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Interna-tional Road Transport Union in order to develop joint activities in the transport sector and de-velop land transport projects in Qatar in line with best practices and international standards. The country is now looking to acti-vate International Road Trans-port Agreement (TIR) electronic system to provide a further boost to the transportation sector,” said Rani Wehbe, IRU special adviser to the Middle East.

He was presenting a paper on ‘Qatar’s accession to TIR — State of the matter’ during a session on the second day of the confer-ence.

Wehbe, who explained that the TIR will further ease pro-ceedings and expedite cargo movement, said it would fur-ther prevent irregularities in the transportation sector. “Training to implement the TIR electronic system has been carried and it

will be implemented in Qatar next year,” he added.

He hailed various entities, in-cluding the General Authority of Customs and Qatar Cham-ber, for showing much inter-est in implementing the TIR agreement.“Seventy-six coun-tries, including 12 Arab coun-tries, have signed the agreement while 62 of them have imple-mented it. Qatar is one of the countries to maintain security and international standards in transportation,” he noted.

The proceedings of the second day of the three-day conference,

titled ‘Ensuring Safe Mobility of People and Goods During Major Events in the State of Qatar’, were launched by Rashid Taleb al-Nabet, Assistant Undersecretary of Land Transport, Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC), at the Traffi c Depart-ment’s headquarters in Madinat Khalifa.

The second day witnessed various sessions in which ex-perts and offi cials contemplated measures to improve transpor-tation.

The conference has been or-ganised by Mowasalat (Karwa)

in partnership with the Traffic Department and National Traf-

fic Safety Committee, with the participation of national and

international organisations specialised in traffic safety.

Nasser Mamdouh al-Sham-mari, operations manager, LTS at Mowasalat, noted that Mow-asalat is initiating measures to ensure improvement in the country’s transportation sec-tor.

“We keep educating our staff and monitoring the capacity of vehicles and staff. The fitness of vehicles is monitored with the help of various stakehold-ers, including the MoTC and Traffic Department, in order to improve their performance. We

also monitor our staff in order to ensure that they follow the rules and regulations and pro-vide the best service,” he said.

Al-Shammari was speaking on ‘taxi and limo sector stake in road, traffic and driving safety’ during the session.

The session was also attend-ed by Dr Badr Yaroob, regional adviser, Transport and Logis-tics, UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, and Najla Malallah al-Jaber, land transport planning spe-cialist at the Land Transport Planning Department, MoTC.

Nasser Mamdouh al-Shammari, Dr Badr Yaroob and Najla Malallah al-Jaber attending the IRU conference. PICTURES: Thajudheen and suppliedRashid Taleb al-Nabet

Rani Wehbe

2017 models of BMW G 310 R, G 310 GS recalled

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI), in co-operation with Alfardan Motorcycles, dealer

of BMW motorcycles in Qatar, has an-nounced a recall of BMW G 310 R and G 310 GS models of 2017 due to possible corrosion on the brake calipers.

The recall campaign comes within the framework of the MoCI’s continuous ef-

forts to protect consumers and ensure that dealers follow up on vehicle defects and repairs.

The ministry has said it will co-or-dinate with the dealer to follow up on the maintenance and repair works, and communicate with customers to ensure that the necessary repairs are carried out. The MoCI has urged all customers

to report violations to its Consumer Pro-tection and Anti-Commercial Fraud De-partment, which processes complaints, enquiries and suggestions, through the call centre: 16001, e-mail: info@moci.gov.qa, Twitter: @MOCIQATAR, Insta-gram: MOCIQATAR, and the ministry’s mobile app for Android and iOS: MO-CIQATAR

Galeries Lafayette Doha launches

Qatari luxury abaya brand Malachite

Galeries Lafayette Doha has launched luxury abaya brand Malachite by Qatari designer

Amna Abdulwahab, celebrating the creations of yet another local talent.

Founded in 2017 in Doha, Malachite off ers “elegant handmade couture abaya using the fi nest silk, the best Swarovski crystals and the most exquisite pearls”, according to a press statement.

The boutique was ceremonious-ly launched on November 21, when guests enjoyed the fi rst look of Mala-chite’s Capsule Collection created ex-clusively for Galeries Lafayette Doha, while sipping on some Arabic coff ee.

“The perfectly set Arabic ambiance refl ected the brand’s philosophy that luxury is an experience,” the statement noted.

Addressing her audience, Abdul-wahab said: “We are glad to be a part of Galeries Lafayette Doha, especially because we share the Parisian depart-ment store’s vision of bringing togeth-er art and culture. This collaboration will introduce a new chapter in the world of abaya fashion. Malachite is all about empowering women as we be-lieve that with the right abaya, you can conquer the world.”

The name Malachite means a stone

of balance, abundance, manifestation and intention. It represents “personal growth and abundance of spirit”. The signature green colour of the brand “symbolises the rich and verdant hues of nature in full bloom”.

“The luxury brand’s vision and in-terest in details is portrayed in the fi ne selection of accessories and embel-lishments and delicate designs that manifest the luxurious experience of abaya couture.

Their distinguished work ensures excellence and a touch of fi nesse and couture in the making of abayas,” the statement added.

Malachite at Galeries Lafayette Doha.

QU students receive training from QRCS

Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) has trained a group of students from Qatar University (QU), in partial fulfi lment of their academic requirements for gradu-

ation in the 2019-2020 academic year.Over three consecutive months, six seniors at the Depart-

ment of Social Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, attended as full-time interns at QRCS’ Volunteering and Local Development Division.

They were engaged in the day-to-day activities of the division’s social workers, from receiving, examining and deciding on aid applications to conducting research on

social issues and phenomena to understand them and propose potential solutions.

Among the skills acquired by the Qatari students were one-on-one interviews, case studies, field visits, re-porting, listening, observation and data collection and analysis. The internship was part of a memorandum of understanding signed by QRCS and QU to work together on research topics of common concern, training and con-sultation programmes, and capacity-building in first aid, disaster management, social work and other fields of spe-cialty.

QATAR9Gulf Times

Thursday, November 28, 2019

QU, Universiti Utara Malaysia to strengthen co-operationQatar University (QU) has

hosted a memorandum of understanding (MoU)-

signing ceremony with Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), which will strengthen co-operation between the two academic institutions, im-prove understanding and seeks to establish mutual benefi cial collabo-rations to benefi t the students.

The event was attended by a number of dignitaries from Ma-laysia, including Tengku Sarafu-din Badlishah Ibni Al Aminul Ka-rim Sultan Sallehuddin, Crown

Prince of Kedah; Prof Dato’ Dr Ahmad Bashawir bin Hj Abdul Ghani, UUM vice-vhancellor and Dato’ Seri Utama Haji Mukhriz Tun Mahathir, Chief Minister of Kedah.

QU president Dr Hassan al-Der-ham was on hand to sign the agree-ment and spoke on the occasion, saying: “We are honoured to host the Universiti Utara Malaysia and to sign this agreement between both universities. It is important for universities to work together to collaborate in terms of faculty and

student exchange, as well as co-organising symposiums and work-shops.”

“Our relationship with Malaysia is very strong; His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani visited Malaysia on a state visit two years ago, when he signed several MoUs with diff erent institutions. It is essential for us to follow up with widening our collaboration with universities in Malaysia because Malaysia’s development is a model for us both economically, socially but also specifi cally in education

and higher education. Therefore we are honoured to have this collabora-tion and we look forward to working together,” he noted.

The UUM vice-chancellor also spoke on the occasion and expressed his appreciation, saying it was a great opportunity to visit the QU campus and meet the community.

He spoke about UUM and its ar-eas of focus, listing the universi-ties most recent achievements, and expressed enthusiasm on behalf of UUM in establishing a formal edu-cational collaboration with QU.

Off icials at the MoU-signing ceremony.

Generation Amazing, Jordan Hashemite charity kick off ‘football for development programme’Generation Amazing (GA)

has announced that it is partnering with the

Jordan Hashemite Charity Or-ganisation for Arab and Islamic Relief, Development and Co-op-eration (JHCO) in order to bring the ‘football for development programme’ to refugees and vul-nerable communities in Jordan and across the world.

Generation Amazing, the Su-preme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC)’s fl agship CSR pro-gramme, joins forces with JHCO, who are known for their cross-sec-toral relief and humanitarian work across Jordan and internationally, bringing emergency assistance and providing aid for victims of man-made and natural disasters.

The partnership aims to im-plement the Generation Amazing methodology into already exist-ing sport for development infra-structure in Jordan as well as ini-

tiate an exchange of knowledge and operating space in Jordan,

Qatar and worldwide, according to a press statement.

An offi cial partnership signing ceremony took place during the 2019 World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) held re-cently at Qatar National Conven-tion Centre in Doha.

The event was attended by JHCO chairman of the board of trustees Prince Rashid bin El Hassan, SC Secretary-General Hassan al-Thawadi and JHCO secretary-general Ayman al-Mufl eh.

“We are proud and excited to partner with such a renowned international humanitarian or-ganisation, and will be further enhancing our Generation Amazing reach and impact across the region and the world by working together with the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organisation over the next four years,” said al-Thawadi.

“JHCO has an impressive rep-utation for providing high-quali-

ty support to aff ected individuals and communities in Jordan, the Mena region and further afi eld. We see that this partnership will not only ensure that both GA and JHCO are able to serve refugee and other vulnerable populations over the coming years, but also innovate respectively as organi-sations working in the humani-tarian sector. We look forward to implementing this collaborative eff ort, which will use football for development to improve the lives of young people.”

The Generation Amazing ‘football for development pro-gramme’ works with participants to develop communication, lead-ership and teamwork skills while also promoting values like in-clusion, integration and gender equality and building a higher sense of active citizenship among youth through the power of foot-ball.

“The partnership between the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organisation and the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Leg-acy’s Generation Amazing pro-gramme provides a valuable op-portunity for both organisations to not only provide support to refugees and vulnerable commu-nities in Jordan and other coun-tries, but to also aid in modern-ising their skills and experience to help integrate them into host communities through sport for development,” al-Mufl eh noted.

Further elaborating on what the partnership is hoping to achieve, al-Mufl eh said JHCO is looking forward to extending the ways in which it can support refugee communities by further establishing alternative methods for interacting with young peo-ple.

“This partnership provides an essential opportunity to boost

the morale of refugees, giving them the stepping stones they need to improve their qual-ity of life. Hands-on work, such as that exhibited in this pro-gramme, will most defi nitely improve the relationship and instils trust between the charity and refugees, providing a solid ground for both parties to grow together and creating a mutually benefi cial environment, creat-ing the fi rst steps for socio-eco-nomic growth.”

More than 500,000 benefi ci-aries have been reached to date through Generation Amazing, which is currently operating in eight countries: Qatar, Oman, Nepal, Pakistan, Jordan, Leba-non, the Philippines and India.

The programme plans to ex-tend its outreach in the next few years by doubling that fi gure and impacting the lives of 1mn ben-efi ciaries by 2022.

Dignitaries at the agreement-signing ceremony.

Qatar Biobank expert showcases nation’s progress at conference

Qatar’s eff orts to advance preci-

sion medicine have been show-

cased to the world of biobanking

at an international conference in

the US.

Qatar Biobank director Dr

Nahla Afifi was one of a select

group of speakers invited to

present at the Cambridge Health-

tech Institute’s 11th International

Leaders in Biobanking Congress,

in Miami, Florida, US.

Dr Nahla explained how Qatar

Biobank’s dedicated work to

collect health information from

Qatari nationals and long-term

residents was progressing, and

helping to identify serious health

conditions such as diabetes, high

blood pressure and cardiovascu-

lar diseases.

Early counteraction against

such issues would be beneficial to

patients in Qatar to help improve

their long-term health.

An overview of the series of

the detailed tests that par-

ticipants go through at Qatar

Biobank – a member of Qatar

Foundation – was also shared,

including blood samples, waist

and hip measurements, grip

strength, retinal imaging and an

MRI scan.

Dr Nahla, who spoke on the

final afternoon of the three-day

congress, said: “It was a great

occasion to attend and much

knowledge was gained as ex-

pertise was shared by everyone.

Delegates from around the world

had the chance to learn about the

incredible progress that we have

achieved over the past few years

at Qatar Biobank.

“We are delighted to share

important knowledge with the

worldwide biobanking commu-

nity in such gatherings, which sig-

nificantly aids precision medicinal

support work across the world.

It was a pleasure and honour to

represent our great institution at

the congress.”

The address also highlighted

Qatar Biobank’s goal to con-

tinue collecting and analysing

important health data from the

Qatari population, and to carry

out further investigations, the

eventual aim being the realisation

of personalised medical care for

all citizens in Qatar and further

afield.

Over the coming years, Qatar

Biobank will collect health infor-

mation from 60,000 people in

Qatar – 20,000 participants have

already completing the screening

process.

Details of Qatar Biobank is

available online at www.qatar-

biobank.org.qa/home

Dr Nahla Afifi

MIA hosts public lecture by Hermitage Museum offi cialsThe Museum of Islamic Art (MIA)

has hosted a talk titled ‘The Her-mitage Days’ in collaboration with

the State Hermitage Museum of St Pe-tersburg as part of an ongoing partnership between the two cultural institutions.

Dr Mikhail Piotrovskiy, general direc-tor of the Hermitage, delivered a lec-ture titled ‘Museum in the 21st Century’, which shed light on the rich history of the museum and its approach to conservation and collection care.

During his talk, Dr Piotrovskiy deliv-ered a presentation on the collections ex-hibited across the museum as well as the iconic visits by Russian and international heads of state, celebrities and others.

The lecture was followed by one deliv-ered by Irina Guruleva, research offi cer in the Department of Scientifi c Restoration and Conservation, titled ‘Conservation in the Hermitage’.

Guruleva introduced the Hermitage’s best practice approach to collection care.

The lecture is the latest initiative by MIA “designed to allow an exchange of expertise and knowledge between cultur-al organisations and to expose members of the community to renowned cultural fi gures and benchmarks of museum prac-tice”, a press statement notes.

“Conservation forms a core part of safeguarding cultural heritage for genera-tions to come – both in Qatar and across the globe. We were pleased to host our guests from the Hermitage Museum and exchange best practice approaches with regards to conservation and collection care. We hope to continue and expand

this collaboration,” said Dr Julia Gonnel-la, director of the Museum of Islamic Art.

Dr Piotrovskiy said: “Our co-operation with MIA is an extremely important one, I remember talking in this room a year af-ter the opening of MIA, when there was

a conference on museology. Additionally, we participated in exhibitions hosted at MIA, including the recent ‘Syria Mat-ters’. Our teams also have good rela-tions — the team in Qatar has visited the Hermitage. It is a good and permanent

partnership by two wonderful museums.”The collaboration between MIA and

the Hermitage Museum “is a testament to the lasting legacy of the Year of Culture programme, of which Russia was a part-ner country in 2018”, the statement adds.

Dr Mikhail Piotrovskiy Dr Julia Gonnella Irina Guruleva

The Public Works Author-ity (Ashghal) joined hands with students from Al

Markhiya School for Girls to plant trees at the Al Markhiya Street Development Project site as part of the ongoing ‘Qatar Beautifi ca-tion and Our Kids Planting Trees’ campaign launched by the Su-pervisory Committee of Beautifi -cation of Roads and Public Places in Qatar.

The students expressed delight at participating in the campaign and said they would like to make Qatar greener by planting trees. Sondos Mohamed, a student, said: “Qatar is beautiful and I love it. I like to plant trees on its streets to make them more green.” The campaign has been launched as part of the ‘Plant Million Trees’ mission that is being imple-mented in co-ordination with the Ministry of Municipality and En-vironment (MME).

Apart from the MME, the su-pervisory committee works in co-ordination with several min-istries and other entities in Qatar, such as the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Minis-try of Culture and Sports, Qatar Museums, Qatar Rail and Private Engineering Offi ce, for project implementation. The commit-tee is responsible for fi ve major tasks, including the construction of central public parks, provision of dedicated lanes for pedestrians and bicycles, development of the Doha Corniche, development of Central Doha and increasing af-

forestation and greenery areas.The supervisory committee’s

campaign will enhance sustain-ability through minimising envi-ronmental pollution and reduc-ing the emission of CO2 through minimised consumption and conservation of energy resources. It also focuses on the provision

of more public transport op-tions aiming at reduced use of private cars and improve lifestyle through clean and safe transpor-tation.

The initiative works to ensure a healthy environment within residential neighbourhoods and places of public gather-

ing through increased aff ores-tation and landscaping, which will greatly help in reducing the temperature in cities. The Al Markhiya Street Development Project implemented by Ashghal includes planting 300 trees and development of 51,835sqm of landscape.

10 Gulf TimesThursday, November 28, 2019

QATAR

A delegation from the United Nations Off ice of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS) yesterday visited the Shura Council. The UN delegation was briefed on Qatar’s eff orts in supporting the least developed countries, achieving comprehensive and sustainable development therein and Qatar’s role as an active member of the international community. The UN delegation was received by a member of the Shura Council, Nasser bin Sulaiman al-Hayder, and a number of Shura Council off icials.

UN delegation visits Shura Council

Secretary-General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Martin Chungong has received a written message from HE the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Aff airs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani pertaining to the relations between Qatar and the IPU and ways of promoting them. The message was handed over by the Permanent Representative of the State of Qatar to the UN Off ice in Geneva ambassador Ali Khalfan al-Mansouri, during his meeting with the IPU Secretary-General.

FM sends message to IPU Secretary-General

Ashghal continues to plant trees as part of green campaign

Students from Al Markhiya School for Girls.

Swiss School of Qatar receives prestigious Triple IB authorisationBy Ayman AdlyStaff Reporter

Swiss International School of Qatar (SISQ) has re-ceived Triple IB authori-

sation (PYP, MYP, DP) from the International Baccalaureate Or-ganisation in Geneva, head of school Philip Bradley announced at a ceremony held on the school premises yesterday.

Accordingly, the school is now authorised to off er its students the Primary Years Programme, Middle Years Programme and Di-ploma Programme of the Inter-national Baccalaureate (IB).

Bradley said the school cur-rently has some 720 students from 69 nationalities and is con-sidered one of the most sought-after schools in the country. He stressed that “the school was borne out of the vision of HE the Attorney-General Dr Ali bin Fetais al-Marri, president of the school board, as he wanted to

ensure that it was truly interna-tional by attracting students and teachers from across the globe.” “Rich in language — English, Ar-abic and French, we continue to grow and, within only two years, we became an authorised IB con-tinuum school — PYP, MYP and DP. Every step has made us bet-ter as individuals and better as a school,” Bradley said while ad-dressing a gathering of students, their parents and a number of guests who included offi cials from the Ministry of Education and Higher Education as well as Mark Malley, CEO of Bellevue Education, who came from Lon-don to take part in the event.

In his address, Malley recalled when he met HE Dr al-Marri six years ago to talk about the school project. HE Dr al-Marri told him that he needs to create a truly in-ternational school and discussed what should be done to realise such a vision, he said.

“Now the school has set the highest bar in the GCC region as

HE Dr al-Marri assured me that he would give his full support to the project. It has become a school of choice in Qatar and we are proud of it. The school enjoys the eff orts of a highly dedicated staff of 100 members on all levels, and I really appreciate that we have wonderful students, teach-ers and staff , who constitute the real asset of the school, besides being a sophisticated school as a joint venture of Bellevue and Qa-tar,” Malley noted.

He added that the school serves students aged from 3-18 years, and the new accreditation would enable the students to join any university around the world.

The ceremony featured a choir performance by pupils of the school, who started with the Qatar national anthem and then performed some other songs ac-companied by the piano. Even-tually, the students, parents and members of the school staff posed for photographs to mark the occasion.

Off icials mark the occasion. PICTURES: Ram Chand

The event was attended by students, their parents and a number of guests.

QATAR

11Gulf Times Thursday, November 28, 2019

Doha emerges as major cruise hubFrom Page 1

HE al-Baker said: “Receiv-ing turnaround calls is a great milestone for our cruise tourism, that will support the hospital-ity, retail and aviation sectors as thousands of passengers spend time exploring Qatar.

“We’re particularly pleased that our cruise visitors can expe-rience the excitement of regional and international sporting events taking place this season. Together with support from our partners in public and private sectors, in-cluding global partners like Costa Cruises, Qatar is on its way to be-come a distinctive cruise hub in the region,” he said.

The arrival of Costa Diadema comes as a result of an agree-ment signed between QNTC and Costa Cruises in September last year to develop cruise tourism in Qatar. With a capacity of 4,974 passengers and over 1,200 crew members, Costa Diadema is the latest addition to the fl eet of Costa Cruises launched in 2014 and is currently the largest ves-sel fl ying an Italian fl ag.

“Costa Cruises was the fi rst cruise company in the world to start regular cruises in the Ara-bian Gulf back in 2006. As a pio-neer in the cruise industry, it is part of Costa DNA to constantly innovate its product, off ering new features and destinations with the aim to deliver guests an unforgettable cruise experience. We are glad Costa Diadema is now operating in an increasingly interesting destination such as Qatar, which has a huge poten-tial for the cruise industry and is a strong addition to the regional itinerary”, said Neil Palomba, president of Costa Cruises.

Qatar has multiple advantages that make it a perfect turna-

round cruise hub. The expanded network of Qatar Airways cover-ing over 160 destinations world-wide provides visitors numerous options to suit the cruise itiner-ary (passengers from seven des-tinations in six countries across Europe were able to arrive in Doha this morning on board fl ights landing within a span of less than two hours).

The passengers are further fa-cilitated by the speedy immigra-tion system at the fi ve-star Ha-mad International Airport.

Running parallel to the cruise season is an exciting winter cal-endar of events featuring FIFA Club World Cup 2019 matches, music concerts by global artists and numerous retail, travel and hospitality promotions that the cruise passengers will be able to enjoy during their stay in Qatar.

As a result of various initia-tives by QNTC and its partners, Qatar’s cruise industry has seen remarkable growth during the last few years.

The 2018/19 season achieved 121% growth in the number of cruise passengers and 100% growth in the number of cruise ships, with over 140,000 pas-sengers arriving aboard 44 ships, including 38 mega ships, which typically carry between 3,000 and 4,000 passengers and crew.

The 2019/20 season is ex-pected to be even bigger, with over 186,000 passengers and over 61,000 crew arriving on 74 ships. Five ships will make their maiden calls to Doha this season. In addition to the 16 turnaround calls, it is also the fi rst season where 9 ships will be staying overnight at Doha Port, giving the passengers ample time to ex-plore the destination’s off erings. Also 45 ships are making transit calls during this season.

Costa Diadema docked at Doha Port. HE Akbar al-Baker presented a plaque to the ship’s Captain Georgio Moretti.

Qatar attends Bosphorus summit in IstanbulQNAIstanbul

The State of Qatar is taking part in the 10th Bospho-rus Summit which kicked

off in Istanbul yesterday with a delegation led by HE the Min-ister of Commerce and Industry Ali bin Ahmed al-Kuwari.

The 10th Bosphorus Summit which runs until tomorrow un-der the theme, “Towards a New World Order” features seminars and discussion panels includ-ing a discussion session entitled, “Bilateral Relations between Qa-tar and Turkey” to be attended by CEO of Qatar Financial Cent-er Yousuf al-Jaida.

The Summit brings together

more than 3,000 participants, including heads of states and governments, ministers and businessmen, from 80 countries to discuss the challenges facing the world economy and the chal-lenges of globalisation, and the means of making trade co-oper-ation among countries a success.

The Summit also highlights the investment climate in Tur-

key and the future of world trade and its role in changing the glo-bal system, in addition to the digital transformation and the increasing role of computers and artifi cial intelligence as a com-mercial and fi nancial tool.

In a speech during the Sum-mit, HE al-Kuwari said that the Bosphorus Summit represents one of the most important inter-

national platforms for exchang-ing views and foreseeing future prospects in all fi elds.

The Minister underlined that the participation of the State of Qatar stems from its keenness on consolidating the integrated strategic co-operation frame-works with Turkey, noting that the State of Qatar looks forward to building new investment

partnerships to support the multilateral international co-operation.

On the Qatari economy, the Minister said that the State of Qatar has succeeded in imple-menting a robust strategy to fortify the Qatari economy and move forward in achieving its National Vision 2030, based on its own capabilities and strong

strategic partnerships with vari-ous countries of the world.

The Minister noted that the positive performance of the na-tional economy is the fruit of Qatar’s drive to consolidate its policy of economic diversifi ca-tion in accordance with the goals set by the National Development Strategy 2018-2022.

Business Page 2

Technical data sheet of Costa Diadema

Shipyard: Fincantieri, Marghera Gross Tonnage: 132,500 Length: 306 metres Breadth: 37.2 metres Height: 60.29 metresDecks: 19 (14 passenger decks)Propulsion: 2 x 21,000kWCruising speed: 20 knots (top speed: 22.5 knots); Crew: 1,253Cabins: 1,862 including 130 cab-ins and 11 Suite inside Samsara area, 756 cabins with private balcony, and 64 Suites with private balconyPromenade: Over 500 metresRestaurants: 7 Swimming pools: 3 (one with a retractable roof) Jacuzzis: 8

Sports facilities: multipurpose court, jogging trackWellness Center: Samsara spa on four levels (over 6,200 m2) with gym, spa baths, thalas-sotherapy pool, treatment rooms, sauna, Turkish bath, UVA solarium, cabins and suites.Entertainment: Theatre on three levels, “Star Laser,” with the “Laser Maze” and “Laser shoot-ing” games, Video Arcade area, Internet Point – Wi-Fi, shopping centre, casino disco, 4D cinema, Kids’ and teens’ areas: Squok Club with a pool for children, and a reproduction of a Galleon and a Castle Big Screen on the central pool deck

Cruise passengers enjoying a number of activities at the terminal. Costa Diadema passengers enjoying authentic Qatari hospitality at the Doha Port terminal.

A warm welcome for Costa Diadema passengers yesterday.

Gulf Times Thursday, November 28, 201912

WellbeingHOL STIC

By Ghanim al-Sulaiti

Yesterday, I accidentally ate dairy

in the form of yoghurt branded

as an alternative to regular dairy

yogurt, here in Doha. On the

menu of the popular cafe, I opted

for ‘coconut yoghurt’ given it is

made from coconut milk, and a

good vegan alternative...or so I

expected.

Given the cafe was offering the

coconut yoghurt as an alterna-

tive to the regular yoghurt, I

didn’t even think to check, that

all may not be what it seems.

After consuming most of the

yoghurt, I started to have some

doubt and went on to enquire

with staff as to how long they

had been serving the vegan

alternative. It turned out the

coconut yoghurt was not

genuine coconut yoghurt made

from coconut milk, but instead

was ordinary, dairy yoghurt with

artificial coconut flavouring. I

was frustrated, angry and came

to the realise that I had just

consumed dairy for the first time

in six years.

Unfortunately, our world is not

as vegan as I sometimes wish it

were. There are uses of dairy in

things one would suspect would

be vegan, but you can’t be too

careful and it’s always a good

idea to double check when try-

ing new products — even when

something is described as an

alternative.

Restaurants may claim to un-

derstand what veganism is, and

they may be keen to jump on to

the fast-growing trend of offer-

ing vegan food but that doesn’t

mean they don’t make mistakes,

haven’t trained their staff in the

area of veganism, or are simply…

wrong.

I’ve even seen things labelled

vegan that list whey, honey,

dairy, and eggs in products’ in-

gredients. It’s always a good idea

to check, educate, and have con-

versations to really ensure that

products are genuinely vegan,

and while veganism has grown

this year faster than any other

year there still isn’t a worldwide

understanding.

Despite my anger, I also had to

adopt some understanding. The

reality is that we live in a non-

vegan world and this is just an-

other reminder that we all need

to do our best to keep educating

and helping people understand

why we choose to not consume

animal products.

Encouraging more vegan op-

tions at restaurants is a great

way to make vegan eating easier

for the millions of people who

are moving away from animal

products — so we have to stay

positive. I spoke with the café

staff and went on to explain that

they could very easily off er genu-

ine coconut yoghurt, which would

encourage vegan visitors and

would also mean the company

were off ering a sustainable, vegan,

healthy version of their dish.

I think that here in the Middle

East, once more restaurant

owners get an idea of how easy,

delicious and profitable it can be

to serve vegan food, it won’t take

much to get them to add it to the

menu permanently.

Have you had accidentally

consumed non-vegan food as a

result of a restaurant’s mistake?

The author is an expert in vegan wellbeing and health. Instagram handle: @Ghanim92

Slow and steady wins the race

By Sanah Thakur

The universal experience of riding

an elevator can be summed up in

one word: awkward. And time has

changed nothing, whether maga-

zines and pagers were companions

or highly advanced cellphones – the

journey essentially involves a state

of awkwardness.

I’m the type of person who

loves being attentive to human

behaviour in social settings and

that’s why it intrigued me why we

all conformed to the unspoken

etiquette of elevator rides. Isn’t it

funny that we hardly ever witness

anything drastically diff erent from

silence, prolonged stares at the

level buttons or looking intensely

downwards? Imagine someone

walking in screaming at the top of

their voice or deciding to crouch on

the floor. That would be uncomfort-

able. Even having someone walk in

and stand in the opposite direction

of the door would create confusion,

because hey, no one really ever

does that.

My curiosity escorted my fingers to

the keypad of my laptop, to type in

‘awkward elevator rides’ and to my

surprise, curiosity had led research-

ers to the same. The characteristic

stance of standing uncomfortable

in tension, (what I’ve referred to

as the awkwardness), is believably

instinctive, according to Profes-

sor Dario Maestripieri from the

University of Chicago. The innate

way of responding to danger has

also remained eternally the same,

for about a million years! Behaviour

in elevators is mostly odd and while

we believe its rational thinking,

Professor Maestripieri disagrees.

Entering into close proximity with

strangers triggers a protective

stance because the mind perceives

a threat of aggression. He explains

that while this threat is not real,

our mind responds as if it is and

therefore produces protective

behaviours. This explains why we

often walk into an elevator and

move towards the corners or at an

arm’s length from the people inside

it. The confined space creates a

feeling of discomfort, as we aren’t

used to being socially intimate with

people we ‘really don’t know’.

Typical behaviours one can spot in

an elevator are usually disguised

distractions from the silence. Tex-

ting consistently, staring into the

depths of the insecurity highlight-

ing mirror or essentially anything

to avoid eye contact. Lee Gray,

Associate Dean at the University of

North Carolina, and also ‘Eleva-

tor Historian’, comments on the

oddness of elevator behaviour in

his NPR interview. “Well, I think

one of the things that first, to sort

of characterise it, is, we’re all ac-

customed to go into the buildings.

We all know buildings are filled

with technology. But this is the only

piece of technology that looks like

a lot of other spaces in the building.

In other words, it looks like a room,

although it’s a very, very small one.

And we all know how we behave

in rooms. We give each other an

appropriate amount of little, polite,

social distance between ourselves.

And that’s all fine until we’re in the

tiny, tiny room – that’s the elevator”.

It’s interesting to notice how space

can change social behaviour and

bring it to a level of adolescent

awkwardness. Often, I’ve walked

into two people engaging in intense

conversation and the minute I walk

into the elevator, it seems almost

rude to continue speaking because

the norms of behaviour change

instantly. Elevator rides are essen-

tially social situations which change

with every individual’s entry and

exit, creating a dance in behaviour-

al responses. Hence why, it never

feels normal to ride an elevator

unless you’re completely alone.

While the eternity of this awkward

behaviour seems to be going

nowhere, I did find relief in one

study on releasing this behavioural

tension. Maestripieri’s research

studies revealed that the simple act

of smiling could eliminate the likeli-

hood of aggression. It seems easy

to walk into an elevator and smile at

the occupants, yet I can count the

number of times I’ve experienced

a journey with smiling strangers.

So the next time you walk into

an elevator, remember, however

awkward it gets, you can always

just SMILE.

The author can be contacted on Instagram @sincerelysanah

The Eternal Awkwardness Of Elevator Rides

I ate dairy

Wellness Meal Plan

Sweet Potato Hummus

Ingredients:

2 cups of boiled chickpeas

1 and 1/2 cup of chickpea water

1/2 a cup of yoghurt (substitute dairy yoghurt with vegan yoghurt to

make vegan hummus)

1 lemon

1/4 cup tahini

1 sweet potato (peeled, sliced and baked)

1 tsp of each of the following spices:

1- salt

2- black pepper

3- smoked paprika

4- garlic powder

5- chilli flakes

Method:Incorporate all the ingredients in a food processor or a blender and

there you have a tasty silky smooth sweet potato hummus.

Tip:Keep in the fridge up to 4 days and enjoy it as a snack with some

veggies; or spread a generous amount on toast with some lebnah,

avocados and chilli flakes!

Enjoy the taste of eating right!

By Shefa Ali

During a one on one coaching ses-

sion recently, a woman with tears

in her eyes asked me, ‘How do I

overcome fear?’ I could almost feel

the pain in her heart. She went on

to say that she lives her life afraid

all the time. The object of her fear

changes as time passes, but the

fear remains constant.

In my opinion, this omnipresent

fear is the biggest obstacle to our

peace, happiness and progress in

life. When I say fear, I don’t neces-

sarily mean fear of danger for life.

What I am talking about are all the

things that make us anxious, nerv-

ous, tense and stressed. The things

that give us the feeling that we

need to control our surroundings.

In my experience, the root of fear

is distrust. Maybe we feel we have

been betrayed, injured or abused.

Those feelings lead us to decide

that the world and those around

us cannot be trusted. Sometimes

this can result in us losing the faith

which is so important in life.

So what was my answer to the lady?

The answer to fear is to firmly root

ourselves in God. When we realise

that God is always with us, always

for us, we will never be afraid,

regardless of the circumstances we

find ourselves in.

Our family and friends may betray

us. They may sadden us or hurt us,

but if we give ourselves to God, if

we make our relationship with Him

our first priority, then we will never

be broken inside; we will always be

cared for. We must realise that if

God can provide for even the small-

est insects, he certainly will provide

for us.

The author is a consultant and coach. Instagram handle: @miss_shefa, Website: missshefa.com

The $64,000,000 question

By Reem Abdulrahman Jassim al-Muftah

I see a lot of people trying and starting to get healthy but then also see a lot of them

struggling with maintaining their new, and usually sudden, lifestyle changes; so I keep ask-ing myself why… For example, a colleague will tell me that they started a new diet, started work-ing out and are hoping to reach their goals within a month. A friend will also tell me that they started eating better, having smaller portions, began gym-ming 6 times a week and can’t wait to see their new body. A family member will also explain to me how they started having more fruit and healthier snacks and started walking in the morn-ing and can’t wait to feel and look better. Okay…so what are the red fl ags in all these state-ments? It seems people keep hoping to change overnight and to be strong enough to stick to lifestyle changes automatically. That’s good, don’t get me wrong, but they all stopped a week into their wellness journeys. I keep hearing a lot of high expecta-tions from people, their chal-lenging goals and how they start imagining the changes simply

taking place and how easy it is to actually live a healthy life-style. Do you notice yourself or someone else yo-yo dieting or working out in phases like a few days in and then stopping again and always complaining that they aren’t seeing results? Due to the trend of health and well-ness and how everyone wants to get on the wagon, I’m really worried that people just behave as if they maintain a healthy life-style but aren’t because they are ashamed of their struggles with the change. But the real problem here is that then they start get-ting sad, disappointed, angry or maybe even depressed because they aren’t see any changes or because they are surrounded by people who are on track or make it seem like they are not success-ful yet. Yes, the trend is positive, but we have to look at it with simple eyes and realise that it is a challenge, but still a realistic goal to achieve, but we shouldn’t get sucked into a world where we beat ourselves up because

we aren’t meeting our own un-realistic expectations. We have to actually stop and be real with ourselves. In this case, what is the secret key to success? Well, I personally believe that the one of the most powerful keys and part of the criteria of living a healthy lifestyle is consistency. Isn’t it harder to get back on track all those times than staying on track in the fi rst place? So can a person be consistent?

Be realistic, manage your ex-pectations, have goals but be real with yourself.

Be open to change, you might have to remove somethings from your home, from your life or even people that are bad infl uences.

Monitor your progress, you don’t have to track yourself and put that kind of pressure on yourself, but take general notes on the changes you are making and noticing.

Be accountable with yourself. You are your own boss when it comes to your health, so if you aren’t following good habits you

should hold yourself account-able.

Be real with yourself, be mind-ful, think of what you are doing with every decision you make and how it links to your goals.

Tips to reach consistency:1- Think about what really

motivates you and keep remind-ing yourself of it.

2- Make sure your goals are re-alistic and manageable accord-ing to your time and priorities.

3- Observe your food and wa-ter intake; eat and drink mind-fully.

4- Have a smart game plan for when you are eating out or or-dering in.

5- Keep water readily avail-able.

6- Observe your sleep sched-ule.

7- Leave a mat near your bed to remind you to stretch.

8- Observe the total amount of time you are actually physically active each day.

9- Place your workout stuff

near your room door as a re-minder.

10- Monitor the time you are on your phone and have other distractions around, acknowl-edge those distractions.

11- Place healthy snacks around you and remove those that aren’t.

12- Keep fresh easily available.13- Don’t spend too much

time with those who don’t follow clean eating habits.

14- Put reminders in your phone calendar.

15- Have your partner, close friend or family call you out on your bad habits, such as not eat-ing clean all day or skipping your workout for a few days in a row. If you aren’t comfortable, join a group or have a diary that keeps track of your habits and monitor yourself.

16- Don’t let travelling or hol-idays get your off track.

The author is a wellness advocate and infl uencer @keys2balance.

REGION/ARAB WORLD/AFRICA13Gulf Times

Thursday, November 28, 2019

The black boxes from two French military helicop-ters that collided in Mali killing 13 soldiers have been found, a French military spokesman said yesterday. The crash occurred late Monday during an opera-tion against jihadists in the Liptako region, near the borders with Burkina Faso and Niger. It was the heaviest single loss for the French military in nearly four decades. “The two black boxes from the heli-copters have been recovered, they will be handed over to the relevant authorities to be analysed,” the spokesman, Colonel Frederic Barbry, told BFMTV. Three helicopters and a squadron of Mirage jets had arrived on Monday to support ground troops.

Suspected militant rebels have killed about 15 people in east Congo, an off icial said yesterday, the latest in attacks causing anger at perceived inaction of the army and UN troops. The raid occurred over-night in the village of Malika, near the city of Oicha in a forested region near the Ugandan border, said Donat Kibwana, the administrator of Beni territory. Kibwana blamed the attack on the Allied Demo-cratic Forces (ADF), a militants rebel group originally from Uganda that has operated for decades in Congo. They have killed at least 80 people in 14 raids since the army launched an operation against them late last month, according to UN figures.

The UN peacekeeping mission in DR Congo said it was launching a probe after gathering evidence that its troops may have killed a young demonstrator, as a fresh protest unfolded in the east of the country yesterday. “The elements that we have indicate that it was Blue Helmets who were responsible for the death of this young man,” said a spokesman for the mission, Monusco. The death occurred on Tuesday in the eastern city of Beni where angry locals have been demonstrating against Monusco. In a statement, Monusco quoted mission chief Leila Zerrougui as say-ing the man “was reportedly killed in an exchange with Blue Helmets as he was about to throw a petrol bomb.”

The US and Britain yesterday expressed concern over elections in Tanzania where strongman Presi-dent John Magufuli’s party won 99% of seats, saying the vote lacked credibility.The long-ruling CCM party ran almost entirely unopposed in local government polls on November 24. The opposition boycotted, citing violence and intimidation that rights groups say have become a hallmark of Magufuli’s rule. His party clinched most of the 16,000 seats for street and village leaders — influential posts essential for grassroots campaign-ing ahead of polls next year in which Magufuli is expected to seek re-election.

South Africa yesterday said it was introducing an aff ordable, cutting-edge drug to fight HIV in the country with the largest number of people living with the Aids-causing virus. Hailing the new anti-retroviral drug as “the fastest way to reduce HIV viral load”, the health department said it will start rolling out the advanced pill known as TLD on December 1, international World Aids day.Health Minister Zweli Mkhize unveiled the pioneering drug at a ceremony in southwestern KwaZulu-Natal, the province with the country’s highest prevalence rates, where more than a quarter of the population is infected.

Black boxes from crashed helicopters found in Mali

Suspected militants kill 15 in latest east Congo attack

UN launches probe over protester death

Tanzania vote irregular, lacked credibility: US, UK

South Africa to launch advanced new HIV drug

TRAGEDY STRIFEUNREST ELECTION HEALTH

Namibians vote in tight contest clouded by economic crisisReuters Windhoek

Namibians voted yes-terday in what was ex-pected to be the tough-

est contest yet for the party that has ruled for three decades of independence as the southern African country wrestles with an economic crisis and its big-gest corruption scandal.

President Hage Geingob, Na-mibia’s third leader since the sparsely populated and mostly arid country freed itself from the shackles of apartheid South Africa in 1990, is seeking a sec-ond and fi nal term from 1.3mn registered voters.

Geingob’s ruling Swapo party has successfully tackled some of the problems left after dec-ades of neglectful rule, fi rst by Germany and then by White minority South African admin-istrations.

Swapo is now contending with an economy in recession for nearly three years, one of Namibia’s worst droughts and its biggest graft scandal — all of

which have conspired to make this vote unexpectedly tough for Geingob, who won by 87% last time.

“I campaigned like hell but if I lose I will accept that.

I am a democrat,” Geingob told reporters shortly after vot-ing while Popular Democratic Movement opposition party leader McHenry Venaani said

he was “very confi dent of win-ning”. Geingob faces nine chal-lengers including Panduleni It-ula, a dentist-turned-politician who is a Swapo member but running as an independent.

Itula is popular with young people, nearly half of whom are unemployed.

Concurrent legislative polls will elect 96 members of parlia-

ment, testing Swapo’s 77-seat majority.

Polls opened at 7am (0500 GMT) and close later. Results are expected within 48 hours.

Under Swapo, the former guerrilla movement that fought for independence, the propor-tion of Namibians living below the poverty line fell by three quarters, from nearly 70% in

1993 to 17% in 2016, accord-ing to the World Bank. The economy has been marred by a drought that ravaged agricul-tural export crops, as well as by unprofi tably low prices for Na-mibia’s main hard commodities, uranium and diamonds.

The Bank of Namibia expects the economy to contract by 1.7% in 2019, which would be its third year of declines in a row.

A scandal in which two min-isters were alleged to have conspired to dole out fi shing licences to Iceland’s biggest fi shing fi rm, Samherji, in return for kickbacks has also taken the shine off the ruling party.

“I want change. I am sick and tired about corruption in this country which no one is doing an-ything about,” 55-year-old busi-nessman Jacques Kotzee said after voting. But loyalty to the former guerrilla movement remains high. “Namibia has gone through a very terrible time,” Leevylee Abrahams said after casting his vote. “But I’m voting for continuity because I believe that this government can really improve the lives of people, given a chance again.”

Striking doctors warn of ‘silent genocide’AFPHarare

Senior Zimbabwean doc-tors joined hundreds of junior colleagues in a mass

walkout this week, warning of a “silent genocide” caused by dire conditions in hospitals.

The public sector doctors de-manded the reinstatement of 440 junior colleagues, who were fi red after downing tools in a pay dispute in September.

It was unclear how many sen-ior doctors had gone on strike.

A severe economic downturn has forced infl ation to triple digits in Zimbabwe but salaries have failed to keep pace with price hikes, pushing many serv-ices beyond the reach of most people.

Doctors in the public health system say the value of their pay shrank more than 15-fold in the past year — a legacy of economic mismanagement under ex-pres-ident Robert Mugabe.

Many government workers — junior doctors among them — have stopped work because they cannot aff ord to commute.

In a letter dated Tuesday ad-dressed to Zimbabwe’s largest

hospital, the senior doctors who all work in the public sector said until all the fi red doctors were reinstated, they would “no long-er able to off er any emergency services”.

“We do not accept that one can be dismissed for being inca-pacitated to come to work in an unsafe environment,” the group said in a separate statement is-sued yesterday.

The doctors said hospitals were lacking basic equipment and staff , the situation becom-ing so bad that it amounted to “a silent genocide (which) contin-ues to be perpetrated upon the people of Zimbabwe”.

State hospitals cater for the majority of Zimbabweans who cannot aff ord private care. Wealthier patients including top politicians usually seek care in neighbouring South Africa or Asian countries

A senior doctor who asked for his name to be withheld said the situation had become untenable.

“There is no public health in Zimbabwe at the moment, eve-rything has come to a standstill, even those who were providing emergency services have given up,” said the doctor.

Namibians wait in line to access a polling station during the presidential and parliamentary elections in Windhoek, yesterday.

Five shot dead as Iraq protesters block roads to press reformsReuters Baghdad

Protesters blocked roads with burning tyres in southern Iraq and clashed

with police in Baghdad yester-day, aiming to use economic disruption as leverage to push the government from power and root out state corruption.

Security forces shot dead two people in Kerbala overnight and two in Baghdad yesterday, while a fi fth person died from gunfi re by security forces during pro-tests in the southern oil capital of Basra.

Demonstrators prevented government employees get-ting to work in Basra by install-ing concrete barriers painted as mock-up coffi ns of relatives killed in weeks of unrest, a Reu-ters witness said.

Iraq’s large protests are the most complex challenge to the ruling class that has controlled state institutions and patronage networks since a 2003 US-led invasion toppled dictator Sadd-am Hussein.

Young protesters say politi-cians are corrupt and blame them for Iraq’s failure to recover

from decades of confl ict and sanctions despite two years of relative calm following the de-feat of Islamic State.

The unrest has shattered

that calm and authorities warn against its exploitation by armed groups, especially should protest-related violence spread to northern Iraq where IS mili-

tants are waging an insurgency.The extremist group claimed

three bomb blasts in Baghdad overnight which killed at least six people, but provided no

evidence for the claim.Government reform has

amounted to little more than a handful of state jobs for gradu-ates, stipends for the poor and pledges of election reform which lawmakers have barely begun to discuss.

“First we were demanding re-form and an end to corruption,” said Ali Nasser, an unemployed engineering graduate protesting in Basra.

“But after the government started killing peaceful protest-ers we won’t leave before it’s been toppled together with the corrupt ruling class.”

Alia, a 23-year-old medical student, said: “The reforms are just words. We want actions. We’ve had 16 years of words without actions. We have been robbed for 16 years.”

Security forces meanwhile shot dead more demonstrators.

In the holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, they used live ammunition against protesters, killing two overnight.

Two more were killed in clashes near Baghdad’s Ahrar Bridge yesterday. Near Basra one protester died of wounds from gunfi re, police and med-ics said, bringing the toll since

unrest broke out on Oct 1 to 344 people dead nationwide.

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi expressed concern over both the violence and the fi nan-cial toll of unrest late on Tues-day, but mostly blamed uniden-tifi ed saboteurs for the damage.

“There have been martyrs among protesters and security forces, many wounded and ar-rested...we’re trying to iden-tify mistakes” made by security forces in trying to put down the protests, he told a televised cab-inet meeting.

“The blocking of ports has cost billions of dollars.”

Protesters have blocked traf-fi c into Iraq’s main commodities port near Basra this month and tried to surround the Central Bank in Baghdad, apparently bent on causing economic dis-ruption where calls for removal of the government have failed.

The government is moving slowly in enacting any kind of change.

Promises of electoral reform and an early general election have yet to be ratifi ed by parlia-ment, and the political class has closed ranks in the face of a sig-nifi cant challenge to its grip on power.

Troops arrest six Palestinians in West Bank

QNA Occupied Jerusalem

The Israeli occupation forces arrested yester-day six Palestinians from

diff erent parts of the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian sources said that the Israeli forces arrested four Palestinians from Beit Kahil and Deir Samet in Hebron.

In occupied Jerusalem, the Is-raeli occupation forces arrested two other young Palestinians after they raided their homes in Silwan, south of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces raided Ras al-Amoud neigh-bourhood in Silwan and arrested three youths.

Meanwhile, Israel’s defence minister announced that the bodies of Palestinian attack-ers will no longer be returned to their families, in a policy change meant to deter “fi ghters.”

Naftali Bennett, who took up the post earlier this month, said he had ordered a complete halt to the release of the bodies, regard-less of which organisation the fi ghter, or attempted fi ghters, was part of.

The army and defence estab-lishment were informed of the change, which will take full ef-fect after approval by the Securi-ty Cabinet. Israel holds onto the bodies of Palestinian fighters to prevent funerals celebrat-ing their martyrdom, and to use them as bargaining chips to trade for the remains of Israeli soldiers being held by fighter groups. Two Israeli civilians thought to be suffering from mental illnesses are presumed to be held captive by Hamas, the group which rules Gaza, as are the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in 2014.

According to the Jerusalem Centre for Legal Aid, a Pales-tinian group that tracks the issue, Israel is currently hold-ing the bodies of 51 Palestin-ians, including that of Sami Abu Diak, a prisoner who died of cancer in Israeli custody this week.

An Iraqi demonstrator grapples with a tear gas canister amid clashes with security forces in the capital Baghdad’s Al-Rasheed street near Al-Ahrar bridge, yesterday, during ongoing anti-government demonstrations.

Lebanon petrol stations set to begin nationwide strike todayReuters Beirut

Lebanon’s petrol stations will begin an open-end-ed strike today nation-

wide, a union representing them said yesterday, amid the country’s worst economic cri-sis in decades.

Protests that have swept Lebanon since Oct 17 have added to deep strains in the fi nancial system, worsening a hard currency crunch that has hit the ability of many im-

porters to bring in goods.The union said it was strik-

ing because of losses sustained while using a parallel market for dollars relied on to import fuel, according to a statement cited by state news agency NNA. The Lebanese pound’s value on the parallel market, the only source of dollars for most importers, has slumped since the protests erupted, currently trading about 40% weaker than the offi cial rate.

The central bank said last month that it would prioritise foreign currency reserves for

fuel, medicine and wheat, but buyers tapping the facility are still required to supply 15% of their own dollar needs.

Lebanon’s energy ministry is set to trial a state tender for gasoline next month after fuel importers threatened to raise prices. The ministry sets price guidelines for fuel sta-tions, who typically import the gasoline themselves. The Lebanese Economic Bodies, a private sector group that includes industrialists and bankers, called off a separate three-day strike.

Khamenei says ‘dangerous’ plot foiled

AFPTehran

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayat-ollah Ali Khamenei yesterday said his sanctions-hit coun-

try had foiled a “very danger-ous” plot after violent demon-strations triggered by a fuel price hike.

The demonstrations fi rst fl ared on November 15, hours af-ter a midnight shock announce-ment that petrol prices would immediately go up by as much as 200% in the Islamic republic.

A near-total Internet black-out was imposed as the protests turned violent, with police sta-

tions attacked, petrol pumps torched and shops looted.

Connectivity was restored for much of the country after the unrest was quashed within days, and mobile access was returning late yesterday.The outage aimed to temper shows of dissent and stem the fl ow of videos of vio-lence being shared online, rights groups said.

It also made it diffi cult to as-sess the full extent of the blood-shed. Offi cials in Iran have con-fi rmed fi ve people were killed and so far announced about 500 arrests, including of some 180 “ringleaders”. London-based Amnesty International said on Monday that 143 people were

killed, citing what it said were “credible reports”. Mansoureh Mills, an Amnesty researcher, said in Paris that protesters took to the streets because they no longer felt they had anything to lose. “They can’t get a job, they can’t feed their families...so we are going to continue to see pro-tests like this” periodically, she said in a telephone interview.

“Consequently, therefore, we are going to see more crack-downs...it’s like a vicious circle.”

Iran has blamed the unrest on “thugs” backed by its foreign enemies, including the Unit-ed States, Israel and an exiled armed opposition group it con-siders a “terrorist” cult.

AMERICAS

Gulf Times Thursday, November 28, 201914

Three workers were injured in an early morning explosion yesterday that sparked a blaze at a Texas petrochemical plant, the latest in a series of chemical plant accidents in the region. An initial explosion at a TPC Group plant in Port Neches, Texas, was followed by secondary blasts, shattering windows and blowing locked doors off their hinges in homes near the facility, about 130km east of Houston. Residents within a half-mile radius were evacuated. The fiery blast follows others at petrochemical plants in east Texas. In April, a fire at a KMCO LLC plant northeast of Houston killed one worker and injured a second.

Operations resumed yesterday at Canada’s largest railway, Canadian National Railway Co, a day after company and union off icials reached a tentative deal to end an eight-day-long strike that had triggered a severe propane shortage and left many Canadian exports stranded. A CN spokesman said yesterday that there were no hiccups in the return to work and that trains were resuming operations as expected. About 3,200 striking conductors and yard workers had been demanding improved working conditions, including rest breaks. Transport Minister Marc Garneau said on Tuesday the government would be monitoring CN’s return to operations.

Massachusetts yesterday adopted the country’s toughest ban on the sale of flavoured tobacco and vaping products, including menthol cigarettes, in response to a rise in youth vaping and an outbreak of vaping-related serious lung injuries. Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, signed into law legislation passed by the state’s Democrat-controlled legislature earlier this month that also places a 75% excise tax on e-cigarettes. Several states have adopted emergency bans on the sale of flavoured vaping products amid a nationwide outbreak of lung injuries among e-cigarette users.

Former US president Jimmy Carter has been released from hospital and sent back to his home in Georgia to continue his recovery from injuries sustained recently as a result of tumbles. The 95-year-old underwent “successful” surgery earlier this month to relieve pressure on his brain caused by the recent falls. He will celebrate Thanksgiving at his home in Plains, along with his family, The Carter Center said in a statement yesterday. Last month, Carter was also admitted to hospital to monitor a minor pelvic fracture after he fell in his home in Plains, 215km south of Atlanta. It was the second fall that month for Carter, who required stitches above his eyebrow after the first incident.

A US judge yesterday delayed the planned December 18 sentencing hearing of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, but did not set a new date. Judge Emmett Sullivan had been expected to put off sentencing after both Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents, and the United States filed a joint motion to request the delay, citing the expected December release of the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the origins of investigations into alleged Russian election interference. Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying about his 2016 conversations with Sergey Kislyak, then-Russian ambassador to the United States.

Three injured in Texas petrochem plant blast

Canadian Railway resumes services after biggest strike

Massachusetts bans vaping, tobacco products

Jimmy Carter released from hospital after surgery

Judge delays sentencing of ex-Trump adviser Flynn

ACCIDENT ON TRACKSTUBBED OUT OLD AGE WOES JUSTICE

House panel invites Trump to impeachment hearingReutersWashington

The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Tues-day invited President Donald

Trump to its fi rst impeachment hearing, scheduled for December 4, starting a new phase of the inquiry that could lead to formal charges against the president within weeks.

Trump is not required to attend the hearing.

But the move allows the president and his legal team access to congres-sional impeachment procedures that he and other Republicans have denounced as unfair, partly because the White House has not been able to call or cross-examine witnesses.

The House Intelligence Committee, which has led the impeachment in-vestigation into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine through weeks of closed-door testimony and televised hearings, is expected to release a formal evidence report shortly after lawmakers return to Congress on December 3 from their Thanksgiving recess.

The Judiciary panel will use the re-port to consider formal charges that it could recommend for a full House vote by mid-December.

It gave Trump until 6pm on Sunday to advise the committee on whether he would attend the hearing, and to indi-cate by then who would be his counsel.

The White House did not immedi-ately respond to a request for comment.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, the Ju-diciary Committee’s Democratic chair-man, told Trump in a letter that he was reminding the president that the com-mittee’s rules allow him to attend the hearing and for his legal team to ques-tion witnesses.

The hearing, scheduled to begin at 10am, will have legal experts, who have not yet been identifi ed, as witnesses.

“The president has a choice to make: he can take this opportunity to be rep-resented in the impeachment hearings, or he can stop complaining about the process,” Nadler said in a statement. “I hope that he chooses to participate.”

The impeachment probe is looking

into whether Trump abused his power to pressure Ukraine to launch investi-gations of political rival Joe Biden and a discredited conspiracy theory promot-ed by Trump that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.

In an interview on Tuesday with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Trump denied he directed his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who had been pushing Ukraine for the investiga-tions, to act on his behalf in trying to get Ukraine to help turn up dirt on his po-litical rivals.

“No, I didn’t direct him, but he is a

warrior,” Trump told O’Reilly, adding Giuliani “possibly saw something” and “he’s done work in Ukraine for years.”

Giuliani has said he conducted an investigation into corruption and pos-sible collusion in Ukraine in his role as a defence attorney trying to clear Trump.

The inquiry centres on a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelen-skiy to investigate Biden, now a leading Democratic presidential contender, and his son Hunter, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy company while his father was vice president under Demo-cratic president Barack Obama.

Democrats have accused Trump of abusing his power by withholding $391mn in security aid to put pressure on a vulnerable US ally to interfere in an American election by digging up dirt on his domestic political opponents.

Trump denies wrongdoing and has dismissed the inquiry as a sham by Dem-ocrats who want to overturn the result of the 2016 US presidential election.

In his letter, Nadler said the hearing was intended as an opportunity to dis-cuss the historical and constitutional basis of impeachment, as well as the meaning of terms like “high crimes and misdemeanours.”

“We will also discuss whether your alleged actions warrant the House’s ex-ercising its authority to adopt articles of impeachment,” Nadler wrote.

House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney tweeted that Democrats “have decided to give @re-alDonaldTrump the right to question liberal law professors, but not any fact witnesses. At all.”

The Democratic-led House is aiming to resolve the question of Trump’s im-peachment before the end of the year, possibly by approving formal charges known as articles of impeachment and forwarding them to the Republican-controlled Senate for a trial that could begin in January.

A trial would determine whether Trump should be convicted and re-moved from offi ce.

But Senate Republicans have shown little inclination to remove Trump, their party’s leader, who is seeking re-election in 2020.

On Tuesday, the House Intelli-gence Committee released transcripts of closed-door testimony from Mark Sandy, a career offi cial with the White House Offi ce of Management and Budget, and Philip Reeker, acting as-sistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian aff airs.

In his testimony, Sandy, one of the only current White House aides to agree to testify to congressional in-vestigators, said a budget office attor-ney and another staffer in that office resigned partly because of concerns over the hold on US military aid to Ukraine.

Reeker in his testimony discussed the “irregular” role three offi cials close to Trump — the ambassador to the Euro-pean Union and Trump donor Gordon Sondland, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Giuliani — played in US policy to-ward Ukraine.

A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday found support for impeach-ing Trump tracked higher over the past few weeks of televised impeachment hearings.

According to the poll, which split largely along party lines, 47% of re-spondents believed Trump should be impeached and 40% were opposed.

Pair of storms stymie Americans during Thanksgiving travelBy Peter Szekely, Reuters New York

Two winter storms lum-bering across parts of the United States yesterday

disrupted the travel plans of mil-lions of Americans who typi-cally jam the country’s highways and airports to visit family and friends over the long Thanksgiv-ing weekend.

One of the hardest-hit areas on the day before Thanksgiving Day was Minnesota’s Twin Cit-ies region, which was blanketed in white by the same system that clobbered the Denver area a day earlier.

Snowfall totals in and around Minneapolis had reached 15cm to 20cm by yesterday morning be-fore topping out at up to 18cm as the system slides to the east, said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Serv-ice in College Park, Maryland.

The storm, which is also pack-ing high winds, was expected move eastward across upper Michigan and upstate New York toward central Maine, which could get 15cm to 25cm of snow, the Weather Service forecast.

“By the time we get to tonight, we’re really looking for the im-pacts to move into northern New England,” Hurley said.

On the other side of the coun-try, a second major storm was slamming Oregon and North-

ern California, where damag-ing winds, coastal fl ooding and heavy mountain snows of up to 120cm were forecast.

Farther south, the front was expected to dump heavy rain, threatening fl ash fl oods from San Diego to Los Angeles, the weath-er service said.

As a side benefi t, the rain was expected to douse the so-called Cave Fire in Santa Barbara Coun-ty, which has charred 1,810 hec-tares of brush and woodlands, and prompted temporary evacu-ation orders for 5,500 residents.

Even as the storms bought rain, snow and high winds to the

Upper Midwest and far Western states, they spared the highly populated East Coast and central Midwest, which were also ex-pected to fare well as travellers go back home on Sunday.

“The densely populated areas are going to be fi ne in both cases,” said Hurley.

The weather woes set in as a near-record 55mn Americans follow through on their plans to use to planes, trains and auto-mobiles to travel at least 80km for today’s Thanksgiving holiday, according to the American Auto-mobile Association.

One-quarter of the 103 US

fl ights cancelled yesterday morning were going to or com-ing from the Twin Cities’ MSP Airport, according to FlightA-ware.com.

Despite being one of the busi-est travel days of the year, New York’s LaGuardia Airport — un-aff ected by the worst of the

weather — was relatively serene.“It’s a normal day here,” said

management consultant Nimish Mittal, 26, as he and his wife Sle-sha, who live in Manhattan and got to the airport early for lines that never materialised, awaited their fl ight to Kansas City, where they both have families.

Margaret Moir, 67, had just ar-rived at LaGuardia from Detroit, for a weekend in New York with a girlfriend.

It was to be her fi rst Thanks-giving without her husband, who died of liver cancer two weeks ago.

“I’ve cried plenty,” said Moir, a retired state government worker, as she waited for her friend’s de-layed fl ight from Atlanta to ar-rive.

On their agenda for the week-end was watching the Macy’s parade from their Times Square hotel room, before heading to the upscale Bergdorf Goodman de-partment store for turkey.

But winds forecast at 32kph to 40kph with gusts of up to 64kph were threatening to sideline the parade’s 16 giant balloons for safety reasons.

Organisers have said they will make a decision today morning.

The storm now in the West is expected to move eastward and create new woes, especially in the Upper Midwest, for travel-lers planning to return home on Sunday, the weather service said.

Firefighters battle new blaze in California

Hundreds of California firefighters

on Tuesday battled a wind-driven

brushfire that grew out of control

overnight near Santa Barbara,

threatening thousands of homes

and prompting evacuation orders.

The so-called “Cave Fire” that

started on Monday in Los Padres

National Forest, grew overnight

as it moved toward populated

areas in the cities of Santa Barbara,

Goleta and nearby communities

about a two hours’ drive north of

Los Angeles.

Some 600 firefighters were

battling the blaze that prompted

evacuation orders for about 2,300

homes, or nearly 5,500 people.

Fire off icials said helicopters and

fixed-wing planes were assisting

the firefighters who faced steep,

rugged terrain.

“The Cave Fire is burning under

some of the toughest firefighting

conditions anywhere in the world,”

said Los Padres National Forest

Fire Chief Jimmy Harris.

“We’ve experienced several

off shore wind events at this point,

and that has just dried the fuel

bed out to the point where we’re

seeing the fire behaviour we saw

last night.”

He said the blaze was all the

more challenging for firefighters as

high winds were pushing the flames

downhill and then back uphill.

Authorities said the fire, the

cause of which was unknown, was

zero per cent contained but they

were hopeful that a storm set to

arrive in the area later in the day

would help extinguish the flames.

While the rain could bring

much-needed relief for firefighters,

off icials warned that it may also

prompt flash floods and debris

flows.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill

Brown said that about 4,000 peo-

ple who were forced to evacuate

would be allowed back into their

homes Tuesday afternoon.

The blaze comes on the heels of

a series of major fires that erupted

in the state last month destroying

homes and vineyards and forcing

thousands of people to flee. A videographer records flames at a wildfire dubbed the Cave Fire, burning in the hills of Santa Barbara.

Trump pardons Bread and Butter ahead of ThanksgivingIn keeping with one of the modern and

light-hearted traditions of the White House,

President Donald Trump pardoned two tur-

keys ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, in

a brief ceremony held in the Rose Garden.

The turkeys are named Bread and

Butter.

Technically, only Butter was granted the

full pardon, based on a public poll, while

Bread will serve as an alternate.

Both birds will get to live out their days

at a university in Virginia.

“Butter, let’s talk to you for a second,”

Trump said as the bird was brought out.

“Butter, I wish you a lot of luck. I hereby

grant you a full and complete pardon.”

Trump could not resist the chance to

hail record numbers on the stock market,

and during his speech also took jabs at his

opponents.

“Democrats are accusing me of being

too soft on Turkey,” Trump said, amid

ongoing tensions with the government in

Ankara.

The birds were not spared a reference to

the impeachment inquiry, the main divisive

issue that has many in the country on edge

as they go home to dine with their families.

“They have already been served

subpoenas to appear in Adam Schiff ’s

basement on Thursday,” Trump said with

snark, referring to the lawmaker heading

the probe.

“Unlike previous witnesses, you and I

have actually met,” Trump said about the

birds.

President Donald Trump pardons the National Thanksgiving turkey during a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Tuesday.

US moves to protect indigenous women, girls

By Ellen Wulfhorst, Reuters New York

US President Donald Trump launched a task force on Tuesday to help

protect Native American women and children, calling the rate of violence among indigenous peo-ple “heartbreaking.”

The task force aims to improve co-ordination and communica-tion among federal, state and trib-al authorities in response to cases of missing and murdered indig-enous women and children, the White House said in a statement.

Native American women in some tribal communities are 10 times more likely than the aver-age American to be murdered, it said, and the initiative called Operation Lady Justice is an “aggressive, government-wide strategy” to address the crisis.

“The statistics are sober-ing and heartbreaking,” Trump said at a White House ceremony where he signed an executive or-der creating the task force.

“Too many are still missing and their whereabouts are un-known. We’re taking this very seriously,” he added.

Research by the National In-stitute of Justice, a government research agency, has found more than four out of fi ve American Indian and Alaska Native wom-en — more than 1.5mn women — have experienced violence in their lifetime.

More than 5,700 American In-dian and Alaska Native women and girls were reported missing in 2016, according to the Na-tional Crime Information Cent-er, a government data agency.

Several leading Native Ameri-can rights organisations did not respond to requests for com-ment on the new task force.

Law enforcement and pros-ecutions are often hampered by a maze of jurisdictions and justice systems based on such factors as whether a crime occurred on tribal land or whether the victim or the accused is a tribal member.

ASIA15

Gulf Times Thursday, November 28, 2019

Bangladesh sentences 7 to death for 2016 cafe attackA Bangladesh court hand-

ed death sentences to seven members of a

militant group yesterday for their role in an attack on a cafe in 2016 that killed 22 people, mostly foreigners, in the South Asian nation’s worst such inci-dent.

“Charges against them were proved beyond any doubt. The court gave them the highest punishment,” public prosecu-tor Golam Sarwar Khan told reporters after the verdict, amid tight security at the court in the capital, Dhaka.

One of the eight accused was acquitted, he added.

A defence lawyer said the convicted men would appeal the charges, which include train-ing the attackers and supplying arms, explosives and funds.

After the ruling, they shout-ed, “We did nothing wrong” from the dock to a packed courtroom, witnesses said.

Two were seen wearing prayer caps bearing the insignia of Is-lamic State; authorities opened an investigation into how the caps reached them while they were in police custody.

The July 1 attack on the res-taurant popular with foreign-ers in Dhaka’s diplomatic area shocked the nation of 160mn and unnerved businesses, in-cluding the vital garment ex-

ports sector, and foreign inves-tors.

Five young militants, armed with guns, sharp weapons and grenades stormed the Holey Ar-tisan cafe, took diners hostage and killed them over 12 hours. Nine Italians, seven Japanese, an American and an Indian were among the dead. The attackers were also killed in a rescue bid by army commandos.

Prosecutor Khan said the seven men convicted belong to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bang-ladesh (JMB), a group that seeks to establish Shariah rule in the predominantly Muslim country.

“The ruling will set an ex-ample. It will give a message to militant groups that none of them will be spared,” Law Min-ister Anisul Huq said.

Under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh has been cracking down on militant groups to preserve its image as a moderate Muslim nation. Af-ter the cafe siege, police raided suspected hideouts and killed dozens of militants believed to have helped mount the attack. Hundreds more were arrested.

“We are happy that justice has been served,” said Shamsuzza-man Shams, whose policeman brother was killed when he tried to enter the cafe to foil the at-tackers, adding: “We want im-mediate execution of the ruling.”

But defence lawyer Delwar Hossain said all seven men con-victed will challenge the verdict in a higher court. “They didn’t

get justice,” he said.The assault was claimed by

Islamic State but the govern-ment has consistently denied the presence in the country of any transnational militant or-ganisation such as Al Qaeda or

Islamic State, blaming domestic militants instead.

Police said a faction of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was involved in or-ganising the cafe attack.

In the year before the atroc-ity, Bangladesh saw a string of grisly individual murders, in-cluding of secular writers and foreigners, claimed by Islamic State or Al Qaeda.

The US embassy in Dhaka

said the trial was a landmark case. “We remain committed to continuing to support Bang-ladesh in its fi ght against ter-rorism, especially in our shared eff orts to improve rule of law,” it said.

ReutersDhaka

Police escort extremists, centre, accused of allegedly plotting the Holey Artisan Bakery cafe attack in 2016, to a courtroom for their trial in Dhaka yesterday.

17 killed in Nepal bus crash

A passenger bus veered off a road and plunged into a gorge in southern Nepal

yesterday, killing at least 17 peo-ple and injuring 13 others, local police said.

The bus fell about 300m and crashed into the gorge in San-dhikharka town of Arghakhanchi district, police offi cer Madhav Regmi said.

Thirteen passengers, includ-ing the driver, were being treated in two hospitals in the region, he said.

The police offi cer said the cause of the accident was not immediately clear.

The crash site is around 227km south-west of Kathmandu.

Road accidents are fairly com-mon in mountainous Nepal, which in recent years has seen a drive to build roads connect-ing remote regions to towns and cities across the country.

DPAKathmandu

85 Chinese held over online scam in Indonesia

Dozens of Chinese nationals have been arrested in Indo-nesia over an online scam

that bilked victims out of millions of dollars, authorities have said.

Acting on a tip-off from their Chinese counterparts, Indone-sian police said they conducted a half dozen raids in the capital Jakarta and Malang city, arrest-ing 85 Chinese nationals and six Indonesians.

The roundup comes several days after almost 700 Chinese nationals were arrested in neighbouring Ma-laysia where authorities raided a building and busted a major online investment scam operation.

It was not immediately clear if the busts were related.

Yesterday, Indonesian police said the suspects targeted vic-tims in mainland China and net-ted some 36bn rupiah ($2.6mn) over a period of four months. They did not say how many peo-ple were scammed.

“They pretended to be police or prosecutors and called their victims, telling them that they had legal problems and demand-ed money to settle the issue,” said Jakarta police chief Gatot Eddy Pramono.

“Some of them also pretended to be bankers off ering invest-ments,” he added.

Police also seized evidence in-cluding laptops and computers, Gatot said.

Some scammers have moved to Indonesia and other regional countries after China cracked down on their networks.

AFPJakarta

First bodies of UK truck victims arrive in Vietnam

The fi rst remains of the 39 people found dead in a truck in Britain last

month arrived in Vietnam yes-terday where they were met by huge crowds of sobbing relatives who have been waiting weeks for their return.

Sixteen bodies were fl own from London to Hanoi, where they were quickly shuttled in ambulances to their hometowns in central Vietnam.

Hundreds of people fi lled the compound of a church in ru-ral Dien Chau district in central Nghe An province to greet two returned bodies, many carry-ing white fl owers to off er the families of the dead.

The cousin of 33-year-old victim Nguyen Van Hung waited hours in the crowd near the town church.

“He was a nice man. No one expected him to return home like this,” said the cousin, refusing to be named, as relatives wept nearby.

Hung was among 31 men and eight women found dead in a re-frigerated truck in an industrial park in Essex, east of London, on October 23.

Victims’ relatives have taken out hefty loans from the gov-ernment to cover the cost of re-patriation: $1,800 to bring back

ashes, or $2,900 for the cost of a coffi n carrying the body.

Authorities in Vietnam en-couraged relatives to opt for ash-es “to ensure speed, low cost and sanitation safety”, but many paid more for the bodies so they could carry out traditional burials.

Cremation is rare in the Viet-nam countryside, where many of the victims were from.

Some funerals were due to start yesterday and burials could take place later this week.

The rest of the remains are ex-pected to arrive in Vietnam this weekend, though offi cials have not announced the schedule.

All 16 victims whose bodies came back yesterday hailed from three provinces - Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh.

It was a painful homecoming for families who have been sus-pended in grief for weeks antici-pating their relatives’ return.

“We have been waiting for this moment for a very long time. We will organise the funeral as soon as he’s returned,” said Vo Van Binh, whose son Vo Van Linh was among the victims.

“We are very sad but happy as fi nally my son is back,” he told AFP from central Ha Tinh province, where the family had gathered awaiting the arrival of Linh’s body.

The tragedy exposed the dangers of illegal journeys from Vietnam to the United Kingdom, a top destination for

migrants from Vietnam.Most of the victims hailed

from just a handful of central Vi-etnamese provinces, which are among the poorest in the coun-try and where well-entrenched networks of brokers help to fa-cilitate the risky trips abroad.

Ten of the dead were teenag-ers, including two 15-year-old boys.

Britain’s ambassador to Viet-nam Gareth Ward sent his con-dolences to families on Wednes-day in a video message, saying it was a “very diffi cult time”.

He promised families the UK and Vietnam would cooperate to “prevent human traffi cking and protect vulnerable people here”.

Several families told AFP they went deep into debt after bor-rowing money to pay for their children’s journeys overseas, and would now struggle to repay the cost of repatriation as well.

Their children were promised well-paid jobs, possibly in nail bars or cannabis farms where many Vietnamese migrants end up.

Several of the 39 people who died last month paid thousands of dollars to brokers who prom-ised the truck - billed as the “VIP route” - was the safer op-tion, their families said.

On Monday, the North-ern Irish driver of the truck, 25-year-old Maurice Robinson, pleaded guilty to conspiring to assist illegal immigration.

AFPDien Chau, Vietnam

Relatives move coff in of John Nguyen Van Hung and John Hoang Van Tiep, victims who were found dead in the back of a British truck last month, out of ambulances upon arrival in Nghe An province of Vietnam yesterday.

Thailand reverses ban on weed killer linked to cancer

Thailand reversed a decision yesterday to ban a controver-

sial weed-killer and ex-tended the permitted use of two other pesticides for six months, following pushback from its multi-billion dollar agriculture industry.

Glyphosate - a weed killer better known by its trade name Roundup - is a light-ning rod for controversy, as more than 42,700 lawsuits pile up in the US with plain-tiff s alleging that it caused diseases including terminal cancers.

But it remains popular among farmers in Thailand - one of the world’s leading rice and sugar producers - who are among the heaviest users of pesticides in a sector that

employs 40% of the population.Studies have linked

glyphosate, paraquat and chlorpyrifos to a variety of ill-nesses, and the kingdom last month decided the trio would be prohibited from its crops by December 1.

But Thailand’s National Hazardous Substances Com-mittee ruled yesterday that the continued “limited” use of glyphosate would be per-mitted, said Industry Minis-ter Suriya Juangroongruang-kit, without elaborating.

The committee’s decision, which was “unanimous”, also allows farmers to continue using the two other pesticides until June 1, 2020, he added.

Paraquat, a herbicide which the US Centers for Disease Control calls “highly poisonous”, has been banned in the European Union since 2009, while studies have linked chlorpyrifos to devel-

opmental delays in children. Manufacturer Monsanto - a

subsidiary of German chemi-cal giant Bayer - could be on the hook for billions of dollars, though its chief executive has insisted “leading regulatory agencies worldwide are con-vinced that glyphosate-based products are safe”.

The weedkiller remains popular among agricultural workers for its eff ectiveness and its low cost, and is still widely used in the US.

The US Department of Ag-riculture had written letters to Thailand asking to delay the ban, saying that it could disrupt soybean and wheat imports to the kingdom.

Suriya of the Industry Min-istry said those impacts on Thailand’s agro-animal busi-nesses had been overlooked when the ministry origi-nally banned glyphosate in October.

AFPBangkok

German tourist killed in Myanmar landmine blastA German tourist was killed and an Argentine woman injured in a landmine explosion in Myanmar, local police said yesterday.The accident happened near the town of Hsipaw, a popular hiking spot for backpackers who often ride the scenic route by train from Mandalay to reach the mountains.Tim Geibler, 40, died on Tuesday afternoon near the villages of Pan Nayung and Kwun Haung, a local police off icer said, on condition of anonymity.“Tourists are not permitted to go to that area,” he said, adding that a 39-year-old Argentine woman was also slightly injured in the blast.Local NGO Without Borders, which runs a de facto ambulance service staff ed by volunteers, said she had since been discharged from hospital.A German foreign ministry spokesman confirmed the incident and said its Yangon embassy was in close contact with Geibler’s relatives. (AFP)

Cambodia’s Hun Sen off ers US new ‘bond of friendship’

Cambodia’s leader Hun Sen, pictured, has of-fered to renew friend-

ship with the United States after receiving a letter from President Donald Trump, a turnaround in relations with the country he once accused of conspiring to overthrow him.

A letter dated November 26 from Hun Sen to Trump thanked him for assurances that Wash-ington was not seeking “regime change” in Cambodia.

Both countries foreign aff airs teams should now work “to re-store trust and confi dence, and renew the bond of friendship between our two countries and peoples”, he added in the letter seen by Reuters.

The rapprochement comes after Cambodia, one of Chi-na’s closest allies in Asia, had

threatened to turn its back on both the United States and the European Union (EU) over their criticism of political repression.

Less than four months ago, a Cambodian offi cial said US diplomats should “pack up and leave” after a US embassy statement that the 2018 elec-tion did not refl ect the will of the people.

Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CCP) won all 125 parliamentary seats in the election after the Supreme Court disband-ed the main opposition party.

The opposition Cambodian Na-tional Rescue Party was accused of plotting to take power with US help, and its leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested on treason charges.

Kem Sokha was released from house arrest earlier this month, though the treason charg-es remain, as the EU moved closer to cutting off preferen-tial trade status over human rights, though a fi nal decision is months away.

Hun Sen’s letter followed one from Trump seeking to improve ties but also urging him to put Cambo-dia back on a democratic path.

The Cambodian leader, in power for more than three dec-ades, acknowledged tumultu-ous periods in US relations.

“However, I am of the view that we should not become hostage of a few dark chapters in our history,” he wrote. “There are so many other beautiful chapters that are worth nourishing for the greater good of both our countries and people.”

ReutersPhnom Penh

16 Gulf TimesThursday, November 28, 2019

ASIA/AUSTRALASIA

Samoa measles death toll rises to 37 amid anti-vaccination push: WHOAFPGeneva

A measles epidemic rag-ing in Samoa has killed 37 people, the World Health

Organisation said yesterday, blaming an anti-vaccine mes-saging campaign for leaving the Pacifi c island nation vulnerable to the spread of the virus.

The UN health agency warned that a steep decline in vaccina-tion rates in Samoa, a Pacifi c Ocean island nation halfway between Hawaii and New Zea-land, had paved the way for a

“huge outbreak”, with more than 2,500 cases in a country of just 200,000 people.

The death toll has been ris-ing steadily since the country declared a national measles epi-demic in mid-October. WHO said another fi ve people had died Wednesday, bringing the total number of deaths to 37.

Measles is caused by a virus and can lead to serious compli-cations including pneumonia and infl ammation of the brain that can do permanent damage and be deadly, especially in small children. Kate O’Brien, director of the WHO’s immunisation de-

partment, told reporters in Ge-neva that “very low coverage of measles vaccine” was to blame for allowing the highly conta-gious disease to rapidly spread in the country.

In 2018, only 31% of children under fi ve had been immunised, she said. “When measles enters a country like that, there is a huge group of people who are not im-mune,” she said. The tragedy, she said, was that immunisation rates used to be far higher in Sa-moa, with coverage measured at 84% just four years ago. Offi cials have blamed the low rates in part on fears sparked last year when

two babies died after receiving measles vaccination shots. This resulted in the temporary sus-pension of the country’s immu-nisation programme and dented parents’ trust in the vaccine, even though it later turned out the deaths were caused when other medicines were incorrectly administered.

O’Brien said that an anti-vaccine group had been stoking these fears further with a social media campaign, lamenting that “this is now being measured in the lives of children who have died in the course of this out-break.”

Misinformation about the safety of vaccines, she said, “has had a very remarkable impact on the immunisation programme” in Samoa.

Ian Norton at WHO’s Emer-gency Medical Team Unit mean-while warned that the outbreak was taking a heavy toll on the small country’s entire health sys-tem.

“It has really spiked dramati-cally,” he told reporters, pointing out that more than 200 new cases arrive at hospital every day.

Apia’s main hospital, which normally has just four beds in its intensive care unit, currently has

14 children on ventilators, Nor-ton said, stressing that this poses “a huge, huge burden”.

He said mass vaccination was the only way to rein in epidemic. The UN children’s agency Unicef has sent than 110,000 doses of measles vaccine and medical teams from Australia and New Zealand are helping administer them.

Norton said Britain was also preparing to send a support med-ical team, adding that WHO has sent out an appeal to other coun-tries in the region to send medical teams.

Samoa is not the only place

struggling with measles. WHO data for the fi rst six months of 2019 shows the highest number of measles cases reported world-wide since 2006, and there are currently several large outbreaks raging in places like the Demo-cratic Republic of Congo, Mada-gascar and Ukraine.

And the UN health agency has been sounding the alarm over vaccination rates around the globe as the anti-vaccine move-ment gains steam, driven mainly by fraudulent claims linking the MMR vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella to a risk of autism in children.

Hong Kong police to enter universityReutersHong Kong

Hong Kong police said they would enter Polytechnic University today, bring-

ing their near two-week siege of the campus to an end, after fi nal searches for any pro-democracy protesters still hiding turned up empty.

For a second day yesterday se-curity teams from the university scoured the maze of buildings at the campus, a focal point in re-cent weeks of the citywide pro-tests that fi rst erupted in June, but no one was found.

“As the school has completed the search, the police security team will enter Polytechnic Uni-versity tomorrow, as we need to process dangerous items and collect evidence,” District Com-mander Ho Yun-sing told re-porters.

Any remaining protesters would be given medical treat-ment, he said. The red-brick university on Kowloon peninsula was turned into a battleground in mid-November, when protesters barricaded themselves inside and clashed with riot police in a hail of petrol bombs, water cannon and tear gas. About 1,100 people were arrested last week, some while trying to escape.

The number of protesters has

dwindled dramatically, with some managing to fl ee and oth-ers brought out. A lone woman found was “physically weak and emotionally unstable”, according to a statement from the univer-sity.

The university yesterday asked government departments for help removing “dangerous ma-terials” from the site, which is littered with rotting waste and detritus of the siege, urging au-thorities to take a “humane” ap-proach.

The city’s largest pro-estab-lishment party, the Democratic

Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, urged authorities to send medics to the site to take any remaining protesters to hospital. The Poly-technic University campus was the last of fi ve that protesters had occupied to use as bases from which to disrupt the city, block-ing the nearby Cross-Harbour Tunnel linking Kowloon to Hong Kong Island and other arteries. Demonstrators are angry at what they see as Beijing’s meddling in the freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

China denies interfering and says it is committed to the “one coun-try, two systems” formula put in place at that time.

The protesters had blocked the tunnel’s mouth, smashed toll booths, lit fi res and cemented bricks to the road, but it was reo-pened early yesterday, and Hong Kong television showed a steady fl ow of vehicles passing through. Hong Kong authorities hope that a lull in clashes over the week-end during local elections, where pro-democracy candidates scored a landslide victory, can translate into more calm after nearly six months of turmoil.

Hundreds of people are facing potential jail time in connection with the unrest. Secretary for Security John Lee said police had arrested more than 5,800 people since June, the numbers increas-ing exponentially in October and November, and had charged 923. Smaller scale protests continued yesterday, as crowds in the cen-tral business district took to the streets around noon.

Reuters also reported that China’s leaders had set up a crisis command centre in the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, to deal with protests that have be-come the biggest populist chal-lenge since China’s leader Xi Jin-ping came to power in 2012.

The Ministry of Foreign Af-

fairs’ Offi ce in Hong Kong called the report “false”, without elabo-rating, in a statement posted on its website.

“No matter how the situa-tion in Hong Kong changes, the Chinese government’s deter-mination to safeguard national sovereignty, security, and devel-opment interests is unwavering,” it said.

Despite the euphoria among protesters over the electoral vic-tory, in which democracy advo-cates swept around 86% of the 452 district council seats, fresh demonstrations were planned for the weekend, including a march to protest against the use of tear gas on “children”.

A “Thanksgiving” protest, in appreciation of the US Congress passing legislation supporting protesters, is scheduled today, the date of the US holiday.

The city-wide elections drew a record turnout and were seen as a vote of no-confi dence in

Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed leader, Carrie Lam, over her handling of the fi nancial hub’s worst crisis in decades. One Hong Kong newspaper, Sing Pao,

published a front-page spread for the second successive day calling for Lam’s resignation. “Hong Kong people had enough, Carrie Lam quit,” it read.

District councillor Ted Hui delivers a statement to the media at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in Hong Kong yesterday.

A journalist works on his laptop amid items left behind by protestors in Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in Hong Kong.

Graff iti which reads “pro-Beijing” is seen on the ground at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University campus in the Hung Hom district of Hong Kong yesterday.

Singapore shows off rare Philippine raptorsAFPSingapore

Singapore showed off two critically-endangered ea-gles yesterday that were

loaned from the Philippines as part of a breeding programme to reverse the dwindling numbers of the feathered giants.

Destruction of tropical rain-forest and relentless hunting have decimated the population of the Philippine Eagle — one of the world’s biggest and most powerful birds whose wingspan can reach 2m (7ft) — with only around 800 believed left in the

wild, conservationists say. The birds, Geothermica and Sam-bisig, are the fi rst breeding pair ever to be sent outside the Phil-ippines and arrived in Singapore in June on a 10-year loan from Manila.

The creatures are being cared for at the city-state’s main avi-ary and were shown to the me-dia yesterday, as part of events marking 50 years of diplomatic relations between the countries.

“Any future off spring of the eagles will be returned to the Philippines to contribute to the sustainability of the species’ population,” said Wildlife Re-serves Singapore, which runs the

aviary. The scheme has echoes of China’s “panda diplomacy”, which sees the Asian giant send the black and white bears to countries as gifts.

A breeding programme is also being carried out in the Philippines by a small band of conservationists at a sanctu-ary outside the southern city of Davao, close to the eagles’ main forest habitat.

The bird of prey, which has white and brown plumage and an enormous wingspan, is clas-sifi ed as “critically endangered” by protection group the Interna-tional Union for Conservation of Nature.

China accuses Taiwan ruling party using “absurd” spying claims to win votes

China likened claims by a Chinese asylum seeker in Australia who said he was a spy for Beijing to an absurd screenplay, accusing Taiwan’s ruling party of manipulating the “concocted” story to boost its chances in a looming election. The allegations by the self-professed spy Wang Liqiang, reported by Australian media, have rocked Taiwan after he detailed Chinese eff orts to meddle in Taiwan elections and promote Communist Party influence in Hong Kong.Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have seized on the accusations to warn of the threat from China, which deems Taiwan to be sacred Chinese territory to be brought under Beijing’s

rule by force if necessary. China has already branded Wang a fraud and said it was nonsense to suggest it was interfering in Taiwan’s January presidential and parliamentary elections. Yesterday, Beijing doubled down on that criticism. Speaking at a regular news briefing, Zhu Fenglian, spokeswoman for China’s Taiwan Aff airs Off ice, repeated that Wang was a fraudster who carried fake travel documents. “Actually the facts are clear for this ‘fraud who became a spy’. This is a totally absurd, loophole-ridden ‘screenplay’ concocted by anti-China forces,” she said.“The DPP authorities and the fraudster have bandied together, wantonly carrying out political

manipulation,” said Zhu. “Their intention is to create the illusion of the mainland getting involved in the Taiwan regional elections and obtain improper election benefit for themselves.” Among several allegations levelled, Wang said he had helped guide positive media attention toward certain Taiwanese politicians and had donated money to them, including President Tsai’s main opponent, Han Kuo-yu of the opposition Kuomintang party, which favours close ties with China. Han, who has said he would drop out of the election if he had taken any money from the Communist Party, said on Tuesday he would sue Wang if he ever came to Taiwan. Taiwan is investigating two executives at a

Hong Kong-listed company, Xiang Xin and Kung Ching, on suspicion of violating the island’s National Security Act after they were named in the allegations made by Wang. The pair were referred to the Taipei District Prosecutors Off ice yesterday for further investigation.Xiang owns 15 companies in Hong Kong, including businesses from media, education to technology, corporate filings show. Tsai wrote on her Facebook page late on Tuesday that Chinese interference in Taiwan was happening all the time and could not be denied. “China’s involvement in Taiwan’s elections and infiltration of Taiwan society is something that is happening all the time.

US teen’s video on Xinjiang goes viral on social mediaAFPBeijing

A TikTok post by a young woman, pretending to give eyelash curling ad-

vice while actually condemning China’s crackdown on Muslims in Xinjiang, has gone viral on the Chinese-owned app that has been accused of censoring anti-Beijing content.

The clip by US teen Feroza Aziz, who describes herself as “17 Just a Muslim”, had millions of views across several social media platforms by yesterday.

But Aziz said she has been blocked from posting on the hugely popular video platform TikTok for a month after up-

loading Sunday’s clip slamming China, a claim disputed by the app. Human rights groups and outside experts say more than 1mn Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been rounded up in a network of in-ternment camps across the fractious region of Xinjiang.

China, after initially deny-ing the camps existed, describes them as vocational schools aimed at dampening the al-lure of extremism and violence through education and job training. Aziz starts her video telling viewers: “The fi rst thing you need to do is grab your lash curler.”

However, she soon chang-es the subject, saying: “Then you’re going to put it down and

use the phone you’re using right now to search what’s happening in China, how they’re getting concentration camps, throw-ing innocent Muslims in there, separating families from each other, kidnapping them, mur-dering them, raping them, forc-ing them to eat pork, forcing them to drink, forcing them to convert.

“This is another Holocaust, yet no one is talking about it. Please be aware, please spread awareness in Xinjiang right now,” she adds, before returning to the eyelash curling tutorial.

A previous account owned by Aziz, reportedly from New Jersey, was blocked by TikTok over another alleged violation, but the app denied the current

profi le had been frozen. “Tik-Tok does not moderate content due to political sensitivities,” a spokesperson told AFP.

As of yesterday morning, the post had more than 1.5mn views and 501,900 likes, and 600,000 comments.

Two follow-up videos in which Aziz again addressed the Xinjiang camps had both re-ceived more than 7,000 views. The eyelash-curling clip had reached far more people on Twitter, with versions of the same video receiving more than 6.5mn views on Twitter. Aziz told Buzzfeed: “As a Mus-lim girl, I’ve always been op-pressed and seen my people be oppressed, and always I’ve been into human rights.”

Lawmakers wear foldable helmets as they take part in an earthquake drill at the lower house of the parliament in Tokyo, Japan.

Earthquake drill in parliament

BRITAIN/IRELAND17Gulf Times

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Farmers’ protestshuts down DublinReutersDublin

Farmers shut down busy parts of Dublin’s city centre for a second suc-

cessive day yesterday by park-ing dozens of tractors in the capital to protest against low beef prices and climate change initiatives they say they un-fairly target them.

The farmers arrived on trac-tors from all over the country on Tuesday for a planned pro-test in a cordoned off area but parked their vehicles in the very centre of the city and re-fused to leave until the coun-try’s agriculture minister met them.

Some slept in their vehicles overnight, many parked out-side the fi ve-star luxury Shel-bourne Hotel on the corner of St. Stephen’s Green, one of the main bus route into the city.

Police warned commuters that a number of the city’s main thoroughfares, including Kil-dare Street, the seat of parlia-ment, remained closed to traffi c.

The city’s bus operator told

passengers to expect delays on all routes.

“We’ll sit here for many more nights if we have to but this has got to stop and we have to start getting paid for our produce,” said Nicholas Hugh-es, a 53-year-old dairy farmer from Moylough in County Gal-way who sat in his tractor all night without sleep.

“It’s the only thing we can do, we’re gone if we don’t do this. We can’t stay producing food below the cost of produc-tion and we can’t keep getting blamed for climate change.

“This is about the death of rural Ireland, it’s dying on its feet as we speak.”

The protest was similar to one staged yesterday by French farmers in Paris, although the events were not co-ordinated.

A weeks-long dispute be-tween Irish farmers and proc-essors over beef prices cut pro-duction and caused a wave of temporary layoff s earlier this year before a tentative agree-ment brokered by the govern-ment lifted pickets at meat factories by a grassroots group of farmers.

British celebrity chefRhodes dies aged 59Guardian News and MediaLondon

TV chef Gary Rhodes, famous for shows such as Mas-terChef and Hell’s Kitchen,

has died suddenly at the age of 59.Rhodes had been in Dubai

with his wife, Jennie, who was at his bedside when he died. A production company that was working with Rhodes on a new TV series said he was taken ill during a break in fi lming.

Rock Oyster Media and Gold-fi nch TV said in a statement: “It is with terrible sadness that we share the news that Gary Rhodes OBE, TV chef, author and restau-rateur has died suddenly at the age of 59.Gary was in the middle of fi lming a wonderful new series with Rock Oyster Media for ITV.

“All at Rock Oyster Media and Goldfi nch are devastated by this tragic news. Gary was taken ill very suddenly at home during a break in fi lming and died a short time after-wards. Production was obviously halted as soon as Gary was taken

ill and members of the Rock Oyster Team remain in Dubai to support the family as best they can.”

A statement released by the family read: “The Rhodes fam-ily are deeply saddened to an-nounce the passing of beloved husband, father and brother, Gary Rhodes OBE. Gary passed away last evening at the age of 59, with his beloved wife, Jennie, by his side.”

Rhodes was born in London but grew up in Kent before embarking on his career as a cook, training at a college in Thanet. He became head chef at the Castle hotel in Taunton, where he retained its Michelin star at the age of 26.

He came back to London in 1990, according to reports in the Caterer magazine, to become head chef at Greenhouse in May-fair. He went on to launch several restaurants, including Rhodes & Co, and opened his fi rst overseas venture in 2004.

Rhodes was awarded an OBE in 2006. He presented TV shows including MasterChef, Mas-terChef USA and his own series,

Rhodes Around Britain. He also had four restaurants and his own line of cookware and bread mixes. He went on to feature in the ITV1 programme Saturday Cooks, as well as the UKTV Food show Local Food Hero.

Tributes to the chef came in on social media, with many who work in the food industry shar-ing their condolences. Gordon Ramsay tweeted: “We lost a fan-tastic chef today in Gary Rhodes. He was a chef who put British cuisine on the map. Sending all the love and prayers to your wife and kids. You’ll be missed Gx.”

His fellow TV chef Ainsley Harriott tweeted: “So sad to hear the news about Gary Rhodes. A true culinary icon and a love-ly man. Sending my love and thoughts to his wife Jennie and their boys. RIP, my friend. xx”

The chef Daniel Cliff ord, best known for his work at the Miche-lin-starred restaurant Midsum-mer House, said in a tweet: “Rest in peace a true British classic Gary Rhodes you opened the door for so many young English cooks.”

GPs to sendtext alertif childrenmiss jabsDaily MailLondon

Parents will be sent text messages to remind them when their children are

due to be vaccinated if the Tories win the election.

The health secretary has pledged to introduce a national vaccine-alert system to boost uptake of childhood jabs.

Families will be sent a message from their GP surgery urging them to book an appointment when their child is approaching their immunisation due date. Any parents who fail to show up for the life-saving jabs will be sent another reminder.

Health Secretary Matt Han-cock said the new system will be introduced within 30 days if the Conservatives win the general election.

An alarming NHS report re-vealed uptake has fallen for all 10 childhood jabs, including measles, polio, meningitis and whooping cough. Only 86% of fi ve-year-olds received both doses of the MMR jab in 2018-19, the lowest level in fi ve years.

Earlier this year the World Health Organisation declared the UK was no longer “measles-free”, with poor vaccination rates blamed for the virus’s return.

Hancock said: “The science is clear: vaccines save lives, and ensuring that children are properly immunised is one of the most important things any parent can do for their children. So we will introduce a national vaccination reminder system, to make sure as many children as possible are vaccinated.”

The new system will primarily operate through text message and digital reminders, with the op-tion for postal reminders for those without a digital medical record. It will work with GP surgeries to

remind parents based on a child’s age that they are due vaccinations.

Experts welcomed the an-nouncement, but said it must be backed up with suffi cient fund-ing to enable the system to run smoothly.

Professor Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: “GP practices have systems in place to notify pa-tients when their childhood vac-cinations are due, and follow up children who miss their jabs at the scheduled time.

“However, these systems will be on a practice-by-practice basis, and a more standardised approach across the whole country would be a sensible measure. All parents want to do the best for their chil-dren and having their children vaccinated is one of the most im-portant things they can ever do.”

Dr Doug Brown, chief executive of the British Society for Immu-nology, said: “Vaccines save lives. Despite confi dence in vaccines being high in the UK we have seen a decline in childhood vaccine up-take for fi ve years in a row.

“For us to reverse this trend, we need a multi-pronged ap-proach which is ultimately backed up by signifi cant invest-ment in our local immunisation services. Any steps a future gov-ernment can take to remind busy parents of when vaccinations are due would be a positive step in the right direction.

“This is particularly impor-tant for the MMR vaccine, as the timing for when it is given falls outside other routine check-ups on child health.

“However, for this strategy to be successful, it must be coupled with funding for healthcare staff and services to ensure vaccina-tion clinics are open and acces-sible to all in our communities so we can ensure our children are protected from these prevent-able dangerous diseases.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks to patient Andrew Hall as he visits West Cornwall Community hospital in Penzance, Britain, yesterday.

Premier in plot to ‘sell’NHS to Trump: CorbynAFPLondon

Britain’s main opposition Labour party yesterday accused Prime Minis-

ter Boris Johnson of plotting a “toxic” deal with President Donald Trump to allow US pharmaceutical companies ac-cess to the state health service.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn held up what he claimed were 451 pages of previously secret documents that proved Johnson was seeking to put the National Health Service (NHS) on the ta-ble in a post-Brexit trade deal.

Britain goes to the polls on December 12, with Johnson hoping to secure a majority to be able to push through his di-vorce deal to take the country out of the European Union.

However, the funding and running of the NHS is a recur-ring election topic.

Johnson’s Conservatives ac-cused a “desperate” Corbyn of “out-and-out lying” by peddling “conspiracy theory-fuelled nonsense”.

Corbyn had previously ob-tained a redacted version of the documents.

But the Labour leader said the unredacted version catalogued six meetings between US and UK offi cials since 2017, detailing “what they (the Conservatives) don’t want you to know”.

“The US is demanding that our NHS is on the table in nego-tiations for a toxic deal,” Corbyn told reporters in central Lon-don.

The sale of the NHS was the government’s “secret agenda”, he added, warning that the

coming election was “a fi ght for the survival of the National Health Service as a public serv-ice”.

“It’s already being talked about in secret. That could lead to runaway privatisation of our health service,” he added.

“Megacorporations see John-son’s alliance with Trump as a chance to make billions from the illness and sickness of peo-ple in this country.” Talks were at “an advanced stage” and could see an increase in the cost of generic drugs, he claimed.

The NHS was set up in 1948 under a Labour government, promising free healthcare for all “from cradle to the grave”. Labour has historically been its staunchest defender and repeatedly warned the free-market Conservatives have an agenda to introduce privati-

sation which would end free healthcare.

“We will never sell out our National Health Service,” said Corbyn.

The Conservatives said the documents — readouts of six meetings of the UK-US Trade and Investment Working Group between 2017 and 2019 — had been online for two months and only mentioned the NHS four times.

The party’s manifesto says the health service, the price it pays for drugs and the services it provides are “not on the ta-ble” in any future trade talks.

The Conservatives’ Interna-tional Trade Secretary Liz Truss slammed what she called Cor-byn’s “stunt”.

“Corbyn is getting desperate and is out-and-out lying to the public about what these docu-

ments contain,” she said.“The NHS will not be on the

table in any future trade deal and the price that the NHS pays for drugs will not be on the table.

“This sort of conspiracy theory-fuelled nonsense is not befi tting of the leader of a major political party.”

For his part, Trump told Brit-ain’s LBC radio last month that he was not interested in the NHS. “We wouldn’t be involved in that,” the US president said. “It’s not for us to have anything to do with your healthcare sys-tem. We’re just talking about trade. I don’t even know where that started...with respect to us taking over your healthcare sys-tem. It’s so ridiculous.”

Trump is due to visit Britain next week for the Nato summit on December 3-4, when the is-sue is likely to resurface.

Protesting farmers block St Stephen’s Green with their tractors, in Dublin, Ireland yesterday.

Funeral fi rm ‘hits elderly with up to 57 calls a week’Daily MailLondon

Call centre staff selling fu-neral plans called them-selves “lions” as they

preyed on elderly customers they referred to as “gazelles”, a whistleblower has claimed.

A former employee at Pros-perous Life said staff bombarded targets with calls even after they said were not interested, with

one customer receiving 57 calls in a week.

The fi rm, which sells funeral plans costing between £3,595 and £4,195, was also accused of encouraging those on low in-come to pay for deals they could not aff ord on cards.

Prosperous Life, which prides itself on its “reputation and ex-pertise”, has said the allegations are “entirely false and without foundation”.

Money Mail has repeatedly

warned about misleading prac-tices employed by fi rms selling pre-paid funeral plans. Last year a report revealed that call centre staff regularly harassed custom-ers, with one agent calling 10 times in four hours. Employees were also found to be pressuring people in their late 60s and 70s to agree to home visits.

The Prosperous Life whistle-blower told The Guardian there was a company sales culture in-spired by the Martin Scorsese fi lm

Wolf of Wall Street. There was even a life-sized cut-out of ac-tor Leonardo DiCaprio as fraud-ster Jordan Belfort, who swindled around £155mn from investors.

The former employee said staff at the call centre in Cheadle Hume, near Manchester, would push ahead with sales even if they believed the customer was not in charge of their fi nances because they had given power of attorney to a family member.

The pre-paid funeral plan in-

dustry is voluntarily regulated by the Funeral Planning Author-ity (FPA). Firms can choose to sign up to its code of practice giving customers extra protec-tion. Prosperous Life is not a member of the FPA.

Experts said that without gov-ernment intervention funeral plan fi rms would continue to target vulnerable customers with unscrupulous sales practices.

In June the Treasury an-nounced plans to regulate the

pre-paid funeral sector and promised to stamp out “shame-ful” practices including high pressure sales tactics.

Martyn James, from com-plaints website Resolver, said: “There have been concerns about the industry for years. It is a ma-nipulative area that sees fi rms targeting groups who are the most exploited and using their fear of death against them. It is a Wild West and the sooner the regulation is in place the better.”

Prosperous Life said it does not cold-call customers – it re-sponds to requests made on it is website. The fi rm said it has never had a formal complaint.

It said staff were shown mo-tivational training videos, one of which referred to lions and gazelles. The fi rm admitted the cut out of Leonardo DiCaprio had been in the offi ce, but said it was because it was running a sale promotion where staff could win a trip to New York.

EUROPE

Gulf Times Thursday, November 28, 201918

Russia has formally proposed to the United States that the two nuclear superpowers extend their New START arms control treaty by five years, though Moscow would also settle for a shorter extension, a senior Russian off icial said yesterday. The New START accord, which is due to expire in February 2021, is the last major nuclear arms control treaty between Moscow and Washington. It limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads they can deploy to 1,550 each. Russia warned earlier this month there was already not enough time left for Moscow and Washington to negotiate a full-fledged replacement to the treaty and that time was running out to agree on an extension.

Hundreds of French farmers descended yesterday on Paris by tractor to protest the struggles of the farming community and put pressure on supermarket chains to pay them more for their produce. Some 340km of tailbacks were reported during rush hour in Paris as convoys of tractors snarled traff ic along the main roads into the capital. Tractors also blocked traff ic in Lyon and other cities. In Paris, around 200 farmers blocked the Champs-Elysees avenue and dumped hay outside Fouquet’s restaurant, a hangout of the rich and famous, which was sacked earlier in the year by “yellow vest” protesters.

A 49-carat diamond which analysts estimate to be worth up to $12mn was among over a dozen jewel-encrusted items snatched from a German state museum in a spectacular heist, the museum confirmed yesterday. Publishing a list of the pieces taken in Monday’s brazen raid, the Green Vault museum at Dresden’s royal palace said the items stolen included a sword whose hilt is encrusted with nine large and 770 smaller diamonds, and a shoulderpiece which contains the famous 49-carat Dresden white diamond. Eleven pieces were removed completely, while individual parts of a further three items were also missing.

The discovery of a submarine carrying 3,000kg of cocaine off the coast of Spain marks a “historic” turning point in the battle against drug trafficking, Spanish authorities said yesterday. Police described it as the first “narcosubmarine” to be intercepted in Europe, adding in a statement that it had been found in waters off the northwestern region of Galicia on Saturday, stuffed with 152 neatly-wrapped bales of cocaine. The estimated street value of the drugs is 100mn euros ($110.22mn), Javier Losada, head of the central government delegation in Galicia, told reporters yesterday.

The German army was hit yesterday by another equipment problem, as it was forced to keep its new Airbus Sea Lion helicopter on the ground because key technical documents were riddled with irregularities. The Bundeswehr took delivery of the first N90 Sea Lion chopper a month ago, but “because of the inadequate and incomplete documentation, it is not possible” for the Navy’s personnel to fly the helicopters. Irregularities were found in “well over 150 positions”. “In all, these are considerable errors that do not permit the safe operation of the flight for the moment,” added the army.

Russia urges US to extend N-pact due to expire in 2021

French farmers clog cities to protest falling prices

Museum confirms 49-carat diamond among heist haul

‘Narcosubmarine’ a first for Europe, says Spain

Germany grounds chopper in latest hardware woes

DEFENCE SNARLEDCRIME BUSTED UNSAFE

Albania scrambles to fi nd earthquake survivorsBy Briseida Mema, AFPTirana

Emergency workers in Alba-nia yesterday pulled dust-covered corpses from the

ruins of buildings gutted by a violent earthquake, in a tireless search for survivors as the death toll crept towards 30.

Tirana declared a state of emergency in the areas hard-est-hit by Tuesday’s 6.4 mag-nitude earthquake: the coastal city of Durres and the town of Thumane, where victims were trapped by toppled apartments and hotels.

Devastated relatives wept as search teams in Thumane un-earthed the bodies of a mar-ried couple, Pellumb and Celike Greku, from one of the build-ings torn down by the strongest earthquake to strike Albania in decades.

“Terrible, terrible,” an elderly woman dressed in black shouted, pulling at her hair as the bodies in pyjamas were wrapped in blan-kets and carried away.

Their son Saimir, who was vis-iting from abroad, was rescued alive from the rubble on Tuesday night but later died in hospital,

according to relatives and neigh-bours.

“They went to heaven togeth-er, they were very honest and poor people,” said Valbona Cupi, 60, another local, in tears.

Nearby, rescue teams were combing another crumbled building in hopes of reaching a young woman they believed may still be alive after the more than 24-hour ordeal.

Earlier in the day, they pulled out the body of a young man.

By mid-day yesterday, the of-fi cial death toll was 27 after the defence ministry revised down an earlier fi gure of 28.

Some 45 people had also been rescued, the ministry said.

There was no estimate on how many people remained missing.

Around 650 people have been treated for mostly minor injuries, according to Albania’s health ministry.

Aftershocks continued yester-day, with a 5.3 magnitude quake shaking buildings in the seaside town of Durres and spreading panic after it struck just off the coast, the European Mediter-ranean Seismological Centre re-ported.

Earlier in the day, a 6.1-mag-nitude underwater earthquake

rocked the island of Crete in neighbouring Greece.

More than 27 buildings were badly damaged, with several re-duced to dust, in Durres, a beach destination on the Adriatic coast.

Thousands of people spent the previous night sleeping in tents or on the grass of the city’s foot-ball stadium.

Many were afraid to return home as the aftershocks rattled nerves and temporarily halted rescue work.

During a visit to Durres, Prime Minister Edi Rama said the government would arrange for homeless families to be moved into hotels.

“We cannot spend the winter under open skies or in tents,” he said, pledging to put each family in a new home by 2020.

In the district of Keneta, emer-gency workers and relatives kept up the search for a family of six — two parents and four children — whose home was fl attened by the earthquake.

“Hope is the last thing that dies,” said Asije, 40, a close rela-tive of the Lala family who had moved to the port city from Al-bania’s poor north in search of a better life.

Another relative, Hasan Lala,

was working with rescuers who used pickaxes, shovels and their hands to clear debris and move slabs of concrete.

“The rescue operation is very diffi cult because you can’t use heavy machinery, you have to work with your hands,” he said, as distraught neighbours watched from the house next door.

Albania is one of the poorest countries in Europe, but experts, rescue teams and emergency aid have fl owed in from around the continent.

Tirana declared yesterday a national day of mourning and cancelled festivities planned for Independence Day celebrations on November 28-29.

In an act of solidarity, neigh-bouring Kosovo, whose popula-tion is mostly ethnic Albanian, also went into offi cial mourning.

Two Kosovar brothers, Shem-sedin and Isa Abazi, were among those killed in Durres when their hotel collapsed, according to Pristina.

The powerful quake struck just before 4am on Tuesday.

Earthquakes are common in the Balkans due to the move-ments two large tectonic plates — the African and Eurasian — and the smaller Adriatic micro-plate.

Rescuers look for survivors through the rubble of a collapsed building in Thumane, northwest of Tirana, after an earthquake hit Albania.

EU chief vows to build a ‘green superpower’By Francoise Michel, AFPStrasbourg

Brussels’ next top offi cial Ur-sula von der Leyen will take offi ce on Sunday after win-

ning a comfortable parliamentary majority for her plan to make the EU a green superpower.

The 61-year-old conservative takes offi ce with Europe challenged to fi nd its new role alongside geo-political and economic giants the United States and China.

Her path to offi ce, delayed from November 1, was rocky and Brus-sels’ power has been undermined by Franco-German rivalry and Brit-ain’s imminent exit.

But yesterday, the European Parliament in Strasbourg gave the former German defence minister a 461 to 157 vote of confi dence to al-low her 27-strong commission to get to work on December 1.

After a handover ceremony on Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the latest European treaty, she will head to Madrid next week for the COP 25 climate summit.

“I ask for your support to give Europe a new start,” she said, in a largely well-received speech at-tended by the massed ranks of the new commissioners and in which she shifted fl uently between Eng-lish, French and German.

“Our union will embark on trans-formation that will touch every part of our society and economy and we will do it because it will be the right thing to do, not because it will be easy,” she said.

She hailed the Dutch vice-presi-dent that she was obliged by mem-ber states to pick as her deputy, so-cialist Frans Timmermans, as the right man for the dossier.

And she promised a “European green deal...for the health of our planet, our people and our econo-my.”

As well as promising measures to combat climate change, von der Leyen insisted that Europe has the heft to lead the world in a digital economic revolution.

“We are the world’s trading su-perpower,” she boasted. “We are the largest source and destination of

foreign direct investment anywhere in the world.

“We should harness this twin power of digitalisation and climate transition to boost our industrial base.”

Von der Leyen’s own appoint-ment to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as president was approved in July with only nine votes more than she needed, a narrow margin in EU politics.

And three of her initial nominees were rejected during the parliamen-tary confi rmation process — an un-precedented snub — weakening her from the outset.

But the main centre-right, liberal and socialist voting blocs rallied round her in the fi nal vote, and the Greens chose to abstain rather than vote against.

“Our priorities are a crucial part of the von der Leyen commission,” said Manfred Weber, head of the parliament’s centre-right EPP bloc and himself a disappointed former presidential hopeful.

“In 2024 Europe will have the most ambitious and inclusive cli-mate policy in the world, a Euro-pean border and coast guard, trans-formed Europol into a European FBI, a master plan to fi ght cancer and created millions of jobs.”

The commission has members from across the political spectrum and 12 out of the 27 are women, not quite the parity that was promised but the highest number ever in the European Commission.

There will nevertheless be oppo-sition. The parliament’s eurosceptic, far-left and right-wing populist par-

ties oppose much of her programme, and the Greens are sceptical.

“Having heard the von der Leyen speech in the European Parlia-ment today, I already miss Juncker,” sighed German MEP Reinhard Bu-tikofer.

And there is one more cloud hanging over the investiture: Brexit.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to pull Britain out of the EU on January 31, after Brexit was re-peatedly delayed amid wrangling in Westminster over the divorce terms.

But in the meantime he has re-fused to fi ll Britain’s seat on the commission and is now standing for re-election in a December 12 vote.

Von der Leyen expressed regret at Britain’s decision and was markedly more conciliatory than her pred-

ecessor Juncker, who often made jokes about what he saw as Lon-don’s great mistake.

“I have made no secret that I will always be a remainer. But I will also always respect the decision taken by the British people,” she said.

“And whatever the future holds, the bond and the friendship be-tween our people are unbreakable.”

Von der Leyen has not been in-vited to observe next week’s the Nato summit in London, but said she con-tinues to regard the trans-Atlantic alliance as key to Europe’s security — distancing herself from Macron.

The French leader has branded Nato “brain dead” and suggested that Europe should take arms to defend itself, but von der Leyen insisted the EU “would never be a military alliance.”

European Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen addresses the European Parliament in Strasbourg yesterday.

Europeans face up to new space challengesBy Juliette Collen, AFPParis

European ministers yesterday met in Spain aim-ing to defend its top space ranking against challenges from the United States and China,

and increasingly from industry disruptors such as Elon Musk’s Space X.

Ministers of the 22 European Space Agency (ESA) member states gathered in Seville to discuss a re-quest for 14.3bn euros in funding, some 4bn euros more than in the previous 3-year budget.

The European Union has already agreed to provide 16bn euros and now the crucial question is what to spend it on.

“There is a desire to do more, to have a more ambi-tious scientifi c programme and to develop our infra-structure to match our ambitions,” ESA spokesman Philippe Willekens told AFP.

In a fast changing environment, “Europe must pay attention to remain the leader in those sectors it already is and to continue to conquer new markets,” Willekens added.

In recent years, Europe has established itself as a major space player, with its very heavy Ariane 6 rocket launcher the latest off the production line and the Galileo GPS system operational.

But this position is now “threatened,” the Institut Montaigne think-tank in Paris says, as global com-petition increases, led by the United States and Chi-na who have poured massive amounts of money into the industry, both civilian and military.

“Europe does not have the structural advan-tages of the Americans and Chinese because it does not have a single, shared objective,” said Isabelle Sourbes-Verger of France’s National Centre for Scientifi c Research (CNRS). “Europe has the same problem it has always had — what justifi es spending more on space?”

Europe must answer these questions just as new play-ers such as Space X and a host of others, mostly Ameri-can, have begun to emerge, shaking up the industry.

This “New Space” evolution has seen Musk for example develop reusable launchers for dramatically smaller yet more powerful satellites, many designed for the “connected world” of driverless cars and countless other aspects of everyday life on earth.

Some experts fear that Europe is simply not com-petitive enough to get into these new markets, never mind holding on to what it already has.

Ariane 6 is a particular cause for concern, with French state audit offi cials recently describing its economic model as “presenting some risks” given ferocious competition from Space X which in 2017 took Arianespace’s global satellite launch crown.

Space X has forced down costs sharply, develop-ing a reusable rocket which the Europeans thought initially to be impossible, the offi cials said.

Worse still, Europe “at this stage has only devel-oped the building blocks which will allow, in due time, to acquire” this re-usable technology, the au-ditors said in a report.

Arianespace head Stephane Israel insists that Ariane 6 is “just the beginning” and the rocket pro-gramme “opens a cycle of innovations which will have to be accelerated.”

Deshmukh’s son may take oath as ministerIANSMumbai

With Shiv Sena chief Ud-dhav Thackarey, eight Congress leaders will

also be sworn in as ministers in Maharashtra, including former chief minister late Vilasrao Desh-mukh’s son Amit Deshmukh, party leaders said yesterday.

“Maharashtra Congress chief Balasaheb Thorat, former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son Amit Deshmukh, ex-chief minister Ashok Chavan, party working president Nitin Raut, Kisan Congress chief Nana Patole, Vishwajeet Kadam, Aslam Sheikh and Varsha Gaikwad are likely to be sworn in the ministers,” senior Congress leader told IANS.

He said the party is also push-ing for the post of speaker in the 288-member assembly.

“We are pushing for former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan to be elected as the speaker of the assembly,” he said, adding the Congress is likely to get 12 cabinet berth while the rest will be shared

by the NCP and the Shiv Sena.The pre-poll alliance part-

ners Congress and the Nation-alist Congress Party (NCP) have forged an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s former ally Shiv Sena.

Uddhav Thackarey, fi rst fam-ily member from the Thackarey family, will take oath as the chief minister today at Shivaji Park.

Meanwhile, former fi nance minister P Chidambaram yester-day launched a scathing attack on the BJP over the Maharashtra political drama, saying it showed the honour they accorded to the constitution.

In a brief interaction with the media at the Rouse Av-enue Court, Chidambram said: “That’s the honour they show to the constitution? It’s sad that the prime minister, the president and the governor were involved in the midnight (drama).”

Chidambaram was produced before Judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar at the end of his judicial custody in the INX Media case.

The court extended the judi-cial custody till December 11.

Ajit Pawar likely to be NCP fl oor leader againIANSMumbai

The Nationalist Congress Party is likely to elect Ajit Pawar again as its fl oor

leader in the assembly ahead of the swearing-in today, sources within the Sharad Pawar-led party indicated.

In a truce with uncle Sharad Pawar, the NCP wants to re-store the status of Ajit Pawar. However, it is not clear whether Ajit Pawar will be a deputy chief minister or accommodated in the ministry.

After a surprise revolt, Ajit Pawar was removed as the NCP legislature party leader and Jay-ant Patil was appointed in his place.

Ajit Pawar on Tuesday re-signed as deputy chief minis-ter and then met Sharad Pawar late at night. In the three-party legislature meeting, at least two leaders, including Chhagan

Bhujbal, supported Ajit Pawar’s rehabilitation.

The junior Pawar revolted against the NCP and joined hands with the Bharatiya Ja-nata Party to take oath as deputy chief minister last Saturday.]

The optics in the assembly have set the NCP’s internal dy-namics straight with Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule receiving the newly elected MLAs before the start of the fi rst session yesterday, and she wel-coming and hugging estranged cousin Ajit ‘Dada’ Pawar.

With Ajit Pawar being pushed to the fence, Sule is at the centre stage of the NCP now.

She was part of all the meet-ings and the negotiations that her father did towards the for-mation of the government. She was also instrumental in pursu-ing Ajit Pawar back to the party fold.

After the Saturday coup, Sule immediately changed her What-sApp status – “party and family

splits’’. It now is clear that the saga of the Pawar family will ro-tate around Sule.

The high profi le rebellion within the Pawar clan is be-ing seen as the direct fallout of Sule’s gradual elevation in the party, fi rst in the Rajya Sabha and then in the Lok Sabha. Until then Ajit Pawar had a free run in the NCP aff airs.

As the clout of Sule has gradu-ally increased in the party, Ajit Pawar had been upset for quiet sometime, said an NCP insider. In the past few days, Sule was part of the hectic activity and even close Pawar aide Praful Pa-tel was missing.

As Sharad Pawar emerges from shadows to becoming the strong Maratha, Sule will be the next heir apparent in the NCP.

Pawar on Tuesday walked in amid loud cheers at hotel Tri-dent where Uddhav Thackery was elected as the leader of the three parties.

MaharashtraBJP ignored seniors, saysparty leaderIANSMumbai

In a veiled attack on former Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, sen-

ior state Bharatiya Janata Party leader Eknath Khadse yesterday claimed that the party could have won at least 25 more seats in the October 21 assembly elec-tions if seniors had not been sidelined.

Khadse, once the de facto No 2 in the state party and govern-ment before he was made to resign on alleged corruption charges, also targeted Fadnavis for joining hands with Nation-alist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar to form the short-lived government last week.

Though he did not specifi-cally take the name of Fadnavis, it was quite obvious who he was referring to in his media inter-action.

Khadse criticised Fadnavis for hobnobbing with Ajit Pa-war, creating a big mess of the government formation and then giving the NCP leader a “clean chit” in the irrigation scam.

Dwelling upon how sen-ior leaders like himself, Vinod Tawde, Prakash Mehta and Chandrashekar Bawankule were denied tickets in the assembly polls, Khadse said: “You should have taken us along with you. That way, the BJP could have won around 20-25 seats more which it has lost.”

Instead, his daughter, Rohini Khewalkar-Khadse was given the ticket from Muktainagar, but she lost to independent candi-date Chandrakant N Patil, who was supported by the Congress-

Nationalist Congress Party alli-ance.

His daughter-in-law Raksha Khadse, however, is a BJP MP from Raver in Jalgaon.

Khadse, who has been a sen-ior party leader since the era of the late veterans Pramod Ma-hajan and Gopinath Munde, served as a minister in the erst-while Shiv Sena-BJP govern-ment of 1995-1999, became a minister again in 2014, but was later forced to quit during the Fadnavis regime.

On the irrigation scam, Khadse said the party had given cartloads of evidence against Ajit Pawar, but “now all these documents have been disposed of in ‘raddi’ (rubbish mart), and probably fetched a good price”.

While clarifying that the party was never wrong, he said that it was when “some party leaders entrusted with decision-making powers tend to take wrong deci-sions that the party has to face the consequences”.

Justifying his contentions, Khadse said when in 2014 the BJP snapped alliance with the Shiv Sena, it was the party’s de-cision and he was entrusted with the responsibility of announcing it.

“The two parties contested separately, but later came to-gether and formed the govern-ment which functioned well for the last fi ve years,” he said.

However, in 2019, the two par-ties contested the elections as a formidable alliance and were re-turned in a majority.

“The people gave a majority – 161 seats – to the BJP-Sena com-bine, but it was only on the issue of the post of chief minister that the alliance broke and the two

partners parted ways,” Khadse said.

The 67-year-old outspoken leader rued that though seniors like him have worked hard and did penance for the party for the past 35-40 years, they were sim-ply brushed aside and the party is now looking at the damage. Prime Minister Naren-

dra Modi, BJP chief Amit Shah and party working president J P Nadda in a meeting on Tues-day decided to ask Fadnavis to put his resignation, sources said yesterday.

The top leaders had to take this decision because they could not arrange the majority to win a fl oor test despite every eff ort. They thought that taking fl oor test when they knew they could not prove the majority would be more embarrassing than asking Fadnavis to resign, the sources said.

The prime minister was par-ticipating in the special session of the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sab-ha on the occasion of the Consti-tution Day on November 26. In between, the Supreme Court de-livered its verdict on the Mahar-ashtra issue and ordered holding a fl oor test by yesterday evening.

After attending the special session, Shah and Nadda went to Modi’s room to discuss the ongoing political scenario. The meeting continued for half-an-hour.

According to the sources, when Modi got to know that Ajit Pawar seemed unable to con-vince the legislators for the fl oor test, they decided to save party’s prestige through Fadnavis’ res-ignation before the fl oor test. The step could also do a damage control for the party.

Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule hugs her cousin Ajit Pawar outside the Maharashtra assembly in Mumbai yesterday.

Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari holds a meeting with chief minister-designate and Shiv Sena Party’s leader Uddhav Thackeray in Mumbai yesterday.

Farmers, widows, celebrities to attend Thackeray’s swearing-inIANSMumbai

More than 500 farmers from diff erent parts of Maharashtra will be in-

vited to attend the swearing-in of Uddhav Thackeray as Mahar-ashtra chief minister at Shivaji Park in Mumbai today evening, a top Congress leader said yes-terday.

“We are having at least 500-700 farmers and widows for the grand function tomorrow. There will be at least 20 farmers from each district in Maharashtra,” said Vijay Wadettiwar, former Leader of Opposition in the as-sembly.

Chief Ministers of all opposi-tion-ruled states have also been invited besides central leaders of all political parties, and state party leaders, he added.

Some of them are Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi, Trinamool Congress (TMC) su-premo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerji, Aam

Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Ke-jriwal, and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief M K Stalin.

Also invited is Maharashtra Navnirman Sena president and Thackeray’s cousin Raj Thack-eray.

Shiv Sena Legislative Party leader Eknath Shinde said that apart from political dignitaries from all parties in Maharashtra and the rest of India, there will be celebrities from the fi lm and glamour world, industrialists, sports personalities and promi-nent achievers in diff erent fi elds.

He said that at least 500 farm-ers and widows who have met Thackeray during his state-wide election tours will be attending the function.

The chief Justice and judges of the Bombay High Court, top police, civil and defence offi -cials, diplomatic corps and high-ranking government offi cials will also attend the swearing-in cer-emony, sources said.

This is the fi rst time in the state that a second swearing-in

ceremony of a chief minister – of a diff erent alliance government – within a gap of fi ve days, will be held.

At the crack of dawn on No-vember 23, a two-member gov-ernment comprising chief min-ister Devendra Fadnavis and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar was sworn in, leaving the state and country in a daze.

However, that government barely completed 80 hours in of-fi ce, paving the way for the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance government headed by Thack-eray to stake its claim to power, and fi nally invited to take the oath of offi ce on November 28.

Meanwhile, a day before his swearing-in, Thackeray got a boost when a Palghar-based party, Bahujan Vikas Aghadi (BVA) joined the Aghadi, a top leader said.

In a statement, former Con-gress chief minister Ashok Cha-van said that the BVA with three legislators has decided to throw its weight behind the MVA. The three legislators are Hitendra

Thakur, his son Kshitij Thakur and Rajesh Patil.

With this, the strength of the MVA goes up to 169 in the 288-member assembly, said Chavan.

Starting his political career with the Congress over four dec-ades ago, the six-time legislator Hitendra Thakur later formed his own political party which has been lording over the Palghar re-gion.

The BVA wields total control over the Vasai-Virar Municipal Corporation and these twin towns – barely 25km north of Mumbai – rank as the fi fth-largest in the state and the fastest growing ur-ban conglomerate in India.

Once a staunch political rival of Shiv Sena, the BVA has largely remained unallied though it had supported the Bharatiya Janata Party after the election results were announced on October 24.

Following the unilateral sup-port extended to MVA, the BVA could now be a contender for a ministerial post, according to party sources.

Gobind Singh Longowal was yesterday re-appointed president of the cash-rich Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) for the third time in a row. The decision was taken at the annual meeting of the SGPC general house held inside the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar. His name was proposed by former SGPC president Jagir Kaur and seconded by Alwinder Pal Singh Pakhoke. The SGPC, considered a mini-parliament of Sikh religious aff airs, has an annual budget of nearly Rs1,200 crore. It has control over Sikh religious aff airs, and manages gurdwaras in Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, including the holiest of Sikh shrines Harmandir Sahib, popularly known as Golden Temple.

The Sikh community in Bijnore, Uttar Pradesh is up in arms against a private school that objected to a class 10 Sikh student wearing a turban. The Gurudwara Prabhandak Samiti has lodged a complaint with district officials. According to reports, the student was asked by the principal of St Mary’s school not to wear the turban to school. The student had been regularly attending school with his turban, but two days ago he was asked not to wear the turban. Balbir Singh, head of the Shri Guru Singh Sabha, said that the community had lodged a complaint with the sub-divisional magistrate. Copies of the complaint have been sent to the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak.

Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda yesterday slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in Haryana, saying it had failed to finalise the common minimum programme in the past one month. “When will this government start working? People don’t know what they are doing. They have not yet announced any programme for the people,” he said. After 18 days of dilly-dallying, the government on November 14 inducted 10 in the council of ministers, which included one Jannayak Janata Party legislator and an independent. Taking a dig at the post-election BJP-JJP alliance, Hooda said in democracy the mandate should be respected. The government was formed on the basis of “selfishness”, said Hooda, a two-time chief minister.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) will file a review petition against the Supreme Court’s verdict on the temple issue in the first week of December. Senior advocate Zafaryab Jilani said on behalf of AIMPLB that the review petition would be filed before the 30-day limit which ends on December 9. The board has already said it would ask for a review of the judgment in which the entire disputed land has been given for the temple and a five-acre plot of land would be given to Muslims for construction of a mosque. The Babri mosque stood on a plot of land which is considered by Hindus to be the birthplace of Ram. The mosque was demolished by a Hindu mob in December 1992 that led to riots across the country.

A man killed five members of his family in Jharkhand alleging that his wife had illicit relationships, police said yesterday. According to the police, Gango Das, 30, had a quarrel with his wife who was eight months pregnant. The family members including the mother and two other relatives tried to intervene. He picked up a rod and hit his wife Sheela Devi, 27, mother Shanti, 60, daughter Radhika Kumari, 6 and son Piyush Kumar, 2 and two nieces. Except one niece all others died on the spot. The survivor has been admitted to a local hospital. After the massacre, Das locked himself in a room. Police said Das was mentally disturbed. Police have arrested him. The bodies have been sent for postmortem.

Longowal re-appointed SGPC chief for third time

Sikh boy asked not to wear turban to school

Hooda slams ‘paralysed’ Khattar government

AIMPLB to file review petition on Ayodhya verdict

Man kills five family members in Jharkhand

RELIGION CONTROVERSYPOLITICS JUDICIARY CRIME

INDIA19Gulf Times

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Bolivia govtnames fi rst envoy to US in 11 yearsAFPLa Paz

Bolivia has appointed its fi rst ambassador to the US in 11 years, offi cials said, as the

interim government resets the country’s foreign policy after the departure of Evo Morales.

Walter Oscar Serrate Cuellar has been given the key posting, the foreign ministry announced on Twitter, fi lling a position left vacant since a diplomatic spat be-tween La Paz and Washington in 2008.

The high-profi le appointment, which has to be approved by the senate, comes as the caretaker government prepares to hold new elections that exclude Morales.

Morales’ Movement for Social-ism party controls the upper house of Congress.

Serrate previously served as Bo-livia’s ambassador and permanent representative at the United Na-tions, the ministry said.

Under Morales, Bolivia’s pres-ident for nearly 14 years, ties with the US were tense. Relations took a turn for the worse under former US leader George W Bush, with the expulsion of ambassadors from both countries in late 2008.

Morales resigned on November 10 and fl ed to Mexico where he was granted political asylum after dis-puted October 20 elections ignited street protests.

Morales, who had been seeking a fourth term, claimed victory, but opposition groups said the results were rigged.

Since declaring herself interim president, right-wing senator Jeanine Anez, who has been rec-ognised by the United States, has wasted no time rewriting Bolivia’s foreign policy.

She broke ties with Cuba and Venezuela.

Anez’s fi rst foreign policy deci-sion was to recognise Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s president, joining a

group of around 50 countries.Foreign Minister Karen Longar-

ic announced Venezuelan diplo-mats would be sent home for “vio-lating diplomatic norms.” Bolivia also fi red all its ambassadors ex-cept those to Peru and the Vatican.

The announcement comes as some 20 former members of Mo-rales’ government are holed up in Mexico’s embassy in La Paz, the foreign ministry said.

Five of them — including Mo-rales’ former top minister Juan Ramon Quintana — are wanted for arrest.

Both Morales and Quintana have been accused of sedition and terrorism.

Federal prosecutors are inves-tigating allegations that Morales, after arriving in Mexico, encour-aged his supporters to maintain road blocks that caused severe food and fuel shortages in La Paz.

Interior Minister Arturo Murillo played a telephone recording to journalists last Wednesday, alleg-edly of Morales issuing instruc-tions to a leader of the opposition movement in Bolivia.

“Don’t let food into the cities, we’re going to block, really en-circle (the cities),” says the voice Murillo attributed to Morales.

Bolivia has lodged a formal pro-test to Mexico over Morales’s re-marks, saying they “contravened” his political asylum status.

Looming new elections and talks between the interim gov-ernment and opposition groups have helped defuse tensions after weeks of unrest that left dozens dead.

Normal activities are resum-ing in La Paz and other cities with schools and businesses reo-pening this week and blockades of major transport routes mostly removed.

An eight-point agreement released by the government pledged, among other things, to set up a commission to free pro-testers who had not committed any crimes.

Brazil NGO raided in Amazon fi res probeGuardian News and MediaBrasilia

The headquarters of an award-winning Brazilian NGO which works with

remote communities in the Am-azon has been raided by police, who also arrested four volunteer fi refi ghters and accused them of starting wildfi res to raise inter-national funding.

Heavily armed police raided the offi ces of the Health and Happiness Project, (known by its Portuguese initials as PSA) in Alter do Chao in the Amazon state of Para, seizing computers and documents.

PSA has close links to the Alter do Chao volunteer fi re brigade, which in September helped bat-tle huge wildfi res raging through

protected areas in this popular tourist region. The four arrested fi refi ghters were members of the volunteer brigade, and one of them works for PSA.

The arrests came three months after Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro sought to blame a surge in Amazon fi res on NGOs, without providing any evidence.

“It is a Kafkaesque situation, we were all taken by surprise without understanding why,” said the Health and Happiness Project’s co-ordinator Caetano Scannavino. “If (the fi refi ghters) were really criminals they must be Hollywood actors because they tricked us.”

The Alter do Chao fi re brigade also denied the accusations. “We are sure that whatever the accusation, their innocence will

be made clear,” it said in a state-ment.

Local indigenous associations and campaigners said the raid and arrests were a politically-motivated attack on dedicated fi refi ghters and a respected NGO.

“This is a very serious NGO whose work is recognised by the local population and interna-tionally,” said Felipe Milanez, a professor of humanities at the Federal University of Bahia.

“We know the serious work and honesty of our fi refi ghters,” said the Iwipuraga indigenous association.

Jose de Melo Jr, the detective leading the investigation, de-nied any political dimension and said he had evidence of arson.

“We observed in some im-ages that the fi refi ghters were responsible for starting these

fi res,” he said. “They created a problem for them to solve and make money from.”

Detective Melo Jr sent the Guardian a video he said fi re-fi ghters had uploaded to Youtube. Apparently shot from a drone, it showed blazes burn-ing in a stretch of forest before panning back to reveal a vehicle on a dirt road, but did not show anybody lighting any fi res.

The Alter do Chao brigade was formed last year and has close links to the Health and Happiness Project, founded in 1987 by Caetano Scannavino’s brother Eugenio, a doctor from Sao Paulo.

“They have paralysed our operations,” said Eugenio Scan-navino. “This is very danger-ous, it is a retaliation against the NGOs.”

The NGO’s activities include operating a hospital boat visit-ing remote riverside commu-nities and helping indigenous communities develop sustain-able tourism. It also runs an ex-perimental agroforestry centre.

On Monday, the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported that real estate interests were pressurising protected areas in Alter do Chao. In September federal prosecutors said they suspected one of the Alter do Chao fi res had been started in an area invaded by a land grabber on the run from police after be-ing handed a six-year, 10-month prison sentence.

But detective Melo Jr said his operation has not examined any possible links between the fi res and land speculation which locals say is rife on protected areas.

A supporter of former Brazilian president Lula da Silva holds a sign that reads “Lula was not tried. He’s the victim of political persecution” in front of the TRF-4 appeals court in Porto Alegre, Brazil, yesterday.

Lula’s supporters rally

Argentina’s president-electrules out seeking IMF fundsAFPBuenos Aires

Argentina’s leftist presi-dent-elect Alberto Fern-andez said he would re-

nounce the remaining $11bn tranche of the country’s Inter-national Monetary Fund loan as soon as he takes offi ce next month.

Outgoing centre-right Presi-dent Mauricio Macri agreed a massive $57bn loan loan package last year, but the austerity meas-ures he imposed failed to right the economy.

“What I want is to stop ask-ing (for money), and that they let me pay,” said Fernandez, who takes offi ce on December 10 af-ter ousting Macri in last month’s elections.

“I have an enormous problem. And I’m going to ask for $11bn more?” the incoming president said in an interview Argentina’s Radio Con Vos.

Fernandez said he will “try to

revive the economy in order to pay and solve the debt problem sensibly.”

The return to power of protec-tionist Peronists has raised fears of yet another debt default, and eroded the peso’s value.

The poverty rate has risen to more than 35%, infl ation for the year to September was at almost 38%, while the peso has depreci-ated 70 % since January 2018.

The president-elect has in-sisted his government would not default but rather seek to renegotiate the terms of the IMF loan, and sought to reas-sure voters in last month’s elec-tion that their bank deposits would be safe under his admin-istration.

“It’s like a guy who drinks a lot and is a little drunk. The solution is not to continue drinking. The solution is to stop drinking,” he told the radio.

Debt soared by about $100bln under Macri and now exceeds 90% of GDP. At the time of his election in 2017, it was 38% of GDP.

“I try to be a serious person. A person who tells you ‘I’m going to do such and such a thing,’ and you know he’s going to do it.

“I don’t want to sign agree-ments that I’m not going to fulfi l. Those agreements were already signed by Macri. He signed one, two, three and fulfi lled none,” said Fernandez.

The IMF suspended the re-lease of a $5.4bn disbursement in September following the govern-ment’s failure to meet infl ation targets.

“We want them not to lend us more money, but to let us devel-op. Let’s discuss the time I need to develop, but don’t give me more money.”

Rights body calls forChile police reformsAFPSantiago

Chile’s national police committed “serious hu-man rights violations”

as weeks of violent demonstra-tions across the South Ameri-can country claimed 25 lives, Human Rights Watch said in a report calling for reform of the force.

HRW said the police, known as Carabineros, “committed seri-ous human rights violations, in-cluding excessive use of force in the streets and abuses in deten-tion,” during the protests.

The New York-based right group had received hundreds of disturbing reports of abuse, including cases of beatings and sexual assault, Jose Miguel Viv-anco, HRW’s director for the Americas, told a press confer-ence in Santiago.

“We believe that the abuses are not isolated cases, they are not coincidences,” said Vivanco.

The rights groups said in a statement it met with President

Sebastian Pinera in Santiago, rec-ommending a series of reforms to help prevent police misconduct.

The reforms were needed “in the wake of compelling evidence of excessive use of force and abuses against demonstrators and bystanders.”

Among its recommendations is a thorough reform of the Chil-ean police, including reviewing detention protocols for identity checks, setting up internal con-trol mechanisms and strength-ening police training.

“We recognise the value of the Human Rights Watch report and the recommendations that have been made to us,” said Lorena Recabarren, the Chilean minis-ter with responsibility for human rights.

She said the fi ndings “concern us and, of course, are ones we re-ceive with pain.”

Meanwhile university student Gustavo Gatica became the fi rst demonstrator to be left fully blind after being hit in the eyes by pellets fi red by riot police on November 8 during a protest in Santiago.

US to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorists: TrumpReutersWashington/Mexico City

US President Donald Trump said he would designate Mexican drug

cartels as terrorist groups for their role in traffi cking narcotics and people, prompting a speedy request for talks by Mexico.

“They will be designated,... I have been working on that for the last 90 days. You know, designa-

tion is not that easy, you have to go through a process, and we are well into that process,” Trump said in an interview with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

Soon afterwards, Mexico’s for-eign ministry issued a statement saying it would quickly seek a high-level meeting with US state department offi cials to address the legal designation as well as the fl ow of arms and money to organised crime.

“The foreign minister will es-

tablish contact with his counter-part, Michael R Pompeo, in order to discuss this very important is-sue for the bilateral agenda,” the ministry said.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rejected Trump’s “interventionism.”

“Co-operation, yes, interven-tion, no” Lopez Obrador said in a morning news conference when asked about Trump’s comments.

Once a particular group is designated as a terrorist organi-

sation, it is illegal under US law for people in the United States to knowingly off er support and its members cannot enter the coun-try and may be deported.

Financial institutions that become aware they have funds connected to the group must block the money and alert the US treasury department.

Reacting to the comments from Trump, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said in a tweet that Mexico would never

tolerate any move that would vi-olate its national sovereignty.

“We will be fi rm,” Ebrard add-ed.

Earlier this month, Trump of-fered in a tweet to help Mexico “wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth” in the aftermath of the bloodiest attack on US citizens in Mexico in years.

Three women and six chil-dren of dual US-Mexican na-tionality were killed in an am-

bush in northern Mexico.Mexican authorities said they

may have been victims of mis-taken identity amid confronta-tions among drug gangs in the area.

Alex LeBaron, a former Mexi-can congressman and relative of some of the victims, rejected the idea on Twitter of a US “in-vasion.” “We have already been invaded by terrorist cartels,” he wrote. “We demand real co-ordi-nation between both countries...

both countries are responsi-ble for the rising trade in drugs, weapons and money.”

The LeBaron extended family has often been in confl ict with drug traffi ckers in Chihuahua and victims’ relatives said the killers must have known who they were targeting.

“Co-operation, yes, inter-vention, no” Lopez Obrador said in a morning news confer-ence when asked about Trump’s comments.

LATIN AMERICA

Gulf Times Thursday, November 28, 201920

A demonstrator is detained during a protest against Chile’s government in Concepcion, Chile.

“I don’t want to sign agreements that I’m not going to fulfi l. Those agreements were already signed by Macri. He signed one, two, three and fulfi lled none”

PAKISTAN21

Gulf Times Thursday, November 28, 2019

Court puts pressure on govt to explain army chief extensionPakistan’s Supreme Court

yesterday gave the gov-ernment one more day to

explain why it granted a three-year extension to army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, setting up the possibility of a rift between the judiciary and military.

The court’s push has put the government in a fi x over extend-ing Bajwa’s time in the position, who has good relations with Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Khan’s cabinet has twice ap-proved a three-year extension for Bajwa, citing a worsening national security situation in the region over its rivalry with India.

But in a surprise ruling on Tuesday, the Supreme Court

suspended the extension, cit-ing a series of irregularities and ordering the government and the army to produce legal provisions and detailed argu-ments on the reasoning behind the move.

The court adjourned without passing a verdict yesterday. Ba-jwa’s term expires at midnight today, leaving just one day to decide the general’s fate.

“If something unlawful has happened we have taken oath to correct it,” Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa told a courtroom.

The government had so far failed to provide legal justifi ca-tion for reappointing Bajwa, he added.

The court’s decision has ramifi cations for the govern-ment and the powerful mili-tary, which has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its 72-year history.

Khan’s administration has enjoyed good relations with the armed forces, in contrast to the previous government of his main rival Nawaz Sharif.

On Tuesday, Law Minister Farogh Naseem resigned in or-der to represent Bajwa in court, and being overruled by the court would almost certainly weaken Khan.

Bajwa’s tenure in the military has been accused by opposition politicians of electoral manipu-lation, meddling in politics, suspension of civil liberties and muzzling the media that helped Khan to power last year. The military has always denied in-terfering in politics.

The army chief usually serves a three-year term. Since the role was established in 1972, only one general has had his term extended by a civilian government.

ReutersIslamabad

Paramilitary soldiers stand guard outside the Supreme Court building in Islamabad.

PTI claims easy win in K-P Senate seat electionZeeshan Khanzada, of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, was elected a senator in a one-sided contest against Farzand Ali Khan, of the Pakistan Peoples Party, who was the joint candidate of the opposition in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.Three lawmakers of the Jamaat-i-Islami didn’t cast vote as the party had announced the boycott of the contest.Four members of the Balochistan Awami Party also voted for the PTI candidate.The seat was declared vacant following the resignation of PPP Senator Khanzada Khan, who joined the ruling party recently.Prime Minister Imran Khan compensated Khanzada Khan by nominating his son, Zeeshan Khanzada, for the vacancy. The unoff icial results show that Zeeshan Khanzada of the PTI secured 104 votes, while his rival candidate, Farzand, polled 31 votes. Four votes were rejected.A total of 139 MPAs cast vote in the 145-member house in the session chaired by Provincial Election Commissioner Pir Maqbool Ahmad.

More women police stations planned in rural areas The Ministry of Human Rights (MoHR) has planned to expand women police stations in rural areas of the country to ensure easy access to justice at their doorsteps.The project would be started by next year under which women police stations would be established in far flung and rural areas of the country.Off icial sources said, majority of women did not report cases of domestic violence due to non-availability of proper system.He said they would train even male off icers to attend female complaints in diff erent cases of domestic violence and property disputes especially.He said main aim of expanding women police stations at district levels was to provide persecuted women a safe way to report their grievances to police in male dominated society.He said women police off icers in their areas would provide necessary information to prevent domestic violence, adding that police stations would be fully operational and all records would be computerised.The off icial said the ministry was taking number of reforms for women’s empowerment to have their equal rights in the country.

Top offi cial, IGP removed in Punjab province

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) govern-ment has removed

Punjab Chief Secretary Yousaf Naseem Khokhar and Inspector General of Po-lice (IGP) Arif Nawaz Khan, ahead of expected major reshuffl e.

Interior Secretary Azam Suleman Khan, a BS-22 offi cer of the Pakistan Administra-tive Service (PAS), has been posted as chief secretary and Shoaib Dastagir, a BS-21 po-lice offi cer, as the provincial police chief. Khan is the third chief secretary and Dasta-gir the fi fth IG during the last 15 months.

Khokhar was asked to report to the Establishment Division.

Khan has spent the ma-jor portion of his service in Punjab. He has served as Kasur deputy commissioner, Dera Ghazi Khan and Fais-alabad district coordination offi cer, irrigation secretary, communications secre-tary, and additional chief secretary home.

Sources said since there had been a lot of pressure on Prime Minister Imran Khan to replace Chief Minister Usman Buzdar for his ‘poor governance’, he removed the IGP and chief secre-tary to give an impression that it was the bureauc-racy which was responsible for his government’s ‘poor performance’.

The outgoing IGP had re-placed BS-22 police offi cer

Amjad Javed Saleemi who was also removed from the key slot some six months after his appointment as head of the provincial police force.

Saleemi was appointed the IGP when the PTI government had removed Mohamed Ta-hir from the top slot a month after his posting as Punjab police chief.

Tahir’s abrupt removal had upset Nasir Khan Durrani who tendered his resignation as chairman of the Punjab Po-lice Reforms Commission, the offi cial said.

According to the offi cial documents, the Punjab gov-ernment had recommended to the prime minister three names for the appointment of one of them as IGP Pun-jab. The two others were Mo-hamed Mushtaq Mehar and Ahmad Latif.

The frequent transfer of IGPs of Punjab has kicked off debate as the senior cops believe that they are not against the ‘change of face’ rather the humiliating way the heads of the largest po-lice force have been shown the door in violation of the law.

Earlier, they said, Nawaz served as the Punjab IGP for 11 months and his second ten-ure just spanned only seven months which is a matter of serious concern.

Offi cials expected massive senior-level administrative reshuffl e in Punjab as a result of meetings between the chief minister and prime minister so as to improve governance here. Changes are expected in the police department as well.

InternewsLahore

Red Line BRT project ready to start in Karachi

After much sputtering, it appears the Red Line Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)

project is fi nally ready to start.Delayed for many years, the

Sindh government has com-pleted all fi nancial and techni-cal preparations for the trans-port scheme and will fl oat a request for tenders in January.

Construction work on the project is set to begin from Au-gust next year and is planned to be completed within the 24 months that follow, offi cials as-sociated with the development said.

Once fi nished, the Red Line will connect Karachi’s Model Colony to the Tower area by way of Numaish Chowrangi and the Green Line.

From Numaish Chowrangi,

Red Line buses will make use of the Green Line corridor till Jama Cloth Market and divert onto another specially con-structed corridor from there to reach the tower.

As the hub of the entire BRT system, Numaish Chowrangi will also allow Red Line travel-lers to switch to other lines and access the rest of Karachi.

While the Red Line is expect-ed to cost a staggering $503mn, according to project docu-ments, much of this amount is being loaned by donor agencies on easy terms.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved a $235mn loan for the project in July after it was green-lighted by the Ex-ecutive Committee of the Na-tional Economic Council (Ec-nec) earlier this year.

The Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIDB) ap-proved another loan worth

$71.81mn last week and the same amount is also being pro-vided by the French Develop-ment Agency (FDA).

The Green Climate Fund is providing another $37.2mn as a loan and $11.8mn as a grant to make the project environment-friendly.

The Sindh government it-self is putting in $75.9mn and has acquired all the other loans on easy terms. It will have to pay off all debt in 30 years. Al-though a Sindh government project, the federal government has given a sovereign guarantee for the Red Line BRT.

“Our vision for the Red Line is to ensure it is environment-friendly,” said BRT project di-rector Rasheed Mughal. “The buses will run on compressed natural gas (CNG) and there are plans to build a bicycle path along the route.”

Talking about the Red Line

route, the BRT project director said it would comprise two cor-ridors spanning a total length of 26.6km. The main corridor will extend from Model Colony to Numaish Chowrangi while the secondary corridor will run from Jama Cloth Market to Tower.

The two corridors will be connected by a 2.4km portion of the Green Line track, which will serve as a common corridor for all BRT lines. He added that a total of 24 bus stations will be built for the Red Line apart from the fi ve stations it will use along the common corridor.

A total of 213 buses will run along the Red Line charging fares ranging from Rs15 to Rs55, according to Mughal.

“For the fi rst time, we are implementing a third genera-tion BRT system that will let us like 10 public transport routes to the Red Line corridors via feeder buses,” he said.

InternewsKarachi

Traders gather at a fruit market in Lahore yesterday.

Fruit marketLawyers seek fast hearing in Musharraf treason case

The Lahore High Court Bar Association ap-proached the Supreme

Court seeking, a directive for the special hearing of the treason case against former president Pervez Mushar-raf to comply with its earlier observation in which it was held that the trial was a case of paramount importance under the Constitution and should be proceeded with expeditiously, and with due diligence.

A three-page petition fi led by the bar association re-quested the apex court to di-rect the special court and the federal government to follow the April 4, 2019 SC directives.

It alleged that the federal government, under one pre-text or the other, was drag-ging its feet in presenting and proceeding with the trial, and that the special court was not proceeding expeditiously in accordance with the directives of the apex court.

In its earlier order, the SC had stated that control over the proceedings of the trial could not be allowed to vest in the accused.

The judgement had also

held that Musharraf would lose his legal right to defence if he failed to turn up before the special court hearing the trea-son case against him for im-posing the November 3, 2007, emergency.

The decree was issued by the SC to help the special court reach a logical end, giv-ing a clear directive to go ahead with the treason case without having to record the statement of Musharraf under Section 342 of the Criminal Procedure Code in case he did not show up before the trial court.

The order had asked the special court to decide on the matter after hearing argu-ments of the prosecution and if Musharraf appeared before the trial court, he would have all the normal rights of de-fence. Further, the order said, the SC would keep the matter pending.

Musharraf left for the UAE for treatment of a spinal injury in March 2016 and has since then been out of the country.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Bar Council vice chairman Syed Amjad Shah has condemned the fi ling of a petition in the Islamabad High Court by the government seeking directives for the special court to refrain from announcing its verdict in the high treason case.

InternewsIslamabad

Persian language losing survival fi ght at Peshawar varsity

The language of Rumi and Omar Khayyam is on the verge of losing the bat-

tle for its survival at Peshawar University’s Persian language department.

The decline of the language in Khyber-Pakhtunkwa (K-P) has been slow but signifi cant. Once a mandatory subject in schools the language, known for its po-etry, is no longer being taught and perhaps spoken as com-monly as it once was.

Established in 1956, the Persian language depart-ment has no students

and just one faculty member.“From time to time, we trans-

late land ownership documents in Persian for Jirga decisions,” said Dr Yousuf Hussian, the only assistant professor at the depleted department.

Four out of the fi ve full-time faculty members have retired, leaving the department with just one assistant professor. Ironi-cally, all four retired instructors, including the former head of the department, remain listed on the offi cial website, which may have received update years ago.

Known for training promi-nent politicians and mem-bers of the academic com-munity, the bare-bones department at the university only

has one assistant professor.With the sole faculty mem-

ber juggling with both cleri-cal and academic duties, the Persian language will soon merge with the Urdu and Arabic department.

A sharp decline in interest in the language has also forced the department to freeze admissions this year. Not only that, the de-partment has already halted all classes, leaving the once fi lled rooms with lovers of poetry at-tributed to Omar Khayyam and Rumi, empty.

Despite being abandoned, the language still has some purvey-ors. One such individual is Qazi Fazli Wahid, a 70-year-old gold medallist, who holds an MPhil

from the university’s Persian department.

“This is the language of Suf-ism, Iqbal, and intellect,” said the septuagenarian.

“Not too long ago, schools across K-P taught the Persian language, and we had outstand-ing teachers in the province,” said Wahid, who has witnessed the rise and fall of the language.

“The Bustan and the Gulistan, a landmark of Persian literature, are no longer being taught,” Wahid added.

According to Muhamed Tayy-ab, a historian from K-P, the lan-guage witnessed a brief period of promotion after independ-ence. “The language received a severe blow during General

Zia-ul-Haq’s era. Propaganda at the time portrayed Persian as the language of Shias,” Tayyab claimed.

Under Zia’s pressure in the late 1970s, the K-P Text Book Board scrubbed Persian from its offi cial menu of languages taught across the province.

Persian never recovered from that fatal strike. And so began the fi nal descent of Persian that once served as the offi cial language of the Mughal court.

While the pluricentric lan-guage exists in subtle ways across the province, in ageing documents and books of poetry, it will perhaps never have the same status it once did.

InternewsPeshawar

Gulf Times Thursday, November 28, 2019

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CHAIRMANAbdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFFaisal Abdulhameed al-Mudahka

Deputy Managing EditorK T Chacko

Big Tech still doesn’t have a handle on its role in campaigns

Over the last year and a half, politicians and activists have spent more than $900mn pumping 5.7mn ads through Facebook’s network. Is there any wonder the company is reluctant to crimp that pipeline?

In late September, Facebook took off one of the few restrictions it had placed on political advertisers, exempting candidates and political parties from the fact-checking process it had instituted to slow the virus-like spread of fake news on the platform. If President Trump wanted to run an ad saying he has proof that former vice-president Joe Biden is a Ukrainian spy, he’s free to do so. And if Biden wanted to respond with an ad showing a faked Kenyan birth certifi cate for Trump, he can do that too.

One is all for candidates speaking freely to the public. But one is not comfortable with the way Facebook and other tech companies enable candidates and campaigns to turn their speech into something more manipulative and powerful than it would otherwise be.

Facebook’s move was such an alarming renunciation of responsibility, politicians and good-government advocates were aghast. They’ve been pressing for change ever since Facebook’s see-no-evil approach to political ads became offi cial in September. The company appears to be responding; according to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook executives are exploring ways to reduce the

power political advertisers have to manipulate Facebook users. In particular, they’re discussing ways to limit how precisely political ads can be targeted to specifi c audiences.

These discussions come as Twitter and Google are also adjusting the tools they off er political advertisers. But these Big Tech companies are fi nding that there’s no simple way to balance two important but competing interests: our society’s free-speech values and our interest in free and fair elections.

Along with Google’s sister company YouTube, the three companies dominate online advertising as well as play a central role in the fl ow of information on the Internet. It’s more than just their near-ubiquitous reach; it’s also the tools they off er to deliver messages tailored to individual leanings and susceptibilities, and the algorithms that some of them use to decide which posts to favour and which ones to bury.

Combined, these factors have the potential not just to amplify deceit, but to deliver it to the audiences most likely to believe it. As Twitter chief Jack Dorsey put it, “Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimisation of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.”

People don’t want Big Tech companies to be a gatekeeper, picking and choosing which political speech is allowable. But people also don’t want them to make their amplifi ers and their vulnerability-seeking targeting tools available to candidates seeking to deceive either, especially not when these companies have a fi nancial incentive to turn a blind eye to abuses of their platforms. Otherwise, there will be no boundaries, and the US will truly be a post-truth society.

The lesson here isn’t that these companies shouldn’t be trying to make their platforms both open and trustworthy. It’s that the two qualities aren’t well matched, and there’s no easy way to overcome that problem.

“Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse”

By Kamran RehmatDoha

When a $62bn project, rich in economic and infrastructural dividends, with a 3,000km network

of railways, oil and gas pipelines, and renewable energy schemes connects two countries, some attention is only inevitable. On the fl ip side, it will invite the envy of those who will be hard-pressed to match it and therefore, un-able to stomach it.

Early this week, it was evident in the unusually specifi c speech that Alice Wells, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, delivered on the subject at the Wilson Centre, a Washington think-tank before a host of diplomats, scholars and media persons where she basically warned that Pakistan was unwittingly priming to be at the receiving end of a Chinese juggernaut.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor — or CPEC as it is simply referred to — is the jewel in the crown of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that involves partnering with dozens of countries around the world through trade and infrastructure projects such as shipping lanes, railroads and airports. A project as grandiose as BRI is not without its share of detractors and given the undercurrents of China’s rapidly expanding global reach and power was always bound to create unease for its rivals in the region and across the globe.

The top American diplomat for South Asia isn’t, of course, the fi rst one to draw the red line on CPEC nor would

likely be the last. However, her rather public and calibrated presentation is interesting for both its timing and a clear sense of desperation in Washington over its own considerably shrinking infl uence across the globe.

The timing is signifi cant because a chastened US is attempting to revive ties with Pakistan after a long period of distrust and what is evidently the latest retreat to a historically transactional relationship. The Trump administration initially, disparaged Islamabad whilst vainly trying to secure a face-saving exit from Afghanistan after an 18-year-old draining war. It has since returned to siding with pragmatism, and only last week Trump called Prime Minister Imran Khan, with whom he has since built an equation, to thank him for the role Islamabad played in securing the release of two Western hostages, including an American, held by Taliban since 2016.

This is not to suggest that Wells did not raise pertinent posers, which would be par for the course in any project of this scale and, fundamentally speaking, economic sense. Two top ministers of Prime Minister Khan’s cabinet — Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and newly installed Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar — quickly rebutted Wells’ argument that Islamabad was getting a raw deal from CPEC, which she claimed would push it to the edge in terms of a stifl ing debt and foster corruption whilst repatriating jobs and profi ts to China.

While Qureshi simply chose to reject Washington’s concerns as unfounded in a decidedly diplomatic mien, Umar held a presser to pointedly address the questions raised by the American diplomat whilst candidly agreeing that

the questions were valid in certain respects but incorrectly posited for lack of intent or information. He spelt out, with facts and fi gures, how and why these fell short of passing muster.

Asserting that Islamabad would never back out of CPEC given its time-tested relationship with Beijing that had defi ed the odds since its inception, Umar said the country would never again become a “collateral damage” in a confl ict between two major powers. While agreeing with Wells that the external debt had considerably impacted the economic progress over time, he dismissed the suggestion it was contrived by China.

“Our total public debt right now is $74bn, out of which the CPEC debt is $4.9bn — not even 10% of the total debt,” Umar pointed out. He also rejected the notion that it was a one-way street. “Both countries have benefi ted: Chinese fi rms got business as their machinery was exported to Pakistan. The lack of infrastructure in Pakistan, especially in the power sector, was where a lot of the country’s needs were met. Besides, CPEC became a source of fi nancing in large amounts which was previously unavailable. So a base was laid out in the fi rst phase and now further developments will take place in the next phase,” the minister explained.

Umar disclosed that special economic zones will be in business in about two months. While admitting that the fi rst phase did not generate too many jobs, he explained it was important to understand that when the objective is infrastructural development, it happens. However, he expects once the industrial development takes off , it will line up jobs.

Meanwhile, Chinese ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing expressed his “shock and surprise” at the US critique of CPEC, saying Washington should not be casting aspersions over something about which it does not have accurate information.

At a presser in Islamabad, he also countered why the US had suspended its promised aid to Pakistan (in 2018, the Trump administration suspended $2bn military aid, including what it owed to Islamabad as service charges for on ground assistance in the anti-terror war in Afghanistan) and not invested in its power sector despite knowing about the country’s dire shortfall.

“When in 2013, the Chinese companies were establishing power plants, where was the US,” he bristled. “If Pakistan was in need, China would never ask it to repay loans in time,” Ambassador Jing declared. He also dismissed Wells’ accusation of underwhelming Pakistani workforce, saying that 75,000 Pakistanis were employed in CPEC since 2015 — a number that he projected would grow to 2.3 million by 2030. In a parting shot, the envoy said he would be more than happy to see more investment coming from the US to Pakistan.

Reinforcing Islamabad’s position on the subject, Umar clarifi ed the deep rooted ties with Beijing were not aimed against anyone. “We wish to have better relations with all countries. I can assure Alice Wells that American companies were welcome, are welcome and will continue to be welcomed to invest in Pakistan”.

The writer is Features Editor. He tweets @kaamyabi

Pakistan, China dismiss US clamour over CPEC

CRITIQUE: US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Alice Wells made an unusually specific critique of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project at the Wilson Center in Washington DC earlier this week. (File photo)

By Nina L KhrushchevaMoscow

In her 2014 book on Putin’s regime, the late Karen Dawisha argued that the key to understanding Vladimir Putin’s Russia is money.

While Putin was selling stories to the public about restoring Russia’s global infl uence, she explained, he and a coterie of trusted cronies were amassing massive amounts of personal wealth. More than an authoritarian, nationalist, or revanchist, Putin, in her view, should be understood as a crook.

At the time, I disagreed: though money was undoubtedly important to understanding the Putin regime, the drive for global infl uence was not to be dismissed. But in the wake of the security forces’ raid on the Lebedev Physics Institute (FIAN) in Moscow last month, I have changed my mind.

For decades, FIAN has been at the frontier of Russian scientifi c and technological progress. It would thus seem that the institute is ideally suited to play a central role in advancing the strategic priorities that Putin himself identifi ed in May 2018: science, technological innovation, and export-oriented production.

And yet last month, Russian security forces descended on the institute, in order to fi nd, detain, and question its director, Nikolai N Kolachevsky, about a supposed plan by the company Trioptics, which rented offi ces in FIAN’s premises, to export a special type of optical window to Germany. Because the window has applications in space or military activities, the authorities claim, exporting it could undermine national security.

Why are Russia’s security apparatchiks taking actions that contradict the Kremlin’s stated policy goals? Some argue that they have simply escaped Putin’s control. For 20 years, Putin has been installing his

former KGB colleagues and friends into powerful positions in Russia’s security and military apparatus. These so-called siloviki, or strongmen, could have accrued so much power that they do what they please, even if it means undermining Putin’s eff orts to put Russia on the road to progress.

This is possible, but not likely. A more plausible explanation is that Putin himself is confl icted. While he wants to be able to tout Russian achievements in science and innovation, he also wants to enrich himself as much as possible. And, as Dawisha observed, if he has to choose, money comes fi rst.

With regard to FIAN, Putin’s fi nancial interests seem to be linked to his daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, who directs Innopraktika, a scientifi c institute that receives state money. Innopraktika is affi liated with Moscow State University, whose rector, Viktor Sadovnichiy, has a long history of catering to those in power.

The institute’s work seems to centre on devices that read brain activity. But it also apparently oversees all kinds of construction projects on a vast plot of land adjacent to the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB) – the KGB’s successor organisation – and the Federal Protective Service.

If we keep following the scientifi c-money trail, we arrive at the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN), which held elections last week. After the organisation’s 2013 elections, in which the Kremlin-backed candidates for membership did not perform well, the government announced major reforms, including a three-year moratorium on RAN elections.

It was then decided that, to ensure “fairness,” the government would approve all candidates, despite the fact that they are academics. The government then attempted to make Mikhail Kovalchuk – the physicist

brother of Putin’s billionaire “personal banker,” Yuri Kovalchuk – RAN’s president in 2017.

But, despite all the machinations, the far more distinguished physicist Alexander Sergeev won the election. Although Sergeev had criticised the government’s RAN-reform eff orts, as well as its broader control over scientifi c research – a major reason

why young talent fl ees Russia – his international reputation was so great that Putin had little choice but to approve his candidacy.

The Kremlin did not do the same for Sergeev’s colleague, the well-regarded Alexei Khokhlov. Yet, in another blow to the government, Khokhlov later became RAN’s vice-president.

This year, RAN members have

continued to push back against the Kremlin’s agenda. Two months before the election, RAN’s anti-falsifi cation commission named 56 candidates for membership as plagiarists or purveyors of pseudoscience. The government ruled that this should not disqualify them. (This stance is no surprise: Putin’s own doctoral dissertation was allegedly copied from a 1978

management textbook.) Ultimately, only six were disqualifi ed.

RAN’s resistance is unacceptable to the Kremlin, as is the high standing of Khokhlov, who, having served as Moscow State University’s vice-rector until last year, is a likely successor to Sadovnichiy. If Khokhlov secures that position, the university may become less open to FSB-related construction projects, less supportive of the First Daughter’s institute, and less willing to hand out fake degrees to Kremlin cronies. The FIAN raid – which, Sergeev laments, further diminished the reputations of Russian scientists – may thus have been orchestrated to undermine him.

In discussing the raid, a journalist friend in Moscow deadpanned, “In Putin’s Russia, physics belongs to spies, history is written by Chekists, and geography by soldiers.” And, indeed, Sergei Naryshkin, Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, is also president of the Russian Historical Society, and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu leads the Russian Geographical Society.

Science is still putting up a fi ght. But, given the insatiable fi nancial appetite of Putin and his inner circle, there is only so much Russia’s honest scientists can do – a message that the FIAN raid conveyed loud and clear. As a retired academic put it to me, “Whatever you say about the Soviet Union, knowledge mattered. Today’s Russia, despite its claims to be a ‘great country,’ resembles a small former colony, where every general in power wants to call himself a doctor of philosophy, just to increase his profi ts.” – Project Syndicate

Nina L Khrushcheva is professor of International Aff airs at The New School. Her latest book (with Jeff rey Tayler) is In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones.

COMMENT

Gulf Times Thursday, November 28, 2019 23

US life expectancy declining due to more deaths in middle age

The most important story you missed in 2019

Live issues

By Linda CarrollReuters Health

After rising for decades, life expectancy in the US decreased for three straight years, driven by higher rates

of death among middle aged Ameri-cans, a new study suggests.

Midlife all-cause mortality rates were increasing between 2010 and 2017, driven by higher numbers of deaths due to drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicides and organ system diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes, according to the report pub-lished in JAMA.

“There has been an increase in death rates among working age Americans,” said Dr Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “This is an emergent crisis. And it is a uniquely American problem since it is not seen in other countries. Something about life in America is responsible.”

The rising rates of midlife mortality

hit some regions of the country harder than others, Woolf and his co-author found. Increases were highest in north-ern New England and the Ohio Valley.

Economic hardship and the result-ing despair may be to blame in those regions, Woolf suggested. “While it’s a little diffi cult to place the blame on despair directly, the living condi-tions causing despair are leading to other problems,” he explained. “For example if you live in an economically distressed community where income is fl at and it’s hard to fi nd jobs, that can lead to chronic stress, which is harmful to health.”

Noting that a pattern of increasing mortality in middle age is not seen in other high income countries, Woolf said this might be because “in other countries there are more support sys-tems for people who fall on hard times. In America, families are left to their own devices to try to get by.”

Data for the study came from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Mortality Database for 1959 to 2017. The researchers also

scoured the medical literature for studies of U.S. life expectancy and mortality trends.

Based on the data, life expectancy had increased by almost 10 years over the course of nearly 6 decades – from 69.9 years to 78.9 years – but had been declining since 2014. And the overall decline was explained by increased mortality among the middle aged.

Death rates among the middle aged weren’t uniform across the country. The largest relative increases in midlife mor-tality rates occurred in New Hampshire, 23.3%, West Virginia, 23.0%, Ohio, 21.6%, Maine, 20.7%, Vermont, 19.9%, Indiana, 14,8% and Kentucky, 14.7%. Life expectancy actually increased or plateaued in some Western states, the researchers reported.

“The current problems we are see-ing are decades in the making,” Woolf said. “We used to have the highest life expectancy in the world. The pace at which life expectancy was increasing in the US started to fall off relative to other countries in the 80s.”

The new fi ndings highlight some

distressing trends, said Dr John Rowe, a professor in Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.

“It is depressing,” Rowe said, “but I don’t think it’s much of a surprise. We knew the opioid epidemic was taking a major toll with 250,000 who have overdosed and died.”

What’s striking is that the decline in life expectancy isn’t the same for all age groups. “This is really evidence that mortality rates are increasing only in middle age while they’re continuing to decline in children, adolescents and people over 65,” Rowe said, noting that it’s occurring as mortality rates from cancer and stroke are declining.

Part of the problem may be that middle aged people are getting squeezed by health care costs because they are less likely to have coverage than children and people over 65. In fact, another recent study found out-of-pocket costs were more likely to prompt middle aged people to cut back on heart disease medications than people over 65.

By Mark SuzmanSeattle

According to the most recent tally, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal publish a

combined total of 1,000 stories every day. Although the report didn’t say how many people read all of them, it’s safe to assume that nobody managed to do so.

Each of us probably overlooks tens of thousands of important news stories every year. But the biggest one that people missed in 2019 happened on October 10 in a conference hall in Lyon, France, where a gathering of government offi cials, business leaders, and philanthropists pledged $14bn to an organisation called the Global Fund.

Not many people know what the Global Fund is until they hear its full name: The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The Fund was established shortly after the turn of the millennium, when hundreds of thousands of children were dying from preventable diseases. The Aids crisis was at its height, with news outlets describing the virus as a “malevolent scythe” cutting across Sub-Saharan Africa. Its unstoppable spread, some predicted, would lead to the collapse of entire countries. This was an international crisis that required an

international response.At the United Nations, then-

Secretary-General Kofi Annan rallied the world around the Millennium Development Goals – a set of specifi c targets related to poverty and disease reduction – and launched the Global Fund to achieve them.

The Fund was designed to be a new kind of multilateral venture, not just a coalition of governments. It also brought in partners from the business and philanthropic sectors, including the newly-formed Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This inclusive approach enabled the initiative to draw on a wider range of expertise.

Over the last two decades, the Global Fund has transformed the way we fi ght Aids, tuberculosis, and malaria – the three biggest killers in poor countries. By pooling resources, the Fund created economies of scale for life-saving products such as anti-malarial bed nets and antiretroviral drugs. Then, by working with almost 100 countries, the Fund built a massive supply chain to deliver the goods. In the process, deaths from Aids have fallen by 50% from their peak, and malaria deaths have decreased by about 50% since the turn of the millennium. Now, the Fund has $14bn in new funding to continue this work.

The replenishment is vitally important news, fi rst and foremost because of the sheer number of lives it

will help to save. The $14bn, the Fund predicts, will be enough to cut the three diseases’ death rates by almost 50% again by 2023. That translates into 16mn lives saved.

But what happened on October 10 in Lyon is critical for another reason: it illustrates how we are at a pivotal point in history, from which the world might move in one direction or another.

On one hand, the successful recent fundraising eff ort was a testament to the way the world went about solving humanitarian crises in the early years of this century. Multilateralism, it turns out, worked – and worked extremely well.

That same period also gave rise to organisations like Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a global alliance of public- and private-sector stakeholders that aims to get vaccines to some of the world’s poorest children. Gavi has helped to immunise more than 760mn children to date. And the coverage rate of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP3) vaccine in Gavi-supported countries increased from 59% in 2000 to 81% in 2018 – only four percentage points below the global average. (Gavi, too, will need to raise new funding over the next year.)

On the other hand, the fact that no similar multilateral organisation has been established since the early 2000s – at least not on such a scale – should give us pause.

The Fund managed to raise the $14bn at a time of rising isolationism. Today, many governments seem to prefer to go it alone rather than engage in the expansive problem-solving that worked so well over the last 20 years. Brexit is one example of this. Others include US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and his administration’s call for deep cuts to US foreign aid (which, thanks to Congress, have yet to be made).

I often wonder what would have happened had the Aids crisis emerged 20 years later than it did. Would we be able to create the Global Fund today? The answer, I think, is no. It would be very diffi cult to build support for that kind of initiative in this environment.

Last month’s news from Lyon, then, is part of an ongoing story. Will the world realise that multilateral coalitions work and reverse course? Or is the era of multilateralism at an end?

The Global Fund’s replenishment may be the best news you hadn’t heard about yet in 2019. But unless we halt the slide toward isolationism and start rebuilding a global community, it’s the kind of news you may never hear again. – Project Syndicate

Mark Suzman is Chief Strategy Offi cer and President of Global Policy and Advocacy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Putin’s regime means money

Vladimir Putin

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24 Gulf TimesThursday, November 28, 2019

QATAR

Qatar Foundation to unveil MF Husain’s fi nal art installationJust when his fans and critics

thought that they had seen everything that Maqbool Fida

Husain could possibly off er, he re-appears. The artist’s latest instal-lation, the ‘Seeroo fi al Ardh’, will soon be unveiled in Qatar Foun-dation’s (QF) Education City on December 11.

The new installation will be his fi nal project and it will also be his most unusual – Husain designed it to be an art installation that is both kinetic and experiential.

The ‘Seeroo fi al Ardh’ is part of Husain’s extensive project on Arab civilisation. The installation was commissioned by Her High-ness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, in addition to a series of paintings that refl ect the 99 names of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. The artwork itself tells the story of the progression of human civi-lisation through the history of the Arab region.

The artwork touches on how people throughout the region used nature, and ultimately ma-chines, to further their ambitions. It highlights the fact that the en-lightened mindset that sparks innovation and experimentation existed in the Arab world both before and during the European Renaissance.

Husain passed away before the installation was completed. After his death, QF has completed the installation, taking care to en-sure it includes all the details in the artist’s fi nal plan. Machaille

al-Naimi, president of Commu-nity Development, QF, said: “The artwork is a natural progression of QF’s eff orts to help position Qatar as a hub for international art and culture.

Additionally, this installation comes at a time when Qatar is celebrating the Qatar-India 2019 Year of Culture.

“This specifi c art installation does not just refl ect the journey of Arab civilisation; it is also rep-resentative of the openness and

inclusivity of QF and Qatar. It sends an invitation to both resi-dents and visitors to explore the country’s art and culture land-scape and – like M F Husain – to be inspired by it.”

Following the unveiling, the installation will be housed in a permanent building near the Al Shaqab equestrian centre within Education City, and will be open to the public. Husain’s works have been exhibited throughout the world. His fi rst exhibition in

Qatar was held in 1984 at Doha’s Sheraton Hotel, with a further ex-hibition being held at the Museum of Islamic Art, over a decade ago.

Husain then took up residence in Qatar, and his close ties with the country were cemented when he was granted Qatari citizenship.

An exhibition of the paintings that the artist created during his time in Qatar, titled ‘Horses of The Sun’, was held at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, in Education City, earlier this year.

The ‘Seeroo fi al Ardh’ art installation at Qatar Foundation.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani receives members of the off icial delegation accompanying Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Amiri Diwan yesterday. The Amir met President Abbas who briefed him on the latest developments in Palestine, and thanked him for Qatar’s continued support to the Palestinian people and their just cause.

Amir meets Palestinian delegation