Thursday 9 April 2020

16 Sha'aban - 1441

2 Riyals

www.thepeninsula.qa

Volume 25 | Number 8222

SPORT | 01 PENMAG | 05 BUSINESS | 12

Qatari

entrepreneur to

launch online

app ShahBandar

Classifieds

and Services

section

included

Athletics

Worlds

moved to

July 2022

Qatar’s strategic food reserve can last more than a year: MinisterQNA / THE PENINSULA DOHA

Minister of Commerce and Industry, H E Ali bin Ahmed Al Kuwari, said yesterday that the State’s strategic reserve of food commodities can last for more than a year, adding that the country’s import policies continue at the same pace without any change.

H E the Minister called on suppliers, outlets and local manufacturers to play their natural role in providing goods in the demanded quantities by consumers.

This came during a visit made by H E the Minister to a

number of supermarkets to get a close look at the strategic stock of food products and commodities, and to gain insight into the demand pat-terns of citizens and residents.

H E the Minister was briefed in detail by managers and oper-ators of malls and outlets on the availability of food products, consumer goods and subsidised supplies.

Al Kuwari stressed the importance of maintaining market stability and meeting citizens’ needs in terms of basic commodities.

He also noted the role of retail outlets in meeting con-sumers’ needs and storing the

necessary supplies in ware-houses to replenish shelves and ensure the availability of products regardless of the level of demand.

He said the Ministry was prepared to address any short-comings by any party.

H E the Minister also high-lighted the Ministry’s con-tinuous efforts in monitoring markets to determine the avail-ability of food and consumer goods across all retail outlets, malls and supermarkets, adding that the State continues to import all kinds of food products from different sources and countries through air cargo and sea ports. �P2

The Minister of Commerce and Industry, H E Ali bin Ahmed Al Kuwari, visiting a supermarket, yesterday.

Decline in new COVID-19cases as 178 recovered THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) yesterday announced 153 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and recovery of 28 more cases.

Some new cases are related to travellers who came to Qatar from COVID-19-hit countries and others are related to con-tacts, including citizens and res-idents. Some new cases were also reported among expatriate workers, the Ministry said.

The new cases have been

put in quarantine and are receiving the necessary medical care.

The total number of positive COVID-19 cases recorded in Qatar till yesterday stands at 2,210. There are 2026 under treatment. The total number of recovered cases is 178.

The MOPH continues to urge all members of society to take the necessary precautions and maintain social and physical distancing to reduce the chances of contracting the virus.

All shops except food stores, pharmacies to remain closed on Fridays and SaturdaysQNA — DOHA

The Cabinet, in its meeting yesterday, decided to close the shops and stop all commercial activities on Friday and Saturday of each week, with the exception of food and catering shops, pharmacies and restau-rants that do delivery. The Ministry of Commerce and Industry shall determine the other necessary activities exempt from this decision, until further notice.

The Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, H E Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani chaired the Cabinet meeting held through video conferencing.

Following the meeting, Min-ister of Justice and Acting Min-ister of State for Cabinet Affairs, H E Dr. Issa bin Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi said that at the beginning of the meeting, the Cabinet heard the explanation given by H E the Minister of Public Health on the latest developments to curb the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19).

The Cabinet praised the efforts made by the Ministry of Public Health and its detection teams and all its employees, including officials, doctors, medical personnel and workers, as well as the efforts of the relevant ministries, insti-tutions and state agencies that have been playing their role

effectively and responsibly, to protect citizens and residents and ensure their health and safety.

The Cabinet called on cit-izens and residents to stay in their homes and not go out, except when necessary.

The Cabinet reviewed the report of the Standing Com-mittee of Water Resources on its work during the period from June 30, 2018, to December 31, 2019, and took the appropriate decision in this regard.

This committee is con-cerned with proposing policies and strategies related to water resources, approving plans, programmes and projects related to the management and development of water resources, and setting priorities for water resources devel-opment projects, and follow up the implementation of pro-grammes and projects related to water resources and propose appropriate solutions to address wasteful use of water.

The report indicated that the committee discussed a

number of topics including water resources policy and the modernisation and devel-opment of the national water resources strategy in Qatar.

The Cabinet took necessary measures to issue a draft law organising medical treatment abroad, after the Cabinet reviewed the recommendation of the Shura Council on the draft law.

The Cabinet approved a draft agreement on exemption from visa requirements for holders of diplomatic and private passports and service between the government of the State of Qatar and the gov-ernment of Turkmenistan.

It approved a draft MoU for cooperation in the legal field between the Ministry of Justice in the State of Qatar and the Ministry of Justice of the Kyrgyz Republic. The Cabinet also approved draft MoU in the field of commerce between Qatar's Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Ministry of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan. �P2

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

54

APRIL 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

114 126

250279

228 225

153

NUMBER OF POSITIVE CASES IN QATAR, APRIL 2020

NUMBER OF RECOVERED CASES

LAST 24 HRS

LAST 24 HRS

TOTAL TO DATE

TOTAL TO DATE

153

28

1,504,971 87,984 318,068

2210

178

2026 UNDER TREATMENT

NUMBER OF POSITIVE CASES 08 APRIL 2020

TOTAL POSITIVE TOTAL DEATHS TOTAL RECOVERED

COVID-19 GLOBALLY

Catering shops also exempted; restaurants to remain open

for delivery and takeaway only

Ministry of Commerce and Industry to determine other

necessary activities exempt from this decision

Cabinet praises efforts by the Ministry of Public Health as

well as other Ministries and State institutions to effectively

curb the spread of COVID-19

Qatar delivers field hospitals with 1,000-bed capacity to ItalyQNA — DOHA

Upon the directives of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, two military aircraft of the Qatari Amiri Air Force, carrying two field hospitals, arrived in the Italian Republic yesterday, in support of the efforts of Italian friends to confront and contain the outbreak of the coronavirus.

The two planes landed con-secutively at Pratica di Mare military airport near the capital, Rome, and Verona Villafranca Airport, loaded with two field hospitals.

The area of the first field hospital is about 5,200 square meters, and the second hospital is about 4,000 square meters, with a capacity of 1,000 beds for both hospitals.

The hospitals are equipped with modern technical devices and equipment for the treatment of people with coronavirus.

The military technical team that arrived on the Qatari medical aid plane at Pratica di Mare military airport was received by Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, H E Luigi Di Maio; Ambassador of the State of Qatar to the Italian Republic, H E Abdulaziz bin Ahmed Al Malki Al Jehni; Qatari Military Attaché in Italy, H E General Hilal bin Ali Al Mohannadi; and Commander of the Pratica di Mare military airport, H E General Rosso Alberto.

Upon the arrival of the two military aircraft, H E Ambas-sador Al Malki said, “In a con-crete way Qatar wants to show that it is close to Italy during this difficult time. We will get out of this emergency and we will do it together!”

There are a total of four flights with which the State of Qatar will deliver this medical aid. Two more flights carrying medical aid from Qatar are expected to land in Italy today,

April 9. A fifth aircraft with medical equipment sent in

collaboration with Qatar Fund for Development and Qatar

Armed Forces will arrive tomorrow (Friday).

Officials upon the arrival of two Qatari Amiri Air Force planes carrying two field hospitals at a military airport in Italy. Two more Qatari planes will carry medical supplies to Italy today.

PHCC launches two new Test & Hold COVID-19 health centersTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Primary Health care Corporation (PHCC) has announced that Al Gharaffa Health Center and Um Slal Health Center will now be used as Test and Hold COVID-19 facility, with imme-diate effect staring from today.

Al Gharaffa Test and Hold Health Center will operate 24 hours a day, while Umm Slal Test and Hold Center will operate from 7am to 11pm.

All registered patients have been notified of the following: for Al Gharaffa Health Centers, Well Baby and obstetric ultra-sound appointments will now be rescheduled to Leabaib Health Center. Walk-in appointment patients can visit nearby health centers including Madinat Khalifa, Leabaib, Al Daayen and Qatar University Health Centers

For Umm Slal Health Center, Well Baby and Obstetric Ultra sound appoint-ments will now be rescheduled at Qatar University Health Center. Walk in appointments patients can visit nearby health centers including Madinat Khalifa, Leabaib, Al Daayen, Qatar University health centers.

All other clinics for both health centers may be rescheduled in coming months.

PHCC has recently launched the Community Call Center, offering both tele-phone and virtual Consultation services to patients. �P2

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02 THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020HOME

'Aman 5' drill in Doha today QNA — DOHA

'Aman 5' drill will be carried out today in Doha between the Armed Forces, Ministry of Interior and Lekhwiya security force, from 10am until 2pm. The Ministry of Interior stated that this exercise comes within the framework of joint coor-dination with the aim of ensuring the readiness of all units and departments according to the specific assumptions of the exercise. The first four drills were in Al Rayyan, Dukhan, and the north and south regions.

OFFICIAL NEWS

DOHA: Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin

Hamad Al Thani yesterday held via

telephone a conversation with the

President of the Republic of Moldova,

H E Igor Dodon, during which they

discussed bilateral relations and ways

of enhancing and developing them.

During the call, they reviewed the

latest developments related to the

novel coronavirus pandemic and

the efforts made by both countries

to combat it, in addition to means

of cooperation between the two

countries to limit and prevent its

spread. QNA

DOHA: The State of Qatar has

strongly condemned the explosion

that took place in the governorate

of Diyarbakir, southeastern Tur-

key, causing civilian deaths. In a

statement issued yesterday, the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiter-

ated the firm position of the State

of Qatar on rejecting violence and

terrorism, regardless of motives and

reasons. The statement expressed

the condolences of the State of Qatar

to the families of the victims, and

to the government and people of

Turkey. QNA

Amir holds telephone conversation with Moldova President

Qatar strongly condemns explosion in Turkey

HMC helps people overcome mental distress QNA — DOHA

The Mental Health Service of Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has launched a new helpline to provide support for people experiencing stress or psychological distress, as a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic, yesterday.

Working with the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and the Primary Healthcare Corpo-ration (PHCC) this is a national initiative that will support all sections of the community.

The helpline is staffed by experienced mental health pro-fessionals who can provide assessment and support to callers through four main cat-egories as Children and young people (and parents), adults, older people, and frontline healthcare workers.

“The situation we are facing is unprecedented. The emer-gence of COVID-19 here in Qatar has forced us to com-pletely change many aspects of how we live our lives and with this change comes uncertainty, said Chair of the National Task-force for Mental Health and

Wellbeing and HMC’s Chief of Continuing Care Group, Mahmoud Saleh Al Raisi.

“Many people are under-standably worried by the current situation and may feel frightened, confused, anxious, or low. It is important that people understand that these feelings are normal and that there is help available for them. This new mental health helpline aims to provide an easily-accessible support line for people in need of professional advice and care,” added Al Raisi. To access the helpline, which is available from 7am to 10pm every day, members of the public can call the toll free number- 16000. The helpline is confidential and users can remain anonymous, avoiding

the stigma often associated with mental health.

The professional staff taking calls at the helpline speak a range of languages and every effort will be made to enable callers to communicate in their language of choice. Staff will make an initial assessment of need, may offer brief support or refer for more specialist help when this is required. An appointment can be made on the line and a tele-consultation can be arranged with a suitable clinician.

The Chairman of the Mental Health Service at HMC, Dr. Majid Al Abdulla, who was instrumental in establishing the helpline, said, “COVID-19 is having a significant impact on our lives and this can be a major

cause of stress and anxiety for many people. Staying at home, self-isolating or spending time in quarantine will hugely affect the way we feel. Many people may be feeling more stressed or anxious than normal and our helpline is designed to provide the help and support many people are asking for.

“This is a specialist and comprehensive helpline which can offer assessment, diagnosis, brief intervention including CBT and can assist with prescribing and medications issues. It is staffed by highly trained and qualified clinicians from across the health system,” added Dr. Al Abdulla.

The Executive Director of Clinical Development and Head of Psychology in HMC, Dr. May Muraisi, has put together a team of psychologists for the helpline. “During this period our mood will be affected and feelings of fear, anxiety, anger and depression are very common, our staff will work to help people to recognise the signs of stress and anxiety and will provide coping strategies which can reduce the impact of these.”

The Minister of Commerce and Industry, H E Ali bin Ahmed Al Kuwari, during a visit to a supermarket to get a close look at the strategic stock of food products and commodities.

GAC launches

electronic

platform for

distance learning

QNA — DOHA

The Chairman of the General Authority of Customs (GAC), Ahmed bin Abdullah Al Jamal, launched yesterday a digital platform for distance learning and training.

The electronic platform will allow the General Authority of Customs to conduct its training workshops planned in the year 2020 online. The chairman of the authority praised the move during a meeting that was held on the newly-launched platform , describing it as an important step in upgrading the training provided by the authority.

He also stressed the need to develop effective plans to take advantage of this platform to enhance the experiences of the authority’s employees during the next period in various fields of customs training.

Many people are understandably worried by the current situation and may feel frightened, confused, anxious, or low. It is important that people understand that these feelings are normal and that there is help available for them.

All shops except food stores, pharmacies

to remain closed on Fridays and Saturdays

FROM PAGE 1 It also approved a draft

memorandum of under-standing between the Min-istry of Commerce and

Industry in the State of Qatar and the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the Republic of Tajikistan.

PHCC launches two new Test & Hold COVID-19 health centers

FROM PAGE 1

Patients who has mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19 can call 16000 and will be directed to a swabbing facility at a PHCC COVID-19 health center. This interim measure has been put in place to divert people away from hos-pitals and health center in a bid to curb the spread of the illness.

During the visit Individuals will be swabbed, and they will receive their results from a healthcare professional once the sample has been tested. These two health centers bring the total of operating test and hold COVID-19 health centers managed by PHCC to four, which includes Muaither and Rawdat Al Khail health centres.

Strategic food reserve can last over a yearFROM PAGE 1

H E the Minister said all suppliers are coordinating to maintain normal imports, adding that alternative plans have been established to

address any shortage in goods.H E the Minister of Com-

merce and Industry emphasised that merchants and stores that refrain from selling the products or attempt to take

advantage of the crisis will face the maximum penalties under Consumer Protection Law No. 8 of 2008, which include the closure of the retail outlet and a fine.

03THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020 HOME

Qatar participates in GCCmeeting on water and electricityQNA — DOHA

The State of Qatar participated, yesterday, in the extraordinary meeting of the under-secretaries of the Ministries of Electricity and Water in the GCC member states, which was held via video conference to discuss issues related to electricity and water in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Qatar was represented at the meeting by the President of Qatar General Electricity & Water Corporation (Kahramaa, H E Eng. Issa bin Hilal Al Kuwari.

He said that meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council states came at an important time to exchange views on how the electricity and water sectors should deal with the coronavirus pandemic. He added that the sides also dis-cussed exchanging expertise and unifying their response. He said that the pandemic showed that Kahramaa had solid emergency plans in place, saying that the company succeeded in ensuring service resumed uninterrupted while taking all the precau-tionary measures to ensure the safety of its employees.

The President of Qatar General Electricity & Water Corporation, H E Eng. Issa bin Hilal Al Kuwari, during the GCC meeting.

The Supermoon rises over the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

Supermoon in Qatar sky

Qatari Diar opens Abrouq, Umm Samra roadsQNA — DOHA

The Qatari Diar Company opened Abrouq and Umm Samra roads, which are the main roads that lead to Lusail Stadium, and provide a number of main entrances to the stadium that will host the opening and the final matches of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

The Qatari Diar Company’s opening of the two roads comes within the framework of Lusail City’s preparations to host the FIFA World Cup Championship of 2022, as the art work along the two roads is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

The length of the two roads together is 4.9 kilometers, and they are considered the main routes of Lusail City, as they link the southern areas with the northern areas through a tunnel that extends under the main commercial street in Central Lusail with the length of 640 meters.

The two roads will make the movement between Lusail City’s neighbourhoods and dis-tricts easier, such as Jabal Thuaileb, Madinat Al Yasmin

right up to Lusail stadium.The opening ceremony was

attended by Brigadier Mohamed Marafia, Director of Engineering and Safety Department; Eng. Othman Zarzour, Executive Director of Sports Facilities Department in the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy; Ali bin Fahd Al Shahwani and Abdullah Muqallad Al Muraikhi, members of the Municipal Council among

others.Engineer Walid Al Saadi,

Director of Infrastructure and Public Services Department at the Qatari Diar Company, said that the projects in Lusail City are still going on despite the current circumstances. “The company has taken all pre-ventive and precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the Covid 19. However, we are still able to achieve

successive achievements of the company, which will continue as planned.”

“Thank to all the contracting companies and workers who work with the Qatari Diar Company for their contribution to this achievement,” he added.

For his part, Eng. Zarzour, stressed that the opening of the Abrouq and Umm Samra roads is an important achievement in the context of Qatar’s

preparations to host the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

“These two roads will guar-antee the flow of thousands of fans to Lusail Stadium, the biggest stadium for the tour-nament with a capacity of 80,000 fans, and they also link the stadium area to the road network in the city of Lusail, which will be of great impor-tance during the final prepara-tions for the championship,” he added.

On the other hand, Brigadier

Marafia, pointed out: “Today we are happy to participate in the opening of the Abrouq and Umm Samra roads in Lusail City, which is characterized by a huge network of distinguished roads that have been planned and implemented by the Qatari Diar Company at the highest international standards.”

“The new road increases the connection of Lusail City areas and increases traffic flow across the city and adds alternatives to its main hubs,” he said.

Brigadier Mohamed Marafia, Director of Engineering and Safety Department; Eng. Othman Zarzour, Executive Director of Sports Facilities Department at the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy; Ali bin Fahd Al Shahwani and Abdullah Muqallad Al Muraikhi, members of the Municipal Council; Engineer Walid Al Saadi, Director of Infrastructure and Public Services Department at Qatari Diar Company; and other officials during the opening of the roads.

Qatar Airways Cargo transported over 50,000 tonnes of medical supplies and aid in MarchTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar Airways Cargo has increased services around the world, operating freighters and freight-only passenger aircraft to ensure the conti-nuity of global trade and transportation of essential supplies to where they are needed during this critical time.

In the past month, the airline has transported over 50,000 tonnes of medical and aid supplies to impacted regions around the globe. This equates to roughly 500 fully loaded Boeing 777 freighters.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, H E Akbar Al Baker, said: “Now, more than ever it is important to support global trade that ensures the supply of essential goods and vital aid worldwide. I am thankful to the airport authorities, ground handlers, c a r g o a g e n t s a n d

governments around the world who have helped us increase our services to fulfil the demand for time-sensitive freight.” “I also want to thank many of our long standing commercial customers that have supported us to prior-itise humanitarian relief ship-ments to badly effected regions over their existing commercial arrangements. We are all in this together and are glad to be of service to communities around the world during this difficult time.”

Additional capacity has been introduced to cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, Paris, Amsterdam, Muscat, Kuwait, Delhi, Beijing and Melbourne. The airline also continues to work closely with governments across the globe to operate freighter charters to support State efforts to bring in humanitarian aid and essential supplies. To ensure

the safety of crew and cargo, the airline has implemented special procedures for ground handling to ensure minimum contact between staff and adherence to social distancing guidelines are met. All of its freighters and passenger air-craft are equipped with face masks, gloves and hand san-itisers for our crew and all the crew and staff are screened regularly.

As an airline, Qatar Airways maintains the highest possible hygiene standards, which include the regular dis-infection of aircraft, the use of cleaning products recom-mended by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the World Health Organization (WHO), and robust staff training.

Qatar Airways Cargo uti-lises its full freighter fleet as per schedule and operates belly-hold cargo flights to destinations where possible.

Traffic accident deaths decrease 37.5% in February, says report THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Traffic accident deaths decreased in February this year at a monthly rate of 37.5% compared to January 2020, and at an annual rate of 28.6% compared to February 2019.

This was revealed in the 'Monthly Statistics Bulletin' of February 2020 released by the

Planning and Statistics Authority, yesterday.

The most prominent change in this issue is the drop in the total new drivers’ licenses at a monthly rate of 13.8%, offset by a decrease in total traffic viola-tions at a monthly rate of 7.5% (compared to January 2020). Also, the month witnessed a decrease in traffic accident

cases, at a monthly rate of 11.0% (compared to January 2020), said a statement.

The demographic statistics revealed that the total popu-lation of Qatar has increased from 2.773 million during Feb-ruary 2019 to 2.782 million at end of February 2020. Regarding vital statistics, 2061 live births have been registered

during February 2020. Also, a decrease in the total Qatari live births by 14.7% compared to last month. On the other hand, 198 deaths were recorded during the same period, an increase of 3.1% compared to January 2020.

Moreover, February 2020 has experienced a monthly decrease by 13.0% and 14.2% r e s p e c t i v e l y i n

marriage contracts and divorce certificates. The total number of marriage contracts was 321 contracts, whereas the total number of divorces has reached 115 divorce cases; namely, one divorce for every 3 marriages.

As for the social security statements, reached QR85m in February 2020, for 15516 beneficiaries.

Total electricity con-sumption during February 2020 was 2471.1 GWh attaining a monthly decrease of 6.1% and an annual rise of 35.0%. While the total water consumption has reached 49541.9 Thousand m3 during the same month attaining a monthly decrease of 4.9% and an annual rise of 62.0%.

Concerned authorities examining the diagram of the newly opened roads.

Al Hammadi, Advisory Committee for Teachers hold meetTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

The Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulwahed Al Hammadi, yesterday met with the newly elected members of the Advisory Committee for the Teachers of Government Schools via video conference.

H E the Minister reviewed with them the distance learning system and how to enhance it to improve the academic achievement of students.

Some other topics were also highlighted during the meeting like challenges of new learning system and how to overcome them, roles of teachers, parents and students during the out-break of COVID-19 and its impact on educational process.

H E Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulwahed Al Hammadi lauded the role of the Advisory Committee for Teachers saying that the Ministry depends on it a lot in setting policies and making decisions related to edu-cational process. The Minister called members of the Advisory Committee to establish a platform to communicate with each other and express their views and the views of the

educational field exchanging ideas and proposals for benefit the entire educational process as they represent 17,000 teachers, coordinators and administrators.

He also called the members of the committee to set an agenda with a clear vision on how to deal with challenges and to support the educational process.

On the implementation of the distance learning system, His Excellency said that the pan-demic of coronavirus has brought us a useful experience that will help us all in enhancing e-learning and enhancing per-sonal responsibility for student and teacher and parents. He said that student should learn for his future focusing on self-study to obtain knowledge not for

certificates. The Minister also praised the role of teachers in the current circumstance, stressing that their responsibility towards the students increased as the communication through the distance learning system has become more necessary now.

He noted that distance learning provided teachers with an opportunity to get closer to their students, asking them to build bridges of trust with them.

At the end of the meeting, the Minister affirmed that the committee has the full right to communicate and meet with any department of the Ministry to discuss issues and challenges that concern them or face them in the educational field.

The Advisory Committee for the Teachers of Government Schools comprises Saeed Salem Nasser Al Nabit Al Marri, an additional support teacher at Al Sheehaniya Preparatory School for Boys as Chairman of the committee, and Al Anoud Abdullah Abdul Rahman Abdullah Al Hammadi, Deputy Director for Academic Affairs at Al Taawun Primary School for Girls, as Vice-Chair, and a member (17) teachers repre-senting all school levels.

The Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulwahed Al Hammadi, during the video conference.

QCAA signs

contract with IBG

QNA — DOHA

Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA) signed a contract with the Swedish International Business Group (IBG) which is the leading company in the fields of management, consulting and training services in the aviation sector, in order to increase capacity of Qatar’s airspace and Hamad International Airport.

The Authority explained in a statement that this step aims to meet the expected increase in operations and number of aircraft in the coming period, and provide all of the require-ments to host the World Cup 2022 in the State of Qatar, by accommodating the largest possible number of aircraft arriving and departing the airport within one hour.

The contract contains the development of the air navi-gation system and increasing the efficiency of the navigation devices.

04 THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020HOME

Ezdan Real Estate and Municipality of Al Wakra team up for sanitisation driveTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

As part of national cooperation among different entities, Ezdan Real Estate Company has teamed up with the Municipality of Al Wakra to undertake a sanitisation drive at Al Wakra-based Ezdan Mall, Ezdan villages and resi-dential compounds, as a preventive procedure against coronavirus “COVID-19” outbreak. They participated in sanitising the roads, public, resi-dential facilities, and the fences, in addition to Ezdan Mall Al Wakra premises, its façade and the surroundings using equipment for spreading disin-fection solutions.

A specialised team partici-pated in the drive, and a large number of maintenance per-sonnel at Ezdan Real Estate Company, as part of Ezdan’s

social responsibility and com-mitment to collaborate in facing this current crisis. Ezdan has shown due care since the beginning, by enhancing an awareness campaign on its social media platforms urging them to observe precautionary and pre-ventive measures, and to apply

home-quarantine, and keep social distancing to contribute to ending the crisis of coronavirus pandemic, and the return of life to its regular nature.

For his part, Hani Dabash (pictured), the Director of the Property Management at Ezdan Real Estate, has stressed the necessity of cooperation to con-solidate efforts in fighting the pandemic, and to break the chain of transmission between com-munity members, so that the competent health authorities can restrict it and fight it effectively. This sanitisation drive will help reduce the spread of coronavirus, “COVID-19”, and it was carried out by a professional team that is very familiar with the precau-tionary procedures and how to deal with the materials and devices used correctly, he noted.

The drive covered the

heavily-settled Al Wakra region, where the teams were provided with vehicles specialised in road and air sanitisation, as they were dressed up in special uniforms, and face shields that protect them against heavy exposure to chemicals.

“Ezdan Real Estate is keen to contribute with outright efforts to serve the community and provide a safe environment for all its members,” Dabash said, praising the efforts made in ster-ilising public facilities, and the tireless work in addressing the spread of this pandemic that threatens the health and safety of all people.

“Ezdan Real Estate has ini-tiated since the beginning of this crisis a set of measures to comply with precautionary instructions announced by the competent authorities in Qatar, and has been

aware of the importance of coop-eration in this crucial time against the threats, and contribute to all the available capabilities to mit-igate the spread of this virus,” Dabash noted.

Dabash expressed his confi-dence in the ability of the State of Qatar to overpower the out-turns of this crisis and under the sagacious leadership of the State of Qatar and the measures adopted to protect the people and society, calling upon all people of Qatar to adhere to all instruc-tions of social distancing and home-quarantine.Sanitisation drive in progress at an Ezdan Village.

Ooredoo Group supports communities, businesses in challenging situationTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

As COVID-19 outbreak continues to impact communities and busi-nesses around the world, Ooredoo Group is supporting customers across its global foot-print with both digital solutions and relief measures. Ooredoo teams are working together to share knowledge and experi-ences internationally to better serve and support customers.

With online activity on the rise resulting in a steep surge in Internet usage, Ooredoo has sig-nificantly optimised network performance and enhanced Internet speeds, enabling social distancing, seamless home schooling and access to home entertainment. Engineering teams are working around the clock to ensure customers can continue to enjoy the Internet despite significant pressure on the networks caused by the boom in social media usage and video consumption.

Ooredoo is also helping busi-nesses build corporate resilience, maintain operations and ensure business continuity with a range of secure and immersive digital solutions.

The company has also taken action to ensure the safety of its employees in different parts of the world, making its innovative digital solutions available to them, as well as to businesses of all sizes striving to keep their teams safe and productive remotely.

Sheikh Saud bin Nasser Al Thani, Group Chief Executive

Officer, Ooredoo, said: “More than ever, we are conscious of the fundamental role that telcos and technology play to keep people safe and businesses running. As a community-based company, supporting employees and cus-tomers sits at the core of our culture,”

“This is a responsibility we’re taking seriously as we all work through this uncertain time. In line with our vision of enhancing people’s digital lives and enabling customers to enjoy the benefits of the Internet, our teams around the world are working together as one to enable the communities we serve by providing much-needed relief measures, inno-vative solutions and digital services,” he said.

Ooredoo companies in the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia are offering cus-tomers an enhanced suite of remote working and digital business offerings that can enable business continuity.

In Qatar, Ooredoo’s digital business experts are supporting a wide range of organisations across the country – from SOHOs and SMEs to large enterprises, across the public and private sectors – to develop remote working capabil-ities, unified communications and

collaboration. The company is already seeing strong demand for remote working solutions, such as the Ooredoo Business Collaboration Solution and Ooredoo Confer-encing, with Cisco WebEx Teams providing a simple, secure and complete set of collaboration tools.

Ooredoo Kuwait has success-fully launched its first eShop for business customers and is ensuring home delivery for orders. Also, the company is currently developing a videoconferencing solution using WebEx, which will be available in the near future to further support customers.

Ooredoo Oman has provided upgrades to its business cus-tomers’ data services, encour-aging them to work remotely using digital platforms such as Skype for Business.

To support business cus-tomers in their efforts to work efficiently and effectively, Ooredoo Myanmar is acceler-ating the launch of Cisco Webex Teams and a Work-From-Home Internet solution, while Indosat Ooredoo has designed a special mobile package for businesses.

In the Maldives, Ooredoo is pro-viding Supernet Business, enabling businesses to connect their employees via high-speed broadband to work from home. This

is in addition to providing private connections so that teams can securely access their intranet appli-cations and conferencing services.

Recognising the challenging times that businesses are facing, Ooredoo has launched a relief initiative to help customers affected by COVID-19 in Pal-estine, Iraq and Algeria. The ini-tiative increases payment flexi-bility for business customers in these countries, enabling them to continue providing services and keeping their businesses running smoothly.

Ooredoo Group’s companies are also helping minimise the spread COVID-19 by encouraging employees to work remotely, practicing social distancing in all outlets and offering online support to customers through all available digital channels.

The Group’s companies around the world have launched a series of informative videos containing useful health and safety tips to raise awareness on how to stay safe with COVID-19. Ooredoo Algeria has given free access to the Algerian Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 website to keep customers informed on the latest news.

In Qatar, Oman, Tunisia, Algeria, Indonesia and the Mal-dives, Ooredoo is reminding cus-tomers to make all transactions online or using the company’s app. Ooredoo Kuwait, Indosat Ooredoo and Ooredoo Maldives are providing free delivery for SIM cards purchased online.

To further encourage people to stay at home, a number of Ooredoo companies have boosted their network per-formance to provide increased Internet speeds to customers. Ooredoo Qatar launched its #Sta-yAtHomeWithOoredoo cam-paign, offering customers free bonus data, increased Internet speeds with no extra charge and free Ooredoo content. Ooredoo Tunisia renamed its network to “Stay Home” and Ooredoo Kuwait is running its online cam-paign “Be safe. Be home. Be online.” In Myanmar, the company has launched its “Stay calm, stay safe, stay connected” campaign and has attractive data and voice packs, enabling eve-ryone to stay connected.

And to help parents and stu-dents with home schooling, Indosat Ooredoo, Ooredoo Oman and Ooredoo Palestine have

upgraded Internet subscription of educational institutions. Ooredoo Algeria has offered its customers free educational content through IQRAA and Lamsa, and is currently in talks with iMadrassa and educational institutions to explore ways the company can support students during the confinement period.

Most importantly, frontline workers are being rewarded in many countries where Ooredoo operates. Asiacell in Iraq and Ooredoo Tunisia have made sub-stantial donations to support their governments’s fight against COVID-19. In addition, Ooredoo Tunisia has set up a hotline through which customers can donate easily by sending an SMS. Ooredoo Qatar has gifted front line heroes with data and minutes for local calls. Ooredoo Kuwait has provided government teams with free Internet packs and is using big data analytics to provide insights on the situation. And in the Maldives, Ooredoo is pro-viding free Internet support for government institutions and other stakeholders who are part of the national emergency response.

Sheikh Saud added: “Our utmost priority at this time will continue to be focused on the health and safety of our employees, customers, partners and the com-munities we serve. We’re doing everything we can to continue delivering the connectivity and support our customers need during this challenging time and making sure that everyone can stay con-nected through our advanced net-works around the world.”

Sheikh Saud bin Nasser Al Thani, Group CEO, Ooredoo

Lulu Hypermarket Qatar opens temporary stores in Industrial Area THE PENINSULA — DOHA

Lulu Hypermarket has opened temporary supermarkets at various locations in the Indus-trial Area, in cooperation with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Adminis-trative Development, Labour & Social Affairs. The mini super-market will provide all essential and affordable product lines, groceries, fresh food, instant food, baked food and other daily necessities.

Dr. Mohamed Althaf, Director of Lulu Hypermarkets, said: “We are extremely thankful to the governmental authorities for allowing us to become part of the contingency plan rolled out by them to address the crisis head-on by ensuring the supply of essen-tials to the community. This ini-tiative is aimed at providing the

essential items to the com-munity through temporary supermarkets during the current pandemic situation. Considering the successful launch of the mobile format, we have decided that Lulu will con-tinue to expand the temporary format as part of our corporate social responsibility.”

Meanwhile, the man-agement stated that Lulu store timings have changed under the guidelines of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Lulu Department stores are now open from 8am to 1pm and Lulu Supermarkets will remain open as usual ie from 8am to 12 midnight.

With online activity on the rise resulting in a steep surge in Internet usage, Ooredoo has significantly optimised network performance and enhanced Internet speeds, enabling social distancing, seamless home schooling and access to home entertainment.

QU-CCE offers online courses free of cost for publicTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Qatar University’s Center of Community Service and Continuing Education (QU-CCE) recently announced on its webpage that The Center is offering number of courses to public free of charge, in line with the precautionary efforts made by the university and the state to limit the spread of the Corona virus, and to provide protection to everyone.

These courses are a contin-uation of the university’s approach to meet the actual needs of society, individuals and institutions. The Center strives to develop their knowledge and skills, both at personal and pro-fessional level without leaving their homes during this period.

In a statement to him about these services provided by the Center, Dr. Rajab Abdulla Al Esmail (pictured), Director of CCE said: “These seven courses offered will cover several topics in finance, nutrition, disaster management, crisis man-agement, emotional intelligence

and family budget. Starting from April 12 for period of 2-3 hours per session. It is being offered free of cost to public by registering on Center’s website. Through Zoom program which is accessible through mobile and computers.

“The Community Service and Continuing Education Center con-tinues to offer another set of pro-grams through distance learning in cooperation with Cegos Company, which is one of the leading com-panies in the field of e-learning and includes more than 80 training courses in the fields of Varied, such as: management, leadership, cus-tomer service, finance, project

management and etc, in multiple languages and are packages for government and private institu-tions,” Dr. Esmail added.

The Center also offers IELTS and TOEFL preparation courses online at affordable prices, in cooperation with EduSynch USA, where these courses can help students to obtain high scores on these tests. The courses qualifies them to obtain admission to uni-versities, whether at the under-graduate or graduate level.

The Community Service and Continuing Education Center is a link between Qatar University and the community through its provision of general and spe-cialized training programs that meet the actual training needs of society, in addition to the prepar-atory programs for professional and international certification exams and admission exams for universities of all kinds, to provide the opportunity for the largest number of Community members to benefit from their expertise, experiences and resources available at the university.

Sanitisation process going on at Ezdan Mall Al Wakra.

Maintenance personnel during the sanitisation drive.

Ezdan has shown due care since the beginning, by enhancing an awareness campaign on its social media platforms urging people to observe precautionary and preventive measures, and to apply home-quarantine, and keep social distancing to contribute to ending the crisis of coronavirus pandemic.

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Coronavirus lockdown has given us thechance to strengthen our family bondsTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

With the World Health Organ-isation (WHO) having declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, countries around the world are taking measures to curb the spread of this disease. This has led schools, restaurants and many public spaces to close, while more and more organisations are calling for

their employees to work remotely.

This has ultimately meant that children are engaging in online learning, parents are working from home, and family members are spending more time with each other.

While this may be a scary and confusing time for parents and kids alike, it is important to remain positive and engaged.

This is an opportunity to take advantage of this time spent at home to strengthen the bond between family members by doing healthy, creative and fun activities together.

The Doha International Family Institute (DIFI) study on The Arab Family Strength in Qatar, Jordan and Tunisia has shown that there are seven major family strengths among

Arab families: responsibility, support, good communication skills, respect, conveying tradi-tions, resilience, and love. Quality time spent with family members can be an opportunity to further build on these strengths and values.

So, what kinds of activities can families do together to stim-ulate kids throughout the day?

Parents can engage their kids by doing a variety of activ-ities such as completing their schoolwork, playing board games and other types of games, reading books, watching movies, doing crafts, and remaining physically active. This is the time to reconnect with kids and re-emphasise key family values and traditions.

Recent DIFI research showed that 32 percent of the sample of adolescents aged 12-15 years in Qatar eat breakfast less than three times a week, while 43 percent of adolescents eat fast food 3-7 times a week. These unhealthy behaviours adversely affect their health and wellbeing. As such, this is a golden oppor-tunity to teach kids about good food options and healthy eating habits, and their importance to

their growth and development. At the same time, this is the ideal time for parents to have three meals a day with their kids and take advantage of this time to communicate, share experiences, and offer emo-tional support.

DIFI’s research has also illustrated that 45 percent of the sample of adolescents aged 12-15 years in Qatar spend more than six hours a day on the Internet. Meanwhile, 60 percent of adolescents prefer to spend time online and on social media instead of with their families.

As kids are currently spending more time at home with their families until schools reopen, there is a high chance that they will spend more time

on these platforms, which can be harmful to their mental and physical wellbeing. As a result, parents must encourage their kids – depending on their ages and interests – to participate in physical activity, play video games with them, and engage in other online activities, as well as reading books with them as alternative options.

The coronavirus pandemic can make families feel scared or anxious. That’s why it is important to remember that this is an opportunity to appreciate our families, and to spend more quality time with them.

The article was written by Dr. Sharifa Al Emadi, Executive Director, Doha International Family Institute – a member of Qatar Foundation.

Dr. Sharifa Al Emadi, Executive Director, Doha International Family Institute, a member of Qatar Foundation.

A family having fun time together.

M7 launches online coaching sessions for aspiring local designersTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

M7, a creative startups hub dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship established by Qatar Museums for the nation’s growing fashion and design industry, yesterday announced a biweekly series of online coaching sessions by leaders in the field, intended to guide and encourage aspiring designers.

Although the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has delayed the full inaugu-ration of M7, these exclusive online coaching sessions — live each Thursday and Saturday on the M7 Instagram account, @M7.qatar, at 6pm — will provide ongoing inspiration and support until normal activities may resume.

A new five-storey, 29,000sqm facility, M7 is located in the heart of Msheireb Downtown Doha, the mixed-use development that is reviving the city’s historic core as a sustainable new live-work neighbourhood.

M7 serves to advance the careers of Qataris in creative industries, espe-cially design and fashion; train aspiring entrepreneurs in creative fields; spark creativity in people of all ages and backgrounds through exhibitions, per-formances, films, educational pro-grams, and public discussions; and help connect Qatar’s innovators with the world.

Maha Al Sulaiti, Acting Director, M7

said: “The day when M7’s beautiful facilities are bustling with activity has unfortunately been postponed, but cre-ativity and innovation in Qatar cannot wait. We are moving ahead to support Qatar’s up-and-coming design industry hone their skills through these online talks, which are certain to benefit emerging talents as they explore, col-laborate, and grow into successful entrepreneurs.”

Through the online coaching ses-sions, local and international leaders in the industry are giving their insights into topics such as nurturing creativity and skills during difficult times, making use of technology in the fashion business, testing products in the market, developing a business plan, and promoting products through a pro-gramme of marketing and public relations.

Each of the sessions reflect one of M7’s founding principles: to inspire, Equip, Validate, Empower, Accelerate, Connect and Promote.

The series of online coaching ses-sions will kick off today and on Sat-urday at 6pm with “Inspire” featuring sessions with interior designer Chris Wolston and textile designer Karl-Artur Korsar who will talk about how they keep themselves inspired with the resources at hand during this chal-lenging period of the pandemic, as well as design and brand identity.

It will be followed by “Equip” on

April 16 and 18 in which Amir Berbic, Dean of Virginia Commonwealth Uni-versity Qatar, and Maryam Al Sumait, the co-founder of the design service agency Makery, will discuss different

applications that designers can use to produce and launch their products.

On April 23 and 25, Oleg Fazulyanow, CEO of Fashion Consult Group Milan, and Tariel Bisharian, CEO

of Emerging Talent Milan Showroom, will talk about the business of fashion and how designers can test if their products will work in a target market in a session dubbed “Validate.”

Next is “Empower” on April 30 and May 2 which will see Nez Gebreel, global brand and talent developer and Fashion Trust Arabia board member, and creative director Mirna Naccache discuss how designers can empower their creative voices.

Aysha Al Mudahka, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partnership Development at QF and Former CEO of the Qatar Business Incubation Center, and Stefano Bellandi, CEO of Cipriani Couture, will share how to build a business plan from concept to production in “Accelerate” scheduled on May 7 and 9.

Slated on May 14 and 16 is “Connect” featuring Khalifa Al Haroon, Founder of ILoveQatar, and Harriet Gyamfuah, Founder of Crea-tives Amplified, who will discuss ways for designers to stay connected with their customers using digital platforms.

Finally on May 21 and 23, “Promote” will see Bianca Brigitte Bonomi, Editor in Chief of Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, and Kai Margrander, Fashion Director of Harper’s Bazaar Germany, speak about the impact of media placements and promotion of design.

M7, a creative startups hub dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship established by Qatar Museums for the nation’s growing fashion and design industry, kicks off today a series of online coaching sessions by leaders in the field.

QRCS, UN raise awareness against coronavirus in Yemen

THE PENINSULA — DOHA

The representation mission of Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) held an introductory workshop on the risks and prevention of COVID-19, amid public uncertainty and lack of information about the disease.

Held in cooperation with the United Nations High Com-missioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the workshop was attended by 50 staff of QRCS’ mission and health care pro-viders. It covered many topics on the nature of the disease, how it spreads, and how to prevent it.

Dr. Mohamed A Al Jalood, the instructor of the workshop and UNHCR Health Officer, said: “This workshop is important as it seeks to protect lives, reassure the participants,

and highlight their role in dealing with concerns of a coronavirus spread among health care providers. It is crucial to give information about good health practices and inform the public through field workers”.

He commended the efforts made by QRCS to raise awareness and help thousands of beneficiaries under its health care project for internally dis-placed persons (IDPs) and other diverse projects. “We are happy with this partnership,” said Dr. Al Jalood. “We will work together with QRCS at all the phases of the IDP support

project, to attain the desired goals”.

Another workshop was held at QRCS’s mission premises in Sanaa, in preparation for a project to secure shelter and nonfood items (NFIs) for vul-nerable IDPs in the Qa’atabah, Al Hussein, and Jahaf Districts of the Dhale Governorate.

Under the project, 1,000 displaced families will have shelter for six months, and NFIs will be distributed to 500 families.

Haythem Al Dumaini, the project’s manager, said the participants were introduced to the goals and action plan of

the project. “The registration and verification teams will receive high-standard field training, and all the teams will coordinate together as well as with the competent author-ities,” he stated. “We also reviewed the lessons learnt from previous similar projects and discussed the applicable solutions”.

To be implemented in four governorates (Sa’dah, Taiz, Ibb, and Dhale), the project has a budget of $882,743, funded by the UN Office for the Coordi-nation of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Yemen Humanitarian Fund (YHF).

Participants listening to the instructor during the workshop for raising awareness against coronavirus in Yemen.

Mall of Qatar stores offer shoppers ‘Stay Safe & Shop from Home’ serviceTHE PENINSULA — DOHA

Shoppers across Qatar can now enjoy a new set of services offered by the Mall of Qatar, making the shopping expe-rience easier, safer, and more flexible. More than 70 stores at Mall of Qatar have started “Stay Safe & Shop from Home” service, allowing customers to shop for their favourite brands and products from the comfort of their own homes.

The service is the ideal alter-native for personal shopping, which has temporarily stopped as a result of the mandatory closure of shops at the mall imposed by Qatari authorities as a precautionary measure to prevent and contain the spread of COVID-19. The Mall of Qatar remains committed to abiding by the Qatari authorities’ instructions to ensure people’s safety and well-being and support initiatives that best meet their expectations.

Khaled Sam Hosn, CEO of

Mall of Qatar, said: “In light of the current situation and the preventative and precautionary measures the state is under-taking to limit the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), we at Mall of Qatar, consider the safety of shoppers our top pri-ority and are happy to support our tenants with ‘Stay Safe & Shop from Home’ initiative, which is a good solution to keep business going and meet the demands of customers in this current situation.”

The service is provided directly by the tenants at Mall of Qatar, and customers can now order their products via different platforms. All outlets offering the “Stay Safe & Shop from Home” service can be viewed on Mall of Qatar website accessible through the link https://www.mallofqatar.com.qa/shopfromhome. Partici-pating outlets and offerings will be regularly updated on the mall’s website as more stores are joining this service.

Held in cooperation with UNHCR, the workshop was attended by 50 staff of QRCS’ mission and health care providers. It covered many topics on the nature of the disease, how it spreads, and how to prevent it.

09THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020 GULF / MIDDLE EAST

Paying tribute to health workersIraqi security forces wearing protective masks pay tribute to health personnel for their efforts during the coronavirus pandemic crisis, in the southern city of Basra, yesterday. The Health Ministry said COVID-19 has killed 56 Iraqis and infected more than 800 others.

Virus-hit Iran urges IMF to approve $5bn loan as deaths surpass 4,000AFP — TEHRAN

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged the International Monetary Fund yesterday to give the sanctions-hit country a $5bn emergency loan to combat its novel coronavirus outbreak.

The Islamic republic is bat-tling one of the world’s deadliest coronavirus outbreaks which it says has killed 4,003 people and infected more than 64,500.

In the past 24 hours, 1,997 new cases of COVID-19 infection were detected in Iran, state news agency IRNA quoted health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour as saying. That put the number of con-firmed cases at 64,586, he added.

Iran, which announced its first COVID-19 cases on Feb-ruary 19, is by far the worst hit by the pandemic in the Middle East, according to official tolls.

But there has been specu-lation abroad that the real number of deaths and infections

in the country could be higher. Jahanpour said that while

3,956 patients were in critical condition, those who recovered had reached 29,812. The spokesman added that Iran had carried out 220,975 COVID-19 tests to date, according to Irna.

In a bid to halt COVID-19, Iran has ordered the closure of non-essential businesses and imposed inter-city travel bans, while refraining from a lockdown. Iran has said it needs what would be its first IMF loan in over half a century to con-tinue fighting the virus.

But its arch enemy the United States, which effectively holds a veto at the IMF, is reportedly set to block the loan, arguing Iran will use the funds for military purposes. “I urge all international organisations to

fulfil their duties,” Rouhani said during a cabinet meeting.

“We are a member of the IMF... if there’s going to be any discrimination between Iran and others in giving loans, neither we nor world opinion will tolerate it.”

Iran announced on March 12 that it had requested the loan. The country has not received assistance from the IMF since a “standby credit” issued between 1960 and 1962, according to IMF figures. According to the IMF’s website, a Rapid Financial Instrument “is available to all member countries facing an urgent balance of payments need”.

“If they do not act on their duties in this difficult situation, the world will judge them in a different way,” Rouhani said.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo charged in a recent interview that Iran would use any economic relief to pursue nuclear weapons and back Shia militias in Iraq that the admin-istration blames for a wave of attacks on bases used by US troops. “You see the way... the regime is treating their people in this time of enormous crisis. You see the way that they con-tinue to spend money,” Pompeo told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has waged a campaign of “maximum pressure” on Iran since it withdrew from a landmark nuclear deal in 2018.

It has since imposed wave after wave of crippling sanc-tions that target key sectors of

Iran’s economy such as oil sales and banking. Iran has repeatedly called on the Trump administration to reverse its sanctions policy, which has been opposed even by some US allies, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Medicines and medical equipment are technically exempt from the US sanctions but purchases are frequently blocked by the unwillingness of banks to process purchases for fear of incurring large penalties in the United States. “It will go down in history that the White

House, which was engaged in economic terrorism so far, is now a terrorist in health issues, too,” Rouhani said.

European nations have delivered medical goods to Iran in the first transaction under the Instex financing mechanism set up to get around US sanctions. But it has been more than a year since Britain, France and Germany announced the cre-ation of Instex and Iran has questioned European govern-ments’ commitment to seeing it through in defiance of the Trump administration.

Hamas affirms readiness for prisoner swap with IsraelANATOLIA & QNA — GAZA CITY

The Palestinian Hamas group said it would “deal responsibly” with any “real response” to its prisoner swap initiative with Israel.

“We will deal responsibly with any real response for the initiative of the movement’s leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Al Sinwar, regarding [Israeli] soldiers captured by Al Qassam Brigades, to release a number of Palestinian elderly, women,

ill and children prisoners,” the group’s spokesman Hazem Qassim said on Twitter. Last Thursday, Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, said the group was willing to initiate a prisoner swap with Israel.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for “immediate dialogue through mediators,” on missing Israelis in Gaza.

This is the first time that Israel expressed willingness for talks on four Israelis missing

since the 2014 Gaza war.In April 2016, Hamas

announced for the first time that it had taken four Israeli soldiers captive while withholding their identities except for Oron Shaul, an Israeli soldier missing since the 2014 war.

Hamas has insisted that Israel should release Palestinian prisoners re-arrested shortly after they were released during a prisoner exchange in 2011.

At the end of the 2014 con-flict, the Israeli government

announced the loss of the “bodies” of two soldiers in the Gaza Strip, namely Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin.

However, in June 2016, the Israeli Ministry of Security changed their classification as “missing and captive.”

Meanwhile, a Palestinian fisherman was injured last morning during a pursuit by Israeli occupation navy boats off the Gaza shore.

The Israeli occupation navy chased several Palestinian

fishing boats while sailing in the sea near the Gaza shores and opened fire at them injuring one fisherman by several rubber-coated metal bullets, Palestine News Agency (WAFA) reported.

The fisherman was trans-ported to hospital in Gaza where he was reported in mod-erate condition.

The Occupation navy con-tinues to deliberately target Pal-estinian fishermen boats on daily basis and prevents them from fishing.

Coronavirus cases rise in six Arab countriesANATOLIA & QNA — KUWAIT

Health authorities in Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, Palestine, Morocco,and Lebanon reported new coronavirus cases yesterday.

In Kuwait, the Health Ministry confirmed 112 new cases, raising the total to 855, including 105 recoveries. The country has only reported one death from COVID-19 so far.

Oman’s Health Ministry confirmed 48 cases, bringing the total to 419. Two COVID-19

patients have died in the country to date, while 72 have recovered.

Iraqi health authorities reported 38 new cases in the cities of Najaf and Erbil, taking the total number to 1,160.

In Palestine, the Health Ministry said two new corona-virus cases raised the total to 263.

Morocco’s Health Ministry reported one fatality, raising the death toll to 91, while 58 new cases brought the total to 1,242, including 97 recoveries.

L e b a n o n ’ s H e a l t h

Ministry confirmed 27 new cases, pushing the total to 575, while the death toll remains at 19.

More than 1.44 million cases have been reported worldwide, with over 83,000 deaths, and nearly 308,000 recoveries, according to data compiled by the US-based Johns Hopkins University.

The Kuwaiti Ministry of Health announced that 112 people were infected by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 855.

The latest cases include a Kuwaiti citizen who has recently travelled to France, 105 others who were in contact with previously infected people, Health Min-istry spokesman Dr. Abdullah Al Sanad said in press con-ference reported by the Kuwaiti news agency.

Kuwaiti Health Minister Sheikh Basil Al Sabah had announced earlier that there has been six new recoveries from the infection, bringing the total of recoveries to 111 cases.

The number of patients in intensive care reached 21, seven of those are in critical condition and 14 are stable. Those currently receiving treatment at hospitals reached 743 patients.

A total of 911 people were discharged from non-resi-dential quarantines after having taken all preventive measures.

At an earlier time, Kuwait reported its first death of COVID-19, announcing that a 46-year-old Indian national died of the virus.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaking during the National Committee Against the Coronavirus, in Tehran, yesterday.

Israeli Arab MP thanks Erdogan for students’ returnANATOLIA — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

An Arab member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, expressed his gratitude for efforts by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which resulted in the return of Pales-tinian students.

Ahmad Tibi, in a statement, said that a Turkish Airlines plane carrying 110 students, despite the suspension of flights, flew from Istanbul to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

The students returned to their homes in Palestinian areas of Israel and Jerusalem.

Tibi, who is the head of Arab Joint List in the Israeli par-liament, said he sought help from an Israeli airline for the students’ return. The request, however, was declined by Israel’s security authorities.

When all his efforts went in vain, he approached Turkish president’s office, which responded promptly, and arranged a flight for the students.

It was the last air journey before a temporary shutdown of Israeli airspace to curb the spread of coronavirus, and ahead of the Jewish Passover holiday.

COVID-19 cases in Israeltop 9,400; death toll at 71

ANATOLIA — OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

The number of coronavirus cases in Israel now tops 9,400 and the death toll stands at 71, the country’s Health Ministry said .

The ministry said six people died and 156 more tested pos-itive for COVID-19, raising the total number of cases to 9,404.

It said 147 of the patients are in critical condition, while 801 have recovered so far.

Israel late on Tuesday imposed a lockdown through Friday to mark the Jewish Passover holiday.

Israel has taken several measures to stem the virus’ spread, including closing all educational institutions and banning gath-erings of more than 10 people in open or closed public areas.

Since March 15, all businesses except supermarkets, phar-macies, gas stations, and banks have also been closed.

Tel Aviv also banned the entry of foreign citizens into the country, except those with Israeli residency.

Yemen seals border with Saudi Arabia over virus fears

ANATOLIA — ADEN

Yemen has decided to seal its only remaining border crossing with Saudi Arabia to prevent a coronavirus outbreak in the war-ravaged country, local sources said.

Yemeni authorities have decided to close the al-Wadia border crossing with Saudi Arabia from Wednesday until further notice, sources at the border told Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media. Al-Wadia remains the only transition point between the two countries after other border crossings were closed due to the conflict continuing in Yemen since September 2014.

While Yemen has not reported any coronavirus case yet, the number of cases in Saudi Arabia rose to 2,795, with the death toll at 41, according to the country’s Health Ministry.Yemen has been beset by vio-lence and chaos since 2014, when the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels overran much of the country, including the capital Sanaa. The crisis escalated in 2015 when a Saudi-led military coalition launched a devastating air campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi territorial gains.

Lebanon inmates set fires in amnesty bid amid pandemicANATOLIA — BEIRUT

Inmates at Qubbah prison in Tripoli, Lebanon set fire to the mattresses in their cells Tuesday to draw attention to the govern-ment’s inaction over issuing a general amnesty amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

While the fires were brought under control by civil defense units, relatives of the prisoners gathered in front of the prison and chanted slogans but later got into a brawl with security forces.

The Lebanese army said in a statement that the relatives of inmates along with other people attacked security forces with stones.

As a result, 13 soldiers were injured, including one officer, the statement said, adding security forces tasked with the protection and monitoring of prisoners are working to resolve the issue.

The incident occurred as the country’s health ministry announced that the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Lebanon had risen to 548 since the virus was first detected on Feb. 21, with the death toll at 19.

“We are a member of the IMF... if there’s going to be any discrimination between Iran and others in giving loans, neither we nor world opinion will tolerate it,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said.

Online music lessonPalestinian music instructor Esmail Dawood gives an online Oud lesson attended by his children, during confinement at home due to the COVID-19 outbreak, in Gaza City, yesterday.

QNA — NEW YORK

The State of Qatar and the Principality of Monaco under-lined that the celebration of the United Nations on April 6 of the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, which was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly on August 23, 2013 in its reso-lution (67/296), underscores the power of sport to drive social change, community and human development, and to foster peace and under-standing both in developed and developing countries.

This came in an article written by Permanent Repre-sentative of the State of Qatar to the United Nations Ambas-sador H E Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif Al Thani, and Permanent Representative of

the Principality of Monaco Isabelle Picco, and published on the website of the United Nations Chronicle magazine.

The State of Qatar and the Principality of Monaco said that sport has been on the United Nations agenda since 1993, when the General Assembly adopted its first res-olutions entitled “International Year of Sport and the Olympic Ideal” (resolution 48/10) and “Observance of the Olympic Truce” (resolution 48/11).

They noted that every two years, the Assembly adopts a resolution on “Sport as an enabler of sustainable devel-opment” and every other two years, a resolution on “Building a peaceful and better world through sport and the Olympic ideal”, ahead of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

They said that the contri-bution of sport was further recognized in the Declaration on the 2030 Agenda for Sus-tainable Development, adopted by the General Assembly in resolution 70/1 of 25 September 2015, which emphasizes that “sport is an important enabler of sus-tainable development”. The Declaration also recognizes

“the growing contribution of sport to the realization of development and peace in its promotion of tolerance and respect and the contributions it makes to the empowerment of women and of young people, individuals and com-munities as well as to health, education, and social inclusion objectives”.

Unfortunately, the article pointed out, this years cele-bration comes in the devas-tating wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with severe pressure placed on public health systems, emergency services and the global economy. The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has stated that “our world is facing an unprece-dented threat, and the United Nations is facing one of the biggest challenges in our history.”

The permanent represent-atives of the State of Qatar and the Principality of Monaco believed that the global sports landscape has also been altered significantly, from playing games behind closed doors to canceling events, with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics postponed until 2021. The pandemic has shaken the sports world, with social distancing being the best way so far to protect oneself and others.

“Now more than ever, we need to celebrate the Interna-tional Day of Sport for Devel-opment and Peace and the power of sport to change the world, as Nelson Mandela reminded us. If sport teaches us anything it is that teamwork is essential and that together we are stronger. In the same way, we shall overcome COVID-19 if we and the rest of the world work together. Likewise, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a pathway towards a sustainable future for all, leaving no one behind, with peaceful and inclusive societies, and a healthy planet. We can only get there by working together,” they stressed.

They underlined that sport plays an important advocacy role in combating the spread of diseases and highlighting the importance of interna-tional solidarity. “In times of crisis, fear and anxiety can consume us. Alone, it seems, we can do very little, but working together, we can do so much. Even though sporting events have come to a halt for now, athletes, major and small sports leagues and community sports organiza-tions are delivering messages of positivity connecting us with each other. Sport is bringing people and commu-nities together, helping us find

common ground, regardless of ethnicity, religion or political affiliation,” they said.

Permanent Representative of the State of Qatar H E Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif Al Thani, and H E Permanent Representative of the Princi-pality of Monaco Isabelle Picco added in the article that in the context of the global pan-demic, it is important to note that the World Health Organi-zation advocates 30 minutes of daily physical activity in order to stay healthy, boost ones immune system and combat stress and depression.

“Moreover, we should not forget that sport is a versatile instrument to prevent conflict and build peace, as it builds relationships across social, eco-nomic and cultural divides and creates a sense of shared identity and fellowship among groups that might otherwise be inclined to view each other with distrust and hostility. The uni-versal language of sport helps fight radicalisation and prevent violent extremism that is con-ducive to terrorism. It is also a very powerful tool for dialogue and reconciliation,” they added.

“With so much progress in the last few years, we must keep on. By raising awareness of the role of sport in health, sustainable development and peace, the International Day can help increase much needed global solidarity. Sport is uniquely equipped to unite. It has unlimited potential to positively heal the world we live in now, and the world we are building for the future. More than ever, the power of sport can contribute to the global efforts to make the Sus-tainable Development Goals (SDGs) a reality,” they stressed.

The article underline that the State of Qatar, host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, is com-mitted to delivering a sus-tainable World Cup tour-nament and showcasing innovative solutions. Efforts are in place to address climate change, workers welfare and rights, and business practices.

They noted that Qatar has often stressed its intention that the World Cup benefit the entire MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and spe-cifically support youth with access to education, research, social, cultural, technological and economic opportunities.

“A number of initiatives have been launched for the purpose of unlocking this potential. For instance, Gen-eration Amazing leverages the power of football to instigate social change, break down barriers, increase access to sport and enhance com-munity integration in line with the SDGs. From Brazils Atlantic coast to the highlands

of Nepal, Generation Amazing, in collaboration with United Nations partners and civil society, is building sporting facilities and running programmes that focus on developing leadership skills and civil engagement, and nurturing life skills for thou-sands of girls and boys in underprivileged commu-nities,” they added.

“We also view the World Cup as a supporting platform for the talented and growing entre-preneurial and innovation com-munity of the region. Financial and technical mentoring from worldwide experts is provided to young entrepreneurs to develop creative and cost-effective ideas, including inno-vations that will lead to more sustainable outcomes in the design, construction and opera-tional stages of the World Cups infrastructure delivery. Most importantly the organizers are energizing sectors that will con-tribute to more diversified, forward-looking economies across the region. Pioneering disciplines such as behavioural psychology are being intro-duced, using research to improve processes and policy outcomes,” they said.

The article noted that Monaco is proud to have the only Olympian Head of State. Sport is at the core of Monacos identity and way of life, which is reflected in its hosting of major yearly sporting events, including the Monte-Carlo Masters, the Formula 1 Grand Prix, and the Track and Field Herculis IAAF Meeting by the hundreds of sports associations that ensure access to physical activity for all. Physical edu-cation and swimming lessons are an integral part of the cur-ricula from primary to high school.

It noted that sport is increasingly integrated into partnerships and projects developed by the specialized funds, agencies and pro-grammes of the United Nations, as well as other stakeholders, including private-sector companies.

The permanent represent-atives said that athletes around the world are a con-stant source of inspiration through their hard work, relentless efforts and col-lective engagement. “Those values are essential for our collective action to overcome the global pandemic and its economic consequences worldwide. Sport has the power to enrich our lives and promote peaceful relations between nations as we embark upon our recovery efforts and work towards strengthening our global community,” they underlined.

10 THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020VIEWS

CHAIRMANSHEIKH DR. KHALID BIN THANI AL THANI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFI

editorinchief@pen.com.qa

ACTING MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED SALIM MOHAMED

m.salim@pen.com.qa

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORMOHAMMED OSMAN ALI osman@pen.com.qa

EDITORIAL

DESPITE challenges caused by COVID-19 outbreak, the ports in Qatar have delivered robust performance which shows their strength and resilience. While global maritime industry is struggling due to the outbreak of pandemic, Qatar’s ports have witnessed rise in traffic handling in March.

The ports have recorded 53 percent growth in general cargo volumes last month, compared to Feb-ruary this year. Hamad Port, Ruwais Port and Doha Port handled 112,730 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) containers; 131,472 tonnes general cargo; 59,601 live-stock heads; 41,554 tonnes building materials and 6,088 units of vehicles during last month.

A total of 225 ships docked at these ports in March. Preventive measures taken by Qatar Ports Management Company (Mwani Qatar) have played crucial role in smooth functioning of ports in this challenging times.

Mwani Qatar, in coordination with the Ministry of Public Health and relevant authorities, has implemented series of measures to limit the spread of coronavirus in the ports which will not only keep the workforce safe, but will also ensure uninterrupted supply of goods in the country.

The measures include sanitisation of containers, installing thermal cameras, submission of COVID-19 disclosures and making workforce at the port aware about how to limit spread of the virus.

These ports started the new year on a positive note. Hamad Port, Doha Port and Ruwais Port have witnessed significant rise in cargo handling in the first month of this year. These ports handled over 50 percent more vehicles in January this year compared to same month in 2019.

Ports positive performance in January came after a successful year. Qatar’s maritime sector set new volume and productivity benchmarks in 2019. Hamad Port, Ruwais Port and Doha Port received 4,082 vessels and handled 1.34 million TEUs containers during the year.

Qatar’s maritime sector is expected to witness another year of strong growth as various steps have been taken by the concerned authorities to boost goods traffic at the ports. One of the major steps include expan-sions of Hamad Port.

The development works of Phase II of the Hamad Port, which consist of second container terminal (CT-2), has already begun. As part of the development of CT-2, QTerminals had announced in December last year that it had placed an order for 24 Terminal Trailers. Hamad Port, one of the largest ports in the Middle East, has led from the front in boosting Qatar maritime sector and it occupies the lion’s share in the overall port traffic. The proactive policies implemented by the government to strengthen country’s maritime infrastructure have enabled ports to overcome any challenging situation.

Qatar’s resilient ports

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Quote of the day

Once we have finally turned the page on this

epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully

to understand how such a disease emerged and

spread its devastation so quickly across the globe.

But now is not that time.

Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General

Sport is an important equalizer, as the same rules apply to everyone, and it carries ideals and values, such as the Olympic values of excellence, friendship and respect.

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If sport teaches us anything it is that teamwork is essential and that together we are stronger. In the same way, we shall overcome COVID-19 if we and the rest of the world work together.

Qatar, Principality of Monaco underscore power of sports in fostering peace and understanding

11THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020 OPINION

For countries like Italy, such a move would underline the commitment of bloc members to each other in times of need. But for Germany, it’s the thin end of a wedge which eventually leads to the thrifty north directly subsidising the south.

Oil markets are sending confusing signals at a time when more confusion is the last thing anyone needs. When Russia walked out on OPEC+ rather than contribute to more output cuts, Saudi Arabia turned on the crude taps. Whatever Riyadh’s intention, this “price war” was quickly made meaningless by the impact of the new corona-virus on global oil demand. The price collapse has been beyond anything anyone could have imagined.

Now, storage room for crude is becoming scarce. Analysts warn darkly that plunging prices may threaten global economic stability. Equities follow the oil price news. Everyone seems to agree that prices should stop falling; and yet no one seems to argue that a very low oil price is exactly what the world’s economy needs to recover.

The combination of price war and pandemic is also cre-ating some strange bed-fellows. Some American shale producers are advocating that their country blocks Saudi oil imports, others want to talk to

OPEC to find a solution. Pres-ident Donald Trump’s gov-ernment has expressed an interest in cooperating on global oil supplies with Saudi Arabia and Russia; it’s nudging OPEC+ to reconvene, or an even wider group of producers to meet. Could we be witnessing the emergence of an unholy alliance of Saudi Arabia, Russia and the US, to “manage volatility,” and inci-dentally shore up the price of oil?

Cards on the table, I hope not.

Oil is still the lifeblood of modern commerce. It takes seven liters (1.85 gallons) of oil to produce $100 of global gross domestic product. This is better than the 10 liters of 30 years ago, but the price of oil still matters.

Today, the world has three centers of oil production, each with its own governance structure, its own economic and strategic interests, and each with an entourage of similarly structured, smaller producers in geographic proximity. Taken together, these three - the US, Saudi Arabia and Russia - account for 45% of global liquid hydrocarbon pro-duction (almost half of which now comes from the US).

In this new world, US energy “independence” (or “dominance”, as the Trump administration likes to call it) has become an important strategic asset. It took a little longer for the economic

implications of becoming a net oil exporter to sink in for the Americans. A flurry of presidential tweets demanding lower prices not-withstanding (aimed at an electorate with big cars and low incomes), the US economy is on the verge of becoming a net beneficiary of rising oil prices, if it isn’t already.

The shale industry, from which all this change origi-nates, is in the midst of a dif-ficult process of financial restructuring - not untypical for a new industry but painful for individual com-panies. Many firms have seen financial constraints emerge, long before the

coronavirus struck.The collapse of price

support from OPEC+, signaled by that Russian walkout and Riyadh’s reaction, would have sounded the death knell for many shale companies even without the pandemic. However, if Moscow’s - or Riyadh’s - strategy was to kill the industry, it would almost certainly have failed. US finance thrives on such dis-ruption. Even now, American shale assets will be moth-balled and change hands, debt will be restructured, and hydrocarbons will flow, quite possibly at a more efficient cost per barrel. Sources of financing may change. The technology is here to stay.

Presently, Saudi Arabia has every incentive to come to an output agreement. Its society is simply too dependent on oil to let its price stay on the floor. Russia, meanwhile, is vul-nerable to a global inventory overhang, which would force its producers to shut in pro-duction. The risk to its fields makes it an unlikely can-didate for an all-out dispute. Of the three main producers, the capacity for a longer price “war” is actually highest in the US.

But could the threat to America’s newly strategic shale industry from price competition really bring Washington into a dialogue with OPEC? Should it?

In a shrinking market, the low-cost producer is king. Left alone, a global oil market would emerge in which large OPEC producers from the Gulf (the cheapest) would have the first go at selling whatever quantity they desire. A mix of global companies would be next; this second layer might indeed be tilted toward Russian operators, with low production costs and the helping hand of Vladimir Putin’s government. Uncon-ventional producers - nimble, numerous, and price responsive (as in the US shale patch) - would close off the system. They would produce the residual, and the cost at which they’re capable of doing so would set the global price of oil.

This would be a market as stable and efficient as it gets. It is actually what we have today, when you factor in the restrictions that falling oil demand growth will place eventually on the ability of groups like OPEC and OPEC+ to launch large moves to raise prices.

Beyond the immediate

emergency, meaningful long-term cooperation to “sta-bilize” prices would require state intervention or quotas; or US import restrictions. Any of these would mean cur-tailing the benefits of compe-tition and open entry to which the US shale industry owes its existence. In the short term, such measures would fly in the face of supporting the post-pandemic economy by pushing up fuel costs for eve-rybody. In the long term, they would curtail the capacity to innovate on which we depend so heavily in the transition to cleaner fuels.

So the answer on whether the three big producers should be joining hands on the crude price is no. The rest of the world has very little to gain from more intervention in the functioning of the world’s oil markets. What’s needed instead are better rules to safeguard compe-tition on a global scale. This may be wishful thinking. But the temptation to “manage” the market, now or when peak oil demand approaches in earnest, should be resisted.

Christof Ruehl is a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School.

A Saudi-US-Russia oil deal is not a good idea

Step-by-step, the coronavirus crisis is forcing the euro zone into greater integration. But like the euro zone debt crisis before, it may not deliver what bond markets really crave.

A long called for joint euro bond is back on the agenda, but German and Dutch resistance to calls for a ‘coronabond’ from many southern European states and the European Central Bank is again testing the single currency bloc’s cohesion.

For countries like Italy, such a move would underline the commitment of bloc members to each other in times of need. But for Germany, it’s the thin end of a wedge which eventually leads to the thrifty north directly subsidising the south.

However, the scale of the coronavirus crisis and the plight of Spain and Italy has already softened Berlin’s position on Europe-wide

budget rules and strict condi-tionality in European Sta-bility Mechanism bailouts, big shifts from its hard line during the 2011 Greek debt crisis.

Coronabond supporters argue they would be strictly a one-off. For markets and the ECB, such bonds would offer a benchmark “risk free” euro zone rate to be built on if necessary.

“If there is a time for joint bonds it’s now,” Luca Paolini, chief strategist at Pictet Asset Management, said.

During any future crisis, such a backstop would shield poorer states from crippling rises in borrowing costs. And long-term, it could boost the euro’s reserve currency status.

“Politically, it’s very important when there is an emergency that costs are shared equally across the euro area (but) Italy is paying 2% more than Germany,” Paolini said, referring to 10-year sovereign borrowing costs.

A joint bond could be issued at a yield of around 0%, he noted, while Italy pays 1.5% for 10-year cash. On a one billion-euro issue, the annual difference amounts to 15 million euros.

While a plain-vanilla pooled bond so far looks unlikely, compromises such

as issuing coronabonds through a specially created European rescue fund, are on the table.

The troubles facing the bloc bring to mind predic-tions by European Union founding father Jean Monnet that piecemeal integration would generate crises, each of which would bring the bloc closer, in a kind of chain reaction.

Germany and the Nether-lands opposed ECB bond buying for years, citing a no-bailout rule and fears of underwriting national debts. It took an existential debt crisis, brutal recession and precedents set by other major central banks to soften their opposition in 2015.

“(European policymakers) have a history of only moving towards agreement on mon-etary or fiscal matters when a crisis necessitates it,” Mike Riddell, head of UK fixed income at Allianz Global Investors, said.

“This is certainly one of those times.”

Phantom returns Joint bonds, dismissed by

German economic affairs minister Peter Altmaier as a “phantom debate”, have been touted since the bloc’s early days.

They’ve shot into focus now because crisis-fighting expenditure will blow out

budget deficits and worsen debt ratios, potentially sparking credit rating downgrades.

How much borrowing costs could rise without coro-nabonds is hard to predict, but a doubling in Italy’s 10-year bond yield to 3% in less than a week in mid-March shows pressure can build quickly.

Although the ECB’s emer-gency stimulus package eased this, unease ahead of an April 9 euro group deadline sent yields 20 basis points higher across southern Europe last week .

Meanwhile, German yields inched up 4.5 bps, a reminder that euro zone bor-rowing costs diverge even more in difficult times.

The stakes are highest for Italy, with debt ratios over 130% of GDP and a pre-carious credit rating, which Moody’s ranks just one notch above junk status.

“As long as the bulk of new debt from the crisis remains under national responsibility, rating con-cerns from deteriorating fiscal metrics should increase,” Christoph Rieger, Commerzbank’s head of rates and credit research said.

The ECB would have to buy increasing amounts of debt to keep yield spreads from widening, he predicted.

German gains What may eventually

sway Germany is the euro’s future.

Euro membership has been good to export-driven Germany, which has enjoyed immense national savings through the benchmark status of its government bonds, ultra-low borrowing costs and a hugely under-valued currency.

Based on its gains, which the Centre for European Policy think-tank estimates at almost 2 trillion euros between 1999 and 2017, it has much to lose.

Although the euro will not be immediately jeopardised without joint bonds, the risk is of more euroscepticism, particularly in Italy and Spain.

“My guess is that in 10 years’ time we will have a common euro zone Treasury. If not, the euro area will have broken up,” Pictet’s Paolini predicted.

Piet Haines Christiansen, chief strategist, ECB and fixed income at Danske Bank predicts that market fears would be assuaged by 500 billion euros of joint 7-10 year debt issuance. “The case for coronabonds is a now or never moment. You really need to take a leap forward,” Christiansen said.

All for one and one for all? Eurozone will for joint bonds tested

CHRISTOF RUEHL BLOOMBERG

DHARA RANASINGHE & SUJATA RAO — REUTERS

The collapse of price support from OPEC+, signaled by that Russian walkout and Riyadh’s reaction, would have sounded the death knell for many shale companies even without the pandemic.

The shale industry, from which all this change originates, is in the midst of a difficult process of financial restructuring - not untypical for a new industry but painful for individual companies. Many firms have seen financial constraints emerge, long before the coronavirus struck.

So the answer on whether the three big producers should be joining hands on the crude price is no. The rest of the world has very little to gain from more intervention in the functioning of the world’s oil markets. What’s needed instead are better rules to safeguard competition on a global scale. This may be wishful thinking. But the temptation to “manage” the market, now or when peak oil demand approaches in earnest, should be resisted.

A file picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump shaking hands during a bilateral meeting at the G20 leaders’ summit in Osaka, Japan.

12 THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020MIDDLE EAST / AFRICA

Syria responsible for 2017 chemical attacks: WatchdogAFP — THE HAGUE

The world’s chemical weapons watchdog yesterday for the first time explicitly blamed Syria for toxic attacks in the country, saying President Bashar Al Assad’s regime used sarin and chlorine three times in 2017.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said it “has concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the per-petrators of the use of sarin as a chemical weapon in Lataminah in 2017... and the use of chlorine... were individuals belonging to the Syrian Arab Air Force”.

The report is the first released by the Hague-based watchdog’s new Identification and Investigations Team (IIT), set up specifically to finger the perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria’s ongoing nine-year-long civil war.

“Attacks of such a strategic nature would have only taken

place on the basis of orders from the higher authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic military command,” IIT coor-dinator Santiago Onate-Laborde said in the OPCW statement.

“Even if authority can be delegated, responsibility cannot. In the end, the IIT was unable to identify any other plausible explanation,” he said.

The report said the attacks were carried out by two SU-22

jet fighters which dropped two bombs containing sarin on March 24 and 30, 2017, as well as by a Syrian military heli-copter that dropped a cylinder containing chlorine on a hos-pital in the town of Al-Lataminah on March 25 that year.

Almost two years ago, the Hague-based body confirmed that sarin and chlorine were used in two attacks in Al-Lataminah, but at the time it did not name those responsible.

Another deadly sarin assault took place a few days later on April 4 in nearby Khan Sheikun, killing more than 80 people.

But the new report stopped short of naming the culprit of an alleged 2018 chlorine attack in the Syrian town of Douma in which at least 40 people died -- an investigation that has become a major bone of con-tention between Damascus and its Russian ally and Western nations.

Eastern Libya confirms first COVID-19 caseREUTERS — BENGHAZI

The authorities running eastern Libya confirmed a first case of the coronavirus despite efforts to close borders and impose a curfew to limit social interactions. Libya has confirmed a total of 20 cases of the new coronavirus, with the others in the western areas controlled by the internationally recognised Government.

Shipping containers are seen stacked at Beirut’s port, during a countrywide lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease, in Beirut, Lebanon, yesterday.

Millions in Lebanon risk food insecurity over virus lockdownAFP — BEIRUT

Millions in Lebanon risk food insecurity due to a coronavirus lockdown unless the government provides urgent assistance, Human Rights Watch warned yesterday.

Lebanon in mid-March ordered residents to stay at home and all non-essential businesses to close to halt the spread of COVID-19, which has officially infected 575 people and killed 19 nationwide.

Before the pandemic erupted, Lebanon was strug-gling with its worst economic crisis in decades, with 45 percent of the population facing poverty according to official estimates.

Lockdown measures to slow the spread of the virus have made matters worse with “millions of Lebanon’s resi-dents... at risk of going hungry”, HRW said in a statement.

Lebanon is home to 4.5 million people, and also hosts around 1.5 million Syrians who have fled the nine-year war next door, most of whom rely on aid to survive.

“The lockdown... has com-pounded the poverty and eco-nomic hardship rampant in Lebanon before the virus arrived,” said HRW senior researcher Lena Simet.

“Many people who had an income have lost it, and if the government does not step in, more than half the population may not be able to afford food and basic necessities.”

The economic crisis since last year had already caused many people to lose their jobs or take salary cuts, and stay-at-home measures to counter the virus have now prevented even more from earning a wage.

Media has carried reports of a taxi driver who set his car on fire after security forces fined him for breaking the lockdown rules.

And an unemployed Leb-anese construction worker unable to afford rent offered to sell his kidney, in an image widely shared online.

HRW Lebanon researcher Aya Majzoub said many fam-ilies are struggling due to a lack of savings.

The government has said it

will pay out 400,000 Lebanese pounds (less than $150 at the market rate) to the most vulnerable.

HRW said the government should also consider sus-pending rent and mortgage payments throughout the lockdown.

Majzoub said Syrian ref-ugees were also affected.

“Many of them were sea-sonal workers -- they worked in agriculture, they worked in the service industry -- and they’re not able to do that anymore,” she said.

But their ability to cope will depend largely on international aid, as before the pandemic.

The World Bank last week said it had re-allocated $40 million from its support to Leb-anon’s health sector to fight the virus, including for tests and ventilators.

And it has also been dis-cussing “assistance to help mit-igate the impact of the eco-nomic and financial crisis on the poor through emergency social safety nets”, World Bank spokeswoman Zeina El-Khalil told AFP in March.

A volunteer from the Violet organisation checking the temperature of a child at a camp for displaced Syrians, during a campaign to inform children about the novel coronavirus and the methods used in order to limit its spread, in the village of Kafr Yahmul, north of the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib, yesterday.

Tunisia seeks donations to fund coronavirus facilitiesREUTERS — TUNIS

Tunisia asked for donations to fund 250 intensive care beds to be placed in a sports hall in the capital as it tries to ramp up medical facilities in response to the coronavirus.

Tunisia, which has con-firmed 596 cases of the virus and 22 deaths, has imposed a lockdown for more than two weeks, which it will keep in place until at least April 19.

However, officials have complained that many people are not respecting the need to isolate. Health Minister Abdel-latif Mekki said on Tuesday: “Patients will die at the hospital doors if the violation of the lockdown continues”.

He added that the gov-ernment would transfer anybody who tested positive for the coronavirus to a hospital or medical centre.

Tunisia President Kais Saied taking part in the distribution of aid packages amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, in Gammarth town, on the outskirts of Tunis, yesterday.

UN seeks $130m to prevent hunger catastrophe in ZimbabweREUTERS — HARARE

The United Nations food agency said yesterday it needed $130m to fund emergency operations in Zimbabwe until August and prevent a catastrophe in the southern African nation, as climate- and recession-induced food shortages deepened.

T h e W o r l d F o o d

Programme (WFP) said 7.7 million Zimbabweans, half the population, need food aid after a devastating drought and cyclone last year.

A lack of predictable rains this year has affected crops, compounding the situation.

The coronavirus pandemic has added to the pressure. Zim-babwe has recorded only three

deaths and 11 cases, but econo-mists predict it could face a second successive recession this year as the pandemic shuts down large parts of the global economy.

Zimbabwe’s mining industry, the largest single earner of foreign exchange, has already signalled that exports could fall by a quarter due to

the effects of the new coronavirus.

“With most Zimbabweans already struggling to put food on the table, the COVID-19 pan-demic risks even wider and deeper desperation,” Eddie Rowe, WFP director for Zim-babwe, said in a statement.

“We must all do our utmost to prevent this tragedy turning

into a catastrophe.” The WFP said inflation, at

540% in February, was pushing prices of staples beyond the means of most Zimbabweans, forcing families to eat less and sell off belongings or go into debt.

Zimbabwe is under a 21-day lockdown but some residents have complained this

risks exacerbating the situ-ation. More than 80% of the working population ekes out a living in the informal sector, leaving them with few protections.

The government says the lockdown is necessary to contain the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 81,000 people globally.

In Libya, water cuts add to misery of conflict and coronavirusREUTERS — TUNIS

Cuts to Tripoli’s water and power supply on Tuesday and yesterday aggravated conditions for civilians after days of inten-sified fighting that have under-mined preparations to cope with the novel coronavirus.

Nader Mohamed, a taxi driver and father of three in Tripoli, said the situation had grown much worse. He lives on the fifth floor and must carry the family water supply up to their flat each morning.

They cannot afford a

private generator and he sits in the evenings with candles, telling the children stories from memory.

“Besides the war, we now suffer from a virus, and if it spreads, God only knows what will happen,” he said.

The latest surge in warfare since mid-March has shown no signs of slackening, with fighting and bombardment on several fronts, but no decisive gains by either side.

Libya’s main split is between the eastern-based

Libyan National Army (LNA) of Khalifa Haftar and the inter-nationally recognised Gov-ernment of National Accord (GNA), which holds the capital Tripoli and some other parts of the northwest.

The LNA, backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia, has set up a parallel administration in Benghazi, in the east, and launched an offensive a year ago to capture Tripoli frequently bombarding the capital.

The escalation is in

defiance of pleas from the United Nations and interna-tional aid agencies to cease fire to allow Libya’s war-tattered health system to prepare for the coronavirus, with 21 cases confirmed across the country.

On Monday, projectiles struck al-Khadra hospital in Abu Salim, an area held by the GNA near a frontline, causing damage and prompting the U.N. humanitarian coordinator to denounce “a clear violation of international humanitarian law”.

Shops are closed in the Libyan capital Tripoli due to the coronavirus, yesterday.

Congo President’s chief of staff arrested amid graft probeREUTERS — KINSHASA

Police in Democratic Republic of Congo arrested the President’s chief of staff, Vital Kamerhe, after he testified in an investigation into alleged misappropriation of public funds, a police official said.

Kamerhe, the chief of staff to President Felix Tshisekedi, was being driven by the police to the Makala prison, Sylvano Kasongo, the police chief of the capital Kinshasa, told Reuters.

Tshisekedi’s spokesman, Kasongo Mwema, said he had no comment. “The president does not comment on the decisions of the justice system,” he said. Tshisekedi came to power in January last year vowing to clean up the corruption that watchdog groups said had flourished under his long-serving predecessor, Joseph Kabila. Kamerhe has been dogged by allegations of graft over his role in a $304m public works programme that included roads, bridges and social housing. He has denied all charges of impropriety.

The report is the first released by the Hague-based watchdog’s new Identification and Investigations Team (IIT), set up specifically to finger the perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria’s ongoing nine-year-long civil war.

13THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020 ASIA

India mulls narrowing lockdown to virus hotspotsREUTERS — NEW DELHI

India is considering plans to seal off coronavirus hotspots in Delhi, Mumbai and parts of the south while easing curbs elsewhere as a way out of a three-week lockdown that has caused deep economic distress, officials said yesterday.

The sweeping lockdown of India’s 1.3 billion people to prevent an epidemic of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, ends on April 14 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due to take a decision this week on whether to extend it.

Scenes of poor migrant workers and their families walking long distances on empty highways to their homes in the countryside have increased the pressure on Modi to re-open parts of Asia’s third largest economy.

More than 80% of the positive cases of the coronavirus have been traced to 62 districts — less than 10% of India’s landmass — according to government data.

These are concentrated in the western state of Maharashtra, home to financial capital Mumbai, Delhi and the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Tel-angana and Kerala.

Many parts of the country have not reported a single case.

Such a skewed geographical spread strengthens the case for a more targeted approach under which the affected area

and its neighbouring district will be cor-doned off, health officials said.

“To manage coronavirus, we are working on a cluster containment strategy,” said Health Ministry joint sec-retary Lav Agarwal, leading the effort to tackle the outbreak.

He said such measures were already in place in east Delhi, Agra and in the textile town of Bhilwara in western Rajasthan state which has now become a test case for a more targeted fight against the disease.

Under the “Bhilwara model”, which

was adopted last month soon after about 30 people tested positive in the first big wave of infections, the town and its sur-rounding villages were tightly sealed with a virtual curfew in place.

People were not allowed even to step out of their homes to get essential stocks or medicines, instead they were asked to call helpline numbers for delivery of staples at their homes.

“It is a lockdown, within a lockdown,” said district information officer Gouri Kant. So far, India has had 5,194 people infected with coronavirus

of whom 149 have died, government data showed yesterday.

The small numbers, in comparison to large countries such as the United States, Italy and China have prompted questions from Modi’s critics about whether India has gone too far in shutting down its economy, throwing millions of those who depend on pay by the day out of work and onto the brink of poverty.

A senior government official, aware of internal discussions on the lockdown, said parts of the country that had not reported a single case of the coronavirus and where people were not in quarantine could lift the curbs.

“There are proposals that are on the table, if there is a partial lifting it will be done on the basis of safety assessment,” the official said.

But it was unlikely that schools, col-leges, rail travel and religious gatherings would be allowed anywhere in the country, the official said.

Police personnel patrolling during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against COVID-19, in Allahabad, India, yesterday.

South Korea imposes new travel curbs over virusREUTERS — SEOUL

South Korea’s government said yesterday it will increase restrictions on people travelling from overseas to prevent new coronavirus infections, and announced new stimulus measures for exporters hit by the outbreak.

South Korea will tempo-rarily suspend visa waivers for citizens of countries that have imposed travel bans on South Koreans, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said.

The change will affect trav-ellers from at least 88 countries, including Australia, Canada, Russia, and France, among others.

“While maintaining the foundation of our openness, we will strengthen travel restric-tions under the principles of reciprocity,” he said.

South Korea, which has been praised for its fast and effective response to the pan-demic, has recorded a total of 10,384 coronavirus cases as of midnight Tuesday, with 200 deaths. Chung also said the gov-ernment would impose restric-tions on foreigners travelling to South Korea for “non-essential

visits,” but did not elaborate.South Korean President

Moon Jae-in said the gov-ernment would make an addi-tional 36 trillion won ($29.5bn) worth of cheap loans available for exporters hit by the coronavirus.

Speaking at a policy meeting with economic chiefs, Moon said businesses and domestic demand devastated by the coronavirus pandemic deserve additional support which the government plans to provide through policy banks, tax benefits and other measures.

Loan guarantees will be extended for exporters, while debt will be rolled over for small businesses. Fresh measures worth 17.7 trillion won will be rolled out to boost consumption and support domestic demand, he added, without giving details.

The announcement adds to planned economic rescue package of 100 trillion won ($80bn) in late March designed to help companies and put a floor under crashing stocks and bond markets.

The state-run Korea Health Industry Development Institute will today host an online

presentation for about 400 health officials and medical experts from 13 countries, including the United States, Mexico, Italy, the foreign min-istry said. The presentation will outline South Korea’s corona-virus containment measures, which have won praise after the

country reduced its rate of daily cases from more than 900 in late February to around 50 per day this week.

“We’ve been getting requests from many countries for us to share our know-how on the coronavirus response,” a foreign ministry official said.

Shutdown in Dhaka Buses are parked at a terminal during a government-imposed shutdown as a preventive measure against the coronavirus in Narayanganj, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, yesterday.

A ‘palace guard’ member in traditional Korean costume wears a protective face mask as he performs for tourists at Deoksugung Palace in Seoul, yesterday.

Killer of Bangladesh’s founding leader faces execution 45 years onAFP — DHAKA

A Bangladesh military captain arrested after nearly 25 years on the run over the assassi-nation of the country’s founding leader will be executed, officials said yesterday.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was killed along with most of his family in a mil-itary coup on August 15, 1975, nearly four years after he led Bangladesh to independence

from Pakistan.In 1998 Abdul Majed was

sentenced to death along with a dozen other army officers over the murders.

Bangladesh’s Supreme Court upheld the verdict in 2009 and five of the killers were executed several months later.

Majed is believed to have fled to India in 1996. He returned to Bangladesh last month, a prosecutor told reporters.

Acting on a tip-off,

counter-terrorism police arrested Majed on Tuesday as he rode in a rickshaw in the capital Dhaka, said police inspector Johurul Haque.

“The formalities to execute him have already begun,” Justice Minister Anisul Huq said, adding that the former officer will not be able to appeal his sentence. Huq said Majed’s only option to avoid the gallows was to appeal to the President for clemency.

However, since President

Abdul Hamid is a close confi-dante of Hasina, any mercy appeal is expected to be turned down, paving the way for his execution within weeks.

Hasina, whose public cele-brations this year for the cen-tenary of her father’s birth have been hampered by the corona-virus pandemic, survived the 1975 attack because she was in Europe with her sister.

In a video message, the country’s home minister called Majed’s arrest “the best gift of

Mujib centenary year”.The road to getting justice

for the 1975 assassination was long, and the killing continues to poison Bangladesh’s murky political scene to this day.

Successive post-coup mil-itary governments rewarded the killers with diplomatic positions and several of them were even allowed to form a political party and contest polls in the 1980s.

For 21 years, an indemnity law enacted by the post-coup government prevented a

prosecution of the killers. This was only overturned after Hasina came to power in 1996.

Hasina has also long accused Ziaur Rahman, pres-ident from 1977 until his assas-sination in 1981, of orchestrating her father’s murder.

This is denied by his widow Khaleda Zia, prime minister from 1991-1996 and 2001-06 and Hasina’s former ally turned arch enemy who was convicted of graft in 2018, charges she said were fabricated.

Korean Air to put 70% ofstaff on leave for monthsAFP — SEOUL

South Korea’s flag carrier Korean Air will put 70 percent of its 19,000 staff on furlough, it said, as it scrambles to cope with the coronavirus pandemic that has brought global aviation to a standstill.

The airline industry is among the sectors worst hit by the virus and the ensuing travel restrictions, with thousands of flights cancelled, routes cut, and companies facing financial turmoil.

Korean Air is the flagship of the Hanjin group, one of the multifaceted, family-controlled conglomerates known as chaebols that dominate business in South Korea and played a key part in its rise to become the world’s 12th largest economy.

Most of its staff will go on leave from April 16 for six months in response to “deteri-orating business circum-stances”, Korean Air said in a statement.

According to normal South Korean practice, the workers will receive 70 percent of their normal pay, with most of it — reportedly up to 90 percent — funded by a government scheme for industries in need of special assistance due to the coronavirus.

Korean Air’s labour union agreed to participate as part of a “burden-sharing” initiative, the company said — executives have also agreed to take pay cuts. The furlough measure comes after a months-long battle for control of the company between members of its founding Cho family.

Modi to review lockdown plans this week

Some 80% of cases in less than 10% of India's landmass

Facebook plea gets Sri Lankan chef off cruiseREUTERS/AFP — COLOMBO

A Sri Lankan chef stuck aboard a cruise ship headed to Europe managed to get ashore in Colombo this week after issuing a social media plea for help from his government.

A navy team in special pro-tective suits helped Anura Bandara Herath disembark on Monday on the orders of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa after the chef’s appeal on Facebook was picked up by a number of local TV stations.

Herath was working on the MSC Magnifica, which had to abandon a Asia-Pacific cruise and return home to Italy after it was banned by several coun-tries due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The 31-year-old was the only Sri Lankan on board and asked to get off after learning that the ship was scheduled to stop for three hours to refuel and resupply off Colombo.

Sri Lanka has been on lockdown to contain the coro-navirus pandemic and Herath was placed in quarantine in the southern city of Galle for three weeks after leaving the ship. He said there were no cases of coronavirus on board.

“When I am released from here I will go home first and then to the temple,” he told Reuters by phone on Wednesday.

“After that I will find a way to help those affected by the virus. I didn’t earn a lot of money. But I will keep a per-centage apart to do that.”

Earlier on Sunday, Sri Lanka extended the suggested quarantine period from two weeks to four after a 34-year-old man who returned home from South Korea tested pos-itive a week after leaving isolation.

Army chief Shavendra Silva told those who are completing the mandatory two-week quarantine to isolate them-selves for a further 14-day period. Although not a man-datory order, local officials have been told to ensure people follow the extended isolation.

Labs in Indiatold to conductfree virus testsIANS — NEW DELHI

The Supreme Court of India yesterday ordered all corona-virus infection patients to be tested free of cost.

A bench comprising Jus-tices Ashok Bhushan and S. Ravindra Bhat said, “The tests relating to COVID-19, whether in approved government lab-oratories or approved private laboratories, shall be free of cost. The respondents (Union of India) shall issue necessary direction in this regard immediately.”

The apex court order came on a petition filed by advocate Shashank Deo Sudhi chal-lenging the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) advisory to fix maximum Rs4,500 for corona test by private entities.

The petition also sought direction that all such tests be conducted by accredited path-ological laboratories, and to strike down the ICMR advisory for allegedly being violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

“Private hospitals , including laboratories, have an important role to play in con-taining the scale of the pan-demic by extending philan-thropic services in the hour of national crisis. We thus are satisfied that the petitioner has made out a case for issuing a direction to the respondents to issue necessary direction to accredited private labs to conduct free of cost COVID-19 test”, said the court in an interim order.

Suggesting free tests, the petitioner also claimed that capping test charges at private labs violates the ideals and values of the Constitution. The top court observed whether the private laboratories car-rying free of cost COVID-19 tests are entitled for any reim-bursement of expenses incurred, would be looked into later.

The court observed it finds prima facie substance that at this time of national calamity, permitting private labs to charge Rs 4,500 for screening and confirmation test of COVID-19 may not be within the means of a large part of population of this country and no person can be deprived to undergo the COVID-19 test due to nonpayment of capped amount of Rs 4,500. The court noted that government labo-ratories are already conducting COVID-19 tests for free.

14 THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020ASIA

Tokyo sees biggest dailyjump in infection casesas emergency beginsREUTERS — TOKYO

Tokyo recorded 144 corona-virus infections yesterday, its biggest daily jump since the start of the pandemic, the city’s governor Yuriko Koike said, on the first day of a state of emer-gency aimed at containing the outbreak.

Total infections in the Jap-anese capital stand at 1,339, said Koike, a rise that helped carry the nationwide tally to 4,768, according to an evening report by public broadcaster NHK.

Deaths in Japan as of yes-terday morning stood at 98, said the NHK.

The number of infections is still far smaller than in many European countries and the United States, but a steady rise in some areas prompted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to declare the emergency in Tokyo, Osaka and five other hard-hit prefec-tures. A day after it was announced, commuters

heading to work packed into trains in Tokyo, with some expressing confusion over how best to restrict their movements.

“It’s unavoidable that people have to come out for work,” said Risa Tanaka, an office worker wearing a mask near the Shinjuku station, who said she usually tried to work at home, but had stepped out to deliver some documents.

“I don’t know if the

emergency declaration is enough.” The scenes in Tokyo contrasted with measures across Europe enforced by police patrolling the streets and also through the use of drones in some countries, such as Britain and France.

French residents have had to sign and carry an official form justifying their presence outside homes and face stiff penalties for breaches.

Despite some accusations of heavy-handed policing, the enforcement has largely suc-ceeded, leading to bare city streets and the effective shutdown of much of Europe’s local economies, though some flouting has included barbecue gatherings in parks.

Japan’s month-long virus emergency gives regional gov-ernors more power to press businesses to close, but will add to pains inflicted on the world’s third-largest economy from supply chain disruptions and travel bans.

“We’ve reduced the number of in-office workers by half, but we are still rotating to go into work,” said a commuter, Chihiro Kakegawa, an employee of a financial insti-tution near the Tokyo station, adding that it freed her from going to work everyday.

Train schedules of the East Japan Railway Co, which

services the capital and sur-rounding areas, remain unchanged, with operations running as normal.

“I don’t think the reduction is anywhere near the 70 or 80 percent Abe is aiming for,” said Yoshihiko Furusawa, 43, as he watched pedestrians near the Shinjuku ward office where he works. The government did

not provide detailed train usage data for the first day of the emergency, but it said use of the Yamanote line, one of the busiest train lines that circles Tokyo, was down 40 percent on weekdays in recent weeks. It said the number of pas-sengers on some subway lines was down by about a third for the similar period.

People wearing face masks commute on a train, in Tokyo, yesterday.

Indonesia ferry passengers jump ship amid virus fearsREUTERS — JAKARTA

Several passengers on an Indo-nesian ferry jumped into the sea and swam ashore after author-ities sought to block the vessel docking due to fears of suspected coronavirus cases, as tensions rise over the spread of the disease across the archipelago.

The ferry travelling from via Indonesian Borneo and the island of Sulawesi was blocked when trying to make port in Maumere in the eastern island of Flores, amid fears three crew members on board had contracted the novel coronavirus.

Passengers flung themselves into the sea in life vests and swam ashore as authorities debated whether the ship, the Lambelu, would be permitted to dock, an official said.

“We ask for the passengers to cooperate with health pro-tocols before disembarking from the ship and refrain from any actions that could be harmful,” Wisnu Handoko, an official at the transport ministry, said in a statement.

Videos shared on social media showed medical workers

in protective gear carrying out tests on board the Lambelu after it was allowed to dock, before passengers were moved into quarantine on land.

The ferry was carrying 255 passengers, mostly migrant

workers returning home from Malaysia, after the neighbouring country imposed a coronavirus lockdown.

In a sign of growing anxiety about the spread of the corona-virus, residents in Maumere

gathered at the port to protest the ship’s arrival on Tuesday.

As of yesterday, Indonesia had recorded 2,956 cases of the coronavirus and 240 deaths, with many of the cases in the capital Jakarta though a growing number

in other provinces.There are fears in less

developed parts of the country, including Flores where there are no confirmed cases, that people travelling from other cities could spread the disease to areas where healthcare facilities are ill-equipped.

Tests conducted on pas-sengers from the Lambelu on Tuesday evening were sent to a laboratory on Java island with passengers in quarantine expected to wait up to a week for the results.

Weeks before Eid, the end of the Islamic fasting month when millions of Indonesians tradi-tionally travel from cities to their hometowns and villages, the coronavirus outbreak has exposed tensions between central and regional govern-ments, with some regional leaders seeking to impose lockdowns.

President Joko Widodo has sought to limit transmission of the highly contagious COVID-19 respiratory disease through social-distancing but has resisted general lockdowns adopted in many countries.

Passengers wearing face masks have temperatures checked by a healthcare worker amid the spread of coronavirus, on an intersection of the road in Bogor, West Java province, Indonesia, yesterday.

Philippines

backs Vietnam

after China sinks

fishing boatAP — MANILA

The Philippines yesterday expressed solidarity with Vietnam after Hanoi protested what it said was the ramming and sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat by a Chinese coast guard ship in the disputed South China Sea.

The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila expressed deep concern over the reported April 3 sinking of the boat carrying eight fishermen off the Paracel Islands.

The incident happened at a time when a common approach was crucial in con-fronting the coronavirus pan-demic, it said.

“COVID-19 is a very real threat that demands unity and mutual trust,” the department said.

“In the face of it, neither fish nor fictional historical claims are worth the fuse that’s lit by such incidents.”

China claims virtually the entire South China Sea and has built several islands equipped with military installations in the area, one of world’s busiest shipping lanes. Vietnam has been the most vocal opponent of Beijing’s territorial assertiveness.

T h e P h i l i p p i n e s ’ Department of Foreign Affairs recalled that 22 Filipino fish-ermen were left floating in the high seas after a Chinese vessel sank their boat at Reed Bank on June 9 last year. They were rescued by a Vietnamese fishing vessel.

“Our own similar expe-rience revealed how much trust in a friendship is lost by it and how much trust was created by Vietnam’s human-itarian act of directly saving the lives of our Filipino fish-ermen,” the department said.

The United States has also expressed serious concern over the reported sinking of the Vietnamese vessel and called on China to remain focused on supporting efforts to combat the pandemic and “stop exploiting the distraction or vulnerability of other states to expand its unlawful claims in the South China Sea.”

42 Thai returnees from Indonesia found to have coronavirusAGENCIES — BANGKOK

Health authorities in Thailand say more than half the people returning from a trip to a mass religious meeting in Indonesia have been found to be infected with the coronavirus.

Forty-two of the 76 all-male Muslim pilgrims who arrived on a charter flight on Monday were found to be carrying the virus when they were tested on Tuesday.

Thailand yesterday con-firmed 111 new coronavirus cases, including the 42 returnees, bringing the country’s total to 2,369. including 30 deaths.

The Muslim group had trav-elled to Sulawesi island in Indo-nesia on March 17 to attend a ceremony organized by Jamaat Tabligh, a Muslim missionary movement. More than 8,000 pil-grims reportedly had arrived at the meeting site by the time offi-cials canceled the event, citing the health hazard.

The March 19-22 gathering

at a boarding school in a rural area in South Sulawesi province was canceled after it became clear that a similar event held three weeks earlier in Malaysia was the source of more than 600 infections. An estimated 16,000 people attended the Malaysian event, and attendees who were infected there were found on their return to Brunei, Cambodia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Hundreds of people who came for the event in Sulawesi were quarantined at a hotel after it was cancelled.

The Thais who returned to their homes in the country’s south were being quarantined in their own provinces, while those who tested positive were sent to hospitals. In Songkhla province, hosting the biggest number, the returnees were being kept at a dormitory inside a sport complex.

Meanwhile, Thailand approved a plan yesterday to allow all foreigners who entered

legally to receive automatic visa extensions, to prevent long queues at immigration centres and stem the spread of the coro-navirus, a senior immigration official said. Thailand has closed its borders and banned entry to foreigners, except diplomats and work-permit holders to combat the COVID-19 outbreak.

Those foreigners who

entered the country before the ban was imposed — who had visas, received visas on arrival or under visa waiver pro-grammes — will not need to line up at often crowded immigration centres around the country to extend their stay.

The automatic visa extension has been granted until April 30, according to an

interior ministry document. Police Lieutenant General Sompong Chingduang the gov-ernment could extend this deadline each month.

Last week the government allowed migrant workers with expiring work permits to stay in the country, without the need to apply for extensions, until Thailand reopen its borders.

People wearing protective suits stand at an immigration centre, in Bangkok, Thailand.

HK extends social distancing curbs until April 23REUTERS — HONG KONG

Hong Kong said yesterday social-distancing restrictions including the closure of some clubs and a ban on public gath-erings of more than four people would be extended until April 23 as it battles to halt the spread of coronavirus.

The government said a

“drastic” more than two-fold spike in the number of cases in Hong Kong over the past two weeks to 936 meant the move was necessary. Four people in the former British colony have died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

Other restrictions that have been extended include the closure of gyms, cinemas,

mahjong parlours. Beauty salons have been added to the list. The global financial hub has also extended indefinitely a two-week closure of its airport to foreign arrivals that was due to end on Tuesday.

While schools remain closed, many people work from home and shopping malls and restau-rants are largely deserted, Hong

Kong has stopped short of a full lockdown imposed in other cities such as London and New York.

The extension of restrictions comes as the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the disease is believed to have originated, started to allow people to leave yesterday for the first time since it was locked down 76 days ago to contain the novel coronavirus.

East Timor PM withdraws resignation

REUTERS —DILI

The Prime Minister of East Timor withdrew his resignation yesterday, saying he would stay in power to oversee the battle against the coronavirus pandemic as the government approved a $250m fund to fight it.

Asia’s youngest democracy, grappling with political

instability that has hampered efforts to reduce poverty, stamp out corruption and develop its rich energy resources, declared a state of emergency over the virus after its first case in March.

Prime Minister Taur Matan Ruak, who goes by a popular name rather than his birthname of Jose Maria de Vasconcelos, resigned in February.

Total infections in the Japanese capital stand at 1,339, said Koike, a rise that helped carry the nationwide tally to 4,768, according to an evening report by public broadcaster NHK.

15THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020 ASIA

Afghan govt releases 100 Taliban prisonersAFP — KABUL

The Afghan government released 100 low-risk Taliban prisoners yesterday, officials said, a day after the insurgents announced they were walking out of talks with Kabul.

The two sides have been negotiating in the Afghan capital since last week to try to finalise a prisoner swap that was originally supposed to have happened by March 10 and pave the way for “intra-Afghan” peace talks.

But the exchange has been beset with problems, with Kabul claiming the Taliban want 15 of their “top

commanders” to be released, while the insurgents have accused Afghan authorities of needlessly wasting time.

In a statement, Afghani-stan’s Office of the National Security Council (NSC) said the 100 prisoners freed yesterday were “thoroughly vetted” and had all taken an oath never to return to the battlefield.

The government “has received the same assurance from the (Taliban’s) leadership in Doha,” the statement read.

An NSC spokesman earlier said the 15 commanders were not among those being released, and that additional prisoners would be freed “depending on what the Taliban do”.

The insurgents did not

comment. Officials said the freed prisoners were chosen based on their health, age and length of remaining sentence “as part of our efforts for peace and containment of COVID-19.”

Afghan officials have said they want to release up to 10,000 non-Taliban prisoners to slow the spread of corona-virus in jails.

The United States signed a deal with the Taliban in late February that required the Afghan government — which was not a signatory to the accord — to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners, and for the insur-gents to release 1,000 pro-gov-

ernment captives in return.In the accord, Washington

promised the withdrawal of US and foreign troops from Afghanistan by July next year, provided the Taliban start talks with Kabul and adhere to other guarantees.

On Tuesday, the Taliban’s political spokesman Suhail Shaheen accused the adminis-tration of President Ashraf Ghani of “intentionally post-poning the release and breaching the deal”.

He said the Taliban would pull their negotiators out of “fruitless” discussions with the Afghan government over the prisoner swap.

Afghan policeenforce stricterlockdown steps

ANATOLIA — KABUL

With a continuous surge in coronavirus cases in Afghan-istan, authorities in the capital Kabul yesterday introduced stricter lockdown measures following non-compliance of earlier directives.

As per orders of the Interior Ministry, only gov-ernment employees and a limited number of workers associated with essential services such as health, food, telecommunications and media would be allowed to leave their homes. The new directives are effective imme-diately until further notice.

“Hundreds of police per-sonnel on patrol would enforce the lockdown and anyone vio-lating it would be taken into custody,” the ministry said in a statement.

Earlier, all residents were advised to stay home, and avoid non-essential move-ments and gatherings.

Positive cases in the land-locked country have surged to 423, according to health officials.

Deputy Minister for Public Health Fada Mohammad Peykan told a press conference on Tuesday that the death toll from the virus had reached 14, whereas 20 patients had recovered to date.

More than 3,000 suspected cases have been tested in the ministry’s laboratories so far, he added.

The deputy minister pointed out that among those infected, 91 of them had a history of travelling to coun-tries affected by the virus that has claimed over 82,000 lives in 184 countries with 1.43 million confirmed cases glo-bally. Kabul is the worst affected after Herat province that borders Iran.

Masked crowds fillWuhan’s streets, trainsafter travel ban liftedAP — WUHAN

Amid streets newly bustling with cars and pedestrians, Wang Chun celebrated the lifting of a virus lockdown on her hometown of Wuhan yesterday with a dance outdoors after 2 1/2 months largely cooped up at home.

“I’m so happy Wuhan has defeated the virus,” Wang said after recording a K-Pop-inspired duet with a male partner for posting on the internet. Neither of them wore face masks, at least for a brief few minutes.

After she put on the mask again, Wang confronted the question many of the city’s 11 million residents are asking themselves: When will they be going back to work? “That’s a very good question,” Wang responded with a giggle.

Wuhan ended its 76-day lockdown yesterday morning, allowing residents to again travel in and out of the city without special authorisation through the use of a mandatory smartphone app powered by a mix of data-tracking and gov-ernment surveillance showing they are healthy and have not been in recent contact with anyone confirmed to have the

virus.Long lines formed at the

airport and train and bus sta-tions as thousands streamed out of the city to return to their homes and jobs elsewhere.

Yellow barriers that had blocked off some streets were gone, although the gates to res-idential compounds remained guarded.

After more than two months indoors, Wuhan resident Tong Zhengkun was one of millions of enjoying a renewed sense of freedom.

“Being indoors for so long drove me crazy,” an emotional Tong said as he watched a cel-ebratory midnight light display from a bridge across the broad Yangtze River flowing through the city, where the coronavirus outbreak began late last year.

Tong said his apartment complex was shut down after residents were found to have contracted the coronavirus. Neighbourhood workers delivered groceries to his door.

Such measures won’t be entirely abandoned following the end of Wuhan’s closure, which began on January 23 as the virus raged through the city and overwhelmed hospitals. Schools are still closed, people

are still checked for fevers when they enter buildings, and masks are strongly encouraged. City leaders say they want to simul-taneously bring back social and commercial life while avoiding a second wave of infections.

The ability to travel again is a huge relief and about 65,000 people were expected to depart yesterday by plane and train. It didn’t take long for traffic to begin moving swiftly through reopened bridges, tunnels and highway toll booths. Nearly 1,000 vehicles went through a toll booth at Wuhan’s border

between midnight — when bar-ricades were lifted - and 7am, according to Yan Xiangsheng, a district police chief.

According to airport official Lou Guowei, the first flight left Wuhan Tianhe International Airport at 7.25am for Sanya, a coastal city in Hainan province known for its beaches.

“The crew will wear goggles, masks, and gloves throughout the flight,” chief flight attendant Guo Binxue was quoted as saying by China’s official Xinhua News Agency. “It will be very smooth because we have made

much preparation for this flight.” Xiao Yonghong had found herself stuck in Wuhan after returning to her hometown on January 17 to spend the Lunar New Year with her husband, son and parents-in-law.

“We were too excited to fall asleep last night. I was looking forward to the lockdown lift very much. I set up an alert to remind myself. I was very happy,” said Xiao, who was waiting for her train outside Hankou station with her son and husband, all three of them wearing masks and gloves.

Travellers are seen inside Hankou Railway Station after travel restrictions to leave Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province and China’s epicentre of the novel coronavirus disease outbreak, were lifted, yesterday.

Pakistan: Scribe

acquitted in

terrorism caseANATOLIA — KARACHI

A Pakistani court yesterday overturned the conviction of a journalist in a terrorism case, according to court record.

A two-judge bench of the Sindh High Court acquitted Nasarullah Chaudhry on his appeal in the port city of Karachi, declaring that the prosecution had failed to prove its case.

Chaudhry, who is asso-ciated with a local Urdu lan-guage daily, Nae Baat, had been sentenced to five years in jail by an anti-terrorism court for possessing copies of a magazine allegedly linked with terrorist groups.

Police claimed to have recovered four copies of Nawa-e-Afghan Jihad, or Voice of Afghan Jihad, dating back to 2012, which, according to the prosecution, were meant to fan terrorism.

He was arrested a day after security agencies raided the Karachi Press Club, the country’s oldest journalist body, sparking protest from both local and international journalist groups.

The raid, and his arrest was viewed as part of a per-ceived government campaign to stifle press freedom in the country.

Military promises Pakistani doctors gear to fight virusAGENCIES — QUETTA

Pakistan’s military promised on Tuesday that dozens of doctors who were briefly jailed for protesting a lack of protective equipment needed to treat the growing number of coronavirus cases will get the equipment they need.

The 47 doctors protested in Quetta, the capital of south-western Baluchistan province, on Monday, when they were detained. They were released later the same day, according to provincial spokesman Liaquat Shahwani.

An army statement on Tuesday said the “emergency supplies of medical equipment, including PPE (Personal Pro-tective Equipment) are being dispatched to Quetta.”

However, some of the doctors said they were mis-treated by police and that some of their colleagues were beaten. The physicians declined to give their names, fearing reprisals.

Two doctors have died after contracting the new virus in Pakistan, which has recorded 4,004 cases and 54 deaths. Many of the cases have been

traced to pilgrims returning from neighbouring Iran. Paki-stani authorities have imposed a countrywide lockdown until April 14. In Iran, authorities struggling to battle the virus

announced on Tuesday they would expand testing to asymp-tomatic people, but didn’t say how many test kits they have available or provide other details.

Meanwhile, the Young Doctors Association (YDA) announced to end their boycott after reaching an agreement with the provincia l government.

Provincial minister Zmarak Khan announced that the gov-ernment had accepted the rightful demands put forward by the YDA.

“We stand with doctors and the paramedical staff,” he said during a press conference with the association’s president, Dr Yasir Khan.

The YDA had announced a boycott of their services in hos-pitals across Balochistan on Monday after Quetta police baton-charged doctors for pro-testing near the CM House.

One-hundred and fifty doctors were arrested for pro-testing against the lack of per-sonal protection equipment in hospitals across the province to treat coronavirus patients.

“We are putting in all our efforts to win the war against the coronavirus,” said Dr Yasir.

Yasir said that the YDA was ending its boycott and expressed the hope that the committee formed by provincial ministers to approve doctors’ demands will keep their promises.

“We know the protest made life difficult for people,” admitted Dr Yasir.

Doctors wearing face masks chant slogans during a protest against the lack of protective gears for medical staff treating coronavirus disease patients, in Quetta, Pakistan.

North Korea says 509 in quarantine, but still no confirmed virus casesREUTERS — GENEVA

North Korea, one of only a handful of countries not to have reported confirmed cases of COVID-19, has said that it continues testing and has more than 500 people in quarantine, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday.

The WHO, which said it had been receiving “weekly updates” from the health ministry, said that the reclusive country had the capacity to test coronaviruses in its national reference laboratory in the capital Pyongyang.

“As of 2 April, 709 people – 11 foreigners and 698 nationals — have been tested for COVID-19. There is no report of a COVID-19 case. There are 509 people in quarantine - two foreigners and 507 nationals,” Dr. Edwin Sal-vador, the WHO Representative to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), said in an email reply.

“Since 31 December, 24,842 people have been released from quarantine, which includes 380 foreigners,” he said.

The WHO has been informed that North Korea received

primers and probes for use with PCR diagnostic tests from its ally China in January, he added. The WHO has sent supplies of pro-tective equipment.

The WHO’s website shows the latest global tally at nearly 1.3 million officially reported cases and 72,614 deaths in some 206 countries and territories - appearing to exclude North Korea, Lesotho, Tajikistan, Turk-menistan and Yemen.

A UN human rights expert has called for lifting international sanctions against countries including North Korea

— imposed for its nuclear and missile programmes — to ensure that food supplies reach hungry populations during the pandemic. The Geneva-based WHO said in February that North Korea had reported checking nearly 7,300 travellers over a six-week period to February 9.

The health ministry said 141 travellers with fevers had tested negative for the novel corona-virus, it said.

Some foreign experts have expressed doubts that North Korea, which shares borders with China and South Korea, both

hard-hit by epidemics, has not detected any infections.

North Korea has stepped up border checks and imposed quarantine measures. The head of US forces in South Korea said in mid-March that North Korea had its military forces on lockdown for about 30 days and had recently resumed training.

“We are on lockdown... We are very cautious about the spread of this virus,” a North Korean diplomat at its UN mission in Geneva told Reuters. “I understand we have no cases, zero cases.”

The two sides have been negotiating in the Afghan capital since last week to try to finalise a prisoner swap that was originally supposed to have happened by March 10 and pave the way for 'intra-Afghan' peace talks.

The WHO, which said it had been receiving ‘weekly updates’ from the health ministry, said that the reclusive country had the capacity to test coronavirus in its national reference laboratory in the capital Pyongyang.

16 THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020EUROPE

Johnson ‘improving’ as UKreports 938 more deaths

REUTERS — LONDON

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s condition is improving and he is able to sit up in bed and engage with clinical staff, finance minister Rishi Sunak said yesterday as Johnson remained in intensive care battling COVID-19.

Johnson was admitted to St Thomas’ hospital on Sunday evening with a persistent high temperature and cough and was transferred to intensive care on Monday.

The 55-year-old British leader, who tested positive for the new coronavirus nearly two weeks ago, has received oxygen support but has not been put on a ventilator.

“The latest from the hospital is that the prime minister remains in intensive care where his condition is improving,” Sunak said at a daily gov-ernment coronavirus news conference.

“I can also tell you that he has been sitting up in bed and been engaging positively with the clinical team.” Johnson’s desig-nated deputy, Foreign Secretary

Dominic Raab, said earlier the prime minister would soon be back at the helm. The United Kingdom’s total hospital deaths from COVID-19 has risen by a daily record of 938 to 7,097 as of 1600 GMT on April 7.

But the number of new infections and hospital admis-sions in Britain was beginning to show signs of flattening, Stephen Powis, medical director of the National Health Service, told the news conference.

While Johnson was out of action, the country was entering what scientists said was the

deadliest phase of the outbreak and the government was grap-pling with the question of when to lift the lockdown.

“We are beginning to see the benefits I believe but the really critical thing is that we have to continue following instructions - we have to continue following social distancing, because if we don’t the virus will start to spread again,” said Powis.

In the latest of a raft of measures to rescue the economy and society from the worst effects of the crisis, Sunak announced an extra $930m of

funding for charities so that they could continue their work.

He also said Raab would chair a government emergency response meeting, known as Cobra, today to discuss how to deal with a review of lockdown measures in Johnson’s absence.

“We committed that there would be a review in and around three weeks (from the start of the lockdown). That review will be based on the evi-dence and the data provided by SAGE,” said Sunak, referring to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, leaves Downing Street as the spread of the coronavirus disease continues, in London yesterday.

France records 541 more coronavirus deaths in hospitalAFP — PARIS

France yesterday reported 541 more deaths from COVID-19 in hospital over the last 24 hours, bringing its total official toll from the coronavirus epidemic to 10,869.

Top health official Jerome Salomon told reporters that there were now 7,148 people in intensive care, a net increase of 17 from the day earlier, the lowest increase recorded in recent weeks.

He said that due to a tech-nical fault there was no daily data available yesterday from nursing homes, meaning that the overall death toll is likely incomplete.

The death toll from hos-pitals was slightly lower than the comparable number from the day earlier, which was 597.

France has been in lockdown since March 17 in a bid to slow the spread of the epidemic, with only essential trips allowed that must be jus-tified with a signed piece of paper.

Salomon said that had been slowing the increase of the virus’ spread over recent days, adding this was because the lockdown was being largely observed.

“The slowing seen over the last days is linked to your good respect of the con-finement rules,” he said.

He expressed hope that France would see a flattening in its curve of cases in coming days but emphasised that this

“plateau is at a very high level”.

Meanwhile, France is to further extend a lockdown ordered to slow the spread of the coronavirus, with Pres-ident Emmanuel Macron to again address the nation next week, the French presidency said yesterday.

The confinement order “will be extended” beyond its current limit of April 15, a presidential officia said, adding that Macron will address the nation on Monday evening to present the new decisions on the fight against the virus.

Macron will from now until Monday “speak to a large number of public and private actors — French, European and international — on what is at stake concerning COVID-19 and prepare the decisions that will be announced on Monday to the French,” the presidency said.

It will be Macron’s third prime time address from the Elysee Palace since the crisis began.

Macron’s address comes amid a nuanced picture of the situation in France, with the daily death toll still grim but some data giving officials room for very cautious optimism.

France has been in lockdown since March 17 to slow the spread of the epi-demic, with only essential trips allowed that must be jus-tified with a signed piece of paper.

COVID-19 toll in Spain rises to 14,555 with 757 new fatalitiesREUTERS — MADRID

Spain’s overnight death toll from the coronavirus edged higher again yesterday while the main business lobby warned the economy could slump up to 9 percent this year if lockdown restrictions remain beyond May.

The health ministry said 757 people died over the past 24 hours, up from 743 people the previous day, marking the second daily rise in a row and bringing the total death toll to 14,555 — the world’s second-highest after Italy.

However, Health Minister Salvador Illa said the numbers were still consistent with a slowdown. The daily percentage pace of increases has roughly halved from the end of March to about 5 percent.

“There are no good numbers

when it comes to deaths... (but) we are now in the slowdown phase,” he said.

Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general said Spain’s outbreak was “definitely slowing” but he c a u t i o n e d a g a i n s t over-optimism.

Overall, cases rose to 146,690 from 140,510 on Tuesday.

At the Sur de Madrid cem-etery, Reuters TV footage showed local priest Eduard Batubenga giving a short funeral prayer next to a hearse carrying the body of an elderly woman who died at a nursing home from the COVID-19 disease.

Shortly after, a 37-year-old victim was buried.

“Now, sometimes at a set time you get two services.

While you are doing one, the other is waiting in line,” Batubenga said, explaining that daily funerals had shot up to

around 40 from 10-15 “on a bad day” before the epidemic.

The surging death toll is

forcing families to wait up to a week to bury loved ones, and only a maximum of three rel-atives can attend the burial.

People wearing masks stand as they maintain social distancing during the state of emergency by the government against the coronavirus, in Madrid, yesterday.

French aircraft carrier to return home over virus fearsAFP — PARIS

France’s aircraft carrier will be brought home early from a deployment in the Atlantic after some crew members showed coronavirus symptoms, the defence ministry said yesterday.

About 40 sailors on the Charles de Gaulle are under medical observation, it said in a statement, and those with symptoms have been placed in isolation. None have shown signs of serious illness.

“As of today, a screening team with test means will be sent aboard the aircraft carrier to investigate the cases that have arisen and to hinder the spread of the virus on board the ship,” the ministry said.

The ship, which can transport about 2,000 sailors, had been deployed in the Atlantic as part of a Nato exercise after having partici-pated in Operation Chammal that seeks to contain the IS group in Iraq and Syria. It was preparing for its return to the Mediterranean.

Italy reports 542 more deathsANATOLIA — ROME

Italy yesterday reported 542 more deaths from the novel coronavirus, bringing the total number of fatalities to 17,669 -- the highest worldwide -- but registering a slight acceleration in active infections.

The daily rise in the number of victims is the lowest in about three weeks, supporting the government’s hopes that the curve has reached a plateau.

Current infections grew 1.3 percent from Tuesday to 95,262 — a bit higher than the previous day when the rise was at 0.9 percent. The number of recovered people touched a new record, climbing to 26,491, while the number of intensive care patients dropped for the fourth consecutive day.

The epicentre of the Italian outbreak remains the northern Lombardy region, which now counts 9,722 victims.

In its ongoing battle to contain the outbreak, the Italian government has extended an almost-total lockdown — which halted most production and business activities in Italy — until at least April 13.

But authorities are worried that the nice weather, coupled with the upcoming Easter vacation, will push more people outdoors, multiplying the risks of restarting the contagions’

rise. Both scientists and gov-ernment officials are issuing warnings, asking people to stay at home, and avoid outdoor activities. But pressures are growing for the government to start lifting some of the stringent lockdown measures, at least for key businesses, ahead of the so-called “phase-2” of the pandemic.

One of the strongest calls came yesterday from Italy’s

business association Confind-ustria, specifically for the northern regions of Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Piedmont and Veneto.

“If the four main northern regions, which represent 45 percent of the Italian output, won’t be able to restart their activities in the short term, the country risks to turn off its engine definitively and every additional day represents a risk

of not being able to restart it,” they wrote in a joint appeal.

Since the virus emerged last December in China’s Wuhan city, it has spread to at least 184 countries and regions.

There are more than 1.45 million confirmed cases worldwide, with over 83,600 deaths, and above 308,700 recoveries, according to the US-based Johns Hopkins University.

A nurse puts on his personal protective equipment before starting work in the Intensive care unit for patients infected by the novel coronavirus at a hospital, in Rome, yesterday.

Virus death tollin Germanyreaches 2,017ANATOLIA — BERLIN

The death toll from coronavirus in Germany crossed 2,000 yesterday, while the total number of cases neared 110,000, according to local health authorities.

Data analysis firm Risklayer and Karlsruhe Institute of Tech-nology, which compiles real-time figures from nearly 400 local authorities, reported 207 new deaths over the past 24 hours, bringing the toll to 2,017.

With 4,284 new cases, the number of people infected with the virus climbed to 107,659.

More than 33,000 people were estimated to have recovered from the virus so far.

Besides widespread coro-navirus testing, Germany has also significantly increased the number of intensive care beds in hospitals.

The 55-year-old British leader, who tested positive for the new coronavirus nearly two weeks ago, has received oxygen support but has not been put on a ventilator.

Grandson ofKazakhstan’s former presidentwins UK caseREUTERS — LONDON

London’s High Court removed anti-graft orders against the grandson of the former president of Kazakhstan yesterday, dealing a blow to powers that British crime fighters use to target dirty money.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) had sought Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs) against the companies which owned a London mansion in which Nurali Aliyev lived and two other prop-erties to try to force him to explain where the money to buy them had come from.

However, yesterday, the High Court ruled in favour of Aliyev and discharged the orders against the companies which owned the properties.

“The court’s powerful judgment demonstrates the NCA obtained the orders on an inac-curate basis as part of a flawed investigation which was entirely without merit,” Aliyev, the grandson of former Kazakh pres-ident Nursultan Nazarbayev, said in statement.

“The NCA deliberately ignored the relevant information I voluntarily provided and pursued a groundless and vicious legal action, including making shocking slurs against me, my family and my country.”

17THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020 EUROPE

Kosovo says

ready to resume

dialogue with

SerbiaAP — TIRANA

Kosovo’s acting prime minister assured a European Union special envoy of his commitment to resume dialogue with neighboring Serbia on normalizing ties.

Albin Kurti, who heads a caretaker cabinet, also asked in a letter to new EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak that any final agreement should be guar-anteed by the EU and the United States.

He said a deal should be accompanied by a “political, economic and financial package” to “accelerate the convergence of the two coun-tries’ standards of living and their integration into the European Union.”

But Kurti warned that “under no circumstances or sit-uation will issues of mutual sovereignty, territorial integrity and internal affairs be discussed.”

Last week Kosovo lifted a 100% tariff on imports from Serbia and Bosnia-Herze-govina in a sign of good will to resume the dialogue.

EU plan for virus aid package under fireAFP — BRUSSELS

An EU effort to put together a €20bn aid package to help poor countries fight corona-virus came under fire yesterday, and the bloc’s diplo-matic chief admitted it contained “no fresh money”.

Brussels plans to redirect money from existing funds to help countries with weak healthcare systems tackle the pandemic and aid their long-term economic recovery.

EU officials fear that beating the pandemic in Europe alone will not be enough because, if it continues to rage elsewhere in the world, the virus will simply return in time.

German Development Minister Gerd Mueller said after talks with his 26 EU coun-terparts that the proposals did not go far enough.

“I do not consider the pro-posals to be sufficiently far-reaching but an important first step,” Mueller said.

“It can’t just be a matter of reprogramming funds -- we need a rescue umbrella for Africa as well and fresh money for that.” Africa has been iden-tified as a particular concern because of its links to Europe and the poor state of healthcare in many of its countries.

The Norwegian Refugee Council’s Europe director Edouard Rodier pointed to the Central African Republic as one example -- a population of five million people with only three ventilators available in the entire country.

The European Commission

and European Investment Bank have pledged €15.6bn ($16.9bn), while commit-ments from EU member states and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development takes the total above €20bn.

But EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell acknowledged after the development min-isters’ talks that “there is no fresh money”.

Instead the money comes from redirecting existing funds to target coronavirus, including 5.2bn euros in accelerated loans from the EIB, Borrell said.

Rodier warned that shifting money from one pot to another would not solve the problem. “Clearly the solution cannot be to shift the resource required to meet existing critical needs to cover new developing needs -- we need to do both,” Rodier said during an online conference yesterday.

Irish police officers, or Garda officers, talk with members of the public as they conduct checks on pedestrians and motorists in Dublin city centre yesterday, as life in Ireland continues during the nationwide lockdown to combat the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Head of EU’s top science body quits amid coronavirus controversyREUTERS — BRUSSELS

The president of the European Union’s main science organi-sation has quit the post he took up only in January, the European Commission said, amid controversy over the bloc’s response to the corona-virus pandemic.

Mauro Ferrari, who became head of the European Research Council for a four-year mandate on Jan. 1, submitted his resignation on Tuesday, which the Commission said was effective immediately.

“The Commission regrets the resignation of Professor Ferrari at this early stage in his mandate as ERC President,” a spokesman said.

Ferrari made a statement to the Financial Times, which first reported the resignation, saying: “I have been extremely

disappointed by the European response” to the pandemic.

He cited institutional resistance and bureaucratic infighting in the EU’s complex structures to his proposal for a big scientific programme to fight the coronavirus.

“I arrived at the ERC a fervent supporter of the EU... The COVID-19 crisis completely changed my views,” the statement said, referring to the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus.

The ERC, however, said in a statement it regretted Ferrari’s comments on his resignation, which it said were “at best...eco-nomical with the truth”.

The body said it had asked Ferrari to resign on March 27, quoting his lack of under-standing of the ERC’s role, as well as engaging in personal and external activities instead

of being fully involved in the work of the EU agency. It did, however, say it rejected Fer-rari’s proposal to fund a special initiative on COVID-19, saying it was outside the ERC’s remit.

The ERC was established in 2007 to fund top European scientists with a budget of 1.86 billion euros ($2.02 billion) in 2018. It awards grants to projects proposed by experts, rather than following political directives, according to its website.

EU governments and the bloc’s institutions stand accused of a haphazard response to the pandemic by failing to react quickly enough or work together.

The bloc’s finance ministers failed to agree a financial rescue package in recent weeks to soften the economic shock of the pandemic.

Hilmar Gerber, operations manager of the primary health clinic at Sophiahemmet hospital, opens a tent for testing and receiving potential coronavirus patients, in Stockholm, Sweden, yesterday.

Truck driver pleads

guilty in deaths

of 39 Vietnamese

migrants

REUTERS — LONDON

Northern Irish truck driver Maurice Robinson has pleaded guilty to 39 counts of manslaughter related to the deaths of Vietnamese people found in a shipping container in southeast England last year, police said yesterday.

The victims, 31 men and boys and eight women whose ages ranged from 15 to 44, were discovered in October in a container at the back of a truck driven by Robinson to an industrial estate in Grays in Essex, about 20 miles (32 km) east of London.

Most were from Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces in north-central Vietnam, where poor job prospects, environ-mental disasters and the promise of financial reward fuel migration.

Robinson, 25, had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing in November to charges of con-spiring to assist unlawful immigration and acquiring cash which he knew or sus-pected came from criminal conduct.

At Wednesday’s hearing at the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court, a second man who was also charged with 39 counts of manslaughter, British-Romanian dual national Ghe-orghe Nica, 43, pleaded not guilty.

Several others have been arrested and charged in both Vietnam and the United Kingdom, and other legal pro-ceedings are ongoing.

Autopsies concluded that the provisional cause of death of the 39 Vietnamese people was a combination of hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, and hyperthermia, or overheating, in an enclosed space.

The trial will begin on Monday Oct. 5.

Sweden rejects Trump claims over virus strategyAFP — STOCKHOLM

Sweden yesterday rejected claims by US President Donald Trump that its approach to containing the coronavirus was too soft and that it was “suffering” more than others.

Stockholm has not imposed extraor-dinary lockdown orders seen elsewhere in Europe to stem the spread of the virus, which has killed almost 700 people in the Scandinavian nation.

Asked at a White House briefing on Tuesday what advice he would offer to leaders who were sceptical of social dis-tancing measures, Trump replied: “There aren’t too many of them... They talk about Sweden, but Sweden is suffering very gravely.”

Instead of a lockdown, Sweden has called on citizens to take responsibility and follow social distancing guidelines and stay home if they have symptoms, and has also banned gatherings of more than 50 people and barred visits to nursing homes.

But primary schools, shops, cafes, restaurants and bars remain open.

Foreign Minister Ann Linde pushed back against Trump’s claim Sweden was not doing enough.

“We are doing about the same things that many other countries are doing, but in a different way,” Linde told broad-caster TV4.

“We trust that people take responsibility.”

On Wednesday, Swedish health authorities reported 8,419 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, with 687

deaths. State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell at Sweden’s Public Health Agency told reporters he did not believe Sweden was suffering any more than any other country.

“No, we don’t share his opinion.” “Of course we’re suffering. Eve-

rybody in the world is suffering right now, in different ways,” he said.

“But Swedish healthcare, which I

guess he alludes to... is taking care of this in a very good manner. It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of stress on the personnel and it’s really a fight for them every day, but it’s working.”

Top EU court orders Poland to suspend disciplinary chamberREUTERS — WARSAW

The European Union’s top court told Poland yesterday to suspend a panel created to discipline judges, saying it was not independent and breached EU law.

The decision is a new blow to the ruling eurosceptic Law and Justice party (PiS), which is at odds with the European Commission over reforms which the EU executive says have eroded the independence of Poland’s judiciary.

Brussels has long had con-cerns about the independence of the Polish Supreme Court’s Disciplinary Chamber, whose members were mostly elected

by a parliament in which the nationalist PiS has a majority.

The European Commission - the guardian of EU law, which takes precedence over national law - asked the European Court of Justice in January to suspend the chamber, which has powers to punish judges over their rulings.

Announcing its decision fol-lowing that request, the Court said in a statement that EU member states should “ensure that the disciplinary regime applicable to judges of the national courts... complies with the principle of the inde-pendence of the judiciary.”

“As a result, the Court grants the Commission’s appli-cation for interim measures,” it

said. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Warsaw would refer the ruling to Poland’s Constitutional Tri-bunal, a judicial body estab-lished to resolve disputes on the constitutionality of the activities of state institutions.

“A reform of the judiciary is the exclusive competence of EU member states,” Morawiecki told a news conference.

A spokesman for the disci-plinary chamber said the court ruling did not undermine the functioning of the chamber. But a spokesman for the Supreme Court agreed with the EU court’s decision that the chamber should be suspended.

The Supreme Court had

already questioned the inde-pendence of the disciplinary chamber and its head, Malgo-rzata Gersdorf, has become a figurehead for opponents of the judiciary reforms.

PiS says its reforms are nec-essary to make the court system more efficient, but the European Commission has accused it of politicising the judiciary since returning to power in 2015 and is worried about what it sees as a threat to democracy.

Warsaw has lost several cases brought to the EU’s top court by the Commission, which wants Poland’s access to tens of billions of euros in the bloc’s next long-term budget made conditional on observing the

rule of law. The disciplinary chamber

was created under the PiS gov-ernment in 2017, along with a disciplinary ombudsman who investigates cases against judges before passing them on to the chamber.

Designed to provide a new disciplinary system for judges, the panel has the power to cut their salaries and suspend them from their work. Critics say it can be used to muzzle judges critical of the ruling party’s reforms.

PiS says the reforms will not only make the court system more efficient but will also root out the remnants of communist rule, which ended in 1989.

Parliament backs Dutch govt's tough anti ‘corona bonds’ stance

REUTERS — THE HAGUE

Dutch parliament passed a motion urging the government never to agree to any European Union proposal that would make the Netherlands respon-sible for the national debt of another country, in a clear support of the government’s tough stance on so-called ‘corona bonds’.

The motion, tabled by the populist, anti-EU Forum for Democracy party is not binding but will make it politically dif-ficult, if not impossible, for the Netherlands to support Italy’s requests for eurobonds.

EU officials fear that beating the pandemic in Europe alone will not be enough because, if it continues to rage elsewhere in the world, the virus will simply return in time.

18 THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020AMERICAS

Sanders suspends White House bid; Biden likely to be Democratic nomineeREUTERS — WASHINGTON

Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist who promised to lead a grassroots political revolution into the White House, suspended his campaign yesterday, making former Vice President Joe Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee to face Republican President Donald Trump in the November 3 election.

Sanders, the front-runner in February, acknowledged he no longer had a viable path to the Democratic nomination after a string of nominating contest losses to Biden but promised to work with the former vice-president to oust Trump.

He said he would stay on the ballot in future primaries and continue to gather delegates in order to push the Democratic platform toward his populist anti-corporate agenda, including a government-run healthcare system and tax hikes for the rich.

“Then together, standing united, we will go forward to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history,” he said in a livestreamed speech to

supporters from his hometown of Burlington, Vermont.

The 78-year-old US senator, whose progressive agenda pulled the party sharply to the left, had early success in the Democratic race before losing in South Carolina in late Feb-ruary as moderate Democrats united behind Biden.

The departure of Sanders, the last remaining rival to Biden, sets up a long battle for the White House between the

77-year-old former vice-pres-ident and Trump, 73, who is seeking a second four-year term in office.

Biden praised Sanders and promised his ideas would be incorporated into his White House run. He reached out to Sanders’ supporters.

“I see you, I hear you, and I understand the urgency of what it is we have to get done in this country,” Biden said. “I hope you will join us. You are more than welcome. You’re needed.”

Sanders’ decision comes as the country grapples with a coro-navirus outbreak that upended the nominating schedule, with some primaries postponed and others up in the air.

Sanders, who also mounted an unexpectedly strong chal-lenge in 2016 to eventual Dem-ocratic nominee Hillary Clinton, had been under pressure to halt his campaign after Biden won resounding victories in primary contests on March 17 in Florida, Arizona and Illinois.

Some allies encouraged Sanders to stay in the race to further influence Biden’s policy positions. But the coronavirus crisis shifted public focus away

from the campaign and, with all rallies canceled, Sanders had little opportunity to get his message across.

Sanders had promised his platform of ambitious social pro-grams and raising taxes on cor-porations and the wealthy would expand the electorate. But instead Americans of all types turned out for Biden: women and men, white and black voters, those with or without college degrees, and self-described lib-erals and moderates.

Democrats said Sanders’ decision to pull out now would give the party time to come together

before the August nominating con-vention. Some Democrats blame Sanders for staying in his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton too long, hurting her general election bid against Trump.

“Bernie is doing this rela-tively early. I think that allows more time for healing,” said Democratic operative Joel Payne, who worked for Clin-ton’s campaign in 2016.

Trump, who has courted Sanders supporters and said the senator was treated unfairly by the Democratic Party, reacted quickly on Twitter.

“This ended just like the

Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!,” Trump wrote.

Many of Sanders’ policy positions have become part of the mainstream Democratic Party debate, including his Medicare for All proposal that would create a government-run healthcare system to replace the current blend of private medical insurance and public programs. He also advocated a $15 minimum wage, tuition-free public colleges and higher taxes on the wealthy.

In this February 19 file photo, Senator Bernie Sanders speaks as former vice-president Joe Biden reacts during the ninth Democratic 2020 US Presidential candidates debate at the Paris Theater in Las Vegas Nevada, US.

US virus death projection lowered but official warns of ‘second wave’REUTERS — NEW YORK

An influential university model on the US coronavirus pandemic yesterday scaled back its projected death toll by 26 percent to 60,000 but a federal health official warned of a second wave of infections if Americans relax “social distancing” practices.

The downward revision in the death toll in the University of Washington model — often cited by US and state policy-makers — coincides with com-ments by some political leaders that caseloads may have reached a plateau in certain areas.

Those assessments in recent days, including an apparent leveling out in hospi-talizations in New York state - the US epicenter of the pan-demic - are tempered by a per-sistent climb in the US death toll, which rose by more than 1,900 on Tuesday as some 30,000 new infections were reported.

Even that revised forecast suggested months of pain ahead for the United States. All told, about 400,000 US infec-tions have been reported, along with roughly 13,000 deaths.

The pandemic has upended American life, with 94 percent of the population ordered to stay at home and nearly 10 million people losing their jobs in the past two weeks.

Hospitals have been inun-dated with cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, resulting in

shortages of medical equipment and protective garments.

The University of Washing-ton’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model is one of several that the White House task force has cited. It now projects US deaths at more than 60,000 by August 4, down from the nearly 82,000 fatal-ities it had forecast on Tuesday.

The White House corona-virus task force has previously projected 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could die.

The institute also moved up its projected peak in the number to US deaths to this Sunday, when it predicted 2,212 people will succumb to the disease. The revision moves forward the projected peak by four days, suggesting the strain on the country’s healthcare system will begin to abate a little sooner than previously expected.

New York’s de Blasio esti-mated an undercount in the death toll of 100 to 200 people per day who are dying at home but excluded from the city’s rapidly growing coronavirus count. So far the city’s announced death toll has reflected only COVID-19 diag-noses confirmed in a laboratory.

But after a spike in the number of people dying at home, the city will now try to quantify how many of those died from coronavirus-related causes and add that to the its official death toll, New York’s health department said.

Supermoon lights up NYC skylineThe supermoon rises next to the Empire State Building while it glows red in solidarity with those infected with coronavirus as the outbreak of the disease continues in the Manhattan borough of New York City, US, yesterday.

CDC eyes loosening rules to allow some to return to workAP — WASHINGTON

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering changing its guidelines for self-isolation to make it easier for those who have been exposed to someone with the coronavirus to return to work if they are without symptoms.

The public health agency, in conjunction with the White House coronavirus task force, i s c o n s i d e r i n g a n announcement as soon as Wednesday, Vice-President Mike Pence said.

Under the proposed guidance, people who are exposed to someone infected would be allowed back on the job if they have no symptoms, test their temperature twice a day and wear a face mask,

said a person familiar with the p r o p o s a l u n d e r consideration.

The person was not authorised to publicly discuss the draft because it had not been finalized and described the proposal on the condition of anonymity.

The new policy is aimed in particular at workers in critical jobs. But it also comes as the Trump administration is eyeing what it calls a “stabilization” in infection rates and looks toward rolling back some of the restrictive social distancing guidelines and restarting the stalled economy.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said yesterday that even as death rates rise, the admin-istration has been working on plans to eventually reopen the

country amid “glimmers of hope” that social distancing is working to stop the virus’ spread.

“If, in fact, we are suc-cessful, it makes sense to at least plan what a reentry into normality would look like,” he said on Fox News Channel yesterday.

“That doesn’t mean we’re going to do it right now,” he added. “But it means we need to be prepared to ease into that. And there’s a lot of activity going on.”

Dr. Deborah Birx, a leader on the White House’s corona-virus task force, called the upcoming CDC guidance “a very important piece.”

“It looks at degree of exposure and really making it clear that exposure occurs within 6 feet for more than 15

minutes, so really under-standing where you shouldn’t be within 6 feet of people right now,” Birx told CBS yesterday.

The proposed guidance would follow recommenda-tions made by the CDC that eased self-isolation require-ments for front-line medical workers who were exposed to the virus.

Under CDC guidance, medical workers who have been exposed to the virus without protective equipment but who have no symptoms can return to work with a mask and temperature checks after 14 days.

Pence on Tuesday said the White House is focusing on the “point of need” for the current situation but also is operating on another track to consider

future recommendations for the public.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks.

For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. In the United States, there have been about 400,000 cases and about 13,000 deaths.

In fashioning the recom-mendations, the administration appeared to be trying to balance political concerns about wanting to preserve as much normalcy as possible with public health concerns that some infections are being spread by people who seem to be healthy.

New York reports record 779 more deathsAGENCIES — NEW YORK

New York’s efforts at social distancing are working to get the coronavirus outbreak under control even as the state reported an additional 779 deaths, a record high for a second day, the Governor Andrew Cuomo said yesterday.

Cuomo, who has emerged as a leading national voice on the outbreak, said he never thought he would ever again experience a disaster on the scale of the September 11, 2001,attacks and called the mounting death toll “almost unimaginable to me.”

The governor acknowledged that it was a “very real

possibility” that deaths in New York were being undercounted as people died in their homes, and called for continued adherence to business closures and other social distancing steps.

Cuomo ordered all flags to be flown at half-staff across New York, where 6,268 people have now died from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, accounting for nearly half the deaths in the United States.

“Don’t start doing a retro-spective like it’s over,” Cuomo told a daily briefing. “We are not through it. It’s not over.” Cuomo pointed to the fall in new hos-pitalizations on Tuesday to 586 on Tuesday, down from 656 a

day earlier, and other data points as evidence that New York was “bending the curve” and gaining some control over the rate of infections.

But he warned that the death count would continue at the current level, if not climb higher, over the next several days as those hospitalized more than a week ago and put on a ventilator machine passed away.

He also warned that any relaxing of social distancing steps — on Tuesday he extended the state’s closure of non-essential businesses and schools until the end of April — risked reversing the gains.

“This is just a small snapshot

in time where we are,” Cuomo said. “You have four or five days of flattening. You could have tomorrow morning we wake up and the number is back up.”

Meanwhile, Mayor Bill de Blasio said yesterday New York City's death toll from the coro-navirus has been disproportion-ately high in black and Hispanic communities, and the city is starting an outreach campaign for those residents.

"We’re seeing folks who have struggled before really being hit particularly hard,” de Blasio said at a City Hall briefing.

Cuomo called for research into why people from minority communities were dying at dis-proportionate rates

Hawaii mayor calls

Florida man

flouting quarantine

a ‘covidiot’

AP — HONOLULU

A mayor in Hawaii is calling a Florida man accused of trying to flout Hawaii’s traveler quar-antine a “covidiot.” Kauai Mayor Derek Kawakami isn’t taking credit for coining the word borne from the COVID-19 pandemic, but said he “may be the first elected official to bust it out in public.”

Bobby Edwards, of Boynton Beach, was arrested last week after police said he landed on the island without proof of having accommoda-tions set up. A statewide order requires people arriving in the islands to quarantine for 14 days.

Edwards “was exhibiting belligerent behaviour toward airport personnel and toward officers during his arrest,” police said.

Police added that Edwards, 31, “was also showing signif-icant signs of intoxication and was not being cooperative.” Earlier last week, another Florida man, Dwight Anthony Tucker of Tampa, was stopped in the tourist town of Hanalei a day after he arrived on Kauai, police said.

He was arrested after authorities said he disregarded Governor David Ige’s statewide order requiring all visitors arriving on or after March 26 to self-quarantine at their place of accommodation.

Also last week, Kauai police arrested Devin Martin of Olympia, Washington, and accused him of violating the quarantine order. “He did not have reservations for proper accommodations and he allegedly refused to find suitable lodging,” police said.

Sanders, the front-runner in February, acknowledged he no longer had a viable path to the Democratic nomination after a string of nominating contest losses to Biden but promised to work with the former vice-president to oust Trump.

19THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020 AMERICAS

20 doctors at

Mexican hospital

test positive for

coronavirus

REUTERS — MEXICO CITY

At least 20 doctors at a public hospital outside Mexico City have tested positive for the coronavirus, the head of Mexico’s social security institute (IMSS) said yesterday, in the second major outbreak among health workers in the country.

Coronavirus was first detected at the hospital in Tlanepantla de Baz, in Mexico State just outside the capital, on March 10, IMSS Director Zoe Robledo said at the pres-ident’s regular news conference.

He said the transmission did not originate inside the facility, and that it had been tracked to three separate cases — one patient and two doctors who did not have contact with each other.

He said the cluster was not similar to an outbreak in the city of Monclova in the northern border state of Coa-huila, where 45 health workers have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the state’s health ministry.

“Compared with Monclova, where there is epidemiological proof that there was contagion inside the hospital, it’s not the same case,” he said. “The epi-demiological study, which took several weeks, is showing that it came from outside.”

Two weeks ago, workers at the Tlanepantla hospital protested outside the building to demand more medical equipment to handle corona-virus cases. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has led to 2,785 cases in Mexico so far, and 141 deaths.

The Mexican government said yesterday that at least 108 Mexicans have died of com-plications related to COVID-19 in the United States, more than half of those in New York.

The actual number could be higher, because Mexico's foreign ministry said in a statement that the figures only include deaths reported to its consulates.

Blood donation driveArmy officers donate blood through the hematology institute Hemorio, in an effort to bolster the blood supply, during the coronavirus disease outbreak, at the army forces headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Puerto Rico seeksban on flights fromvirus hotspots in USAP — SAN JUAN

Puerto Rico’s governor yesterday asked federal offi-cials to ban all flights from US cities with a high number of coronavirus cases to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the US territory.

The petition by Governor Wanda Vázquez to the Federal Aviation Administration came after officials accused some visitors of taking medicine to lower their fevers to avoid being placed in quarantine by National Guard troops screening people at the island’s main international airport.

At least two passengers from New York who lowered their fever with medication are now hospitalized in the island with COVID-19, according to the National Guard.

Vázquez asked to ban flights from New York, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Con-necticut and Illinois.

Joel Pizá, interim executive director of Puerto Rico’s Ports Authority, said in a statement that those flights would be rescheduled when there’s a drop in cases in those states.

It’s unclear how many flights would be affected if the FAA agrees to the temporary ban. A Ports Authority spokesman did not immedi-ately return a message for comment.

The FAA previously authorized a petition from the US territory to allow the National Guard to screen passengers at Puerto Rico’s main airports.

Puerto Ricans have been increasingly complaining about a high number of COVID-19 cases among tourists arriving from the US who don’t adhere to the required two-week quar-antine. One man was heavily criticized on Twitter after he posted that he was at the super-market just days after arriving in Puerto Rico from New York.

Puerto Rico has reported at least 24 deaths and more than 600 confirmed cases, with only 6,000 people tested in a US. territory of 3.2 million. The ter-ritory’s government imposed a curfew on March 15 that has shuttered all non-essential businesses and ordered people to stay in their home unless they have to buy food, medi-cation or go to the bank.

Honduras to ensure food supply with farming on unoccupied land

REUTERS — TEGUCIGALPA

Honduras will spur planting of grains, vegetables and fruit on unoccupied land as it intervenes in the agroindustrial sector to ensure the food supply amid the spreading coronavirus pandemic, President Juan

Orlando Hernandez said on Tuesday.

Instructions will go out to the agriculture ministry and the national agrarian and property institutes to identify such land and direct its owners to plant the food crops to supply national markets, he added.

“This plan for food security will ensure that there is food on the tables of all Hondurans, so that when this crisis passes we will not have famine,” Hern-andez said in a televised address.

He did not give further details of the plan, however, and an official decree has yet

to be published. Property owners would be compensated fairly for their services, Hern-andez added.

Just over three weeks ago, the government imposed a curfew in a bid to halt the spread of the virus, which has infected 312 people.

Trudeau to meet

Cabinet in person

after wife beats

coronavirus

AP — TORONTO

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday he will attend a Cabinet meeting in person after spending weeks in self isolation at home following his wife’s positive test for the new coronavirus.

Sophie Gregoire Trudeau announced on March 28 that she had recovered from the virus after two weeks in self-quarantine, but the prime min-ister continued to self isolate at home on the advice of health officials.

Trudeau said he will con-tinue to work mostly from home by telephone, “as we are asking most Canadians to do.”

But he added: “There will be moments for strategic meetings or particular issues where I will go into he office for meetings, taking all proper precautions.”

Justin Trudeau has been giving daily news confer-ences outside his residence. His wife took their three children to the prime minis-ter’s summer residence after she recovered.

As of midday Tuesday, Canada had 17,065 new coro-navirus cases and 369 deaths from the disease.

Canada says medical donations won’t sway policiesAFP — MONTREAL

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned yesterday that donations of medical equipment by foreign companies like Huawei in the fight against the coronavirus will have no influence on future government policy.

“We will be receiving dona-tions of equipment from various companies and we’re happy that people are offering that,” he said.

“But no, we do not expect this to have any impact” on future decisions, he said. “This will not affect our decision on other issues in the years to come.”

The prime minister was asked if donations to Canada by Huawei could influence his gov-ernment’s policies toward the Chinese telecoms giant, which is at the center of a protracted diplomatic crisis between Ottawa and Beijing.

At a time when the world

faces a shortage of masks, Huawei gave Canada more than a million masks, 30,000 face shields and 50,000 pairs of gloves, according to the Globe and Mail daily.

A Huawei spokesperson in Quebec did not confirm those figures in a statement. “Numerous companies made similar efforts and we were lucky to be in a position, technologically and financially, to help the Canadian population,” the statement said.

“Our goal was to help the

Canadian population and not to gain publicity.” In January, a Canadian court began deliber-ating on whether to proceed with the extradition to the United States of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, accused of bank fraud by Washington.

Meng, the daughter of Hua-wei’s founder, was arrested in 2018 during a stopover in Van-couver at the request of the United States, setting off an unprecedented dispute between

Canada and China.Canada must decide in the

coming months whether it will authorize Huawei to deploy a 5G network in its territory, which Washington opposes, warning that it would pose risks of espionage and sabotage of western networks.

In other coronavirus developments, Trudeau said Canada will make 30,000 res-pirators, part of an effort to lessen its reliance on foreign suppliers.

Women stand in line at a market after the Peruvian government limited men and women to alternate days for leaving their homes, in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19, in Lima, Peru, yesterday.

Peruvian women with COVID-19 give birth to healthy babiesREUTERS — LIMA

Two pregnant women diag-nosed with the new coronavirus in Peru have given birth to babies who have tested negative for the disease, a hospital in the capital Lima said on Tuesday.

The first of the children was born on March 27 and the second on March 31, both through cesarean sections on the advice of doctors, the Rebagliati Hos-pital in Lima reported.

“Fortunately, there has been no vertical transmission, that means that there has been no contagion from mothers to new-borns,” said Carlos Albretch, a doctor in the family unit of the hospital, which is run by state-owned Essalud.

He added that both mothers were in good health, although still receiving treatment for the coronavirus.

Medics in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the outbreak originated, raised concerns at the start of February about potential transmission of the virus by mothers to unborn children after at least one case of a baby born with symptoms.

However, a study of nine pregnant women in China who had tested positive for the virus, published in the Lancet in mid-February, reported that there was “no reliable evidence as yet available to support the possi-bility of vertical transmission of COVID-19 infection from the mother to the baby.”

Census sends paper forms as Midwest sets paceAP — ORLANDO

If you’re a census slacker and haven’t yet filled out the form for the 2020 head count, the federal government is trying another way to get in touch with you.

Starting yesterday, the US Census Bureau was mailing out paper forms to 64 million homes whose residents haven’t yet answered the once-a-decade questionnaire.

Most US residents started getting notices about a month ago that they could respond online or by phone. But about 20 percent of households auto-matically received a paper questionnaire, either because their area lacks consistent Internet connectivity or their neighborhood has a high per-centage of people over age 65.

Now the rest of the nation, at least those households that haven’t responded, are getting paper questionnaires.

About a month into the start of the 2020 census for most US residents, the self-response rate is approaching half of all

households, with most responding online. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa and Virginia are setting the pace with response rates over 50 percent. But in other states — Alaska, West Virginia and New Mexico - only between a quarter and a third of house-holds have responded.

The Census Bureau’s sus-pension of field operations between mid-March and mid-April due to the spread of the new coronavirus may be affecting response rates.

The suspension included the bureau’s “Update/ Leave” oper-ation in which census takers drop off questionnaire packets in communities where large numbers of homes don’t have regular addresses, receive their mail at P O boxes or were hit by a disaster. The lagging states

have the largest number of “Update/ Leave” areas in the country, according to the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York.

“We don’t know definitively why the response rates are so low in places such as West Virginia, etc, but I think it’s safe to say that a major, if not the major, reason they’re so low is because Update/Leave has been suspended,” said Steven Romalewski, director of CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research.

That operation covers large numbers of poor rural areas and Indian reservations, which tra-ditionally have been among the hardest communities to count, said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a consultant on census policy.

The further away from last week’s Census Day, the April 1 date people are asked to use on the

form when determining where they live, the less accurate the responses tend to be because peo-ple’s memories fade, she added.

“The delay in the enumer-ation of those communities could exacerbate those pat-terns,” Lowenthal said.

The Census Bureau says the current national response rate is on track for what was expected. Because the 2010 census only used paper forms, and the schedule was more compressed, a side-by-side comparison of response rates from the two decades is flawed. But almost a month into the 2010 census, about two-thirds of households had responded.

The 2020 response rates, so far, vary demographically. As of April 2, neighborhoods whose residents are predominantly white had the highest average rate at 42.5 percent, according to an analysis from CUNY’s Center for Urban Research.

The analysis found the response rate was 41.8 percent for predominantly Asian neighbor-hoods, 35 percent for predomi-nantly black neighborhoods and

30.5 percent for predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods.

Besides causing the delay in field operations, the outbreak is keeping advocacy and civic groups from conducting face-to-face outreach, considered the most effective way of encouraging participation.

Some outreach groups are looking to alternative tactics. In the nation’s hardest-hit metro area, NYC Census 2020 - with help from Brooklyn-based arts and media institution BRIC - launched an ad last week that links funding for public services crucial in the crisis, like hos-pitals and firefighters, to being counted in the census.

The NALEO Educational Fund, a Hispanic advocacy group, is doing a half-million-dollar radio and digital ad buy to encourage participation, and previously planned town hall meetings are going virtual.

“The current environment has caused all of us to dramat-ically change the approach that we had planned to do,” said Arturo Vargas, CEO of NALEO Educational Fund.

The US Census Bureau was mailing out paper forms to 64 million homes whose residents haven’t yet answered the once-a-decade questionnaire.

20 THURSDAY 9 APRIL 2020MORNING BREAK

Climate change could trigger sudden losses of wildlife: StudyREUTERS — LONDON

Climate change could trigger sudden, potentially cata-strophic losses of wildlife in regions around the world over the coming decades, and the first waves could already be unfolding, according to a study published yesterday.

With human activity from pollution to habit destruction putting a million species at risk of extinction, according to a global research effort pub-lished a year ago, the new

study homed in on the possible i m p a c t o f r i s i n g temperatures.

“We found that climate change risks to biodiversity don’t increase gradually,” said lead author Alex Pigot of the Centre for Biodiversity & Envi-ronment Research at Uni-versity College London.

“It’s not a slippery slope, but a series of cliff edges, hitting different areas at dif-ferent times,” he said.

With governments battling to contain the coronavirus

pandemic, campaigners’ hopes that a series of landmark summits would turn 2020 into a pivotal “superyear” for gal-vanising environmental action have faded.

Plans to hold a major wildlife summit in China in October and a UN climate summit in Scotland in November have been pushed back to 2021.

Even as the novel corona-virus has eclipsed the eco-logical crisis, a series of studies have underscored the risk that

seemingly slow-moving proc-esses brought about by climate change could suddenly accel-erate, spelling disaster for people and wildlife.

The latest paper, published in Nature, predicts when and where severe disruption to ecosystems could happen this century as the burning of fossil fuels envelops the Earth with more heat-trapping gas.

The study crossed-refer-enced climate data from 1850 to 2005 with the geographic ranges of 30,652 species of

birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and other animals and plants, divided into 100 by 100 kilometre grid squares across the globe.

The authors found that species can often adapt to a certain amount of warming before most members of a given ecosystem are forced out of their comfort zone at about the same threshold.

“Once temperatures in a given area rise to levels that the species have never experi-enced, we would expect there

to be extinctions, but not nec-essarily — we simply have no evidence of the ability of these species to persist after this point,” said author Christopher Trisos at the University of Cape Town.

The study found that tropical ocean species could face new temperature regimes before 2030, as evidenced by mass coral bleaching on Aus-tralia’s Great Barrier Reef. Higher latitudes and tropical forests are seen as at risk by 2050.

No press, no family: Space crew set for launch during pandemicAFP — ALMATY

A three-man space crew finished preparations yesterday for a mission to the Interna-tional Space Station (ISS), which is going ahead despite the coro-navirus pandemic.

Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency and Nasa’s Chris Cassidy will blast off from Kaza-khstan for a six-month mission at 08:05 GMT today.

But with journalists and rel-atives unable to travel to Baikonur due to restrictions related to COVID-19, the tradi-tional farewell press conference broadcast by Roscosmos had a more distant and sombre feel.

“Instead of talking only to some cameras we would be talking to some people right now,” said Cassidy, who is readying for his third stint in space.

Cassidy, 50, admitted that

the crew was “affected” by their families not being able to be in Baikonur for their blastoff to the ISS.

“But we understand that the whole world is also impacted by the same crisis.”

Quarantine and isolation from the rest of the world are not new habits for astronauts.

The glass barrier that sepa-rates them from media and loved ones during regular pre-launch events is specifically meant to protect them from potential infection.

This time, however, their isolation has been “even more thorough”, said Ivanishin, after the crew opted out of visits to sites in Moscow during their training an hour outside the city.

Today’s launch will be the first time a manned mission uses a Soyuz-2.1a booster to reach orbit, after Roscosmos stopped using the Soyuz-FG

rocket last year. The newer boosters have

been used in unmanned launches since 2004.

The upgraded rocket relies on a digital flight control system

rather than the analogue equipment used in prior Soyuz models.

Ivanishin said the new system would be more inde-pendent and require less

manual input from the crew in the event of emergencies.

“The system has become better, but it is early to say whether it will be easier to control,” Ivanishin said.

Crew members Chris Cassidy of Nasa and Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner of the Russian space agency Roscosmos posing for a photo behind a glass wall during a final news conference ahead of their mission to the International Space Station, in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, yesterday.

Reality TV star Kylie Jenner is world’s youngest self-made billionaire againIANS — LOS ANGELES

Reality TV star and make-up czarina Kylie Jenner becomes the youngest self-made billionaire in the world for the second year in a row.

Forbes released the annual World’s Billionaires list, and Jenner remains the youngest self-made billionaire.

Jenner first made it onto the billionaires list in March 2019, then further cemented her spot in November, when she agreed to sell 51 percent of her Kylie Cosmetics to beauty giant Coty Inc. for $600m.

The deal, which closed in January, values her business at about $1.2bn.

The cash from the sale and her remaining 49 percent share of the company make Jenner one of just 2,095 people in the world with a ten-digit fortune, reports forbes.com.

“I didn’t expect anything. I did not foresee the future,” Jenner had previously told Forbes, adding: “But (the rec-ognition) feels really good. That’s a nice pat on the back.”

Jenner started her cos-metics empire in the year 2014. She turned her social media following into a dedi-cated customer base by using about $250,000 of modeling earnings to pay an outside company to produce Kylie-branded lip kits — $29 packages of lipstick with matching lip liner.

The first batch of 15,000 lip kits sold out within the first minute. She soon expanded, releasing 500,000 kits in six shades a few months later.

Twitter’s Dorsey pledges $1bn for COVID-19 relief effortAFP — SAN FRANCISCO

Twitter co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey said he was committing $1bn of his personal fortune to coronavirus relief through his philanthropic fund.

Dorsey said in a series of tweets that he would transfer his equity in his digital pay-ments group Square to his limited liability corporation Start Small, contributing around 28 percent of his overall wealth.

“Why now? The needs are increasingly urgent, and I want to see the impact in my lifetime,” Dorsey said.

“I hope this inspires others to do something similar. Life is

too short, so let’s do everything we can today to help people now.”

The move could be the largest from a single individual for coronavirus relief and comes with the pandemic spanning the globe and inflicting a heavy toll in lives and economic devas-tation on the US.

Dorsey said that after the pandemic ends, the fund would focus on health and education for girls and “universal basic income” efforts.

Dorsey, who is CEO of both Twitter and Square, has created a foundation as well as the Start Small LLC -- a model similar to that established by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in his

Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, to allow for flexibility in funding startups and efforts a foun-dation may be ineligible to fund.

“Why is #startsmall a LLC? This segments and dedicates my shares to these causes, and pro-vides flexibility,” Dorsey said.

A document link tweeted by Dorsey showed the new fund had already pledged $100,000 to a new initiative called Amer-ica’s Food Fund launched by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

Dorsey’s net worth is esti-mated at about $3bn including his stake in Twitter and Square.

He said he chose to use his equity from the payments group

because “I own a lot more Square. The impact this money will have should benefit both companies over the long-term because it’s helping the people we want to serve,” he said.

Other technology entrepre-neurs have pledged relief efforts in varying amounts.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has pledged $100m to help food relief efforts during the pan-demic, and Zuckerberg has offered more than $25m to help research through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Gates Foundation last month pledged $125m for research but is believed to be investing more in a variety of projects.

Sony unveils new PlayStation 5 controllerIANS — TOKYO

The Japanese consumer elec-tronics giant Sony has unveiled the new wireless game controller for PlayStation 5, calling it ‘DualSense’ to better reflect its new capabilities.

The controller features all new colour theme and also has some added functionality both inside and outside.

There is also an integrated microphone, a first for Sony’s controllers, along with a USB-C port and an overhauled design.

“The new controller, along with the many innovative fea-tures in PS5, will be trans-formative for games – con-tinuing our mission at Play-Station to push the boundaries of play, now and in the future,” Jim Ryan, President and CEO, Sony Interactive Entertainment said in a statement.

The DualShock 4’s share button, which allowed Play-Station 4 owners to quickly post screenshots and videos of their games, has been retained, but is now called the create button.

Sony says that the new button will operate in the same way but will have more func-tions that it will reveal in the future.

D e s i g n - w i s e , t h e ‘DualSense’ has seen some notable changes. The two handles are less rectangular in shape and have a slight curve along the outer edge.

The touchpad is also no longer rectangular, and appears to be a bit bigger overall.

Both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are slated to be launched in November, though things could change in the light of the coronavirus global pandemic.

Disney might check visitors’ temperatures when theme parks reopen, says chairmanREUTERS — LOS ANGELES,

Walt Disney Co might require theme park visitors to have their temperatures checked when they reopen after coro-navirus restrictions on public gatherings are lifted, Executive Chairman Bob Iger said in an interview published on Tuesday.

The company is considering the idea as one way to make the public feel safe about returning to Disney’s parks once they are allowed to open again for business, Iger told Barron’s.

“One of the things that we’re discussing already is that in order to return to some sem-blance of normal, people will have to feel comfortable that they’re safe,” Iger said. “Some of that could come in the form

ultimately of a vaccine, but in the absence of that it could come from basically, more scrutiny, more restrictions.”

“Just as we now do bag checks for everybody that goes into our parks, it could be that at some point we add a com-ponent of that that takes peo-ple’s temperatures, as a for-instance,” Iger added.

Disney operates Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California as well as theme parks in China, Hong Kong, Japan and France. All are currently closed to help fight the spread of the novel coronavirus. The company has not said when they will re-open.

Walt Disney World, the most-visited theme park in the world, attracted 58.4 million visitors in 2018, according to the

Themed Entertainment Association.

Iger said Disney is studying China’s efforts to let people

return to everyday activities.In China, “you can’t get on

a bus or a subway or a train or enter a high-rise building there,

and I’m sure this will be the case when their schools reopen, without having your temper-ature taken,” Iger said.

An aerial view of Cinderella Castle at the end of an empty Main Street at Disney’s Magic Kingdom theme park after it closed in an effort to combat the spread of coronavirus disease , in Orlando, Florida, recently.

FAJR SUNRISE 04.00 am 05.18 am

W A L R U WA I S : 26o↗ 37o W A L K H O R : 25o↗ 37o W D U K H A N : 24o↗ 41o W WA K R A H : 27o↗ 38o W M E S A I E E D 27o↗ 38o W A B U S A M R A 22o↗ 43o

PRAYER TIMINGS WEATHER TODAY

HIGH TIDE 04:52– 17:41 LOW TIDE 00:03 – 12:34

Hot daytime with scattered clouds and chance of rain at

some places at first and slight dust at times, mild by night.

Minimum Maximum26oC 40oC

ZUHR

MAGHRIB

11.36 am05.56 pm

ASR

ISHA

03.05 pm07.26 pm